Chapter 17

Chapter 17

My plan was very simple.

With a crowd blocking the entrance, that burly fellow would have no choice but to run deeper inside.

When that happened, everyone’s eyes would fall on him, and naturally no one would pay attention to me.

As it turned out, my idea worked beautifully.

The man really did turn and bolt into the alley. The constables on the outer street and the clerks guarding the gate dutifully chased after him, leaving the ward market gate wide open and revealing the empty street outside that I had been dreaming of.

Everything was perfect-

Except for the fact that he dragged me out with him on his way.

After dying and coming back so many times, I swear, this was the fastest I had ever run.

Dark clouds covered the moonlight. The alley was so black I could not see my hand in front of my face. All I could hear pounding against my eardrums was my own heavy breathing and his light footsteps.

He seemed very familiar with these streets and alleys as well. In a few turns, he had skirted past the shacks, stepped onto a pile of firewood, and flipped himself up onto a courtyard wall. He even remembered to reach a hand back to me.

“Come on.”

The constables’ footsteps shattered the alley’s nighttime stillness.

I saw lights flicker on in the distance as people were woken by the commotion. I heard movement beginning in the courtyard behind the man.

The thought of dying again and the thought of risking everything fought fiercely inside me.

A northern wind scattered the dense clouds, and dim moonlight once again lit the shadows on the man’s face.

In that instant of mingled light and dark, I saw a familiar face.

Gu Changfeng.

It was as if a string of scattered beads had suddenly found the one long-lost thread that bound them together.

The broken pieces of the puzzle snapped back into place, and many details I had overlooked surfaced in my mind.

The patrol soldiers on the outer street who refused to let anyone suspicious pass.

The man hidden in the shadow of the donkey cart, collapsed at the gate from sheer exhaustion.

The fact that he carried no documents or contracts that could prove his identity.

The way he had hidden in the haystack even earlier than I had.

The man bent down and urged me again.

“Hurry up, or neither of us will get away.”

I gritted my teeth, steeled myself, and placed my hand in his.

A powerful force hauled me up onto the wall. Gu Changfeng moved lightly and soundlessly.

Keeping to the shadows where the candlelight could not reach, he flipped over the low wall of the back courtyard again. In just a few leaps and bounds, he carried me across several streets and alleys, then returned to the courtyard I knew all too well.

Bodies lay sprawled all over the yard.

The sounds of the manhunt carried through the night from far away.

Gu Changfeng glanced back at me.

“This…”

I lowered my eyes.

“The yamen runners will find this place very soon. In any case, you have no identity papers, and you’re already being hunted. Whether it’s one murder or ten, you only have one life to pay with. If I were the official in charge, I would definitely say you were the ringleader of the thieves. You fled here with nowhere left to go, evil intentions stirred in your heart, and when you failed to use this courtyard as a hiding place, you slaughtered everyone inside.”

The fingers around my wrist tightened, then slowly loosened.

The man put on that smiling face I had seen several times before.

“Why would you think that, miss? I-”

I took his hand and set it against my throat.

“My neck is very thin. One squeeze, and it will snap.”

I stared at him.

“But you also know you can’t stay in this courtyard for long. Before you twist my neck, all I have to do is shout once, and you won’t be getting out.”

I knew what he had been planning.

If nothing had gone wrong, he would have hidden in that haystack until the ward gate opened, then concealed himself under the donkey cart when it returned from fetching water. He would have stayed there until he collapsed from exhaustion at the entrance to this courtyard, where the madam would kick him aside.

Using that kick from the madam, he would obtain a brand-new identity-a down-and-out traveler thrown out by the brothel keeper after spending all his money on women. All he had to do was recover his strength, and then he could walk out in broad daylight.

That was why, out of all the households here, he had just so happened to choose the one I was in.

A perfect plan.

But I was the accident.