Chapter 9: Two Years

In the black night sky, the stars were so beautiful as to make one’s heart palpitate, and the light silver light, sprinkled in the crescent moon sea under the mountain, reflected countless blinking eyes. The grass by the lake was soft, and the wind was gentle, as if whispering to the sleeping people. Countless tents spread out from around the Crescent Sea, deeper into the grassland, with hidden lights reflecting the stars in the sky, while more herdsmen’s tents were dark and quiet, bathed in starlight.

Fan Xian’s hand holding the cylinder stiffened slightly, and he watched the movements near the king’s tent on the shores of the Crescent Sea without moving, and it was only after a long time that he put down the cylinder, bowed his head and shrunk his knees, and fell into deep thought.

Xihu Shanyu went into the tiny tent and did not come out until long afterward. There should be experts of the Hu tribe escorting in the surrounding darkness, but the whole defense system, compared to the usual, was much looser, probably this Shan Yu was also unwilling to have the experts of the royal court too close to that tent.

What kind of people live in that small tent? Fan Xian pursed his dry lips, his mood slightly depressed. This discovery might be a bit strange, even stranger than Wei Wucheng’s coincidental encounter, but Fan Xian didn’t suspect anything – the Hu people could never imagine that someone could be high up in the mountains, watching everything that was going on along the shores of the Lunar Sea.

This was not something that could be done by human power; science and technology were the first productive force. Fan Xian’s fingers gently rubbed the cylindrical binoculars, licked his lips, and instead of leaving on that note, he waited quietly until Shan Yu came out of that tent.

Xihu Shan Yu, who was over thirty years old, was wearing a thin cloak, but his sword was not by his side, and after walking out of the tent, he turned back and slightly bowed, and judging from his expression, it seemed that he was not willing to leave there and then.

The corner of Fan Xian’s lips revealed a sneer.

A few days later, the major trading houses in the Central Plains began to bargain with the dignitaries in the Western Hu royal court over the goods they were bringing on this trip, and in order to wait for the characters who were coming from the two great sage kings’ tents, the time was delayed for a little more than two days.

The royal court was showing goodwill to these merchants, naturally for the possible importation of goods in the future, but this fall sale was also a luxury goods fair with a huge amount of money. The princes and nobles of Western Hu have the richest resources in the entire grassland, and they have an unknown amount of gold and precious stones in their hands, which can be used to buy luxury goods from the Central Plains without blinking an eye.

However, even so, this trip to the Central Plains merchants to sell all the inventory, also spent four or five days. During these four or five days, Mu Feng’er, representing the First Merchant House of Shazhou, was also cozying up to the Hu people and earning a small fortune. Fan Xian, on the other hand, after fulfilling his duties very simply, began to walk around the Crescent Sea, or to look around, or to be looked around.

It had to be said that in his true capacity, making such a move in the heart of the Western Hu royal court was a very arrogant and even foolish act.

His eyebrows were pulled a little closer together, the tips of his eyebrows were glued upwards, and his skin color changed slightly, but what didn’t change was the still handsome face. That’s why when he was walking on the meadows and dunes near the Crescent Moon Sea, he was always greeted with countless pairs of blazing and fiery gazes.

Although the women of the Hu Clan were not as open as the people of the Central Plains denigrated them as being, they were definitely much more passionate about their feelings and beautiful men. If Fan Xian was able to show off the muscles that were hidden under his shirt, he believed that this passion would be like a fire in the fall that would directly engulf him.

It was just that he didn’t want to develop an affair in the Hu Clan that couldn’t possibly have an ending, and he was just chatting with Wei Wucheng as he strolled around the Crescent Moon Sea. Of course, whether or not his subconscious mind was hiding the idea of going to attract another person’s attention was anyone’s guess.

The conversation with Wei Wucheng went well, and this young man from Northern Qi, who had probably spent a lot of time on the grasslands, rarely met such a good person to talk to as Fan Xian, and from time to time, he would come to him to talk. From the conversation over the past few days, Fan Xian gradually figured out some things, but in the last two days, perhaps Wei Wucheng had been warned in some way, and was much more careful with his words. At the same time, Fan Xian also found himself surrounded by a few more pairs of attentive eyes.

Fortunately, it didn’t cause too many problems, the princes and nobles in the king’s tent were still mainly focused on the merchants and the power behind them, Fan Xian, the little white man in the eyes of the Hu people, didn’t attract much attention. He still every day late at night, on time to climb that steep lonely mountain, with binoculars, spying on the crescent sea shore of everything.

Late at night Shan Yu, not every day will leave his king’s tent, go to that small tent, but the frequency also seems extraordinarily high. Fan Xian has long been clear, the king’s tent behind the side of the several small tents is the general Hu maidservant living place, not how surprising.

What was strange was why Shan Yu went there. The marvelous thing was that Fan Xian and Mu Feng’er realized that it was very difficult to get close to those small tents nowadays, and that there were many people secretly protecting that small tent and isolating it from the world by the Crescent Moon Sea.

After four consecutive nights, Fan Xian became more and more convinced of his own deduction, but he couldn’t help but think with slight sarcasm that the master of the grassland seemed to be acting a little too respectfully.

Cilechuan River, under the Yinshan Mountain, the sky is like a dome, covering the four fields. The sky is pale, the wild is vast, the wind blows the grass low to see the cattle and sheep.

“Does anyone know where Cilechuan is? Does Yinshan refer to this mountain behind the sea?”

The tents near the royal court have been withdrawn a lot, and the area around the crescent moon sea became empty and quiet. The herdsmen who lived by the water and grass each had their own place to go. With less goods brought by the merchants of the Central Plains, the heads of the tribes, leading their own people back home, the attraction of the Royal Court for them, until today, is still far less than the goods of the Central Plains.

Inside a quiet tent, Wei Wucheng, who has been a member of the West Hu King’s Court’s inner treasury for a year, holds a piece of paper in his hand and asks his companion beside him. It had already been a year since these people came to the grasslands, helping Shan Yu with political affairs, gathering intelligence, and playing an important role in the majestic rise of the royal court. Now that the Qing Army’s fall hunt had ended and the grasslands were preparing for the arrival of winter, there were no major battles to prepare for, so Wei Wucheng began to commit the same old crimes.

“You think you’re still in the Upper Capital? You think you can still go to the imperial examinations?” One of his companions was obviously not in too good of a mood and said mockingly, “When you have nothing to do all day long, you just hold on to your poems and songs and read them, you don’t even look at where you are.”

Wei Wucheng wasn’t annoyed and laughed, “This little speech was gifted by a friend, and it describes the grassland scenery extremely well, so I wrote it down, I just didn’t understand two of the lines very well.”

These people carefully savor, and found that it is indeed the same thing, this little speech is simple, but there is a grand atmosphere, it is really not ordinary people can write out.

In this way, this song, the sky is pale and wild, began to be remembered, and then spread to the hands of the Hu people around the royal court, and then translated into Hu language, began to be Hu women waving their whips and singing softly.

The circulation was not wide, but something like rumor is a little better than binoculars, it has natural wings, and is even more skillful than Ye Liuyun’s lightness of being.

A servant girl carrying an urn of goat’s milk heard it as she marched past the tent. She stood outside the tent, gently set aside the earthenware urn, fumed for a while, and then wiped her milk-stained palm on her own garment.

Shan Yu also knew about this little speech that night, but he did not care much, a king needs to consider too many things, do not think this little speech can bring what kind of problem, just entrusted, casually asked a couple of sentences, learned that Wei Wucheng from those merchants heard, and no longer care about it.

Those Chinese merchants have already left the royal court for three days, is it still for a small speech, go to chase each other back?

Shan Yu in this matter, some do not care, so when he found the next day that the handmaiden with goat’s milk urn suddenly disappeared, he was furious, as if his heart was being dug away a very important treasure.

Good in that servant girl left a letter, persuade him to calm down, she went to go back, only then Shan Yu stopped sending cavalry to chase the idea of those merchants in the Central Plains.

Grassland in the autumn grass is long, cover the royal court to all directions of the road, of course, the grassland originally there is no road, the horse stepped on more, there is also a natural road.

In the royal court to the direction of Qingzhou, more than a day’s journey, is a large area of flat desert plains, quiet and incomparable, the autumn sun hangs low, the meaning of killing full.

The woman dressed in the costume of a maidservant just walked out from amongst the long grass, and then she saw the young man on the opposite side.

The young man with a smile on his face and a strong sense of disappointment in his eyes.

The young man looked at this woman who hadn’t seen her for three years, looked at her face, looked at her eyes that were still as clear as a lake, no, clearer than a crescent moon sea, looked at her hands that were stuck by her side, and opened his mouth to say, “You’ve gotten a tan.”

Haitang Duo Duo, who had been missing for more than two years, had now turned into an ordinary maidservant in the Xihu royal court, and she looked at Fan Xian without opening her mouth to speak, and in her clear eyes, she didn’t know what kind of statement she was silently stating.

Fan Xian stared into her eyes and said, “I have been waiting for you here for two days …… or is it that you have been waiting for me on the grasslands for two years?”