As they spoke, he wrapped his uninjured arm around Yunyi’s slender waist. This action made Yunyi’s body stiffen, and she took a deep breath, suppressing the strange feeling in her heart. She forcefully squeezed the horse’s belly and shouted loudly, “Hyah!”

Under her urging, Azure Cloud galloped swiftly through the snow-filled sky like an arrow released from its string. For Li Shimin, every gallop of Azure Cloud brought jarring pain that was torture to endure. His right shoulder ached beyond words, and large beads of cold sweat continuously dripped from his forehead.

After galloping for about half an hour, Yunyi could see the city gate in the distance. She turned back and said, “Second Young Master, please endure a little longer. We’re almost there!”

“I’m fine, you be careful yourself.” These mere eight words nearly exhausted all of Li Shimin’s strength, and he couldn’t say another word.

When they were still about a li away, Yunyi saw the gate officials slowly closing the city gate. She hurriedly called out, “Wait, there are still people!”

Because the wind and snow were too heavy, the gate officials didn’t hear her voice. Even if they had heard, they wouldn’t delay closing the gate for a young woman’s words.

Although Yunyi repeatedly urged Azure Cloud to speed up, they still couldn’t reach the gate before it closed. Looking at the tightly shut city gate, Yunyi felt extremely anxious. Enduring the pain in her feet, she jumped down from the horse and walked to the gate, continuously pounding on it. “Please open the gate and let us in.”

After repeating this several times, finally an impatient voice came from the other side of the gate, “The city gate is closed. You can enter the city tomorrow.”

Yunyi pleaded, “Sir, the wind and snow outside are heavy with nowhere to rest. We’re also injured. Please let us in.”

“The court has ordered that after you hour, unless it’s urgent military intelligence, the city gate must not be opened. Go away.” After this statement, no matter how Yunyi knocked on the gate and pleaded, no more sounds came from the other side. Even when Yunyi brought up Li Shimin’s identity, it was useless.

Li Shimin said from horseback, “Forget it. Privately opening the city gate is a capital offense. Not to mention they’re uncertain of our identities – even if they were certain, they wouldn’t open it. Let’s quickly find a place to shelter.” As he spoke, he looked around in all directions and suddenly pointed eastward, “I know there’s a village over there. Let’s go there.”

Following the direction of his finger, Yunyi vaguely saw some houses. She nodded helplessly. Since it wasn’t far, and she didn’t want to have overly intimate contact with Li Shimin, she didn’t mount the horse but led it by the reins toward the place Li Shimin had indicated.

When they arrived there, although the wind and snow were heavy, they could still see many houses. Perhaps because of the snow, there were no pedestrians on the streets – only houses standing one after another in the wind and snow.

“Is anyone there?” Yunyi walked to an old house and knocked on the door while asking, but no one ever responded. There wasn’t even a sound. She said puzzledly, “Could they have gone to sleep this early?”

Li Shimin’s voice reached her ears, “No need to knock. There’s no one inside. Let’s go in.”

Yunyi said in surprise, “No one? Second Young Master, how do you know this household isn’t home?”

“Not just this household – all the houses here have no one.” Li Shimin struggled down from horseback and pushed open the unlocked door to enter.

Strange, how would Li Shimin know there was no one here? Had he been here before? But looking at these houses, this was clearly a village. How could there be no one at all? Had everyone moved away?

Yunyi led Azure Cloud into the house. Inside, it was indeed as Li Shimin had said – no one lived there. The house was filled with dust and spider webs and had apparently been empty for some time. However, what puzzled her was that there were several dark red marks on the walls that looked like… blood.

While Yunyi was settling Azure Cloud, Li Shimin found firewood and dry grass from somewhere and said, “It was windy and snowy all the way here. Quickly use these to start a fire and warm up, don’t catch cold.”

After Yunyi managed to start a fire, she warmed her ice-cold hands while curiously asking, “Second Young Master, where did all the people here go? Why don’t they live here anymore?”

By now it had completely darkened. Li Shimin’s face alternated between light and shadow in the firelight. “This village used to have many residents and was quite lively. Later, someone in the village contracted a terrible plague. Originally it was just one or two people, but then it became ten, twenty – more and more people got sick, yet the physicians couldn’t cure it. Even the physicians themselves got sick.”

Yunyi’s eyelids twitched as she blurted out, “You mean… everyone here died of plague? But why have I never heard of this?”

Although she only arrived in Honghua Prefecture in September, to successfully assume the identity and enter the Governor’s residence without being discovered, she had Moping spend considerable effort gathering information about all the major and minor affairs of Honghua Prefecture to memorize. But she had never heard of this incident, nor had she heard Meixue and Caiping mention it.

“No.” Li Shimin’s answer made Yunyi breathe a sigh of relief, but his next words made her blood run cold. “When the Governor at the time learned of this, fearing it would cause panic throughout the entire prefecture, he ordered the news to be suppressed and summoned many physicians to provide treatment. Unfortunately, it was never effective. Instead, the situation became increasingly serious. At least seventy to eighty percent of the entire village contracted the plague. They didn’t want to be trapped in the village waiting to die, so once they united and tried to leave for other villages, seeking a chance to survive. In the conflict, many people died, and later several soldiers were also infected with the plague. That Governor, fearing the situation would become uncontrollable, ordered all the people in this place to be killed!”

Yunyi stared at Li Shimin with a pale face. After a long while, she finally recovered, clutching her chest and saying with difficulty, “Second Young Master just said seventy to eighty percent got sick, which means some people didn’t get sick. They…”

Li Shimin sighed, “To completely conceal the news and prevent the plague from spreading, the entire village of over seven hundred people, regardless of whether they were infected or not, were all killed without exception!”

“This… this…” Yunyi was not some inexperienced country bumpkin, but hearing about the killing of over seven hundred innocent people at once was still difficult to accept. She seemed to see those plague-stricken people wailing as they died under the butcher’s knife, and her mood couldn’t calm down for a long time.

After a long while, she said in a heavy voice, “A village just disappeared like this. Didn’t anyone suspect anything?”

Li Shimin took a wooden stick to stir the fire and said, “After that Governor buried all the bodies, he blamed everything on ghosts and spirits, sending people everywhere to spread this story while completely clearing himself of involvement. But as you said, with such a big incident, how could no one suspect anything? Especially those who had relatives in this village – they united and lodged complaints everywhere, even wanting to go to the capital to appeal to the Emperor. But Luoyang is thousands of li from here, the journey is long and arduous. How could they just go as they pleased? Plus the Governor sent people to obstruct them everywhere, so this matter eventually came to nothing.”