Yun Ye was startled with alarm and was about to resist when the iron chain slid down by itself. That woman, beastlike as she was, collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath, her face bearing a trace of determination.

Suddenly, Yun Ye understood the meaning behind her action. She wanted to die. She wanted to use this opportunity to seek death.

Earlier, Yun Ye’s words about pigs also eating people had frightened her. Such a tragic fate was something she could not accept. Dying by the blade would be much more fortunate than being eaten by pigs.

Having figured out the reason, the anger in his heart subsided. He squatted down and said to the woman: “My situation isn’t any better than yours. You’re a prisoner, I’m also a prisoner. We’ll both be exploited by him. After today, who knows if we’ll still see the sun tomorrow. So, you shouldn’t harbor hostility toward me. If we analyze it carefully, we should actually be friends.”

“There isn’t a single good Tang person. They’re all leeches in the jungle, all wanting to suck our blood. You’re the same.” Who could imagine that from a throat as thick as a man’s could come a voice as clear as silver bells? Could pig feed have the function of changing one’s voice?

It would take some time to explain things to her. He carried her on his back and brought her out of the pigsty. Both of them now stank equally. Wang Cai sauntered over. Yun Ye didn’t want to pass the stench on to him, so right outside the pigsty, he used thorny branches to bind together a crude stretcher and hung it on Wang Cai’s body to let him drag it along.

There was a bamboo building to live in, which wasn’t bad—except that wind from all four directions could penetrate it. He placed the woman on the bamboo bed and said to her: “I’m going to bathe you. Don’t think I’m trying to take advantage of you. Besides, you don’t have any advantage for me to take.”

Having said this, he prepared to remove the rotten hide from the woman’s waist. Many places had already stuck to her flesh. Yun Ye carefully used a knife to cut it down bit by bit. When the rotten hide separated from her body, her waist was already a bloody mess. He didn’t dare touch it further. Only when the wound stopped bleeding could he clean her.

Dou Yanshan wouldn’t give him wound medicine, and those foolish natives couldn’t identify medicinal herbs. Weren’t they supposed to be children of the great mountains? Why didn’t they know even this common knowledge?

He hung a pot over the fire pit—this was the greatest privilege Dou Yanshan had given Yun Ye. A person who had been starving for a year couldn’t eat dry rice. He added some water, poured in some rice, and began cooking porridge.

He threw several stones into the fire pit. When the stones were heated through, he clamped them into a clay jar. Five or six stones put inside, and the water in the jar became warm water. Only then did he take out a piece of hemp cloth and begin cleaning the woman’s body.

“We’re in the same miserable situation. Won’t you tell me who you are? This is very impolite.”

Her body was extremely filthy. Sometimes, to remove years of accumulated grime, he had to scrub hard. Seeing the woman’s muscles tense from pain, Yun Ye spoke, hoping to distract her.

“I am the king of this land, Queen Tango. I took the scepter from my mother’s hands, so I am the king here. That Tang person is an outsider, the most despicable guest.”

“You’re a failed queen, Tango. You didn’t fulfill your duty to protect your subjects, letting them sink into the deepest part of hell. How about it, do you still want Worry-Free Grass?”

Needless to say, this unfortunate queen must have consumed opium, which was how Dou Yanshan controlled her. Her most loyal subordinates must have also consumed this substance, which was why Dou Yanshan could establish a foothold on this land.

At the mention of Worry-Free Grass, Queen Tango fearfully curled her body into a ball. By the looks of it, her path to quitting the drug must have been very miserable. Dou Yanshan’s only mistake was that he shouldn’t have locked Tango in the pigsty out of anger—this gave her the only path to survival. Otherwise, in a few more days, Worry-Free Grass would surely have torn her last line of defense to shreds. That way, Dou Yanshan would have easily obtained the clan’s ritual vessels without needing to go through all this trouble.

Good heavens, Yun Ye had never seen a body with so much grime. Black, filthy water flowed down through the bamboo gaps with a rushing sound. It could be certain that this year, the grass under the bamboo building would grow especially lush.

People always had to take sides. Standing with Dou Yanshan would sooner or later cost him his life. Yun Ye needed a teammate. For example, this Queen Tango would be a suitable teammate.

As long as this queen’s intelligence was above the baseline, she would become his capable assistant. Yun Ye didn’t believe that a former king wouldn’t have one or two backup plans.

However, finding a teammate by starting with bathing her was somewhat demanding of the impossible. Dou Yanshan was right—Yun Ye couldn’t accept Queen Tango. Right now, his stomach was already churning violently.

The last bamboo ladle of clean water poured down, and finally there was no more maddening black filthy water. After drying her body, Yun Ye took out a very large piece of cloth, cut a hole in the very center, put it over Queen Tango’s head, and at the positions of both armpits, sewed a few stitches with hemp thread. Finally, he tied a rope around her waist. Very good—a standard sack dress was complete.

In fact, clothing was somewhat superfluous for Tango. Which of those women outside didn’t bind a piece of animal hide around their waists and run around the world with their skin exposed? Yun Ye did this for himself, to avoid associating Tango’s terrifying body with other women’s bodies in the future.

Wang Cai smelled the fragrance of the rice porridge and stood outside, resting his head at the doorway looking inside. It had been some time since he had drunk rice porridge. Poor Wang Cai used to not drink porridge—he wouldn’t even drink porridge with white fungus added. He had tasted the white fungus and lotus seed porridge prepared for Yun Ye—it didn’t taste good. He most liked fermented rice wine, but unfortunately there was none here. Even drinking a mouthful of porridge had become a luxurious ideal.

The scalding hot rice porridge bubbled in the pot. Tango’s nostrils kept opening and closing. Wang Cai stuck out his tongue licking the bamboo, with white drool flowing from the corners of his mouth.

Tango was very dissatisfied that Yun Ye gave half of a pot of porridge to Wang Cai, and moreover, Yun Ye only gave her one bowl. That one bowl of porridge wasn’t even enough to fill the gaps between her teeth, while that horse drank porridge with loud slurping sounds.

Yun Ye poured the porridge from his own bowl to Tango. This action made the dissatisfied Tango feel at least a trace of warmth. After finishing the porridge, Tango covered herself with a blanket and fell into a deep sleep. In her dreams, she seemed to see her mother, that woman who was equally robust as a mountain…

Yun Ye, wearing his undergarments, vigorously rubbed his clothes on the stone slab. He rinsed them in water, pulled them up, and smelled them, discovering that the pig stench seemed impossible to wash away forever. Irritated, he threw the clothes on the stone slab, preparing to wash them again.

“Oh my, Marquis Yun can actually wash clothes? This is beyond your younger brother’s expectations. I originally thought Brother Yun’s cleanliness obsession was feigned, but it turns out to be real. You’ve already washed your clothes eight times. If you keep scrubbing, they’ll be ruined. Could it be Brother Yun also wants to emulate these savages and wear animal hides?”

“Dou Yanshan, spare me your sarcastic remarks. If you have soap pods, give them to me. Otherwise I can only run around everywhere in my underwear.”

A large bundle of soap pods was thrown in front of Yun Ye. Dou Yanshan squatted beside him watching Yun Ye wash clothes, his mouth grinning almost to the back of his head. As long as Yun Ye struggled in hardship, he was delighted. Then he could put on the appearance of a deity to rescue him. The Dou family’s servants from top to bottom all fell for this routine.

The clothes were finally washed clean. Yun Ye then washed his entire body again. The soap pods scraped his skin painfully. This substance was slippery and hard to grasp, not to mention it was full of fine wooden splinters, so this bath was very uncomfortable.

Dou Yanshan stood watching under a banyan tree by the river. Yun Ye originally wanted to chase this fellow away, but seeing the aerial roots hanging down from the banyan tree crawling with leeches, each one stretching its body long after smelling his scent, he abandoned the plan to chase him away. They were all men—looking once wouldn’t cost him a piece of flesh. On the other hand, Dou Yanshan might lose a few taels of blood.

The clothes draped on the stones were warmed by the sun and felt very comfortable to put on. Dou Yanshan, with several leeches behind his ears, was about to come up and talk to Yun Ye. Each leech had sucked itself full of blood, making it seem as if Dou Yanshan had suddenly grown several fleshy pillars.

Leeches were notorious blood-suckers. Once they latched on, they absolutely wouldn’t let go until they’d sucked their fill. While sucking blood, these things would also spit saliva. This saliva would numb the nerves and prevent blood from coagulating. The person being bitten would be completely unaware, like Dou Yanshan right now.

“Brother Dou, when did you grow several fleshy pillars behind your ears? This way, my brother certainly looks much more imposing.”

Dou Yanshan found it strange that Yun Ye would say this. Unconsciously, he touched behind his ear and felt a leech, which he forcefully tore off. His hand was covered in fresh blood. Only half of the leech had been pulled off—the other half still clung firmly to the back of his neck.

Dou Yanshan let out a wild scream and ran off at high speed. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared into his own bamboo building.

Taking Wang Cai to the place where Dou Yanshan had just been standing, he pointed at those leeches writhing like maggots for Wang Cai to see. Animal instinct made Wang Cai keep retreating until he was outside the range covered by the banyan tree trunk before stopping.

Very good. Wang Cai now knew how to identify leeches and didn’t need him to worry about it. If a person could return, should he bring some leeches back for Sun Simiao? The old Daoist had already been tormented by the problem of blood coagulation. Perhaps he could comprehend something from the leeches.

Returning to his own bamboo building, Yun Ye laid down a bamboo raft at the entrance of the bamboo building so Wang Cai could enter. The nights here were too dangerous. Things like vampire bats, which were rare in later generations, must be plentiful now. Even if there weren’t such things, mosquitoes and insects alone would make Wang Cai suffer greatly. The small pouch Dan Ying had given him was still there. The medicinal herbs inside were still working. As long as he wore it, there generally wouldn’t be mosquitoes in the house.

Nanzhao’s climate was strange, much warmer than a thousand years later. It was only March, yet the river valley was already very hot. However, the distant mountain peaks seemed to still have white snow. The higher up one went, the colder it became.

He stretched silk threads across the doorway, tying them firmly to the pillars. In this room, Yun Ye and Wang Cai wouldn’t move around randomly when sleeping. As for whether Queen Tango would move, he couldn’t be bothered with that.

Thinking of the iron chain that had wrapped around his neck during the day, Yun Ye pulled several more threads beside his own bed.