After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

The rain was getting heavier and showed no signs of stopping.

The rain would wash away the tire tracks on the ground, making their whereabouts impossible to trace. Neither the Crown Prince nor Han Ting had missed their best chance to find them. Lu Zhiyuan understood that if she and Lu Yun wanted to survive, they needed to figure out the purpose of the people before them.

The meal was simple, served in a farmhouse kitchen. A pot of tea was brewed, but it wasn't any particularly good tea; it was yellow flower tea that the villagers had picked from the back mountain.

Gu An turned his back to them and waited until they had almost finished eating before speaking: "I don't know what to say, nor where to begin. Perhaps the Crown Princess should ask."

Lu Zhiyuan took a sip of tea, the faint floral fragrance carrying a hint of sweetness.

Are you Gu An?

"It's genuine, no doubt about it. The Crown Princess can investigate as she sees fit."

What exactly happened at the hanging platform that night?

Gu An stared silently at the pot of tea that was still boiling, and after a long while he said, "My trusted confidant betrayed me."

There are fixed routes for transporting military supplies, and under normal circumstances, things don't go wrong. Even if something does happen, there are ways to deal with it. Gu An has a trusted confidant named Gu Cheng, whom he brought from the Gu family. Gu An trusts him greatly and has entrusted him with scouting the route and finding lodging.

Military rations are different from other supplies; they must avoid bustling towns and cannot stay in inns frequented by ordinary people. Too many people and too much attention could lead to trouble. They generally stay in official guesthouses or inns owned by the Xie family specifically for transporting goods.

Compared to the rest of the trip, there were more nights spent camping in the wild.

According to the original plan, they were supposed to stay in the village that night, but Gu Cheng said there were some strange things happening in the village, and just in case, it would be better to stay at the Hanging Platform. They had heard the legends about the Hanging Platform, but they didn't believe in those ghost stories and thought they were nonsense.

They're all soldiers who fight wars; who hasn't seen dead bodies? If ghosts really existed, why would they need to guard the borders? The tens of thousands of soldiers who died in Beiliang alone could have overthrown an enemy country.

That night was just like tonight; the sky was clear and blue at dusk, but the weather changed after nightfall, and it started to rain. There was a regulation in the court that when lodging overnight, the grain wagons had to be arranged in a circle, with soldiers guarding both the inside and outside.

The soldiers were divided into two teams. One team stayed inside, with two men on guard duty and the rest taking a break. The other team patrolled the outside, taking turns. Since the founding of Northern Liang, there had never been a mishap.

That night was the same, except the rain came suddenly, and the resting squad of soldiers moved from their tents to the General's Temple.

"Rumor has it that the soldiers on patrol hid under tarpaulins and disappeared along with the grain carts."

"What a joke! We're soldiers, why would we hide under a tarpaulin in such a little rain?" Gu An slammed his fist on the table. "I really don't know what the people who made this up are thinking."

"The rumors are fabricated, what's the truth?"

"The soldiers who were resting were naturally resting in the temple, and the grain carts were indeed covered with tarpaulins. The soldiers responsible for patrolling the perimeter were patrolling in raincoats. How could soldiers slack off just because of a little rain? If everyone were so perfunctory, Northern Liang would have perished long ago."

Gu An sighed.

Rainy nights are ideal for ambushes, and Gu Cheng had mentioned something unusual happening in the village. As the leader of the grain transport team, how could Gu An dare to be negligent? Whether they were resting or patrolling outside, everyone was listening intently to the sounds outside.

He hadn't slept for the first half of the night, and only managed a short nap in the second half. As dawn approached, the rain lessened considerably, and Gu Cheng called everyone to get up for breakfast. They ate mixed grain porridge cooked in a stone pot, flatbread and steamed buns bought in the previous town, and pickled radishes. The meal was quick, taking only fifteen minutes, after which they changed shifts with the patrolmen outside.

His last memory was of tidying up tarpaulins. He woke up lying in a cave, his face and body aching terribly.

Lu Zhiyuan looked at him: "Don't you know what happened?"

Gu An shook his head: "I don't know, at least I knew nothing about it at that time."

The meal was cooked at the General's Temple. Gu Cheng ladled out the first bowl for him. He helped himself to the steamed buns and picked the dried radish himself. He didn't notice anything wrong while eating. After finishing, he went to inspect the grain carts outside, holding an umbrella, and also called the patrolling soldiers to come to the General's Temple for a meal. Before his consciousness faded, he felt a little itchy all over. His last image was a black tarpaulin.

Based on experience, he must have fainted.

The cave was long and filled with water that dripped continuously from the ceiling. He was awakened by the dripping water, which stung his wounds. He couldn't move; every movement felt like being torn apart.

Lying around him were many men like him, without armor; he knew they were his soldiers. Soldiers always had scars, and having spent so much time together, he naturally knew where those scars were. He was pressing down on Tiger, a man of few words but great strength, who did all the dirty and hard work during the grain transport.

Not far to the left is A-Chai.

As his name suggests, he was extremely thin. He wasn't born thin; he had been stabbed in the stomach on the battlefield. He survived by a hair's breadth, but was left with lasting effects. He ate very little because he couldn't digest food properly.

As a disabled person, he could have gone home. But there was no one left at home; his parents and sister were all dead, leaving him all alone.

It was Gu An who brought him to the grain delivery team.

He climbed in the cave for a long time, and there was no one else alive besides him.

Lu Zhiyuan imagined the scene and felt a sense of déjà vu.

"Who saved you?"

“A farmer down the mountain.” Gu An grinned, the scars on his face crisscrossing, giving him a strange, grotesque beauty. “Luckily, he met me during the day; if it had been night, he probably would have thought I was a vengeful ghost and killed me.”

The farmer was kind-hearted; seeing his injuries, he assumed he had been bitten by wild animals in the mountains, so he put down what he was carrying and carried him home. The farmer was very poor and couldn't afford a doctor or medicine, so he had to rely on herbs he had gathered himself. After several brushes with death, he ultimately survived.

It was a year later when he fully recovered that he learned the village he lived in was called Xiawa Village. The villagers of Xiawa Village had never traveled far, had never heard of the Hanging Platform, and had no idea how far their village was from that place.

Knowing the main road, it would take two hours to walk there and more than an hour to drive there by cart. The village had no horses, only one ox and two donkeys; the ox was an old one, and the donkeys were an old donkey and a young donkey. They couldn't walk fast, and their cart-pulling skills were so-so.

The villagers didn't know there was a cave in the mountain. They said the back mountain was a taboo place, and unless someone got lost in the mountains, no one would go there.

When asked about the taboo, the villagers looked at each other, bewildered, as if none of them knew.

An old man in the village had been to the back mountain and said there were many corpses there, either swallowed by wild animals or killed by evil people. For the safety of the villagers, a sign was put up at the back mountain, telling everyone not to go there unless necessary, or they would be responsible for their own lives if they went.

The words on the sign were written in vermilion lacquer, but they have peeled off from wind and sun.

As the villagers passed the warning around, it turned into a taboo.

Gu An went to the back mountain and started searching from the place where the farmer had found his bones, but he couldn't find the cave after searching for a long time. There were indeed many bones in the mountain, some human and some animal.

After nightfall, the temperature dropped sharply, and there were signs of large snake activity.

Alone, he dared not linger and left in haste.

Looking back, I think the cave was probably hidden under a pile of rocks, not far from where the large snake was seen. Snakes prefer shady places, and considering the skeletons on the ground, it must be related to the large snake; the cave was very likely its lair.