Yang Jing didn’t know what Liu Maolin was thinking. After listening to Elder Liu, the Hall Master, he too leaned in for a closer look at the map.

The route on the map was clear, marking several villages where they could rest.

He nodded. "Alright, we’ll follow this route."

The three of them went into the inner room and chatted for a while longer. Before long, the sounds of horses and carts echoed from the courtyard outside the warehouse. The guards must have finished loading the medicinal herbs onto the carriages.

Yang Jing finished his tea, straightened his clothes, and stood up. "That should be everything. I’ll get going now. I’ll try to make it back before nightfall."

Elder Liu, the Hall Master, and Liu Maolin both nodded.

Liu Maolin and Yang Jing emerged from the inner room into the courtyard, where the convoy was fully assembled and ready to depart at a moment’s notice.

At the head of the convoy stood three powerfully built guards. All were Bright Strength masters with the rank of Guard Captain in the Liu Family, a clear sign that the escorted herbs were indeed extremely valuable.

Two of them looked weary; they had just completed another escort mission with Liu Maolin not long ago and now had to rush to Jinhe County without a moment’s rest.

Liu Maolin instructed the three Bright Strength Guard Captains, "Gentlemen, this is a critical mission. On the road, you are to follow Yang Keqing’s orders. Do not act without his authorization."

The three men nodded in affirmation.

Although Yang Jing was very young—much younger than any of them—he was a Dark Strength expert. They had sparred before. The three of them combined were no match for him; he could defeat them with ease. Even without Liu Maolin’s specific instructions, they would have deferred to Yang Jing.

Yang Jing stepped forward and swung himself onto a sturdy black stallion. His gaze swept over the waiting convoy as his fingertips unconsciously toyed with the hilt of the saber at his waist. In a deep voice, he commanded, "Move out!"

At Yang Jing’s command, the Liu Family Medical Hall’s convoy, dozens strong, slowly rolled out of the main gate.

....

Yang Jing led the Liu Family Medical Hall’s convoy, laden with important medicinal herbs, out of Yuhe County and headed north.

Yuhe County was located in the south-central region of Jintai Prefecture. Both their destination, Jinhe County, and the Jintai Prefecture City itself lay to the north.

The sight that greeted them upon leaving Yuhe County was one of refugees everywhere.

The series of wretched scenes sent a faint chill down Yang Jing’s spine.

Lately, Yang Jing had been almost entirely immersed in his training. This was partly because his recent breakthrough to the Dark Strength realm had left him highly motivated, and partly in preparation for the upcoming training ground trials.

Liu Maolin knew Yang Jing had been training obsessively, so he hadn’t assigned him any of the more routine escort missions. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

As a result, Yang Jing had only heard about the situation outside the city from others.

But seeing it now with his own eyes, his heart couldn’t help but clench.

’Isn’t this a goddamn chaotic age, brought to life?’

Yang Jing’s brow furrowed. ’I have to bring my family into the city. I can’t rest easy otherwise.’

’I’ll get it done right after the training ground trials.’

’As for Grandfather, if he’s really unwilling... well, I’ll just have to use force. I’ll tie them up and drag them into the city if I must.’

The caravan of carriages continued its journey north.

Yang Jing noticed that as they traveled farther north, the number of refugees on the road, while still significant, was much lower than it had been within Yuhe County’s territory.

Perhaps it was due to the war that had broken out in Caozhou. Many of its people had been displaced, fleeing eastward as refugees. Jintai Prefecture was one of the prefectures in Jizhou closest to Caozhou, and Yuhe County, being in the south-central part of Jintai, was consequently also quite near the conflict.

In contrast, the situation in the northern part of Jintai Prefecture seemed much better.

The journey was not without incident.

In this day and age, refugees were everywhere and bandits ran rampant.

Halfway to their destination, Yang Jing and his group were stopped by two separate bands of highwaymen, but both were little more than disorganized rabble.

Without exerting his full strength, Yang Jing easily defeated the bandit leaders. The three Bright Strength masters and the other guards then coordinated their attack, quickly scattering the rest of the robbers. The convoy suffered no losses, and the herbs remained completely untouched.

By the time the herbs were safely delivered and the handover in Jinhe County was complete, dusk had fallen.

Yang Jing dared not linger. He immediately led the convoy back, managing to enter the walls of Yuhe County just as the sky turned completely black.

The moment the convoy passed through the gates of Yuhe County, Yang Jing finally let out a full sigh of relief.

Although they had run into two groups of bandits along the way, neither had been particularly formidable.

What truly worried Yang Jing were the Flying Horse Thieves.

The Flying Horse Thieves were known for their swiftness. The Court had dispatched troops after them several times, but the thieves had always given them the slip, even managing to kill seven or eight soldiers in the process.

By now, the notoriety of the Flying Horse Thieves had spread throughout all of Yuhe County.

’If we’d run into the Flying Horse Thieves, I’m not sure what I would have done.’ He had considered the possibility. ’If we had really encountered them, I would have done my best. But if that wasn’t enough, my only option would have been to flee. With my Raging Wave Legs, if I focused on escaping into the mountain forests or reed marshes, they probably wouldn’t have been able to catch me.’

’Losing the herbs would have meant letting down Liu Maolin and Elder Liu, the Hall Master, but I would never risk my own life over some medicinal herbs and a guilty conscience.’

’In this chaotic age, if I died, what would happen to my grandfather, grandmother, and mother? And who would search for my father and eldest uncle?’

Fortunately, however, by following the route that Elder Liu, the Hall Master, had laid out, he had managed to avoid the Flying Horse Thieves entirely.

Still, Yang Jing knew this wasn’t a long-term solution. The Flying Horse Thieves came and went like the wind; they were highly mobile. They might be able to evade them a few times, but as long as the Liu Family Medical Hall continued to transport herbs to Jinhe County and the Prefecture City, a confrontation was inevitable.