Chapter 151 Encountering Bandits

Chapter 151 Encountering Bandits

The suspected spies were arrested one by one, and some of them subsequently confessed to the involvement of many other foreign spies who had been fortunate enough to escape the case.

One by one, wave after wave, these spies were as if they were being pulled along by an invisible thread, and soon they were caught one after another, becoming model tools for the border troops to torture and behead.

As the catalyst for this series of upheavals, Xie Wanniang wisely tried to minimize her presence—she didn't want to attract another wave of spies just because she had eliminated one group that was targeting her.

Especially considering the huge trouble she still has with her scumbag father and his family, she should try to keep a low profile whenever possible.

After uncovering all the spies they could find and arranging two more capable bodyguards for Xie Wanniang, Jiang Yuan reluctantly bid farewell to Xie Wanniang, Hao Yu, and the others. He then returned to Zijing Pass with the large and small bags they had prepared for him and the others sent by Chang Yao.

He actually wanted to hire two more capable bodyguards for Hao Yu's family, but Hao Yu firmly refused. It wasn't that Hao Yu felt his family wasn't in danger or that he was stingy with money; he just wanted to visit his old buddies.

Hao Yu was once a soldier guarding the border, but after being discharged due to injury, he went to live with Jiang Yuan's biological parents.

Later, when the world fell into chaos, Hao Yu stayed in Mingfu Village for more than ten years to protect Jiang Yuan. All his former comrades lost contact with him because of his anonymity.

Now that he's returned to his old haunts, he wants to see if he can find those old buddies with whom he once shared a life-or-death bond.

When Jiang Yuan heard Hao Yu say that he had his own plans, he didn't insist on sending people to Hao Yu's house. But he also gave Hao Yu a heads-up, "After years of war, it's hard to say whether your old comrades will have survived."

Hao Yu nodded, "I was prepared."

He was just doing his best, hoping against the worst.

Moreover, he wouldn't blindly hire someone just because of old friendships. If he could find an old friend, catching up was a must, but whether or not to bring that person back required careful investigation and deliberation.

After Jiang Yuan left, Hao Yu began to work on this matter. He hired two trustworthy people to secretly inquire about his comrades.

The reason he made this so clandestine was because he was 80% certain that he was also a target for the spies.

Although Jiang Yuan and his team have eliminated many spies in Yi County and even the surrounding counties and towns, no country or force has ever been able to completely eradicate spies.

He didn't want to bring disaster to his comrades, nor did he want the surviving spies to use this incident to plant people in his camp. So, although this method was roundabout and troublesome, he was still very cautious and chose to remain behind the scenes for the time being.

It was also a good opportunity for him to find out in advance whether his comrades were alive or dead, and what their current living conditions were.

Xie Wanniang didn't have as many thoughts as him. Now she had two experts by her side, funded by Chang Yao and paid by herself, which greatly increased her safety. This made her more interested in the remote mountains.

Once the clothing shop had stocked up on goods, officially opened for business, and gradually got on track, Xie Wanniang packed up and, along with Haitang, Atai, Xiaomei, the two people who were specifically there to protect her, and four retired soldiers who were responsible for managing the medicinal herb fields, went to the remote mountains where few people had set foot, in search of more valuable and precious medicinal herbs.

To facilitate her search for and transplantation of medicinal herbs, she spent almost a month living in the small village she had built. During this time, she led people to the surrounding mountains and forests about twenty times.

After finishing her business here, Xie Wanniang, who had gotten a tan from the sun, didn't even have time to rest before trouble came her way again.

On her way back to Yi County, a group of bandits disguised as a caravan surrounded her and a real caravan in the center of their horse caravan.

It was just a coincidence that Xie Wanniang traveled the same route as the caravan at the same time: ...

As villages and towns located on the frontier, it is perfectly normal for bandits, foreigners, and mixed-race individuals to appear from time to time. Even being robbed every year is something that the people and caravans are used to.

Therefore, many people in the border town, even if they have never been on the battlefield or systematically learned martial arts, have seen blood on their hands and even killed people.

After moving here, Xie Wanniang was mentally prepared to encounter bad people one day. However, she did encounter them twice in a row in the suburbs of Yi County, which left her feeling quite helpless.

It is unclear when, but this band of bandits, disguised as a merchant caravan, sneaked into the interior of the pass. Their main target was the large merchant caravan that was ahead of Xie Wanniang and her group.

As for Xie Wanniang and her companions, they only had an inconspicuous ordinary carriage, and the two guards sitting on the carriage shaft were both "old," so the bandits didn't take them seriously at all.

The two guards that Jiang Yuan found for Xie Wanniang through Chang Yao were both over forty years old. They had just left the Chang family's guard team last year because of their age and went home to make a living on their own.

They were all rough, unkempt men, with unshaven beards and wearing ordinary clothes, looking no different from ordinary people.

Most importantly, in an era of low food production, frequent natural disasters and wars, and extreme scarcity of medical resources, resulting in an average life expectancy that Xie Wanniang found absurd, one's forties was already a delicate age that could be classified as "elderly."

The bandits glanced at the two men at the front of the carriage and immediately dismissed them as "not a threat."

They didn't look like wealthy people. After all, the carriage was as plain as it could possibly be, and the driver and the person following along were both elderly. It seemed that the person sitting inside couldn't be anyone important, and it would be very easy to silence them.

Yes, the bandits didn't surround Xie Wanniang and her group because they wanted to rob them. Rather, it was because they were too close to the caravan. The bandits felt that if they didn't surround them as well, there was a high chance that the caravan would reveal what was happening before the bandits "finished their job."

The bandits wanted to make a smooth retreat after making their fortune, so they couldn't let Xie Wanniang and her group find an opportunity to report to the authorities.

Although the officials in the yamen posed no real threat to them, they had the authority to urgently contact the local garrison under such circumstances. The bandits had no desire to confront the seasoned border troops head-on.