Chapter 119 - Bewitched

An Hao frowned and sneakily approached with his guard up and sword drawn.

"This is fine. Let's leave."

"No! How can we leave him here? What if he gets attacked?!"

"They'll find him by morning. Who will attack him here?"

"I don't know, a snake!"

"That's enough, we're leaving."

"We're taking him inside!"

An Hao finally got a good view of the two girls who were arguing, with one standing on the side, while the other was kneeling on the ground holding...Lei Yong! 

"Can you not be so stubborn right n-?"

"Stop right there! Who are you?" An Hao jumped out of the bushes, sword pointed at the girls who both raised eyebrows in his direction. An Hao slowly inched closer and ordered, "Put him down and step back slowly...As long as you comply I will be lenient."

Ah Jin glared at Lei Xing, "See."

Lei Xing glared back, "How is this my fault? If you hadn't been so stubborn then we would have been on our way back by now."

"The stubborn one here is you." Ah Jin said through gritted teeth.

Lei Xing scoffed and rolled her eyes and mumbled, "Everything is always my fault. Why don-"

"Hey!" An Hao finally barked, they were ignoring him, how dare they ignore him?! "I said put him down! If you don-" Next thing he knew, his eyes roll to the back of his head and slumped down. 

He couldn't move his body but he still had a bit of consciousness left and heard them debating his fate. 

"We should kill him."

"What?!" Ah Jin exclaimed.

"He could start trouble so it's best to-"

"That's enough. No more suggestions, we're going to do this my way or I'll leave you here."

"Tch, like you can."

An Hao then woke up in the morning tucked in on his bed, in his tent. He quickly jumped off to go find the Emperor to inform him of what he saw, only to be informed that the Emperor was with Lei Yong. He was confused and quickly ran to Lei Yong's tent to find him on his bed with a doctor checking on him, with the Emperor and Eunuch Li standing on the side.

An Hao knit his brows and immediately demanded, "Where are those girls?!"

They all turned to him perplexed at the question. He then turned to Lei Yong, "The girls you came with?"

Lei Yong raised an eyebrow, "What are you talking about?"

An Hao frowned and thought Lei Yong must be protecting them and then demanded, "How did you get back?"

Lei Yong knit his brows and explained, "After we fell into a trap, we scattered and I managed to escape on my own. I stumbled around in the forest trying to get back to camp and must have collapsed when I finally saw the lights."

An Hao narrowed his eyes at Lei Yong, "That's not it. Some girls brought you. Two girls! I saw them. They were even arguing over you and they even hi-" He closed his mouth and frowned, there was no way he was going to say that, it was too embarrassing...those two scrawny girls beat him? No way! They had help, had to. 

"Were they pretty?" Lei Yong asked interrupting his thoughts.

An Hao raised an eyebrow, "Ah? Yes...but what does that have to do with anything?"

The Emperor snorted and then patted An Hao's shoulder with a smirk, "It seems that our little An Hao has grown up."

Eunuch Li sighed, "I didn't think it would ever happen." Then he chuckled, "Your father will be relieved."

Even the doctor was trying to stifle his laughter, An Hao glared at them, "What's funny? I'm being serious. There were girls-"

"En, we understand...I didn't know you cared for me this much." Lei Yong then lightly chuckled but quickly stopped because of his wounds and added, "But next time, leave me out of such fantasies, okay? It's for you and the girls to enjoy alone."

The entire room burst into laughter and An Hao got irritated and flew out of the room with a red embarrassed face. He grabbed one of the men outside and asked for where they found Lei Yong. The guard took him to the location and it left him feeling even more confused. It was way on the other end of camp. He asked about the time they found him and discovered it was apparently not long after he came across them. 

For them to have dragged him all the way to this site in that short amount of time, they would have had to run right through the camp. Unless they galloped on horses, but then there was no way they would have escaped detection then. Not to mention they also took him back to his room and the guards on patrol said they didn't see anything suspicious.

An Hao was completely baffled and went back to where he saw them the night before, but there were no traces of them or any lead to go on. He stood there frowning at the ground, deep in thought.

{...How could they have done all that?... Then did I really dream that?... But then what are the odds of Lei Yong would truly returning alive, especially LAST NIGHT?! It's too much of a coincidence! And I know what I saw! I'm not an idiot!...}

An Hao frowned at the memory. It always nagged at his mind. No matter how he tried to persuade the Emperor and Lei Yong they did not believe him, after all, he had absolutely no proof. He even tried to draw their faces for Lei Yong to identify them, but he was never a good artist. The Emperor and Lei Yong simply looked at his drawings and burst into laughter, making jokes about how he had been bewitched in his dreams, which further aggravated him.

Those girls not only looked down on him, but they also used some sort of trick to defeat him and then turned him into a laughing stock and even went on to terrorize his dreams to top it all off. He stewed on this issue for so long that he started dreaming about them too. Especially about that one who wanted to kill him. He would have dreams where she would dice him up and do all sorts of other gruesome things. She gave him nightmares. Which was why when he saw Xiao Ting, who had that similar face, he subconsciously took on a hostile attitude. 

An Hao sighed in annoyance and tossed the encounter with Xiao Ting out of his mind. He scrutinized the map and the routes he marked out to Nanjing territory. It really was not a short trip.

{...Even if you switch horses, it's still quite a stretch to get there and back...Not to mention they had to find him too...But it is possible to cut out that part if they had connections in the Nanjing army...Either way, they are definitely not good!...}