When An Jing, covered in bloodstains, returned to the rider camp, the surrounding refugees suddenly parted in fear, but the one-eyed leader and the Scholar in White, who had already heard the screams of agony, both revealed smiles of admiration.
"Not bad."
An Jing saw the scholarly eyes that were squinted like a Tibetan fox's, spinning with shrewd light as they sized him up, "Your performance is even better than we had imagined."
"Sir, you flatter me." An Jing bowed slightly, and with a grand wave from the one-eyed leader, two riders took An Jing to the camp to change his clothes and clean his body.
Soon after An Jing had changed into a new set of clothes and returned to the rider camp, the collected children reached the necessary number, and the riders shouted in preparation to leave.
The moment was marked by a setting sun, a raven returning to the mountain, with the light dimming behind the dense leaden snow clouds, turning the whole world into a hazy gray-blue.
Standing at the edge of the refugee camp on the roadside, An Jing turned back and looked up, he saw a boundless white wilderness, an endless majestic mountain range, and a great city that stretched from the foot of the mountain to its waist, encircled by a long river.
The majestic scenery of the Northern Border was indeed the best in Da Chen, and Ming Mountain City, magnificent and towering, was also truly deserving of being the largest city of the Northern Border.
But now, it faced the Frost Calamity and the misfortune of people.
In An Jing's eyes, those mountains, shrouded in wind and snow and barely visible, seemed to come alive, their profound silhouettes like the body of a Demon God, supporting the heaven with their peaks and treading upon the earth with their bases, while the city lights became countless indifferent eyes, overlooking the multitude of mortal lives below.
Bowing his head, he saw parents who had sold their children waiting on both sides of the road.
They were either numb or tearfully watching their children, saying their final goodbyes.
Having taken some medicine and food, Lady An Shen had recovered some strength and was also there, waiting for her own child.
"Jing'er."
With no tears in her dried-up eyes, across the road covered in Fei Shuang, Lady An Shen looked at her child.
"Survive," she hoarsely gave her final instruction, but even the strong-willed An Jing could only muster a forced smile, "Mother, you must survive as well."
"If I am fated to leave, I will go south, to Linjiang, Beirui, Broken Blade Mountain... Mother, survive, wait for me."
"Wait for me to return!"
An Jing boarded the carriage prepared by the riders, taking one last look at his mother.
The woman gazed at the retreating figure of the carriage, her lonely form disappearing into the vast snowfall.
In the carriage.
Even An Jing, with Innate Wisdom and intelligence far surpassing his peers from a young age, felt sorrowful after separating from his mother.
Yet he took a deep breath, pressed down all his emotions, and his eyes grew deep.
His mother was a Martial Artist, and after having a full meal, even if she couldn't blend into Ming Mountain City, simply getting past the Huai River checkpoint and heading south should be no problem.
Broken Blade Mountain was already far away, surrounded by plentiful resources, and even the Frost Calamity couldn't reach there; perhaps one could even find a few relatives to stabilize one's foothold.
—Eh, is there incense in this carriage? Are these people so wealthy?
Indeed, if this group of people could provide free medical treatment to the refugees, they definitely wouldn't lack supplies...
Lost in deep thought for a prolonged time, when An Jing came back to herself, she realized that there were eight people seated in the carriage she was in, which was more spacious than she had imagined.
Glancing around, they were all children around her age, both boys and girls. An Jing also saw the girl who had been severely frostbitten but had been treated by the physician.
It seemed they had been sorted by age.
All the children had just been separated from their parents and would normally be noisy, yet now they all hung their heads, turned their faces aside, and kept their mouths shut.
After all, they were not ordinary children, they were refugees who had survived the Frost Calamity of the Northern Border and trekked through mountains and wilderness with their parents.
Those noisy children were long dead, some even kidnapped and eaten by others.
It sounds cruel, but when it really happened, what more could be said?
Recalling the events, An Jing couldn't help clenching her fists. To eat another's child instead of one's own was bad enough, but some refugees would even go so far as to hunt down and kidnap others' children to cook and eat.
The wails of parents who had protected their children with great difficulty, struggling to keep them alive, would eventually break, no matter how strong they were. Their piercing curses and laments echoed in the snow for a long time.
Back then, she had to take care of her mother, but if she had been alone, unencumbered, she certainly would have drawn her sword and slaughtered all those beastly human scum—regrettably, those vermin fled too quickly, and she only managed to kill one.
Pushing aside the memories, An Jing looked around at the other children sharing the carriage, who likely had also witnessed those scenes.
After seeing those things, even if they had originally been cheerful children, now they all had become silent and taciturn.
Even after being separated from their parents, their thinking would swiftly shift to the most basic mode after the initial sorrow.
—Will I be able to eat my fill at the next meal?
At least they would not be eaten.
With that in mind, they might as well save their energy to handle the subsequent 'well-off family' inspection.
Smelling the faint scent of wood in the carriage, An Jing listened to the sound of the wind outside the carriage, and thought about the style of carriage she had seen earlier.
This was not an ordinary cart, but more akin to a snow sledge with tracks, a large covered vehicle suited for snowy terrain and capable of carrying far more people and supplies than typical carts.
The horses, too, were extraordinary and must be the 'Northwest Frost Riders' that don't fear ice and snow.
Such a carriage couldn't have been made in a short period of time; it must have been prepared well in advance. Did these mysterious people foresee the Frost Calamity all along?
Is that why they were so well prepared, waiting for nature to weed out those 'lacking in Heavenly Mandate', to then buy those like herself, the 'Children of Calamity' who had survived disaster?
Thinking this, An Jing gradually began to feel drowsy.
Although she possessed an exceptionally solid physique and remarkable innate potential, she had been hungry for a long time, and after a rare full meal, her body could not resist the tiredness that came with digestion...
"Hm? This doesn't seem like normal drowsiness?!" An Jing finally realized that the scent in the carriage seemed a bit off, even as sleepy as she was, she shouldn't lose control of her thoughts to such exhaustion.
Looking around at everyone again, An Jing observed carefully, her expression slightly startled. No wonder the other children had all been silent; they had already fallen asleep, and she was the one who had held out the longest!
But even she could not control her drooping eyelids and couldn't help but succumb to deep sleep.
```
Outside the carriage.
A rider looked back at the carriage and expressed his surprise with a hint of amazement, "He finally fell asleep. This kid... Soul Soothing Incense can make ordinary people sleep as deeply as the dead in just two breaths, but he held on for a quarter of an hour!"
"Now I understand why the higher-ups place such importance on this recruitment of newcomers. The quality of this Child of Calamity is truly exceptional!"
"Isn't that the truth."
Another rider interjected, "I thought these refugees were all worthless as broken metal and shattered copper, but it looks like there really is some good material among them!"
"Keep it down," another, more seasoned rider scolded, shaking his head with a slight smirk, "Those who fail to enter our ranks might still end up our colleagues someday. As for those who do get in... Heh."
The older rider clicked his tongue, his words laced with profound implication, "If those Martial Artists remember your casual disdain and arrogance, just imagine what will become of you..."
He didn't need to say any more; the meaningful silence that followed was frightening enough.
"I get it, I get it..." The rider shuddered, jolting suddenly from excitement to wakefulness, continuing to maintain the previous state of silence without bias or emotion.
"Stay alert," the older rider muttered softly, "Keep moving; conserve your energy."
After that, the entire snowy night passed in silence.
In the following days, other than coming out to set up camp and eat, An Jing and the other children continued to travel forward in their sleep.
This may have been to prevent them from knowing how far they had been taken or where to — or perhaps it was simply easier to manage that way; after all, when traveling long distances, it's easier to let children sleep all the way to the destination rather than to care for them along the way.
During this process, many different caravans from all directions converged. Some came and went, with the Scholar in White leaving midway through the journey.
Overall, the entire group was constantly gathering strength and growing in size.
By the later stages, it had turned into a large caravan of over twenty carriages.
An Jing also tried to analyze where he was, but even he could only confirm that they were moving southwest and had begun to leave the influence of the Northern Border Frost Calamity behind, switching to normal wheeled carriages.
But as for which region within Da Chen they had traveled to, he did not know.
"The forest in my old home is a cold temperate coniferous forest, and the last one I saw was a temperate mountain coniferous forest."
An Jing was uncertain; the vastness of Da Chen was beyond his understanding, after all, this was a world with a Heavenly Mandate and Martial Arts, powers and immortality: "Have we not completely left the Northern Border? Are we at the borderlands between the Northern Border and the northwest?"
"Come to think of it, words like 'cold temperate coniferous forest'... what did I do in my past life?"
With such doubts, in a carriage where both the sense of time and space were muddled, An Jing could only roughly estimate and calculate.
About ten days later, the carriage of the Mysterious Person at last reached its destination.
An estate nestled deep within ancient forests and mountains.
White fog filled the gaps between the mountains, while a tributary of the Nameless Rivers flowed alongside the mountain road, flickering with sparkling ripples.
As the mountain road extended, the path began to deteriorate, and villages that seemed uninhabited for days came into view.
Soon, the scenery that faintly hinted at human habitation was gradually replaced by dense vegetation and towering rocks.
Intermingled layer upon layer like a maze, the lush forest blanketing the mountains formed a dense woodland that covered the entire range. Small, but bright green shrubs, layered over the steep cliffs like the scales of a dragon or snake, made these majestic northwestern mountains appear to be part of some colossal creature's body.
The mountain road would inevitably come to an end.
Before reaching the deepest part of the forest, the passable path came to an abrupt halt, as if the laborers who built the road were also powerless against this ancient woodland, leaving only narrow trails that wound deep into the forest like veins, as a final compromise.
From this point onward, nearly all traces of humanity vanished, leaving only the most primitive and wild landscapes.
The carriage jolted along on this rugged mountain path.
Along the way, it gradually dawned on everyone that those who had bought them were probably not house servants of a wealthy family.
Normal noble households would not transport them in such a secretive manner, and even if there were secret estates, they wouldn't be so deep in the mountains.
In Da Chen, even a three-year-old knows not to venture into the mountains.
For within the mountains, there were spirits and monsters, Monstrous Evil, evil demons, and ancient beasts, as well as countless strange and mysterious places that could manipulate the currents of the land's energy, giving rise to numerous Divine Abnormalities.
Within Da Chen, the mountains that had been cleared were fine, inhabited at most by unformed spirits and newly born monsters. Da Chen held no prejudice against these creatures; as long as they obeyed the laws, respected humanity, and spoke human languages, they were treated equally.
But in the border regions... there were too many strange things, too much Monstrous Evil, too many who entered and never returned.
Realizing that they had entered deep into the mountains, even the slightly wiser children had a gloomy expression, for they knew they could never leave this place alive on their own.
Those who would choose to build an estate in such a wilderness, whether from the righteous or the Evil Sect, were part of a secretive organization; it would be difficult for them to return to the civilized world under their original identities.
But regardless of what the children thought, the reality was just this.
They were already in its midst.
"Come on out."
After a long jolt, the carriage came to a stop, and the voice of the rider rang out, "We're 'home'."
An Jing exhaled deeply.
At last, the moment had arrived; he calmed down, ready to face his future 'home'.
An Jing glanced at the seven still dazed companions in the same carriage, then turned and was the first to step down from the carriage.
A formally structured mountain estate entered his view.
However, before An Jing could examine it closely, he heard a familiar voice.
"Not bad."
Glancing sideways, An Jing saw that the one-eyed Martial Artist who had led their convoy was watching him.
He laughed hoarsely, "You are the best among this group of newcomers."
```