Along the journey, Xiang Ying found a temporarily safe corner to stop.
She swiftly removed the jade pendants and jade hangings from her second son and younger daughter and placed them into the space.
Afterwards, she reached out her hand towards Xiang Yuanshuo, who immediately became alert: "What do you want to do!"
"Give them all to me, I'll keep them safe for you, otherwise, if you lose them on the way, I won't take responsibility."
After Xiang Ying finished speaking, Xiang Yuanshuo hesitated for a moment before taking out a bag of gold melon seeds from his boots.
"Quite clever, my boy, those gold melon seeds are easy to hide and carry, very smart indeed." Xiang Ying patted his little head, and Xiang Yuanshuo slapped her hand away with his small hand.
Tao Xue turned over the valuables she scavenged while fleeing for her life.
Xiang Ying gave them a glance and her face instantly became expressionless.
The dragon socks worn by the Emperor, throw away!
Tao Xue complained grievously: "Those are stitched with gold threads, such a pity!"
The pearl buttons picked from clothes, throw away!
Tao Xue covered her mouth: "Those fell off from the favored Lady."
A green gemstone the size of a thumb, contemplation.
Tao Xue exclaimed with joy: "Princess really knows her stuff, that was previously planned to be inlaid on the Emperor's spittoon... Hey! Don't throw it away!"
Xiang Ying threw it, describing a parabola through the air.
She grabbed Tao Xue's sleeve, earnestly admonishing: "Tao Xue, I as your Princess don't have many hobbies, except for liking to hoard valuable and high-quality goods, so in the future, bring less of these worthless trinkets!"
Tao Xue nodded silently.
Xiang Yuanshuo wanted to laugh, his small face was just puckering up when he saw Xiang Ying's eyes sweeping over, he immediately pursed his small mouth.
Xiang Ying led them away from the Imperial Palace, and as soon as they entered the Imperial Garden, they ran headlong into the enemy soldiers who were looting and escorting a group of concubines and princesses.
Although afar, they could still hear their sorrowful and low weeping.
Xiang Ying and her group happened to stand behind the bushes in the garden, unseen.
Tao Xue's face turned pale: "What do we do now? We can't go forward, and there must be pursuers behind!"
Xiang Ying looked up and saw the Wutong tree beside her, blooming with vigorous green leaves in the summer sun.
Without hesitation, she first lifted Xiang Yuanshuo up the tree, took out a rope to tie her second son on Tao Xue's back, and pushed her up.
Lastly, she herself, with nimble movements despite carrying her younger daughter, climbed to the tree trunk, making use of the foliage to conceal their shapes.
The escorting enemy soldiers soon approached the big tree.
Each of them had treasures looted from the harem hanging around their waists, laughing with a contemptuous look.
"Thought Xizhou could be so wealthy, on entering the palace, it turns out to be just this, compared to us in Nanyue, it's nothing!"
"All because that dog Emperor of Xizhou fled with the treasures first, otherwise we could have gotten even more, and these beauties can't even be touched, they just know how to cry."
The soldiers complained, turning back fiercely: "Stop crying! Cry again, and we'll send you all to be army prostitutes!"
The concubines and princesses, intimidated, immediately didn't dare make a sound.
They passed underneath, without even noticing Xiang Ying and the others.
Yet Xiang Ying, hearing their talk, sank into deep thought.
She had long known that Nanyue was wealthier than Xizhou.
She vaguely remembered a friend saying that in this book about famine years, Nanyue relied on the vast and abundant supplies to hard endure the disaster years.
Although many people died, compared to other countries that were wiped out by natural disasters, it was a lot better.
Xiang Ying's desire to hoard goods was stirring.
Her space urgently needed goods to upgrade, and since Nanyue was so rich, it became her next target!
The road ahead was long and arduous; without having read the original book and only hearing the plot from a friend, many details were unclear.
If she relied on herself to take the three children to Nanyue, it would be better to follow the Exile Army directly into their lair.
With her mind made up, Xiang Ying deliberately acted as if she failed to hold onto the tree trunk and slid down with a swoosh.
She happened to land right next to one of the escorting soldiers.
She descended as if from the heavens, and the soldier who caught her eye turned dumbfounded.
When he came to his senses, he immediately pointed his long spear at Xiang Ying and hastily shouted, "Come quick! There's one that slipped through the net here!"
Xiang Ying was captured.
Along with Tao Xue and the two children who were climbing in the tree, they were all netted in one fell swoop.
Xiang Yuanshuo was stomping with anger: "Had I known you were so inept, I'd have been better off taking my brother and sister and running off on my own!"
Xiang Ying's face remained calm as she was shackled in iron chains again.
The concubines looked at her with stunned eyes, a tinge of desolation surfacing in their gaze, then huddled away from her, even the Princesses silently watched her without speaking.
One of the fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls sneered: "I thought big sister had the ability to escape on her own, turns out she's also useless."
Xiang Ying glanced at her with indifferent phoenix eyes.
This was her sister in name, Fifth Princess Xiang Qianqian.
She didn't need to explain herself to these people.
"Stop the noise! Get moving!" A soldier barked and cracked his whip, urging them toward the gates of the Imperial City.
It was only then they discovered that many noble families and royal relatives from the court had been driven here.
The women and children all wore shackles, while the soldiers—not only shackled at hands and feet but also collared at the neck.
Dressed in thin clothing with messy, disheveled hair, they huddled together, crying helplessly.
No matter how noble they were before, after today, they were all slaves of a vanquished nation.
Soon, the Military Supervisor and his men arrived, escorting them away; Xiang Ying saw that Huang Huzi, the enemy who had just made things difficult for her, was among them.
"Elder Princess, it's that man who escaped!" Tao Xue also saw him and was very panicked.
Huang Huzi obviously saw her, his eyes revealing a venomous hatred as he pointed at Xiang Ying and whispered to the Military Supervisor beside him.
The Supervisor gave Xiang Ying an indifferent glance and nodded at Huang Huzi.
From afar, Huang Huzi made a throat-slitting gesture towards Xiang Ying, his smile venomously triumphant.
Xiang Ying impassively withdrew her gaze.
On the road out of the city, the enemy forced the common folk to line the streets and watch.
In the early summer of June, a dry, bloody stench lingered in the air.
The common people, dressed in tattered clothing, watched with hollow eyes as this group, symbolic of power and wealth, was escorted out of the Capital.
With the country ruined and families destroyed, no one was happy.
Except for Xiang Ying.
She appeared to be daydreaming but was actually organizing the supplies she had just scavenged in her space.
The items she had were still not enough; she was already looking forward to hoarding more good things once she arrived in Nanyue.
By the Capital City Pavilion, as the Military Supervisors tallied the numbers, they also watered their horses and prepared provisions here.
Incidentally, they conducted a final body search before setting out on the road.
Everyone had to strip; some, forced to do so, bribed the searching soldiers with their hidden wealth and thus avoided the humiliation of being stripped of their clothing.
Xiang Ying observed covertly from the side.
She noticed that their Exile Team consisted of numerous people, so they were split into separate groups.
There were a total of three Military Supervisors, each with four team leaders under them, and the team leaders each led ten to thirty soldiers mirroring ten or so Exiled Criminals.
Recalling Huang Huzi's expression earlier, Xiang Ying had a premonition that he was likely the team leader assigned to supervise her.
He was sure to have a problem with her and would probably come over to make things difficult soon.
Xiang Ying suppressed her thoughts and prepared to respond.
Her second son, Xiang Yuanlang, had just woken up; Xiang Ying secretly took a water bottle from her space to give him a drink.
But Xiang Yuanlang pushed it away with a slap of his little hand.
His clear black-and-white pupils were filled with wariness and disgust.
Xiang Ying wasn't angry: "If you get thirsty later, there'll be no water for you."
She saved these three children out of humanitarianism, but that didn't mean she had to bear their hostility towards their original mother.
Xiang Yuanlang still kept his innocent little face taut, glaring at her.
Instead, it was Xiang Yuanshuo who picked up the water sack from the ground, offered it to Xiang Yuanlang, and only then he was willing to open his mouth and drink gulp after gulp.
Having just put away the now empty water sack, Huang Huzi appeared before her with his men.
"Bitch, your good days are over. I want to see how you can escape this time. The Military Supervisor has ordered a search of everyone. Either you strip yourself, or wait for us to strip you clean!"