Chapter 11
There were no valuable stones in that protruding hill. Hence, in the past, only commoners would pick and choose some eye-catching stones here.
The jade mine in this area was discovered many years ago, which was why this piece of land had been abandoned for a very long time.
Zhao Xuanjing was sitting in the carriage.
What was said by Xie Qiao yesterday flashed through his mind.
“What is the time now?” said Zhao Xuanjin in a slothful tone while he opened the window of the carriage with his slender fingers.
“Young Master, there’s still fifteen minutes to go before it’s nine o’clock in the morning,” someone said immediately.
Zhao Xuanjing squinted his eyes and suddenly spoke indifferently, “Stop the carriage and take a rest. We’ll leave after fifteen minutes.”
1
The imperial bodyguard below him was stunned for a moment. He did not dare to ask more and immediately told everyone to stop their journey to rest and recuperate.
After Zhao Xuanjing gave his instructions, he realized how silly he sounded.
For some reason, he started to believe what the young swindler said. When he gazed at the sky today, the weather was fine without clouds. ‘In such clear weather and with so many imperial guards alongside me, what accident could possibly take place?’
However, he wanted this young lady to acknowledge her mistake. He planned to lock her up in an administrative office for a few days to teach her a lesson so that she would not be a swindler again.
3
Xie Qiao was watched over by four people.
She had been walking slowly at the end of the line, and she had to pause after taking a few steps.
Among the guards who were watching over her was Qin Zhi, the one whose fortune had been read by her.
At first, he was angry with the young lady who spat out nonsense.
But looking at her delicate and weak appearance, he felt that he, as a grown man, need not take the words of such a young lady to heart.
“Why has the front line stopped? Is the young master really listening to you, young lady?” Qin Zhi murmured.
Xie Qiao’s face turned pale. “What a good coincidence. I can’t walk anymore.”
“You’ve only traveled a short distance, and you can’t walk anymore? If this continues, would we have to carry you?” Qin Zhi glanced at Xie Qiao with a disgusted look, but since he could not be angry with this woman, he had no choice but to swallow up his anger.
He wanted to walk along with his friends, but he had been ordered to watch over this woman.
The young lady walked like a sea turtle who had just landed ashore. She was a bit slow.
1
“You don’t have to carry me. Your young master’s carriage will do the job,” Xie Qiao spoke feebly.
She was used to taking her time with everything.
She was walking quite fast today for her speed. With how fast they had been pressing onward for their journey, she felt like half of her life was gone.
“Argh…you’ll be seeing the official in a moment. Yet you dare to fool around here…”
Before he finished speaking, he raised his eyes and vaguely saw smoke and dust coming out from a distance.
The front line guards who kept a lookout spotted the incident and immediately reported that to Zhao Xuanjing. Zhao Xuanjing was drinking tea in the carriage. He was shocked to hear of the incident and ordered his horse-riding guards to go to the spot to investigate.
The horse-riding guards returned from the investigation in almost no time at all.
“Young Master, in front…an abandoned jade mine had just collapsed, and a lot of rocks went tumbling down. About fifty or sixty feet of the pathway were buried up.”
“…” Zhao Xuanjing had his eyelids twitch. “If we had not stopped, would we be there by now?”
When the imperial bodyguard captain heard this, he frowned and nodded seriously, “If you calculate the distance, yes, we should be there by now.”
Zhao Xuanjing suddenly tightened his eyebrows.
He brought along a lot of guards with him, and while fifty or sixty feet of buried pathway would not be enough to bury all of them, they would still suffer losses.
If he had bad luck today, even he himself might be gone.
This was a pile of mining waste, so there was only a little bit of soil in the area. There were also a lot of useless stones that were thrown all around there, and they slowly piled up to form stone slopes.
If they were hit by the stones, they would have been seriously injured if not outright killed.
“Please… invite the…” Suddenly, he could not utter the word ‘swindler’. Thinking of the words on the fortune-telling banner, Imperial Guard Zhou asked, “Would you like to invite Immortal Xie to come over?”
3