Jackal mounted the horse and said,
“We will continue to head north. Follow the horse’s footprints. If you can follow.”
As he spurred the horse to a run with a short shout, his comrades also followed behind him.
There was a high likelihood that the footprints would be lost due to heavy snow or other reasons in the middle of the way, but he only pointed the direction, and did not disclose the destination.
It would have been difficult to reveal the organization’s residence to a stranger.
Although she understood, she felt a bit overwhelmed.
Although she spoke arrogantly, she had lost her shoes and was wearing ragged clothes.
If she were her old self, she would not even have dared to follow them. As he had expected, the chances of falling behind halfway were close to a hundred percent.
She had been timid, weak, and passive.
But there was one thing he had overlooked.
She was not the endlessly fragile girl of the past. She was a woman who had already seen the end of her life once.
Someone who has lost everything and experienced death once has nothing more to fear.
Asha braced herself and slowly took a step.
Now that it had come to this, it was do or die.
The distance back to the minority village was just as far as following them, and there was no food left anyway.
First, she had to find the lost shoes.
Since she had been fleeing desperately from the bandits, it was highly likely that they were snagged on something like a tree root.
Asha quickly retraced her escape route.
She shouldn’t let them get too far ahead from the beginning.
Even though she couldn’t keep up with the speed of the horse, it was right to stick as close as possible to follow without breaking the footprints.
Soon, Asha found one shoe between the tree roots.
“Where’s the other one?”
No matter how much she looked around, she couldn’t find the other one.
But she thought it was better than nothing, and Asha put on one shoe and made a temporary one for the other foot by intertwining branches and tree trunks, putting fallen leaves inside the shoe.
It wouldn’t last long, but it was better than injuring or freezing her foot.
Asha, having prepared, walked aimlessly following the horse’s footprints for a while.
The weather was too cold, and the same scenery was repeated, so at one point, she felt like she was losing not only the sensation of her body but also her sense of time.
Her whole body froze, and her skin turned red as if it was burning, but Asha wrapped her body with both arms, puffing cold breath, and kept walking.
It was a strange thing.
She wanted to die so much, but when she was given another chance to live, she wanted to live again.
This time, she wanted to find the reason for her life. And why she had returned to the past.
Asha had no intention of giving up until she could not take a single step.
How many hours had she been walking?
She had no sensation in her feet now.
Her shoes had long been holed, and scrapes had formed on her feet, but she couldn’t feel the pain in the bonechilling cold.
To add insult to injury, heavy snow began to fall from the overcast sky.
In the whirl of snowflakes, Asha felt her vision dim and her mind grow distant.
“I’m in trouble…”
She had always boasted that she had excellent physical strength since running away from the imperial palace was her daily routine.
And to some extent, it was true.
Born as a butterfly, she had better natural healing power than others.
People praised the butterfly as a sacred being, and she never knew that something called sacred power might be inherent in her body.
But perhaps she had used up all that strength in returning to the past.
Having breathed only the warm air of the central Etzahim Empire, her body might not have adapted, thrown suddenly into the raw snowfields of the north.
Asha trudged along, her head hanging low, her feet numb. Finally, her foot slipped and she fell facefirst into the snow.
She had to get up again, but she had no more strength left in her body.
It seemed this was the end.
Asha lay in the snow, her eyes flickering like dying embers.
Snow quickly piled up over her disheveled blonde hair and slender body.
“If I die like this, will I go back to the past again……”
Though she had unintentionally regressed, perhaps the gods had mistaken who they wanted to kill and who they wanted to save.
“Please don’t be mistaken this time……”
It was then that Asha closed her feeble eyes.
From a distance, the sound of hooves came galloping powerfully, and a horse’s cry “Heeeiiing” echoed long through the mountains.
Asha looked far off to the hill with her cloudy eyes.
There stood a horse with a thick bluegrey coat, looking down at her.
Its glossy smooth coat, muscular body, and dark mane fluttering in the snowstorm made it a magnificent horse.
Standing on the hill and looking at her, it seemed like a messenger sent by a god.
But it seemed the gods had no intention of killing her this time.
The bluegrey horse came “clippityclop,” holding a wolf fur in its mouth.
When scheming men desperately battle for her favor in the male harem
This one’s also on my reread list! The rivalry, scheming between the men in the imperial harem are just as intense and thrilling as in classic palace drama novels, where concubines fight to the death. Give it a read, girls! I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Synopsis:
“I am not worthy of her… but I still want to be by her side, even if only as a loyal dog…”
Those were the painful whispers of Yue Guanyi – the proud Crown Prince of the Great Qi, who was torn between deep love and a guilty conscience. Despite holding the supreme power of the Imperial Guard, he still could not forget the dark past when he was sold into a brothel.
Fate played a cruel twist when Qiu Shuzhi – a young female official who had just passed the imperial examinations with top honors – stepped into his life. She did not know that she was the one who had saved him from a tragic fate many years ago. And now, her heart was the target of pursuit for both Yue Guanyi and the powerful Empress Dowager Qin Qing.
While Yue Guanyi only dared to silently care for and protect the one he loved from afar, the Empress Dowager Qin Qing openly expressed his feelings and did not hesitate to take advantage of his power to approach Qiu Shuzhi. The covert struggle between the two most powerful forces in the imperial court began…
Trigger warning: All men in this novel are yandere style.
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