Samuel Harris silently took out the meat jerky he had stolen from the Xiongnu, opened the coarse cloth and separated a few pieces of the dark jerky. “I can give you some jerky. The water pouch is for the unconscious Matthew Cooper, I can’t give it to you.”

John Morgan’s expression stiffened again. “Fine then, give me the scimitar so I can protect myself on the road.”

Samuel Harris shook his head firmly.

John Morgan tried again, “What’s the use of weapons while hiding here? I want to go out and find help for you all!” His voice and expression were extremely sincere, making it easy to believe what he said.

At this moment, George Baker sneered, “It’s not just Warrior Harris who doesn’t trust you. Who in the borderlands would believe that you, Ranger Morgan, would be so kind-hearted?”

A “youxia” was a type of knight-errant in Han times, but they were generally seen by commoners as street thugs and ruffians. They scorned the law, broke rules with force, and usually had a bad reputation. In some places, powerful youxia even dominated the region, commanding many followers.

As soon as George Baker interjected, the atmosphere became strange. Sunlight filtering through the treetops shone on John Morgan’s face, making him look particularly fierce, while Samuel Harris absentmindedly stroked the wound on his left side, lost in thought.

This odd tension persisted until Matthew Cooper let out a groan, finally breaking the silence. Upon hearing the sound, Samuel Harris sprang to his feet, went to Matthew Cooper’s side, picked up the water pouch, and brought it to Matthew Cooper’s lips. Sensing the moisture, Matthew Cooper instinctively drank, but perhaps too eagerly, choked on the water and coughed.

Chapter Six: A Fortunate Encounter with Han Soldiers

In the end, John Morgan still did not leave alone. The four of them hid in the forest for thirteen days, three days longer than they had planned, surviving on raw meat for fear that lighting a fire would give them away.

During these thirteen days, John Morgan came to fully realize how formidable Samuel Harris was. Samuel Harris could always rely on his scimitar to fight off wild beasts. They were about to leave when an unexpected event occurred.

The surprise was a large tiger that suddenly burst out of the forest, catching them off guard. Only Samuel Harris, who reacted first, leapt forward to fight the tiger.

The adult tiger and Samuel Harris wrestled for nearly an entire afternoon. The tiger’s roars in the woods were deafening. John Morgan originally thought their group was doomed and was terrified that the Xiongnu would be drawn by the noise to investigate, but fortunately, that didn’t happen.

The fight between Samuel Harris and the tiger was fraught with danger. In the end, though Samuel Harris was covered in wounds, he managed to kill the tiger by stabbing it in the forehead with a dagger.

Anyone with a bit of common sense knows that, for any creature, the forehead bone is the hardest part of the body. Yet, that seemingly unremarkable dagger pierced right through the hardest spot, sinking more than a foot deep into the center of the tiger’s brow, at the “king” mark. From then on, while John Morgan feared Samuel Harris’s formidable strength, he became especially wary of that inconspicuous dagger.

Because of Samuel Harris’s impressive performance in the tiger fight, Matthew Cooper and George Baker began to follow his lead in everything, obeying his every word. Even the always-complaining John Morgan no longer dared to argue with Samuel Harris. In their eyes, anyone who could fight a tiger was no ordinary person, though they didn’t know that, despite killing the tiger, Samuel Harris still felt lingering fear whenever he thought about it.

By the time Samuel Harris had recovered from his injuries, it was already the twenty-first day. After twenty-one days of rest, not only had Samuel Harris healed, but Matthew Cooper had also recovered. Seeing how quickly Samuel Harris healed from the tiger’s wounds, they were once again shocked by his recovery speed and grew even more curious about the little things he carried. But since Samuel Harris never let them see his belongings, the three could only look on helplessly.

……

A crescent moon hung in the sky. For some reason, Samuel Harris noticed that the moonlight now was different from that of later generations. The moonlight in the future was silvery, but now it glowed with an eerie red. When Samuel Harris asked about it, he received a most absurd answer: both John Morgan and Matthew Cooper replied that so many people had died that the moon had been stained red, which was why the moonlight was red. Samuel Harris scoffed at this but said nothing more.

They continued traveling at night, something they were now quite used to. Before, they had fled through deserts and sandy wastes; now, they ran across grasslands, passing countless rotting corpses lying by the roadside.

More than half a month of living without salt had slightly weakened them, and they had to stop and rest frequently along the way.

During their journey, they came across several villages that had been utterly destroyed. The stench inside was overwhelming, and rotting corpses lay everywhere. John Morgan, Matthew Cooper, and George Baker were unwilling to enter, but Samuel Harris insisted they pass through the villages and even said they should search carefully to see if they could find anything useful.

Enduring the stench, they rummaged through the ruins, but apart from a few copper coins stained with black blood, they found nothing. When they passed through another corpse-filled village, they soon heard the sound of hoofbeats, which startled them so much that they immediately dropped to the ground among the rotting bodies, not daring to move.

A dozen or so cavalrymen approached from a distance. They carried no torches, so it was impossible to tell which side they belonged to in the darkness.

In fact, Samuel Harris and his group had already encountered cavalry of varying numbers several times along the way. Each time, they hid in the darkness and only came out after the riders had passed. This time, they intended to do the same.