Power Up Artist Yang - Chapter 337

Yujia went on an unplanned hiking trip.

The mountain climb would’ve honestly been decent if there weren’t men holding large, sharp, and bloodied blades surrounding her. Thankfully, although their eyes were all glued on her for the first few minutes of the walk, soon enough, they came to the assumption that she was truly not going to run away, going to mess around and chat with their fellow bandits instead. With their focus no longer so strictly on her, Yujia took this time to allow her eyes to wander around. She observed the bandits, but more so the path that they were traveling on. There was no distinct road, so she wanted to keep track of any notable landmarks that they might pass. The information might come to use later.

It was just tragic that she was completely clueless when it came to directions.

Regardless, Yujia tried. She tried all the way until they arrived at the camp that the bandits had talked about earlier. It turned out, by “camp”, they meant an enclosure with wooden gates and watchtowers. The height of the gate walls were a little taller than her, but nothing too tall. Overall, the camp was much bigger than she had imagined, but definitely not as drastically large as a full town. It seemed more like a temporary fortress than anything.

The sun was still up when they arrived, but it was close to becoming dawn. The sky began to hold hints of gold. Yujia took note of that too.

Since they arrived, Yujia, Yufeng, and the rest were herded through an entrance guarded by a few bandits. All this time, Yunhe and the rest of the disciples were traveling behind her. At this point, once they entered the camp, they split up. Yujia was moved to the path on the left, while the others went to the right. Only Yufeng stuck with her.

Most of the bandits seemed to have tasks of their own to complete, so they moved away as well. Only two were left to escort Yujia and Yufeng, walking them to a wooden house. As they swung open a loose door without a padlock, a musty wood smell came from the interior. Yujia wrinkled her nose. The scent was quite strong.

Continuing her act of cooperation, she went into the small house. There was hay covering the floor and essentially nothing else. It might as well have been a stable, she supposed.

Once she was in, one of the two bandits nudged the other with his elbow, asking, “Should we just leave them here?”

They looked at her. Yujia made her expression into a friendly smile.

“She don’t look like the type to run away, don’t you think?” the other muttered under his breath.

“Just what I was thinking. But…” He hesitated for a moment. Then, he went outside for a second, bringing back two coils of rope. “We should do this in case.”

Yujia’s expression fell when she saw the ropes, but she quickly regained her composure before the bandits noticed it. This would make escaping certainly a bit more difficult. She should have expected it, however. These bandits were used to tying up their victims, who would usually be thrashing around at this moment. Even if she was oddly complacent, it was natural for them to carry out their typical habits.

Thus, Yujia still remained the same. She held out her hands, cooperating even more as the bandit wound up the ropes around her wrist. To Yufeng, the other bandit was doing the same thing. Then, they gestured for her to get near a wide wooden pole that helped to hold up the building’s ceiling and sit down. Yufeng sat on the other side of her. They took out an even larger coil of rope, wrapping it around her, Yufeng, and the pole so that they were stuck there. Yujia subconsciously tensed up a bit as they did so.

Now that they were fixed in place, the bandits stopped. Asking the other one for advice again, one said, “We don’t need to… stuff their mouths with anything, right?”

“Do you see them screaming or crying right now?”

“No.”

“Well then, why do extra work like that?” The bandit who said that leaned forward, tapping Yujia. “You and the other one don’t start screaming, and we don’t mute you, fair?”

“Sure.” She smiled.

The bandit paused for a moment. “Damn,” he muttered, “it is kinda creepy that they’re like this.” He leaned back.

The other one replied, “I been thinking that since the start. As long as our king likes the pretty one?”

“What about the ugly one?”

“You think she’s ugly? I think she’s not half bad.”

“You can take her then!” He chuckled, smacking the other bandit on the back. “Tonight, after the feast. They should give you first dibs for our guarding work.”

“Then, I’ll thank Brother for your generosity.” The bandit approached Yufeng’s side. “You want to keep my bed warm tonight?”

Although Yujia could not see what happened, she heard the noise of the brief shuffling of fabric. And then, there was a large yelp from the bandit as he jumped back. Yujia turned her head and saw him grabbing his hand, red blood trickling down from it. The red was bright, nothing like the other crusted blood on his skin and sword from the people he had hurt.

“I’d pull out your teeth for that, b*tch.” The bandit seethed, still tightly clutching his hand. His companion stepped forward, but the bandit shook his head. “But I won’t. I don’t want to make that unattractive face of yours even uglier.”

Yufeng replied, her tone light, “I would have cut off your hands if I could.”

He laughed. “As if you could.”

Yujia could not see Yufeng’s expression at this moment, but she imagined a smirk across her face. And though the bandit only saw it as a joke, from what she knew of Yufeng, that young woman was not joking when she said that she would do it. Yufeng never joked when her tone was like that: quiet but deadly.

“Well, at least this one got some spirit. I’ll have fun with you tonight. Just you wait,” he spat.

With that, the two exited the room, slamming the door shut.

Once they were gone, Yufeng immediately muttered in a voice low enough, “What’s your plan?”

She was straight to the point, so Yujia didn’t bother asking what exactly happened for Yufeng to bite that bandit or for those threats to be exchanged either. “As I expected,” Yujia replied, her voice equally low, “because of our cooperative act, they won’t guard us too tightly. From their words, those two will be the only ones outside of this specific door. There’s no lock. We just need to get rid of these ropes. Tonight, there is a feast. They will likely be distracted by that, so that is our only and last chance, to escape.”

She was glad that Yufeng and her were tied so closely, only separated back-to-back by a pole. They could communicate quietly without the bandits outside from catching on.

Yufeng informed, swiftly, “The main entrance and exit of the camp is through the gate we came through. However, there is a smaller door towards our right. Two bandits guard that door. It has less of a risk than the main door, but the area around it is entirely open space. It would be difficult to reach there without being noticed.”

“Yet less of a risk?” Yujia pursed her lips together.

“The main door has watchtowers nearby. There are three bandits up each tower. It has four bandits that cycle in shifts around the gate. The chances that they notice an escape are high as well, and it would be more difficult to handle so many bandits. Thus, more risk.”

Yujia marveled, silently, at how Yufeng gathered all of that information and kept the numbers of bandits in her brain through the brief few moments that they passed through the area.

“So, side door it is,” Yujia ended up agreeing. “How fast can you get out of these bonds?”

“Less than five minutes.”

“Good. We should stay like this for now, then, so they don’t notice.”

“I was thinking the same.”

Now that they had communicated the main gist of their plan, the two of them fell silent. Yujia, who had relaxed from her tense position, found the ropes that were tightly wrapped around her earlier becoming looser. Though her hands were still tightly bound together, she could at least move her whole body by a little.

In the silence, as they waited for time to pass by, she had time to contemplate the events that happened up till now. Maybe it was because all that acting occurred, but she was much calmer now than when the bandits’ ambush first broke out. She was still terrified, for sure, but at least now, her hands were not trembling. It was just so unbelievable, to her, that she was currently in this situation.

But, well, at least she had an even more exciting story to tell Zixu. As soon as that thought popped into her mind, Yujia realized that she would facepalm if she could move her arms at how ridiculous that positive light was.

Her mind, then, inadvertently traveled off to her fellow disciples. She wondered how they fared ever since they went off in the opposite direction.

“What will happen to my senior and junior brothers?” she brought herself to ask Yufeng in a whisper, though she knew the answer already.

“They’ll have to fend for themselves. We don’t have the privilege to track down where they went and save them as well,” Yufeng responded.

Yujia squeezed her eyes shut. As expected, that answer. She drew in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Perhaps a part of her delusion was that Yufeng, the multi-talented Yufeng, could think of a way to save all of them, yet then she realized that this was not a fanciful daydream, but rather a brutal reality. And to escape this reality, she could no longer have any more hesitation. Yufeng had been working all this time to ensure their safety. She needed to play her part as well.