Xue Yao couldn't walk anymore, just now he was still able to take two mechanical steps, once he stopped he completely collapsed, but he didn't know how to tell the seventh prince.
Saying, "Your Highness, go ahead and leave me alone" is just a load of crap.
In the past few days, the chubby little boy's sense of security has dropped to 37, and he doesn't really interact with people anymore.
The Seventh Prince was in his own world, pondering over things, deciding and executing them on his own, without asking for anyone's permission.
So Xue Yao didn't say anything false and clenched his teeth to exert force from the roots of his legs, trying to continue to take a few steps forward.
The completely paralyzed legs made him immediately lose his center of gravity and fell backward, halfway being pulled by his wrist and yanked forward, changing his direction and falling into the seventh prince's arms.
"Yao Yao you stand still." The Seventh Prince reminded his own little companion who was not walking properly.
"My legs are numb from running, Your Highness go back to the capital first, I'll follow soon, okay?"
"No."
The moon was obscured by dark clouds, and there was complete darkness all around.
Xue Yao stood up straight, reaching out for His Highness's chubby little face.
It was the wrong direction to touch, but the little chubby face took the initiative to stick to his palm, just like when he was a kid.
"Please Your Highness, listen to the words once more, it's you they want to arrest not me, as long as you return to the capital and mobilize the other seven armies to prepare for war, the Third Prince's regional Northwest Army all the way to the Northwest and a Tong Family Army will surely not dare to touch your people."
Xue Yao felt the little chubby face leave his palm as the Seventh Prince turned his back and said, "You come up."
Xue Yao reached out and touched the Seventh Prince's back.
The little fat cub tried to escape on his back.
Can't waste the little fat cub's strength.
Xue Yao's body couldn't hold any more grief, holding onto the Seventh Prince's arm with one hand, grabbing his pants with one hand and lifting his legs with force, trying to use his hands to control his legs to keep running.
Rolling hot tears kept crossing the cheeks and were blown away by the northwestern night wind into the endless darkness.
He didn't want the chubby little cub to carry him, so he just walked forward as crookedly as if he were a toddler.
A wind sound suddenly skimmed past his ears, it was the Seventh Prince who suddenly bent over and picked him up in a horizontal hug.
The night wind instantly met his face, and he was carried horizontally by the Seventh Prince, running wildly through the dark night with no end in sight and no hope.
I don't know how long he had been running, the Seventh Prince's panting became more and more ragged, and Xue Yao's palm felt the sweat on his back, seeping out through the two layers of his singlet, like a young beast desperately trying to maneuver around an adult rhinoceros.
Xue Yao gradually adapted to the thick darkness, tilted his head to look for the direction of the North Star, and uneasily reminded the Seventh Prince, "Is the first stagecoach station so far away? We can't run in the wrong direction."
The Seventh Prince looked down at him, turned his head towards the ghostly withered trees on the side with their teeth and claws raised his chin, "The wind is blowing from the northwestern desert, where these trees deflect to, where is the southeast direction, follow this road straight, see the lights and you're there, Yaoyao, remember it well."
Xue Yao had never heard such a weak and frail voice from the little fat cub before, and immediately tapped him on the shoulder to let him put himself down to run on his own.
"Rest a little longer, and Master will leave you alone." The Seventh Prince refused to let him down.
Xue Yao felt that his legs had regained their senses, and was about to struggle down to the ground, when the sound of clattering hooves came from the silent dark night, echoing in the void, making it seem as if the hooves were coming from all directions.
As the sound of the horse's hooves approached at a speed exponentially faster than their escape, Xue Yao had already been carried by the Seventh Prince to burrow into the short bushes on the side.
Xue Yao had never realized that a horse could run so fast.
The cavalry in the distance approached at a rapid pace, and he prayed that the group would keep up that speed as well, passing by in a flash.
They hid in the grass, and sure enough, horses swept before them, followed by an endless clatter of hooves.
Xue Yao clenched his fists and prayed for the sound to fade away, but suddenly he heard a neigh from the strangled horse.
"The footprints are gone!" The leading officer leaped off his horse, held a firebrand against the sand and scrutinized it, before issuing another confirming report, "The footprints are gone!"
Xue Yao's hands and feet were as cold as ice, and his heartbeat was getting heavier.
In his ears suddenly came the seventh prince's low, hoarse voice: "Run two more miles, show your waist tag, call the finest horse, and go back to the capital to find second brother."
When Xue Yao reacted to what the little fat cub was trying to do, he reached out and tried to grab the hem of his coat, but he simply couldn't keep up with the speed at which he scurried out.
A Tong soldier who was near the grass was knocked off his horse by the sheath of his sword.
Immediately after, like ears of wheat blown by the wind, a row of soldiers cascaded inward and were knocked off their horses, and more than a hundred elite cavalrymen were opened up from the center, watching the figure of a teenager, flipping over and leaping onto a batch of warhorses, and with a pull on the reins, galloped off towards the desert to the north.
In a flash, the crowd pulled the reins around and turned around to pursue the attack, and the last soldier to fall from his horse climbed onto his comrade's horse and took out the bow and arrow on his back.
A sound of hooves and dust filled the sky as more than a hundred cavalrymen chased after the seventh prince in the direction he was running away.
The incessant neighing of horses drowned out Xue Yao's howls in the despairing northwestern night sky.
The Seventh Prince single-handedly drew away the first set of pursuers, Xue Yao grinned and wiped away his tears, gritted his teeth and stood up, rolling and crawling towards the stagecoach station two miles away.
He had to run away before the first officials wanted him, or the little fat cub would have no one to count on again.
He fell as he ran, a somewhat comical expression of numbness on his face.
He needed the numbness to block out the sound of an arrow breaking just vaguely heard.
It won't.
The Third Prince didn't dare to let the Seventh Prince die within the border, even if there was a soldier sense shooting arrows, it was just to scare people.
Even if it wasn't a scare, you can't shoot in this dark.
He kept reassuring himself that he wouldn't be able to hold on if he thought about it any more carefully, and that he would have to live to go back to the capital to bring in help so that he could get the little fat cub back to give him a good lesson.
He was usually too good to the little fat cub, which made this guy so capricious that he dared to put his life on the line to lead away the pursuers for him, his companion.
It was because he was too good to him that he dared to let Xue Yao experience this kind of pain that was worse than death with ten thousand arrows piercing his heart.
Not being able to leave it at that, Xue Yao howled all the way and ran wildly, this time, never letting the rebel pup go.
*
The Fifth Prince waited for three days on the other side of the river, and still did not wait for the Khitan emissary to come with the Khitan prince, to change him back.
The guards and food deliverers began to treat him less respectfully, and it was a good thing he didn't understand Khitan, or know what they said to insult him.
The next day at noon, the Khitan that can speak Chinese general, face grimly into the tent, in his tent short table, nonchalantly sat down cross-legged, spoke in a low voice: "It can not be so long, to talk about the conditions can be crossed the river over to talk about the Emperor of Daqi is too treacherous."
"You are the ones who are fucking treacherous!" The Fifth Prince immediately exploded, "A handful of old Khitan kings can be used as bait to trick my father into an ambush, do you still have a father and a ruler in your eyes!"
"My king is so heroic that he will live another hundred years and dare to single-handedly lure the enemy in." The Khitan general looked at the fifth prince grimly, "You swapped our prince, the Da Qi emperor has seven princes, our Khitan king only has one prince, now going back on your word, that's what makes it treacherous."
The Fifth Prince was dumbfounded for a moment.
It was only when the Khitan general said that the Emperor of Da Qi had seven imperial sons that the Fifth Prince suddenly reacted to the fact that his father had given up on him. To provoke the Khitan to a fight to the death?
At this time, he was not disappointed in his heart, but instead, he messed up and thought: when he changed back to his father, he should talk about some conditions, such as begging his father to let his mother consort out of the palace, so that she could turn back into a falcon that soared freely in the sky.
In this way he could sacrifice very well by saving not only his father but also his mother.
Big Brother will surely praise him for his valor and decisiveness, and for being able to carry things better than Big Brother's little darling, Seventh Brother, at critical moments.
"Lone underestimated Old Five once upon a time."
Big brother would say a sentence like this, the Fifth Prince thought to himself, this is the highest praise.
*
In the early summer afternoon, the sun had killed patches of shrubs, and only the cacti were still tenaciously accumulating daylight hot enough to boil an egg.
A pair of feet that had been agile and athletic last night were now stepping slowly, one step at a time, on the sand, the front of the left boot, already topped with holes, the tops of the white socks inside stained with dark blood.
The Seventh Prince glanced up at the position of the sun and turned his head to look at the footprints he had come from, gradually being buried and filled in by the sand.
There's no more cavalry to catch up with.
Thanks to the darkness of last night without a hint of moonlight, the horse that had been snatched had led away his pursuers for him.
He loosened up, bent over with both hands on his knees and sat down on the very hot ass sand.
The left arm, which had bent with it, immediately sent a tingling stab of numbness, and he could feel warm blood seeping out of the gash that had been cut by the arrow.
The Seventh Prince used his right hand to untie the long kerchief on his left arm.
Last night's bandage was too scribbled, to untie to re-tie tightly, endure the pain patiently untie the dead knot, gently tugging, the seventh prince sucked in a breath of cold air.
The blood on the pad had coagulated and was so caked with the wound that there was no way to get at it.
七皇子疼得不再拉扯伤口了，“噗通”一声仰躺在地上，开始“嗯嗯嗯”的撇嘴哼哼，哼声凄婉，要是薛遥在，一定会当场答应再为两壶奶。
But His Highness only hummed for a little while and then stopped, remembering that there was no one around to watch himself pout.
The pupils of a pair of teal eyes stood out from his ashen face, staring dully at the turquoise blue sky.
If Xue Yao were to watch from the side at the moment, he would definitely notice that His Highness's eyes would turn a beautiful dissolving gold color under the direct sunlight, which made His Highness's dirty little fat face not so unbearable.
"Does Your Highness drink milk?" Because of the massive loss of water, it made the Seventh Prince's originally childish voice hoarse.
He wanted to ask the question again to reassure himself, but only managed to get out the word "temple" before he couldn't make another sound.
No one had told the pampered young prince that if he kept lying like this, he would die of dehydration, if not from the cavalry's arrows.
It was the grumbling stomach that saved the Seventh Prince's life.
Either way, His Highness will have to forage for food.
Better yet, a bowl of milk with a Xue Yao roasted callow chicken, which His Highness is super keen on.
With a craving for food, the Seventh Prince walked out of the wasteland into an overgrown valley.
White cooking smoke actually rose above a dilapidated land temple at the foot of the northern mountain.
The seventh prince's stomach first guessed that the smoke belonged to freshly baked food, so it became more and more frantic "gurgling".
"Okay, okay, master knows." His Highness impatiently lowered his head and negotiated with his stomach, "As long as there are no officials, I will definitely snatch it and give it to you to eat, so be quiet for a while."
The stomach probably didn't quite believe the seventh prince's promise, "Gurgle, gurgle", growling more and more deranged.
"Don't even eat if you scream again." His Highness let out a harsh word to his stomach, when in fact he was super eager to eat.
The stomach may also have sensed that its screams would discourage the owner from burglarizing the house, and no burglar carries his own alarm with him.
If you want to eat, you have to follow the rules, so your stomach gradually stops grumbling in resignation.
And so, a few moments later, while none of the five men in this small, broken temple had realized that someone was watching them, the Seventh Prince had gotten a good look at each of their faces.
These men were not soldiers, nor eunuchs, nor were they dressed like companions.
Apart from the royal family, the seventh prince hadn't seen too many men outside of these three categories, so at this moment the expression on his small face became wary again.