Central part of the empire.

This is the Lenghu Province near the southern border. Among the rolling hills, large and small mountain springs and underground rivers rush down the rocks in the mountains, washing out lakes of different sizes.

The lake water seems to be transparent, and you can clearly see the various delicate rocks below. If you put your hand into it, you can feel a cold touch.

Now, under a sloping hidden rock, Charanlot woke up from her sleep.

Looking at the unfamiliar rock walls, rocks, and the stream flowing among the large pebbles not far away, the girl was a little surprised. It took her a while to realize that she had escaped from the whirlpool in the south.

.

Looking back and looking around, she saw the female knight lying not far away from her. Charlanlot sat up, put the thin blanket on her body, then came to her side and checked the injury. Seeing the sky knight

Gradually she got better, and she finally breathed a sigh of relief.

By the way, who saved the two of her that day? She didn't know the person who brought her here.

After rubbing her hungry stomach, Charlanlot tried to get out of this hidden rock crevice and go out to find something to eat.

As soon as she walked out of this huge rock, she saw several people not far away working hard. Some of them were mending clothes, some were repairing weapons, and some were cooking small clay pots.

A man wearing brown leather armor saw the girl's head, smiled a little, and then walked over.

"Are you awake? Are you feeling better? Unfortunately, there is a lack of medicine here, so you often have to deal with it on your own."

He briefly chatted with Charlanlot and then called over a girl of about 14 years old, "Nika, come here and help this sister get familiar with her. She has just arrived."

"Okay, I'll be right back, Dad." The girl was working on a woven basket, and it looked like she was just finishing the last few steps.

"This is my daughter. She knows a lot about the situation here. It will probably be much easier for you to communicate."

"Thank you." Xia Lanlot nodded, and then looked at the rock wall and the woods beside the stream. Light yellow and red brown leaves were sparsely distributed in the crown of the tree, and a few newly sprouted buds could be seen among them. The ground seemed to have been polished.

After simple cleaning, there are not many fallen leaves, and the dark brown soft soil can be directly seen.

"Hello, my name is Nika, what's yours?" This girl was a little lively and jumped over.

Then he led Charanlot to walk around and take a look.

"That night, my father received news that a companion was being hunted, so he ran over to help."

"I found you and another sister, so I rescued you."

"Maybe the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I heard Uncle Bai De say this. He taught me a lot of words and proverbs."

The girl led Charanlot along the stream, walking on the raised stones at the edge of the stream with her two feet and trying her best to balance with her hands. She seemed to enjoy this kind of fun.

Seeing how she almost fell down several times, Charlanlot wanted to help her but didn't dare to, for fear of making the little girl unhappy.

"It's okay. My balance is very good. In fact, this is also a kind of exercise." She turned around occasionally and smiled when she saw Charlotte's worried look.

"My sister was hunted down by the soldiers of the empire, so she must have caused a lot of trouble. But so did we. We escaped because we disobeyed the lord's jurisdiction, and now we are wandering around."

"Although it looks embarrassing, everyone is getting used to it."

"There are always bad things about nobles. I think my sister should also understand it. I won't recall those sad things anymore."

"This, too." Charlanlot nodded silently from behind, feeling that she was also within the range.

"I don't understand the basic principles. I used to listen to my dad's friends talking about freedom and equality."

"In their eyes, we are probably the black sheep, haha."

"Because many people saw that we were doing well, they joined us, which can be considered as poaching a lot of corners of the empire."

"Now we are scattered in this forest, and we live a semi-secluded life. Because the mountains are difficult to walk, some monsters live in them, and the nobles are not willing to spend a lot of money to hunt us down, so they gradually let it go."

"Oh, there are fish there." The girl who was talking to Charanlot pointed to a small water hole in front of her. It was a small harbor formed by several rocks in the stream. A white river fish was sitting quietly in it.

Stay in it quietly.

Then the girl approached carefully and jumped into the water.

There was a splash and flutter of water, and soon she stood up in the stream holding the big white fish.

"Sister, come help me, it's too slippery~" She said as she seemed to hold the fish down, but the fish's tail jumped and flapping from time to time and splashed all kinds of water, making Nika unable to open her eyes.

"Okay, I'll come right over." Xia Lanluo put the thin blanket on the dry stone aside and jumped in. The two of them were in a hurry and spent a while before finally getting the fish ashore.

"Huh..." Lying on the grass beside the stream, their clothes had long been soaked, and a feeling of dampness and coldness came from them.

"I'm sorry for causing trouble for Sister Lottie." Nika stuck out her tongue and then got up again.

"Let's take the fish to the camp first, and then take a bath."

"Um."

As they spoke, the two of them carried the fish to the camp several hundred meters away, and Nika was scolded by her mother for a few more words before she released it.

"I'm sorry to trouble you, Nika." A woman with brown braids came over. She was probably in her 30s or 40s. She didn't look old, but she had a lot of scars on her hands from work.

"It's okay." Charanlot shook her head. Compared to the beginning, she felt much more relaxed now.

"Hahaha, Nika is so awesome, she found another big fish today." An uncle in the camp gave a thumbs up in praise.

"Of course, that's me, hum." The girl was not shy at all, patting her chest to express that she was right.

"Haha, this kid Nika." A burst of laughter came from the shades of trees shrouded in sunshine, and several women who were busy with their work covered their mouths and looked at the girl with smiles.

Charlotte noticed the light white fiber strings in their hands, and a kind of curiosity emerged in her heart.

"Come with me, let's take a shower first." Nika came over with clean clothes and grabbed a white fruit in her hand.

The two of them walked up the hillside as they spoke.

"Although the stream is very clean, it is still too cold, and some people may not be able to bear it, so we found a place between the higher mountain walls." As they said that, the two climbed up the temporary 'ladder', which was just a few steps away.

The steps are barely built by stones to fill the gaps in the stone cracks.

After walking like this for a while, Nica pointed to a puddle and said, "We're here."

The light-colored rocks are very mottled. Among such gravels, a small pool is formed, in which a thin stream of water falls from a high place and flows into it, causing small ripples.

"The terrain here is relatively high. Don't worry about anyone peeping. I'm going to feed that big snapping turtle. This guy is always greedy." After saying that, Nika climbed up the higher mountain wall using her hands and feet.

Snapping turtle? Charlanlot had doubts in her mind, but after a while, she saw that the falling water began to emit bursts of white steam and became hot.

At this time, a flow of magic power was also felt by her.

It was probably at the level of Sequence 3, not too strong, but it seemed to be a fire-attribute monster. She analyzed it in her mind, and then she saw Nika jump down slightly.

She tested the water temperature with her hand and nodded.

"Okay, let's do some simple cleaning first. After the water in the pool is hot, we can go in and take a dip."

More than ten minutes later, the two of them finished washing and walked into the warm pool. A comfortable feeling spread from their feet and legs. At this time, the upper body was still a little cold.

Then the two of them submerged into it, and Nika also looked like she was enjoying it.

"Just now you said that snapping turtle was a monster, right?"

"Well, that's right, dad found it by chance and placed it here."

"It is an original sequence 3 fire snapping turtle. It is relatively lazy. As long as it is not hungry, it will not run around. If you negotiate with it and feed it food, it will generate heat and boil the water around it.

Very convenient.“

"It's amazing." Charlotte thought to herself, how did they achieve such a tacit understanding for the first time.

Lying in the warm water pool to relax for a while, Charlanlot felt that the fatigue and tension that had been weighing on her recently had finally dissipated a lot.

I closed my eyes and took a nap in the water for a while.

After taking a shower, the two of them put on clean light-colored linen clothes, jumped off the rocks, and returned to the camp.

By this time, the sky was getting dark, and the aroma of food began to spread in the forest.

"Come and eat." Someone waved, and Nika jumped up happily in response and took Lottie over.

"Drink some, the freshly cooked hot soup." An old woman brought the Tao Wan, in which the fish soup was accompanied by a few vegetables, exuding a delicate fragrance.

"Thank you." Charlotte thought to herself, she owed a lot of favors.

Sitting by the fire, drinking fish soup, eating a few pieces of fish, and then putting a few pieces of baked wheat cakes into her mouth. The soft and brown taste just out of the oven made Charanlot feel better than many big meals.

eat.

"I'm sorry, the food is not rich now, so we can only eat half full." After eating the small pieces of noodles, the uncle came over and explained briefly. He was still holding the unfinished fish soup in his hand.

It's very bland and has no meat.

"It's nothing, I'm very satisfied to be alive." Charlanlot shook her head.

Then he finally asked curiously about their origins.

"This is very complicated to say." The uncle looked at the bright yellow bonfire, added some firewood, and then spoke slowly.

"Perhaps many outsiders think we are an insurrectionary army, a revolutionary army or something like that, but in fact we are not like that."

"It's just that we couldn't survive in the original territory, so everyone escaped and hugged each other for warmth."

"But in order to deal with pursuing troops and possible attacks, we also had to learn to arm ourselves, so we gradually came into contact with the real rebels, and then we established a relationship."

"Now if you insist on saying that we rebelled against the empire, it cannot be denied, because our behavior does break away from the laws of the empire."
To be continued...