"Medical Tent."
"Going to see the doctor?"
Xiao Jin Yu sighed silently, "You go conduct another corpse examination. I'll go check if Jing Yi is still alive..."
☆、74 Roasted Whole Lamb (Ten)
As Xiao Jin Yu approached the Medical Tent, he heard waves of shouting coming from inside.
"Roll! Roll! Roll away!"
"Roll faster! Get lost!"
"Roll! If you don't roll I'll stew you tonight!"
The guard tensed up completely, his hand on his sword hilt as he swiftly moved from behind Xiao Jin Yu to stand in front, listening warily to the commotion inside the tent.
"...Hit him! Hit him hard!"
"You idiot, don't hit the head... Hit the legs! Step aside, let me do it!"
Seeing Xiao Jin Yu's calm expression, the guard whispered, "Wang Ye, shall I go in and check?"
"Not yet, wait..."
"Yes."
While Xiao Jin Yu remained unhurried, the people inside the Medical Tent were growing increasingly agitated with their curses.
"Where are you rolling... Come back! Roll back here!"
"If you don't listen, I'll sleep with your wife!"
The guard couldn't bear to listen any longer, "Wang Ye..."
Xiao Jin Yu finally nodded.
The guard dashed inside in a flash, "Stop!"
Before his words fully landed, he froze in place, stunned.
Inside the tent, people wrapped in bandages in various places formed multiple layers around a circle. In the innermost ring, three men knelt side by side, each holding a broom straw, their faces red and necks thick as they desperately prodded several dung beetles diligently rolling dung balls.
A young officer with thick bandages around his head crouched on the ground, his round buttocks in the air, his face flushed crimson with urgency as he focused on prodding a dung beetle that had clearly strayed from the track. "Can't stop... If we stop, this little bastard won't stay on the right path!"
"Look, look! Almost... this one's almost there... It's this one again..."
At this shout, the guard—who already had a baby face that made him inconspicuous—was immediately ignored by everyone in the tent. All eyes instantly refocused on the dung beetles.
"Quick! Roll faster! Roll! We won, we won, we won... we won!"
"Ah... Why is it him again!"
Amid the mix of cheers and sighs, a voice full of laughter said, "Thank you for letting me win, thank you... A bet is a bet, a bet is a bet..."
Nearly seventy percent of the people knelt down with mournful faces toward someone sitting cross-legged in the center of the crowd, bowing their heads in unison. Reluctantly but still in perfect sync, they dragged out the word, "Grandfather..."
Just as their foreheads touched the ground, a few cold coughs came from the tent entrance.
The guard held the tent flap half-open. Xiao Jin Yu sat at the entrance, from where he could clearly see the face of the person being hailed as "grandfather" in the center. Even without looking, he knew—no one but Jing Yi would dare to organize a dung beetle gambling event in Leng Peishan's military camp.
The moment Jing Yi caught sight of Xiao Jin Yu's faintly amused face, he sprang up from the crowd. His agility was downright insulting to the thick bandages wrapped around his calves.
While everyone's attention was fixed on Jing Yi, the guard slipped out, let the tent flap fall, and pushed Xiao Jin Yu away. His movements were swift and silent, as if the two had never been at the tent entrance.
Jing Yi snatched up his crutch from the ground, stepped over the "grandsons" and dung beetles scattered everywhere, and hobbled out as fast as he could."Hey, where are you going... You haven't answered yet!"
"You all kneel first, urgent business, urgent business..."
Jing Yi hobbled along the wheel tracks of Xiao Jin Yu's wheelchair until he reached the haystack behind the stables. Xiao Jin Yu had already dismissed the guards and was sitting loosely against the backrest, amusing himself by twisting a flexible blade of grass around his fingers.
Jing Yi leaned on his crutch, grinning like an unhearted cabbage. "Wang Ye, why didn't you give me a heads-up before coming... You could've just summoned me instead. On such a cold day like this, making you come all this way..."
Xiao Jin Yu glanced up at his convincingly dressed wounded soldier act. "You're quite convincing playing a cripple."
Jing Yi swept an ingratiating look over Xiao Jin Yu's unresponsive legs. "Learned from the best, learned from the best..."
Xiao Jin Yu's face darkened slightly as he observed Jing Yi's leg wrapped thickly in bandages. "How did you trick the doctor into wrapping you up like this?"
Jing Yi sensed mostly praise in the question. "Just mixed some rouge, honey, starch and clay, smeared it on, then hugged my leg and screamed in pain... The army doctors are all so busy they can't remember their own names, they wouldn't examine a common soldier that carefully, right..."
Xiao Jin Yu raised an eyebrow. "In a place like this, where did you get rouge?"
Jing Yi immediately felt a chill run down his spine. "Well, that..."
"Well what?"
"That..." Jing Yi grinned shamelessly. "Wang Ye, I heard from the doctor you're quite ill, that excessive melancholy aggravated your old condition... Could it be you missed me?"
Xiao Jin Yu kept a cold expression, completely unmoved. "You've met Leng Yue in the army camp?"
"Hehe..." Jing Yi decided to come clean. "In this damned place, with you not looking after me, how long could I last without her covering for me..."
Xiao Jin Yu rewarded him with a full-eyed glare. "And she didn't skin you alive?"
"Skinned me alright... Chewed me up and spit me out in broad daylight, almost got caught red-handed..." Jing Yi smiled meaningfully. "Besides, with her limited skills, if she didn't have me helping, how could she have possibly worn you out like this..."
No wonder Leng Yue's previous mischief never reached such professional levels - she'd teamed up with this grandmaster of trouble...
Xiao Jin Yu's face turned pitch black. "Jing Yi, do you remember whose army camp this is?"
At the mental image of Leng Pei Shan's face, Jing Yi immediately leaned pitifully on his crutch, standing even more unsteadily than Xiao Jin Yu. "I was wrong I was wrong I was wrong... Please consider that despite these injuries I still risked my life gathering intelligence for you..."
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