Chapter 295: The Swallow Returns

Passing by Yuanzhi City once more, Song You noted that the city's garrison had diminished significantly. He had no intention of entering the city, merely glancing at it from a distance before heading toward Liaoxin Pass.

On the way, he casually chose a spot to spend the night.

However, when he awoke, Lady Calico was nowhere to be found.

“...” Sitting up, Song You scanned his surroundings.

Not far away, the rustling of grass caught his attention. The withered grass occasionally bent and trembled, likely stirred by the antics of that cat.

He paid it no mind. Instead, he poured water to wash his face and freshen up before starting to pack his belongings.

As he rolled up his wool blanket and rug and tucked them into his travel bag, a sound drew his attention. Turning around, he saw a calico cat emerging from the tall grass, accompanied by a small stone figure stumbling behind her. Most notably, the cat had a slender yellow bamboo tube clenched in her teeth. She strode up confidently and placed it at his feet.

“What’s this?”

“It’s bamboo.”

“...”

Song You crouched down and picked up the tube.

The bamboo was slender, no thicker than Lady Calico’s little leg. It had a capped end bound securely with hemp rope—the very rope the cat had gripped to carry it over.

The moment he touched it, Song You realized what it was: a post tube.

In these times, people liked to use bamboo tubes to send letters. When Song You left Yizhou, he had carried a letter for an elderly man at a roadside teahouse to Lingbo, also sealed in a bamboo tube. Some scholars and literati, with their refined tastes, would carefully select different types of bamboo, preferring nodes close to the root. They would carve intricate designs onto the surface, turning them into miniature works of art.

The tube in his hand was simple, almost plain, with no decorations save for an address carved into the surface, “Chen Si, Changqiang Sect of Mount Huangsha in Yuezhou, Wu Commandery.”

Song You read it out softly and then turned to Lady Calico. “Where did you find this?”

The calico cat remained silent, merely turning her head to glance behind her toward the direction she had emerged from amidst the grasslands.

“Are there more?”

“...”

The cat hesitated, as if unsure how to express her answer with just her gaze. After a moment, she finally spoke, “Plenty!”

“I see.” Song You held the bamboo tube up thoughtfully. “Would you kindly take me to see them, Lady Calico?”

Hearing this, the cat promptly turned around and darted off, running back toward the grasslands. The crude stone figure went after her, loyally trailing behind.

The grasslands were far from flat, with numerous pits and hollows of varying sizes. While they posed no difficulty for Lady Calico or a person, they were a significant challenge for her summoned little Mountain God.

The stone figure stumbled upon a pit roughly the size of an egg, lost its balance, and with a resounding

thud

, collapsed into a pile of loose stones.

Lady Calico turned her head at the sound but, after a brief glance, seemed unconcerned and continued bounding ahead.

Soon, she led Song You to a specific spot amidst the vast grassland.

Indeed, scattered across the ground were numerous bamboo tubes. They were all slender, the thickest being no wider than a baby's arm. Some lay haphazardly on the ground, while others were partially buried in the mud. Some tubes remained intact, while others had been opened.

Inside the opened ones, a few still contained letters, though the papers were rotting and crumpled. Others were completely empty, the contents long gone.

Song You surveyed the area calmly and began picking up the tubes one by one to inspect them. Each had an address carved on its surface. They appeared to be letters sent home by soldiers from the northern border.

He continued searching carefully and eventually found an oil paper package casually discarded on the ground, half-buried in the mud.

Still, he saw no signs of any remains.

“...”

Song You picked up the bamboo tubes one by one, carefully examining the carved addresses.

They spanned all regions and provinces.

Among the scattered bamboo tubes were letters addressed to Yizhou, Changjing, and even Yanzhou. There was even one bound for the Western Regions. However, the majority were addressed to Mount Huangsha's Changqiang Sect in Yuezhou.

What caught Song You's attention was a familiar address among them—one addressed to Lin Chang of Duoda, Yanzhou.

From that, he deduced these were from Liaoxin Pass.

It was likely that, facing the impending threat of the northern frontier army or preparing for a decisive battle, the garrison of Liaoxin Pass had sent out one final batch of letters home. Alternatively, an outbreak of illness might have prompted the desperate dispatch of farewell messages.

Regardless of the reason, the couriers had been intercepted halfway—either by northern frontier scouts or a small detached force that circled behind them. After finding the contents to be mere personal letters, the attackers likely discarded them by the roadside.

It must have been quite some time ago...

Liaoxin Pass fell at the beginning of the year, and it was now late autumn. This pile of letters was sent out no later than the start of the year.

Moreover, the grasslands had seen heavy rains throughout the summer. Even if this area hadn’t been deliberately flooded by the northern frontier’s demonic water and flood attacks, the natural rains would have left the plains waterlogged. Many bamboo tubes had been scattered or even buried in the mud.

It was only today that Lady Calico had stumbled upon them.

Song You turned to the calico cat, who was now looking at him with a puzzled expression. He said warmly, “Lady Calico, you've achieved a great deed once again.”

“What is this?” she asked.

“These are letters,” he replied.

“Are they worth a lot of money?”

“They’re invaluable.”

“...!”

Lady Calico stared at Song You without blinking.

The Daoist patiently explained, “Imagine if I hadn’t seen you for a very long time, and during that time, you wanted to tell me about your days, how you're doing, and all the little things you usually talk to me about. So, you write it all down on paper, put it in a bamboo tube, and send it to me. If I receive the letter, I can hear everything you wanted to say. But if I don’t receive it, then I’ll never know...”

“...!”

Lady Calico blinked, her expression shifting as understanding dawned on her.

Lady Calico was accustomed to being around the Daoist priest. She had plenty to say to him every day, countless questions to ask him—meeting and talking with the Daoist was something she couldn't do without.

If there ever came a day when she hadn’t seen or spoken to him for a long time, and she wrote her words on paper to have someone deliver them to the Daoist, that letter would undoubtedly be incredibly precious and absolutely not something to be lost.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“Since we’ve come across these, it means it’s fate,” Song You said. “We should help recover them for their owners.”

“Are we going to deliver them ourselves?”

“That’s too far.”

“Then what do we do?”

“No worries. The court has a postal relay system specifically for delivering letters for soldiers, officials, and exam candidates. We can hand these over to the nearest military town.”

“Liaoxin Pass!”

“Lady Calico, you’re so clever.”

“I will go find it right away!”

Lady Calico turned her head, picked up a bamboo tube in her mouth, dragged it out of the mud, and placed it to the side.

The Daoist smiled and began his search as well.

Military postal tubes like these, though simple in design, were quite functional. Equipped with lids and twine for privacy, they also had a certain level of water resistance.

However, being hollow and light, they were easily scattered by heavy rains, often ending up far apart. The wild grass, blending with the bamboo’s color, further complicated the search.

Fortunately, neither the Daoist nor the cat lacked time.

They worked methodically, using the oil-paper packet as the center of their search. The furthest find was more than ten zhang away. Altogether, they recovered over a hundred intact tubes, stacking them near the horse.

Throughout the process, Lady Calico was particularly enthusiastic—not because of any profound moral reasoning or higher sense of duty. Rather, after hearing the Daoist’s earlier explanation, she became convinced of the importance of these items. She kept imagining that if even one tube was missed, it might just be a letter written by a Lady Calico to her Daoist priest.

Such an oversight was absolutely unacceptable.

Only after an extended search turned up no more tubes, and the Daoist reassured her that they had found enough, did she reluctantly return to stand guard over him and the recovered bamboo tubes.

Song You paused for a moment, thinking, then carefully reviewed their finds.

This time, he picked out all the letters for the Changqiang Sect since he was passing through that area anyway. He decided to deliver them personally—it would be quicker and more secure. As for the rest, he stuffed them into the mailbag in various ways before continuing his journey.

Initially, the distance to Liaoxin Pass should have been no more than twenty to thirty li—a trek of little more than an hour at most. However, after spending half a day searching for bamboo tubes, it was already dusk when he arrived.

Liaoxin Pass now housed only a few thousand soldiers, as the bulk of the Great Yan army was stationed beyond the northern border.

Song You carried General Chen's handwritten letter. As soon as the garrison commander saw it, he immediately recognized Song You as the Daoist they had heard about—the one who had slain countless demons in Yuanzhi City and followed the army to exterminate demons on the battlefield.

He was akin to the Daoist Spiritual Master Fuyang of the founding era, who had fought alongside the founding emperor's forces, slaying demons and subjugating lower-realm deities. Naturally, they treated him with the utmost respect.

Although Song You was already aware of the fate of Liaoxing Pass, he still asked Lin You, the cavalry captain under the generals’ command, about it. He only heard that no one had survived at Liaoxing Pass and that the deaths of all the garrison troops had been reported back to their families.

With a sigh, he left most of the letters there, entrusting them to Lin You to deliver through the postal system. After staying for a night and replenishing his dry provisions, he set out again.

This time, however, he headed west, retracing his steps.

In just a few days, he entered Duoda Grasslands again and encountered a patrol from Zhaoye City. It wasn’t the same group he had seen before.

When he finally reached the famed Zhaoye City, he found nothing particularly remarkable about it. It was merely a military town of yellow earth, scarred and battered by war. The defensive battle had already been won, and like Liaoxin Pass, Zhaoye City no longer had many troops stationed there.

To Song You’s eyes, the city was like an old man sitting on the doorstep on a summer evening, chest and belly bare, cooling off peacefully—serene and weathered. Its wrinkles were so deep that they obscured the scars, making it difficult for an outsider visiting for the first time to imagine the grand, tumultuous years it had witnessed in its youth.

Song You stayed another night in the city before departing.

However, just as he was leaving, the Daoist suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked up at the sky. The calico cat, puzzled, also followed his gaze upward.

There was a bird in the sky.

Although it was already late autumn, seeing birds in the grassland skies wasn’t unusual. But this bird was no ordinary sight.

It was a swallow...

Who knew if swallows even lived on the grasslands, but at this time of year, the northern grasslands were already very cold, and there should absolutely be no swallows around.

This swallow flapped its wings, circling in the sky. It darted left and right, rising and diving, just like it had when they first met in Anqing. Yet, who could tell if his heart now was as conflicted as it had been back then?