Han Baoju shouted: "I'm off to look for that Duan Tiande now, if he’s crawled into a tortoise hole and disappeared, we are going to have to waste a lot of energy."
He was the only one among the Seven Freaks that wasn't injured, so he charged out of the door, mounted ‘Wind Chaser’, his yellow horse, and began to go chase after Duan Tiande and Li Ping.
"Third Brother…third Brother!" Zhu Cong shouted. "You don't know what they look like!" But Han Baoju wasn't the patient type and with ‘Wind Chaser’ well deserving of his name, he was long gone.
o0o
Once he was out of the temple, Duan Tiande ran as fast as his legs would carry him, all the while dragging Li Ping. Only after he was sure that nobody was chasing after him did he finally stop and take a breath. Then he ran to the bank of the nearest river and jumped on the first boat that he saw.
Taking out his saber and putting it up against the neck of the fisherman, he ordered the man to start moving the boat. The rivers and canals south of the Yangtze were as dense as a spider web and boats were the everyday mode of transportation; as common as horses and carriages were up North.
Hence the saying: "Northerners ride horses, Southerners ride boats." With Duan Tiande looking as vicious as he did, as well as being dressed like an official, how could the fisherman dare disobey?
He immediately undocked and guided the boat out of the city.
"What a mess! If I go back to Linan, if nothing else, my uncle will kill me on first sight." Duan Tiande thought to himself. “Probably the best thing would be to head north to get away for a while.
Hopefully that bastard of a Taoist and those Seven Freaks have all died from their injuries and then my uncle will get so angry that he passes away. Then I can return and get my position back."
Once he made up his mind, he instructed the fisherman to start heading north. Even though Han Baoju's horse was faster, he was nevertheless searching on land, and thus let the two of them slip through.
Duan Tiande switched boats a couple of more times as well and changed his clothes and forced Li Ping to change hers. After ten days or so, he arrived in Yangzhou and decided to check into an inn.
He was hoping to be able to settle down in the city for a while and wait out the storm. By an extraordinary coincidence, he just happened to overhear someone inquiring about his whereabouts.
Shocked, he peeped through the little crack in the door and saw an amazingly ugly, short, and fat Eagle Shooting Hero
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guy with a beautiful young girl. Both of them had a Jiaxing accent. Guessing that they were some of the Seven Freaks, he immediately grabbed Li Ping and ran out of the back door. Luckily, the Yangzhou native at the front desk did not quite understand their dialect and didn't understand what they were asking about. This made it possible for Duan Tiande to get away and rent another boat.
Not daring to stop even for a second, he made his way north, up the Grand Canal, all the way to the shore of Liguo Post on the shores of Mount Wei Lake inside the borders of Shangdong province.
Li Ping, who was quite plain looking and whose stomach was bulging by now, was spending days on end cursing and crying. So even though Duan Tiande was by no means a gentleman, he never had any inclinations towards her. All the two ever did was fight and curse at each other; there wasn't a moment of peace between them.
After several more days, that ugly dwarf and pretty girl showed up again. Duan Tiande had hoped to hide in the back of their accommodations. Li Ping, knowing that her rescuers were near, began to shout at the top of her lungs. Duan Tiande immediately stuffed a wad of cotton into her mouth and beat her. Li Ping struggled and shouted for all she was worth. Even though she wasn't successful in her attempt to get their attention, it was too much of a close call for Duan Tiande.
At first, Duan Tiande brought Li Ping along hoping to use her as a hostage and thereby help him get out of a jam should it ever come to that. But the situation had changed. Figuring that it would be much easier if he was by himself and that this feisty woman was a disaster waiting to happen, he decided that it would be best to kill her. Once the Han cousins had left, he took out his saber.
Li Ping had been waiting the entire time for an opportunity to avenge her husband's death.
However, she was tied up every night, making it impossible. Now, upon seeing the murderous look in his eyes, she prayed: "Xiao Ge, please protect me and allow me to kill his monster. Then I will join you." She reached into her shirt and placed her hands on the dagger that Qiu Chuji gave her.
She had hidden the dagger very well and was able to slip it past Duan Tiande's search. [Note: Xiao Ge is an affectionate term used by Li Ping with Guo Xiaotian.]
With a chuckle, Duan Tiande raised his saber and swung down at her. Prepared to die, Li Ping summoned all her strength, pointed the dagger at Duan Tiande, and charged. Feeling a burst of murderous cold air upon his face, Duan Tiande flicked his saber in an attempt to knock the dagger out of her hand. Unexpectedly, the dagger was so sharp that, with a loud ping, it sliced the saber in half. The saber fell onto the floor as the tip of the dagger touched Duan Tiande's chest. Shocked, Duan Tiande instinctively jumped back. Nevertheless, the front of his shirt was slashed wide open.
In complete shock and panic, he picked up the chair at his side and shouted: "Put that down this instant or else I'll kill you!" Li Ping was exhausted and the baby in her belly was kicking non-stop.
Not able to fight any longer, she fell onto the floor and tried to catch her breath. But she was still clutching the dagger tightly.
Duan Tiande was afraid that Han Baoju would come around again. If he ran off by himself, he was afraid that Li Ping would reveal where he was going to those chasing him. So he immediately forced her onto another boat and went further north up the Grand Canal, passing Linqing, Dezhou, and arrived in Hebei province.
Every time he set up camp, no matter how remote the location, before long there would be several men arriving to look for him. Eventually, the ugly gnome and the girl were joined by a staff wielding blind man. Luckily, none of them recognized him, so he was able to escape every time.
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Eagle Shooting Hero
Soon another troublesome thing happened; Li Ping suddenly began acting crazy. Every time they stopped somewhere, she would periodically begin shouting and screaming nonsense. Sometimes, she would even start to tear and rip at her clothes and make all kinds of weird faces and gestures. At first Duan Tiande thought that she really had gone crazy, but after a few days he suddenly figured it out. As it turned out, she was afraid that her pursuers had lost them and was purposefully leaving a trail for them to follow. This was what was making it even harder for him to lose them. By now the end of summer had passed and the cool breezes began to blow. In order to avoid capture, Duan Tiande went well up into the North Country. The money he had taken with him was about to run out, yet the Freaks were still close on his trail.
"Back in Hangzhou, I was important, I was somebody. Meat, wine, money, women, I had it all. But I had to get greedy and go to Ox Village and kill this bitch's hubby and get myself into this mess."
He cursed himself.
Several times, he was on the verge of leaving Li Ping and running off by himself. But each time, he could not summon up enough courage to do it. Every attempt to kill her ended in failure as well.
What was supposed to be protection had somehow turned into a curse that he just could not get rid of. On top of everything else, he had to be constantly on guard against her attempts to avenge her husband. He was frustrated, frightened, and angry; yet there was nothing he could do.
Before he realized it, he had arrived at the capital of the Jin Empire, Yanjing. Duan Tiande thought for a bit and decided to try and find an out of the way place and finish off Li Ping. In such a huge and bustling city, there was no way those who were chasing him could find him.
Happy that things were finally going to work out, he made his way towards the city. Unexpectedly, just as he arrived in the front of the gate to the city, a team of Jin soldiers came walking out from inside. Not even bothering to ask any questions, they seized both him and Li Ping, handed them each a carrying stick, and commanded them to carry cargo for them. Because Li Ping was short and a woman, her load was reasonably light. But Duan Tiande was given two 50 kilogram [110 lb] loads and they were practically forcing him to his knees.
This group of soldiers followed an official as they headed north. As it turned out, that particular official was an emissary who was being sent out to present Royal Warrants from the Jin Emperor to the Mongolian subjects of the Jin Empire. The Jin soldiers that accompanied him were seizing any random Han Chinese that they ran into, forcing then to carry their heavy cargo and food supplies so as to save themselves from the labor. Duan Tiande argued back a couple of times and was immediately answered by several stinging lashes to his head. This situation he had seen many times before so it was all quite familiar to him; but before, he had been the one that was doing the whipping, not receiving it.
By now, Li Ping's belly was huge and doing all this heavy work was on the verge of killing her.
However, so determined was she to get revenge that she tried her best not to let the Jin soldiers find out about her condition. Fortunately, she had been working on a farm ever since she was able to walk, and this made her strong and used to this kind of grinding work. Having basically resigned herself to death, she was barely able to manage the dozen of days they spent walking through the freezing and miserable steppe.