He rode for another twenty minutes, and although they needed to pass through three towns, they finally arrived at a military camp. Just as I was about to rein in my horse, Xie Bi'an said, "We've passed it? Turn back!"
"You didn't say so earlier," I said, pretending not to see through her desire to ride a bit longer. I playfully chided her, pulled my horse around, and rode back through the two remaining towns.
There was another military camp here. I had seen it when we rode by earlier. The guards at the gate looked puzzled as to why we had ridden past without stopping.
As we approached the camp entrance, I suggested we dismount and take a moment before going in.
Xie Bi'an agreed and told me to go down first.
"I can't move, you do it," I said.
Xie Bi'an pursed her lips, shoved her body forward, and swung her leg over the horse to dismount. She stumbled a few steps and still couldn't stand steady, ending up sitting on the ground with her leg askew.
I quickly dismounted and helped her up. "Are you alright, An'an?"
Xie Bi'an shook her head and glared at me. "No more of that from now on!"
"What are you talking about?" I feigned ignorance.
"Get lost!" Xie Bi'an punched my arm, got up, and brushed off her legs. "Let's go!"
I led the horse and followed her into the military camp. I couldn't resist using my Qi sensing technique to observe the interior. There were no high-level practitioners here, and more importantly, I couldn't discern the color of any ghostly auras, only their general strength. Nothing seemed particularly powerful.
The girl who would later be a cannonry officer greeted us. It seemed we were meant to rendezvous here. She had changed into a beautiful paper armor suit and wore a helmet with a nose guard. Her exposed face was small, and at first glance, I didn't recognize her.
"Greetings, Lord Wu!"
"Ah, hello, hello. You... what's your name again?" I had actually forgotten. No, not forgotten, I had never asked her name. I only remembered seeing a name tag on her toe when I had borrowed her body. I thought her surname was Dai?
"My name is Dai Lu," the girl smiled. "You truly are forgetful, honored sir."
"What a coincidence," Xie Bi'an said. "Your great-great-grandfather also served in our Shenji Battalion. It's a special fate that grandfather and granddaughter are meeting here."
"Your great-great-grandfather's... great-grandfather, who was that?" I asked, feeling a bit dizzy from the lineage. How many generations was that?
"Oh, no, not great-grandfather's great-grandfather's great-grandfather, there's another 'great' in there," Dai Lu laughed. "Fortunately, my family has a genealogy scroll with portraits. That's how I recognized my ancestor at first glance."
As she spoke, an old man, looking to be in his seventies, walked over with his hands clasped behind his back, sporting the hairstyle of the late Qing Dynasty.
"This is the Fire Energy Supervisor of our Shenji Battalion, Lord Dai Zi, Lord Dai," Xie Bi'an introduced. "And this is Lord Wu from the Yin Division. It was he who recommended your granddaughter to His Highness the Young King of Hell."
Dai Zi? What a familiar name!
Ah, I remembered! He was a prominent figure during the Kangxi Emperor's reign, mentioned in history books. He was a master of firearms and invented the twenty-eight-shot repeating rifle and weapons like the Weiyuan Commander Cannon, all groundbreaking armaments for their time. This master was originally from the south. His exceptional inventions had offended a foreign official in the court, a Belgian named Ferdinand Verbiest. Feeling his position as a "foreign expert" threatened, Verbiest accused Dai Zi before the Kangxi Emperor of colluding with the Sakura Kingdom and supplying them with advanced weapons to attack the Great Qing.
The Kangxi Emperor believed the accusation and exiled Dai Zi to Shengjing, which is present-day Shenyang.
Oh, no wonder Dai Lu was also from Shengjing and studied there. It turned out that the Dai family had established roots here since the Kangxi era. It also made sense that Dai Lu's father, uncle, and grandfather all served in the artillery, a long-standing family tradition.
I immediately paid my respects to this late Qing weapons master with great reverence. If not for the Kangxi Emperor's gullibility and belief in slander, perhaps China's firearms would have caught up with the West, even surpassing it over three hundred years ago. Then, the humiliating history that followed might never have occurred!