The mountain gradually rose, and the sky gradually darkened.

Anada and Lucius rode their horses along a small road and climbed a small hill. Looking back, there was a sense of stepping into "the lion's den".

Looking out, Nineveh was like a giant lion composed of stones and bricks, backed by vast mountains, quietly perched on the banks of the Tigris. The huge city did not become completely dark due to the arrival of night, and several of the most bustling places were still brightly lit.

"That's the temple of Ishtar," Lucius said, looking at the lights, and licking his lips. "The goddess who oversees love and fertility, and also the place with the most temple prostitutes..."

Anada ignored him and touched Illeta's forehead in her arms.

The Assyrian girl fell into a coma again, and her forehead was scorching.

"It's hot again," Anada said. "We must first find a place to spend the night and find a way to reduce her fever."

"She's injured and has been exposed to the rain, How could she not have a fever," Lucius sighed.

"This little girl has never suffered so much, the people in the Bell family all pampered her, that's why she's called 'little wild horse'," he remembered the past, and his eyes became gentler. "It's hard for her."

Suddenly, a strange and frightening howl echoed from above.

"Big Hyena!" exclaims Lucius, "There's a Big Hyena on the mountain!"

She looks back to where the sound is coming from and tilts her head back to look up.

In front of them are two slopes that stand at an angle. The slopes are dark, steep, and barren, with large and small odd-shaped stones scattered with a few shrubs and weeds.

The howl of the Big Hyena is coming from the slopes, the howling echoing through the valley and making it difficult to determine the direction.

Soon, the single howl turns into a chorus.

Anada squints her eyes, her yellow pupils shining brightly in the dark.

Bright moonlight shines on the slope. She sees, floating in the distant sky, a pair of glowing orbs that must be the eyes of the Big Hyena.

She saw at least six pairs of eyes.

"It's not good," Lucius's voice came, with a tone of panic that could not be expressed, "Look below!"

Anada turns her head and follows the direction of Lucius's finger.

Lucius was shaking, "The soldiers are coming! The Minis people are coming to kill me!"

Anada looked down and then looked away.

"Let's find a campsite first," she said.

Lucius exclaimed, "What are you talking about? There's a large group of people coming to kill us down there!"

Anada was indifferent.

"So what? Once we get into the mountains, it will be completely dark. Their speed will slow down. There are wild beasts and treacherous mountains here at night. I think the soldiers will rest and it is unlikely that they will chase us all night in the mountains."

"But they have a torch," Lucius asked, "What if they catch up with us overnight?"

"They can't catch us," Anada said. "I arranged a few crossroads when we went up the mountain. By the time they realize something is wrong, it should already be deep into the night."

Lucius was surprised.

"If it's really like you said, they might not catch us," he said, "but how did you, I mean, when did you make arrangements ... I mean, did you prepare to deal with the soldiers from the start?"

"I didn't think about it," Anada said, and then she turned her horse around.

"I don't think, I just do what I feel needs to be done."

Before setting out, she cast a glance at the figures howling on the mountain.

They were still there.

Their eyes, like floating balls of light, hung in mid-air.

She suddenly realized that they may not be the saber-toothed tigers.

She remembered when Lucius mentioned the female warrior, Isis of Masaya, he once described the saber-toothed tiger as "a quadruped meat-eating animal with short hind legs and long front legs, a little smaller than a lion."

She had also seen paintings of saber-toothed tigers on the walls of the Niniwei folk houses and spotted four-legged beasts with long front legs and short hind legs.

But the things on the hillside...

They didn't look spotted like the paintings of saber-toothed tigers. The moon was so bright that it lit up the distant and nearby hills, and from here they looked even blacker than the stones on the mountain.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Their shape was somewhat similar to the saber-toothed tiger described by Lucius:

Their head was not much smaller than a lion, and their front legs were very long compared to their short and thick hind legs.

But it's a bit too long.

At this moment, those six things were using their two long front legs to prop up the ground, making their strong bodies supported by their short and thick hind legs almost completely upright, like a person but not a person.

These dark things were walking back and forth between the rocks on the distant high slope in this posture. They made a piercing and strange laughing-like roar, singing to each other, while lowering their huge heads and gazing down at her with their ball-like eyes.

Their lion-like eyes with a yellowish-red tint locked gaze with them for a few seconds.

Anada felt the back of her neck heating up, even a little warm, like a Niflheim rune.

She withdrew her gaze.

"Let's go," she told Lucius, "Ilia is about to collapse."

They rode their horses and traveled along the rugged mountain road.

Along the way, they could hear the eerie roar rising and falling, but always lingering around them, as if those things were following them.

Lucius, riding on his horse, was chilled to the bone by the ghostly roar.

He drove his warhorse, almost touching Anada's warhorse. If it wasn't for the limited weight of the warhorse, he really wished he could run and share a ride with Anada.

They went back and forth. Anada held Irela and it was inconvenient to get on and off the horse, so she commanded Lucius to collect dry bushes and leaves along the way, and also picked a few dandelions.

Lucius was unwilling in his heart, eager to escape this ghost place, but dared not act alone, so he followed orders.

They walked for a while and climbed a ridge. Here the wind was raging, blowing away the howling.

Anada chose a windward huge rock as a camping site, carefully holding Irela down from the horse.

Lucius also hurriedly dismounted.

Anada dug a shallow pit on the ground and asked Lucius to pile the collected withered branches and leaves in the pit, and then took out flint from the backpack of the Minos knight, starting a pile of bonfires.

The backpack of the Minos knight really has everything.

Lucius took out a blanket and some coarse flour from the backpack, combined with clear water in the water bottle, and ate with relish.

Anada checked Irela's injury by the firelight.

Irela had a high fever and had started talking nonsense. Fortunately, the foot palm pierced by the bronze sickle knife was well treated before, and the herbs on it were not washed away by the rain.

The high fever was not caused by the inflammation of the wound, which relieved Anada.

She put a dandelion in her mouth and chewed it thoroughly. Then she picked up the unconscious girl's wheat-colored face and, to the stunned gaze of Lucius beside her, deeply kissed her. She carefully pried open Illelith's tightly clenched teeth with her tongue and slowly transferred the chewed dandelion into the depths of her oral cavity.

Illelith's small face wrinkled into a ball in the state between dreaming and waking.

"It's bitter, too bitter..." The dizzy Assyrian girl cried and hummed.

Anada gave Illelith a drink of water and let her swallow the dandelion, then let her lie down under the giant rock, wrapped in a blanket, and continue to sleep deeply.

After doing all this, the mother lion breathed heavily, her tall body leaning weakly against the giant rock, raised her hand to touch her forehead, and the heat was no lower than Illelith's.

Lucius noticed her strange appearance.

"What's wrong with you?" He asked cautiously.

Anada shook her head carelessly and drew her sword.

"Turn around," she said.

Lucius' face changed greatly: "Are you going to kill me?"

Anada carelessly extended the sword blade to the burning campfire and tilted her yellow eyes to look at him: "If you don't turn around."

He stammered, "We had already agreed on this..."

She ignored his persistent nagging.

She plucked another dandelion and chewed it into pieces, then gently undid the waist rope around her waist.

The tassels of the waist rope were already stuck to her pure white belly with blood. She tore the tassels apart with pain, revealing a deep wound underneath.

This was from the battle against the Arkade female warrior, Isis. Isis broke her shield, and a piece of the shield splattered onto Anada, deeply wounding her belly. The piece was accompanied by "The Wrath of the Scorpion God," which caused her great trouble. She didn't expect this trouble to persist.

The wound was actually deep, but on the surface, it had already formed a thin layer of scab.

She pressed down on her belly beside the wound, and suddenly a large amount of yellow pus oozed out from around the scab.

This journey through the mud and water made the wound become inflamed and infected.

She took a deep breath, used a sword blade that had been heated in a fire to gently pick open the blood scab, and then cut a new small opening vertically with the wound, forming a cross.

She squeezed hard, letting the foul yellow pus continuously flow out from the cross-cut, until what was squeezed out turned into bright red, then she stopped.

And then she spit out the chewed dandelion into her palm and pressed it tightly against the wound that was free of pus and blood.

After doing all this, her chest was heaving, panting like a cow, sweating like juice, and her whole body was like being washed with water.

Lucius heard something was wrong, turned his back to her, and couldn't help but shake his shoulder, moving his neck left and right, trying to sneak a look back.

The intense pain from treating the wound made her limbs weak, but she still tried her best to speak calmly: "If you turn your head around again, you won't have a head anymore."

Hearing these words as cold as the beginning, Lucius indeed dared not move anymore.

She caught her breath for a while and her limbs regained some strength, and then she cut a blanket with her sword and dug a hole in the middle.

She cautiously looked at Lucius, who was motionless with his back to her, put on the blanket, sticking her head out of the hole she dug, and tied the waist with a waist rope, tying the two blankets that hung down from her front chest and back to her waist.

She took a long breath.

After being robbed in the South for so long, she finally put on "clothing" that was enough to cover her body.

Although she didn't understand fancy rhetoric, she could still feel that clothes were a symbol of civilization and the deprivation of slaves' right to wear clothes was a serious insult to the slaves' personality by the Assyrians.

The best way to deal with it is to show that you don't care about being naked, and show your nakedness and impropriety to those who are above you so that the humiliation inflicted by the enemy will become a humiliation to them.

She did the same.

Every time she was stared at by those Assyrian nobles, she would hold her head high and ignore them, with the fire of revenge burning more and more fiercely in her heart, wishing to burn everything down.

At this moment, the imperial general who led the pursuit cavalry, who was also the Scorpio God High Priest of the Akkad people, Marsayas, just got off the camel, came to the side of the mountain road, and searched carefully.

The reason why his mount was a camel instead of a warhorse was because no warhorse could bear his mountain-like body.

Anandibujia's anxious voice sounded next to him: "It's been two hours already, and we haven't found it yet... we're lost now, what should we do?"

Marsayas ignored him.

He carefully stared at a small cluster of broken plants in front of him, a cluster of dandelions that had been pulled out.

Marsayas smiled, his eyes shining in the dark, greedily licking his tongue: "I didn't expect, my warrior mother, you are still an untainted chick."

Next to the dandelion, he found two small pieces of soil with a pungent smell.

Marsayas picked up a small handful from each of the two pieces of soil and tasted them in turn.

He closed his eyes and savored carefully, then spat it out with a smile.

"Very fresh urine, the first is a man, the other is a woman, passed by here two hours ago, not wrong."