"General Shen, what should we do with those Daoist priests?"
"Imprison them."
Shen Changyin looked at the bundle of talisman water and the peace charms Old Jin had brought and shook her head.
"Neither she nor I believe in this. Forget it."
After dismissing Old Jin, she gently touched Xie Yu's increasingly pale face.
"Be good. Wait for me."
She stood up, went to the drawer in her study, and took out the small box she knew so well. She opened it briefly, glanced at the gleaming delicate instruments inside, then closed it again.
She stepped out of the residence, boarded a carriage.
"To the official manor."
—
Xie Yu spoke with Old Jin for a long time.
Old Jin remained wary but was gradually maneuvered into revealing quite a bit.
Xie Yu learned that Old Jin had originally been a soldier in the nearby garrison. But when the court repeatedly failed to pay their wages, she and others had become half-soldier, half-bandit.
When nomadic raiders attacked, they still fought them.
But if wealthy merchants or nobles passed through—
Unless stripped of a layer of wealth, they were never allowed to leave.
Even so, they could not be called righteous. There were only more innocent souls dead at their hands, not fewer.
Xie Yu kept probing for information while silently calculating the timeline.
If the theory of parallel worlds was true, then the two worlds must have diverged at some branching point.
In the world outside the dream, Old Jin had begun following Shen Changyin three years ago, back when she had not yet become a bandit-soldier.
But in this world, Shen Changyin had not only failed in rebellion—she had never even appeared, nor recruited Old Jin.
Which meant the divergence between the two worlds had occurred at least three years ago.
If that were the case, Shen Changyin's whereabouts would be even harder to trace. She might not be in the northwest at all. She could be anywhere in the realm.
With that bleak thought, Xie Yu sat by the fire and let out a quiet sigh.
Before departure, the royal kitchen had prepared travel rations overnight—cakes made from lard, rice flour, bean flour, sorghum flour, and salt. Now they lay roasting over the flames, giving off the rich scent unique to caramelized oil and grain. Old Jin and her group were already half-mad with hunger, their eyes fixed on the cakes.
As the cakes slowly crisped and browned, Xie Yu clapped her hands to draw their attention.
Under the watchful eyes of the bandit-soldiers, she pointed at the cakes over the fire.
"I'll give you two choices."
"First: eat half a cake. After that, hand over your weapons and horses, walk back to the nearest village or town, and stop committing crimes. I will not pursue the matter.
"Second: each of you may eat a whole cake. From today on, you follow me. Under my command, you prepare to fight the Hu invaders."
She lifted her chin. "You may begin eating."
Amid the scent of roasted wheat and firewood, the bandits looked at one another. No one wanted to be the first to step forward.
In the end, it was Old Jin's stomach that betrayed her, growling loudly. Her face flushed red. She looked furious and impatient.
"Damn it! I'm in! There's food and we get to fight the Hu? I'm the one who profits!"
She briskly grabbed a crisp, golden cake from the iron plate over the fire. The thick calluses on her hands made her fearless of the heat. She held it tight, blew on it twice, and took a huge bite.
"By the heavens," she chewed, then suddenly looked up. "What did you put in this?"
Xie Yu glanced at the cake in her hand. "Something with a bit of chew—green wheat kernels and minced pork, probably. And chopped preserved mustard greens."
When she had left the capital in a hurry, she had dragged the palace cook out of bed and ordered her to make dry rations overnight. When she told the young cook to use only lard and grains, the girl had nearly burst into tears.
"Your Highness the Third Princess, where are you going? How can you live on this?"
The cook had been trained in the palace since childhood. She was not a noblewoman, but she had never known hardship. She had no concept of campaigning and war, only the feeling that her mistress should not be eating something so crude.
Xie Yu had gently reassured her, "The Princess's Manor hasn't gone poor. This is simply faster to make. You must hurry and have everyone prepare more. Don't cry."
At her insistence, the cook wiped her tears and led the maidservants in kneading the rations.
Later, when Xie Yu passed the small kitchen while packing, she had caught a particularly fragrant scent but paid it little mind.
Only afterward did she discover that the young cook had insisted on stir-frying a large pot of preserved greens with pork, cooking sweet green wheat kernels, and mixing them into part of the batch.
There weren't many of these premium military rations. Once Xie Yu discovered them, she mixed them in with the ordinary cakes. Each night, a few people would randomly receive one with meat inside.
She had intended it as a small morale-boosting surprise.
Unexpectedly, Old Jin's group had been the lucky ones today.
Old Jin stared sharply at the half cake in Xie Yu's hand. "Yours doesn't have meat."
Xie Yu shrugged. "The ones with meat are few. They're mixed in at random. You just happened to get lucky."
After hearing that, Old Jin fell silent, lowered her head, and bit fiercely into the cake again, chewing and swallowing like a hawk tearing into raw flesh.
Then she snarled at her fellow bandits, "What are you standing around for? Go get your cakes! You think you're pampered ladies who never worry about food?"
Her companions stepped forward. Most took a whole cake. Two thinner young women exchanged a glance. One stepped up, took a cake, broke it in half, and handed the other a share.
They sat by the fire and finished eating in silence.
When they were done, the two thinner women rose and bowed to Xie Yu. "Madam, we will take our leave here."
Xie Yu waved a hand. "Be careful on the road at night."
In the end, the majority chose to stay. Xie Yu knew she could not use them directly yet.
Even in ancient armies, soldiers often had more bandit temper than discipline. As for women like Old Jin, who had truly been horse bandits, they would be even harder to manage.
She would have to win them over little by little and retrain them from the ground up.
The second and third days passed, settling the group.
Old Jin sparred with her several times and realized she truly could not defeat Xie Yu. At last, she was convinced—both in civil and martial matters.
When she heard that Xie Yu planned to visit a nearby town to assess the situation, she even volunteered to lead the way.
Xie Yu agreed.
Their small party entered Liusha Town. Xie Yu noticed the houses were all made of packed earth, their outer walls bearing a distinctive pale grayish-white hue unique to the local soil.
There were not a few people in the town. It was not as lively as towns near the capital, but it was the only settlement within dozens of miles.
There were even two or three taverns still open, as well as an inn.
Yet news of the border war hung like dark clouds over everyone's heads.
Even though they went about the same daily tasks as the capital's citizens, the expressions on their faces were entirely different.
After a brief stroll, Xie Yu planned to buy some vegetables and meat to improve her soldiers' meals and gather some information. She headed toward the eastern market.
Just as she reached the street entrance, she heard a cold, sharp voice from within. It sounded young.
"Are you buying or not?"
Someone replied, "I am, but your pig is too small. It's too expensive to sell by the head. I doubt anyone else would take it. Be reasonable—drop the price by another thirty percent."
The sharp voice brimmed with anger. "Get lost."
The rebuffed customer flared up. "I'm a regular! I chose you because your family has sold pigs here for generations. Why can't you recognize goodwill?"
"When Auntie Zhu was alive, she was far better at business than you."
The rest was drowned out by a loud thud—someone hitting the ground. The crowd gasped, followed by the dull sounds of punches landing.
People rushed forward, pulled the young woman off the customer, and shielded the customer as she ran.
"You just wait! My aunt is the county deputy magistrate!"
The crowd scattered.
Only then did Xie Yu see the young woman clearly.
She wore simple coarse clothes patched many times over. The desert winds were strong; a rough cloth was wrapped around her head like a veiled hat, casting heavy shadows over her features.
It was a young and handsome face, her eyes bloodshot, fury barely contained.
And it was a face Xie Yu recognized.
Zhu Ting?
Xie Yu stepped forward. Zhu Ting raised her eyes and looked at her coldly. "What?"
"Buying a pig," Xie Yu replied.
Zhu Ting's expression softened slightly. From beneath the coarse cloth, she extended a hand and pointed at the pigs enclosed in a crude wooden pen.
"One hundred copper coins per pig. No bargaining."
It was her left hand she extended. But Xie Yu remembered she was not left-handed.
Her gaze flicked toward the right hand hidden beneath the cloth. She said nothing, only glanced at the pigs. "They're just over four months old, aren't they? Why sell them now? If you wait until they are fully grown, you could get more."
Even modern pigs required five or six months before slaughter. In ancient times, pigs were usually raised nearly a year before reaching peak weight.
Selling them at four months was a loss.
Zhu Ting looked at the pigs in the pen—still more like adolescents, nudging and rooting at one another happily.
"The person who raised them died. I can't manage them alone."
Xie Yu immediately turned her head, speaking too quickly. "What happened to Auntie Zhu?"
Realizing her reaction was too strong, and noticing Zhu Ting's suspicious gaze, she quickly added, "I came here a few years ago. I heard her pigs were the best around—very flavorful. She was a kind woman."
Only then did Zhu Ting look away. "Conscription. She died."
"The two best at raising pigs in my family were her and my cousin. Both were sent to the battlefield."
Jiang Fang, standing beside Xie Yu, frowned. "How could one family send two people? Isn't it supposed to be only one per three generations?"
In theory, the war had not yet grown severe enough to require multiple members from one household.
Zhu Ting glanced at Jiang Fang, clearly a woman from the capital. "The county magistrate's distant niece didn't want to serve. So my family had to send one extra."
Jiang Fang hesitated. "Does the magistrate know?"
At last, Zhu Ting brought out her right hand and rested it on the wooden railing.
The entire hand was wrapped in coarse white cloth. Large dark bloodstains had already dried. Her ring finger bent at an unnatural angle, limp and twisted.
"She smashed this finger."
Jiang Fang fell silent, unable to bear looking further.
Xie Yu asked, "What will you do after you sell these pigs?"
Zhu Ting did not answer.
"Tell me what you plan to do, and I'll buy them all. These pigs are your mother's and cousin's life's work. Settle them properly, and you can go do what you need to do."
Zhu Ting stared at her for a long time. The hatred in her eyes did not fade. At last, she lowered her head.
"I'm going to the border. It doesn't matter if I can't find the Hu who killed my mother. They travel in small groups. Killing even one will be worth it."
Xie Yu asked, "Have you never thought about killing the county magistrate first?"
Zhu Ting abruptly looked up.
"Follow me," Xie Yu said. "I'll take you to kill the magistrate first. After that, you'll have plenty of chances to kill Hu."
Zhu Ting still hesitated. "Why should I trust you? Who are you?"
Xie Yu waved a hand. Behind her, a small squad drew half their finely forged steel blades from their scabbards in perfect unison. The sharp edges flashed brilliantly under the desert sun.
"My surname is Xie," she said. "No one with the surname Xie needs to deceive you."
Xie was the imperial surname.
Zhu Ting stared at her for a long time—so long that her hands began to tremble—before slowly standing up.
"You'd better keep your word."
"Of course," Xie Yu replied.
That very night, she brought Zhu Ting and her pigs back to the military camp. Near the camp, she had a small pigpen built and deliberately assigned the former bandits to feed the pigs.
They carried too much of a habit of killing and looting. They needed real productive labor to grind down their violence.
Jiang Fang entered her tent and asked what the next step would be.
"Are we pushing forward to the front lines, or falling back? We need a clear direction."
Xie Yu looked at the map spread across her desk and shook her head. "Front line? The current front line won't exist for much longer."
Over the past two days, she had gathered extensive intelligence and compared troop strengths on both sides. She knew the present border defense would inevitably collapse.
She had studied this world's military history carefully. It was an all-female world. Wars between civilizations were less frequent. Even the nomadic tribes were less aggressively expansionist than in her original world.
Conflicts between different civilizations and ethnic groups retained a kind of caution here. They did not occur often—but once they did, they were extremely brutal, and would never stop easily.
Both sides would pour everything into turning the battlefield into a meat grinder—cruel, yet filled with a ruthless respect for the enemy. A respect that meant extermination.
Because in this world, once war broke out, it meant it was absolutely necessary.
In the world outside the dream, at this time there had been no Hu invasion. That was because Shen Changyin had already eliminated them in the northwest.
But in this world, without Shen Changyin to deal with the Hu, they had rested and rebuilt over the past three years. Now they were coming in force.
Xie Yu could return to the capital. She was a princess. If she wanted to flee, she could.
But she had no intention of going back. She would finish what needed to be done.
She pointed at their current position on the map. "The only thing we can do now is hold this place and build it into a solid anchor for a second defensive line."
"Use these two days to prepare. Train those who need training. Put everyone to work. Move the residents inland as soon as possible, and recruit local young women into the army."
Her thinking was clear. After outlining the general plan, she sat down with Jiang Fang to discuss the details of implementation.
The next day, she led a group to deal with the magistrate. They raided her residence. Gold and silver jewelry filled the place, left openly in broad daylight, unchecked and unquestioned.
The cellar was stocked with large amounts of grain. That was at least some gain.
Besides the magistrate, there were officials and local gentry who had colluded with her. They were all dealt with as well.
By evening, the entire county was gripped with fear. The common people were on edge, not understanding what had happened.
Xie Yu stood in the main hall of the county office, looking down at the magistrate's corpse. A sharp pig-slaughtering knife was embedded in her chest—Zhu Ting's work.
Even missing one finger, she was still an exceptional knife wielder.
Jiang Fang stood beside Xie Yu, quietly waiting for her decision.
Xie Yu had two choices.
Respect the body and bury it locally—or let it serve a greater purpose?
She suddenly thought that on the night she had first transmigrated, she would definitely have chosen to bury the body properly.
Time passed quickly.
She raised her head. "Behead her. Display it publicly."
She strode out of the county office.
Behind her, the magistrate's head was severed and hung high to appease public anger.
The townspeople hurled stones at it ceaselessly, soon smashing it beyond recognition.
That made things much easier for Xie Yu's soldiers. They went to every corner of the county, persuading people to relocate inland and to enlist.
Although the people had begun to trust them, they still muttered doubts.
How did this look like an army?
This group of polite young women from the capital—could they really defeat the Hu?
Some seasoned border hunters and sturdy middle-aged women even offered Xie Yu advice, suggesting her troops should act fiercer.
Xie Yu thanked them with a smile, asked about border conditions, and politely saw them off.
Five days. Ten days. The Hu had not yet arrived.
People almost began to wonder whether the front lines were not as bad as rumored.
Then, on the fifteenth day, the front completely collapsed.
The Hu rode in on horseback, trophies hanging from their saddles, charging forward at full speed.
It was a surprise assault. On the fifteenth night, they attacked multiple garrisons simultaneously. The unprepared defenders were immediately pierced through.
Their leader ordered them to press the advantage and push inward toward even less prepared territory.
They galloped across open plains—never expecting to encounter the most solid resistance at a narrow pass.
At first glance, the small unit commander among them spotted the opposing general—a strikingly beautiful woman. Though her skin had been tanned to a healthy wheat color by the sun, her superior features made her look ill-suited for brutal warfare.
She sat on horseback, positioned behind several rows of vanguard troops.
The Hu commander had several defenders' heads hanging from her saddle—counting them as military merit. She ground her teeth.
Someone so beautiful and timid—what was she doing on a battlefield? She ought to be taken back and made a wife.
"Kill—!" she shouted.
She led her unit charging forward.
And immediately felt as though she had plunged into a swamp.
The enemy's defensive line was like iron—or like indestructible fabric. No matter what, it could not be pierced.
The soldiers themselves did not seem extraordinary. They simply obeyed commands strictly and in order. Yet that alone left the Hu cavalry no room to maneuver.
The Hu commander took some wounds. The smell of blood only intensified her killing intent. She roared in fury.
Her face flushed red as she spewed vulgar, obscene curses as a form of motivation.
The next second, she saw the beautiful general raise her hand in a small gesture.
A chill ran through her.
Instinctively, she looked up.
Between the cliffs on either side, the vast sky stretched overhead. An arrow struck her squarely in the brow.
A rain of arrows followed, annihilating the reckless advance unit entirely.
After counting the heads, Jiang Fang walked over to Xie Yu. "They were greedy for merit and rushed forward. We ambushed them and they died quickly. But the main force won't be so careless."
Xie Yu reined in her horse and looked toward the horizon that belonged to Hu.
"One army, one strategy. When soldiers come, generals block. When water comes, the earth dams it."
"In the end, it's nothing more than fighting to the death without retreat."
She gathered the routed troops from the front lines, broke them up, retrained them. Those with the weakest will were assigned to logistics with civilian laborers for a time before being rotated back.
The war dragged on. She was busy every moment.
She discovered that the bows and crossbows in use were outdated—not even repeating crossbows. They could be improved. Yet she had never found the time to dismantle the exquisite crossbow Shen Liuzhen had left her. In the end, she could only hold the current bow in one hand and a brush in the other, scribbling on paper.
She tried to summon what little physics knowledge she possessed, mixing in some half-baked firearms concepts and fragments of composite bow techniques she vaguely remembered from online articles. Again and again she drew blueprints. When they were close to workable, she sought out carpenters for testing, then revised and improved.
By the end of the first month of war, she had managed to produce a barely functional repeating crossbow with significantly improved range.
The residents who had relocated inland became their greatest logistical support, busily transporting supplies every day.
The prefectures behind them had long since been mobilized by her. The orders she gave their officials were simple.
Either support me—or you die.
To make the threat more convincing, she even had letters drafted for the empress to personally inscribe imperial edicts and send them to those prefects.
The edicts were equally simple.
Either support my daughter—or you die.
But the empress was not without pressure. As the war dragged into a stalemate, the Hu began playing political games—ambiguous negotiations day after day. The moment they showed any willingness to talk, the peace faction at court began chanting for reconciliation daily.
In the world outside the dream, Shen Changyin had eliminated the Hu early on, so there had been no foreign invasion. Xie Yu had never even realized who among the civil and military officials belonged to the peace faction.
Now, every dozen days or so, she received intelligence reports from the interior, fully transcribing the peace faction's words and actions.
Xie Yu grew so angry her temples throbbed. She memorized every one of their names. If she ever returned to the world outside the dream, she would never promote them again.
At such a critical moment, she had not expected that the most reliable group might actually be the Xie family.
The Xie family feared death intensely, obsessively pursuing immortality—but they were not the sort to believe that "foreign invaders could bring a better life" or that "surrender equals victory." They stood firmly on Xie Yu's side.
In this world, Xie Yu had not even dealt with the Fifth Princess, who was secretly training death squads. At the time, lacking Shen Changyin's support, she did not have enough power to confront her head-on—and she did not particularly object to the existence of the death camp itself.
So she simply sent people under cover of darkness to destroy the site where the Blood Refinement Pills were being made, released the captives, and burned the buildings to the ground.
The masterminds behind the Blood Refinement Pills seemed startled and did not dare act rashly again.
This was something Xie Yu had already taken care of in previous dream entries, which conveniently made it easier for her to contact the Fifth Princess now.
She did not bother with pleasantries. In her letter, she wrote bluntly:
I've taken an interest in a few officials from the peace faction. I've decided to teach them a lesson. Have your death warriors bind them and send them to me overnight.
Before the Fifth Princess's reply even arrived, the officials Xie Yu had named were already delivered.
Xie Yu neither berated nor tortured them. Instead, she arranged for them to rotate through every post—from logistics to frontline infantry.
After they had personally killed two enemies on the battlefield just to survive, she sent them back.
Three of the four immediately became hardliners for war. The remaining one remained stubbornly unrepentant. Before Xie Yu even needed to act, the Second Princess quietly had her eliminated.
Some time later, Xie Yu sent a second letter to the Fifth Princess.
Conducting a "great khan-style roll call" over the list of peace-faction officials became her only entertainment amid the suffocating tension of war.
In the capital, the peace-faction officials lived in constant fear. They kept a close watch on anyone delivering letters to the Fifth Princess, terrified that their own names might appear in the next "death list."
As the front line stagnated, the intelligence war grew increasingly fierce.
Xie Yu actually encountered the exact dilemma once described on that old bulletin board:
You now have enemy prisoners of war. They might possess intelligence. What should you do?
She almost felt grateful. In countless debates with "Shen Gengxu," she had explored nearly every possible scenario like this.
She immediately established a prisoner-of-war camp and formal interrogation procedures.
For ordinary soldiers with no intelligence value, she assigned hard labor—but no torture.
For high-ranking officers with information, she conducted interrogations. She would display terrifying instruments of torture before them and calmly say, "I will not use these on you."
On one hand, the average educational level among the Hu was not high, making it easier to extract information through conversation. On the other hand, lenient treatment proved effective in gaining cooperation.
Occasionally, there were prisoners guilty of grave atrocities who truly needed to be executed. She handled them quietly and swiftly.
All of this was to send a message to the Hu: she treated prisoners well.
Sure enough, within a month, the proportion of Hu units surrendering on the battlefield increased noticeably.
But that was only the deliberately displayed gentler side of war.
Most of the time, Xie Yu was trampling through mud mixed with blood and corpses, personally leading charges.
Mountains of bodies. Rivers of blood thick enough to float shields.
Countless severed heads lay on the ground, eyes wide open.
This was war.
Xie Yu allowed the newly recruited military physician, Zhang Changge, to scold her nonstop while applying medicine.
A deep wound marred her face—slashed by a Hu blade. It ran from the bridge of her nose down to the angle of her jaw, cutting across her entire right cheek. She had nearly lost an eye.
Blood had poured down her neck, coating her as though she had bathed in it.
Supplies were limited. Zhang Changge's anesthetic powder was nearly gone—nowhere near enough to dull the pain.
Xie Yu simply gripped a wad of cotton in her hand and made no sound.
This was war. War changed a person.
Three and a half months later, the war ended. The Hu retreated. Forty percent of their forces were dead, twenty percent captured. The remainder barely maintained formation as they fled deep into the grasslands, unlikely to mount another invasion for a long time.
It was already an extraordinary army. In Xie Yu's original world, when casualties reached thirty percent, armies typically collapsed.
Yet this force had endured. Lionesses did not wage war lightly. When they chose war, they truly believed it necessary.
In the end, however, they still lost to the defenders led by Xie Yu.
And what fault did the defenders bear? They had only defended their homeland.
After the war, Xie Yu assessed the northern territories.
She soon realized that nearly the entire northwest had fallen under her actual control.
She sat at the large table in her tent, staring at the power she now held in her hands—momentarily stunned.
Jiang Fang rushed in gleefully, clutching a stack of papers—plans for developing the north, consolidating control, replacing prefects, and installing their own people.
Xie Yu approved them all.
Then Jiang Fang said, "It's time to return. A victorious army returning to court. This time you've won big."
"When you parade through the capital, those young ladies are going to bury you in flowers."
She was exhilarated, imagining glory and triumphant return.
Only then did Xie Yu truly feel that she had won.
She fell silent. And silent again. For a long while.
Then she suddenly burst into unrestrained laughter.
A win was a win.
No matter how heavy the war, no matter the enemy's grievances—victory was victory.
Victory was something to savor.
She took part of her army and, within days, began the journey back to the capital.
Passing through the northern regions, people came out in droves—supporting the elderly, carrying children—just to see her. They stuffed her hands with local melons and fruits, insisting the capital's produce was never as sweet.
It felt as though she was seeing for the first time how many people lived here—dense as a forest, nearly filling the plains.
Before leaving, she went once more to look at the crooked-neck tree. She touched its rough bark and murmured softly, "Wait for me. I'll come find you."
Traveling light and fast, she soon arrived outside the capital with her army. The city had long prepared to welcome them. Vice Minister Zhang from the Ministry of Rites had arranged red decorations outside the gates. Even Xie Yu's horse wore a red flower tied to its chest.
Xie Yu was forced into a magnificent, imposing suit of armor. Still, she insisted on wearing a half-mask—her face now bore a scar.
The army began parading through the capital streets.
The roads were packed so tightly with people that not a drop of water could pass through. Everyone shouted and cheered—calling her Third Princess, calling her Your Highness.
Flowers rained down upon her.
Xie Yu smiled, caught one midair, examined it briefly, then tossed it back. She clenched her left fist and thrust it high.
The crowd erupted into frenzy.
—
"Senior Sister Shen Yu, today is the day the Third Princess returns in triumph. Aren't you going to watch?" a classmate from the academy asked Shen Changyin.
Shen Changyin set down her brush, her expression as cool as ever. "No. You all go."
Months ago, she had heard that the Third Princess had gone to the northwest to resist the Hu.
At the time, she had been moved, even considering her as the princess she might one day serve. The Xie family's struggles for succession were perennial; Shen Changyin had long intended to seize merit by backing the winning dragon.
But soon after, she heard about the prisoner-of-war camp established in the north.
Its policies were nearly identical to those she had once discussed with the straw-hat woman. The details confirmed it beyond doubt—the straw-hat woman was in the Third Princess's camp, serving as her strategist.
A beloved wife?
If she had a beloved wife, why was she serving the Third Princess? The battlefield was merciless—would she even return alive?
Shen Changyin did not know how to respond to this news. She only knew she was not happy.
So she spent months in this awkward turmoil.
Today, the Third Princess returned victorious.
Then… was she there too?
Had she returned?
Shen Changyin looked at the copied manuscript of "On Punishments" on her desk, lowered her eyes for a long time, and finally stood up, heading toward the main street where the parade was passing.
—
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