Chapter 224· Extra 9
Winter has passed and spring has arrived; another year has passed.
On a spring afternoon, in the back mountain of the Youshan tribe, the usually busy high priest rarely came out to escape to a quiet moment.
She sat leaning against a huge rock, with a yawning fox as her pillow on her lap.
As the man and the fox were dozing off in the mountain breeze, the fox suddenly twitched its ears and raised its head warily.
Ah Song touched Xi Jing's ear: "What's wrong?"
Before he could answer, the wind carried the sound from afar.
"Mother~~~"
"Father~"
Xi Jing buried her head back in her lap, raised her two front paws to cover her ears, and didn't really want to pay attention to the two little ones, but unfortunately the two of them came over because of the smell.
As soon as Achan stopped, Amian rushed over to Asong and held up a large bouquet of flowers.
"These are flowers that Ah Chan and I just picked, and we're giving them to Mother."
Ah Song took the flowers and asked with a smile, "Where did you go? Why didn't you comb your hair?"
“In the mountains,” A-Mian mumbled, then quickly squeezed between A-Song and Xi-Jing, pushing her father out of the way, and then hugged A-Song’s arm and said coquettishly, “Mother, braid my hair.”
"good."
Ah Song pulled his youngest daughter to sit down and started taking her hair out. Xi Jing stared longingly as Ah Song was taken away by his son. After a while, no one paid any attention to him, so he sulked and went to the side to sulk.
However, Achan didn't give him time to get angry. She lay down next to him, looked up and said, "Father, lick my fur."
Now, Achan is almost past her growth period and has officially become an adult. Not only has she grown much larger, but her fur has also become thicker, and the fox has gained a lot of weight.
Xi Jing glanced at Asong, who was busy braiding Amian's hair and had no time to pay attention to him, then looked down at Achan, who was lying next to him wagging her tail and waiting to be licked, and gave her a perfunctory lick on the top of her head.
Then Achan heard her father say worriedly, "With so much hair falling out, she'll go bald if she keeps losing it."
Achan was so frightened that the hairs on her body stood on end.
Xi Jing continued, "Your second uncle had severe hair loss back then, and he was bald when he grew up."
After saying that, fearing that Ah Chan wouldn't believe him, he emphasized, "It's true, if you don't believe me, go ask your sixth uncle."
The thought of going bald made Achan's face turn green. She stopped licking her fur and rushed to A-Song, crying, "Mother, I don't want to go bald!"
Asong quickly hugged Achan, glared at Xijing, and gently comforted her: "Your father is lying to you. Once the old fur falls out, new fur will grow, and then Achan will become a beautiful big fox."
Xi Jing didn't let A Chan off the hook: "Your mother isn't a fox, she doesn't understand."
Achan glanced at her father, who seemed to have ill intentions, then turned to look at her mother. After thinking for a moment, she moved closer to her mother, feeling that her mother's words were more reliable.
Xi Jing clicked her tongue. Her daughter had grown up and wasn't as easy to fool as she used to be.
After Asong finished braiding Amian's hair, Achan immediately took her younger sister and ran away. Her father was too unfriendly today, and she wouldn't play with him.
After both daughters left, Xijing moved back to her usual spot and lay down.
Ah Song patted him lightly: "You always bully Ah Chan."
Xi Jing snorted twice: "Those two stole the roast chicken you left me last night, and didn't even leave me a single chicken leg. Unfilial daughters!"
"A tattletale."
Xi Jing calmly accepted the praise.
Ah Song took a few stems from the bouquet beside her and skillfully braided them into a wreath. After finishing, she hung it on Xi Jing's ear. Xi Jing's ears twitched, and she commented, "Ah Mian's taste isn't very good either. These flowers aren't as pretty as the ones I gave you yesterday."
Ah Song couldn't help but laugh. Treating his two daughters equally was just a jealous fox.
However, even the big fox needs to be coaxed, so she had no choice but to agree, saying, "Yes, the flowers you sent are the most beautiful."
Speaking of sending flowers, Ah Song couldn't help but think back to those days when Ah Chan and Ah Mian weren't born yet, and she and Xi Jing had only been together for a few years.
One day he said he was going home, but he suddenly turned back halfway there, saying that he had seen a night-blooming cereus and had picked it to show her.
Legend has it that the Night-blooming Flower only grows in the Netherworld. A-Song had only seen records of it in ancient books passed down through generations, and had even mentioned it to Xi-Jing. He never expected that Xi-Jing would actually remember it.
Unfortunately, on the day he returned, the Demon Emperor sent troops to attack the Witch Clan. By the time things calmed down, the flowers had already withered.
Later, Xi Jing went back to look for it, but she couldn't find that field of night-blooming cereus anywhere.
From then on, he seemed to have developed an obsession with sending her flowers, probably because he felt that the bouquet brought them good luck.
Actually, Ah Song thinks so too.
So, although the flowers her daughters gave her were very beautiful, she still preferred the ones her father gave her. But she couldn't tell that little crybaby, Amian, about this.
Spring came and autumn went, and Achan and Amian's birthdays finally arrived. Achan had also transformed from a little fox with fur flying everywhere into an adult fox.
On their birthday night, Achan and Amian made their fourth wish: to have their mother sleep with them. However, their unreasonable father grabbed them by the neck and threw them out the door, saying that they were adults and could not cling to their mother.
Their father had gone too far, and the two sisters, in a fit of anger, decided to run away from home.
The next morning, when the two little foxes were nowhere to be seen, even by breakfast time, Asong couldn't help but ask Xijing, "Where did Achan and Amian go?"
Xi Jing calmly replied, "She ran away from home."
How did you know?
"Last night, the two of them were running around the kitchen and the study, making so much noise that I couldn't sleep. I couldn't help but notice."
Ah Song put down the bowl in his hand: "You knew, but you didn't stop it?"
Xi Jing coughed lightly. Of course, he wouldn't stop them. Last night, he almost went out to help because he thought those two brats were too slow.
Adult children should leave home to make their own way in the world; otherwise, they'll only hinder their parents from nurturing their relationship.
Ah Song glared at him, grabbed his ear and dragged him outside: "You're an adult now, don't come back until your daughters are back."
Xi Jing was dumbfounded.
Although Achan and Amian's initial intention in running away from home was to teach their father a lesson, and their mother would certainly not disappoint them, they had actually wanted to go out and play for a long time.
Achan wanted to go to the Great Xia Dynasty to play, while Amian was eager to go to the Dragon Clan to catch a dragon to take home. The two sisters each had their own destination, and in the end they decided to separate outside the Great Xia Dynasty.
Amian learned from her mother from a young age. Achan wasn't worried about her safety. Instead, before leaving, Amian gave Achan some perfume powder that she had specially developed, saying that it was an improvement on her mother's recipe and smelled particularly good.
Achan didn't quite trust A-Mian's skills, but she was afraid that if she didn't accept the food, her younger sister would cry, so she finally accepted it.
After parting ways with A-Mian, A-Chan entered the territory of Da Xia and traveled south, eventually stopping in Jeju.
There's nothing particularly special about Jeju Island, but if I had to point out one thing, it would be that Jeju's storybooks are better than those from other places.
Achan's favorite storybook was called "Walking with a Fox," which tells the story of a scholar on his way to the imperial examination who teams up with a fox spirit to solve a case. Unfortunately, only the first volume of the story was published, and the most exciting part of the story was over. She had no interest in going anywhere else to play.
The bookstore owner said that the second volume of her storybook would take a month or so to arrive, so Ah Chan decided to stay in Jeju temporarily for the sake of her storybook.
Since we're going to live here permanently, we need to rent a place first.
She rented a small, detached courtyard house, which wasn't very big, but it had a well, so it was a bit more expensive.
Next door lived a scholar named Song Yu, who was a Xiucai (a successful candidate in the imperial examinations) and made a living by writing storybooks because his family was poor.
That's right, Song Yu is the author of the story "The Scholar and the Fox Demon".
In order to be among the first to see the new stories, Achan racked her brains and even learned to take advantage of her proximity to the source.
Unfortunately, the scholar is preparing for the provincial examination and can only manage to write one or two pages each day. Ah Chan wishes she could take the exam for him so he could focus on writing his storybook.
She had to coax herself for a long time before she finally convinced herself to abide by human rules and not to force humans to do things arbitrarily.
But someone just had to make her unhappy. With less than five days until the provincial examination, Achan noticed that someone was acting suspiciously near the scholar's house.
At first she didn’t pay attention, until she discovered that those people were trying to sneak into the scholar’s house.
She questioned the two men and learned that they had actually tried to break the scholar's hand so that he could not participate in the imperial examination.
If my hand is broken, does that mean I can't write storybooks anymore? That's outrageous!
Ah Chan was absolutely furious. She not only found out and punished those people one by one, but also personally escorted the scholar to the examination hall, fearing that something might happen to his precious hands before the exam.
Song Yu, the one being protected, was completely unaware of this and was still focused on writing his exam papers in the examination hall.
The prefect of Jeju, however, was so engrossed in this bizarre case that he lost his appetite. Every night, a group of people lined up to jump into the river, even crawling with broken legs, which was extremely strange and suspected to be some kind of evil sacrificial ritual.
Fearing that the matter would affect the imperial examinations, he dared not delay and contacted the Mingjing Division immediately.
Fortunately, a garrison commander was recently stationed in Jeju Prefecture, and the case was successfully transferred to him.
The Mingjing Division was always incredibly efficient, and they found Song Yu the very next day. Since Song Yu was still at the examination hall, A Chan, who was his neighbor, became the person to be questioned.
They would ask if Song Yu had recently made any enemies or done anything unusual.
The leader of the thousand-man asked the same few questions over and over again, until Ah Chan got fed up and finally left with her men.
As soon as they left, Achan took out the scented powder that A-Mian had given her, intending to properly fumigate the room, which was filled with an unpleasant human smell.
Outside the courtyard, Feng Yang, the commander of a thousand households, who was about to return to the yamen to report, looked up and saw his superior. He hurriedly went forward to greet him.
“My lord, I just asked Song Yu’s neighbor, and he said that he has rarely gone out recently and no one has come to see him.”
The young man on the black horse did not look at his subordinate; his indifferent eyes were fixed on the room with the door tightly closed.
After a long pause, he finally asked, "Who lives there?"
"She is a young woman."
"Woman." He scoffed lightly, his demonic aura almost overflowing.
When Bai Xiuming kicked open A Chan's door, A Chan was sneezing uncontrollably. She shouldn't have overestimated her sister's abilities. What kind of perfume was this? It made her feel all wrong.
Seeing the door broken open, Achan covered her nose with one hand and angrily questioned the person, "Who are you? How dare you trespass on a private property?"
Bai Xiuming sneered: "Only the dwellings of the common people of Great Xia can be called civilian residences. Are you even human?"
"Of course I..." Before Achan could finish speaking, she suddenly reverted to her original form.
Her eyes didn't look very clear, and her eight tails swayed excitedly behind her, as if she had been influenced by something.
Bai Xiuming stared in astonishment at the beautiful eight-tailed fox before him.
It was her, that little fox.
She has grown up.
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