Chapter 22. My name is Wangcai. From now on, you...
Er Gou's sad story takes place in a cold winter. It turns out that she and Aunt Shen are not biological mother and daughter, and she has never actually met her parents. She was raised by an old beggar since she was a child.
Unfortunately, in the winter when she was six years old, the old beggar was kicked by the wild horse of a nobleman riding in the street. Because he had no money to find a doctor, he couldn't bear it and died that night.
From then on, Er Gou was all alone. At that time, Er Gou was not called by that name; the old beggar always called her Xiao Ya.
Without the old beggar, Xiaoya had to go out and make a living on her own. However, Quzhou had just experienced a flood a few years ago, and the people were already impoverished. Everywhere on the streets, there were half-grown children begging for a living. In addition, Xiaoya was thin and weak, so how could she compete with the other children who had already honed their skills? Not to mention not knowing where her next meal would come from, being able to eat a cold steamed bun a day was a luxury.
Just when Xiaoya thought she wouldn't survive the winter, a turning point appeared.
It was a rainy night. The little girl huddled in the dilapidated temple where she and the old beggar had lived for several years, wrapped in a straw mat. The temple had long since lost its incense offerings and had not been repaired for many years. It was drafty and leaky, and the other beggars didn't even want to go there.
The little girl was trying to fall asleep, clutching her stomach which was so full she could barely cry out, when she suddenly heard footsteps. She struggled to sit up and peered toward the sound, only to see a young man in white robes carrying an umbrella stepping into the temple.
The first thing Xiaoya noticed wasn't the young man's appearance, but rather the few drops of mud splattered on his shoes, which were as clean as white steamed buns. It always felt like a pity to see mud on a white cloth.
The young man must have noticed her gaze. He chuckled softly but did not approach. After closing his umbrella, he sat down on the ground without caring about the dust.
Xiao Ya then turned her attention to his face. Just then, the dark clouds dispersed, the full moon shone, and a stream of light shone on his handsome face, making him appear as if he had transformed into a compassionate Buddha.
"Are you here to save me?" She had heard the old beggar tell the story of Buddha saving all sentient beings, so at this moment she thought that her short but bumpy life had finally come to an end.
The young man smiled slightly: "Although I cannot save you, I can drag the person who caused you to end up here into hell. What do you say?"
Xiao Ya didn't understand what he meant. She was too naive. She didn't even know who she was, and she had never tasted hatred. The deepest emotion she had ever felt was the sadness and helplessness she felt when she saw the old beggar holding her hand and closing his eyes.
"Harm me?"
The young man shook his head without explaining, only gazing at the path outside the temple: "The one who will ferry you across is coming."
Xiao Ya struggled to her feet and walked to the entrance of the dilapidated temple. She saw a man in black rushing towards her in the rainy night, seemingly protecting something. When he rushed into the temple, she realized that he was carrying a bag of steamed buns.
The young man in white smiled and said, "Thank you for your hard work."
The man in black, his face blank, handed him the steamed buns: "Here, the steamed buns you insisted on eating in the middle of the night."
The young man in white didn't take it, but pointed to the little girl beside him, "Give it to this child."
The man in black then turned his attention to the emaciated, blond-haired girl, shoving the steamed bun into her arms. He then frowned and said with disgust, "This little beggar is Li Yu's posthumous child? How did she grow up to be such a scumbag?"
Xiao Ya's pupils contracted, and without caring that the bun in her arms had fallen to the ground, she ran outside to look.
She didn't know who Li Yu was, but she had heard the old beggar say that her surname was Li, but that this surname would bring her death.
Before she could rush out of the dilapidated temple, a strong arm easily lifted her up from behind. "Can't you see it's raining outside? Why are you running?"
She turned around and saw the man in black looking puzzled.
As the two remained locked in a stalemate, the young man in white spoke up: "Black Wind, put Miss Li down."
The girl was put back on the ground by the man called Black Wind. She no longer tried to escape, but just stared intently at the two of them.
Looking into her wary eyes, the young man in white finally stopped smiling and said calmly, "Since you are not completely ignorant, hand over the thing he left you."
The old beggar did entrust her with something before he died, telling her to keep it safe and that someone would come to collect it later. But… she bit her chapped, cracked lips: “How should I know? Who are you?”
"Oh?" The young man in white became somewhat interested. "Then who do you need to deliver this to?"
Xiao Ya felt the pressure in his words and subconsciously shrank her neck, but kept her mouth tightly shut.
"I am an old friend of Zhennan, is that enough of a title?" Seeing that the child still had some backbone, the young man softened and stopped making things difficult for her.
"Zhennan..." Indeed, the old beggar had instructed that if the Zhennan Army came looking for them, they should be given the item. "Are you really the Zhennan Army?"
“The Zhennan Army…” The young man pondered the name, and for some reason, the words he uttered carried a strange, lingering quality. “The Zhennan Army no longer exists in this world.”
Having finished speaking, he didn't want to waste any more words, his cold eyes meeting her hesitant gaze directly: "You have no choice."
Xiao Ya knew this was an ultimatum. If she didn't hand over the items to them today, she probably wouldn't live to see the so-called Zhennan Army arrive. Rather than that, she might as well take a gamble and bet that they really were old friends from Zhennan.
She turned around, rummaged around under the straw mat where she had initially been lying, and finally pulled out a tattered old garment, which she handed to Black Wind, who was following her.
After obtaining this old garment, which even a beggar wouldn't steal and which reeked of a sour smell, Black Wind carefully searched it from top to bottom with a very solemn expression.
Finally, he felt a clear patch on the inside of the garment. He tore it open and found an oil paper envelope inside.
Black Wind checked the clothes again to make sure there was nothing else before handing the envelope to the young man in white.
The young man in white casually opened the envelope, glanced through the letters inside, let out a light scoff that had no clear meaning, put the contents into his sleeve, picked up the umbrella from the ground, and prepared to leave.
"You, you're leaving?" Xiao Ya took two steps forward.
The young man glanced back at her, his expression seeming to ask, "What else?"
The little girl finally mustered up her courage and asked, "Can you take me away?"
The young man stared into her pleading eyes, a slight smile playing on his lips, and pointed to the old beggar's remaining clothes on the ground: "You are not as useful to me as they are."
Seeing that the man was about to leave, Xiao Ya rushed forward and hugged Hei Feng's leg. She actually wanted to hug the young man in white more, but her animal-like instincts told her that if she did, she would die a terrible death.
The moment the little beggar grabbed Black Wind's leg, his muscles tensed instantly. It wasn't discomfort, but for a highly skilled and wary assassin like him, it was difficult to control his killing intent when a stranger got close. Although the young master seemed to dislike this little brat, they were, after all, related…
He looked pleadingly at the young man in white, "Young master, this..."
Before the young man in white could speak, the little girl interjected, "I will become useful."
At that moment, her small body suddenly burst forth with an indomitable tenacity: "Letting me live is definitely more useful than it."
Upon hearing this, the young man in white finally treated her as an equal, no longer as just a stray cat or dog on the street.
“Speaking of which, you and I are somewhat related by blood.” He slightly hooked his index finger and rested it on his chin, as if deep in thought. After a while, he finally made up his mind: “Alright, it won’t hurt to bring you along.”
The group walked towards the inn. The young man in white, annoyed that the girl was walking too slowly, had Black Wind carry her. Black Wind walked very steadily, and the girl, carried on his shoulders, didn't feel any jolting, only that his shoulder made her feel nauseous. Fortunately, her stomach was empty, and she couldn't vomit anything, otherwise she would have seriously doubted that this unpredictable young man in white would have changed his mind.
Even so, she didn't forget to climb up the pole, tentatively asking in a low voice, "Brother?"
The young man in white raised an eyebrow slightly, but did not refute it. Instead, he asked, "What's your name?"
The little girl shook her head. "I don't have a name. Could you give me one, brother?"
The young man in white, who had been walking ahead of the two, turned around upon hearing this and saw her fawning expression. He smiled brightly and said, "Since you call me elder brother, then we should naturally follow the order of seniority."
"My name is Wangcai. From now on, you shall be called Ergou."
Er Gou didn't think much of the name at the time, since most of the little beggars her age were called Gou Dan or Gou Zai... Therefore, she was confused when she received Hei Feng's sympathetic gaze.
Looking at her innocent yet foolish face, Hei Feng thought to himself, "I just hope this brat won't implicate me when she grows up. Every wrong has its perpetrator, every debt its debtor; if you want to hate someone, hate the young master."
Having received a name, Er Gou felt accepted and became bolder, straining his neck to ask, "Brother, who is Li Yu?"
She had never met her parents since birth, so she was very curious about what Hei Feng had just said about her being Li Yu's daughter.
“Li Yu,” the young man in white drawled, then said lightly, “is not only your father, but also a person in this world who deserves to die a thousand deaths.”
Er Gou was startled; his soft words struck her like a heavy hammer. She stared at the man's back, feeling as if the outer shell of his Buddha-like aura was cracking open, and a thick, tangible killing intent was rushing outwards.
At that moment, she understood that this person was not a Buddhist disciple who saves all sentient beings, but a demon who crawled out of hell.
However, the killing intent around him quickly dissipated, and the shattered shell pieced itself back together to become a gentle and refined gentleman. If it weren't for the hairs that had stood on end for that moment, Er Gou would have even doubted whether everything that had just happened had really occurred.
Black Wind felt the child's body trembling slightly on his shoulder and sighed inwardly. This girl really knows how to bring up the most sensitive topics.
...
A note from the author:
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Wangcai actually had mixed feelings about Ergou. Rationally, he knew that what happened back then had nothing to do with the child, but emotionally, people always feel a sense of guilt. So, he maliciously named the little girl Ergou as a small act of revenge.
Thinking about it this way, our Wangcai is really petty. I wonder how he will get revenge on Xiao Hengbo when he meets her.
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