weeping
Chapter 42
"Mu Qing" didn't call out again. A series of "clucking" sounds came from her throat, and her whole body stiffened and leaned back.
The kite reacted extremely quickly, jumping off Mu Qing's back and flashing in front of her. It charged at Mu Qing's chest, and the force made me lean forward as well. I quickly let go of the half-sword blade I was holding. Only then did I feel the pain. I looked down and saw two very deep wounds on my palm, blood dripping out in a disgusting way.
At this moment, the pain and tightness in my chest and abdomen came at me. I knelt down and supported my upper body with my hands. With a "whoosh," I vomited violently, wasting all the thin porridge I had in the morning. I even spilled bile and gastric juice all over the floor. When I could vomit no more, my body felt empty, as if a flood had passed through. Only then did I feel a little better, but my head was still dizzy.
When I finally managed to look up after catching my breath, I saw Yuanzi standing alone by the hot spring pool, holding a broken sword. "Mu Qing" was nowhere to be seen.
I struggled to my feet, wiped the grime from the corner of my mouth, and asked in a hoarse voice, "Where is that monster?"
"I bumped into the pool and it's starting to melt. Do you want to come and see?" I was so impressed by Yuanzi's calm demeanor when she said this. But just imagining the scene in the pool made me gag again, though this time I really couldn't vomit anything.
Of course, Yuanzi wouldn't force me on such a matter. She turned around and walked to my side, took out a porcelain bottle from the cloth bag tied to her waist, poured out two pills, and stuffed them into my mouth. I snatched them, looked at them, and sniffed them a couple of times to confirm that they were the kind of "black-hearted" painkiller that Lan Feiyu had given me before, and then swallowed them.
"...You..." Yuanzi stared at me, her brows furrowed. Before she could finish her sentence, I quickly asked, "Is there anything else? Lan Feiyu is also injured."
Iris frowned deeply. She followed my gaze and saw Lan Feiyu lying to the side, but made no further move.
I urged her twice more before she slowly poured out two more pills for me. I took them and headed towards Lan Feiyu. I heard Yuanzi say behind me, "Is she that important to you?"
She had asked me this question before, and I had already answered it, so there was no need to repeat it. I didn't have the time or the inclination. When I rushed to Lan Feiyu's side with the pills in my hands, she had already opened her eyes and was staring blankly at the sky. I knelt down beside her, carefully lifted her head, and brought the pills to her lips. She opened her mouth blankly and put them in, but she neither swallowed nor chewed them.
I called out to her with some concern, "Lan Feiyu? Yu'er? How are you feeling? That 'drug person' has already been thrown into the pond by Yuanzi, 'she' is dead!"
—Shouldn't it be dead? If it's still alive even after its bones have melted, then it's not a living being at all, but an evil spirit from the underworld.
Lan Feiyu finally reacted. She blinked, and her first question wasn't about the "medicine person," but rather, "Iris?"
“Yes, the kite defeated ‘her’,” I said.
When I heard that name, I instinctively turned around to look, but I couldn't see Iris anywhere. Where had she gone in such a short time?
"Xi'er," Lan Feiyu, with one hand protecting her lower abdomen, struggled to sit up with my help. She seemed to want to ask me something, but when her gaze fell on my blood-stained hand, she exclaimed, "You, what happened to your hand?"
"Uh, same as yours." I glanced at my own hands, then looked at Lan Feiyu's hands. Her hands didn't seem as badly injured as mine; at least the bleeding wasn't as bad.
"You really are something! I wrapped my hand with strips of cloth, and you just picked it up like that? Aren't you afraid of breaking your hand?" Lan Feiyu's expression and tone were full of anger. She held my hand and examined it carefully, frowning and baring her teeth, as if she was in unbearable pain. "The wound is so deep, it will take a long time to heal, and I don't know if it will leave a scar."
I initially thought I could bear it, but after her words and that angry glare, I suddenly felt an excruciating pain. I gasped for breath, my eyes welling with tears, and sniffled at Lan Feiyu, saying, "Ugh, it hurts so much..."
Lan Feiyu glanced at me, her eyes also welling up with tears, and nodded: "Does it hurt so much you want to cry?"
I was naturally honest, my eyes even faster than my mouth, squeezing out tears. Many years ago, I heard my uncle say that when a person bleeds, they usually don't cry, but that was definitely not me. Once a flood breaches the dam, it's completely out of human control.
Perhaps even Lan Feiyu didn't expect that I could completely disregard the issue of whether it was shameful or not, and that I would actually cry. She was stunned for a moment, then suddenly straightened up and hugged me tightly. Her body was pressed tightly against me, trembling slightly. It wasn't until I stopped crying that I realized she was sobbing silently on my shoulder.
She cried for longer than I did, so long that I had to stroke her back like my mother comforted me when I was a child, as if to instill courage in her—but even though I was careful to use the back of my hand, I still managed to scratch red marks on Lanfei's raincoat.
But this approach didn't work much; instead, she burst into tears. The more she cried, the more helpless I became, and I could only repeatedly and monotonously try to comfort her, saying, "Don't cry, it's okay."
"You silly girl!" Lan Feiyu concluded, her voice choked with emotion. "I've never seen anyone from Dongchu as silly as you."
Yeah?
I was somewhat surprised. It turns out that in her mind, my great Dongchu was a land of talented people and a street full of smart people!
However, that was clearly not what Lan Feiyu really meant, because she continued, "I always thought that the people of Dongchu were cunning, selfish, and looked down on others, much more despicable than the villains of our Bozhou, but Xi'er, I never expected there to be someone like you, someone like you... Miss."
This praise made me blush, and I don't think all people from Dongchu are as she described. Some of us are cunning and selfish, while others are upright and generous. Although different places nurture different people, we can't generalize about character and social status.
Besides, among the people of Bozhou, weren't there two princes who were ungrateful and killed their adoptive father and brother?
But now was clearly not the right time to argue. Lan Feiyu suddenly stopped crying, let go of me, and stared straight at what was behind me. I turned around curiously and found that Yuanzi, who had disappeared before, had reappeared. She was still standing by the pool where "Mu Qing" had fallen, looking at me and Lan Feiyu expressionlessly through the layers of water vapor.
"Get up, let's go back." She was the least injured of the three of us and was still able to move around freely. She watched as Lan Feiyu and I helped each other up, but she didn't offer to help at all.
I clicked my tongue in surprise and quietly asked Lan Feiyu, "You really don't know her background?"
Lan Feiyu shook her head.
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