Wu Xiaoliu's calves began to tremble uncontrollably again: "Seriously, seriously..."
What sin had he committed? They had finally gotten along well for a while, but how could they go back to the way they first met overnight?
The woman stepped back and nodded with satisfaction. "Okay, then it's you who doesn't want to know. It can't be considered as me being dishonest."
Wu Xiaoliu quietly took a half step towards the door: "It's getting late, why don't we do it tomorrow..."
Without even raising her eyelids, the woman suddenly asked, "That night when we first arrived at the Sun residence, I asked you a question. Do you remember?"
Wu Xiaoliu's feet, which were about to move, suddenly stopped. He didn't say anything, but it seemed that he remembered something.
"Let me ask you, have you ever heard of a group of people who all have the same face and kill people with flying wires?"
Xiao Nanhui's words hit Wu Xiaoliu's heart like a heavy hammer, and the expression on his face could not be hidden.
"You can't pretend to be asleep this time. If you're thick-skinned enough, you can pretend to be dead and see."
This is not a question of how thick-skinned you are, but how bold you are.
Wu Xiaoliu collapsed back into his chair with a thud, lowering his head and not daring to look at the other person: "I know you are someone from an important background, but those people...it's better for you not to meet them."
"What if I've already met him?"
He raised his small, green-bean-sized eyes in shock and looked him up and down. "Then how come you're not dead, and you don't have any missing limbs?"
Well, they didn't lose any limbs. After all, she, Shrike and the guy surnamed Ding, it would be hard to find anyone else in the world who could make them lose any limbs.
But, it didn't end well.
She thought of the embarrassing scene at the Xiong family's old house in Huozhou that day, and she wanted to laugh. The arc just climbed up the corner of her mouth and fell again: "You really knew something from the beginning. Why didn't you tell me when I asked you before?!"
Wu Xiaoliu revealed his timid and aggrieved expression again: "This is unlucky, and you didn't chase me to ask..."
Xiao Nanhui hated his cowardly look the most. He grabbed the teapot on the table and poured two cups. "So it's my fault. We have time today, so let's make up for what happened last time. Tell me everything you know, don't leave out a single word."
Wu Xiaoliu sighed, picked up the teacup and drank it all in one gulp.
"I was born in Mao'er Town, thirty miles south of Wancheng. When it was prosperous a few years ago, there were hundreds of households there. Ever since I can remember, I have gone to the mountains with the children in town to find food..."
"Are you going to tell this story from when you were three or four years old until now?"
"...Didn't you ask me to say every word without missing a single one?"
"Get to the point."
"...The people you're talking about came to this town when I was little. They kidnapped many children, and I almost got kidnapped myself."
Xiao Nanhui's eyes finally lit up, and he leaned forward. "Kidnapped a child? How old was the child? Has anyone found him?"
"They were half-grown children, mostly around seven or eight years old. I've always been stronger than my peers, so when I was five or six, I looked seven or eight. Aside from me, none of the other children ever returned to the town; I was the only one. But most of the kidnapped children were either fatherless or motherless, so no one would have cared."
"Then how did you escape?"
Wu Xiaoliu started to feel a little embarrassed again. Xiao Nanhui slapped the table, and the teapot, two teacups, and a candlestick on the table all fell three inches off the ground and fell back. Wu Xiaoliu said quickly: "I, I think... I think I peed my pants. They thought it was unlucky, so they threw me away..."
Xiao Nanhui's mouth twitched.
The people in this organization are not very good, and some of them have mysophobia.
"Do you remember what they said and did when you were with them?"
Wu Xiaoliu didn't tremble, but his eyes revealed genuine fear: "I was too young at the time and was frightened. All I remember is a lot of crazy wild dogs, thorny brambles, and red-hot irons..."
She lowered her eyes, hiding the complex emotions in them: "Okay, no need to say more."
She thought she might know how those people got their disfigured faces.
The candlelight flickered and then dimmed again. She ignored it and, for the first time, rubbed a few sand dates for Wu Xiaoliu.
Wu Xiaoliu was chewing something in his mouth, and his mind gradually calmed down.
A few autumn insects circled around the flames, their wings making slight flapping sounds, which was annoying.
After a long pause, Xiao Nanhui asked, "You said that happened when you were a child. Does that mean those people haven't appeared since then?"
"A few years after that incident, I wasn't in Mao'er Town anymore. But during the years I've been wandering around Lingxi, I haven't heard about those people again."
"Do those people have a nickname or name?"
Wu Xiaoliu shook his head. "If they don't even want to be recognized by their faces, how can they have names? But back home, everyone calls them... Puhuna."
Xiao Nanhui frowned: "Puhu, what is that?"
"I've also heard from the elders that long ago, when those people first started to move around Kishu, an old monk from the south tried to convert them, but was brutally murdered. Before he died, he uttered only three words: 'Puhuna.' The villagers couldn't understand them, so they passed it down orally. Whenever they mentioned those people, they would say 'Puhuna came.'"
A gust of night wind blew open the curtains on the window, and the candle on the table finally turned into a wisp of green smoke and went out.
Servant calls that.
Xiao Nanhui moved his ten toes that had just been freed and silently repeated the three words in the darkness.
Who are they?
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
