Chapter 97 Just Treat Me As If I’m Free
Liu Yuan felt embarrassed and quickly walked forward to chase Xu Qingcheng.
"Little brother, the strange uncle is so happy~"
Xihe fell behind, staring at Liu Yuan's staggering figure with a smile, and couldn't help but be lost in thought.
"He used to be even more... cheerful than he is now?" Xiao Mingxuan racked his brains to come up with a word.
His memory of Liu Yuan still lingers on the time when he escorted him to Tianshuo five or six years ago. At that time, Liu Yuan was a rising star in the army, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was "riding high on the spring breeze."
"What if I say I want to save him?" The little girl tugged at the hem of her clothes and lowered her head, not daring to look at the back of the man in front of her again. If she looked at him again, her heart would feel like something was blocking it and she couldn't breathe.
"You want to cure him?" Xiao Mingxuan's steps were not at all fluctuating, as if he had already expected it.
Xihe nodded and said, "People like Uncle Weird shouldn't stay here. I want to... take him back."
The light and shadows in front of my eyes changed, and a ray of light came in from the exit, shining on people's faces, warm and gentle.
"Xiao Xier, it's not that easy." Xiao Mingxuan knew that he shouldn't feel sympathy. He had experienced Liu Yuan's strength. As long as he allowed the other party to stay in Jiangnan, Tianshuo would inevitably lose a powerful general. This would be beneficial to him in every way.
But maybe it was because I had been with the little girl for too long, my heart softened a little, and I actually had the urge to help.
"Even if you recover and return to the Imperial City, it will be useless. The Liu family is guilty of treason. No one in the Nine Clans can escape. Even if you insist on protecting Liu Yuan, the court officials will not allow someone suspected of treason to serve in the army."
"But it's the Liu family who is collaborating with the enemy and selling out the country, not the uncle." The little girl was almost crying in anxiety.
Xiao Mingxuan wiped away her tears and said calmly, "Isn't Liu Yuan's last name Liu? You overestimate the empathy of those people in the court."
Their suspicion will never disappear, and they will wonder if this is a trap set by the Liu family to protect Liu Yuan.
I would rather kill someone by mistake than let him go.
"We have to try, don't we?" Xihe looked at Xiao Mingxuan with a smile, her eyes showing an unprecedented determination. "We can't just give up without trying. As long as there is even the slightest possibility, we have to try."
Xihe thought of the lingering light in Liu Yuan's eyes when he was talking about deploying troops, and also thought of his sadness when his martial arts were completely wasted.
"Knowing it is impossible but still doing it." Xiao Mingxuan suddenly said this without any warning, and it felt ridiculous.
“To do something knowing it’s impossible is my greatest sincerity.”
Xiao Mingxuan suddenly looked up and met Xihe's smiling face, and asked, "What if the ending is not worthy of the hardships you've endured along the way?"
"Little brother, not everything in this world has an ending, and not everything will go as planned. Despite this, shouldn't we just do it? I'm not afraid of failure, nor am I afraid of things not going as planned, because people are always forced to accept the gifts of fate, whether good or bad, but I'm afraid of regret." The little girl tugged at the hem of her skirt and jumped forward two steps. She picked a flower from a crevice and placed it in her palm. She didn't know how such a harsh environment could have allowed it to grow. "I think if I think of this again in the future, my reaction shouldn't be regret or sigh. I've tried my best, tried, and then just follow my fate~"
Xiao Mingxuan's expression was unclear and he didn't speak for a long time.
He held the little girl's hand and walked towards the exit. The sunlight filtered through the overgrown branches, rustling onto them. A man was leaning against the beam at the exit. The light blurred his face, only outlining his tall figure. The man was lazily playing with some wild grass he had picked up from somewhere, having a lot of fun.
"Uncle Weird, are you waiting for us?"
Liu Yuan nodded without saying anything, and just helped the little girl remove the fallen leaves that had gotten stuck in her hair.
He glanced at Xiao Mingxuan with a half-smile, then quickly turned his head away, took the wine jug from his waist, tilted his head back and took a sip of wine.
"Let's go. Qingcheng is waiting for us up ahead. We'll be at the bandit's camp in a little while."
"Great!" As Xihe came out of underground, he was extremely happy. He let go of Xiao Mingxuan's hand and ran forward to catch up with Xu Qingcheng who was not far away.
Xiao Mingxuan and Liu Yuan lagged behind, showing no intention of catching up. Xiao Mingxuan wasn't the talkative type, and Liu Yuan was even less so. An unspeakable silence spread between them.
"Did you hear that?"
Liu Yuan took a deep breath and replied lazily, "Yeah."
"What do you think?" Xiao Mingxuan asked.
Liu Yuan muttered, "No feeling." Then he felt a little annoyed. The things that had been decided were out of his control. On the contrary, he had no desire to change them back. Instead, he was eager to try the possibilities mentioned by the little girl.
"You did it even though you knew it was impossible." Xiao Mingxuan suddenly lowered his head and smiled, with a hint of sarcasm, "You were so full of words when you were trying to persuade me, but why are you so silent when it comes to me?"
Perhaps it was God's intention. The same scene, the same people, just the identities were reversed.
Liu Yuan, who was trying to persuade others with all sorts of tricks, couldn't hold back his face. He gulped down several mouthfuls of wine, his face still burning. "Shut up! Can my situation be the same as yours?"
Xiao Mingxuan had his own set of rules in mind. No matter how much others said, he would not change. At this moment, he was too lazy to fight with Liu Yuan to the death. "What do you want to do? Do you want to give it a try?"
"That's a perfectly appropriate statement for anyone, but why does it sound so strange coming from you?" Liu Yuan remembered the little boy he'd taken from Beili back then, a tiny ball, like a dough ball. Now, five or six years later, the boy who couldn't even hold onto his legs had grown to his waist. "You, a prince of Beili, are actually asking a general from an enemy nation whether I want to return to the battlefield. Don't you find that ridiculous?"
Logically speaking, the person who wants him dead the most should be the person in front of him.
Xiao Mingxuan looked up and met Liu Yuan's meaningful gaze, then slowly looked away after a long time.
Liu Yuan was right, he really shouldn't have gotten involved.
As the prince of Beili, he should have killed the man in the secret room of Jiang Mansion from the beginning, destroyed the evidence, and watched Liu Yuan's three years of hard work go to waste, or let him fend for himself in Jiangnan after he was released.
But he did nothing. Instead, he helped him silently with a tacit attitude.
The memories of his youth are already very vague, and many people and things have long since disappeared, but Xiao Mingxuan still remembers Liu Yuan who wrapped himself in a quilt under the yellow sand that year.
The young and energetic Yanagihara.
After a long time, he smiled and said, "Just think of me as someone who's free."
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