Chapter 85 The Spear of Courage Still Presses Forward (Part 8) Our Mission...
Ying Ya's mother died in childbirth shortly after his birth.
If she had given birth to a girl, it would have been fine, but unfortunately, she was a disabled person with little ability. She was insignificant to outsiders and was just another useless person who could only open her mouth to eat.
The newborn Ying Ya was thin and bony, like a quail soaked by rain. He was nestled in the warm blanket that his mother had prepared before giving birth, held in the arms of his father, whose beak was like a sawed gourd.
The man's eyes were swollen and red as he looked at his wife, who had passed away on the bed. As always, he couldn't utter a few words. Even though his heart was like a drifting duckweed, adrift and helpless, and immense grief was about to overwhelm him like a flood, he still dared not make a loud sound, for fear of disturbing others.
Ying Ya's father's surname was Ji, but even he didn't know whether he was born on Sun and Moon Mountain or Xuanyuan Hill. He had no physiognomy skills and was taciturn. In the past, under the protection of Ying Ya's mother, he was able to live a relatively peaceful life in a remote corner. But now, the old good-for-nothing was taking care of the little good-for-nothing. His family disliked him and he had no relatives or friends to take care of him. The cowardly and incompetent man couldn't even step into human society on his own. The burden of the child kept hitting walls everywhere. Fortunately, his wife's former friend pleaded for them and gave the father and son a dilapidated house on the edge of the Ying family.
Even when a quail grows up, it can only fly over the rooftop at most. Ying Ya, on the other hand, inherited his taciturn father's quiet nature and was also born with a physical disability that prevented him from spreading his wings.
Out of humanitarian spirit, even the most ruthless Ying family had no intention of letting their able-bodied descendants suffer from mental impairment.
Ying Ya continued to study with other children his age in the family, though, being physically disabled, he essentially had to associate with other disabled people. Through his interactions with more members of the Ying family, young Ying Ya came to understand the extraordinary and mysterious abilities his mother possessed. Therefore, the woman with the blurred face in the only photograph in the family left a deep and unforgettable mark of longing in the heart of Ying Ya.
At the same time, he knew he did not belong to the same category.
In the crippled classroom, only classical Chinese principles of conduct and basic knowledge of astronomy, geography, and the world were taught, without touching upon the Taihao clan's bird-controlling magic. Thus, Ying Ya, who desperately wanted to get closer to his mother whom he had never met, had no choice but to abandon the benevolence and morality he had just learned and resort to stealing. Of course, he told himself that things involving knowledge could perhaps be called striving.
Every day before dawn, Ying Ya would dress neatly and go to the woods near his home to practice the bird-controlling incantation, covered in morning dew. But no matter how hard he worked, from dawn till dusk, without eating or sleeping, if a plump, chirping sparrow could fly into his hand, it would be as if his mother's grave had been blessed with good fortune.
Although he was clumsy with words and lacked the ability to communicate, Ying Ya was still quite innocent and naive at that time.
After spending her time as a somewhat withdrawn little mute in the noisy classroom, she returned home and tried her best to act as the peacemaker in the family, dealing with the older mute man. She boiled water, cooked, cleaned, and then dragged the man, who spent his days weeping over his mother's photo, to the dinner table. While eating, she reported to him everything she had seen and heard that day, completely forgetting the "one should not speak while eating or sleeping" rule she had just learned.
Occasionally, the man would be jolted awake by grief and pain, remembering that he was a father, and would rise in the darkness to grab his son, who had just fallen asleep after a long day.
Ying Ya was still sleepy and dizzy. His knee, which he had bumped against the headboard when he got up this morning, was still aching. The night was cool and still, and his father's words, like a hoarse and mocking lullaby, forced their way into his ears under the guise of comfort.
He taught him that he must never cause trouble for others when he is out in the world. Your father has lived a life of fear and caution, just to survive in this world full of elites and geniuses. As my son, you must also follow this way of survival.
Ying Ya was so sleepy that he shook his head, but he had always been an obedient child. He forced himself to nod at the man and tried to force a reassuring smile.
Only then can a man breathe a sigh of relief, lie back in bed, and sleep soundly until the sun is high in the sky.
Despite waking up early with dark circles under his eyes, Ying Ya still remembered what his father had said. But he never expected that even if he was careful with his words and actions, he would still be the biggest trouble in other people's eyes.
While fellow disabled individuals should sympathize with each other, Ying Ya's classmates didn't seem to share this view. They studied the classics day and night, and the more principles they learned, the better they became at noticing the differences and distinctions around them.
Based on their long-term observations, Ying Ya was quite unusual. He had no mother, which meant he had no powerful backing and no foothold in Taihao. Furthermore, they had heard from somewhere that Ying Ya's mother had died on the very day he was born.
Adhering to the principle that the purpose of millions of years of evolution in the animal world is never to be at the bottom of the food chain, the classmates, who were already inferior because of their physical disabilities, finally found Ying Ya, who was even lower than others, as the key turning point for them to regain their confidence.
One day after school, a few young boys blocked Ying Ya's way as he was rushing home to cook.
Ying Ya's only route must be a narrow path that few people pass by in a day.
With their mothers above them and sisters below them, these boys lived a very successful life in the clan. They were all tall and strong, and compared to Ying Ya, who was always hungry and had to do a lot of work, it was like a stone hitting an egg.
However, Ying Ya remained neither humble nor arrogant, muttering, "He can be approached but not forced, he can be killed but not humiliated." Then he was punched so hard that his face was swollen and he fell to the ground, seeing stars.
Even so, he did not feel fear or pain.
Until those bastards pointed at Ying Ya, who couldn't get up, and said that his mother must have been angered to death because she gave birth to a good-for-nothing, otherwise why would his father not love him and why would no one care about him?
The punch that landed on his face was insignificant; at most, it was just the soft flesh inside his mouth hitting his teeth, breaking the skin and drawing some blood. He often got more serious injuries when he went out to practice his incantations or when he did chores at home. But those seemingly harmless and insignificant words were like a red-hot pair of iron clamps, melting and burning his most vulnerable spot inch by inch, until they scorched his heart, which was still developing its many orifices.
Is that how it is?
Ying Ya thought, so it was all because of him. Because he was a useless piece of trash, his mother was unwilling to hug him more and left this world early to go to a faraway place and never come back. That's why his father was absent-minded all day long, never cared about his studies, and never asked him if he was in pain or hungry.
She must have felt disgusted by his birth, which is why she was willing to sever the blood ties and leave him alone in this world.
In an instant, all the confusion that arose from his childhood ignorance and the unsolvable problems from his early education suddenly became clear. Everything had a perfectly reasonable explanation, so reasonable that he accepted it with delight.
The people who beat him up scattered, laughing and joking. They still had a place that always waited for them somewhere, a place textbooks called "home." Ying Ya, having understood everything, sat slumped where he had fallen. The scrapes on his palms and the swelling on his face began to hurt belatedly, his senses so dulled, just as it had taken him so long to understand everything.
It wasn't until dark clouds rolled in overhead and raindrops splattered the dust on the ground into mud that he managed to get up and limp home.
From afar, Ying Ya saw the silent man standing under the eaves, his clothes gathered, waiting for him. When Ying Ya approached and saw the injuries on his body, the man frowned and weakly criticized him for playing too late and coming home late, otherwise he wouldn't be in such a dirty and tattered state.
Several gray streaks appeared on Ying Ya's face, stretching from below his eyes to his chin. He dazedly wiped his face, threw down his schoolbag, and went into the kitchen.
Distracted, he burned his palm with the fire. Remembering what the man had said about using wood ash to treat wounds, he put his hand into the cooled fire after cooking, and didn't leave until late at night before finding gauze to wrap it around his hand.
As the sweltering heat of summer arrived, the foul, putrid odor could no longer be concealed. Peeling off the layers of gauze from my hands, I found the innermost layer soaked with pus.
Ying Ya stood by the window, raising his injured hand to the moonlight. It was foul and ugly, just like him. As if possessed, he endured the pain and recited the incantation that was forbidden to be spoken through a mutilated body.
"When the Qi first descends, it transforms into form."
"The talisman summons all birds and reveals the secrets of the netherworld."
The fields were desolate. A few night owls hooted, and the summer heat lingered, like the rotting flesh growing in his palm and the knot of sorrow stuck in his chest. Just when he thought it would end without a trace, as it had a thousand times before, an unusually large red-eyed crow folded its broad wings and landed by the window.
Ying Ya felt a breath catch in his throat, neither daring to spit it out nor swallow it, and the two of them stared at each other. The crow innocently tilted its head, staring at the half-grown child inside the house, its eyes flashing, alternating between red and white.
It hopped forward two steps like a child, close to Ying Ya's outstretched arm, and its sharp beak plunged into the rotten flesh in his palm. The excruciating pain instantly spread throughout his body, but Ying Ya dared not pull away. He gripped his wrist tightly until he could no longer feel anything above his wrist, fearing that if he let go, this bird, which had come for him for the first time, would flap its wings and fly away.
A crow under the moonlight carried a piece of Ying Ya's palm in its beak. With a slight tilt of its head, the rotting flesh slid into its narrow throat. It seemed quite satisfied, tilting its head to examine Ying Ya's veil-like face. Its black feathers shimmered with emerald and crimson light under the moonlight, slowly revealing a strange brilliance.
The red-eyed crow raised its head and let out a short, strange cry. Then, the sound of flapping wings echoed in the quiet night sky. A second and a third crow landed by Ying Ya's window.
They pecked at the flesh in his palm with a hungry yet orderly throbbing, each tear seeming to affirm his unwavering determination. Sweat and tears mingled, soaking his clothes and blurring his vision so he couldn't see the moonlight. His nerves twitched until the pain turned into numbness, and finally into an unprecedented certainty about his own existence. He bit his lip until it bled, but the blood gathered at the corner of his mouth, forming a radiant smile.
If his mother were watching from afar right now, she would surely be happy for him.
He would only regret that this day had not come sooner. If he had been born with a rotten, festering hand, and with a sky full of black crows perched on the roof, perhaps she would not have been sad and angry. Perhaps she would have gently stroked his head, and perhaps she would never have left him.
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