Chapter 86 The Spear of Courage Still Presses Forward (Part 9) Our Mission...
He traded one hand for the ability to summon crows. To navigate this world smoothly as someone with a disability, one must pay an equal price.
Ying Ya, with only his skeletal right hand and a flock of crows, found the people who had bullied him that day. He just wanted to show off—yes, that's the word. Not revenge, nor to repay the grievances he had suffered, but simply to show those people that even a crippled body could control birds, and that his deceased mother would be proud of him.
However, the other party clearly misjudged Ying Ya's intentions. Faced with a pale, gloomy-faced, dark-eyed, and hunchbacked child, revealing a chilling skeleton, terrifying images from their imaginations replayed endlessly in their minds. The boys were initially terrified and knelt down to beg for mercy. But then, having been adept at reading people since childhood, they quickly realized that Ying Ya had no intention of seeking revenge. They changed their attitude, and it only took a few minutes from testing him to attacking him again.
They laughed and threw stones at Ying Ya and his crows, calling him a fool who, without Ying Ya's command, would only dodge and not attack. A sharp-edged stone struck his forehead, but he was used to pain. The sensation didn't frighten him, but it could make a child who had only eaten a meager meal faint.
He lay on his back on the ground, and the largest red-eyed raven stood obediently beside his ear, gently pecking at his cheek with its sharp beak.
Ying Ya couldn't understand why he wasn't liked even though he possessed the power of divination. All he wanted was to be able to sit with them at lunchtime at school.
Countless emerald green vines emerged from the grass, silently wrapping around the hands and feet of several naughty children, tightening and binding them, pinning them firmly to the spot like wooden stakes.
The boys were stunned and dumbfounded by the sudden turn of events, their mouths agape, breathing heavily from shock.
"What is this thing! What is this thing!" they shouted in panic.
Before Ying Ya completely fainted, he saw a red-haired angel descending from the sky with a righteous and awe-inspiring posture and dazzling light.
The Shaohao and Taihao clans have been neighbors for ten thousand years. Therefore, although Ying Ya and the man's home is said to be on the edge of the Ying family, it is actually at the border between the two clans.
Recently, a flock of unknown, thieving birds have been sneaking through the barrier my mom set up and eating all the berries she planted in the forest.
Feng Feng had been staking out this place for several days, and today he finally spotted the flock of birds. He had followed them all the way here, determined to punish these sharp-beaked little thieves.
But she happened to witness a situation of the strong bullying the weak, and Lord Feng Feng, a man of noble character and integrity, could not tolerate the strong oppressing the weak and the many bullying the few. The boy who had fainted on the ground looked extremely thin, and whatever the conflict between them, it should be resolved in a gentlemanly manner.
"Hey! A bunch of brats! How dare you bully us here! If I see you, I'll make sure you're crying for your parents!" Feng Feng put one hand on his hip, his two fingers together like a sword, his eyebrows furrowed, his eyes wide with anger, and he focused his energy on his dantian, imagining how Zhang Yide scared away a million soldiers at Dangyang Bridge.
Although the children were terrified by the sudden appearance of the soldiers, the thought of their mother and sisters rekindled their spirits.
"Who are you! How dare you interfere in the affairs of the Ying family!"
Seeing that the children dared to talk back, Xiao Feng switched stances with his left and right hands, his feet moving swiftly and gracefully, muttering incantations such as "The spear strikes like a dragon" and "Taking the enemy general's head from among ten thousand troops." This startled the children whose hands and feet were restricted.
Several green vines then snaked out from all directions, their upper bodies erect like cobras, swaying in front of them. Before they could react, the vines whipped their buttocks.
"How dare you bully people like this!"
"We were wrong, we were wrong, we were wrong! We'll never do it again!"
Seeing their sincere attitude, with snot almost dripping into their mouths, Feng Feng reluctantly withdrew the vines, watching the group scramble away, clutching their backsides.
She walked over to the unconscious Ying Ya and glanced at the dazed little black bird beside him.
"Little crow? Whose child are you?"
Ying Ya wasn't seriously injured, but his face was covered in blood, and with his exposed skeletal arm, Feng Feng didn't dare to treat him himself. So he wrapped him in vines and dragged him back to the Feng family.
Feng Ye helped find a doctor and took the child to the village hospital. He also deduced Ying Ya's identity from the little bird that followed him around like a shadow and sent someone to inform the Ying family. Meanwhile, Feng Feng stayed by Ying Ya's side the entire time.
She is a person who always sees things through to the end, and she always helps people to the end. Just like the kitten she rescued from the grass a few days ago after the rain, she stayed by the kitten's side day and night.
Even though the little guy had eaten and drunk his fill and his fur was dry, he went off to chase his freedom again.
The doctor said Ying Ya was mostly fine, suffering only minor injuries and fainting from malnutrition and fever. However, she couldn't determine the cause of the child's withered right hand.
Feng Feng rested her chin on her hand, leaning over Ying Ya's bedside, watching him sob and tremble in his nightmare, like a small blade of grass about to wither, enduring the harsh winds and frosts of autumn and winter. She glanced out the hospital window; at the edge of the vibrant fields, the magnificent sunset silently watched everything, its light illuminating his frail, translucent skin. Feng Feng slapped her thigh; she had always felt that Ying Ya looked strange, but she just couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Now she understood that the strange thing about Ying Ya was a faint sense of barrenness. As a child of nature who loved to run freely between heaven and earth, it was hard not to feel compassion for a barren land.
So she ran out of the hospital, to the edge of the field outside, picked a daisy that was burning hot in the setting sun, returned to Ying Ya's bedside, made it into a small ring, and gently put it on his finger.
When he wakes up, she will tell him that the world will not always be cold and lonely; all he needs to do is quietly wait for spring to arrive.
*
When Daphne recounted how Ying Ya fought with others when he was "young," she first laughed heartily, then laughed until tears streamed down her face. She gritted her teeth and stared at a point in the void, saying that those little brats bullied her son and she had given him a good beating. Even now, he still runs away in terror whenever he sees Daphne.
She nonchalantly wiped her face with the back of her hand, sniffed, and smelled a burnt odor in the air.
Oh no, my mushroom soup!
After saying that, she stuffed the photo album into Feng Feng's arms and ran to the kitchen.
Everyone sat around the dining table, the setting sun beginning to paint everything in a golden hue. A charming floral-patterned earthenware pot held a rich mushroom soup, golden wisps of steam rising from its surface.
Looking at everyone's faces through the rising steam, Xia Zhu found it hard not to imagine what a "home" looked like. Every summer evening in the past, she would sit with her grandfather at the small square table by the window, just like this.
Steaming hot, golden and gleaming.
She couldn't help but steal a glance at Ying Ya, and found that he had taken off his wide robe, his wings were obediently folded up, and his bangs were swept to one side, revealing a pair of eyes that were staring intently at Daphne, who was serving him soup.
Perhaps he also wondered in his mind if the scene would overlap with this moment.
The mushroom soup was fragrant and warming, and the giant swamp bread was so much tastier than the Star Travel Tree. The bacon bits were sizzling with oil and being salt-baked with moss. Xia Zhu squinted her eyes contentedly, thinking that it was really nice to leave this world with such a brief fantasy.
For some reason, Ying Huo could always see through what she was thinking and then promptly pour cold water on her thoughts, pulling her back to reality.
"What's wrong? You think this place is pretty good, huh? Are you going to abandon everything in reality and stay here? You're just aiding and abetting evil."
Xia Zhu kept her eyelids drooping and didn't give him any look.
"Is it a crime to even think about it?"
"Thinking about it simply won't cause any problems, but have you forgotten? These eerie dreams are all imagined. Thinking about them too deeply turns them into obsessions."
Xia Zhu was stunned. She suddenly remembered the words Feng Ye had said when they first met.
The deeper the desire, the more it attracts innate spiritual entities, causing them to merge like butterflies forming cocoons or snowballs, creating a dreamlike realm of demons. These descendants of the gods inherently possess spiritual power, passed down through bloodlines.
On the surface, there seems to be no problem, but who was the first to call the stone obtained after slaying the demon in the dream "the Heavenly Manifestation"? Was it the supreme god in the Nine Heavens who has never shown himself?
Of course, the words of the supreme deity are absolute truth, and no one has ever doubted this.
Is that really the case?
Human nature is intertwined with desires; who is the master and who is the guest? Who is the cause and who is the effect?
Xia Zhu always believed that hearing and seeing alone were not enough; only practice could yield true knowledge. The word "facts" was cruel and unshakable, and its status and influence were so great that they had to be personally verified before they could be regarded as the standard.
Right now, she can't even explain where she came from, let alone have the credentials to verify the truth. She'll just have to take it one step at a time and figure out everything someday.
Ji Wuchou did not forget her task, and she asked Daphne about the location of the Skybird.
"The Sky-Asking Bird? Its habitat is the salt lake swamp that leads north from the village entrance. It's quite a strange creature. But what do you want with the Sky-Asking Bird?" She paused, the spoon she was about to put in her mouth, and scanned everyone's faces before finally settling on Ying Ya's evasive gaze.
"Aha, my son's got some ambition, he wants to be a hero and save the princess too, huh! I'm telling you, when I was young I also wanted to go to the Great River of the Middle Kingdom to take the knight exam, but then I met your short-lived father, but mainly because of you..." She patted Ying Ya's shoulder, "Hey, hey, don't flatter yourself, your mother isn't held back by you, it's just that young people usually move forward with their dreams."
She stared intently into Ying Ya's eyes.
"Do you know? At that beautiful moment, my dream quietly changed. This world must allow anyone to change, and it also allows all kinds of dreams, big and small, to exist."
Her voice was gentle yet firm, like a powerful magic. A subtle change occurred on Ying Ya's blank face, and Daphne thought he understood her meaning.
So she released her hand from his shoulder, picked up the soup spoon from the plate again, put the delicious mushroom soup into her mouth, and showed an exaggeratedly happy smile on her face.
"Good men and good women aspire to travel far and wide! Mom is waiting for you to rescue the princess, invite her to our home, and make her delicious mushroom soup again!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
