Unparalleled Evildoer

Chapter 10: Where to Go When the Country is Destroyed and the Family is Ruined

Taoist Qingyang was shocked. He didn't expect that Li Zhan would choose to commit suicide by jumping into the river. He hurriedly jumped onto a huge rock to check. In a blink of an eye, there was no trace of Li Zhan except the rolling waves on the water.

There were huge hidden rocks under the river and undercurrents, making it difficult to escape. Taoist Qingyang stood with his hands behind his back, watching for a long time, then sighed, "Am I being too ruthless?" and turned and left.

……

This river merges into the Fen River. Although the water flow is fast in the upper reaches, it becomes gradually stable as it flows downstream as the river widens.

A fishing boat was parked on the water. An old man wearing a straw hat and hunched over was casting a net to fish on the boat. Suddenly, he saw an osprey landing on an object floating on the water. The old man looked and saw that the floating object seemed to be a child. The old man took off his linen clothes, revealing his shriveled body, jumped into the water, and swam to the object. Sure enough, it was a boy. When he touched the boy's wrist, he still had a weak pulse. He hurriedly pulled the child, swam to the side of the boat, and pushed the child onto the boat.

The old man had been fishing on this river since he was young and was a good swimmer. He had dealt with drowning cases like this many times before and quickly drained the water out of the boy's stomach. After the boy began to breathe, he collected the net and moored to the shore. There was a thatched hut on the shore, which was the old man's home. As soon as the old man entered the hut with the boy in his arms, he shouted, "Come here quickly, I saved a child!"

There was an old woman with gray hair sitting in the house. She looked ten years younger than the old man. She was sewing. When she saw the old man coming back with a child, she said, "Why did you bring a child back? You can't even feed two people. Here's another mouth to feed. Throw him back!"

The old man put the child on the straw mat and said with a simple smile, "We saved him with great difficulty, how can we just throw him back like this? Besides, look at the clothes the child is wearing, he must be from a wealthy family. If we send him back, won't they thank us?"

"You wish. I think this child's home is probably gone. Otherwise, how could he have fallen into the water?"

"Go make a bowl of hot soup and give it to him. When he wakes up, you can ask him and he'll know."

The old woman stood up and complained, "If this child doesn't have a family background, drive him away immediately!"

The old man smiled and said, "If you want to drive them away, you have to recover and be able to walk again before you can drive them away."

This boy was naturally Li Zhan. After he jumped into the river holding a wooden stake, a whirlpool swept him in and he was submerged in the water in an instant. He held on to the wooden stake tightly, as he knew it was his only hope of survival.

He didn't know how many times he was turned over by the water flow, or how many times the wooden stake hit the boulders. He brushed past the boulders at the bottom of the water several times. It took a long time for him to surface. Before he could take a breath, his body suddenly felt light and he fell straight into the deep pool. Li Zhan was already dizzy and weak. After falling and hitting the water, he fainted.

After the old man fed Li Zhan the hot soup, Li Zhan's breathing gradually stabilized. The old man looked at Li Zhan's fair face and sighed: "If my son were alive, my grandson would be this big too!"

The old woman said, "You don't want to keep him at home and raise him as your grandson, do you?"

"Of course I want to stay, but I'm afraid the child won't want to. Look at this child, he is so pretty and delicate, how can he endure our poor life!"

"A child like him is useless in our family. He can't do any work. No matter how handsome he is, he can't eat."

At this time, Li Zhan was breathing rapidly. He suddenly stretched out a hand and shouted anxiously, "Mother!..." and suddenly woke up.

After a long pause, he realized that he was not dead. He was in a thatched hut, and an old man was looking at him kindly. Li Zhan knew that he must have been saved by this old man, so he said softly, "Thank you, grandpa, for saving me." After saying that, he felt severe pain all over his body, as if his lungs were torn apart, and he fainted again.

……

When he woke up again, the old man was helping him sit up and feeding him fish soup. The old man asked, "Where is your home? Why did you fall into the water?"

Li Zhan coughed a few times and panted, "My home... It seems... I have no home. I... I don't remember anything."

The old man turned around and looked at the old woman. The old woman pulled her face and complained: "That's great, that's exactly what you think, let me see what you can do!"

The old man ignored the old woman and said, "Think about it again and see if you can remember anything. Do you remember your name? If you can remember it, I can take you home. Your family must be very worried!"

He coughed a few more times and shook his head slowly, "I can't remember, I forgot everything, I can't remember it anymore."

The old woman said angrily: "I think you want to stay here and not leave. Now you have some energy, so you should leave now!"

The old man hurriedly stood up, came to the old woman, and advised: "Where do you want him to go now? It won't be too late to send him away when he is well again."

"If he never gets up, then we will just have to pick up an ancestor and keep him at home as a sacrifice."

"No way, I'll let him go as soon as he's better."

"This child is weak and in very poor health. Maybe his parents were cruel enough to throw him into the water and abandon him."

"Nonsense, there are no such cruel parents. Besides, such a good child, others don't want me but I do!"

The old woman said angrily, "So you still want to take this child in, Old Man Cai, I'm telling you, if you don't drive him away today, then I'm leaving, and I won't live with you anymore!"

Old man Cai smiled innocently and said, "Where can you go alone? There is chaos and famine everywhere. You're lucky to be alive and guarding this river." The old woman said sternly, "Okay, it seems you want to drive me away. Well, Old man Cai, who do you think cares about your shabby thatched house? I can find a man anywhere else who can't live better than you!" Then she got up and was about to pack her things.

Old Man Cai hurriedly stopped him and said with a smile: "Look, you're here again. Don't be angry. That's not what I meant. Can't I let him go after two days?"

Li Zhan struggled to stand up, left the straw mat, staggered to the front of Old Man Cai, and said lightly: "I have no way to repay you for saving my life, so I can only kneel down to thank you, grandpa." As he spoke, he staggered to his knees and was about to kowtow to express his gratitude.

Old Man Cai hurriedly helped Li Zhan up and said, "It's just a small effort. You don't have to do this. Go and have a rest. You can walk again when you are better!"

After being helped up, Li Zhan said, "I can move around now. I won't bother you any more. I'll take my leave now."

Old Man Cai said, "No, you haven't recovered yet. Wait until you are well again before leaving!"

The old woman said, "He wants to leave, why don't you let him go?"

Li Zhan turned around and was about to leave the hut, but Old Man Cai stopped him and said, "Wait a minute!" Then he quickly went outside. After a moment, he came to Li Zhan with two strings of dried fish and handed them to him, saying, "Take them. You'll fill your stomach on the way."

Li Zhan looked at the dozen or so palm-sized dried fish strung together with branches, his eyes moistened, and he said gratefully, "Thank you, Grandpa!"

After saying goodbye to Old Man Cai, Li Zhan insisted on walking a long way, carrying two strings of dried fish. He sat down to rest only when he could no longer see the thatched hut. He leaned against a tree, panting, and staring aimlessly into the distance.

I originally chose to commit suicide by jumping into the river rather than die at the hands of the Taoist priest. Unexpectedly, I survived, but I didn't know how to live on. I wanted to spend the rest of my life in a thatched hut, but this body couldn't even fit in a thatched hut. Looking at the vast sky, I smiled bitterly and said to myself, "God, you actually left only a useless person like me. You are really blind. Well, I can live one day at a time. I can't die in a well or a river." Thinking of this, I felt much more open-minded.

His stomach growled, and Li Zhan picked up a dried fish and chewed it. The dried fish was fishy, ​​but Li Zhan felt it had a different flavor. He thought, "This tastes much better than those herbs."

When he was leaving, Old Man Cai told him that there was a village not far from here. In the past, Old Man Cai often sold the fish he caught there. However, he had not been there for more than a year because many people there starved to death, and there were not many families left due to conscription. Not only did no one buy the fish, but when he saw those poor people, he felt sorry for them and gave the fish to them. After returning home, he was still blamed.

It was sunset and Li Zhan had almost finished his rest. He had eaten two dried fish and was walking slowly towards the village with the fish skewers in his hand. He saw cracked fields, no one was cultivating the land, and the fields were overgrown with weeds. It was a desolate place. He was feeling melancholy when suddenly a group of crows soared into the sky and circled in the air, screaming "Ah! Ah!" Even though Li Zhan was unusually calm, he couldn't help but tremble and almost fell to the ground. It turned out that the crows were frightened by Li Zhan and so suddenly flew up. Li Zhan was about to smile bitterly when he suddenly saw a shriveled corpse lying in the grass. The body had already rotted, flies were buzzing around and it was emitting a foul smell. Li Zhan quickly covered his mouth and nose and almost vomited out the dried fish he had eaten. He took a few quick steps and soon found several more corpses. Some were rotten to the point of only bones, while others were large and should be the corpse of a child.

Although Li Zhan was not afraid, he thought to himself, "If I die, I will dig a hole for myself to avoid being exposed in the wild and making people feel uncomfortable." But then he thought again, "Although I have dug the hole, how can I cover myself up?" In this way, he thought of many mechanisms to bury himself along the way, but they all failed in the end, because no matter what kind of mechanism it was, there must be a living person to help him press it. He always had such wild thoughts before.

Before he knew it, the sun had already set for a long time. He arrived at the entrance of the village and found that there was a flame in the village, as if a huge bonfire had been burning. Curious, he slowly approached the fire, came to the broken wall, hid himself, and looked inside.

In front of the campfire, more than a dozen soldiers surrounded the villagers. There were more than a dozen people, most of them were skinny and old, and there were also two children who looked like Li Zhan. They were all kneeling on the ground trembling with fear. Judging from the clothes the soldiers were wearing, they should be the Qin army. Li Zhong once described to Li Zhan the costumes of soldiers from various countries.

Li Zhan thought: "It seems that Jingxing Pass has been breached, and the Qin army has entered. The State of Zhao will also be destroyed."

One of the soldiers, a tall and thin soldier holding a short sword, stood in front of the people and shouted at them, "If you have food, hand it over. If you have money, hand it over. I will spare your lives. If you have nothing, don't even think about leaving alive today!"

An old man with white hair knelt down and begged for mercy, "We have been out of food for more than a year. The bark of the trees on the mountain has been stripped away. Where is there any food? Please have mercy on us, sir!"

"Then don't blame us for being rude!" Without saying a word, he stabbed the old man to death with a sword, scaring the people into crying.

"Don't cry. If you don't hand it over, this will be your fate!"

An old woman knelt forward, stretched out her trembling hands, clutched two copper coins, and cried, "I only have two coins, please let us go, sir!"

The soldier took the coin and threw it on the ground angrily, cursing, "The State of Zhao is dead, and you are using this Zhao coin to fool your commander. I want silver!"

"I only have..." Before he could finish his words, the soldier slashed his neck with a sword. Blood flowed from his skinny neck. "Grandma!" His grandson cried and rushed over.

Li Zhan thought to himself, "My father is right. This is the country, and these are the people who have lost their country." He suddenly recalled his father's angry face, which seemed so familiar.

The soldier stepped forward to pull the crying child away and was about to kill him, but a soldier next to him stopped him and said, "Don't kill him yet!"

"Why?"

"We came down to collect food. We have been to several villages, and every village is like this. How can we report back? I see that this kid still has a few pounds of meat. It is better to keep it and kill it at the end. The meat will be fresh. When the time comes, we can peel the skin and say it is the meat of a hunted pig. It will be easier to report back and we can have some meat!"

"Good idea! Someone, bring these two children back to me. As for the rest, leave no one alive. Cut off their ears and throw them into the fire!"

Immediately, screams were heard. Li Zhan could not bear to watch any longer, so he quietly left the village and walked north along the night road.

When the nights are cold, I always think of my mother’s warmth, but unfortunately everything has become even colder.

(End of this chapter)