beg for chivalry

Ah Yao returned to the thatched cottage.

There had been a new rain earlier, and the muddy water droplets fell along the grass roots, dripping into the mud in the house.The damp and dark room is filled with the smell of rotten ears and rice bran. Behind the stove is a rotten wooden bed.There was a dark bulge on the bed, like a scorched steamed bun.

"...Mom." Ah Yao called out, and stepped into the room anxiously. "Are you awake?"

The raised haystack did not move.

The room was a bit gloomy and cold, and it didn't seem like there was a living person's anger.Ah Yao was flustered, she rushed to the wooden bed to pull thatch.Gradually, her hands pushed aside the grass stalks, revealing the layer of linen quilt underneath.

This startled her suddenly, because in the boundless darkness, her mother's two eyeballs flashed a dark light on the linen quilt.Immediately afterwards, she saw a pale, bloodless face, which was facing the thatched roof motionlessly, as if frozen.

Her mother's gray lips moved slowly.

"... Ah Yao."

"I'm here."

Ah Yao held her hand tightly.

When my mother was not sick, she was the most beautiful medical girl in Jiulong Town, like a delicate peony.But at this time, all her beauty and strength were taken away by her illness, and she was lying here half dead, like a decayed flower and leaf.

She was breathing, and every movement of her nostrils seemed to take a lot of effort.Even though she was just lying down, she was exhausted and out of breath as if she had walked up the mountain for twenty days and nights.

A Yao suddenly wanted to cry. "Mother, I earned money today. I'm going to ask Grandpa Feng to take me to the mountains to find medicine... You don't have to go first, Ah Yao will find Shetiancha to save you soon..."

"..."

Her mother opened and closed her mouth speechlessly, her words seemed to be choked up.

Finally, a few words were squeezed out of the dying woman's mouth. "Snake... Tiancha."

A Yao said: "I... I also met a person who was looking for snake tea today. I used morning grass to get there, but he gave me a lot of money. Mom, I have never seen so much money in my life , shining like stars in the sky. Do you think I am bad...I lied to him, alas, alas..." She hid her face and began to cry, tears dripping between her fingers.

Her mother stared at the thatched roof with a fixed gaze, and murmured: "Snake Sky Tea...Snake Sky Tea."

Suddenly, the dying woman lying on the bed violently rose up!Ah Yao only felt a pain in her shoulder, and two skinny hands had already locked onto her shoulder, pinching the prey tightly like an eagle of prey.

The woman's eyes suddenly burst into a breathtaking light: "Snake Sky Tea...!"

"Mother, what's wrong with you?"

"You said...someone came to find Snake Sky Tea?"

Ah Yao was suddenly a little scared by her expression. "Yes Yes."

"Who is that person? Is it a man or a woman? What does he look like?" A series of hurried words spewed out from those two dark lips, and a creepy smile suddenly cracked on her mother's face, revealing a bright mouth. porcelain white teeth.

Ah Yao suddenly felt that the woman in front of her was very strange, like a hungry wolf.

"It's an older brother, he...has a dimple on his face when he smiles..." Ah Yao muttered.

"What else?" The dying woman suddenly became fierce and aggressive.

Ah Yao said: "He...he is wearing white clothes."

"Sure enough, sure enough..." Her mother said to herself, and suddenly she laughed.The laughter was cold, and Ah Yao felt the hairs all over his body standing on end.

"Mom, what are you talking about? I don't understand..."

"The kid who came to find Snake Tea...do you know where he lives and what his name is?"

"I, I don't know. Mother, your hand hurts me so much..."

The woman began to shake her roughly, scolding sharply. "Think! Think about it for me! Even if you think about it, you have to think about it!"

"Ah Yao doesn't know... Ah Yao really doesn't know." The girl choked and pulled her mother's hand, but that hand was as cold and hard as iron.

"A Yao, my good daughter. You must think about it again. Who is he? What does he look like? Which corner of the street did he go to?" Her mother asked in a low voice, as if The poisonous snake hissing, "If you don't say it, just look at the stove next to you. You are as skinny as a stick. I don't know if it can be as warm as firewood?"

Ah Yao shook his head in fear. "You...you are not my mother. Who are you?"

"Why did you say that?"

"My mother is gentle and kind. She is the softest person in the world. She doesn't even have the heart to kill caterpillars on vegetable leaves. But if I do something wrong, my mother will put on a straight face and teach me. Everyone told me "You are the daughter of Shaoyao, you will not do bad things." But not only did you not call me a liar...you also said such harmful things...you are not my mother!" Ah Yao stammered.

The bony, pale woman smiled, but looked at her dimly with dark eyes. "Look carefully, I'm your mother, Ah Yao. This face, this body...can't you even recognize the mother who gave birth to you and raised you?"

Ah Yao carefully looked at the man's face, it was indeed no different from her own mother.

She summoned up the greatest courage in her life, and murmured: "You're not... Although you look alike, you're not my mother!"

"Then I - I don't have to be kind to you anymore!" The woman laughed suddenly, jumped up from the wooden bed and strangled her fiercely.Her figure was as fast as a bolt of lightning, like a nimble wolf hunting.

The strange woman kicked her hard in the stomach, held her ankle with one hand, and pressed her hair onto the stove with the other hand.

"Ah Yao, Ah Yao," the woman murmured leisurely, as if she was humming a gentle ditty to a baby in her swaddling arms, but her words were so cruel that no one would take her words as words for the child. honey words. "Have you seen this eye stove? I'll count to three, if you don't say anything, I'll twist off your arms and legs and stuff them into the flue."

"He...I saw him in Qian's Village!" Ah Yao was terrified and lost her voice.

Her mother stopped with a smile.

"At that time, I went up to the roof to pick pear blossoms secretly... I happened to see that brother wielding a knife. His young master seems to call him... Wang Xiaoyuan." The girl was terrified, and she confides all she knows.

"Don't you know that?" The woman with a face similar to her mother smiled, but the strength in her hands did not relax at all. "anything else?"

"Other than that... Ah Yao really doesn't know anything."

The woman threw Ah Yao back on the wooden bed, patted the dust on her hands and said, "Great." She paced the room with her hands behind her back, smiling and muttering to herself: "Wang Xiaoyuan...is called by this name now." Well, hum."

She smiled sullenly and said: "I expected that the third lady would go to the Arhat Temple to search for ancient books if she wanted to cure the young master's illness. I just added a few random strokes, but I didn't expect that she would actually come to find Snake Heaven Tea Yes. Wonderful!"

Ah Yao couldn't understand her words, she was startled and frightened: "You... who are you?"

The person who was very similar to her mother heard the words and gently fiddled with the neck. Gradually, loose wrinkles appeared on the face of this person, and the facial features were blurred. After a while, a thin mask was removed.

Behind the mask is a handsome face, like a crown of jade, with picturesque eyebrows, clearly a handsome young man.But Ah Yao only felt creepy when he saw it, because this person's eyes were cold, bloodthirsty and ruthless, even though his smile was gentle, he was extremely terrifying.

This person is obviously a man, but he looks good when he is a woman. If he didn't press A Yao madly, she might still be kept in the dark at this time.

Yan Jiubian smiled softly: "It doesn't matter who it is." He took out a mask from behind and put it on his face, "Do you recognize it now?"

The mask was blue-faced with fangs and blue eyes as big as copper bells, extremely ugly.Ah Yao was so frightened that her wits flew out of her wits, she faltered and said, "...Black, black-clothed Rakshasa!"

She had heard the herb pickers in the town talk about the "Heroes' Meeting" in Qianjiazhuang, saying that the most abominable devil in the world went on a killing spree that night, and the corpses of the people he slaughtered could be piled up into hills, and rivers of blood could flow to the gate of the village. outside.She once eavesdropped on Mr. Shu's anecdotes about the world, and someone painted on the spot, complacently pasting the appearance of Rakshasa as imagined by everyone on the earthen wall outside the teahouse.

Ah Yao could recognize him as a black-clothed Rakshasa for another reason—the man had a wishful tattoo on the back of his hand, and this was the mark of Houtianlou!

"You... What did you do to my mother?" She said in horror.

Yan Jiu changed his mind. "Nothing. But her life and death depends on your performance."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to go find that kid named Wang Xiaoyuan and let him find Shetiancha." Yan Jiubian had a vicious smile on his face, "Then tell me... where is his resting place?"

A Yao asked tremblingly, "Is my mother okay?"

"If you do what I say, she will be better than anyone else in the world." Yan Jiubian smiled.

"Do as you say, will my mother come back?"

The man smiled meaningfully. "You can see your mother."

Ah Yao panicked, her mind went blank.She panicked for a moment, and suddenly felt that the person in front of her looked familiar, so she exclaimed, "I...have I seen you?"

Yan Jiubian raised his eyebrows. "...Unexpectedly, the two of us are destined."

Ah Yao stared at him in fear for a while, then suddenly turned her eyes away as if being scalded.She tightened her sackcloth, and suddenly her voice trembled: "Aren't you... the young master of that Wang Shaoxia!"

That day when she climbed up to the roof of Qianjiazhuang to pick flowers, she happened to see Wang Xiaoyuan and another person fighting swords.Her eyes were sharp, and she saw that man fiercely knocked Wang Xiaoyuan on the head.Thinking about it now, the appearance of this person in front of him is quite similar to that young master who bossed around his servants back then.

No, it should be exactly the same.When she found this, Ah Yao trembled with fright.

Yan Jiubian's expression was blank.

He stood numbly in the distance for a moment, chewing the girl's words carefully.Suddenly, a burst of ecstasy welled up in my heart.

After the Qianjiazhuang Qunying meeting, he pretended to disappear from the Yubai swordsman disguised by Wang Xiaoyuan, but he never went far.Yan Jiubian expected that Jiulong was a place rich in medicinal herbs, and someone would definitely not let go of the opportunity to cure the poison of "one phase, one taste" and come here to look for ancient books of medicinal herbs.

So he lurked in Jiulong Town, pretending to be "Shaoyao Girl" and added a few strokes to the medicine book of Arhat Temple, and then waited for someone to find Snake Heaven Tea according to the fake prescription.He originally thought that he would find Zuo Sanniang first, or the Yubai Swordsman—unexpectedly, the person he most wanted to find had already arrived at his door.

For someone who looks exactly like him, he already has the answer in his heart.

Only the assassins in Houtianlou would have a similar appearance to him.And only one of them was poisoned by "one aspect, one taste", which made Zuo Sanniang so anxious.

"……found it."

Yan Jiubian's eyes widened suddenly, and he murmured repeatedly, joyfully, tenderly, but also viciously, loathingly, and bitterly, like raving. "I found it!"

Ah Yao stared blankly at him who seemed to be insane.

"I've been hiding for two years, and I finally caught my foot. What method am I going to use to deal with you, break your heart, cut your liver, and make your life worse than death?"

Yan Jiubian laughed in a low voice, and the cold laughter echoed among the damp and dark walls. "...Young Master."