Chapter 288: Gui Fang Child
“Pretty Mother is gone.”
The little girl hadn’t even opened her eyes when this sentence popped out of her mouth.
Yun Ce didn’t answer; he just looked at the little girl and smiled.
“That younger brother who likes to drink milk is gone too.”
While the little girl rubbed her sleepy eyes, she said this, and Yun Ce felt her six senses were very sensitive.
“They went back. Your Mother is called Shen Sanniang?”
After the little girl finished rubbing her eyes, she seemed to wake up. She looked at Yun Ce and said, “You’re so silly. Mother is Mother; Shen Sanniang is Shen Sanniang. Mother only let me tell others that I’m Shen Sanniang’s child.”
Yun Ce rubbed his nose and said, “I am indeed pretty silly. What’s your name?”
“My name is Huo Wudi!”
“Whoa, what a domineering name.”
1 “You’re being silly again. Which girl has a name like this? It’s not enemy’s enemy; it’s the di from reed flowers. Mother said that in autumn, reed flowers bloom, a field of pure white like snow covering the ground, pure and flawless.”
1 “Ah? So your name is that beautiful? But there’s no such flower as reed flower in Great Han. Your Mother tricked you.”
1 The little girl wrinkled her nose and thought for a moment before saying, “An old grandpa said that too.”
1 “Oh, who is that old grandpa?”
1 “He’s a bad guy, a bad guy who hit my head with a hammer!”
1 “Do you know where he is?”
1 “Up in that tower.”
1 “How did you escape from that tower?”
1 “I played dead, and they threw me down.”
1 Yun Ce looked through the hole in the roof at the Panxing Tower over a hundred meters high, then at the little girl, and felt she was deceiving him.
2 “You’re silly again. Falling from the top of the tower would definitely kill me. I was thrown from not too high up. There were lots of little children’s corpses below; I fell on the corpses, so I didn’t die.”
2 Yun Ce took a whistle from his bosom and said to the little girl, “I’ll blow the whistle. Tell me if you feel uncomfortable.”
2 Huo Wudi glanced at the whistle, shook her head, and said, “Don’t. It gives me a headache.”
2 Yun Ce said, “Only headache?”
2 “And other things. Someone in my head tells me to stab my palm with a knife. I’m not silly, of course I won’t. Then my head starts hurting.”
2 After saying that, she looked at Yun Ce’s mouth holding the whistle and said, “I don’t want to sleep.”
2 Yun Ce took the whistle from his mouth and said, “No sleeping. What do you want to do?”
2 “I want to pee.”
2 “Then go pee in the empty ground downstairs.”
2 “Can’t pee.”
3 “Why?”
3 “Need to blow the whistle.”
3 “Me blow?”
3 “Me blow!”
3 Hearing this, Yun Ce laughed. He directly handed the whistle to the little girl. Then he saw the little girl run barefoot down the stairs to behind the house, find a hidden spot, and seem to pee.
3 It was just that the little girl took a bit long to pee. Considering that pooping also takes time, Yun Ce leaned by the window, watching the Red Date Horse standing under that withered tree getting rained on.
3 Suddenly, he heard the little girl’s scream from behind the house. Yun Ce quickly went to the back window, poked his head down, didn’t see the little girl, so he hurried to the front window. Just in time, he saw the little girl riding on the Red Date Horse’s back, using her muddy little feet to kick hard at the Red Date Horse’s broad back, seemingly wanting the Red Date Horse to carry her and run fast.
3 Then, the Red Date Horse carried the little girl into the house, shook its body, and threw her to the second floor.
3 Yun Ce reached out to catch the little girl and laughed, “Peed already and now you want to ride the horse?”
3 The little girl smiled sweetly and said, “Big horse is pretty.”
4 Yun Ce found a piece of charred charcoal and started drawing on the wall. The little girl was curious at first, but by halfway, the childlike quality on her face had mostly disappeared.
4 After Yun Ce accurately drew Heng Ji’s appearance on the wall, the little girl looked at him and said, “Give me a pancake.”
4 Yun Ce laughed, “In Chuyun City, right?”
4 The little girl said, “You still remember me?”
4 Yun Ce shook his head. “Don’t remember, but after seeing your eyes, it feels familiar. Weren’t you with your mother? How did you end up like this?”
4 The little girl wrinkled her nose again and said, “Can you help me kill a few people?”
4 Yun Ce said, “What, want to boss me around? Something your mother couldn’t do, you think you can?”
4 The little girl thought for a while with her head down and said, “I can call you Daddy.”
4 Yun Ce pursed his lips and said, “I don’t want a daughter born to a Gui Fang woman.”
4 “You hate Gui Fang people that much?”
5 “Yeah, hate them a lot.”
5 “Why?”
5 “No reason, just hate them, hate them very much.”
5 “Fine then. My Mother is a Gui Fang person. I’m leaving.”
5 “Put on your shoes before you go.”
5 Huo Wudi obediently put on her shoes, glanced at Yun Ce sideways as she went down the stairs, kept looking back at Yun Ce, and at the gate, looked up at Yun Ce on the second floor and said, “I’m really leaving now.”
5 Yun Ce smiled and waved to her. The Red Date Horse also poked its head out from the first-floor door, looking at the departing Huo Wudi.
5 Huo Wudi didn’t turn back. She opened the gate and walked into the ruined Chang’an City in the drizzle.
5 After Huo Wudi left, Yun Ce turned his gaze to the nearby Panxing Tower. He really wanted to know now what kind of slaughterhouse the Panxing Tower had become.
5 Although entering the Panxing Tower during the day versus at night doesn’t make much difference for experts, Yun Ce still felt it was better to go at night. At least he needed to make some noise; otherwise, what if that damned He Junnian really focused on his son?
6 This bastard even dared to harm Huo Qubing’s daughter; harming the Heir of the King of Changsha’s son should be no difficulty for him.
6 Regarding his two sons, Yun Ce would rather overthink than let any suspicion slip. If not for possibly not being able to beat He Junnian, Yun Ce would absolutely make killing He Junnian his top priority right now. As for whether it would be killing the wrong person, Yun Ce felt there was no point in investigating that.
6 Tonight, Yun Ce planned to burn down the Panxing Tower.
6 Although there weren’t many incendiary bombs left made from the juice squeezed from those highly combustible insects’ bodies, Yun Ce planned to use them all tonight. One per floor could only burn up to eight floors.
6 Once Chang’an’s rain starts, it falls until dawn the next day. Not sure if it’s to add some romantic atmosphere or something else, but this light rain falls slower than the rain soaks the ground, especially the early spring rain, which people like to call the apricot flower rain that doesn’t wet clothes.
6 As soon as it got dark, Yun Ce changed into tight clothes and specially compressed his height by three inches, making him instantly look burly, even his voice became rough.
6 Such an unmasked man naturally used a Horse Chopping Saber, and a three-pointed two-edged one. The advantage of this saber is that whether chopping down, upward slashing, or withdrawing, it can injure; no one without strength can’t use this saber well.
6 There weren’t many people near the Panxing Tower to begin with. After it got darker, Yun Ce circled from those ruined houses toward the Panxing Tower.
6 When he arrived at the bottom of the Panxing Tower, he realized this tall building was almost a dangerous ruin. The once magnificent golden first floor was now as dilapidated as a ghost domain. He had planned to break through the first floor’s defenses and kill up to the second, but not only was there no one on the first floor, even the second was empty.
6 Luckily, the stairs looked relatively clean, so Yun Ce went straight up the stairs.
7 The third floor was extremely empty, with a bonfire burning inside and seven or eight people warming themselves around it.
7 Yun Ce originally wanted to kill these seven or eight people, but accidentally saw a small body slinking along the wall corner toward the fourth floor like a mouse.
7 This piqued Yun Ce’s interest. Without disturbing the guards on this floor, he flipped out through the broken window, dug into the stone crevices outside with his hands, and little by little pulled his body up to the fourth floor.
7 After waiting a bit, Yun Ce saw Huo Wudi arrive on the fourth floor like a mouse. Her limbs were extremely flexible. Though she was crawling, her speed wasn’t slow. Seeing her consciously stop and go, deliberately avoiding some hidden guards, he knew she came here often.
7 Yun Ce slowly used his fingers’ strength along the wall to climb to the roof like a giant gecko. Moreover, he was right above the little girl’s head: she crawled, he followed; she stopped, he stopped. He just placed an incendiary bomb at the right spots.
7 After the little girl climbed to the sixth floor, she no longer tried to go higher but skillfully crawled left. Yun Ce hurriedly followed.
7 For a tall building like the Panxing Tower, it was truly luxurious only with enough lamp light. Without lamps, such a tall building was just a useless pillar.
7 Previously, Zhang Min said that going up this building didn’t require stairs; there was an elevating device that could send people and things to the proper floor. Now, after the ravages of war, climbing stairs was the only option.
7 The sixth floor was still dim, with only a few rooms leaking some light.
7 Huo Wudi shrank in the wall corner, put the whistle in her mouth. Yun Ce sensed waves of silent sound waves emanating from her. The originally dead silent sixth floor suddenly filled with dense rustling sounds. Yun Ce looked toward the sound and, even with his iron will, broke out in cold sweat seeing a large group of little kids crawling out on all fours from the dark rooms.
8 “What’s going on? Why have all the Fanlu come out?”
8 With the noisy voices, Yun Ce saw Huo Wudi mix into the group of children, deliberately switching positions a few times. If Yun Ce hadn’t been watching, he might have let this little one slip away.
8 Many women wearing veils ran out from the lit rooms. They moved hurriedly but methodically, quickly herding these crawling children back into the rooms.
8 Yun Ce followed Huo Wudi from the roof into a room. The ceiling was high; Yun Ce hid on the beam and looked down to see that woman stack the little children like bricks in the corner, then close the door and leave.
8 Yun Ce flipped down from the beam, patted the still pretending-to-be-dumb Huo Wudi, and said, “What is this place?”
