Chapter 9: The Reborn Yang Luo
Yang Luo hugged her knees and squatted in the corner. When someone passed by, she reached out together with the beggars beside her and shouted, “Please have mercy.”
Perhaps because she was thin and weak, although her face was dirty, it somehow seemed delicate. An old woman saw her, hesitated for a moment, then took a piece of cake from her basket and put it in Yang Luo’s hand.
Yang Luo thanked her repeatedly. She wanted to eat it in big bites, but saw the young beggar beside her looking envious. She sighed in her heart and broke the steamed bun in half to hand it to him. The young beggar happily ate it up.
Yang Luo took a bite of the steamed bun and found it somewhat amusing. She never thought she would fall to begging, and it had only been three or four days, yet she had gotten used to it—from being unable to swallow at first, now she could skillfully reach out to beg, even making pitiful expressions…
It turned out that to survive, she could endure any hardship.
Besides, it would be fine once A Sheng came back.
The thought flashed through, and Yang Luo felt a bit dazed. In her heart, this hunter youth had truly become a reliance.
In her gaze, a youth gripping a bamboo pole came swaying along with a basket on his back.
“A Sheng!”
Yang Luo happily stood up and rushed over holding the cake.
Mo Zheng looked at the girl running over and let out an “oh” in response.
Yang Luo handed him the cake in her hand, beaming: “It’s the sesame cake from Widow Wang’s shop. Mother used to buy it for me often. It’s pretty tasty.”
After she said that, she saw the bites she had taken on the steamed bun and felt a bit embarrassed.
“I ate a little.”
Mo Zheng seemed not to expect her first words to be this. He pursed his thin lips: “Although work ended today, breakfast was provided this morning. I ate half a pot by myself, enough to last the day. You eat it.”
Yang Luo seemed to only then remember what he had gone to do. Her eyes held expectation and nervousness as she asked softly: “Did you get it?”
Mo Zheng nodded and said softly: “There was a box buried at the spot you mentioned, full of gold and silver. These three days, I’ve taken some out each night and hidden it in the ground by the roadside outside the town. I successfully brought it all out.”
After hearing this, Yang Luo turned and walked away.
Mo Zheng was stunned for a moment, then saw Yang Luo hand the cake with her bites to a young beggar squatting in the corner, then stride back.
“Let’s go. We have money now. Why eat steamed buns?” she said. “Let’s go to a restaurant for a good meal!”
Mo Zheng couldn’t help but smile.
However, to eat a good meal at a restaurant, they needed to spend money elsewhere first. Yang Luo took Mo Zheng to buy new clothes first, then found an inn and got a room. They each washed up and changed into new clothes.
Yang Luo changed clothes and came out, couldn’t help raising her hand to sniff her arm. The inn was still too simple, with no fresh flowers provided, but the soapberry fragrance was also pleasing.
Since escaping that night, she had only wiped off the bloodstains.
However, with life and death at stake, she couldn’t worry about other things. Yang Luo couldn’t help but sniff her sleeve again. It shouldn’t smell bad now, right?
The door beside her creaked.
“A Sheng, have you changed…” Yang Luo said, hurriedly looking over. The words on the tip of her tongue stopped again, her gaze lighting up. “You look really good.”
Good-looking? Mo Zheng glanced at the cyan robe she was wearing.
Speaking of changing into new clothes, he reminded Yang Luo that ordinary clothes would do, it wasn’t good to be too eye-catching in public yet, so the robe she was wearing now wasn’t much different from the original hunter youth’s gray cloth robe, just with better fabric and better tailoring.
Yang Luo also felt that the Hunter Youth was not much different from before. His face had been washed, but because of the wind and sun exposure in the Mountain Forest, it still carried a slight grayish-black tinge.
But still felt it looked very nice, clean, refreshed, and neat.
“You’ll look even better once you’re older and your features fully develop,” Yang Luo said, gazing at the youth’s face, seemingly with a trace of reminiscence. “Moreover, you look even better when you smile.”
Mo Zheng’s gaze flickered slightly: “You can even foresee what I’ll look like in the future?”
Yang Luo’s expression stiffened, her gaze darting left and right: “No, I don’t have that kind of ability. No need to be a prophet for this. Whether it’s good-looking or not, you can tell at a glance. We women are best at this.” With that, she stepped forward first. “Let’s go eat quickly. I’m starving.”
Mo Zheng naturally saw her evasion, but she did not press further. This girl had previously revealed her own secrets once or twice, but if a person has one or two secrets, they would naturally have three or four…
It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care.
“Young Lady,” he said, stepping past Yang Luo and shaking the bamboo pole in his hand. “Let me clear the path for you.”
He is her guard, after all. Yang Luo couldn’t help but laugh. She cleared her throat lightly, slowed her steps, and walked forward slowly in a dignified and serene manner.
……
……
“What? You saw my mother’s sarcophagus, and there was still one of me inside?”
During the meal, Mo Zheng told her about the strange things she had seen in White Horse Town.
Yang Luo clearly didn’t know and hadn’t expected it, so she stood up in surprise.
Mo Zheng gestured for her to sit down. Fortunately, they were seated in an inside position. At this time, there weren’t many people in the restaurant. Because they were young and couldn’t drink alcohol or order many dishes, the shop assistant was too lazy to come serve them.
Yang Luo took a deep breath and sat down, biting her lower lip: “Is it an illusion created by the government or the villain?”
Mo Zheng shook her head: “Judging from the corpses’ posture, they were already holding each other before death.” She looked at Yang Luo and asked in a low voice, “Before you escaped, do you know what the situation was like at home?”
Yang Luo was dazed in expression, her hands in front of her clenching tightly.
“I, Mother pushed me out, told me to leave,” she murmured. “I thought Mother would come soon, so I left.”
Then the mountain bandits killed their way in, but Mother did not follow, and a big fire broke out in the house.
The fire started burning from the inside.
Is that where Mother is, the fire that Mother herself set?
Firelight flickered before her eyes, Mother’s face appearing and disappearing.
“I knew there would be a day like this….” It seemed that Mother’s voice from that noisy, chaotic night rang in her ears, “A Luo, you must live, you have to keep living.”
Amid her jumbled thoughts, she heard Mo Zheng’s voice.
“…You said earlier there are villains’ spies in the government, so I think perhaps this is your mother confusing them, creating the illusion that you are already dead.”
“You’re considered safe now too…”
Yang Luo was dazed, then suddenly thought of something else.
So Mother did this to protect her, to let her escape alive, creating the illusion that she was dead.
That meant Mother believed what she said!
Those incredibly unbelievable words she said back then, Mother believed them!
Tears slid down Yang Luo’s face.
Yes, she had actually been deceiving this hunter youth all along; she wasn’t some prophet who could foretell the future; she had died and come back to life, reliving it once more.
She actually wasn’t the current fourteen-year-old Yang Luo.
She was the nineteen-year-old Yang Luo.
She was the Yang Luo who, after Mother’s death, was recognized by Duke Ding’an’s Mansion and lived in the capital city for five years.
The Yang Luo five years later died on the day of her wedding, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw her long-dead mother and returned to the night before Mother’s death.
