A Pitiful Child...
Before dawn the next day, Su Yang was awakened from his sleep by Gu Feidi.
The party packed up and mounted their individual horses.
Qin Jianyue and Chi Tong went back to the capital to assemble the imperial forces in the southwest; Uncle Luo, his two nephews, and Gu Feidi would travel northwest to the wasteland.
They parted in front of the inn. There wasn’t much to say other than wishing each other luck as they reined their horses away.
It was inconvenient for Gu Feidi and Su Yang to follow Luo Yu and Luo Yin too closely, so they fell a little behind and picked a hidden road a little further away.
* * *
Two days later, in the evening when the sky was just turning dark, Gu Feidi and Su Yang found a secret mark beside the road sign left by Luo Yu.
Luo Yu and Luo Yin had met scouts from the Village of Mount Qianfeng and were ready to enter the camp set by the Central Plains Wulin forces.
Their camps were set up on a part of the wasteland that was a great stretch of flat land with no boulders around to take cover behind. Gu Feidi and Su Yang could only stay behind a slope far away, but enough to see the smoke coming from the campfire.
Suddenly, a tiny black spot flew through the air and disappeared in the dim afterglow of the sunset in the blink of an eye.
Gu Feidi frowned instinctively. “Boreal owl…this thing is troublesome. If we can’t get rid of them, all of our movements will be detected.”
Su Yang looked up at the sky and grumbled, “We should have brought bows and arrows.”
But Gu Feidi shook his head. “The boreal owls fly in silence. With their small stature and fast speed, it would be very difficult for us to shoot them down, even with bows and arrows once the sky turns dark. Fortunately, they don’t speak. They are just tools meant for delivering messages.”
Su Yang tsked and complained, “The E’Luo Gui Faction is really something. This is pretty much information warfare, and even in the sky...what were the words again? Air supremacy?”
“Air supremacy?” Gu Feidi was puzzled by the borrowed terms.
“It means...where a side holds complete control of the skies.” Su Yang explained. “Whoever controls the sky is more likely to win the war...I think that’s what the words mean.”
“You always come up with fantastic and unique things…” Gu Feidi exclaimed with a placid smile, gazed up toward the stars that began to shine in the sky and sighed. “If there is a way for people to fly, the sky...would indeed be a place of strategic importance.”
Here, they talked leisurely about things that were not marginal; on the other side, the Village of Mount Qianfeng’s scouts led Luo Yu and Luo Yin into a tent surrounded by the Tengyun Pavilion’s guards. Luo Yu asked his nephew to wait outside and entered the tent alone.
Gu Ruohai turned to the newcomers, and surprise filled his eyes. He instantly put down the paper and brush in his hands, frowned and asked, “You came down from the mountain! What are you doing here?”
Then he asked another question in a lower voice, “Is it related to my son犬子 in a literary sense, means young dog or puppy. It could also mean ‘my son’ in a humble way. I want to translate this to dog/puppy so much. ?”
Luo Yu greeted Gu Ruohai with a smile, returned the jade pendant and informed, “I can’t control your son...but I happened to have something that demanded my attention down the mountain, so we travelled to Qing Wu County together. When we stopped by the House of Jade, he received a letter from Shizun that ordered him to journey to the wasteland with Su Yang...Due to your plan to drive him out of your pavilion for protection, they decided not to show their faces for fear of disrupting your plan.”
Gu Ruohai frowned and wondered, “Why is Shizun intervening in this matter? Isn’t she always indifferent to the world?”
Luo Yu shook his head. “I asked that question myself. I just think...Shizun has foreseen this. Naturally, she has her own purpose if she intervenes.”
As he spoke, he suddenly laughed once. “Didn’t we all come to the conclusion that our Shizun is an immortal in our mortal world and is accumulating enough good karma to ascend back to heaven?”
Hearing this, Gu Ruohai also laughed. “At first, our Zhu Zhi-Er竹枝儿 or dearest bamboo branch. I thought it was a cute nickname for Su Huaizhu. took us and tried to infiltrate the Hidden Pearl Pavilion to investigate…”
ered eyes and prolonged silence, Luo Yu added, “I was also shocked when I heard he abducted Jin-er to the Evil Sect. I took a risk to sneak into the Phantom City to find out the truth. But I ended up almost getting caught by the Royal Court. After several difficulties, I returned to the Elegant Jade Peak and learned about your marriage...Later, the turbulence in the Jianghu with the addition of Jin-er’s death made me not want to ask anymore.”
“It was a thing of the past,” Gu Ruohai said with a wry smile. “Asking won’t make a difference.”
“But recently, I came across a secret that was kept during that period.” Luo Yu frowned. “So I wanted to know, why were you two separated? Was it really because of Jin-er?”
A long silence.
Afterwards, Gu Ruohai took a slow and deep breath, releasing it in a long sigh. Then he whispered, “When you went to find A-Yue, Su Huaizhu and I travelled around the Jianghu with Luo Jin.”
That year, Jiuyan Lake…
Gu Ruohai and Su Hauizhu were just young men before their coming of age at twenty when they learned of their mutual affections, the deep feelings they felt towards each other.
Along with them was E’Luo Jin, the faction king’s young daughter, using an alias of Luo Jin. Her brother entrusted her under the care of his two good friends—Luo Jin knew their relationship and often made fun of it, which Luo Yu didn’t think much about, so he left his younger sister with the two young men.
Who knew, when the three lingered around the Jinyan Lake...One evening, Su Huaizhu suddenly found a letter on the table in their room.
Gu Ruohai asked about the letter, but Su Huaizhu smiled and hid the letter. Under the assumption that it might be news sent from the Evil Sect, Gu Ruohai didn’t pursue the contents as he entered his usual meditation.
Gu Ruohai stopped once it was deep into the nightfall and found that Su Huaizhu, who usually stood guard beside him, was not in the room.
Thinking Su Huaizhu was going to deal with the Evil Sect task listed in the letter, he wasn’t in a hurry to find the other man. Instead, he got up and leapt out of the window, planning to admire the starry sky.
However, the moment he stepped on the roof, he noticed that the window of the next room, which was Luo Jin’s room, was wide open, with no one inside.
Feeling very worried because his friend entrusted Luo Jin to their care. He feared that something might have happened to the girl out at night, so he immediately went to search for her.
When he finally found her, it was in the woods on Jiuyan Lake’s bank...A scene that would haunt him for life...
“I punched him that day. Instead of remorse, there was rage on his face...He told me to leave.” Gu Ruohai said, facing the ground. “Luo Jin cried to me for help, but...my mind was blank. I didn’t know what to do. I...ran away.”
As he spoke, he forced a smile, a very bitter smile. “Who would have thought that not only did he not return to the inn, he also abducted Luo Jin back to the Evil Sect. Even went to brothels along the way. He would leave an anecdote to each person he spent a night with and was also mentioned for the tattoos on his body that very few people knew about. I couldn’t tolerate it, I couldn't believe it...but I never thought that the next time we met would be at my wedding.”
“He caused a huge scene at your wedding, but didn’t tell you the reason for it?” Luo Yu asked.
“I…” Gu Ruohai sighed. “At that time, he hurt my father and wanted to kill my new wife. I was so angry that we fought without holding back, and...I lashed out incoherently toward him.”
“I couldn’t stop him because his skill was well above mine. I could only protect the innocent woman in my arms...He was in the perfect position to end the lives of both me and my wife, but he withdrew his attack. Seeing him stop, I wanted to ask him about that year, but before I could, he...turned around and killed a guest present, broke through the encirclement and left...Then came the news of his bloodshed in the Central Plains.”
“Twenty years later, these things are still fresh in my mind.” Gu Ruohai closed his eyes. “If he didn’t like Luo Jin then, why did he have a private meeting with her by the lake late at night…”
Luo Yu sighed. “If he did like Jin-re, how could he force her?”
“Actually, when I thought about it back then, I really thought he had an ulterior motive.” Gu Ruohai said. “But I was already matched under my parent’s order, to get married and bear an heir. And not long after, I heard the news of the Evil Sect’s newest Young Master...Why should I force out the truth of that year? In any case, we can’t go back to how things were.”
Shaking his head with a painful smile, he continued, “I didn’t realise how wrong I was until I met Su Yang for the first time this year. I shouldn’t have given up on seeking the truth, even if the truth would mean giving up my feelings. However, when I asked Su Huaizhu about that year again during our last meeting, he still refused to answer earnestly.”
Upon hearing this, Luo Yu sighed again, “Su Yang...is a pitiful child.”
Gu Ruohai frowned. “I learned that he practiced cold natural mental skills with cold natural energy residing inside of him to save my son...You treated him. How is he?”
It’s really interesting story❤️
Thnx for all of your hard works❤️