The old man turned the stick slowly, stirring it in the broth to keep it evenly heated. The shiny steel surface of the machete reflected half of his face like a mirror. The quality of that knife is great. In today's world, even a peasant girl rarely encounters such a high-quality sword. She couldn't help but wonder why it appeared on a bandit.
"It seems I have no choice." The old man said.
A gang of dozens of people surrounded them. Their smiles were ferocious and obscene. One of them walked around the bonfire and tried to drag the peasant girl away from her position.
"Hey, hey!" the man wearing the gold ring hissed. "Isn't this funny," he said. "You didn't hear me?"
The person dragging the peasant girl hurriedly let go of her hand and backed away fearfully and cautiously.
"My guys always can't tell the right time." said the man wearing the gold ring. "They are always hungry like wild dogs and cannot learn the importance of waiting. But they are very diligent when they are working, and they are also very diligent when they are enjoying themselves. .”
He waved his hand and asked those people who were laughing strangely to sit a little away from the bonfire. The three girls who were chained were also driven over. They were all barefoot and covered in bruises. One of them had a rough leather cord around his waist. She had obviously been hung from the horse by the rope, so there were several bloody marks. When she was tremblingly driven into the crowd, several people stretched out their hands and pinched her miserable body. The other two people received the same treatment, but they were all silent, and only made a vague and suppressed cry at a very rare moment. Someone pushed them to the ground and surrounded them.
"Stop it," said the man with the gold ring, "can we do it for these two lovely grandsons? Guys, you can do that every day for as long as you like. But now this loving Grandpa is going to tell a story, so can you bear it a little longer?”
"I'm only interested in his granddaughter's story tonight," one of them said. The roar of laughter covered the shrill howl of the winter wind.
Once again the man with the gold ring stopped them. "That depends on how this grandpa behaves tonight," he said. "We have to keep our word - but it's a bit boring these damn winter nights. I think everyone would like to have something to keep warm."
"I would like to dedicate food to these gentlemen." The old man said knowingly. So several men came up and took away the broth and all the food. They took out many exquisite silver tableware from the goods outside the willow forest, used them to serve soup and cut meat, and ate happily.
Someone filled a golden bowl with broth, sprinkled with crumbs of bread, and presented it to the man wearing a gold ring in front of the bonfire. Instead of roughly grabbing pieces of meat with his hands like his accomplices, he scooped up bread and soup with a spoon. He took a slow taste and said, "Your craftsmanship is not bad. And this meat, I'm surprised it wasn't found in a cemetery."
"It's venison, sir. I didn't lie."
The man with the gold ring put down his spoon. His sharp wolf-like eyes passed through the mist emitted by the broth and turned back and forth on the old man's face.
"You don't look like an old man from the village," he said.
"There are always days when people are young and proud."
"Ever worked as a servant for a noble?"
The old man's face showed that subtle and gentle smile again. The expression was so obscure that only a peasant girl could distinguish it. Flames flickered in his dark, pupilless eyes. Under the beating tongues of fire, tiny shadows squirmed like snakes and ants.
"I once had the pleasure of meeting a king," he said, "unparalleled in his life."
The man wearing the gold ring laughed disapprovingly, and the suspicion in his cold eyes was replaced by contempt and disgust. He stroked the back of the knife with his right hand and said: "You speak loudly, old man. This makes me doubt whether your previous guarantee is true. But maybe what you said is true, because the king is all liars, scum, fools, lunatics, Coward... As long as you have seen a king with a slightly normal mind, even if he is the monarch who dominates a cesspit, he can be regarded as unprecedented."
The old man stared silently at the bonfire. The man wearing the gold ring tapped the edge of the bowl with his spoon: "I think we can get started."
The peasant girl raised her head. These outsiders have aroused her displeasure. If the old man had not been present, she would have called Feilong to come. But she still hesitated because she had never revealed her true identity to the old man. While she was still hesitating, the old man told Zhuoyi's story from the beginning. This time it was simple and quick. He said that the Zhuoyi clan hid in the mountains, and the man wearing the gold ring laughed.
"It seems that this is a strong but cowardly person." He commented, "But killing someone scared him so much. If he really has no one to deal with, he should kill those pursuers as well."
"The enforcers of that realm have powers he doesn't understand."
"The mountain people you are talking about? Are they ghosts or elves?"
"More like gods."
The man wearing the gold ring made a hissing sound. The expression on his face suddenly changed, and he said in a dead voice: "The gods are just a scam."
"You think so." The old man said unsurely.
"If they are not the biggest liars, then they are the biggest lies, right?" said the man with the gold ring. "Look what kind of life we live. If the world is supported by eight huge pillars, then It was created by the gods. What are they doing now? Or do they suddenly not care about us at all? In that place of mist, people used to say that the gods lived there, but who has seen it? Huh? Pefen Na! Have you ever seen the gods?"
"I've seen their wooden idols!" A man sitting far away replied loudly, "Their butts are round and smooth! You have to drill a hole and try!"
"That's so hard!" said another.
"Stuff it with a leather pad and pancake, you idiot! You and a woman will get stuck in it!"
They were laughing like crazy. The peasant girl sat quietly where she was, feeling puzzled. She saw the old man's eyes turned towards her, with a strange and knowing smile on his face.
"I know little about the gods here," the old man said, "but I did see you, with blood on your hands and heavy words."
The man wearing the gold ring looked at him interestingly. "Heavy," he repeated, "I was just joking, old man. We should all take it easy, there is no way to escape in the end."
"Some things can only be told as jokes because they are too heavy, sir. Understatement is just a form of trick."
"You do love to tell stories." The man said, "Go on. What happened to our murderer trapped in the mountains?"
"An adventure... One night, when he was sleeping in the cave, he heard voices coming from outside. At this time, he had been away from the world for ten years and had never heard a word from outsiders. He was full of surprise and suspicion. He stood up and secretly peeped outside. Under the bright light of the full moon, he saw a group of young women bathing and playing in the mountain lake..."
The audience laughed strangely again. The man used the ring on his left hand to scrape off the oil stains on his lips, and said with a smile: "I guess he has taken a fancy to one of them, or a few of them."
"As you expected, sir. Among those young women with mysterious origins, he saw a black-haired woman. Her beauty was unprecedented in the world, and her manner was like the incarnation of the moon. That made Zhuoyi become obsessed. He stole the lightest and most gorgeous clothes on the shore and hid in the trees to wait. At dawn, all those women put on their clothes and turned into various birds and flew away. Only the black-haired woman could not find her lake. She had to stay alone in the lake with her blue gauze skirt. At this time, Zhuoyi stepped forward and talked with the woman. She asked him to return the clothes, but... I don't think there is any need to elaborate on how he chose. That matter It happened, and you gentlemen can't guess it."
The old man stirred the bonfire with a wooden stick to make the weak flames grow again and burn violently. He pointed his stick at the fire and said: "Ah, love. The fire of salvation, the light of crime."
Those people were all laughing so hard that they couldn't breathe. The old man just raised his eyebrows indifferently. He continued: "Now Zhuoyi is no longer a person. He feels that this is some kind of destiny, guiding him to repent for this. And the mysterious woman - she claims to be the fiancée of a Dragon King, has now She became his wife. They decided to leave the mountains together and start a new life in a place no one could find. So they walked westward, experienced many hardships, and finally came to the westernmost area of the continent. There, the mountain people The rule of the country is the weakest, and the decrees of the central monarch are also difficult to reach. They found a refuge with the local famous families. This is the time when the Zhuoyi family has reached middle age, but his martial arts have been honed in the mountains, and he has become a member of that family. The eldest son’s martial arts teacher. Not long after, his wife became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy.”
The old man spoke slowly. It was past midnight, the stars began to dim, and there was a faint red light in the sky. The man wearing the gold ring shook his head slightly, showing an inconspicuous tiredness.
"A lucky story," he said. "But where's the mythical part of it? Because the woman can turn into a bird when she puts on clothes?"
"Because of their children."
"Oh, a blessed darling of God."
"No."
The old man paused for a while amid the howling of the winter wind. With an almost helpless smile on his face, he said when the wind was over: "That's a crazy baby."
