People were coming and going on the road. After they rested for a while, someone turned into the woods from the road. Li Youba became nervous when he saw it. He tensed up to see who it was.
It was a father and son on horseback. The man had a bow and arrow and a knife. His thirteen-year-old son rode a pony and also wore a dagger. He was obviously a soldier.
The father and son took a look at Li Youba's ox cart, then found another tree, tied the horse's rein to the trunk, and sat down to drink water and eat dry food. It seemed that they were going to Chang'an.
When Li Youba saw the boy, he couldn't help but feel sad. He also had a daughter of a similar age who had trained in piano and dancing skills. She was sold to a powerful family as a musician when she turned twelve years old two years ago. He also had a seven-year-old daughter. The eldest daughter is still in training, and in a few years her father and daughter will be separated.
Suddenly, Li Youba felt horrified. He saw the boy staring at him from the opposite side. Li Youba's wife, two sons and young daughter were all sitting outside the bullock cart eating. Who was he looking at?
Then the boy stood up and walked over while staring at them. Li Youba became even more nervous and couldn't help but stiffen. Their status was so disparate that he had no intention of resisting and could only recite the Buddha's name secretly in his mouth.
He didn't know what kind of surprises fate would bring. In this unstable world, survival was indeed not easy. Maybe an unexpected incident would happen, and his family would be drowned by the torrent of time, leaving no trace of their bodies.
Unexpectedly, the boy walked towards his little daughter with a smile on his face, his eyes filled with intimacy, as if he was reunited after a long separation. What surprised Li Youba even more was that his daughter also looked at the boy happily. The two looked at each other, unwilling to let go of each other's eyes.
Opportunities in life are sometimes like this. If the boy hadn't just had a thought in his mind and begged his father to rest in the woods, and the slightest difference in his thoughts, the result would be a once-in-a-lifetime encounter. Sometimes he would miss it, and he would never see him again in his life.
The boy said: "I found you." The girl responded to him with a bright smile.
The boy walked towards Li Youba: "Is your family a Lehu family?"
Li Youba was so nervous that his words trembled: "Yes, Mr. Xiaoguan, we are Lehu."
The boy was very polite and did not mean to look down upon them at all: "If your niece comes to my house, she will have good food and shelter. You can rest assured."
The boy's father also came over. He was tall and had cold eyes. He seemed to be used to the battlefield.
"Young official," Li Youba hesitated, "My daughter is still young and is still undergoing training."
"My family can hire the best teacher, and she can learn whatever she wants." The boy said, "Whether it's flute, piano, dance, or even swords, bows and arrows, and horse riding."
After hearing this, the girl turned her head and looked at Li Youba eagerly, as if she wanted to run to the boy immediately.
Li Youba knew in his heart that Lehu would not be able to stand up for generations, and his children would be destined to be sold into slavery in the future. This daughter is the youngest, and he feels the most distressed. Although they have been a father and daughter for more than seven years, they will be separated sooner or later. It is better to break off the fate earlier than to be more sad in the future.
The boy's father patted his son on the shoulder: "Do you like this girl?" Then he raised his chin to Li Youba: "Here, how much do you want to bid?"
Li Youba gritted his teeth.
The boy's father said: "It is her blessing that my son has fallen in love with your daughter. To be honest, I am a family member of General Zhu Quanzhong. My son's name is Zhu Yan. The general is a popular figure in the court, and I was sent by him." I'm going to see the emperor, so why are you worried?"
Li Youba hurriedly lowered his head and said, "I don't dare. What an adult wants, how dare I not give it to you?"
"When you say that, it sounds like we are bullying others," said the boy Zhu Yan, "Why don't you follow us into Chang'an, and we will get the money and hand it over to you, okay?"
Li Youba finally left Chang'an, and now he has to go back. Fate has played such a trick, and he can only sigh.
Zhu Yan let the girl ride on his pony. The two of them were so intimate that it didn't look like they had just met. Li Youba and his wife were very surprised. Their youngest daughter did not show any sign of reluctance. Seeing her being so heartless, they couldn't help but feel very sad.
The ox cart and the two horses were walking side by side on the road to Chang'an. Not far away, they saw a young man standing upright in the middle of the road, with his hands cut behind his back, facing them. It was obvious that he was coming with bad intentions.
Master Zhu saw that something was wrong, so he drew his sword on his horse and pointed it at the man: "Please give way. It is not good to be hit by a horse or a car."
The young man was fair and fair, with a kind smile: "No need to bother, as long as I complete what I want to complete, I will leave obediently."
Zhu Yan also felt a tense atmosphere and couldn't help but hold the girl's hand back.
"Who are you? Tell me your name! You dare to obstruct General Zhu's envoy." Lord Zhu dismounted and fiddled with the shining sword in front of the young man.
"I said there's no need to bother." The young man smiled slightly. He was still fifteen steps away. Somehow, he came to Master Zhu in an instant. Before he could see clearly what technique he used, Master Zhu's big sword struck him. He landed with a clang and immediately collapsed on the ground.
The incident happened so suddenly that the boy Zhu Yan had no time to think about it, so he pulled out the dagger from his waist and got off his horse.
Just as he was about to step forward to take a breath, he felt a breeze blowing beside him. He turned around and saw that the girl on the horse had disappeared.
When he turned back, even the young man blocking the road had disappeared.
Zhu Yan searched for the girl like crazy, and Li Youba and his family also looked around in panic, but the girl seemed to have never appeared before and disappeared without a trace.
※※※
When the girl woke up, she saw the backs of two men, one was the young and fair man just now, and the other was an elegant man.
When the two of them saw that she was awake, they gently lifted her up and asked her to look around. Only then did they realize that they were flying very high in the sky, and the three of them were squeezed into a strange thing.
Looking down from a high altitude, autumn is getting thicker on the earth. Many trees are bursting with fiery red leaves, some are bright orange, or dazzling goose yellow. The whole land is like burning flames.
"Who are you?" The girl's lips were dry and white, and she asked fearfully.
"My name is Wu Sheng." The man said softly.
"Where are my parents?" the girl cried, "send me back."
"No, you can't go back. You will have a new life." Wu Sheng held the girl's hand: "You may not know that I have known you for a long time. I know you better than you know yourself."
The young man looked at the girl sadly and continued to control Xiancha. He knew that the girl would be like him, forgetting her past family and being trained to become a very powerful person.
Wu Sheng gently touched the girl's forehead and made her fall asleep again.
He let the girl sleep until he arrived at the Fairy Island, put her into a machine, renewed the cells throughout his body, activated certain turned-off genes, and added special ingredients developed by Wu Sheng into the cells.
When she woke up, except for the memory that she was a girl, the rest of her memories were sealed in the abyss of her heart.
When the girl woke up, he told her: "Your name is Hongye."
Because the red leaves are in full bloom in autumn.
Also because of her strong temper.
※※※
Zhu Yan searched for the girl for many years.
A few years later, Zhu Quanzhong finally usurped the emperor's throne and established a new national "Daliang".
The new regime was established in the storm and was extremely unstable. Zhu Quanzhong massacred those who were unwilling to obey him. The self-respecting generals who had troops in Chengdu, Sichuan were unwilling to obey and established their own Shu Kingdom on the spot.
Zhu Quanzhong prescribed medicine indiscriminately when his condition was unstable. The result was an era of great chaos that lasted for more than fifty years. China then entered the chaotic era known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms in later generations. Nations rose and fell like flowers picked up in the morning.
When Zhu Yan was eighteen years old, he expressed his ambition to his father: "It is not my ambition to run on the battlefield and pursue great achievements. I want to be sublimated in life, so I hope my father will allow me to go to Shu to seek enlightenment." What he did not say was, His real purpose is to find his beloved.
"As a father, I have always respected your ambitions, but the Kingdom of Shu is the enemy's territory! Isn't this a death wish?"
"Sichuan is the ancestral home of Tianshi Dao. I believe I can find what I want there." Zhu Yan's face was very insistent, "I will keep my name anonymous and will never reveal my surname Zhu."
Zhu Yan's father also knew that dragging his child to join the army in these troubled times would undoubtedly lead to his death.
Zhu Yan went to Sichuan to learn Taoism from his master, but only five years later, he heard that Zhu Quanzhong had been killed. Soon after, Daliang also perished, and then the emissaries sent by his father to send money no longer appeared.
