Chapter 45 - Injuries and Memories, the Ma Family Village
That night, a crimson glow haunted Jiading Prefecture. The Changfeng Escort Agency was engulfed in a blazing fire. Nobody trapped in the escort agency survived. The fire left nothing behind.
On the official road under the night sky, Fang Dingwu reined in his horse, turned his head towards Jiading Prefecture, and felt inexplicably lost.
Chi Nanwei startled awake and hurriedly reached for the Tang Blade beside her pillow, only feeling reassured after finding it. Holding the blade tightly in her arms, she turned her head to look out the window.
The moonlight was enchanting, but Chi Nanwei appeared melancholic. The trace of tears on her face was particularly noticeable in the harsh moonlight.
The Changfeng Escort Agency eventually became nothing more than another set of ruins. It was revived only as a topic for small talk or a statistic for documentation until it became a matter of the past.
Over time, people gradually stopped mentioning it until it faded from public memory. But for some, it became a scar deep in their memories, always accompanied by sharp pangs in the quiet hours, reminding them of its existence.
When Ye Beizhi opened his eyes, he found himself covered in a quilt in a dimly lit room. A curtain separated the room into an inner and outer area.
The room was small, with a few bags of sweet potatoes scattered in the corner. The air was filled with the scent of herbal medicine.
Ye Beizhi rubbed his head as he propped himself up. His chest ached faintly. Looking down he saw that his chest was wrapped in layers of clean gauze, indicating that someone had been taking care of him.
At the head of the bed was a set of linen clothing, neatly folded. Although it was well-worn and patched in a few places, it was very clean.
Ye Beizhi sat up straight, lost in his thoughts.
After a while, he put on the linen clothes and walked out of the inner room.
As Ye Beizhi lifted the door curtain and stepped out, he noticed a young girl dozing by the door. She looked no older than fifteen or sixteen.
Next to her was a pot of medicine simmering on the stove, its aroma reinforcing the medicinal fragrance in the air.
The outer room was slightly larger than the inner room but still limited in size.
The room was furnished functionally. There was a bed, a cabinet, and a wooden rack against the wall that held farming implements like sickles and hoes. The lone table in the room had a few stones filling in for a missing leg.
Ye Beizhi did not disturb the dozing girl and wandered around the room, occasionally picking up a farming tool to inspect.
"Ah! You're awake?" The girl, who had woken up at some point, saw Ye Beizhi and sounded quite surprised.
Ye Beizhi glanced at her and nodded.
"Ah, the medicine! Oh no, oh no…" The girl fussed around the medicine pot and grumbled, "You didn't even wake me up. The medicine is almost burnt…"
"Where is this?" Ye Beizhi asked, interrupting the girl's chatter.
"This? This is the Ma Family Village," the girl replied casually, still fussing over the stove.
Ye Beizhi nodded in acknowledgment. After a moment, he asked, "How long have I been unconscious?"
The girl counted on her fingers. "Three days, I think… um… including today, it should be four days."
"How did I end up here?" Ye Beizhi asked as he sat at the table and rubbed his aching chest. "How did I get here?"
The girl turned her head in surprise and remarked, "How odd. Don't you remember how you got here? Didn't your friend bring you? Your friend also gave my father a lot of silver and told us to take good care of you… But how did you get hurt so badly in the first place?"
"Friend?" Ye Beizhi repeated. He was getting increasingly puzzled.
"Yes, he said he was your friend. From his attire, he seemed to be from a prominent family… You don't have amnesia, do you?" The girl looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember something. "By the way, your friend left you a letter."
The girl extinguished the stove to let the medicine cool, and walked to the bedside to search. "Let me find it… I remember my father put it around—Here it is!"
The girl handed the letter to Ye Beizhi and returned to her chores.
Ye Beizhi examined the letter. The envelope was plain, with two words: "For Stormqueller." He opened the envelope, which contained a single sheet of paper. The white paper was filled with black ink characters that read:
Stormqueller,
If you are reading this letter, you are still alive. You need not concern yourself with who I am, but remember this, the one who wants your life and exterminated the Changfeng Escort Agency is the current external prime minister: Qi Zongbi.
Whether it is the Ghostbance Association or the Imperial Guardians, they are all just his tools. Of course, you can choose not to believe me, but it seems you have no other choice.
Lastly, the situation outside is tense, and the Imperial Guardians are still looking for you. If you choose to seek death, I will not stop you. The Ma Family Village is remote, so the Imperial Guardians won't be able to find you in the immediate future. It can provide a temporary safe haven.
Ye Beizhi read the letter silently and then put it away into his clothes.
The girl came out of the inner room just as Ye Beizhi was putting away the letter and asked, "So, did you remember anything? What did your friend say?"
Ye Beizhi looked at the girl carefully and asked, "How far are we from Luzhou?"
"Luzhou… I haven't been there, so I don't know," the girl said, furrowing her brow as she thought. "But my father surely knows. When he comes back at noon, you can ask him."
Ye Beizhi fell silent. They waited at opposite ends of the table, remaining quiet. The girl fiddled with the pot of medicine.
"Here, drink this," the girl said, pouring the medicine into a bowl and handing it to Ye Beizhi.
"Uh… Thank you," Ye Beizhi said, taking the bowl, momentarily stunned. He drank the medicine.
"Hey," the girl said, leaning on the table with her hands and looking at Ye Beizhi with round, curious eyes, "What's your name?"
"Ye Beizhi," Ye Beizhi said as he finished drinking the medicine.
"Ye Beizhi?" The girl dipped her finger in the remaining medicine in the bowl and wrote on the table. "Is 'bei' the one that means north? The one from 'north and south'?[1]"
Ye Beizhi nodded.
"Which 'zhi'?" the girl asked. "Is it the 'zhi' for counting birds and animals?"[2]
Ye Beizhi shook his head and dipped his finger in the medicine to add the character "wood" next to the "zhi" written by the girl on the table.[3]
"So this character is read as 'zhi'… I've never seen it before," the girl said seriously, writing it on the table repeatedly as if imprinting it deeply in her memory.
Ye Beizhi watched the girl diligently write on the table.
She kept on writing and explained, "I don't know many characters. I learned some from listening to the teacher at the private school, and some were taught to me by Ma Erdan. Ma Erdan said he couldn't remember characters and was always punished by the teacher.
"I think if I went to study, I would definitely be better than him… But my father disagrees. He says that a girl shouldn't go to school… because they won't be able to get married! But I still really want to go…"
Ye Beizhi listened silently and then asked, "What… What is your name?"
"Me?" The girl looked up, smiling at Ye Beizhi from ear to ear. "Hee, my name is Ma Xiuxiu!"
Outside, the sun reached its peak in the sky and the wind started to rise.
1. The character 'bei' here is written as 北. ☜
2. The 'zhi' she refers to here is 只 which is a unit of measurement in Chinese usually used when talking about animals or body parts. ☜
3. Ye Beizhi's name is written as 叶北枳 so his 'zhi' character is the Chinese character for wood 木 + the character 只 = 枳, which is the word for orange, but both 只 and 枳 sound the same, as do soooo many Chinese words. ☜
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