The Foolish Girl of Wading Village

Nights in Wading Village were never quiet.

The dogs at the eastern end of the village barked their heads off for no reason. Who knew if they had spotted a rat or something else.

The donkey next door at Old Tom's house joined in too, braying nonstop. It sounded like someone pumping a bellows.

Sena leaned against the little attic window, clutching a hard piece of black bread in her hand. She did not eat it, merely rubbed her thumb over its rough surface.

She was the daughter of Old Buck, the blacksmith. Sixteen this year.

Girls her age either had already married and gone off to bear children and cook for someone else, or were figuring out whether to marry the village butcher or the farmer.

But Sena was different.

She did not want to marry the butcher. He always smelled like pig intestines, a stench no amount of washing could remove.

Nor did she want to marry the farmer. She did not want to spend her life facing the dirt with her back to the sky, living like her father Old Buck, circling a furnace all day long.

She wanted to marry someone... different.

Even that lame minstrel who only knew how to brag would be better than these rough men with nothing but wheat and pork in their heads.

At least pretty words could come out of his mouth. He knew there was a huge puddle called the "sea" beyond the village, and that city nobles ate with spoons made of silver.

Unfortunately, she was not pretty.

Sena unconsciously touched her face. It was pitted in places, scars left behind by the smallpox she had caught as a child.

There were not many, but to those picky young men, they were enough to make her less desirable.

"Ugh."

Sena sighed.

Just as she was about to close the window and crawl beneath her musty blanket to sleep, her gaze suddenly froze.

The moon was quite large tonight.

It hung in the sky like a pale, eerie plate, casting a bleak white light over the ground.

Something had appeared beneath the ancient tree at the village entrance.

More precisely, it was a person.

The person was curled up in a hollow among the tree roots, their body tucked into a ball like a rain-soaked quail. A layer of fallen leaves covered them, rising and falling with each breath.

"Who's that?"

Sena's heart skipped a beat.

This village was so remote that even tax collectors could not be bothered to visit. Usually, apart from Old Pete's broken-down carriage, only a few stray dogs wandered around the entrance.

A vagrant?

A deserter?

Or... one of those fallen knights from the stories, injured and forced to hide in the countryside to recover?

The moment that last thought surfaced, it grew wildly in Sena's heart like weeds.

Was that not how storybooks always went?

On some dark and stormy night, an innocent, kind-hearted farm girl saved a handsome man covered in blood.

To repay her, the man took her back to his castle, and from then on she lived a fine life, eating white bread every meal and wearing silk dresses every day.

Though reason told her that he was probably a chicken thief or a beggar crawling with lice.

Still, the thought of what if? made her heart itch.

"I'll just take one look."

Sena told herself that in her heart.

"Just one look. If he's a beggar, I'll come back and sleep. If he's a thief, he's not far away, so I'll call Dad and have him smash him with a hammer."

She quietly stepped away from the window without daring to light a lamp. In the dark, she put on her slightly more respectable old leather shoes and draped a patched coarse-cloth coat over herself.

Old Buck slept like a dead pig in the front room, his snores shaking the rafters.

Sena slipped out through the back door like a cat.

The wind outside was harsh, stinging her face.

Sena pulled her clothes tighter and shuffled toward the village entrance, step by step.

With every step, her heartbeat sped up. Thump, thump, thump—it felt as if it would leap out of her throat.

The closer she got to the old tree, the stronger the scent of soil mixed with an unfamiliar smell became.

Ten meters.

Five meters.

Three meters.

Sena stopped.

She hid behind a nearby haystack and poked out half her head.

By moonlight, she saw the person clearly.

He wore linen clothes of uncertain origin, far too large and baggy. His trouser legs had been rolled up several times, making him look rather ridiculous. The boots on his feet were torn as well, with strips of rag visibly stuffed inside them.

So he really was a vagrant.

Half the pink bubbles in Sena's heart burst with a pop.

Of course.

Where would so many fallen knights come from?

In times like these, knights were drinking red wine and holding beautiful women in the cities. Who would come to a godforsaken place like this to sleep in a tree hollow?

"Bad luck."

Sena muttered and turned to leave.

Just then, the person curled into a ball rolled over.

The face that had been buried in the crook of his arm was revealed.

Moonlight passed through the sparse leaves at just the right moment, shining on that face like a spotlight, perfectly centered.

Sena's feet seemed nailed to the ground.

She did not leave.

She even forgot to breathe.

What kind of face was that?

Even though it was smudged with a little dirt, even though his hair was a mess like a bird's nest, even though his lips were dry and peeling from thirst.

None of that could conceal that devastating beauty.

His brows looked as if they had been drawn with the blackest charcoal, slanting sharply toward his temples with an indescribable heroic air.

His nose stood as straight as the finest sword spine her father had ever forged.

Though his closed eyes revealed none of their brilliance, his long lashes cast shadows over his eyelids that made her want to reach out and touch them.

How was this a vagrant?

He was clearly a divine statue that had stepped down from a mural!

Sena felt a buzz in her head, as if something had exploded.

The best-looking man she had ever seen in her life was the poor scholar from the neighboring village who could play a few notes on the lute.

But compared to the person before her, that scholar was like a potato freshly dug from the dirt.

They were not even the same species.

"My heavens..."

Sena covered her mouth, afraid she might cry out.

What had she called him just now?

A beggar?

A thief?

If beggars could look like this, would not the king in the city be too ashamed to do anything but jump into the moat?

Sena involuntarily stepped two paces forward.

She wanted to see him more clearly.

She crouched down, less than half a meter from his face.

Up close, the impact was even stronger.

His skin was somewhat dirty, but the foundation was excellent, white as freshly milled flour.

Even the beauty-obsessed wife of the town's general store owner could not compare to that delicate texture.

This was the power of Sword Brows Starry Eyes.

Even if Su Li was down and out like a dog, even if his current social standing was below zero, that face was still hard currency.

As Sena stared, her face began to burn.

Her heart beat even faster than before.

But this time, it was not fear. It was restless desire.

She felt like a thief who had done something wrong, secretly peeping at a treasure that did not belong to the mortal world.

She unconsciously touched her face again.

Rough.

Pitted.

She could even feel a pimple rising on the tip of her nose.

A powerful wave of inferiority washed over her, dousing more than half of her earlier excitement.

"Even if he's fallen on hard times, he's still a cloud in the sky."

"What are you? Mud on the ground?"

Sena cursed herself in her heart.

Was a man like that someone she could even dream about?

He probably would not spare her a second glance. If he woke up and saw a pockmarked girl staring at him and drooling, he might be so frightened that he would run for his life.

But...

She could not move.

She really could not move.

Her legs were weak.

Sena remained crouched there like a cat guarding dried fish, wanting to eat it but not daring to open her mouth, not even daring to reach out and give it a scratch. She could only stare helplessly.

"He's so handsome."

Sena could not help muttering softly.

"If I could just get him to say one word to me, even if he called me an ugly freak, my life would have been worth it."

It was quite a pathetic thought.

When an ugly person insulted you, it was humiliation. When a beautiful person insulted you, it was a gift.

Just as Sena was still tangled up in her own thoughts, pulling herself in opposite directions.

That "divine statue" moved.

Su Li did not sleep well.

His dreams were filled with food.

One moment, Old Jack was holding a meat pie and tempting him with it. The next, Lady Charlotte was forcing poison down his throat from a goblet of red wine.

Then the scene shifted, and a giant roast chicken danced in front of him, shouting as it danced, "Eat me! Eat me!"

Su Li suddenly opened his mouth and bit down hard.

"Ah!"

A short scream jolted him awake.

Su Li snapped his eyes open.

What he saw was not roast chicken.

It was an enlarged, pockmarked face. And a pair of eyes as wide as brass bells.

At that very moment.

Su Li's hand had clamped tightly around the other person's wrist, while his mouth was still in a biting posture. He had bitten nothing but air, and his teeth had knocked together painfully.

The air froze.

The wind stopped.

Even the stupid dog at the eastern end of the village stopped barking.

The two of them simply stared at each other, eyes wide.

They were close enough to smell each other's breath.