By the time Luo Yin came to her senses, Gu Yu had long since vanished.
Luo Yin mentally hurled every curse in her rather limited repertoire at Gu Yu, gritting her teeth.
No wonder she had been so eager to drive that man out earlier...
With a sigh, Luo Yin leaned back in her chair, her hand resting on the Ink Zither... Her thoughts were unreadable.
Su Mo carried the little girl on his back, strolling leisurely toward the pleasure boat... After wandering around for a while, the little girl had declared that she could not walk any farther.
Clutching two bulging bags of food, the little girl swayed on Su Mo's back, bubbling with excitement.
"Young master, hurry up." The little girl looked up at the steadily darkening sky. "It looks like rain."
Su Mo reached behind himself to hitch her higher on his back and grumbled, "You little girl, all you know how to do is shout orders. I'm a scholar. How am I supposed to walk fast with you on my back?"
The little girl tilted her head, gave it some serious thought, then said, "Young master doesn't get enough exercise!"
"I am the illustrious Provincial Graduate Su! What do I need exercise for?" Su Mo curled his lip disdainfully.
"But I'm still growing!" the little girl said with innocent delight. "If you don't exercise, young master, you won't be able to carry me anymore."
Su Mo nearly tossed her off his back... What was this little brat thinking?
"Then when you grow up, you can carry me," Su Mo said shamelessly.
The little girl's face fell, leaving her looking utterly pitiful.
"But I don't want to exercise either."
Su Mo smiled. "That's fine. Just eat more and grow nice and strong. Then you'll be able to carry me!"
At that, the little girl immediately brightened again.
"Yes, yes! I'll eat more... and carry young master someday!" She raised the two enormous bags of food high in her little hands, her eyes shining.
The sky darkened as gray rain clouds pressed down upon the city.
They stretched into an endless mass, gloomy and terrifying.
"Another downpour..." Watching the changing sky, Su Mo finally quickened his pace.
"This damned weather is like a woman's expression. It changes without warning."
Su Mo jogged the whole way, jostling the little girl on his back until she grew dizzy.
Passersby hurried along, while the vendors beside the road packed up their stalls and headed home.
It was a scene of mountain rain gathering before the storm.
Drip... drip...
A few drops of rain began to fall.
"Ahhh..." Feeling raindrops land on her face and head, the little girl began yelling wildly. "It's coming down! It's coming down!"
Whoosh... whoosh...
Before Su Mo could get inside the boat, the rain poured down.
Su Mo and the little girl boarded the pleasure boat, but they still got a little wet before entering its cabin.
Rain pattered against the cabin roof, then ran off its eaves and dripped into the river.
Drip, drop...
Su Mo set the little girl down, took a face towel from the washstand, and dried her rain-soaked hair.
The little girl placed her two bags of food on the table, then turned to look at the downpour outside, her face full of worry. "It's raining so hard. Won't we get washed away?"
Su Mo smiled. "What are you afraid of? Even if we get washed away, we'll still be on the boat. What difference does it make where we stay?"
"But if we get washed away, we'll have to find a boatman to row us back. That'll cost so much." Neither of them could row, after all, and the mere thought of spending money made the little girl's heart ache.
Su Mo smiled at her words and patted her head.
"Then let's just make sure the boat doesn't drift away, shall we?" Smiling, Su Mo turned, fetched a mooring rope from beside the cabin, and headed toward the bow.
Seeing this, the little girl ran to one side, took out an umbrella, opened it, and followed him.
Su Mo tucked up the hem of his robe, secured one end of the rope to the boat, then jumped ashore with the other end in hand. The little girl jumped down after him, holding the umbrella.
After tying the other end to a mooring post, Su Mo clapped his hands with a smile. "See? With one more rope securing us, we won't have to worry about drifting away."
"Yes, yes!" The little girl nodded in agreement.
"Come on, let's go back aboard and eat." Su Mo let his robe's hem fall and smiled at her.
"Food... food..." The little girl jumped onto the bow first, then turned back to hold the umbrella over Su Mo below.
Suddenly, the little girl froze as she looked into the distance.
"Young master, look! There's someone over there!" she said, pointing toward the nearby street.
"What's wrong with someone being there?"
Wasn't it perfectly normal for someone to be there...? Puzzled, Su Mo turned to look.
The little girl's expression went blank, and she murmured, "It's the auntie who gave us all that money..."
The sky was dark, and torrential rain engulfed the city.
Rain scoured the streets of Capital City. On the deserted street, only a woman in tattered clothes remained, stumbling through the downpour with a baby in her arms.
Rain poured over the woman, dripping endlessly from her soaked clothes.
Yet the water dripping from her body carried a trace of dark red...
Cradling the baby, the woman staggered onward, each step seeming to consume the last of her life.
At last, she collapsed to her knees, threw back her head, and howled.
Her voice tore itself raw, as though her cries could rip open the clouds and rain that shrouded the heavens.
Watching from a short distance away, Su Mo felt something inside him violently torn apart.
"Stay on the boat. Don't move... I'll go take a look!" After giving the little girl that instruction, Su Mo turned and walked into the rain toward the street.
As he advanced through the torrential downpour, Su Mo's legs gradually grew heavy... He saw a dark red tint in the rainwater covering the ground.
Only when he approached the woman kneeling in the street did he see that she was wounded all over. The baby in her arms was wrapped in swaddling clothes, its condition hidden...
Dark red blood dripped into the rainwater, then washed away with it, staining the ground crimson.
Su Mo's heart clenched sharply.
The woman knelt with her face turned toward the heavens, letting the rain scour her cheeks.
Su Mo approached and spoke in a low voice. At some point, his voice had begun to tremble.
"Auntie, what happened?"
This auntie was the very person who had helped Su Mo and the little girl when they first entered Capital City without a penny to their names!
The woman lowered her head and looked at the swaddled baby. Without looking at Su Mo, she gave a desolate smile. "What else could have happened...? We merely ran into 'bandits' on the road, and my entire family was slaughtered!"
"Quick, bring the child and come back to the boat with me." Su Mo moved to pull her up, but a single look from her stopped him in his tracks.
There was something utterly terrifying in the woman's eyes. Just one glance left Su Mo frozen where he stood...
With bloodshot eyes, the woman looked down at the bundle in her arms and murmured, "Go to your boat? And drag you to your death as well?"
Why would going to his boat drag him to his death too? Su Mo could not understand.
"Why... would that happen?"
The woman paused at his words, then turned to look at him again.
Su Mo stood in flowing white robes, his tied hair spilling over his shoulders, but the rain had long since soaked him through.
Beneath his white robes, his frail figure trembled slightly in the wind. There seemed to be fear in his youthful eyes, yet despite that fear, he had not left.
The help she had casually offered him before had remained firmly etched in his heart.
"People are no more than ants. We are all merely pieces on the chessboard of those above us..." The woman's eyes were red, and it was impossible to tell whether rain or tears streamed down her face.
She turned again toward the empty street. Darkened Capital City felt chilling in the downpour. "How could you ever see clearly through the affairs of this world?"
Su Mo stared at the woman before him as though caught in a dream. When she had helped him and the little girl, she had been so noble, yet now she had been reduced to this...
"Go. If you leave now, there's still time..." the woman whispered.
"Stop talking. Come shelter on the boat with me." Su Mo shook his head, suppressed his fear, and tried once more to step forward and pull her up.
Looking at Su Mo's youthful face, the woman seemed to hesitate, a complicated emotion welling up within her.
"Go. Don't concern yourself with me! If they see you with me, you'll die too!" The woman lowered her head, gently stroked the swaddling clothes in her arms, and murmured.
"When mortals enter the game... they never meet a good end!"
Boom!
Thunder sounded. The words "never meet a good end" seemed to shroud Su Mo's heart in utter darkness, bringing an unbearable chill...
The rain washed over Su Mo, gradually blurring his eyes. He could not make out the face of the baby in the woman's swaddling clothes.
An inexplicable terror rose in Su Mo's heart. It was like a pair of enormous hands, pushing him to turn around, pushing him to leave...
Rain poured down as he looked toward the little boat nearby.
Aboard the boat, the little girl seemed to shake her head at him...
"We scholars, in life... owe no debt to our conscience. In death... owe no debt to heaven and earth... Why should we fear meeting a bad end?" An instinct within Su Mo drove him to halt his retreat, turn back, and speak...
Perhaps it was a scholar's pedantic stubbornness. Perhaps it was the pedantic stubbornness of this body's original owner!
...Could your heart find no peace either?
Before you continue