"An'an, An'an!"
And so Jiang Wang crouched there on the ground, and so he gathered An'an into his embrace.
He held her little head and rubbed it again and again. "Don't be so good. I don't need you to be so good."
His voice was strangely hoarse: "You may be as willful as you like, as innocent as you like. You may do whatever you like, love whatever you like — you simply don't need to be... this understanding."
He regretted deeply not having kept Jiang An'an away when he went to ask Zhao Rucheng for money. He had always told himself his little sister was shy and sensitive, yet still he had overlooked it.
He truly was as close to Zhao Rucheng as a brother, close enough to share even superior cultivation arts without a thought, to say nothing of such external trifles as gold and silver. But he had forgotten — An'an did not know that.
All An'an could think was that she was a millstone around her brother's neck. That her brother, in order to give her a home, had gone to ask someone else for money.
"Good heavens." Since their father had sickened and died, Jiang Wang had almost never wept. Yet at this moment, sheltered behind Jiang An'an's little head, he wept like rain.
"Brother... what's wrong with you?" After a long while, Jiang An'an asked.
"Ah, nothing — nothing." Jiang Wang reined in his emotions, still holding Jiang An'an in his arms. "From now on, don't call Zhao Rucheng 'the pale-faced one.' It'll upset him."
"But he really is very pale."
"'Pale-faced' doesn't mean his face is pale... Ah, whatever. Call him whatever you like, never mind whether it upsets him."
"Mm!"
Only after he was certain no more tears would fall, and that the traces of weeping would go unnoticed, did Jiang Wang draw Jiang An'an from his arms and gaze at her very seriously. "Your brother has to apologize to you. Your brother shouldn't have lost his temper with you. Brother... was being a brother for the first time, and he did it very badly."
Jiang An'an twisted the corner of her clothes, a little embarrassed. "I was being a sister for the first time too, and I did it badly. I shouldn't have cheated, shouldn't have angered the master..."
"Is that so?" Jiang Wang wiped Jiang An'an's small face with the thumbs of both hands, gently brushing away her teardrops. "So you were being a sister for the first time?"
Jiang An'an nodded.
Jiang Wang moved his thumb in front of Jiang An'an and raised it. "Then you really do have talent! I've never met a better sister than you."
"Hehe..."
An'an smiled, a little sheepish.
Winter had already set in. The traces of tears still lingered on her small face, but at that smile, spring in all its fullness bloomed.
...
...
Every man in this world has his own fate-destined course, and no two fates are alike. Half of that saying was nonsense of the highest order.
Sun Xiaoyan thought himself a fool, truly a fool. How could he have believed in that so-called bond of brother and sister? How could he have trusted the words of that demoness?
"There are all sorts of delicacies out there — nothing you could ever taste in Sanshan City!"
"I promise I won't bully him, and I'll be a proper example to follow. Please, let me lead the way!"
"Just think of it as my little brother and me going on a trip. We'll have a wonderful time!"
The words still rang in his ears. The words still rang in his ears!
Sun Xiaoyan, thirteen years old this year, bore a name elegant and refined enough, yet his figure was... exceedingly round.
Huff! Huff!
He ran forward with difficulty, his whole belly burning hot, sweat streaming down like rain. His once bright and beautiful clothes had long since lost all trace of their true appearance, rumpled and filthy beyond recognition.
He felt he could collapse on the spot, slump into a lump of mud, a pig, or whatever else could be slumped into. But he did not dare.
He wished so badly to cry. He should have clung to his mother's leg and never let go back then. How had his heart been so clouded as to trust his lifelong enemy?
He ran, and he ran.
Seen from afar, one could barely make out his legs; the boy looked like a gaudy ball rolling along.
He did not want to roll!
Unless he could roll all the way back.
To think of him, Sun Xiaoyan — son of the lord of Sanshan City, the single male heir of the Sun clan this generation — how glorious had he been across all the Sanshan City domain? One might even say he stood "above a thousand, beneath a single one"!
Why, then, had he so lost his senses as to go far from home alone with that "single one"? Was it not delightful to lord it over others back in Sanshan City? Was it not a joy to bully the other children? With the tiger gone from the mountain, could he not play the local tyrant?
Sun Xiaoyan stopped.
Not because anger had risen in his heart and courage from the depths of his belly — he did not possess that thing called courage...
It was because he truly felt he had reached his limit.
It was not that he did not want to run. He genuinely could run no more.
Then he heard that most familiar voice closing in on him at a shocking speed.
"Sun! Little! Fatty!"
Before Sun Xiaoyan could react, a foot — crystal-white, tender, quite beautiful in its way — landed on his backside in a manner decidedly not beautiful.
This time he truly rolled.
Whistling across the imperial highway, careening and rolling wildly.
When he finally came to a stop, he was already bruised and swollen all over his face.
He sat there swaying on the ground, feeling the whole world sway with him.
The first thing that appeared before his half-shut eyes was a pair of bare feet carved like fine jade, bare all the way up to the shins, then a pair of six-length divided culottes well-suited for battle. The owner of those bare feet wore a short side-clasped jacket and had a petite, lovely little face that matched her small frame perfectly.
Beside her, the obese Sun Xiaoyan was almost a hulking giant. But his lips puckered as though he was about to burst into sobs: "Sis, I can't run any more. I feel I really can't go on!"
"It's not your feeling that matters, it's mine." Sun Xiaoman crouched down, smiling at him sweetly. "I feel you can."
This air of Sun Xiaoman's — as though she meant to reason with him — gave Sun Xiaoyan courage.
He flung himself flat onto the ground and began to howl and groan: "Ow-ow, I'm dying here, can't move..."
He had the air of a dead pig that fears no scalding water. Go on then, beat me to death if you can.
Standing, he was a mound; lying down, he was still a mound. His proportions were very evenly distributed.
"Is it really so hard for you to lose some weight?" Sun Xiaoman asked.
To help him lose weight, Sun Xiaoman had forced him to run all the way here on the strength of his body alone. Everyone else had foot-speed talismans and such to use freely — they could leave whenever they wished, rest whenever they wished.
Sun Xiaoyan was filled with an indignant sorrow: "My weight is born of heaven!"
"There's no such thing as a naturally fat man — only a lazy fat man!"
It was inadvertently... quite inspiring.
But Sun Xiaoyan was unmoved. He even closed his already-small eyes with the air of "I won't listen, I won't listen, I simply won't listen."
"You're round as a ball. When the time comes and you take the field, won't you be shaming our Sanshan City?"
"Everyone calls us mountain savages anyway — what face does Sanshan City even have!"
Sun Xiaoman pursed her lips and said no more.
Alarm shot through Sun Xiaoyan's heart. In an instant he opened his eyes again and gazed at his sister with a look of pitiable entreaty: "You're my own flesh-and-blood older sister — where is it written that an older sister can be so cruel to her younger brother? And I'm so small still, I'm just a child!
Besides, as they say, an elder sister is as a mother, and a mother merciful, a son dutiful. Be good to me now, and I'll be good to you later — we'll all be happy together. Isn't that joy itself?"
He argued on and on, his logic very clear.
"Everyone says to raise a child you must strike with the stick in one hand and offer a date in the other. With you I've seen nothing but the stick — not even a date pit!"
The more Sun Xiaoyan spoke, the more aggrieved he grew, until at last he actually burst into loud weeping.
"Ah." Sun Xiaoman looked at him with great helplessness, lightly patting his chest, her manner very gentle. "Your sister is a sister for the first time, and she's done poorly..."
And in the same breath she seized Sun Xiaoyan's collar and lifted his whole body from his fallen posture. "Then get up and hit me!!!"
She punched Sun Xiaoyan flying with a single blow, roaring: "Can't you act like a man? All this whimpering and crying!"
The others accompanying from Sanshan City only watched the scene in silence, shrinking their necks and not daring to step in.
Sun Xiaoyan spun and tumbled in midair, and the moment he touched down, without a word he set off sprinting again — for though he could not be beaten to death, being beaten hurt dreadfully!
No way around it. Run, then.
Up ahead... up ahead was Fenglin City, wasn't it? How much farther... how much farther!
Wuuu...
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