Chapter 304

Half a day had passed since Gu Feixuan left.

The sky turned dark, the maid lit the candles, and the firelight filtering through the cabin windows faintly illuminated the river surface as they moved slowly with the current.

Voices rose inside the cabin.

"Whether it's 'taking something from a bag', 'pulling a wedge', or 'killing the chicken to get the eggs', they have all existed, just changing constantly with the succession of dynasties."

Li Miao gestured with one hand, full of interest, while Gao Anyu sat before him, hands placed properly on his knees, eyes wide and round, staring at Li Miao without blinking.

"In our Great Ming, it's mainly 'killing the chicken to get the eggs'."

"Before the castration, one needs to prepare half a bag of rice, sesame stalks, plant ash, a roll of oil paper, and a pot of stinking hemp water. After fasting from food and water for a day and washing the lower parts, it can basically begin."

"In late spring or early summer, they feed the person being castrated the stinking hemp water, and when he is dazed, they place him on a door panel. They make incisions on the left and right of the lower parts, put a cooked egg in his mouth so he hurts but can't scream, and he can only strain his lower body to squeeze those two things out himself."

"Afterward, they use a small axe-knife or hook-knife to trim the branches, and a fresh eunuch is born."

Gao Anyu shuddered.

"Yuck! "

"Uncle, isn't that too painful?"

Li Miao waved his hand.

"Long pain is worse than short pain; what follows is the real torture."

"After these procedures are done, the castration master inserts a wheat stalk into the person's lower parts and then leaves, abandoning the person in that room to endure half a month on his own."

"Think about it, the lower parts are a bloody mess, but a person has to drink and eat, right? Once they eat, they have to relieve themselves. Those filthy things get on the wounds, and the person has to endure the pain to pry open the wounds to clean them, otherwise, if the wounds rot, they will surely die."

"For those half a month, the person is in that dim room, chewing raw rice, enduring excruciating pain, not knowing if they can survive, prying open their own wounds to clean away that filth."

Li Miao squinted at Gao Anyu.

"I once knew an old eunuch who told me that when he was castrated back then, he listened to the wailing from next door and felt it would be better to just die."

"But after a few days, he began to look forward to that wailing, because it meant someone else was suffering with him, as if his pain were shared, as if he had a companion."

"But in the last few days before coming out, the wailing next door stopped."

"He almost went mad, enduring the pain to crawl off the door panel, knocking on the wall next door, screaming hoarsely, hoping that the companion he had never even seen could wail one more time, just to let him know he wasn't alone."

"But in the end, only he walked out of the room alone."

Gao Anyu lowered his head.

"Uncle, they are... a bit pitiful."

In the Great Ming, whether in the Wu Lin or the imperial court, almost everyone felt that eunuchs were born villains, and no one would sincerely respect a eunuch.

Gao Anyu thought so too; he asked Li Miao this question with a bit of teasing and mockery. He didn't expect that after Li Miao's explanation, he would instead feel pity.

Li Miao spoke calmly.

"Pitiful, naturally they are pitiful. But if you only heard the pity, then I spoke in vain."

Having said that, Li Miao turned his head to the side, raised a hand to stop Gao Anyu's words, listened intently for a moment, and frowned slightly.

"Let's go."

Suddenly, Li Miao stood up, grabbed Gao Anyu with one hand, and walked out of the cabin.

"What's wrong, Uncle?"

Gao Anyu didn't struggle; anyway, whatever Li Miao did was right, so he was just carried by Li Miao, turning his head to look at him.

"Saving someone, and by the way, finishing the lesson I didn't finish for you."

Li Miao paused, then suddenly vaulted several yards, carrying Gao Anyu as they vanished lightly into the night.

————————

"Ha—ha—"

Gu Feixuan panted a few times, suddenly gritted his teeth, used his only remaining left hand to press a few points on his body to stop the bleeding, and sat down dejectedly.

The child he had been carrying under his arm rolled down, tumbled on the ground, and bumped his face until it bled; tears welled up uncontrollably, but he forced himself to bite his lip and hold them back.

He rushed to Gu Feixuan's side, hugging his left hand to try and help him up.

But he was at most five or six years old, his stature only reaching Gu Feixuan's waist, and despite his little face turning red from the effort, he couldn't lift him even an inch.

In just half a day, Gu Feixuan's appearance was vastly different from what Gao Anyu had seen during the day.

His right arm was severed at the root, a huge gash ran across his back from his left shoulder to his right ribs, the long bow was gone, and the quiver remained, but only three broken arrows were left.

His face was pale, and even though he had pressed his acupoints, blood was still trickling from his wounds; he was at the end of his rope. Even if left alone, he would bleed to death within an hour or two.

Gu Feixuan barely opened his eyes and shook the child off.

"Go."

The child opened his mouth and shouted "Ah, ah, ah" a few times, but couldn't say anything; he was a mute.

He stood there thinking, then suddenly ran to the ground nearby, threw himself down, used his little hands to frantically scrape up a pile of withered grass, hugged it, ran to Gu Feixuan, and covered him with it.

"Heh."

A bitter smile appeared on Gu Feixuan's face.

He knew the child wanted to "hide" him with this withered grass.

Although this method was destined to fail, for a five or six-year-old child, not crying or making a fuss, and instead being able to think of ways to hide his tracks, his character was already remarkably resilient.

But the more the child did this, the more Gu Feixuan felt unwilling.

No... I, Gu Feixuan, can die...

But at least, at least I must earn a path of survival for him!

Gu Feixuan gritted his teeth, squeezed a sliver of strength from his body, and stood up, leaning against a tree trunk.

"Ah, ah."

Seeing him stand up, the child rushed over to help him walk.

Gu Feixuan smiled, took a signal arrow from the quiver, and handed it to him.

"Listen to me."

"You don't need to worry about me; with you, it's harder for me to run."

"Take this arrow, run along the riverbank, and see if you can catch up to a luxurious-looking passenger boat; throw this arrow over, and when they hear the sound, the people on the boat will come to find you."

"Tell them Gu Feixuan sent you to find them, do you remember?"

The child was still crying, pulling hard on Gu Feixuan's left hand, as if he couldn't hear his words.

Gu Feixuan's eyebrows stood up.

"Get out of here!"

"If you want me to live, go! Go get help!"

"If you stay here, you're just trying to kill me!"

The child shivered in fear and slowly looked up at Gu Feixuan.

Gu Feixuan gritted his teeth, hardened his heart, and pushed him to the ground.

"Go!"

Only then did the child climb up, look back at him with tears, and scramble into the reeds by the river.

Gu Feixuan let out a long breath, his strength drained, his vision went black, and he almost collapsed to the ground.

But he still mustered his last bit of internal energy, supporting himself against the tree trunk so he wouldn't fall.

He knew that if he fell now, the child would surely die. He had to buy at least the time of a stick of incense, to let the child run as far as possible.

And the people chasing him should be arriving soon.

Sure enough, a sharp, thin voice came from his side.

"Young Master Gu is truly remarkable; among the heroes who have come to suppress bandits recently, Young Master Gu is the hardest to deal with."

"To be wounded like this and still escape so far, I admire you, I admire you."

Gu Feixuan turned his head and saw a middle-aged man with a smooth face and affected posture land, looking at him with a smug expression.

"Young Master Gu, do you still have any strength?"

Gu Feixuan sneered.

"Yin-yang person, dead eunuch."

"Even if I had strength, I'd use it on a woman, not waste it on you."

The middle-aged man didn't get annoyed, flicked his fingernails, and said with a smile.

"Young Master Gu, what's the point of a war of words? You are already at the end of your rope; angering me now will only make you suffer more."

"Oh~"

The middle-aged man made an affected expression of sudden realization.

"Could it be you're trying to use your mouth to stall me, so that child can take the chance to run away?"

"I advise you not to waste your effort. I can hear his footsteps now. I just want to play with you; when he reaches the limit of my hearing, I'll kill you, and then chase him down and kill him."

"Young Master Gu, you can't save anyone with just your tongue."

Gu Feixuan had lost his weapon, his dominant hand was crippled, his internal energy was bottomed out, and he was almost bled dry; he was at the end of his rope.

The middle-aged man had always hated this kid who popped up out of nowhere to meddle, and now that he felt victory was in his grasp, he was naturally happy to mock him a few times, so that he would die with regrets, only then could he vent his hatred.

He didn't expect that after he said this, he would see a sneer suddenly appear on Gu Feixuan's face.

"When did I say I wanted to use my mouth to keep you here?"

"Do you know why my Wu Lin nickname is 'Arrow-Holding Young Master'?"

Gu Feixuan forced himself to take a breath, shakily extended his left hand, and gripped the two remaining arrows in the quiver.

The middle-aged eunuch frowned.

With the two arrows gripped in his hand, Gu Feixuan's aura changed.

The aura that had been fading like embers was gradually becoming sharp.

"Everyone in the Wu Lin knows I love to meddle. As long as there is injustice in the world that I, Gu Feixuan, cannot stand, I will meddle."

"When I first started out, I meddled in an affair no one dared to touch, and my bow was broken, my hand was broken... Back then, some people were like you, thinking I should have died."

"But in the end... the one who died wasn't me."

"To this day, I am still meddling."

Gu Feixuan raised his hand, bit one arrow in his mouth, gripped the other with his remaining left hand, and suddenly looked up at the middle-aged eunuch.

The middle-aged eunuch was actually so intimidated by that sharp gaze that his hair stood on end, and he couldn't help but raise his hands to defend.

"Hehe."

Gu Feixuan bit down hard on the arrow shaft, the blood in his mouth dripping slowly along the shaft, and he said indistinctly.

"Everyone in the Wu Lin knows the four young masters are Wine, Lust, Wealth, and Qi; do you know why I occupy 'Qi'?"

He took a step forward, stumbled, almost fell, stood straight shakily, and the smile on his face became even more ferocious.

"I just can't stand anything, I just want to take a bite out of the villain even if I die, I just can't swallow this evil breath in my heart."

"That child will definitely live, I said so."

Gu Feixuan dragged his broken body and slowly approached the middle-aged eunuch.

"This meddling, I, Gu Feixuan, am determined to do!"