Chapter 342

Half a day had passed since Gu Feixuan left.

The sky turned dark, and the maid lit the candles. The firelight shining through the lattice windows of the passenger ship faintly illuminated the river surface, moving slowly along with the current.

Voices could be heard from the cabin.

"Whether it's 'taking something from a bag,' 'pulling a wedge,' or 'killing the chicken to get the eggs,' they have all happened; they just change constantly as dynasties rise and fall."

Li Miao gestured with one hand with great interest. Gao Anyu was sitting in front of him with both hands placed properly on his knees, his eyes wide and round, watching Li Miao without blinking.

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

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

"In late spring or early summer, the person to be castrated is forced to drink the stinking hemp water. When he is in a daze, he is placed on a door panel. An incision is made on the left and right sides of the lower body, and a cooked egg is placed in his mouth, making him hurt but unable to scream, forcing him to use all his strength in his lower body to squeeze those two things out himself."

"After that, a small axe or hook knife is used 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 not as good as short pain; what follows is the real torture."

"After these procedures are done, the castration master inserts a wheat stalk into the lower body of the castrated person and then leaves, leaving the castrated person in this room to survive on his own for half a month."

"Think about it, the lower body is a bloody mess, but people have to eat and drink, right? Once they eat, they have to defecate. Those filthy things stick to the wounds, and the castrated person has to endure the pain to pry open the wounds to clean them; otherwise, if the wounds rot, he will surely die."

"For these half a month, the castrated person is in this dim room, chewing raw rice, enduring excruciating pain, not knowing if he can survive, prying open his own wounds to clean those filthy things."

Li Miao squinted at Gao Anyu.

"I once knew an old eunuch who told me that when he was castrated, he heard 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 sound, because it meant there was still someone suffering with him, as if his pain was shared, as if he had a companion."

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

"He was almost driven mad, enduring the excruciating pain to crawl off the door panel, knocking on the wall next door, shouting 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, he was the only one who walked out of the room."

Gao Anyu lowered his head.

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

In Great Dashuo, whether in the Jianghu or the imperial court, almost everyone thinks eunuchs are born villains, and no one will sincerely respect a eunuch.

Gao Anyu thought the same; he asked Li Miao this question with some mockery and sarcasm. He didn't expect that after Li Miao's explanation, he would instead feel pity.

Li Miao said calmly.

"They are pitiful, naturally. But if you only heard the pity, then I said it for nothing."

Having said that, Li Miao turned his head to look to one side, raised his 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; in any case, whatever Li Miao did was right. He was just carried by Li Miao and turned to look at him.

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

Li Miao paused for a moment, then suddenly leaped several zhang, disappearing into the night with Gao Anyu, light as a feather.

————————

"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 on the ground in despair.

The child tucked under his arm rolled down, tumbled on the ground, and got a bloody cut on his face. Tears welled up uncontrollably, but he forced himself to bite his lip and hold them back.

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

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

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

His right arm was severed at the root, a huge gash crossed his back from his left shoulder to his right rib, and his long bow was gone. The quiver was still there, but only three broken arrows remained.

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

Gu Feixuan barely opened his eyes and flicked his hand to push the child away.

"Go."

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

He stood there and thought for a moment, then suddenly ran to the ground nearby, threw himself down, used his little hands to scrape together 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 use the withered grass to "hide" him.

Although this method was destined to fail, for a five or six-year-old child, not crying or making a fuss, and instead finding a way to hide his tracks, showed a rare resilience of character.

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

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

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

Gu Feixuan gritted his teeth, squeezed a bit of strength out of 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."

"Don't worry about me here; 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 passenger ship that looks luxurious. Throw this arrow over; when they hear the sound, the people on the ship will come to find you."

"Tell them it was Gu Feixuan who sent you to find them, do you understand?"

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

Gu Feixuan's eyebrows stood up.

"Get out!"

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

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

The child was startled, trembling, and slowly looked up at Gu Feixuan.

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

"Get out!"

The child then climbed up, turned his head to look at him while crying, and scrambled into the reeds by the river.

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

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

He knew that if he fell now, the child would still surely die. He had to at least buy a stick of incense's worth of time 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 injured like this and still be able to escape so far, I admire you, I admire you."

Gu Feixuan turned his head and saw a middle-aged man with a fair face and no beard, moving with affected, mincing steps, landing on the ground and looking at him with a smug expression.

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

Gu Feixuan sneered.

"Yin-yang person, dead eunuch."

"Even if I had strength, it would be used on women, not wasted on you."

The middle-aged man was not annoyed; he flicked his fingernails and said with a smile.

"Young Master Gu, what is the point of a verbal dispute? You are already at the end of your rope. Provoking me now will only mean you suffer more."

"Oh~"

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

"Could it be that you want to use your mouth to stall me, so that child can take the opportunity to run away?"

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

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

Gu Feixuan's weapon was gone, his dominant hand was ruined, his true energy was bottomed out, and he was almost bled dry; he was at the end of his rope.

The middle-aged man had always loathed this kid who popped up out of nowhere to meddle in other people's business. 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, which would satisfy his hatred.

Yet he didn't expect that after he said these words to break his spirit, Gu Feixuan suddenly revealed a cold sneer.

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

"Do you know why my Jianghu nickname is 'Arrow-Biting Young Master'?"

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

The middle-aged eunuch frowned.

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

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

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

"When I first started out, I meddled in an affair that no one dared to touch, and my bow was broken, my hand was broken... back then, there were people like you who thought I should just die."

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

"Even now, 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 forced by that sharp gaze to have his hair stand on end, and he couldn't help but raise his hands to defend himself.

"Heh heh."

Gu Feixuan bit down on the arrow shaft, blood from his mouth dripping along it, and he said in a muffled, unclear voice.

"Everyone in the Jianghu knows the Four Young Masters are Wine, Lust, Wealth, and Spirit. Do you know why I occupy 'Spirit'?"

He took a step forward, stumbled, almost fell, stood straight shakily, and the smile on his face became increasingly 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 foul 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!"

(End of chapter)