“Why did you put yourself in such a dangerous situation?”
Wun Siu Lan looked at Wun Fan seriously, tears still welling in her eyes. A few drops trickled down, leaving a glistening trail on her mask. Wun Fan was anxious and worried but he didn’t know what to do. Her voice was starting to quaver. Wun Fan was on the verge of panicking already.
“That, that wasn’t—I, I…”
Wun Fan smiled bitterly. He didn’t know what to say; he wanted to give an answer but he had none. All he could do was shrug and pretend like it was no big deal. This answer was the last straw on the camel’s back; tears started dropping from Wun Siu Lan’s eyes like scattered pearls, landing loudly on the collar of her robes.
It’s not like Wun Fan had never seen girls cry in front of him in his two lives. In fact, there were plenty of women who broke down in front of him, weeping and wailing. Typically, from the loss of a relative or a friend. However, those situations didn’t prepare him for his current predicament. If he could choose, he would rather face a Martial Master in combat than see Wun Siu Lan cry before him.
Wun Siu Lan seemed intent on letting it all out now that she had started crying. She sobbed and sniffled as her tears continued flowing without stopping, past her mask, down her cheeks and onto the ground.
Wun Fan had never felt his heart ache as it did now. Why did it hurt so much?
Wun Fan gritted his teeth. He grabbed Wun Siu Lan’s hand and walked toward the mountain at the back of the Wun Clan. It was a strange scene—the usually cool and elegant Young Master Fan looked lost and helpless; the noble and generous Young Lady Lan was choking up with tears. All the servants who saw the two of them as they walked toward the direction of the mountain were stunned and shocked. They had never seen Wun Siu Lan looking so vulnerable. Some of the servants were even trembling and were prepared to notify the clan master about what they had just witnessed.
Wun Siu Lan’s sobbing never stopped for the entirety of the walk. Wun Fan wiped her tears with his sleeve over and over while they walked. It was quickly soaked, and he felt helpless. Even being stuck at sixth-level for three years did not make him as helpless as he was when he looked at Wun Siu Lan’s red and teary eyes.
When they arrived at the mountain, Wun Fan made Wun Siu Lan sit down with him in front of a small lake. He looked up at the night sky and seemed to have suddenly decided on something. He laughed nervously and said, “Siu Lan, I won’t do it again.”
Wun Siu Lan opened her red eyes slightly and tried to stop crying. She pouted and frowned as she asked, “Do what?”
“Er…”
Wun Fan fell quiet. He was completely silenced by this impossibly difficult question. He had nothing to say and even that incredibly thick skin of his couldn’t stop his cheeks from blushing.
The crying, which had finally been stopped with much difficulty, resumed with the force of a broken dam. The flood was unleashed. Wun Siu Lan bit her lower lip as she choked up. Every sob pulled on Wun Fan’s heartstrings, frustrating him to no end. He felt his head swell. The reason and logic behind a woman’s behavior is an utter mystery. Which was why Wun Fan didn’t intend to solve the knot. He was going to deal with it in a different way!
“With force!”
Wun Fan pulled Wun Siu Lan a few steps forward and roughly wrestled her shoes away from her feet without asking. He made her sit down and put her porcelain-white feet into the water. Wun Siu Lan seemed to be shocked by his action. She stared at him dumbfoundedly and the waterworks finally stopped.
“You remember, I always brought you here to dip your feet in the water and watch the moon when you cried. Tell you stories and jokes.”
Wun Fan took off his own shoes and soaked his feet while he talked, enjoying the cool sensation. It was winter now and it was about ten degrees Celcius outside. The lake water was very cold, but they were both martial artists. This kind of temperature didn’t bother them.
“I don’t even know why you were so mature all the way back then.”
Wun Siu Lan finally broke into a laugh when she remembered those heart-warming and funny moments from the past. She had a look of nostalgia on her face.
The two of them sat by each other, quiet but without a hint of awkwardness between them. In fact, they enjoyed the silence. A few years ago, Wun Siu Lan and Wun Fan had been very close, just like this. It wasn’t until he started training and became stuck at sixth-level Martial Disciple that he started to become distant. Now that they were both sitting at the back of the mountain like this again, enjoying this strange yet familiar intimacy once more, Wun Siu Lan felt her heart warm.
A few moments later, Wun Siu Lan took off her mask. Her perfect features and her skin as white as snow, matched with the beauty of the lake, made her look sublimely beautiful.
“The mask feels uncomfortable on my face when it’s wet.”
Her voice rang in Wun Fan’s ears like silver bells. Paired with her looks, Wun Fan was completely enchanted by her. He stared straight at her stunning face. It was unbelievable no matter how many times he looked at it.
The ten-year-old Wun Siu Lan wasn’t tall, but even with her slender waist and modest chest, she still had a wonderful figure. Dressed in her blue dress under the quiet moonlight pouring from the skies, Wun Siu Lan looked ever more innocent and angelic. Even her youth did not diminish her looks. Wun Fan had never seen someone so pretty even in his previous life.
However, there were eight strange splotches of colour on her face. They were all sorts of shapes and colours, from milky white to purple to black to dark blue and even green. However, none of this stopped Wun Fan from appreciating Wun Siu Lan’s beauty. He had seen plenty of people with tattoos on their faces in his previous life. He had even seen people tattoo the white of their eyes. These small blemishes on her face were nothing in comparison to that.
Moreover, the number of those splotches of colour seemed to be decreasing as Wun Siu Lan grew older. He couldn’t help but wonder why the people of Heaven’s Martial World were so superstitious. Some people had spread the rumour that those blemishes had appeared on Wun Siu Lan’s face because she was possessed by an evil spirit.
“What is it?”
Wun Siu Lan’s cheeks had turned red and hot from Wun Fan silently staring at her. She couldn’t deal with Wun Fan’s intense gaze. She raised a hand to cover his eyes.
Erm, maybe that was a bit too much. She was his sister. Wun Fan quickly shifted his gaze away.
Men are way more faithful than women, in a sense. When they are sixteen, women like handsome men; when they are twenty-six, they like kind and thoughtful men; when they are thirty-six, they like reliable and trustworthy men. Meanwhile, men will always only like women who are sixteen, no matter how old they get.
Wun Fan turned up the melodramatic, looking up into the sky and sighing, “I’ll admit, it’s all the moon’s fault.”
“Tch, kids from the boonies are all missing their brains.”
Wun Siu Lan rolled her eyes and said disdainfully. However, the curve at the edge of her lips betrayed her. Only Wun Fan would always look at her face so appreciatively without caring for her blemishes. He was the only person who would…
It was late in the night. The mountain was completely silent. Wun Fan lay down on the grass with a thud, putting his hands behind his head as he looked up at the starry canvas. He enjoyed the coolness of his feet as he watched the silver river in the sky. He picked up a blade of grass from the ground and put it between his teeth as he chuckled, “You always hid here in this mountain when they laughed at you back then. And I was always the one to get you to come home by telling you stories and jokes.”
“That’s dirty.”
Wun Siu Lan snatched the grass from his mouth. She also lay down on the ground and looked at Wun Fan from the side. There was always an unusual maturity discordant with his age hidden behind that young face. Sometimes Wun Siu Lan wondered why he sounded so old when he spoke, even though they were the same age.
“Why don’t you tell me a joke now.”
“A long time ago, a great martial artist walked into a forest. He found a rabbit and asked it, ‘What do you usually do in a day?’”
“Rabbits can’t talk. A spirit beast would have to be very powerful to be able to speak like humans.”
“Sigh, kids in towns are always lacking in innocence. Use your imagination, will you? Fine. A long time ago, a great martial artist walked into a forest and found a very powerful rabbit. He asked the rabbit, ‘What do you usually do in a day?’”
“And so the rabbit replied, ‘I eat, I sleep and I hit up some friends.’”
“Wait, why would a very powerful rabbit still need to eat?”
“Mm, so the rabbit replied, ‘I sleep, I train and I hit up some friends.’ The martial artist found a few more rabbits and asked the same questions and every one of them replied the same way, ‘I sleep, I train and I hit up some friends.’ Until, one day, he found a rabbit that replied, ‘I sleep and I train.’ So the martial artist asked, ‘Why are you different from the other rabbits? They all sleep, train and hit up some friends.’ The rabbit’s expression changed and it slowly replied, ‘Because I am Upsomfrens.’ Hahahaha!”
“Yea, no. Not funny. Next one.”
“Alright…”
“Wait, I want to hear the one about that girl with the stepmother and two stepsisters.”
“Fourth Young Mistress, you’ve already heard that one so many times. Aren’t you sick of it yet?”
“Mm…?”
Killing intent.
“I believe that revision is the foundation to a healthy mind.”
“Shut up.”
Only two children sat in the mountain in the back, accompanied by the stars and their own whispers. Everything else was forgotten. Their training, their sadness and their worries. It was all gone.608Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe1kHAsOebk
