The Reticent Blade

Chapter 45 - Injuries and Memories, the Ma Family Village

Chapter 45 - Injuries and Memories, the Ma Family VillageThat night, a crimson glow haunted Jiading Prefecture. The Changfeng Escort Agency was engulfed in a blazing fire. Nobody trapped in the escort agency survived. The fire left nothing behind.

On the official road under the night sky, Fang Dingwu reined in his horse, turned his head towards Jiading Prefecture, and felt inexplicably lost.

Chi Nanwei startled awake and hurriedly reached for the Tang Blade beside her pillow, only feeling reassured after finding it. Holding the blade tightly in her arms, she turned her head to look out the window.

The moonlight was enchanting, but Chi Nanwei appeared melancholic. The trace of tears on her face was particularly noticeable in the harsh moonlight.

The Changfeng Escort Agency eventually became nothing more than another set of ruins. It was revived only as a topic for small talk or a statistic for documentation until it became a matter of the past.

Over time, people gradually stopped mentioning it until it faded from public memory. But for some, it became a scar deep in their memories, always accompanied by sharp pangs in the quiet hours, reminding them of its existence.

When Ye Beizhi opened his eyes, he found himself covered in a quilt in a dimly lit room. A curtain separated the room into an inner and outer area.

The room was small, with a few bags of sweet potatoes scattered in the corner. The air was filled with the scent of herbal medicine.

Ye Beizhi rubbed his head as he propped himself up. His chest ached faintly. Looking down he saw that his chest was wrapped in layers of clean gauze, indicating that someone had been taking care of him.

At the head of the bed was a set of linen clothing, neatly folded. Although it was well-worn and patched in a few places, it was very clean.

Ye Beizhi sat up straight, lost in his thoughts.

After a while, he put on the linen clothes and walked out of the inner room.

As Ye Beizhi lifted the door curtain and stepped out, he noticed a young girl dozing by the door. She looked no older than fifteen or sixteen.

Next to her was a pot of medicine simmering on the stove, its aroma reinforcing the medicinal fragrance in the air.

The outer room was slightly larger than the inner room but still limited in size.

The room was furnished functionally. There was a bed, a cabinet, and a wooden rack against the wall that held farming implements like sickles and hoes. The lone table in the room had a few stones filling in for a missing leg.

Ye Beizhi did not disturb the dozing girl and wandered around the room, occasionally picking up a farming tool to inspect.

"Ah! You're awake?" The girl, who had woken up at some point, saw Ye Beizhi and sounded quite surprised.

Ye Beizhi glanced at her and nodded.

"Ah, the medicine! Oh no, oh no..." The girl fussed around the medicine pot and grumbled, "You didn't even wake me up. The medicine is almost burnt..."

"Where is this?" Ye Beizhi asked, interrupting the girl's chatter.

"This? This is the Ma Family Village," the girl replied casually, still fussing over the stove.

Ye Beizhi nodded in acknowledgment. After a moment, he asked, "How long have I been unconscious?"

The girl counted on her fingers. "Three days, I think... um... including today, it should be four days."

"How did I end up here?" Ye Beizhi asked as he sat at the table and rubbed his aching chest. "How did I get here?"

The girl turned her head in surprise and remarked, "How odd. Don't you remember how you got here? Didn't your friend bring you? Your friend also gave my father a lot of silver and told us to take good care of you... But how did you get hurt so badly in the first place?"

"Friend?" Ye Beizhi repeated. He was getting increasingly puzzled.

"Yes, he said he was your friend. From his attire, he seemed to be from a prominent family... You don't have amnesia, do you?" The girl looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember something. "By the way, your friend left you a letter."

The girl extinguished the stove to let the medicine cool, and walked to the bedside to

"So this character is read as 'zhi'... I've never seen it before," the girl said seriously, writing it on the table repeatedly as if imprinting it deeply in her memory.

Ye Beizhi watched the girl diligently write on the table.

She kept on writing and explained, "I don't know many characters. I learned some from listening to the teacher at the private school, and some were taught to me by Ma Erdan. Ma Erdan said he couldn't remember characters and was always punished by the teacher.

"I think if I went to study, I would definitely be better than him... But my father disagrees. He says that a girl shouldn't go to school... because they won't be able to get married! But I still really want to go..."

Ye Beizhi listened silently and then asked, "What... What is your name?"

"Me?" The girl looked up, smiling at Ye Beizhi from ear to ear. "Hee, my name is Ma Xiuxiu!"

Outside, the sun reached its peak in the sky and the wind started to rise.

1. The character 'bei' here is written as 北. ☜

2. The 'zhi' she refers to here is 只 which is a unit of measurement in Chinese usually used when talking about animals or body parts. ☜

3. Ye Beizhi's name is written as 叶北枳 so his 'zhi' character is the Chinese character for wood 木 + the character 只 = 枳, which is the word for orange, but both 只 and 枳 sound the same, as do soooo many Chinese words. ☜