“Old fu… Oh no… I mean old man, don’t be so serious, it’s just a joke… a joke…” the young man whose head was pointed by a gun instantly changed his words and constantly waved his hands.
In the dark age, killing a man was far easier than killing an insect.
“Yes, Yes, grandpa’s meat won’t taste nice, even if we need meat, we will cook kids first, it was a joke earlier…” the vicious man who asked to set up the campfire earlier also changed his expression and laughed apologetically. He was scared that the old man would shoot him.
Even the way they called Chu Yunsheng also changed dramatically from an old fuck to grandpa.
A pistol that had not been fired yet could scare them this much, what if Chu Yunsheng told them that he was a Skywalker? Probably, those people would kneel down to him immediately.
“Tie that little girl up, we have been feeding her for so many days now, it is time to cook her, grandpa, you can take a rest at the moment, just wait for the meat soup to be served!” The woman who had an intimidating appearance also changed her attitude, but her eyes were staring eagerly at the gun that Chu Yunsheng was holding. No one knew exactly what she was thinking.
This group of refugees had been starving for a while now. When they heard what she said, they immediately started to set up a campfire and cauldron. They quickly gathered the dry beaches in the area and lit it up to melt the snow in the cauldron.
A girl roughly around 10 years old was then being dragged out of the group. She was looking at the cauldron in panic while constantly kicking her little legs trying to move away…
“Sister… sister…” a boy around 6 or 7 years old was pulling a corner of his elder girl’s clothes and crying out loud. He was scared by what those adults were doing to his elder sister, but all he knew was calling his elder sister.
“Hurry up, take off her clothes first, and use snow to clean her and remove the smell!” said murderously by the woman, who was with an intimidating look. At the same time, she picked up the boy and threw him to the side.
But the boy did not land on the ground. A skinny crippled man caught the boy in panic. The man was wearing ripped clothes and one of his sleeves was flapping in the air as he moved. It meant that the man only had one hand. He was on his knees while crawling towards the woman, “please, have mercy, I’m begging you, let go of my daughter, I’ll do anything for you, anything…” the man begged.
“Fuck off!” the man with a mustache kicked him away and said angrily, “you made your own choice when we saved you. Now you regretted it? If you want your daughter back, put your son in the cauldron! I’m fine with either one of them, the younger the person the tender the meat…”
The cripple’s face instantly went pale. He immediately hugged his son tightly as if he was scared that the big mustache was going to take him away. At the same time, he was quietly murmuring something.
“Who do you think you are!” the big mustache spat on the ground and shouted at other refugees, “what are you guys looking at! Take off her clothes!”
The girl didn’t have that many clothes to begin with, and a group of refugees was like a pack of hungry wolves. They easily ripped a big hole in the girl’s clothes.
“Daddy! Daddy! Help me…” the girl cried hysterically to her father.
The cripple suddenly trembled a little, a sharp pain arose in his heart, making his face twisted. He wanted to save his daughter, but he was scared that he would lose his son, two conflicting decisions were fighting fiercely in his mind!
But eventually, he decided to lower his head and clench his fist in silence. His nails were pushed deep into his palm and the red blood was dripping down from his fist, but he still didn’t choose to help his daughter.
“Baby, I’m sorry… Daddy is useless… If daddy saves you, your younger brother will not be able to live….” the crippled man began to bang his head on the ground and cry in pains.
“Daddy…” the girl’s face was filled with despair. Her soul-trembling voice was bleak and sad. Even one of the refugees who was taking her clothes off also stopped.
But the cripple still didn’t dare to look at his daughter. He buried his head in the snow as if he was an ostrich that had encountered dangers.
The little girl lost her hope completely. She stopped resisting and just let those refugees take off her clothes. Her eyes were wide open, and she was staring blankly at the sky. Her lips were moving constantly, however, only Chu Yunsheng was able to hear that the girl was calling her mommy quietly…
When the refugees attempted to rip off her last piece of clothes, the little girl suddenly said coldly, “I’ll not resist, you can cook me, but mommy said that girls shouldn’t take off her pants in front of the other people!”
“Okay okay, whatever she likes. Hurry up cleaning her, I can’t bear the hunger any longer!” the woman with an intimidating look shouted irritably.
“Bang!”
A sound of gunfire suddenly rang out. The woman looked at the bloody hole in her chest in shock. Her lips were twitching. Perhaps, she was trying to say something. However, whenever she tried to open her mouth blood would come out. A few seconds later, she just collapsed to the ground.
Originally, Chu Yunsheng didn’t want to get involved. He had already turned around and ready to leave this place. He had seen this kind of thing many times before. Even in Jin Ling city – a city that still had an adequate social structure, this kind of thing also happened all the time.
Even if he could save her this time, then what? What about next time? And the time after that? Even the girl called Mengmeng, who he had risked his life to save, also disappeared with Jin Ling City.
Besides, even if he saved her, those refugees would still look for someone else. A person would need to die, no matter who he saved.
This was the reality unless the sun came back to Earth again.
But he still couldn’t help. Maybe it was the “conscience” that made him change his mind or it might be something else. But he still fired the gun anyway.
The sound of gunfire shocked all the refugees. Within a few seconds, the mustache man changed his expression several times. He took out the broadsword from his back and said sternly, “Grandpa, we have at least 30 people, you only have one pistol and at most, a dozen bullets, so don’t cross the line, otherwise, you will still be dead!”
When the mustache man just finished his word, a light blue arrow suddenly pierced through his chest and stabbed on the ground. The body of the arrow was still shaking rapidly even though it had already landed!
It followed by a clatter of ground-shaking horse’s hoofs. Then a group of white horsewomen galloped over a hillside and appeared in everyone’s sight.
“It’s the white horsewomen from the castle of Snowstorm!” one of the refugees shouted. But what surprised Chu Yunsheng next was that they did not run away. Instead, all of them kneeled down.
“Woosh! Woosh! Woosh!…”
It was the sound made by the arrows piercing through the air. Those horsewomen did not show mercy at all. Each one of the arrows took a life away.
However, those refugees seemed to have accepted their fate. Not a single one of them dared to resist. Even though they saw the group members being killed next to them in horror, they still did not run away. All they did was to pray that hopefully, the next one would not be them.
After killing almost a dozen of people, those white horsewoman finally stopped firing arrows and slowly rode horses towards them.
All the people that were killed were men, even the little girl’s father was also killed.
The leader of the white horsewomen was a masked woman. She hopped off the horse lightly and spread open her snow-white cloak to cover the girl’s almost naked body. She gently wiped off the tears from the little girl’s face and said coldly, “You have to remember that in this world, men are more unreliable than insects! Come with me… ”
She then took the girl’s hand, and without any explanations, she just put the little girl on the white horse and galloped away.
“Sister… sister…” seeing his elder sister being taken away and his hands were covered with his father’s blood, the little boy cried out loud. He got up and chased the horses in panic. However, he fell down on the way several times.
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew into the valley, it instantly kicked up the snow making it hard to see anything. When the wind stopped, the dead bodies, the cauldron and the only few people that were still alive were buried under the white snow…
…
“Why are you following me?” Chu Yunsheng said to the little boy. Chu Yunsheng had lost his bag, but he found a tree branch as a walking stick. At the moment, he was heading toward the Castle of Snowstorm.
“Grandpa, can you help me to find my sister?” The little boy was step by step following Chu Yunsheng closely. He bit his lips to stop himself from crying and asked.
“No, I don’t know where your sister is, you need to stop following me,” Chu Yunsheng shook his head.
“I’m a good boy, I can do many things, grandpa, I can give you legs and arms massage, I can also…” the boy quickly said.
“There are other people, why do you want to follow me?” Chu Yunsheng waved his hand to stop the boy from talking.
“But, grandpa, you saved my sister, you are a good person. They want to eat me, they are bad guys!” the boy said. His eyes were still red and swollen.
“It was not me, it was the castle of Snowstorm, you need to find them,” Chu Yunsheng didn’t know how to explain to a 6-7 years old boy that he could save him once, but he couldn’t save him all the time. So he simply just wanted to stop the kid following him.
“Can you take me to that snow..? Snow castle?” the boy said hopefully.
…
The place Chu Yunsheng was at, was very close to the castle of Snowstorm. Soon, they started to encounter the castle’s search teams more and more often. With his old appearance, if he started to move fast, it would definitely attract a lot of attention, so he could only walk slowly. Because of this, the boy behind him could catch up with his pace.
For the first time, Chu Yunsheng realized that a kid’s walking speed would not be slow if the kid was “serious”!
Whenever Chu Yunsheng stopped, the boy would quickly approach him, giving him a helping hand or giving him a massage as if he was really an old man. It made Chu Yunsheng speechless.
Whether he started to walk faster the boy would instantly get very nervous as if the kid was worried that he would lose Chu Yunsheng.
Both of them were not talking to each other until they arrived at the edge of the castle.
The castle of snowstorm didn’t have high walls like an ancient castle did. Instead, it was surrounded by wired fences. Around 30 meters behind the wired fences, there was another low wall and it was covered with ice and snow.
Because the wall was blocking the view, Chu Yunsheng couldn’t see the situation inside the castle. However, the outside of the castle was filled with homeless refugees.
Chu Yunsheng had heard from one of the castle’s commanders Xu Qingshu saying that they were using the hierarchical social system in the castle, so they would not feed people that had no values to the castle. Perhaps, she meant those old, sick and weak people outside the castle.
When those refugees outside the castle saw a kid was following an old man, their expressions were not better than the people who had been killed by those horsewomen earlier.
According to the map, Chu Yunsheng planned to find another candidate who was outside the castle before he could help one of the female candidates to escape from the prison. He wanted to give some food to the candidate who was outside the castle first, in case that the candidate would die of starvation.
Chu Yunsheng felt like he had almost become a babysitter now.
Luckily, in order to save as much energy as possible, the refugees didn’t tend to move that often. So it was quite easy for him to find the first candidate, who was a real old man in a shack that was built of soil and bricks.
“Old pal, who are you looking for?” the old candidate asked slowly in a shaking voice, it seemed like his physical strength was very weak,
Chu Yunsheng was once again hit by the harsh reality. He was called an old pal by a real old man. It reminded him again how old he looked now.
‘Bastard Min! How many years of my life exactly did you take away from me?’ Chu Yunsheng cursed in his mind.
“Someone asked me to bring you something,” Chu Yunsheng glanced around, then threw a small bag of insect’s meat into the shack after he was sure that no one was watching him.
“Is it Lao San that kid? It must have been very difficult for him, I’m very old, it’s time to go now. Giving the children’s food to me is a waste… Thank you, old pal.” the old man sighed.
But Chu Yunsheng didn’t have time to listen to him. He simply turned around right after he gave the food. However, the little boy was standing at a place not far behind him. He had been looking at what Chu Yunsheng was doing from the beginning.
“Grandpa, daddy was right, you are a good person,” having thought of his father, the boy’s eyes were filled with tears again.
“You don’t understand. Don’t tell anyone!” what Chu Yunsheng did was just for himself, he just wanted to leave this place, so he didn’t consider himself to be a good man at all.
But then, suddenly Chu Yunsheng realized something, “did your father tell you to follow me?” he asked, even though he thought that he probably knew the answer.
He was just a 6 or 7 years old kid. When facing the death of his father, and his elder sister was taken away, there was no way he would have such intelligence to judge that following him was the safest option. The only possibility was that it was the kid’s father’s dying wish.
A father, who had to choose who got to stay alive between his daughter and son.
A one-armed and crippled father, who was scared to fight for his daughter’s life, but even when he was dying, he was still trying to help his son.
Was he a coward? A heartless father or a great father?
