Chapter 1236: A Beautiful Encounter
Her brother, Li Shaohui, had this gift too.
She lifted her hand such that the rat was at her eye level. “Help me out, will you?”
The afternoon sun spilled diagonally onto the surface of the lake.
Meanwhile, Xia Yingluo sipped some floral tea while sitting in her cane chair.
As dusk approached, the sunset slowly unveiled its splendid colors.
A man appeared behind her quietly; it was Wei Lingnan. “You seem to be in a pretty good mood today, did something happen?” He bent over and hugged her from behind.
Xia Yingluo did not look back at him, but there was a pleasantness in her voice. “I think I’ve fallen for the sunsets here. It’s so beautiful, and the breeze is comforting. I don’t know if this is an illusion, but the air here seems fresher than out there.”
Wei Lingnan smiled. “The man-made scenery here is more perfect than that of the natural world. If you like it, stay a little longer.” He bit her ear gently.
Xia Yingluo felt a momentary numbness in her earlobe and wanted to evade him, but tolerated it anyway.
She sighed. “Wei Lingnan, you can’t possibly keep me in here forever.”
He held her chin and turned her face towards himself. “Once you fall in love with this place, it wouldn’t be the case of me keeping you here.” By then, she wouldn’t leave even if he chased her away.
“Would this day come?” She seemed a little dazed.
He planted a soft kiss on her lips.
It was a quiet and peaceful night. Her obedient and docile behavior had satisfied him, and he did not do anything to her that night. They held each other and lay in bed gazing at the man-made night sky.
“Ah Luo.” He quietly called her.
“Yes?” She replied softly.
He held her gently for a long time before saying, “Back then, when you were chosen, I never would’ve thought of this day.” He was able to hold her so peacefully and safely, as if they’d never part for their lifetime.
Xia Yingluo said, “Tell me about the past.” She wasn’t really interested, but she was trying to make him happy, to earn herself a better chance at escape.
Wei Lingnan did not figure out her ploy. He started telling the story. “You were a princess.”
“Princess?” She’d never expected to be so respectable in his hallucination.
But he spoke of it as if it was the only logical thing. “The Skatana species is a matriarchal society. The Queen would birth to a World Tree, and the tree would be full of fruits—there’d be hundreds of dark-colored fruits—those were the male soldiers—and very few light-colored ones—the females, or princesses. The princesses would fight each other to the death, and the last one standing would be the next Queen.”
“It seems like there isn’t much good in being a princess?” Xia Yingluo commented. “It’s nowhere as good as being a rich girl on Earth, where you’d get everything you want without having to work for it.”
Wei Lingnan smiled. “You used to be like this too.”
“Huh?”
“Without a care about all of those fights, all you wanted was to live well,” he said. “Back then, you’d shed tears even when the most negligible of soldiers got injured. You didn’t act like a princess at all. Everyone said that you’d be the first of the six princesses to die and be eliminated.”
“I’m not that weak!” She rebuked softly. She knew that it was all just a story, but still wanted to defend her image.
Wei Lingnan smiled again. “Indeed, you weren’t that weak. They had been too wrong.”
“So I survived?” She turned around and looked up at him.
Seeing those pretty eyes, his voice became even more tender. “All the princesses were still young at that time, and they had to go into the Wilderness to pick their guardians. That was the most dangerous area of the Skatana planet, there were lots of strange creatures there—strange even to the Skatana species.”
“Why were the guardians in such a dangerous place?”
“The guardians are the abandoned fruits of the tree.” Wei Lingnan’s voice was calm and composed. “Some of the fruits would fall off their branches before they were fully ripe, and would roll on the ground into the Wilderness, others would become food for the wild animals, and yet others would die from insufficient nutrients. Generation after generation of the World Tree, generation after generation of abandoned fruits, only the best of the best could survive.”
Xia Yingluo felt a little upset. Was this how he fought to survive?
She found it funny when she caught herself in that thought. He was obviously making all this up, why did she have to feel so much for him?
“Then what happened?” She asked.
“There were thousands of abandoned fruits in the Wilderness. The year that the princesses went to pick their guardians, there were just over ten still alive. I was one of them, the smallest and weakest one.” Wei Lingnan said, “I was hiding deep in the soil, avoiding the wild creatures. That day, I happened to see Ah Luo all dirty and untidy, hiding behind a rock—she was crying.”
Wei Lingnan seemed to have transported himself into the past. He was reliving a fond memory.
Xia Yingluo got engrossed in the story. Even if this was all fantasy, it was pretty interesting.
She listened as Wei Lingnan continued, “The Wilderness was too dangerous, she was so small, any wild creature could kill her. If she did not manage to get a guardian by the time she left the Wilderness, chances were that she’d be attacked by the other princesses with guardians the moment she left, and death was certain.
“She was hungry and afraid and crying very hard.
“At that time, I had just escaped from a wild creature; I was badly injured and probably dying. Seeing Ah Luo, I couldn’t help but ask, ‘What are you crying about? I wouldn’t have expected a princess to be by my side as I approach death.’ Ah Luo turned around and looked at me in shock.
“‘What are you?’ She asked.
“‘I’m a guardian that you princesses have been looking for. Why, don’t you even know how a guardian looks like?’ I was a dying fruit then, and my impending doom put me in a bad mood, which was why I mocked her. She scrutinized me and, with tear stains on her face, she told me she wanted to save me.
“This time, I was the one in shock. ‘Save me? Do you know how much energy it’d take for you to do that? I’m seriously injured now, you might not even be able to save me from death. If you expend all your energy on me for nothing, you wouldn’t be able to go further into the Wilderness to find a strong guardian.’
“‘Aren’t you a guardian?’ Ah Luo asked me.
“‘But I’m dying,’ I said. ‘And you’re too weak. Even if you save me, I won’t be your guardian. Staying by your side would simply be courting death, isn’t it?’
“She sniffled and was about to cry again.”