Chapter 5 : Chapter 5
Chapter 5: A Shadow in the Grass!
Carrying the kicking rabbit, Chen Guan went over to a small stream not far away and drew a short knife from inside his boot.
Skinning it, gutting it, and washing it clean—there was not the slightest trace of wasted motion. He did it all in one smooth, practiced sequence.
After cleaning it in just a few strokes, he casually snapped off a sturdy tree branch and skewered the dressed rabbit whole, then built a fire beneath it.
Thus, a rabbit that had been lively and hopping only moments before was now being roasted over open flames, meeting the fate it ought to have had.
Luo Li sat at a distance on a rock. She untied the waterskin she carried with her, took a few small sips, and then wiped her mouth.
Suddenly, her delicate nose wrinkled slightly.
A sharp, spicy fragrance she had never smelled before, wrapped around the scent of roasting meat, quietly drifted into her nostrils.
She turned her head to look.
Chen Guan had taken out a bamboo tube and was sprinkling all manner of colorful powders over the golden-brown roast rabbit.
Sizzle—!
Fat dripped into the fire, bursting into a spray of sparks, and the rich aroma at once became even more enticing.
This smell...
She had never encountered it before. It was spicy, yet carried a strange fragrance, utterly unlike the game dishes she had eaten at roadside inns in towns and villages before.
Luo Li found herself swallowing unconsciously.
This fellow...
He must have poured all of his energy into studying food and drink. Otherwise, how could some wild mountain boy raised in a backwater village have managed not only to avoid starving to death, but also have enough money to practice martial arts and become the most famous escort in all the surrounding villages?
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The dry branches in the fire burst and snapped, and the spicy meat fragrance spread through the air without restraint.
Luo Li’s stomach let out an embarrassing little growl.
Very soon, Chen Guan took the rabbit off the fire. It had been roasted until the outside was crisp, the inside tender, and the whole thing shone with oil.
He lifted it to his nose and inhaled deeply, a trace of satisfaction appearing on his face.
“Mm, not bad. This roast rabbit smells far better than the braised one from last night.”
As he spoke, he tilted his head and cast a glance in Luo Li’s direction.
Luo Li hurriedly turned her head away and pretended to be looking at the distant scenery.
She waited and waited.
In her expectations, that fellow, just like the men she had met before, would come trotting over and present the roasted rabbit to her with both hands.
But after waiting for what felt like an eternity, aside from the increasingly rich smell of meat, there was no other movement.
She could not resist her curiosity any longer. Quietly, she turned her head a little and peeked at him from the corner of her eye.
At that sight, she nearly fainted from anger on the spot.
That fellow was crouching all alone atop a large rock, hugging the entire fat roast rabbit and devouring it as though no one else existed.
His mouth was shining with grease.
Where was hers?!
“You!”
At once, Luo Li felt her blood surge. She sprang up from the rock and stormed over to Chen Guan in a few strides, pointing at the rabbit in his hands as she demanded angrily,
“Where is mine?”
Chen Guan paused in the middle of biting into the meat. With a face smeared in oil, he looked at her in puzzlement.
“Your what?”
“I...!”
Looking at his perfectly matter-of-fact expression, Luo Li finally realized what was going on.
This fellow had fussed over it for so long, and there had never been a portion for her at all!
Her cheeks instantly flushed red, whether from anger or embarrassment, even she could not tell.
Grinding her teeth, she snapped,
“Are you even an escort at all?! Is this how an escort is supposed to act?!”
“Stop, stop, stop!”
Chen Guan arched a brow, set the roast rabbit down, and began arguing his case.
“Now listen here, little ancestor, you need to get this straight. What you paid was an escort fee—the money to keep you alive.”
He shook the half-eaten roast rabbit in his hand, wearing a thoroughly businesslike expression.
“Meal costs are not included.”
“If you want to eat, that is fine too. But food costs extra.”
“You...!”
Luo Li was so angry at those words that her teeth clenched tight.
This was not her first time hiring escorts. Whenever she had traveled far in the past, which one of those escort masters had not attended her from front and back, left and right, keeping her protected in the middle as though afraid she might so much as stumble?
But this fellow was different.
All the way here, he had ignored her completely, and now even a bite of food required an additional charge?!
She had never seen such a greedy, shameless escort in her life!
“You bastard!”
Tears of grievance spun in Luo Li’s eyes, yet stubbornly, she refused to let them fall.
Her grandfather had only just passed away, and now she was alone. She had to learn to be strong.
She reminded herself of that at once, turned her head aside, and when she looked back again, the aggrieved expression had already been replaced by the same cool, distant look as before.
She simply stood there and looked at Chen Guan.
Seeing that she had no intention of paying, Chen Guan could not be bothered with her anymore.
He lowered his head, picked up the roast rabbit in his hand, and once again began devouring it in great mouthfuls.
It was as though the girl beside him—trembling with anger, her eyes glistening with unshed tears—did not exist at all.
Even the faint sounds of her sniffling were drowned beneath the deliberately exaggerated sounds of his chewing.
“Damn it, I’m an escort, not your nanny. I’m not here to indulge the foul temper of some spoiled young miss.”
“Can’t you tell? I specialize in curing spoiled young misses of their temper.”
After waiting a while longer, Luo Li saw that not only was the fellow still not giving her any food, he did not even offer a hollow word of comfort. He simply kept eating as though nothing were wrong.
That manner of behavior pushed her understanding of the word shameless to an entirely new height.
And it also gave her a whole new understanding of what it meant for a man to have absolutely no sense of tenderness.
“Hmph!”
Luo Li gave a cold snort.
“Then I just won’t eat!”
“In any case, if I hold out for one more day, I’ll meet up with my little aunt tomorrow. At that point, there’ll be all kinds of delicacies from the mountains and sea. I’ll let him die of envy then!”
She turned and ran back to her white horse, snatched up the waterskin she had set on the rock, and gulped from it furiously.
It was as though what she was drinking was not water, but Chen Guan’s blood.
Chen Guan cast her a glance.
He had thought that by showing off a proper roast, he might make a little extra on meal fees and fatten up his otherwise empty pockets.
Instead, this little girl actually had some backbone.
Once he had eaten and drunk his fill, Chen Guan walked over to Luo Li, raised his sleeve, and wiped the grease from the corner of his mouth with a careless swipe before saying,
“Pack up. We’re leaving.”
“Hmph!”
Luo Li gave another cold snort, hung the waterskin back at her waist with all the force of venting her grievance, grabbed her pack, and leapt lightly back into the saddle.
“So this girl is trained, and she’s even a Xiantian Realm expert.”
Chen Guan muttered to himself. He hoisted his horse-cleaving saber onto his shoulder, went over to the black horse grazing by the roadside, and lightly tapped the ground with the tip of his foot. Like a falling leaf, he drifted up onto the horse’s back and clamped his legs down.
“Hyah!”
The black horse, stung by the pressure, gave a long whinny and immediately launched into a gallop, charging toward the dark mountain range ahead.
Luo Li still followed behind him.
But this time, she was no longer sulking. Instead, she quickened her pace and stayed close behind Chen Guan.
The Wuyan Mountain Range might not yet count as a true forbidden zone for humankind, but it lay on the edge of the Ten Directions Marsh.
Rumor had it that the demons and monsters deep within that marsh were so vicious that even the Director of the Demon Suppression Bureau, who commanded a hundred thousand men, would not dare enter lightly in person.
Though Luo Li had been driven nearly senseless with anger, she had always been a steady person in the way she handled matters. She knew that now was not the time for petty disputes.
Luo Li looked at Chen Guan.
She did not know the true extent of that fellow’s strength, but when walking the jianghu, an escort relied on far more than brute courage. More important still was experience.
Their instinctive feel for danger and their judgment of it far surpassed that of ordinary people. Often, before disaster even descended, they were already able to sense it and prepare to avoid it.
...
Hoofbeats thundered like rolling drums.
The forest flew backward. Dead leaves whirled through the air.
Man and horse alike shot forward like arrows loosed from the bow and plunged into the dim mountain woods.
They traveled a hundred li through the mountains in one stretch. Other than the strange howls echoing from the forest along the way, there were only the occasional witless wild beasts bursting from the undergrowth. Before they could even make out what had arrived, they were already so frightened by the pounding hooves that they scattered in all directions.
Aside from that, the road was actually fairly peaceful. No demon fiends blocked their way.
Looking past that hateful figure ahead of her toward the mountain slope gradually leveling out, Luo Li finally let out a long breath in relief.
Another two hours of travel, and they would leave this mountain range behind. A hundred li downhill from there stood the first city of Pingyang Commandery—Wangyue City.
That city was not especially large, but it was the only foothold at the edge of the Ten Directions Marsh.
And the little aunt who was coming to receive her and accompany her onward to the Great Zhou Imperial Dynasty was waiting for her there at this very moment.
Just as the taut string in her heart loosened slightly—
Boom!
A black shadow suddenly burst from the grass ahead, spraying chaff and leaves into the air as it instantly blocked the only path forward!