The pair, one big and one small, stood off in an almost child-like standoff for a good while before the child's stomach rumbled twice.
The small figure froze for a moment, then abruptly squatted down. Pouncing like a cat catching prey, he grabbed the steamed cake off the ground. Feeling its lingering warmth, he gripped it even tighter and immediately began wolfing it down in ravenous bites, as if afraid the stranger might snatch it away.
Sitting inside the ruined hut, Jiang Zhaoye watched this bristling little brat and felt an urge to laugh.
But seeing his cowering, pitiful state, a tang of sadness welled up in his heart.
He pulled a flask of water from the bundle behind him and tossed it generously to the child. After a brief thought, he pulled out two compressed biscuits as well and threw them over.
Startled by the movement, the child leaped backward twice on the spot like a cat spooked by a cucumber. But once he saw the very familiar objects on the ground, he slowly froze, falling completely silent.
He stared at the two compressed biscuits for a long time.
How could he fail to recognize the very things that had sustained him as he struggled to reach this city alive? Such food was far too peculiar; finely made dry rations using superior ingredients were something common folk like them could never easily lay eyes on, let alone possess.
He raised his head again to look at Jiang Zhaoye sitting in the dilapidated room, his eyes shifting from the straw hat with the veil on his head to the dark blue Hanfu he wore, and then down to the leather boots on his feet.
Jiang Zhaoye looked back at him, following Xiao Ling's guidance to offer gentle, unhurried words of comfort: "Eat slowly. Don't choke."
His voice was that of a youth, leaning cool and crisp, carrying a quality like a clear spring flowing over stones inside the quiet, rundown house.
The child looked abruptly toward his veiled face, his pupils dilating slightly.
He stared at Jiang Zhaoye for quite some time, his lips trembling as if he wanted to speak, yet appearing hesitant to jump to conclusions. The child, now looking much cleaner and more presentable, lowered his head to look at the compressed biscuit in his hand, then looked back up at Jiang Zhaoye. Finally, testing the waters, he asked in a raspy, childish voice, "...Black-Robed... Lord?"
Jiang Zhaoye was taken aback for a moment, but then understood.
Last time, he had been wearing that black cloak, wrapped up tightly with a mask on, so the child had never seen his face clearly and didn't even know what he looked like or how old he was. Thus, he nodded. "It's me."
The child continued to stare at him, his dark pupils glinting with moisture, clearly still harboring some uncertainty.
Thinking for a moment, Jiang Zhaoye reached into his bundle—in truth, taking it out from his spatial button—and produced that black iron mask, shaking it toward him.
Pitch-black all over, the mask had two black lenses fitted over the eye openings, gleaming with a cold metallic sheen in the dim light.
Upon seeing the mask, the child's pupils contracted slightly. After staring at it for a long while, he finally seemed certain. Suddenly, with a thud, he dropped to his knees and bowed low to the ground, pressing his forehead against the floor, his voice raspy and urgent: "Ah Ya thanks Benefactor! The food and water Benefactor gave last time saved Ah Ya's life!"
Startled by his sudden action, Jiang Zhaoye quickly stood up. "You... get up, don't kneel."
The child... Ah Ya remained pressed against the ground without moving an inch, his voice muffled. "Benefactor saved Ah Ya's life. It is only right for Ah Ya to kowtow to Benefactor."
Jiang Zhaoye felt a bit helpless and flustered.
That familiar, gloomy sense of awkwardness—as if having someone suddenly kneel to him was repayment of kindness with misfortune—welled up in his heart once more.
Feeling out of his depth, he stepped forward two paces and reached out to support Ah Ya by the arm. "Get up and speak. I don't care for this."
Indeed, a person's potential when pushed into a corner was astonishing; parroting the local dialect learned on the fly from Xiao Ling had never been so fluent.
Pulled up by him, Ah Ya stood obediently with his head lowered, his posture respectful and docile, looking like a wild cat that had retracted its claws.
Looking at him like this, Jiang Zhaoye felt something was off, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
After pondering for a moment, he sat back down and gestured toward the ground a short distance ahead of him. "Sit."
Ah Ya hesitated briefly before sitting down obediently, though he only rested half his weight on his seat, leaning slightly forward as if ready to spring up or drop back to the floor at any moment.
Jiang Zhaoye looked at him and asked, "Have you... always lived here?"
Ah Ya nodded. "Mm. It's out of the way here. Nobody comes by, so it's safe."
"How did you... get into the city?"
Lowering his head, Ah Ya remained silent for a moment before speaking up. "I followed someone in. There's a hole in the wall outside the city. People specialize in bringing folks inside for money. Ah Ya had no money, so after running a few errands for them, I traded for a chance to get in."
Jiang Zhaoye nodded. Sentences that were too complex were still beyond his ability to repeat, so he didn't press for details. He simply asked further, "How long... have you been here?"
"Nearly two months."
"How did you... survive all by yourself?"
Ah Ya raised his head slightly, stealing a peek at the adult across from him, before bowing his head once more. "Scavenging for food, running errands and doing chores for people. Sometimes if my luck is good, I can snag a meal."
The young child spoke calmly, without a ripple of emotion in his tone, as if describing something completely ordinary in everyone's eyes.
Hearing this made Jiang Zhaoye's chest feel heavy, but he didn't show it, merely nodding in silence.
After a moment of thought, he reached up and removed the straw hat with the veil from his head, revealing his full face to someone in this unfamiliar otherworldly realm for the first time.
Ah Ya was a sharp child. Sensing the movement, he raised his head abruptly and was visibly stunned when unpreparedly confronted with the face across from him.
It was clearly the face of a youth—pure, handsome, with skin as white as snow... In his humble, mayfly-like life, he had never seen high-grade, flawless white jade; the cleanest, purest white thing he knew was winter snow.
Jiang Zhaoye was the handsomest person he had ever seen in this world.
Hints of youthful innocence lingered around the young man's brows and eyes, while a pair of strikingly beautiful, otherworldly ice-blue pupils shone exceptionally clear in the dim light, like two pools of limpid cold spring water.
Ah Ya stared at him blankly for quite a while, appearing spellbound, or perhaps processing the fact that his benefactor was merely a youth...
The unsophisticated child opened his mouth wide, then slowly closed it, ultimately bowing his head and murmuring like a little ostrich, "Benefactor... is so young."
Amused by his words, Jiang Zhaoye felt like laughing. "Aren't you young too?"
Ah Ya froze for a moment and couldn't help looking up at him, as if it were the first time anyone had ever said such a thing to him. His lips twitched, but he didn't reply, though the faint layer of vigilance hidden deep within his eyes seemed to thin a little.
Jiang Zhaoye noticed nothing. The simple middle school student didn't linger on the topic, for he had more important matters to ask about. Organizing his thoughts, he asked slowly, "Ah Ya, do you... know about immortals?"
Ah Ya raised his head, looked at him, and blinked. "Immortals?"
"Mm. That is... people who can use techniques, fly through the sky, and are really powerful."
Ah Ya fell silent for a moment before nodding. "I know. Every year, immortals come to the city to recruit disciples and test spirit roots. Children with spirit roots are taken away, and after that, they never come back."
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