Chapter 16: The Little Child
“City Lord, City Lord! My daughter, she’s so pure and lovely! Not only can she cook, but she can also help in the fields!”
“What nonsense are you talking about? Why would the City Lord need a girl who can farm? My niece, on the other hand, is proficient in zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting. Now that’s a suitable match for the City Lord!”
Li Jianyu looked with a blank expression at the villagers chattering around him.
“Oh! All of you, stop talking, you’re so ignorant!” A burly man threw himself onto the table and shouted, “The City Lord is going to be the Empress!”
Li Jianyu: “…”
The other villagers blinked, looking at the burly man with curiosity.
“Why?”
“Dazhu, you travel around a lot. Quickly, tell us!”
The burly man was already drunk and had lost his senses. He said dazedly, “That day, the City Lord tossed… tossed the embroidered ball! He deliberately threw it in the Emperor’s direction. The Emperor caught it, and he was so happy! He hugged our City Lord, got on his horse, and swoosh, they were gone!”
“Woooow—”
Everyone gasped, covering their mouths, their eyes darting between Li Jianyu and Zhao Linxu.
Li Jianyu: “…”
Is that so.
Amazing.
“In that case, what about the mysterious fox spirit! The Emperor has been searching for that fox spirit for so long!”
“The Emperor is the Nine-Dragon Son of Heaven! Let alone having a lover on each arm, what’s wrong with having a harem of three thousand beauties!”
These past few days, guards had been constantly coming to their village to search for men with tattoos, and they had even set up posts everywhere. Everyone knew about it, and they were getting more and more excited to find out who this mysterious beauty was.
Li Jianyu said in a clear voice, “My relationship with the Emperor is purely that of a sovereign and a subject. That day was purely an accident.”
“That’s right,” Zhao Linxu said with a wink and a smile. “Let’s not tarnish the City Lord’s innocence.”
Li Jianyu felt a strange mix of emotions.
Setting aside the rumors, his innocence had in fact been well and truly taken by Zhao Linxu.
“Then, City Lord, why don’t you come and sit at my place later? My daughter has made mung bean soup!”
“Hey, come and sit at my place too!”
Li Jianyu lowered his head and ate, pretending to be deaf.
By the time he finally left the village, Li Jianyu was exhausted.
“Beauty’s popularity is really high,” Zhao Linxu said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Li Jianyu didn’t reply. He mounted his horse and said, “Next village.”
The two of them rode for a while and saw smoke curling up ahead. A long white plume of smoke passed through the forest and dispersed into the air.
“What’s that?”
Li Jianyu said, “There’s a small post station ahead. The nearby villagers like to go there to chat and drink tea.”
“I see.”
Li Jianyu couldn’t eat anymore now, and there was still a banquet later, so the two of them didn’t plan to order food. At most, they would try the tea, which was said to be very good.
The post station was not large, just a somewhat dilapidated thatched hut. A few horses were tied to the side, and there were a few scattered tables and chairs.
Perhaps because of the festival, there were no customers at the station at all. Even the shopkeeper was hiding inside. There was only a small figure in the back, fiddling with something, probably a waiter.
The two of them sat down at one of the tables and ordered a pot of tea.
“Honored guests! Your tea is here!”
To their surprise, the waiter before them was a nine- or ten-year-old boy. His body hadn’t fully developed yet, and he looked a little thin and small. The hand holding the tray was also trembling slightly.
Seeing this, Zhao Linxu was about to take the tray for the little guy, but before he could reach out, the boy’s reddened hand went limp, and the pot of tea spilled all over Li Jianyu.
“Ah…!”
The boy cried out in alarm and clumsily put down the tray, trying to wipe Li Jianyu with a rag. But the rag was already quite dirty, and now, after wiping, Li Jianyu’s robe was not only wet but also getting dirtier. So, Li Jianyu had no choice but to gently stop the boy’s actions.
“It’s alright.”
The boy became even more anxious, his head almost buried in his neck, and he pulled back his trembling hands.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
With that, he hurriedly ran off, and they couldn’t stop him.
Li Jianyu looked helplessly at his clothes. The fabric from his chest to his knees was soaked, clinging to his inner clothes, which made him a little uncomfortable.
So, Zhao Linxu took off his own cloak and draped it over Li Jianyu. “This will have to do for now. We’ll buy a new set of clothes to change into when we get to the village.”
“Mm.” Although Li Jianyu didn’t want to use Zhao Linxu’s cloak, he had no choice now. Otherwise, it would be really indecent to enter the village with tea-stained clothes.
The cloak still had Zhao Linxu’s masculine scent and warmth. In modern terms, Li Jianyu thought, it’s probably the scent of hormones. The fur was quite warm.
Li Jianyu awkwardly pulled the cloak tighter, then froze.
“What’s wrong?”
Li Jianyu frowned slightly, lowered his head, and searched carefully before saying, “My money pouch and jade pendant are gone.”
The two of them subconsciously thought of the boy from just now. The boy had practically thrown himself into Li Jianyu’s arms, and his hands had been moving up and down by his belt when he was wiping the tea. Although they didn’t want to suspect a child, he was the most likely suspect right now.
Losing the money pouch wasn’t a big deal; at most, he had lost some silver. But the jade pendant was a family heirloom of the Li family. Li Jianyu quickly stood up and went around to the back of the post station.
Behind it was a small courtyard where a thin old man was lazily dozing in a wooden chair.
The old man was a light sleeper. Woken by their footsteps, he paused for a moment, then jumped up. “Oh, look at this useless old man. I really didn’t expect to have customers during the festival, so I fell asleep here. I’ve been negligent to you two honored guests, truly a sin. Quick, quick, go to the front. This old man will bring you tea.”
Zhao Linxu first politely declined the old man’s invitation, then got straight to the point and asked where the little boy had gone.
“Ah? A little child?”
The old man squinted. “Where did a child come from? This old man would never make a little doll work.”
What was going on?
Zhao Linxu and Li Jianyu exchanged a glance.
Something was fishy.
“That child said he was the shopkeeper here.”
“Nonsense!” The old man became anxious and jumped up and down. “This old man is the only one running this post station! All the commoners within a ten-li radius know that!”
In other words, the child had taken advantage of the old man’s sleep to impersonate a waiter and deceive them?
Or was this old man lying?
“Ah!” The old man seemed to remember something and clapped his hands. “It might be little Jiu’er from the mountain! Little Jiu’er came to beg me to let him work here before, but I didn’t agree. The officials came and told us not to let little kids work. This old man has always remembered that!”
“Then what does this little Jiu’er you speak of look like? How tall is he? Which mountain does he live on?”
The old man described him, and it was indeed the boy who had served them tea.
Looking at the anxious old man, Zhao Linxu pulled Li Jianyu and left first.
“We’ll have the shadow guards watch the old man. We’ll go after the boy. The shadow guards also said they saw him run up the mountain.”
Li Jianyu nodded.
“Can we catch up?”
“He’s just a child, after all. He can’t have run far, not to mention we’re chasing him on horseback.”
The two of them mounted their horses. Zhao Linxu, who had a military background, was very good at hunting and tracking. Just by looking at the traces left on the ground, the broken branches, and the footprints, he could tell which way the boy had run. The two of them went up the mountain, following the traces higher and higher.
After riding for a while, Zhao Linxu, who was leading the way, turned to Li Jianyu behind him. “If it’s much further, we can stop here. You should be in a hurry to continue your tour, right?”
“This is just as important,” Li Jianyu said with a slight frown. “I must know why that boy, at such a young age, had to steal, and why someone is living in these desolate mountains.”
He was the City Lord. He had to be responsible for every one of his subjects.
Zhao Linxu nodded in approval.
After riding on the mountain road for a while longer, Zhao Linxu finally saw a solitary figure walking alone ahead.
The boy heard the sound of hooves, and his heart jumped in fright. He quickened his pace and desperately ran forward.
“Giddy-up!” Yuefeng caught up with the boy effortlessly. Zhao Linxu swung his whip and wrapped it around the boy.
“Mmph…!”
The boy fell into the grass, his face covered in mud and a few leaves stuck in his hair. But Zhao Linxu had controlled the force well, and the boy was unharmed.
“Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me! I’ll give you back the money pouch!” The boy bit his lip and took out the money pouch and jade pendant from his pocket, handing them to the two of them. “I’ll give them back to you!”
So it was indeed taken by this boy.
Li Jianyu breathed a sigh of relief, went forward to take them, and asked, “Why did you steal?”
The boy lowered his head and didn’t speak.
Zhao Linxu squatted down and threatened, “If you don’t talk, we’ll send you to the yamen.
[T/N: Yamen: The administrative office and courthouse in ancient China. Being sent to the yamen was a serious threat, as it meant facing official punishment.]
Zhao Linxu was tall and burly. He was fine when he smiled, but now that he was deliberately putting on a scary, ferocious expression, he really looked no different from a bandit, just missing a scar on his face.
The boy looked at Zhao Linxu and burst into tears with a “Waaah!”, crying his heart out.
Zhao Linxu: “…”
