Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Qin Ying pulled back her arm, a single chopstick held between her fingers.
She stared fixedly at the tip of the chopstick, where a small clot of blood clung to the wood.
Grabbing a tissue from the dining table, she wrapped up the makeshift murder weapon.
Qin Ying reminded herself to burn it over a flame later-to incinerate the blood and flesh proteins-before throwing it in the trash.
Regardless of whether the things in the box counted as human, her best course of action was to destroy any strange items and evidence.
Her expression remained blank as she processed these thoughts.
After she had poked the Yellow-robed Taoist on the high platform to death with her chopstick, the World in the Box seemed to freeze.
Every little person stood there, dazed, staring up at the sky.
Qin Ying wondered if her interference in the box’s affairs would cause time to stop.
Just as the thought occurred to her, the box erupted.
Chaos broke out among the tiny people.
Some ran around like madmen, some knelt on the ground begging for mercy, and others simply collapsed in a stupor…
A stampede was already beginning to unfold.
Qin Ying couldn’t help but urge the top of Han Lie’s head inside the box, “Hey, move! Go take charge!”
She currently couldn’t control her strength properly; one wrong move and her attempt to save someone would turn into a killing blow.
Judging by the various reactions of this Squad Leader Han, he could definitely hear her.
It was just as Qin Ying suspected. Her urging voice seemed to ring right next to Han Lie’s ear.
Despite the sweltering summer heat, a chill ran down his spine.
He had too many questions, but now was not the time to seek answers.
Suffering was the best breeding ground for superstition.
Not a single drop of rain had fallen since the year before last. The crops in the fields had all withered and died, and famine had followed in its wake.
Those following the Yellow-robed Old Taoist to pray for rain were all desperate farmers from the surrounding area.
The old man who had just been clinging to him had his ankle stepped on by the panicked, fleeing crowd.
The old man, too poor to even afford a pair of straw sandals and thin as a bundle of firewood, clutched his ankle and wailed.
Han Lie gritted his teeth, but in the end, he moved quickly to drag the old man up from the ground to prevent him from being trampled.
He turned to look at the soldiers behind him.
“Don’t panic! Follow me!”
The Great Xia Official Army raised their Ring-Pommel Sabers high and brought them down flat, forcibly carving a path through the crowd.
They made their way to the side of the valley stream, coming face-to-face with the Yellow-robed Taoist’s Disciples and Followers.
The Yellow-robed Taoist had used rice water to draw talismans, gathering many believers and Disciples and Followers.
Seeing him struck dead by a divine object falling from the sky, many felt their faith collapse and dropped their knives.
But there were still a few fanatics.
A burly Taoist threw the child he was holding into the dried-up riverbed.
He hated Han Lie intensely, believing that the arrow had ruined the ritual and incensed the Supreme Deity.
He muttered crazed nonsense about being abandoned by the gods as he lunged at Han Lie with a sharp knife.
Halfway through his charge, a hand clamped around his throat.
“You deserve death!” Han Lie’s fingers snapped shut.
A crisp sound of bone breaking rang out.
The burly Taoist didn’t even have time to utter a heroic last word before he became a corpse.
Han Lie raised his hand, displaying the Taoist’s body like a banner.
The soldiers following Han Lie felt their morale surge. They raised their blades and hacked at the Yellow-robed Taoist’s disciples.
In the scorching air, the slightly sweet, metallic scent unique to human blood began to spread.
Han Lie climbed the high platform like an ape to untie the swaddling clothes pinned by the arrow.
The child inside had a pale, bluish face; it was unclear if it would survive.
Nearly half the people in the valley had fled.
Those who remained were the elderly, the weak, the sick, the disabled, and the young-those so starved by the famine they could barely stand.
Led by someone unknown, everyone knelt on the ground, bowing their heads and confessing their sins.
Han Lie held the swaddled infant awkwardly, unable to stop himself from looking up at the sky as well.
Outside the box, Qin Ying sighed as she felt herself being watched by countless tiny eyes.
Looking across the scene, there were hardly any people in the box who could stand without wobbling.
Even the seemingly heroic Han Lie and his men had cracked, peeling lips.
They needed water. They needed food.
Qin Ying decided to try her hand at playing the role of the Old Dragon King, the rain-bringer, to give the little people in the World in the Box a bit of rain.
She took a step back from the box, carrying away the chopstick wrapped in the tissue.
She also took away the plate of bone fragments from beside the box.
If she wasn’t mistaken, these fragments were likely the remains of the dragon that had undergone its tribulation within the box.
It was a pity that after the immense struggle of its ascension, it had only managed to crawl from the World in the Box into a residential storage room.
Its transformation into a dragon had been unsuccessful; it had died of its injuries not long after crawling out of the box.
Judging by the dried-out, skeletal state of the remains, it had been dead for about half a year.
It had turned into white bone all alone, undiscovered by anyone until Qin Ying, with her poor eyesight, stepped into the storage room.
This fate could be described as both pathetic and miserable.
Qin Ying poured the bone fragments and fine scales from the cardboard into a shoebox and temporarily tucked it under her bedroom bed.
She didn’t forget to burn the small glob of flesh stuck to the tip of the chopstick before tossing the utensil into the trash.
Then, she headed to the backyard.
This old house had three floors. The side of the first floor facing the street had originally been a small convenience store.
On the day Qin Ying’s parents divorced, they both remarried immediately to start their new lives, leaving their six-year-old daughter alone at the Civil Affairs Bureau.
Qin Ying had clutched a single yuan-not enough for the bus-and walked for four hours by herself to reach her grandmother’s doorstep.
Later, her grandmother changed her name and surname and raised her.
There was a door behind the shop leading to the backyard, which her grandmother used to fill with flowers, green onions, and garlic.
A year had passed, and the neglected yard was overgrown with weeds. Qin Ying found the watering can with practiced ease.
After rinsing it clean, she filled the can with bottled mineral water.
Returning to the box, Qin Ying looked inside and was slightly startled.
In the short time she had been gone, the World in the Box had already reached the afternoon.
The valley was full of the elderly and the weak, slumped on the black mountain rocks, waiting for death.
“Han Lie! Do not be soft-hearted.”
Qin Ying heard a voice. She scanned the box and locked her gaze on one spot.
On a reef by the riverbed, Squad Leader Han was cradling an infant in swaddling clothes.
Han Lie was the name of this Squad Leader.
The man Qin Ying had previously judged to be a “bad egg” was currently standing nearby, hopping with exasperation.
He lowered his voice and shouted, “The Imperial Concubine in the capital suffers from an eye ailment; her vision is clouded, seeing what is near but not what is far.”
“Our mission is to escort the Strange Beast Danghu back to Luoyang to treat the Imperial Concubine’s eyes.”
“Rather than wasting time on these commoners, we should be galloping back to Luoyang.”
“We must report the phenomenon of a Deity appearing to the Imperial Court in exchange for wealth and status!”
Qin Ying was a good judge of character; the bad egg’s heart was full of greed for fame and fortune. His eyes shone when he spoke of wealth.
Then his expression shifted into a frown. “If you ask me, you shouldn’t have stopped the sacrifice just now.”
“Perhaps it would have already…”
Before he could finish fantasizing about the success of the human sacrifice in praying for rain, Han Lie interrupted him: “Supervisor Dong, watch your words.”
Han Lie didn’t know if they could have obtained sweet rain, but he knew that if he hadn’t intervened, the child in his arms would have been smashed into a pulp.
Han Lie squeezed the last few drops of water from his canteen onto the infant’s lips.
The baby sucked at them, its tiny mouth still open like a dying fish, begging for more.
But Han Lie had no more water to give.
Seeing this, Supervisor Dong wore a look of mockery, as if he had seen through everything.
He said, “It’s all a waste of effort. It would have been better if the brat had died then; it would have saved him some suffering.”
Han Lie said nothing, only looking up at him.
Meeting those iron-gray eyes, Military Supervisor Dong Hong felt a chill in his heart.
He suddenly remembered that before Han Lie was demoted to Squad Leader, he was the only person among the hundred thousand soldiers of the Jade Balance Army who had ventured alone into the Southern Wilderness Swamp and successfully made it out alive.
His lips trembled, not daring to continue, yet he felt he had lost face as a supervisor.
In a mix of shame and irritation, he flicked his sleeve. “Then you tell me, what do we do now? How do we deal with these burdens?”
He pointed at the bundle in Han Lie’s arms. “You don’t intend to stay here and nurse the child, do you?”
He fired off three questions. Just as Han Lie was about to answer, he felt a burning sensation in the center of his chest, and a voice echoed in his ear once more.
“What to do? Get something ready to catch the rain. This Deity will get you some water first.”
“Oh, right,” the female voice in Han Lie’s ear added. “That bad egg isn’t allowed to drink a single drop later.”