Chapter 192 — The Most Hopeless Batch
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The soldier walked past a panic-stricken young woman and praised her inwardly. She wore a dark green long skirt that fell to the tops of her feet, her hair done up in a palace bun, her brows delicately painted, a light dusting of powder on her face, a small red mouth like two crimson pearls, and slender, curving willow brows. One glance told him she was a lady of a great house in Tianbo City.
The soldier looked at her a couple of times more, then walked elsewhere. The girl's eyes were like autumn waters, and from her left earlobe hung a bright red jade earring. Suddenly the earring moved, stretching its body.
The earring was in fact a small red snake, threaded through her earlobe—it looked as though it were carved from red jade, but it was a living creature.
If Shen Mu had been there, he would certainly have ordered the soldiers to seize this woman.
He had seen Long Jiaonan's true face; when Long Jiaonan molted, he had seen every inch of that body. When this woman had just crawled out of her skin, she had not been adorned; now, restored to the dress of a daughter, she looked nothing like the bewitching young master of the Yulong School!
Several soldiers were moving corpses in the city, tossing them onto carts and pushing the carts outside the city for burial. Long Jiaonan followed behind, weeping, "Good sirs, is my father's corpse among these?"
The soldiers halted. "Little lady, there are too many corpses in the city, and we do not know which is your father. Take a look—is he on the cart?"
Long Jiaonan looked over them and shook her head. "I did not find him."
One of the soldiers said, "Most likely he is out at the potter's field beyond the city. General Yu ordered us to dig several large pits there to bury the corpses. All the bodies are carried there, and the pits have not yet been filled in. Why not come with us and take a look, little lady?"
Long Jiaonan thanked them and followed the soldiers out to the potter's field beyond the city. There, a great pit had been dug, some ten zhang deep or more, filled with thousands upon thousands of corpses.
Long Jiaonan looked up. Beyond this pit, the potter's field held dozens more like it, and at the edge of each pit soldiers were pushing carts forward and dumping the dead into the pits.
Long Jiaonan looked around, then suddenly called out loudly, "Father, Father! Your daughter has come to find you. If you can hear me, answer me!"
She called several times, and the soldiers were caught between laughter and tears. "This woman must have lost her mind."
Just then, a faint voice came from one of the great pits: "I am here. I am molting, but I am too badly wounded..."
The soldiers at the pits were all dumbfounded. Then an officer suddenly said, "Something is wrong here! Everyone, be on guard!"
Hearing this voice, Long Jiaonan smiled and laughed softly. "Little Red."
The tiny red snake hanging from her left ear stretched its body, dropped from her earlobe, and the instant it hit the ground it swelled enormously, becoming in the blink of an eye a colossal serpent. It opened its mouth and spewed poisonous wind, sending the soldiers at the potter's field reeling.
The giant serpent moved like wind, devouring soldier after soldier, while Long Jiaonan walked into the pit, flinging corpses aside one by one, until at last she dug out the Dragon King, buried among the mass of bodies.
"Your daughter thought you had died!" Long Jiaonan said with a giggle.
"Daughter?" The Dragon King of the Yulong School gave a cold snort.
Long Jiaonan's expression shifted slightly, and she lowered her head. "Your son thought you had died..."
The Dragon King sat up. "I feigned death and hibernated, deceiving that demon god, and was thrown into this mass grave as a corpse. I only wonder how the Red Flood-Dragon is faring."
He pursed his lips and gave a low whistling cry, and before long a small monster with claws—neither snake nor dragon—crawled out of the mountain forest.