Before Murong Xuan Lie and his group arrived, Mei Lin had set up some traps in a nearby forest under Murong Jing He’s instructions, just in case. While these simple setups wouldn’t be enough to deal with Murong Xuan Lie’s group, they were more than sufficient to handle a single guard with divided attention.
When Mei Lin saw that the guard had indeed stepped into the trap and was now suspended in the air, tangled in vines, her wariness towards Murong Jing He deepened. If their fates weren’t currently intertwined, she might have taken the opportunity to escape.
She drew her dagger and approached the guard.
The vines entwined tightly, suspending the man not too high off the ground, his head roughly at Mei Lin’s shoulder level. However, since his hands and feet were bound by the vines and the ground was covered with sharp wooden stakes, he didn’t dare use his inner strength to break free.
Nearby, several campfires still burned brightly. Mei Lin had ignited them using fire-making tools borrowed from the guard. Before he could figure out what was happening, he had been caught in an unusual trap, and in his panic, fell right into it.
When Mei Lin pressed the dagger against his throat, now even more prominent due to his upside-down position, he felt his death was truly unjust, though perhaps not entirely undeserved.
But then, to his surprise, Mei Lin hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked away, leaving him bewildered and swaying in the wind.
* * *
Mei Lin extinguished the fires, retrieved a garment pierced with two holes from a small tree, and returned to Murong Jing He’s side, tossing it onto him before turning away to pull on the vine frame hidden in the underbrush. She helped Murong Jing He up onto it and then put on her own clothes.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Murong Jing He asked, thinking she had the ruthlessness to do so.
“Because I didn’t want to,” Mei Lin replied without even glancing at him, tying her belt and bending down to pull the vine rope.
Murong Jing He was momentarily speechless, suddenly recalling that he had said something similar not long ago. Her response had come quickly.
Mei Lin tested the strength of the rope, then looked up at the sky, only proceeding once she was certain that the menacing bird was no longer around. She slung the vine rope over her uninjured shoulder and began laboriously pulling it along the stream. She didn’t consider herself a soft-hearted person, but seeing the guard’s eyes filled with confusion and resignation had suddenly made her reluctant to kill him. After all, the man hadn’t posed any real threat to them, so why kill him?
If possible, Mei Lin preferred not to speak to Murong Jing He at all. She had an inexplicable fear of him deep down, an urge to stay far away, for many reasons that she couldn’t be bothered to analyze. And Murong Jing He clearly didn’t have much energy for idle chat, so the two of them maintained a tacit silence as they continued on their way until nightfall.
Mei Lin cut through a dense thicket of vines and shrubs to create a space just big enough for the two of them. At the entrance, she used a fire starter, taken from the guard, to light a fire.
The vines contained yam plants, so she casually dug up two arm-thick sections of yam and buried them in the ash under the fire. Then, using her dagger, she skewered the remaining raw snake meat and roasted it over the flames.
Seeing his beloved weapon being treated so roughly, Murong Jing He wasn’t pleased.
“Stupid woman, don’t you know that roasting it like that will dull the blade?”
Mei Lin ignored him, placing the now-cooked snake meat on a large leaf and skewering another few pieces to continue cooking.
Aside from Yan Emperor and Muye Luo Mei, no one had ever treated him so dismissively. Now that the immediate danger had passed, Murong Jing He could no longer suppress his anger. He shouted, “Insolent wench, have you forgotten your place?”
Hearing this, Mei Lin felt a sharp tug at her solar plexus. She finally looked up at the man leaning against the opposite vine-covered wall, his face full of rage. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if he was pretending or if the anger was real. But it didn’t matter; she no longer had any reason to lower herself to him.
0 Comments