Chapter 8: Love at First Sight (3) (1/2)

Yuche fell from the horse, rolled two circles on the ground, and was covered all over in muddy water.

He felt his right leg was both numb and in sharp pain.

As long as he moved it even a little it would hurt beyond endurance.

His white horse paced over from not far away and kept pushing its mouth against his waist as it circled him, thereby expressing unease.

He patted the white horse’s broad neck, signaling his partner to be at ease.

He sat on the ground looking around blankly, not knowing what exactly had happened in that instant just now.

He looked toward his right and saw not far away that young girl who had made him fall in love at first sight.

The girl seemed to sense his gaze.

She turned her head and glanced at the man.

“Is she smiling? Or not smiling?” Yuche looked at her, and a powerful impulse suddenly arose in the depths of his heart.

That impulse was not a stirring born of love, nor an impulse of lust.

That impulse was so shocking, as if it could make the blind see again, make the mute speak, make the dead live again…

It was a satisfaction and attachment close to conversion, an emotional impact far surpassing the feelings between men and women.

For a time he was intoxicated in this feeling and could not pull himself free.

Eve at this moment was like an actor standing at the center of the stage playing the lead.

She was both excited and nervous.

Under everyone’s watching eyes the most she could guarantee was that the line she walked out was straight, but that was enough.

She walked a few steps in front of Bowenros, cleared her throat, and said with feigned calm, “Let’s go.”

Just such a simple sentence, yet it made Bowenros as excited as if he had seen a general who turned the tide.

He gathered the guards to assemble, bandaged the wounded in the team, organized supplies, and turned the carriage back onto the broken-stone road.

This group of guards were worthy of being the elite of Red Eagle Fortress.

Except for Golusido, who still walked a little unsteadily, the rest had actually only received some flesh wounds.

There were even ones like Red Curls Famler and the stout man Haruloba who were completely unharmed.

If Eve had not run around just now, perhaps they really could have withstood the bandits’ attack.

The three highland horses had already recovered, but the carriage box had almost fallen apart.

Bowenros simply had people remove the roof and box body and let this carriage run like an open flatbed cart.

They had lost three warhorses, and also out of self-respect would not go lead the bandits’ horses to ride, thus four people needed to ride two to a horse.

Considering the warhorses’ bearing capacity, the road ahead might have to be walked a little slower.

Golusido and Bowenros were more heavily injured.

They sat on the carriage, wrapped all over in bandages.

The two sat shoulder to shoulder opposite Eve.

Golusido was nearly forty, short in stature, but his appearance did not look old.

Compared with Bowenros, the two instead looked like brothers who had suffered together.

The look was extremely comical.

Everyone left swaggering like this, leaving a ground of wailing bandits lying every which way.

Yuche was carried back to camp by companions who came to rescue afterward.

Whether because of wound infection or catching cold, he developed a fever that very night, talking deliriously in his sleep, and only gradually recovered after three days.

His leg had been bandaged and he could walk now, yet he still limped.

He disregarded his subordinates’ persuasion and insisted on going to check his companions’ injuries.

He heard the camp’s pharmacist say that except for the several killed and those unconscious from heavy wounds, everyone else had trauma to the right leg, and the shape and position of the wounds were all exactly the same, as if pierced by a sharp implement.

Not only those who took part in the fight—even the several watching from hundreds of meters away were likewise wounded in the same place.

Even though several days had already passed since the matter, when everyone in the camp spoke of it they still felt lingering fear.

The pretty women living at the rear of the camp had also heard of this matter and likewise worried so they could not sleep steadily, always afraid someone would come for revenge.

Some had even begun to plead with people in the camp they were on good terms with, wanting them to send themselves home first.

After Yuche finished listening to his subordinates’ statements, he burst into loud laughter.

He seemed not the least bit worried.

“Did you see at the time? That young girl in white. I was infatuated with her at first glance, yet only later discovered this infatuation doesn’t have much to do with the feelings between men and women. No, it should be said that compared with this, what do the feelings between men and women count for!” Yuche’s mood was extremely good.”

“Clearly it was she who acted. You also saw it. She alone could in an instant easily kill all of us—after all there is not much difference between this wound opening on the leg and on the neck or over the heart. But she did not kill us on the spot, not a single one, which shows she pardoned us.” The more he spoke the more energized he became.

He wanted to jump onto the wine table as he usually did when in high spirits and deliver a speech before everyone, yet his thigh still faintly ached.

So he knocked his crutch onto the tabletop with a bang in place of his boot.

He continued. “She pardoned us! She can pardon people like us who have done every bad thing. Why? Because from the start she did not hate us, nor hate all evil. She embraces everything and can understand the suffering of this human world. Her strength originates from her embracing love. So who exactly is she? I’ve thought and thought and there is only one possibility—she is a goddess, an incarnation of a deity walking the world! And we are all her people, her children who have not grown up, so she can easily pardon us. She knows we have only gone astray…”

Everyone present covered their faces and sighed.

Yuche Ero had not from the start had this mystical temperament.

He came from the small country of Hatan, and the faith of the Hatan people differed from that of the Elfland people.

Precisely because of this, Hatan did not receive the exiles from Elfland that year.

That year, out of respect for an old acquaintance, Yuche’s swordsman foster father took an enormous risk of public opinion and did not let him receive baptism and convert to the local religion.

So from childhood to adulthood he had not received religious education, and thus on the level of faith he had always been lacking.

One point to note is that Eve and Yuche had likewise both not received religious indoctrination.

But Eve originally lived in a society where atheists were more common, so she had no feeling about this.

Yuche was different.

When he lived in a society where everyone had religious faith, the craving in his heart for religious conversion grew stronger and stronger with growth.

Yet that hazy pious wish in his heart also prompted him to be cautious again and again, unwilling to lightly believe in this school or that sect.

A similar contradiction also existed in his morals—the swordsman’s words and example let him experience the importance of honesty and responsibility, yet lack of faith and experience made this young man easy to beguile and corrupt.

He had always hovered at the edge of morality until that day the old butcher pulled him toward the side of evil, and he then without the least resistance sank deeper and deeper toward the abyss.

Even after coming to Sunlight Valley he had always craved a faith that came from the heart, a reliable spiritual home.

Under such a background, a box of religious books snatched by a twist of fate in a plunder incident aroused his interest, later the source of all evil in everyone’s eyes.

Yuche’s subordinates to this day still felt this was retribution: they should not have gone to rob an aged and down-and-out relic archaeologist then.

Yuche obtained from this box of books the most precious intellectual enlightenment of his life (rather than religious enlightenment).

After all these books mixed the different religious cultures of various places.

As long as one casually read two volumes one could discover among them each saying its own piece, strained interpretations, even fragments of history altered to fit doctrine.

Precisely because of this Yuche was thoroughly disappointed in religion.

Yet for him, for this era, religion was undoubtedly the only life-saving straw that could redeem a sinful soul—a plot common in religious myths—a person of monstrous sins weeps bitterly and piously converts, after a saint’s baptism washes the heart and reforms the face, and in the end also becomes a saint…

He read many books and more and more perceived this world’s absurdity and places full of contradiction.

Faith!

His heart swayed between believing and not believing, like a person with long-term insomnia.

He had never experienced what sleep felt like, always listening to the snoring of people around him sleeping soundly, itching unbearably in his heart and anxious and uneasy.

This symptom had troubled him for more than ten years, until a few days ago he saw that young girl, saw her stick her head out the carriage window.

Although mist swirled around, he could still see clearly those transparent pupils of hers.

Those pair of eyes that seemed to carry no prejudice toward anything attracted him and made him like her at once.

If only she were not so beautiful!

If only she were not a woman!

If only she were a thread of light, a soul… then he would certainly be able to see clearly why exactly he had been captivated by her.

He had only one simple and pitiful thought—he wanted to speak with her.

Even if she only made sounds without expressing any views or emotions, he could be satisfied thereby.

So when he took advantage of the chaos to encircle the girl’s waist and drag her into his arms, the leaping in his heart could be imagined.

He obtained instantaneous eternal satisfaction.

He even thought in his heart that even if he were killed on the spot now he would have no regrets.

And just when this thought had floated up from his mind, the person was already rolling several circles on the ground.

This lifetime was still the first time he had been so wretched.

“I’ve decided!” On the early morning of the day after he delivered his speech, he gathered everyone in the camp and announced, “I’m going to find her. If I leave at once I might still catch up to her.”

Yuche’s extremely irresponsible words made everyone present terrified.

The instant he spoke, everyone already realized he was not discussing or planning, but had truly and solidly decided.

He was going to do it this way.

“Then what about here?” Someone could not help asking.

“You can stay and continue this trade, can even go out and work alone or find a next house. But if you want me to give an opinion, then I advise you—find a place where no one knows you, forget your identity as bandits, and hereafter go be law-abiding little commoners.”

To the bandits Yuche’s words were so unheard-of that someone thought he was joking and laughed out loud on the spot.

“Ero! Can I go with you?” Behind the crowd a woman with fine features wearing a pale-blue pleated long skirt asked him loudly.

Her voice was sharp and thin and at once covered the noisy discussion of the crowd.

The several equally well-dressed women beside her saw Yuche look toward them and likewise looked at him with inquiring gazes.

He bowed toward them from afar.

“A small person like me is not worth such devotion from you ladies. I am a coarse man. I cannot read a woman’s mind, let alone a noble lady’s. I am unclear what besides this face is worth you ladies willingly staying here for me.” 

Yuche’s eyes met those of the woman who asked. “Liz, I thank you and those subordinates of yours for your help to me in recent years, but you know the trade I do. No matter what I cannot become that kind of chivalrous thief in your mind. That is fabricated in books. If there were such a person in reality they would not live long. My essence is that of a base person. I clearly knew you helped me with something to seek, yet I did not refuse you, and also cannot repay…”

“You need not repay!” The pretty woman called Liz wiped the tears at the corners of her eyes and said.

Yuche seemed still to want to say something to her, but did not say it.

He was both weary of organizing the unformed thoughts in his mind into language and did not want to waste too much time on this aspect.

So he said, “Liz, go back. Your father misses you very much. He will also take better care of you than I.”