It wasn’t that her face was dark; rather, her face had always been : expressionless, ever stern, without any expression. In her eyes, there was a stillness like that of dead water, devoid of any ripple.
The person who had been on the ground had long since scrambled up and run away. Bai Zhi and Wu Wa exchanged a glance. Bai Zhi looked around and saw a bamboo forest. She promptly took a leaf, placed it against her lips,
and with a slight movement of her lips, a pleasant sound emerged. Before long, Bai Zhi’s gaze turned toward Xiao Qi.
"Brother Xiao Qi, remember this sound. We’ll use it when sending you and Sister Fang Ya out. After you cross the iron chain bridge, leave immediately. When you return, you must wait to hear this sound resonate. Understand?"
This place was truly beautiful; she and Wu Wa hadn’t had enough fun yet.
Xiao Qi frowned; he couldn’t possibly leave them behind on their own.
Moreover, their friends had already arrived.
"Your brothers are waiting for us by the iron chain bridge. You’re going to play, and I’m coming with you."
The area was too vast. If the two little sisters ventured off on their own, what would happen if they got lost?
"Xingxing, you go back first. I’ll stay with Xiao Qi, and then we’ll find our friends. I have more than ten friends who have gotten lost here, and I promised to lead them home."
Fang Ya didn’t want to stay either. She had eaten fruit she shouldn’t have, so now she had no strength at all. But she couldn’t just leave. Those lost people—she had to bring them home.
"You’ll get lost, you’ll get lost," repeated Goh Fei’s mother incessantly from behind, as if she were warning them or as though she had seen their future.
Bai Zhi suddenly felt a sense of pathos.
"You got lost here and couldn’t find your way home, so you decide to have your daughter spend her entire life in this little mountain village? The outside world is so wonderful; I can’t believe you wouldn’t fight to take her out. Unless you yourself have given up..."
Some people are like that: not content with fate consigning themselves to their lot; they insist on consigning their daughters as well.
This little mountain village was really too poor, too backward, nothing but mud houses.
The surrounding mountains were too high and vast; they had gotten lost, unable to find the way out, trapping themselves and hoping others would be trapped just like them.
"This place is beautiful, with blue skies and white clouds, green waters and lush mountains. Staying here wouldn’t be bad, but you took the wrong approach. This place is so gorgeous. Wouldn’t it be good to make food? The mountains are full of wild fruits, the water teems with fish and shrimp... Why insist on digging roads and running into the mountains?"
In twenty years, this place will surely be a popular tourist destination.
"What do you know? You understand nothing," Goh Fei’s mother suddenly glared at Bai Zhi, shouting a rebuke before returning to calm, as if the previous moment had just been an illusion of Bai Zhi’s.
"Maybe I don’t understand much, but I know one thing: even if my path is fraught with thorns, I will tread over them. Whether or not I’m covered in blood, I will make it through."
She was someone who had already died once; what more was there to fear? One must press on—there was absolutely no logic to retreat.
"Heh, it’s easy for you to say because you haven’t died. You just don’t know what that kind of despair is like."
Goh Fei’s mother turned abruptly and with a slap, shut the door. She wanted to see how they were going to find their way out.
Closing her eyes, she seemed to see that school once again.
Nanning Vocational College...
That place, she had come so close to attending.