Little Alpaca – Chapter 52

Volume 1: Little Alpaca

You Yan Was Not the Same as Before.

There were four or five Chinese medicine halls¹ in Moshui City, and this one was not considered large. The doctor’s surname was Ye²; his medical skills were not bad, and he was also kind-hearted. He used his own old family house to open this medicine hall and also took on two young apprentices.

On normal days, most of those who came here for treatment and healing were city people. Everyone had their own place to live, and few needed to stay overnight here. Thus, the medicine hall had never been expanded. Letting the two apprentices squeeze together, a total of two rooms could be freed up.

Luo Mingyuan lived in one room, and the other was given to You Yan by Jiang Yuyao.

That night, Jiang Yuyao kept watch at Luo Mingyuan’s bedside. Having already gone two days without closing her eyes, she seemed as if she could not get tired. She did not dare to close her eyes if she could not see her Shidi³ wake up.

You Yan, just as usual, gave the quilt and pillow to the little alpaca and slept through the first half of the night against the wall.

In the second half of the night, she woke up from a dream. After pondering for a long time in bed, she finally got out of bed lightly and quietly, stepped over the little alpaca who was hugging a pillow and sleeping peacefully, went to the room next door where Luo Mingyuan was resting, and gently patted Jiang Yuyao’s left shoulder.

Jiang Yuyao turned around to look at You Yan, a bit of astonishment in the bottom of her eyes.

“You go sleep for a while.”

“Bai-guniang⁴, I’m not tired…”

“Rest for a while. I’ll watch him. I’ll go call you when he wakes up,” You Yan said softly. “You haven’t closed your eyes for two days.”

Jiang Yuyao hesitated for a moment, but in the end, she stood up, lightly said a word of thanks, and turned to walk out of the room.

The moment she went out the door, she saw a little alpaca with sleepy eyes standing by the door with its head tilted, looking up at her.

The little alpaca made an 「en」 sound, made way for her, and then walked into the room behind her. With a kick of its hind legs, it closed the door.

Hearing the sound, You Yan looked back and couldn’t help but chuckle, “Why have you come too?”

“I slept too much in the afternoon.” Yi Qiu walked softly to You Yan’s side, looked at Luo Mingyuan, and couldn’t help but sigh with emotion, “He’s really unlucky. He gets beaten up everywhere.”

“Do you know who he is?” You Yan asked this question once again.

Yi Qiu pondered for a moment, then analyzed calmly with a straight face, “He’s a half-demon abandoned by his parents. Master once said she had some connection with him, and now some strange evil demon has its eyes on him… So, are the parents who abandoned him some kind of incredible figures?”

After hearing this, You Yan was silent for a long time. Finally, she placed her hand on Yi Qiu’s back and stroked it back and forth for a good while, before saying nonchalantly, “The son of the Heavenly Emperor⁵, a Three-legged Golden Crow⁶.”

“Ah!” Yi Qiu told herself that at a time like this, she must put on an extremely surprised expression.

But when she was about to seriously pretend, she suddenly discovered that her expression already seemed surprised enough.

It was true. She had only asked casually and had never thought that You Yan would actually answer.

After all, there were many things You Yan would not tell her. She had always been very clear that in You Yan’s heart, she was just an outsider… no, it should be said, just an outsider alpaca.

In the past, whenever something happened, if she asked a few too many questions, You Yan would threaten her by saying—knowing too much makes it easy to be silenced.

But today, at this very moment, it was the first time You Yan was willing to tell her some things she was not supposed to know.

This was truly more astonishing than “the sun rising from the west”⁷.

Astonishment was astonishment, but the act had to go on.

“He is the son of the Heavenly Emperor, why don’t you kill him?” the little alpaca asked in an astonished tone.

“I wanted to kill him at first,” You Yan said, sweeping a faint glance at Yi Qiu.

“Ah…” Right, it seems I’m asking something pointless. “Then, then you’re not killing him now, is it, is it because…”

“I have a thousand ways to make a person wish they were dead, but for some reason, I suddenly feel…”

You Yan’s words paused here; she couldn’t help but stop for a few seconds before continuing, “Bullying an ant is quite boring. If he still has the life to return to his divine position, it won’t be too late to be opponents then.”

As You Yan said this, she suddenly turned around. Her fingertip gently tapped the spot between Luo Mingyuan’s eyebrows, and a gentle, mist-like spiritual light appeared, slowly flowing to every wound on his body.

Is this really the great villain, bad to the extreme, from under the pen of Little Bird Coo Coo Fly?

In that instant, the astonishment in the little alpaca’s eyes seemed to transform into starlight, drop by drop, as she gazed at the person before her.

After a brief daze, You Yan withdrew that spiritual power. She turned sideways to glance at the little alpaca beside her, and seeing her eyes full of light, she couldn’t resist and gently tapped her little nose.

You Yan: “What’s with that expression?”

Yi Qiu came back to her senses and gave a silly laugh, “Happy…”

You Yan: “Happy?”

Yi Qiu: “You Yan… is not the same as before.”

You Yan: “Where am I different?”

The little alpaca did not answer, but simply raised a hint of a smile, tilted her head, and asked, “Now that I know too much, will I still be silenced?”

You Yan couldn’t help but be stunned. It took her a good while to come back to her senses. In her originally calm eyes, a ripple suddenly appeared.

She smiled, got up and walked to the window, glanced at the sky full of stars, and the corners of her lips unconsciously rose a little.

She said, “It depends on your performance…” 【You Yan Favorability +10】

Yi Qiu subconsciously glanced at the favorability rating—nine hundred and fifty.

She couldn’t stop the joy in her heart. She walked a few steps to You Yan’s side and followed You Yan’s gaze, looking up out the window.

It was the moonlight, the starlight—things that the former You Yan was most disdainful of.

At that moment, a strange thought suddenly flashed through Yi Qiu’s mind.

It seemed she had arrived just a little bit late.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too late.

Luo Mingyuan woke up at the hour of Wu⁸ on the second day. When Jiang Yuyao saw this, she hurried to the kitchen to bring a bowl of white congee.

Perhaps because his own constitution was good, and with You Yan secretly helping to heal his injuries, his complexion was no longer as deathly pale as last night, but his body was still very weak.

Doctor Ye heard that the patient had woken up and hurried over to take a look. Seeing that he could already sit up, he couldn’t help but sigh with emotion, “Young people’s bodies are quite tough. To be injured like this by a bird of prey from the mountain—if it were someone with a weaker constitution, even if they survived, they would be more or less crippled. How could they be like you, already able to move on only the second day.”

Hearing this, Luo Mingyuan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but he did not forget to thank Doctor Ye repeatedly.

Yi Qiu watched from the side, the lines of bullet comments⁹ in the bottom of her heart uncontrollably popping out.

Tough body, isn’t that obvious? This kid has been beaten by his Shixiongs¹⁰ since he was little, not to mention he’s the son of the Heavenly Emperor and the protagonist of the novel. If he could die so easily, wouldn’t that be outrageous?

Doctor Ye earnestly instructed from the side with a pile of advice, such as what could be eaten and what could not, and what should be done and what should not.

When he had said about enough, and seeing that the patient had taken it to heart, he went out to decoct the medicine.

Seeing Doctor Ye leave, Yi Qiu immediately kicked the door shut.

The sound of the door closing caught Jiang Yuyao’s attention. She turned her head to glance at the little alpaca, a hint of doubt flashing in the bottom of her eyes.

“Miss Jiang, that demon is extremely rampant. We must figure out what its identity is.”

You Yan spoke as she walked a few steps to the bedside and asked Luo Mingyuan, “Luo-xiong¹¹, do you still remember what happened before you fell unconscious?”

Yi Qiu couldn’t help but purse her lips.

It seems this bird woman really does not want to pretend anymore. She’s not even calling him Luo-dage¹². Is the three-thousand-year-old young girl perhaps going to vanish from the Jianghu¹³ for good?

Luo Mingyuan, however, did not react at all to the issue of address. He thought about it seriously and said, “It was, it was a bird demon. Very strange. I couldn’t see it very clearly…”

Jiang Yuyao quickly added, “When I arrived, Father had just heavily injured it. Its whole body was wrapped in spiritual light, and it escaped very quickly, so it was indeed hard to see clearly… However, its tail was not like a bird’s; it was a sharp sting!”

Yi Qiu subconsciously glanced at You Yan.

You Yan said without a change in expression, “How could there be a member of the Feathered Clan¹⁴ with a sting growing on its tail? It must be an illusion. Luo-xiong, it injured you this badly, did you really see nothing at all?”

“I don’t remember very clearly…” Luo Mingyuan tried hard to organize his words, hesitating, “It… seemed to have the body of a bird and the tail of a bee… But it also seemed, seemed to have no sting. It should have… have very long tail feathers… And, and many different colors…”

Jiang Yuyao couldn’t help but reach out and touch Luo Mingyuan’s forehead, as if worried that he had fried his brain from a fever last night.

Luo Mingyuan immediately stopped talking, his eyes full of hesitation, as if he too was beginning to suspect that he remembered incorrectly.

But You Yan continued to press, “What do you mean by ‘many different colors’?”

“Its feathers had many different colors… They didn’t at first. It threw me into a cave and ran away, but it wasn’t long before it turned back and returned…”

As Luo Mingyuan spoke, his memory seemed to become much clearer, and his originally hesitant tone gradually became certain. “After it came back, that strange spiritual power from before was gone, and I saw… Yes, I saw that it had many different colors on its body! It, it… was quite beautiful.”

Yi Qiu let out a big yawn at the side, thinking to herself: This is really hard on this little pig trotter. He took a sound beating and still has to praise the culprit as beautiful.

Hearing this, Jiang Yuyao was inevitably surprised, “I have never heard of such a demon.”

“Snake Mountain has the Yi bird¹⁵; its feathers are five-colored¹⁶, and when it flies, it covers a whole xiang¹⁷,” You Yan said thoughtfully, then fell silent for a moment before suddenly raising her eyes to ask Luo Mingyuan, “Why didn’t it kill you?”

“I don’t know…”

Jiang Yuyao couldn’t help but frown, “Bai-guniang, what kind of question is that?”

Luo Mingyuan seemed afraid that Jiang Yuyao would get angry and quickly continued, “Shijie¹⁸, it is quite strange. It could have killed me, but it suddenly left… Before it left, I think I heard some kind of sound…”

Jiang Yuyao quickly pressed, “What sound?”

Luo Mingyuan hesitated for a good while before stammering uncertainly, “A wo-woman’s voice?”

Jiang Yuyao: “…”

In the desolate countryside, and a woman’s voice at that.

If this were in the past, Yi Qiu would definitely be cursing this little pig trotter in her heart for not forgetting to have beautiful peach blossom¹⁹ dreams even when at death’s door.

But the things he mentioned just so happened to connect with the content of the novel.

The goddess of Snake Mountain, Yu Su²⁰, the vicious third female character in the original text, her original form is that Yi bird.

In the original text, what Yu Su cultivated was not wood-element sorcery²¹, but the cave entrance was blocked by vines…

“Ah! I know!”

The little alpaca suddenly held its head high and puffed out its chest, its round eyes seemingly filled with the four big characters 「I am so clever」.

The next second, the three people to the side all looked towards her, their expressions all different for a moment.

Crap, I said my inner thoughts out loud again!

Luo Mingyuan: “Ah?”

Jiang Yuyao: “You can talk?”

You Yan: “What do you know?”

Facing three different kinds of bewilderment, Yi Qiu tactically leaned back a bit, her brain involuntarily starting to operate at the speed of light.

After half a second of awkwardness, she turned her head to look at Luo Mingyuan and shouted loudly, “You! When you were at death’s door, were you thinking, ‘I’m still so young, and I haven’t even gotten a wife yet’!”

Ah, the pot has been thrown²², perfect.

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