Inner Demons Volume 1 Chapter 16

In the night, a small black donkey walked along a road, a lovely girl sitting on its back. A maid wearing double buns walked in front of them. She carried a small blue package with white patterns, and was holding a lantern in her hand.

The black donkey had been taken good care of. Its hair was s.h.i.+ny like it was oiled.  It raised its white chin while walking. The 2 copper bells in front of its chest were jingling, and the sound spread far away in the night.

When the maid got to the bottom of a series of gentle hills, she kicked something accidentally. She frowned and cried out in a low voice.

She was wearing a pair of shoes made of thin cloth, and the thing she kicked was sharp and hard, so her foot was hurt. Furrowing her delicate eyebrows, she put her lantern closer to the ground, and found that it was a saber. She looked into the distance, and then turned around to talk to the one on donkeyback: “Aya! Miss, look!”

The light of the lantern lit up the area, and that made the weapons on the ground, and the burnt skeletons of carts visible. The carts leaned on the hill in a disordered way, and a large area of gra.s.s around them was also burnt.

The girl on the donkey tilted her head and looked at the ground, and then covered her mouth with her hand: “Aya!”

Her eyes were black and s.h.i.+ny, and her face was fair and clear, it almost s.h.i.+mmered in the night. Her hands were thin - a typical pair of hands for a young lady from a n.o.ble family. However, her dark hair was simply combed and tied behind her head, and was decorated by a single wooden hairpin, which didn’t look ladylike at all.

“It’s...it’s...” The young lady on the donkey said in a soft voice, “Was this done by bandits?”

The maid thought for a while, and then nodded without doubt: “Yes, I think.”

The young lady on donkeyback put her other hand on her chest, and furrowed her thin eyebrows: “Wouldn’t many people have died?”

The maid waved her hands and said: “No, no, no, Miss, look, there is only the weapon but not blood on the ground. Maybe the people are still fine.”

“I’ve never seen such a thing. I want to go and see it.” The young lady peered at the forest in the distance - The tall trees which mixed with each other in the night, looking like countless giant demons, rustled in the night wind.

The little maid sighed with annoyance. She lifted her head to look at the girl on donkeyback, and started to count with her fingers: “*Sigh* Miss. A few days ago you said you had never seen a monkey show, so we traveled 2 days to watch the monkey show. Then you said you’d never seen a storyteller, so we went to the tea house and listened to their Tale of the Dragon Lord for a day and a half. On the day before yesterday, you said you want to try Hu cakes[1], so we waited a day in Hun City for the Hu merchants...but Miss, you also said that you wanted to see the lantern festival in Wei City - We are going to be late for that!”

The young lady thought for a while, and sighed: “...but it smells good.”

The maid opened her eyes widely: “Huh?”

“That way, something smells good.” The young lady patted the donkey’s a.s.s, and the black donkey walked away from the road for a few steps. The young lady sniffed, and raise her arm to point at the forest in the distance: “There, the fragrance went that way.”

The maid rubbed the bun on her head, looking troubled: “Miss...”

“Let’s go check it, please.” The young lady grinned and showed her even, snow-white teeth.

The little maid couldn’t persuade her young mistress, so she walked into the weeds with her lantern.

In the dark wilderness, there were 2 people, a donkey and a light in front of them as tiny as a bean. When the slim figure walked through the wildly grown weeds, the complaints of the maid could be heard: “If I had known it would be like this, I would have reported you to my lord.”

Pus.h.i.+ng the gra.s.s aside, she kept complaining: “I thought sneaking out with my Miss would lead me to delicious food and great fun, and then I found that I’m already tired of everything my Miss likes. To be honest, Miss, you shouldn’t be like this - wandering all over the place without a plan. The most attractions are in the capital city. If you don’t want to, we can head for HaoHan Ocean[2], I’ve heard that--”

The young lady was not annoyed at all. Actually, it seemed that she didn’t listen to any words from her maid, and just stared into the forest.

After another half an hour of walking, the maid suddenly tripped and stumbled.

She looked at the ground, and then jumped up like a cat: “Aya, my shoes!”

Under the light of the lantern, There was a big stain on the blue satin vamp of her shoes which had delicate patterns embroidered on it. Now the sticky dark blood covered her shoes.

A man’s dead body lay in the gra.s.s, with a broken twig in his hand. Blood came out of his heck, where a finger-wide wound was. The wound was cut perfectly neatly.

Seeing this mess, the young lady was surprised, too. She cover her mouth with her hand, and said: “Ya! We just bought those shoes yesterday.”

Then she looked at the corpse: “You see? I told you they were gonna die.”

The little maid put on a sad face, and her voice sounded almost like sob: “Miss, let us go back - There must be more like this ahead!”

The girl on donkeyback gazed inside the forest, and smiled: “I think I smelled him. Let’s keep searching.”

Following the weak b.l.o.o.d.y smell, the mistress and her servant went deeper into the forest through the waist-high weeds.

The copper bell in front of the little black donkey’s chest jingled, and its sound spread far away in the night.

But now, he felt that he probably couldn’t do that.

Translator’s notes:

Hu cakes. Also called naans. [2]HaoHan Ocean浩瀚洋: HaoHan=vast.

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Translator: Rienne