The Secret Code of Monsters.

Chapter 834: Curse Removal and Request

Yolanda didn't know when she discovered it.

Maybe when Roland was 'sick'.

Or maybe it was when Shandel was suspicious.

Or the day Rose comes back.

She didn't know, nor did she want to think carefully about whether she 'knew' - because she was in a bottomless gap full of thorns and fangs, and any move she made would cause her to bleed and suffer endlessly.

She looked at the old man in the chair with anger and fear, and rather than questioning him, she just made some insignificant sounds with her breathing.

Just as the flames took away her clothes and her loved ones that night, now, everything happened again.

“Why, why…”

The old man observed the stubborn girl in front of him who was biting her lips until they bled, as carefully as a stargazer observing the night sky. She chewed her lips and the pain, and what was stirred in her stomach was not real rage, but the smoke of confusion and cowardice that made her breathless.

"Don't you know why?"

The old man read out a name.

"You swore an oath."

After saying this name, or perhaps the deaths of the four barbarians brought her vitality, she now looked radiant, as if she had returned to her youth decades ago when she was nimble and energetic.

Her voice was like the ringing of a bell, which made the living tremble and the dead rejoice.

"If it weren't for the cream..."

"But what does this have to do with Roland?!"

Some red shadows swayed in Yolanda's pupils.

She let out a dying howl of a wild beast, her torn vocal cords blown away by a light laugh, just like her shattered and burned family.

The old man laughed intermittently.

Blood flowed from the corners of her mouth, and her voice became as unpleasant as a jay. Something was burning and destroying her throat and lungs, spreading to her limbs and bones - she should have died long ago.

Died in that flame.

It was born from this.

Every day is torture.

She was tossing and turning in fear, and the nightmares that almost tore through her sleeping room echoed in her ears from time to time. When she saw the sunset, she thought of fire. When she saw green water, she thought of pus.

This group of robbers from a remote and desolate land, who were greedy for other people's land and wealth, destroyed everything she loved forever.

But if she wasn't so decadent and stupid, how could she not know how terrible the iron ship was?
Not drawing the sword is a deterrent and also a sign of fear.

The knife had already been unsheathed a year and a half ago.

Therefore.

She never held out hope that a true dawn would come.

What a pity…

"You swore an oath."

The old man chewed the blood that was becoming granular in his mouth, looking as horrible and hideous as a bleeding zombie.

"You swore an oath."

She repeated it again, twice.

It was like chanting a mantra, and Yolanda was shaking all over, as if she was falling into an ice cellar.

"You have no right to choose who is good and who is bad. None of us have the right... Why did the master go crazy?"

As she spoke, she spat out a mouthful of blood.

Yolanda rushed forward to support her, but she twisted her wrist tightly.

"…Take the silver I hid and go find Master Zhang."

She clenched tighter and tighter, almost crushing Yolanda's wrist bones. The pair of eyes that should have been mixed with brown were now as dark as ink and bottomless. The wooden chair under her began to fall, the soft mud disintegrated, and she almost fell into a prison that would be burned forever.

"Go find him! Go find him!"

The old man repeated this command over and over again, trying to use his voice to cut through Yolanda's skin and implant it deep into her body.

She wanted to make her suffer forever and never be relieved.

"Looking for him..."

she murmured.

"He knows..."

what do you know?
Yolanda burst into tears.

Yolanda didn't get an answer.

She stared at the old man who was lost in a dream, and let her move her eyeballs with difficulty, climbing over her shoulders to look towards a farther and brighter place.

Someone was waiting for her in the light.

"…master."

She had been proud of the fact that her children had suckled the flesh of a good mother, but now she was even more proud of the frivolous and great achievements of the past few days.

She was more arrogant than the emperor, and her swollen belly was filled with indescribable happiness. "I——"

She screamed out her last cry from her cracked throat like a starving person who had run out of food:

"I killed four--!!"

then.

It fell back onto the chair as gracefully as a piece of paper in the breeze.

Fell asleep like a baby.

The cigarette holder fell from his hand and was gently caught by Yolanda.

The old man, who was finally free from hatred and pain, not only slowly closed his eyes, but also seemed to touch his mother's silver thread buttons and smell the faint gardenia scent on her body.

She was quiet and peaceful, with a smile that hadn't been seen in a long time.

She is dead.

Yolanda's world also became quiet.

She silently put down the arm that had grown cold from being resting on her wrist, picked up her pipe, turned the pipe bowl upside down and knocked it a few times on the table.

The smoke paste was scattered everywhere.

then.

He then pinched out a few pinches of tobacco from the octagonal box on the tiger-patterned wooden table and pressed them into the bowl with his thumb, pressing them a few times without being too loose or too tight.

Light a match.

Light up a pack of cigarettes.

The thick smoke that had just arrived made her lungs tremble like leaves in a rainstorm. She bent over and started coughing violently.

She coughed and puffed like this, and finished all the tobacco in silence.

When the yellow color turned into grayish-white bone powder, Yolanda slowly turned around and looked towards the person who had been standing behind her for a long time.

"Thanks…"

she said softly.

"thank you all."

She looked at Roland, then Cinder who smiled gently at her, then Rose who was mumbling softly, and then Halida who was busy wiping her face.

He said it again with a stronger tone.

Then, without waiting for a proper "you're welcome", he turned his gaze back to Roland.

"So... do you regret coming here, foreigner?"

It was like a child who was just learning to speak asking his mother where he came from - a question that was destined to be answered with a lie, causing the dust in the earthen house to freeze for a moment.

Roland slowly snatched the handkerchief from Rose's hand, wiped the syrup from the corners of his mouth and face, and was kicked in the process.

“I’m not a foreigner.”

He said.

"I am your friend Roland Collins."

The golden eyes with a strong smile contain a vibrant and fertile land.

It brings to mind champagne, frosting in a wide curved copper spoon, cream on strawberries and strawberries on cream.

"What about you?"

Roland asked back.

Yolanda was silent.

She clenched her pipe tightly and her shoulders began to tremble slightly.

Her joints were like the pine resin accompanying the firewood, gradually softening and melting under Roland's gaze.

then.

He fell to his knees.

She buried her head and her exquisite dignity in the dust, and made the umpteenth unreasonable and ignorant sincere request amidst the astonished, absent-minded and expected gazes.

"Help…"

Tears punched holes in the hard ground, piercing through the core of the earth.

"again…"

She mumbled.

When she faces a man who is neither pious nor educated nor cultured, she obviously will not get a pair of hands to uphold her dignity.

Roland just stood in this breathing rain, staring at the complicated human nature and the dust floating above the blazing flames.

"Okay."

He said.

(End of this chapter)