Madam, please ascend.

Chapter 214 Little Suzaku
It was a small place called Kangcheng, located at the junction of Daxia and Dayan.

This place is located in a remote area, the town is far smaller than Crescent City, and there is no immortal sect to protect it, so people can only live with the wind and sand, which seems miserable.

Zhuque's memory is of a winter night in the desert.

There is bright moonlight, sand and snow all over the sky, and endless golden color, mixed with impenetrable white. Occasionally, a strong wind blows, rolling up thousands of snowdrifts and carrying them eastward with boundless momentum.

It eventually blew into the territory of the Great Xia Dynasty, gradually losing its strength and leaving behind a field of sand.

The fate of this wind is like the fate of the people of Cannes: suffering from the barrenness of the land, and when it dies, its body will be buried under the yellow sand.

However, no matter how poor a person is, he will indulge himself tonight, because after this night it will be the New Year.

In the northwest of the desert, there is a square earthen city. Although it is extremely dilapidated, it is illuminated by the lights of thousands of homes, bringing some warmth to the cold wilderness.

In the city, men, women, young and old all had happy expressions on their faces, carrying fruits and dried meat that were rarely seen on ordinary days, and walking through the streets and alleys. When they met each other, they said "good luck" as if they were happy to have passed another year.

Outside the city, on a sand dune about a mile away, hundreds of figures were vaguely visible in the moonlight, leading camels and horses. Each of them was strong and sturdy, carrying long spears and short-handled swords, and they exuded an endless murderous aura.

These people are the most terrifying existence in the entire desert except for the storm and the scorching sun, the sand bandits!
The people of the Great Yan Dynasty were tough and unyielding, and unlike the Great Xia, which had a strong general guarding the border, bandits were rampant here, often slaughtering small towns at night and looting their food and women.

Today is a "good day". The people in Kangcheng are going to celebrate the New Year, and the bandits outside the city are also planning to have a good New Year.

Unfortunately, the people in the city knew nothing about this and were still happy.

The young men drank wine in big gulps and talked about the caravan coming from the south, or the pretty widow in the east lane finding a new love, and they laughed heartily.

The women and the elderly lit a stove at the back of the house and cooked the meat they had saved over the year, while outside the house children played and the sound of firecrackers crackled.

In a remote corner of the city, two figures, one big and one small, were huddled together in a dilapidated temple in Cannes that had been abandoned for a long time.

The older one was a girl, about thirteen or fourteen years old, with a pale face and thin body. Her head was wrapped in a rag, with her dry hair like grass rolled up in it.

Her little face was a little dirty, and there was fatigue between her brows. Only in her clear eyes did she still retain a bit of delicateness.

In her arms was a skinny baby girl who looked only five years old.

Her face was pale with a little redness, and it looked relatively clean after her sister took good care of it.

At this time, she closed her eyes, frowned, and her body trembled slightly, as if she was in some discomfort.

Although her appearance after growing up was completely different from what it is now, Yun Yi still recognized the girl as Suzaku at a glance.

"Are you hungry?" my sister asked softly. Her voice was extremely gentle, with a maturity that was not expected for her age.

The little Suzaku didn't say a word or open his eyes, but there was a rumbling sound coming from his stomach.

My sister laughed when she heard the sound, her voice as clear and sweet as a bell in the wind. "How come you're hungry again after just eating?"

Tonight, the people in the city all went home early to rest and buy things to prepare for the New Year.

The poor sisters had no place to go, so they had to use the money that the elder sister saved from working to buy some sesame cakes and steamed buns, and hide in the cold and dilapidated temple to have a rare full meal.

Perhaps because he was usually so hungry, Suzaku didn't feel full after eating a sesame seed bun and two steamed buns. Instead, the more he ate, the hungrier he felt. He couldn't bear to tell his sister and make her worry, so he just put on his tattered cotton-padded jacket and closed his eyes, thinking that he would not be hungry when he fell asleep.

Looking at the skinny face of Little Suzaku, her sister felt a pang of heartache. She took out a piece of sesame candy from her bosom and said, "Here, this is my New Year's gift to you."

The girl opened her eyes upon hearing this, and seeing the sweet and tempting hemp candy before her, she revealed an innocent and lovely smile. "Here," the girl urged, "this is from Uncle Zhang on West Street. Haven't you been wanting to eat it for a long time?"

Little Suzaku smiled and shook his head, looking at his elder sister with his bright eyes, with a hint of request in them.

The elder sister smiled helplessly, licked the candy with her tongue, and then stuffed it into her younger sister's mouth, her eyes full of doting, "Is it okay now? Eat it quickly."

As she spoke, she put her sister down in her arms, stood up, and brushed the dust off her clothes. "Wait here, I'll go get you something to eat."

Little Suzaku was lying on the straw mat. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed the corner of his sister's clothes, begging in a low voice, "Don't go."

In the vast desert, food and water are the most scarce things, no matter if you are a beggar or an ordinary person. It is even more difficult to get food in Cannes.

The elder sister was still smiling. She took off the red string and bell tied around her wrist, put it in her younger sister's hand, and said, "If you ring the bell a hundred times, I will come back, okay?"

Her lips were chapped due to lack of water, but her smile could nourish one's heart.

Little Suzaku held the bell, nodded heavily, and stared at her hurriedly leaving figure. For some reason, he always had an ominous premonition lingering in his heart, and even the sweet sesame candy in his mouth became as bitter as coptis chinensis.

It felt as if the sisters would never see each other again.

Yun Yi didn't belong here. His true form had become a shadow, powerless to change anything. He could only squat beside Little Suzaku, offering silent companionship.

Unexpectedly, Little Suzaku's eyes suddenly changed. She could actually see Yun Yi and said, "Sister's name is Hongling, and I'm Xiaoque. They say that cheap names are easier to raise, but Sister likes my name. She hopes that one day I can fly out of the desert."

The key to refining the spirit and returning to emptiness lies in "returning to the truth".

Obviously, Suzaku is at the critical moment of "returning to nature". For her, this night in her childhood is her heartache.

After so many years of practice, her greatest wish was to go back to that day and change the ending that made her most heartbroken and desperate.

Suddenly, there was a sound of horse hooves outside the house, accompanied by screams. Kangcheng could not escape this disaster after all.

The Suzaku in front of Yun Yi suddenly changed. She began to grow bigger and her appearance became what it is now.

Yun Yi felt sorry for the other person, but he didn't know what to do. He could only ask, "What can I do?"

Suzaku smiled sadly: "Don't do anything, just look at me, just look at me."

"it is good."

The next moment, Zhuque produced a golden bell and a red silk in his hand, and his figure turned into a blood-red color in the night. He rushed out of the ruined temple and killed the group of sand bandits.

Yun Yi does not exist in this memory, so he has no entity and can only watch the scenes before him like a lonely ghost.

Zhuque killed the sand bandits without mercy. In the end, the red silk was stained with blood and turned black, and lost its original agility.

However, her killing could not modify her memory. Even if the sand bandits had stopped massacring the city, the people in Kangcheng were still lying in a pool of blood.

One, two, three... Zhuque killed and counted until all the sand bandits were slaughtered.

She finally stopped, and before she knew it, she was surrounded by a sea of ​​blood and corpses, feeling extremely lonely.

(End of this chapter)