Xiuniang smiled and withdrew her hand nonchalantly.

Her lips were smeared with rouge bought by Shen Shiliu, and her pale and dignified face suddenly had a touch of bright color, like a flower that had been soaked in blood.

"I know you've been confused. Today we have a chance. Why don't we make it clear - you are indeed not my biological child," Xiuniang said. "Does this make you feel better?"

The corner of Chang Geng's eye twitched slightly. After all, he was young and did not have the shrewdness to hide his emotions.

In this world, no matter how good a friend or how close a teacher is, no one can replace a mother, not even a father - Chang Geng is not without longing for his mother, but sometimes, if you know it is out of reach and still refuse to accept your fate, it would be too painful and you would feel pitiful for yourself.

Chang Geng had thought countless times in his mind that he could not possibly be Xiuniang's biological son. Now that he had received such an unsurprising answer, he felt empty inside and could not describe how he felt.

Chang Geng's ominous premonition gradually grew stronger, and he asked cautiously: "Why are you telling me all this suddenly?"

Xiuniang looked at her face in the mirror. She looked pale because she had applied too much powder. So she carefully scooped out some rouge and applied it on her cheeks.

"'Chang Geng' is the nickname I gave you," Xiuniang said. "People in the Central Plains say 'There is Qiming in the east and Chang Geng in the west'. They come out at dusk and are responsible for killing and are ominous. You have the most noble and the most filthy blood in the world flowing in your body. You are a terrifying monster by nature. This name is perfect for you."

Chang Geng replied coldly: "I was not born when I was captured and raped by bandits when you were stranded in Shanxi. I can't even count how many fathers I have with my ten fingers - the son of a prostitute and a bandit, how noble am I?"

Xiuniang froze for a moment, without turning back. The rouge could no longer conceal the paleness on her face. A hint of pain flashed across her eyes, which seemed to be able to speak, but soon subsided and turned into a crazy calm.

Chang Geng's earliest memory is of being in a bandit's den on a mountain. Xiuniang always locked him in a musty cupboard. Through the cracks in the rotten wood, young Chang Geng could always see the drunken bandits breaking in.

Those rough men either beat her or had sex with her in front of little Chang Geng.

At first, the bandits kept a close watch on Xiuniang, but gradually, seeing that she was weak and could be bullied, and did not know how to resist, they relaxed their guard and even let her go, letting her serve them like the servants in the village. Xiuniang had poisoned the well and hundreds of jars of wine, and no one knew where she got all the poison.

She filled a small bowl with poisonous well water for Chang Geng to drink, but when he actually drank it, she seemed to regret it and dug into his throat desperately to make him vomit.

Xiuniang put the half-dead Chang Geng into a small bamboo basket and carried it on her back, holding a steel knife in her hand. When she saw someone who was still alive, she would go up and stab them.

Chang Geng remembered that day, she was wearing a red dress stained with blood, and she poured kerosene and the bandit leader's hidden purple gold all over the mountain, setting the entire mountain on fire, and took herself away.

In his short life of more than ten years, Xiuniang tried to kill him countless times. She had poisoned him, stabbed him with a knife, tied him to a horse and dragged him. She even tried to suffocate him with a quilt when she suddenly lost control of her emotions in her dreams countless times at midnight...

But every time he pulled back from the brink of danger and saved his life.

It also left him with a glimmer of unrealistic fantasy.

Chang Geng said as calmly as possible: "You think too much. I have never regarded you as my own mother. I just always thought that the reason you hate me is because I am the dirt left by the bandit den for you."

Xiuniang sat in front of the mirror woodenly, her face becoming paler and paler. After a long while, she suddenly sighed, "Child, I'm sorry for you."

The moment these words came out of his mouth, Chang Geng's guard and resentment almost fell apart. He realized that all the grievances he had suffered since childhood could be easily resolved with just this one sentence.

However, the 14-year-old boy used all his strength to hold back his tears, and then asked tiredly: "What are you going to do now that you are telling me all this? Are you going to remove the poison from my body or just kill me?"

Xiuniang looked at him with a strange look, as if the boy was some kind of valuable artifact: "You know..."

Chang Geng: "Of course I know. Since the day I settled in Yanhui Town, I have had nightmares every night. Even if I take a nap during the day, I will wake up from the nightmare."

Except for the night before - Chang Geng's thoughts were scattered for a moment, and he suddenly regretted being angry with Shiliu.

Chang Geng: "I don't think I've accomplished much in my life, but I haven't done anything wrong either. How could there be so many ghosts knocking on my door in the middle of the night? Is there a strange disease in the world that causes nightmares every night?"

A strange smile appeared on the corners of Xiuniang's bright red lips. Her eyes slowly fell on the iron wrist buckle on Chang Geng's wrist. There was a sharp light in her eyes, as if a pair of poisonous arrows with Aconitum were hidden in them. "What else do you know?"

Chang Geng subconsciously put the iron wrist buckle back into his sleeve, feeling that it would be defiled if she just looked at it.

"I also know that the group of wolves that chased me outside the Great Wall two years ago didn't come on their own, but were summoned by someone. You were warning me that I couldn't run away and you had plenty of ways to kill me, right?" Chang Geng said quietly, "Only the barbarians know how to control those beasts. After you arrived in Yanhui Town, you have been in contact with those barbarians. I guess you are also a barbarian woman. When I was a child, you locked me in a cupboard. I saw a man come in and tear off your clothes. There was a wolf head on your chest."

Xiuniang laughed softly: "Barbarians, you actually call us barbarians..."

She laughed louder and louder, until she was almost out of breath.

Suddenly, Xiuniang's sharp laughter stopped. She covered her chest and coughed violently. Chang Geng instinctively raised his hand, as if he wanted to help her, but then he reacted on his own and retracted his hand as if twitching, pinching the joints of his fingers.

A thin trace of blood flowed out from between Xiuniang's fingers and fell on the hem of her goose yellow skirt, with a shocking purple-black color.

Chang Geng was startled, and finally took a step forward: "You..."

Xiuniang grabbed his arm and struggled to straighten her body, shaking like a dead leaf in the cold wind. She took a few quick breaths, fished out half of a mandarin duck jade pendant from under her dressing box, and stuffed it into Chang Geng's hands with blood on her hands.

Her face was white as snow, and her bloodstained lips were more dazzling than rouge. Her bloodshot eyes stared at Chang Geng intently: "My name is not Xiuniang, that's the name of women in your Central Plains. My name is Huger, which means the purple gold in the heart of the earth..."

She was choked by her own words, and after another heart-wrenching cough, she spat out a mouthful of blood, staining Chang Geng's front red.

"Ominous purple gold." The woman cried in a strange voice. Her breathing became more and more rapid, and her chest seemed to be a broken bellows. "My sister is the goddess of Changshengtian. Even the Wolf God has to kneel down to worship her. You..."

"You are a little monster that I raised," she laughed faintly, "no one loves you, no one treats you sincerely..."

She struggled to grab Chang Geng's wrist, her sharp nails piercing into his flesh, and grabbed the iron wrist buckle on the boy's hand: "This is the Black Iron Light Armor Cloud Disk Wrist Buckle - it was specially made by the black ghosts in the Black Iron Camp. Who gave it to you? Hmm?"

Chang Geng pushed her away fiercely as if he had been scalded.

The woman fell on the dressing table, curled up and twitching, her charming phoenix eyes widened, revealing the hideous whites of her eyes.

"You have the 'Ur bone' I planted on you. I gave it a Chinese name, 'Chang Geng', okay... listen?" Her cheeks twitched violently, white foam and blood flowed out of the corners of her mouth, and her voice became unclear, but it did not prevent Chang Geng from hearing clearly, "The...unparalleled Ur bone, no one can detect it, no one can understand... One day, you will grow up to be the most powerful warrior in the world, and you will begin to be unable to distinguish between nightmares and reality... You will become a powerful lunatic--"

Chang Geng stood there woodenly, feeling those words that he didn't quite understand floating past his ears, easily freezing the cracks in his bones with ice.

"The blood of the goddess also flows in my chest. I will use the infinite power of the Eternal Heaven to bless you. You... throughout your life, there will be only hatred and suspicion in your heart. You will be cruel and bloodthirsty. Wherever you go, there will be blood and gore. You are destined to drag all of them down with you... you will not be able to... well..."

The word "death" staggered out of her throat, and the woman's body twitched violently. Then she suddenly seemed to realize something. She slowly turned her head and looked at the small sachet hanging from the bed curtain. There was a peace amulet in the sachet, which was given to her by Captain Xu in a temple outside the city when he returned home from a duty.

The woman's eyelashes blinked gently, and suddenly seemed to be filled with tears. The tears washed away her sinister gaze and made it extremely gentle. Unfortunately, this gentleness only lasted for a moment.

Her shrunken pupils finally opened up lifelessly, and the woman in her gorgeous attire stopped abruptly in the most vicious curse in the world, and then fell heavily to the ground with the last bit of warmth left.

No one loves you, no one treats you sincerely, and throughout your life, you will only have hatred and suspicion in your heart. You will be cruel and bloodthirsty, and wherever you go, there will be blood and gore, and you are destined to drag all of them to a miserable death with you.

In the dead of night by fire in late summer, Chang Geng stared blankly at the dressed-up corpse on the dressing table, holding the blood-stained iron wristband in a daze.

Why did she commit suicide?

Why did she hate him so much? And why did she raise him to this age?

...What about the iron wrist buckle of the Black Iron Camp?

Who exactly is Shen Shiliu?

Xiuniang's curse seemed to have taken effect. A child's initial trust and closeness to the world came from his parents who raised him unreservedly, but Chang Geng never got it.

No matter how kind-hearted and righteous he is by nature, if he is forced to be full of doubts and vigilance in his heart all the time, he will be like a stray dog ​​with its tail between its legs. Even if he is almost dying of human warmth, he will still reject it again and again in fear.

A strong idea suddenly popped up in Chang Geng's mind - he wanted to find Shen Shiliu. He had to ask this godfather face to face who he was and what his intentions were.

However, he finally did not walk out of the embroidery room filled with the smell of blood. As soon as he walked out of the door, he became timid.

"Oh right," Chang Geng thought blankly, "Mr. Shen's knowledge and talent that he occasionally reveals every day, how could he be a poor scholar who has failed in the imperial examinations for a long time?"

Although Shen Shiliu is idle, he has the bearing of a young man from a noble family. Even though he lives under someone else's roof, he does not look down and out at all... How could he be an ordinary gangster?

He should have known all these things in his mind long ago, but when he closed his eyes, all he could think of was Shen Shiliu propping up his head and guarding him by the bed.

If that is also false—

The old cook who was peeking out saw the door open and hurried over with a smile: "Master, today..."

Chang Geng looked at her with red eyes.

The old cook was frightened by his eyes and trembled. It took her a while to recover. She stroked her chest and complained: "What are you doing..."

Before she could finish her words, she saw the scene in the room clearly.

The old cook froze, then she staggered back three steps, sat down on the ground, and howled with a scream that was not like a human voice.

At the same time, a sharp alarm suddenly sounded in the city.

I don't know who released the alarm whistle in the city wall. The whistle, more than two feet high, was filled with white mist stained with purple and gold. It rushed up to the sky with a "woosh" sound, and floated for thirty or forty miles like a sharp wave, breaking the bleak tranquility of Yanhui City for fourteen years.

Shen Yi, who was busy sorting out his steel armor, raised his head. The next moment, the door of the Shen family was kicked open from the outside. Shen Yi picked up the heavy sword that had been removed from the steel armor from the ground.

"It's me." Shen Shiliu said in a low voice.

Shen Yi said in a deep voice: "Have the barbarians taken action in advance?"

The question was asked in a short and low voice, but the half-deaf Shen Shiliu heard every word: "There are spies from the barbarians on the giant kite, and the people hiding on the returning ship are not ours."

As Shen Shiliu spoke, he rushed into the inner room without stopping, raised his palm and chopped down at the bed. The whole bed board split into two with a loud bang, and there was nothing under the bed.

A set of dark iron armor was actually lying under the wooden board.

Shen Shiliu deftly pried open the secret compartment on the chest of the steel armor and took out a black iron token. His fingers were reflected blue by the cold black iron token. He turned around suddenly, and his waist, which was like mud and could not be straightened, was like an iron spear. The wind from the open door lifted his thin plain blue shirt, as if it was frightened by the cold murderous intent on him and passed by him.

Sixteen: "Ji Ping."

"Ji Ping" was Shen Yi's name, and he had never called him that in front of outsiders. The two of them often quarreled and fought over household matters, and they were as close as real brothers. At this moment, Shen Yi took a step back and half-knelt on the ground swiftly: "Your subordinate is here."

"Since they have arrived early, we can take advantage of the chaos to close the net - I entrust the Fourth Prince to you, send him out of the city first."

Shen Yi: “Yes.”

Shen Shiliu quickly took off his coat and a sword from the bedside, turned around and left.