Chapter 2:

At sunset, the sky is gorgeous at sunset, and the shards of scale clouds are stained by the afterglow of the setting sun in Phnom Penh, just like an exile passing by on the sea of ​​clouds, boating the sea of ​​clouds into the mortal dust, but it attracts the clouds.
It is rare for the Yuan family to visit guests. The parents are waiting in the front hall, and the sisters are busy boiling water and cooking. Leave Yuan Xianger alone to chop wood in the yard.
Holding a sharp axe, Yuan Xianger stood in front of Chaidunzi with a black face, and whispered to the empty wooden stake.
"Step aside."
In her sight, there was a chicken paralyzed on the short pier at the moment, to be precise, a long-necked chicken in clothes.
It is neatly dressed in a small gray robe, and its hands are properly caged in the sleeves, but a thin and long chicken neck sticks out from the collar. This nondescript little monster put his neck on a wooden stake like a guillotine fiercely, pretending to be generous at any time.
Yuan Xiang'er knew that if he cut it down with an axe, the little chicken head would fall to the ground, rolling in a circle in the dusty ground, and then automatically connected to the broken chicken neck. Then lay down without hesitation again.
This long-necked monster doesn't know where to get the weird hobby, and always likes to lie on the pier where people chop wood, playing this kind of beheading game over and over again.
Yuan Xianger, who can see it, doesn’t want to play this game with it.
"Go away, I'm going to chop wood." Yuan Xianger said.
On the little chicken's head, there were two disproportionately sluggish eyes. One eye was up and the other was down. Both eyes turned around, avoiding Yuan Xiang'er's sight, begging for nothing. Lie on the "guillotine" and refuse to move.
"If you don't leave, I will burn you as firewood." Yuan Xianger was angry and funny.
At this time, the eldest sister Yuan Chunhua's voice came from behind, "Xiang'er, are you talking to yourself again?"
Yuan Xiang'er was startled, and turned around in a hurry, and scratched her head embarrassedly.
The eldest sister took the axe in her hand, held her hand, and looked at her red eyes, apparently having just cried.
"Daddy said... I want you to come over."
"Daddy calls me now?"
Yuan Chunhua shook her head, saying that she did not know the situation. But he turned his face, avoiding the sight of his sister, and quietly wiped the tears from his face.
But Yuan Xianger was not a real seven-year-old girl after all. Her father had chatted with a stranger in the front hall for a long time, but now he asked her sister to take him over, a bad premonition suddenly surged in her heart.
The so-called front hall of the Yuan family is nothing more than a thatched cottage with air leaking on all sides. The dilapidated shrine houses several gods and Buddhas, and the whole wall has been blackened by long-term fireworks. A stripped dining table was placed among them. Eat, entertain guests, and reward God in this room on weekdays. At the moment, there are two thick tea bowls for hospitality on the table, and three small silver ingots squatting dazzlingly on the edge of the tea bowl.
Father Yuan was sitting cross-legged on a stool next to the table. The years left deep marks on his face. Years of overwork made the man who was a mature man show a tired and old look. Demeanor. He kept rubbing his thick and yellow fingers, and lowered his head slightly cramped when he saw his little daughter walk in.
Opposite him, sat an unfamiliar young man. This man was inconspicuously dressed. He was dressed in plain short brown, with straw sandals on his feet, and a bamboo hat beside the stool leg. It's just that his indifferent temperament and good looks make it difficult for him to ignore his existence even if he is dressed like this.
Wearing ordinary clothes and sitting in such a humble and barren room, this man can still give people a sense of care and ease. It seemed that he wasn't sitting at an oily table, drinking rough tea in a sea bowl that was notched. But in the elegant house with pine and snow, the painting building with chi-lan style, authentically with a cup of fragrant tea.
Seeing Yuan Xiang'er coming in, he raised his eyes and nodded to the little girl with a smile.
Yuan Xiang'er's dark eyes circled in the house and landed on the silver ingots on the tabletop. In such a poor country, the transactions between villagers were all copper plates, and silver ingots would easily not appear.
Unfamiliar guests, large transactions, and the situation of being stubborn.
Yuan Xianger finally turned his gaze on his father, whom he had called for seven years, and his father avoided her gaze.
So she knew that her parents could not bear the burden of five children and sold herself as a commodity.
The evening breeze poured in from the gap in the wall, making Yuan Xiang'er feel a little cold. But if you must have a daughter in the seller, compared to the elder sister who is about to become an adult and the second sister who is reckless and ignorant, such an undead from another world is indeed the most suitable choice to leave this home.
There was no father in the previous life, and after seven years of heat and cold in this world, she once thought that she had made up for the regret in her heart. Now I suddenly realized that I was still a stranger to this world.
Since it's just a guest, there is nothing to be sad about, Yuan Xianger said to herself in her heart.
"Sir, this is Sanya Tou." Father Yuan called the young guest Mr. In this age, those who read and read, those who exorcise demons, those who settle accounts... can all be called sirs, but I don’t know which kind of man this man belongs to.
The gentleman looked at Yuan Xianger and slowly introduced his family: "My surname is Yu, my name is Yao. The word is natural, and the nickname is Kunpeng. I have practiced the yin and yang and the five elements throughout my life. If you want to accept you as a disciple, I wonder if you want to?"
Yuan Xiang'er wanted to say that I didn't want to, and the one who said it was a god-gimmick, maybe it was a god-stick like Lady Wu. Why should I leave home with you a stranger, who knows whether you are going to abduct me or make me alchemy. But when she watched her father's ardent eyes linger on the shining silver pair on the table, she knew that this matter could not be determined by her own will, and the main thing was that the price that this person paid had satisfied her father.
"Yes." She said flatly.
Father Yuan raised his head and glanced at his seven-year-old daughter. The child was thin and small, and he spoke very little on weekdays, but his eyes were exceptionally clear, as if he could see everything in the world.
At this time, he finally remembered that she was a quiet girl who had been sensible since childhood.
Although she was despised by herself when she was born, she has held her, teased her, and watched her grow up a little bit. Yuan's father's heart that was delighted by the unexpected wealth finally rose with a trace of real guilt.
But what can it do? The harvest this year is not good, and the family can’t open the pot now, and the whole family can’t endure starvation and freezing together in winter. The son who inherited the incense must not be sold, and he could only give up one of the three daughters. After all, three ingots and ten taels of silver are a large sum of money to be used in the countryside. Not only can the whole family survive this bad winter, but it can even save most of it for future sons to marry their wives.
He sighed, "Go to the back room and meet your mother and your grandma."
Yuan Xianger looked at him for a long while, then turned to enter the back room.
The mother and eldest sister in the back room were sitting on the edge of the bed, crying and saw her come in. The mother shed tears and pulled her to her side, reached out her hand to touch her head, looked up and down, choked hard to speak.
The mother's palms were very hot, and she rubbed Yuan Xianger's skin nostalgicly with the roughness of all year round work, conveying a kind of gentleness that belongs to her mother alone.
But that's all.
Yuan Xiang'er waited for a long time, only to see crackling tears. Before a word of retention, the little expectation that ignited in her heart slowly cooled. So she withdrew her hand.
"Mother, I'm leaving now."
The eldest sister Yuan Chunhua was wrapping a piece of cake and sister's three or two pieces of clothes into a homespun bag. After hearing this, she couldn't help but cried out.
"Mother, don't sell my sister, sell me if you want." She cried and said.
"Don't talk nonsense." The mother rebuked softly.
The crying drew the children playing outside the house, Yuan Dabao, Yuan Xiaobao and Yuan Zhaodi saw the fragrant scones in her sister's hands at a glance, and they were suddenly eager to eat cakes.
Mother Yuan looked at the crying sons with embarrassment, and then at the little daughter who was about to leave. After all, she reached out her hand to tear a small piece from the round cake and put it into the hands of the elder son, and then tore it off again. The nugget is in the hands of the toddler son. Then he pushed away the noisy brother Yuan Zhao on the ground, stuffed the remaining cakes into the baggage, tied the baggage, and hung it on Yuan Xianger's arm.
Yuan's grandmother was ill in bed for many years. When Yuan Xiang'er entered her room, the dark room was filled with a musty rancid smell. Yuan Xiang'er still clearly remembers that when she was just born, her sturdy grandmother stood on the street that had been cursing for a day with her arms akimbo, and she was ashamed and embarrassed by her scolding.
But now maybe it's because of getting older and hearing the news that she is leaving, the dying grandma with her toothless mouth, tremblingly fumbled out a pack of red paper sealed candy from the clay pot on the bed. Forcibly stuffed into her hands. I don't know how many years this bag of candy has been left. Even the red paper faded. Yuan Xianger squeezed the red seal that grandma had hidden for many years, and put it together with the chipped pancake.
The family sent Yuan Xianger and the "Mr. Nature" to their door.
After traveling into this world for seven years, her identity has changed from daughter, sister, elder sister and granddaughter to apprentice. But she didn't plan to give any feelings to her apprenticeship. Yuan Xiang'er calculated silently in her heart that when she was a little older, she would find a way to leave this man who wanted to be her own master and live alone.
Yu Yao stretched out his hand to her. It was the palm of an adult male. It was broad and powerful, neither hot nor cold. With the right temperature in the world, he clenched her small hand tightly.
Yuan Xiang'er looked back at the last time, the simple thatched cottage and the dilapidated fence, a family of seven surrounded by the gate. A chicken head with a long neck, two pointed fox ears, and a few small things that probe the head protruded above the wall.
The afterglow of the setting sun is a good time, and the color of the sunset on the horizon becomes rich and gorgeous.
Yuan Xiang'er bid farewell to the home where she had lived for seven years, no longer looked back, holding Yu Yao's hand, and walking towards the depths of the sunset.
Brother Yuan Zhao looked at the back of his sister, and finally understood what had happened.
"Wow, I don't eat pancakes anymore, don't eat pancakes, A-niang, don't sell my sister."
Her angry cry was sent far away by the cool summer breeze, making Yuan Xianger's bitter heart a little better.