Desert Rhapsody - Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Jiang Yuan jumped down from her horse and tried to catch Sun’s reins, but perhaps Sun was still angry with her, or perhaps she had been gone too long and Sun no longer remembered her. Sun circled around Jiang Yuan, ignoring her calls as it ran toward the others, prancing around them in high spirits as if it hadn’t heard her at all. Night interacted with it for a while; the two of them now looked quite familiar with each other. Abal whistled for her, and Sun trotted over to his side.

“As thanks for Lion Tooth, I trained it for you,” he said. The smile on his face was anything but kind, and carried the distinct amusement of someone who had come specially to see her reaction. “No need to thank me, dear Jia Nan.”

Jiang Yuan ignored him. She tried to step forward and stroke Sun, but by now she knew not to approach too rashly when the horse was tense. She took a handful of beans from the pouch she carried with her, along with a small piece of candy that had half-melted in the heat. Sun sniffed it, hesitated, then took a bite. Abal came to stand beside her and rubbed Sun’s ear, so Sun flicked its tail and began eating even more cheerfully.

Jiang Yuan said, “Thank you.” In any case, Abal had indeed helped her care for the horse, and had gone to the trouble of bringing Sun here. Its coat was sleek and glossy all over, and it had grown into a strong, beautiful little mare. It was plain to see that Night and Sun were on good terms. Abal smiled. “After all, I have something I need your help with.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll know in a little while. All this time, no matter what I do, we’re allies, aren’t we?”

Jiang Yuan nodded. As always, he knew exactly how to buy people’s goodwill.

They mounted their horses, letting Sun follow behind, and continued toward the snowcapped mountains. Of course, that was a place they would never reach. Beneath the blazing sun, the mountains looked so bitterly cold, yet that imagined cold only made the heat seem fiercer and left one’s throat even drier. Jiang Yuan kept herself under control, but she still drank water far more often than usual.

Such sights sometimes appeared in the desert. They were not always snow mountains; they could take any form. The only thing they had in common was that none of them were real. People called them “the devil’s temptation.” To this day, that temptation had deceived and killed countless people. Abal, however, was not fooled. After some time, they finally reached a small oasis. It was clear Sun had originally been left here temporarily. More than a dozen camels were also tied up here, each heavily laden with goods.

Blood Eye was covered in wounds and bound beneath one of the palm trees. Abal urged Night forward and circled him once. The missing pieces of the story were easy enough to fill in: Abal often went out and was not with her every day. He had taken men to ambush Blood Eye and seized his goods. But tying both the wealth and the man up here to wait for Jiang Yuan to arrive-this method was truly worthy of admiration. Blood Eye glared at the two of them, his single eye so bloodshot it seemed almost ready to drip blood.

“You two are in this together!” he roared hoarsely. “Abal, you bastard! You-”

Jiang Yuan could only look down at him expressionlessly. As for those goods… she probably had a share in them. “We actually weren’t before,” Abal said lightly, his tone mocking. “All thanks to you, you crippled old scorpion chief.” He made a circle and happened to ride up beside Jiang Yuan, then leaned sideways like a flash of lightning and brushed the corner of her mouth.

Jiang Yuan did not move. Those blue eyes swept past before her, full of slyness and triumph. He said, “No matter what I do, we’re allies.” Jiang Yuan only wanted to beat him senseless. Blood Eye could not see that Abal had not actually kissed her on the lips. Thinking the two of them were involved, his eyes bulged with fury as he struggled with all his might, his mouth letting out inhuman howls. Abal’s smile turned cold.

“I’ve warned many people not to accept my elder brother’s commissions,” he said. “You’re merely one of them.” He jumped down from his horse. After that vicious bit of toying, he neatly cut off Blood Eye’s head.

Letting Blood Eye die in a state of raging fury was clearly a satisfying thing for Abal as well. His pettiness was the same as ever. He straightened and laughed once. An oilcloth had long since been spread beneath Blood Eye’s body. His sentence had been passed long ago; he had only been waiting for Jiang Yuan to arrive and witness the execution. After killing him, Abal placed the head between the corpse’s legs, then wrapped the oilcloth up from all four sides, not letting a single drop of blood seep out.

He tied the oil-wrapped corpse to a camel and had it drag the body to a distant sand dune. The large amount of blood was wrapped in cloth, so it would not leak out during transport and leave too strong a scent to attract wild beasts. Vultures had already flown in from afar. They could not even wait for Abal to lead the camel away before they swarmed forward and began pecking greedily. Abal, taking the camel train and Jiang Yuan with him, set off in search of a new, safe oasis elsewhere.

They did not travel for long. Not long after nightfall, they arrived in a ravine, where just looking down was enough to feel cold, damp vapor rising toward their faces. A campsite had been left here, with tents already pitched and the remains of a campfire, so they could rest without much effort. From who knew where, Abal dug out several wild chickens he had hidden away. They were covered in filth and droppings, listlessly tied with grass rope deep among the rocks; clearly, they had not been starved for just a day or two. They no longer had to suffer. Abal killed them swiftly with one slash, drained their blood, and handed them whole to Jiang Yuan.

Jiang Yuan said nothing and took the chickens to prepare them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lie down on the ground and stretch comfortably. To capture Blood Eye, he had likely been out often these past days and had expended no small amount of effort. She cut half a chicken to make soup and roasted the remaining meat. She kept a portion aside to cook something extra for herself, slicing the meat and stir-frying it with fat and dried fruit on a stone slab. The taste was just barely decent. But before the meat had even left the slab, two fingers reached over through the air. A jeweled ring slipped into the steam, utterly unconcerned, pinched up two pieces of meat, and put them into the mouth beneath the face cloth.

Jiang Yuan looked at Abal crouching beside her and drew in a breath, but in the end she still chewed and swallowed the meat in her mouth. She said, “Your portion is by the fire.”

He smiled. “I’m more interested in the devil’s food.”

“Sorry, I don’t want to share my meal.”

“Then how about I give you another ten percent of the goods?” the bandit chief said casually, watching the food in the pan with great interest. The split he had originally negotiated with Adnan was seventy-thirty, with Abal taking seventy and Adnan thirty. Jiang Yuan stood up to collect the roasted chicken by the fire.

Behind her, Abal said, “You really don’t stand on ceremony, Jia Nan.”

Jiang Yuan ignored him. Establishing a base in Taif, putting down firm roots, sending people to Aden, and posting others in Alexandria to watch for news of Adnan-everywhere required gold. Since she had already been forced into becoming his accomplice, what was there to be polite about when bowing to money? Abal said, “I’ve seen you use two little sticks to pick up food.” So Jiang Yuan handed him the chopsticks she had prepared for herself.
“Aren’t you going to teach me?” he asked teasingly, his blue eyes dark yet bright beneath the firelight and the night sky.

Jiang Yuan said, “Teach yourself.”

Abal clumsily tried to pick up the meat with his chopsticks. After a while, he still pulled out the dagger he carried and speared the meat with the blade to eat it. That little bit of meat was nowhere near enough for a growing boy. Before long, he had devoured his share like a storm sweeping through, then came over as if it were the most natural thing in the world and helped himself to Jiang Yuan’s roast meat.

Night and Sun had been let loose earlier to find grass. Now they finally returned, their hooves striking the sand with dull thuds. Once they finished eating, there was no time to rest or clean up. They still had to help unload the camels and take turns leading them to water. Night was ordered to lead the way, taking them behind the rift valley. After about ten minutes at a trot, they found a patch of grass, and a wadi as well. There was still water in the wadi that had not yet dried up. Saxaul and cacti struggled, stubbornly and desperately, to survive among cracked stones brushed clean of sand.

When Jiang Yuan looked back, she could see the firelight, distant, tiny, yet distinct. The moonlight in the wilderness was bright too. The wind rose from time to time, stirring the robes on their bodies. Brushing down Night and Sun did not take long, but waiting for the camels to drink did, because they needed to fill their stomachs with water. After the work was done, Abal and Jiang Yuan sat together on the ground and waited. After a while, he lay back on the ground and gazed at the clouds in the sky. If one only turned their head, they could see that the snow mountain was still there, as though it would never leave.

“That devil’s temptation-was it the work of you, this devil?”

His voice suddenly rang out. Jiang Yuan turned her head to look at him. He was smiling. He looked both oddly unfamiliar and very familiar. It seemed as if something was a little different, yet also as if nothing had changed at all. Every time she met this guy, she was forced into “murder and robbery.” Still, Jiang Yuan really did know what a mirage was, so she roughly explained it to him. Abal looked rather surprised. He had not expected it to actually be the devil’s work-or, in any case, that the devil would know.

“You know quite a lot,” he said teasingly. “I kissed you. Aren’t you angry?”

The topic changed a little too abruptly. Expressionless, she answered, “The payment was generous.”

That ten-percent share Abal had given her had, of course, not been for the food, but for that kiss.

He gave an “oh.”

“Now I’m rather regretting that I didn’t truly kiss you.” Those blue eyes looked at her, curving slightly. “Kissing a devil sounds exciting.”

Jiang Yuan took out the sugar she carried with her and tried to plug his mouth with it. Abal accepted it with a smile, not at all minding that it was sugar meant to coax mounts. It was inconvenient to eat sugar lying down, so he sat up. He had pulled down his headscarf and folded it over his shoulders. The sound of him crunching the sugar went crack, crack. Jiang Yuan thought for a moment, then stood and walked away.

Abal paid her no mind. A long while later, when the camels had finally drunk their fill and were about to kneel down to sleep, they stubbornly dragged the lead camel back and brought the herd to the fire. The fire was nearly out. Abal lowered his head and tossed in a few pieces of camel dung. Jiang Yuan spread out her bedding and prepared to sleep. She heard Abal’s footsteps; he had probably gone to bathe again. He was young and strong, so he could waste his body however he pleased, soaking himself in the middle of the night without fearing that when he got old, rheumatism would make his whole body ache. To be honest, Jiang Yuan also suspected it was impossible to get rheumatism in a desert region, but her notions were deeply ingrained and could not be changed. Especially in an era without hair dryers.

A long time later, she heard footsteps again, much heavier this time. She was asleep then, hovering between dreams and wakefulness. Suddenly, in her hazy awareness, she realized what was different. After half a year apart, they were actually trusting each other this much. That was clearly impossible. The footsteps stopped beside her head. She felt that beyond the strip of cloth, a shadow seemed to fall over her. Yet she did not wake. Her eyes remained closed, and she did not get up to drive him away.

So Abal poked her in the shoulder, poking her awake. The bandit chief crouched down and looked down at her in the firelight. Propping his chin in his hand, his whole body was wet, clean and cold, while the jeweled ring shone beside his cheek.

“Dear Jia Nan,” he said. “Do you want to try it with me?” His blue eyes were smiling, brilliant with light.

Jiang Yuan stared at him for two seconds before she realized what he wanted to try.

But this was a wasteland, a desert, under the bright moon beside a bonfire, with one man and one woman alone together. He had just finished killing people, and there were no other women around for him to get with. For the moment, she could take it as his brain short-circuiting and flooding again. She turned over, pulled the blanket over her face, and felt that everything she had thought while half-asleep had been complete bullshit. Behind her, Abal said lazily, “Jia Nan, I really do like you. Though your figure and face aren’t much, everything else suits my tastes very well. Do you really not want to try the taste of a man? I’ll make you happy.”

At least he did not pounce on her by force and use some filthy method to seduce her. Otherwise, this time Jiang Yuan would not have let it end with just one shoulder throw. He added, “Just one night. I won’t pester you afterward, don’t worry.”

Oh, thank you so very much.

But the water in Abal’s brain had clearly not finished draining. He was dead set on sleeping with her once. “All right,” he said. “Then how about this: if I don’t look for any other women for a month, in exchange for one night with you? What do you think?”

With her back to him, Jiang Yuan stuck a hand out from under the blanket and gave him the middle finger.

So sleepy. Going to bed. I’ll finish writing tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I have a very serious question. Once this chapter is finished, it’ll hit sixty thousand words and can go VIP.

Sorry, work was too busy, so I didn’t finish updating until Sunday.

Starting today, I’ll build up a stockpile. It goes VIP on Wednesday, and I’ll update daily through Sunday-if everything goes according to plan…

Thank you to the little angels who threw me Overlord Tickets~

Thank you to the little angels who threw [Landmines]: Yue Bing, 1; Number Fungus, 1.

Thank you to the little angels who watered me with nutrient solution~

Thank you to the little angels who watered nutrient solution: ORANGE, 45 bottles; Yue Bing, 15 bottles; Number Fungus, 14 bottles; Engine Oil, 4 bottles; Sherlock’s Fangirl, 1 bottle.

Thank you all very much for your support. I will keep working hard! ^_^