On the Seven Towers

In Li Jia's previous imagination, living in an ancient castle must be a different kind of enjoyment. However, he now knows that he is very wrong.

Although the wooden window without glass can block the window hole, the cold air will still seep in from the gaps around it. The bed board is very hard, and the mattress is just a layer of felt. Although the blanket is made of wool, it is rough and has a faint smell of mutton.

Li Jia woke up in the middle of the night because of discomfort more than once, and realized in a trance that he was in a different world. Maybe it was because he was lying alone in this strange and cold castle, or maybe it was because he left the familiar and warm world in his dream. Li Jia, who had never cried since he came here, actually shed tears secretly.

Loneliness makes people cowardly.

Wake up and sleep, sleep and wake up again, Li Jia ushered in another morning in exhaustion, and he saw a glimmer of light from the gap in the wooden window.

Light may not give people hope, sometimes it just tells you that another difficult day is about to begin.

With this little light, Li Jia opened the notebook and slowly wrote:

"Your Shadow"

I am in a dream,

looking for happiness.

Your shadow,

accompanies me in singing.

When the sun rises,

I am nervous again.

Revisiting again and again,

this moment of separation.

————

Reality is too far away,

separated by mountains and rivers.

Your shadow,

I can't care about it,

when time flows,

I toss and turn.

Looking forward to it day by day,

that moment of reunion.

After writing the last stroke, Li Jia sat on the bed in a daze, not noticing that the tip of the pen had melted into ink.

There was a familiar "snap" sound from outside. He put on his clothes, wrapped the wool blanket around himself, and pushed open the window of the room. A gust of cold wind completely woke him up from his tiredness and blew away the soreness in his eyes.

Now the sun has not risen yet, and the sky is a pale dark blue. However, compared with the dark bedroom, this weather is pleasant, not to mention that there is a female knight practicing hard with a sword in the yard downstairs, fighting alone in the dim morning light.

It has been three days. Since living here, Li Jia can see this slender, fully armed female knight practicing martial arts in the yard every morning.

She always practices only one move. She bowed slightly again, and her right hand quickly pulled out the long sword from the scabbard at her waist, stabbed it into a wooden stake in front of her, poked some wood chips, and then put the long sword back into the sheath. There was no sound when drawing and putting the sword back, so only the sound of the wooden stake echoed in the yard.

Li Jia liked to see her agile figure, and even more liked her red ponytail that bounced behind her head. This color made him think of the shadow in the poem. However, he knew that this was impossible. Maybe Serinda was just a cute and gentle country girl, or maybe she was someone else, but in any case she didn't have the tough temperament of the man in front of him. That was the difference between a lion and a sheep. However, some thoughts are always good.

So, she practiced tirelessly, and he watched tirelessly.

It is said that this person is the knight who will lead the team to rescue the school. In fact, Viscount Ruiz agreed to the request for troops on the first day. Li Jia felt that the thick gift list and trading catalog must have played a big role. But according to the Viscount, he must recruit and gather vassals. So, Li Jia and his party were arranged to stay and wait for the team to set off.

During these three days, Li Jia spent nothing. Shi Hao, who was concerned about the school, asked him if he would go back to school first. Li Jia said that he could not leave before getting reinforcements, and he must prevent the Viscount's plan from changing.

However, Li Jia knew that there was another reason that there was a voice in his heart saying that maybe he could meet that figure here? Since there is no village or town around Floro Town, the biggest possibility is the Viscount's territory, right?

People. It is still so easy to be dominated by emotions and easily succumb to desires.

Li Jia smiled bitterly.

The female knight seemed to have heard Li Jia's hum. This time, she drew her sword with a little more force and missed the wooden stake. She sheathed the sword and turned to look at Li Jia's window.

Li Jia's bedroom was on the second floor. The two were only more than ten meters apart. He could clearly see that the female knight was wearing a helmet that covered most of her face. The metal visor and the scales on her body set off each other, giving her a very cold temperament.

Li Jia said a little embarrassedly: "Sorry, I disturbed your sword practice."

"I was distracted." The female knight's voice was a little rough, and her tone and accent were completely different from hers. "I met you at the Viscount's banquet, the messenger who asked for help. Seeing that you are often frowning, are you anxious?"

"Yes, my friends have been in great danger, but the Viscount has been silent for the past few days."

"Don't be anxious, my sword will clear the danger for you. But before that, we must gather enough strength."

"Thank you." Li Jia showed gratitude and bowed slightly.

"Is that an amulet?" The female knight pointed at a shell pendant that fell out of Li Jia's shirt collar when she bent down and asked.

"This?" Li Jia took the shell in her hand and rubbed it gently, "I don't know either. It's a gift."

"You don't even know what this is. It doesn't seem important to you." The female knight said in a rough voice, "But it looks like an amulet I lost when I was a child. I'm willing to exchange it with you for a ruby ​​bracelet. How about it?"

"Ruby for this?"

"Yes." The female knight took off a gauntlet, took off a string of silver chains with rubies on her wrist, and held it up in the air. "Look, this is a treasure worth ten gold coins."

Li Jia felt that the female knight's voice sounded a little excited, and she seemed to want to change the string of shells, but he still shook his head without hesitation: "Sorry, I can't change, this is a very important person to me. Something given to me.”

"Don't you want to make a lot of money? You can also gain the friendship of me, a magic knight." The female knight emphasized her tone.

"There are always some things that are priceless. Sorry!" Li Jia put the pendant into his collar, bowed to the other person again, and then closed the window.

He didn't see that the female knight stood silently for a long time after he closed the window.

———————————————————————

In the mountain forest not too far away from Li Jia's castle, a group of people were trekking hard.

"How far is it?" Chen Hansheng wiped off a few drops of dew on his face and asked Kalanda in front of him.

It was already dawn, and the mountains were filled with thick fog. In the fog, there was only a faint shadow of a person five steps away. For a team of more than 20 people, only seven or eight people could be seen when looking back and forth. Everything is looming in the pure white curtain, and the colorful autumn leaves are like dots on the painting paper, making people feel like they are walking in a fairyland. But Chen Hansheng hated this beautiful scenery, which greatly slowed down their progress.

"According to what Monica said, if you go over the mountain in front, there will be a valley with a small mountain village in it, which should be their meeting place." She replied.

Only a dark blue peak of the mountain in the distance is exposed, and the rest is hidden in the fog. Chen Hansheng looked at the top of the mountain and estimated that he would not be able to walk there in three or four hours. He couldn't help but become more worried. Yesterday they followed the footprints in the mountains and found Matisse's body, and found fragments of Xiao Chen's clothes nearby.

What a bad thing.

The mist made the ground wet. Li Tianrui slipped and almost fell down the slope. Fortunately, the mercenary behind helped him. He cursed with lingering fear: "These stupid guys are really thieves. They have a way out in such deep mountains."

"Max, Ruth and Monica have all been horse thieves for more than ten years and have traveled to many places. There is no place around here that they are not familiar with. This mountain village is where they have been stationed before, and most of the residents there are similar to horse thieves. "Kalanda said, "We mercenaries call this kind of place a thief village, and sometimes we can get missions to destroy the thief village."

"How do you usually deal with them?" Li Tianrui asked.

"How they treat our brothers, we will treat their bastards." The mercenary who had just helped him replied. As he spoke, he made a gesture of wiping his neck.

"The old man, the woman and the child..." Li Tianrui couldn't imagine such a scene.

"Hmph, most of those old people used to be horse thieves who killed without batting an eye. Those women and children also picked up weapons. I had a good brother who died at the hands of a horse thieves who was less than ten years old. He stabbed him directly in the back with a knife. "Heart." The mercenary said with a cold face, "I chopped that little thing into several pieces with my own hands."

Li Tianrui felt depressed, but could not speak.

"As long as you hold weapons against us, we will not be polite." Kalanda saw his thoughts, "But if you surrender obediently, then you will be kidnapped and handed over to the nearby lord."

"So what if I hand it over to the lord? Instead of being a slave and dying of exhaustion and starvation, it would be better to kill him with one knife and kill him once and for all." The mercenary exposed the truth mercilessly.

Li Tianrui's face became more and more ugly. He tried to change the topic and said, "What happened to the woman yesterday?"

Kalanda glanced at him and said, "Collapsed. If we can find Mr. Xiao, we will give her a happy life. If something happens to Mr. Xiao... hum."

Li Tianrui understood the meaning of the cold snort and lowered his head in silence.

"They are all heinous guys, with their hands full of human lives. No death is an exaggeration. Those old people, women and children have also enjoyed the benefits of robbing and killing, so naturally they cannot escape that fate." Chen Hansheng He interjected, "A person always does half of his life by himself."

"Fate? Do you believe this?" Li Tianrui asked curiously.

Chen Hansheng seemed to have remembered something, and smiled a little self-deprecatingly, "Whatever you do, you deserve your fate. I think we are being fair to that Monica." He slapped Li Tianrui on the shoulder, almost causing her to die. The other party pushed her mouth and chewed the mud, "Hey, are you reluctant to part with her because she has a pretty face? If she was an ugly person, would you still have such entanglements?"

"This is different." Li Tianrui defended, "I am not soft-hearted. I have never been a coward when killing goblins!"

"Oh, can goblins compete with elves? Boy, on the battlefield, you only think about two things, killing the enemy and saving your life. Throw away all other thoughts. This is a little life experience given to you by a veteran."