NABC Chapter 830 Who exactly is singing...?
Chapter 830 Who exactly is singing...?
Everything looks normal.
Anjie's wildly beating heart calmed down a bit, and her face showed some relief.
At least there's someone who listens. Girls are definitely more considerate and sensible; they wouldn't take their own lives for granted.
Anjie's expression of relief froze.
She watched as He Lingling retreated further and further towards the edge of the lotus flowers, and, disregarding whether the strange fish would be watching her, roared:
"He Lingling! What are you doing!"
At the same time that Anjie yelled in anger, He Lingling, who had been holding back her anger for a while, gritted her teeth, took a quick run-up, and jumped towards the lotus flower where Thumbelina was sleeping.
Bang.
Anjie's face turned red with anger.
Watching He Lingling leap into the lotus flower and disappear from sight, An Jie felt that she would have a heart attack sooner or later.
Chen Yi was also quite shocked. His narrow eyes stared wide-eyed at the doughy face, but they remained just slits.
He wanted to speak, but he saw that some of the monsters that were originally attacking Yu Shijiu and Xu Han had already turned around and swam towards them.
To be precise, it swam towards Ange's direction.
Chen Yi: "..."
Chen Yi's fake smile was almost impossible to maintain; his wooden, fat face twitched as he tried to speak but was also worried about the strange fish, leaving him in a dilemma.
Anjie was both angry and anxious. The dagger in her hand quickly disappeared, replaced by a steel pipe exactly the same as the one in Xu Han's hand.
boom!
Boom!
Bang bang bang!
The sound of the fish head being smashed increased significantly. Anjie's smashing force was fierce and heavy, unlike Xu Han's force which only stunned the strange fish. Every time Anjie smashed the strange fish, the biceps on her arms and the veins on her face bulged out in a ferocious manner.
boom!
Another strange fish, oblivious to its fate, had its head smashed by Anjie, and floated on the surface of the water, lifeless and belly up.
In the corner, Fang Youhua and the others, who had been sitting quietly on the lotus flower without making a sound, watched An Jie's violent fish-smashing actions with solemn expressions.
Yang Hua swallowed hard, watching An Jie's muscles as she smashed the fish with a mixture of envy and admiration. He was so envious he almost cried.
She's a fitness enthusiast—no, in the game, she'd be considered a trainee, someone who trains really hard—but even after all this time, she doesn't have muscles as smooth and beautiful as Anjie's.
He looks incredibly strong; it's definitely not the kind of fake muscle built up with performance-enhancing drugs.
What kind of workout routine does this Anjie do to get such a muscular physique...?
Even though they were on opposite sides, Yang Hua couldn't help but take a few more glances.
Fang Youhua stared down at the strange fish corpses floating on the water, her gaze somewhat unfocused.
Suddenly she thought of something.
It happened when she was carrying Xiaohua'er to the field to look for Xiaohua'er's arms and legs.
At that time, none of the villagers stopped her. She carried the lifeless little flower all the way out of the gate, and then staggered towards the fields with the little flower in her arms.
The fields are huge!
Everywhere there was ripe rice, golden and heavy ears of rice shimmering with dazzling golden light under the sun.
Fang Youhua just kept walking and running... searching back and forth in the fields, turning over and over, completely oblivious to the gazes of the villagers who hadn't yet returned home.
A woman tried to strike up a conversation with her, but when her gaze fell on the little flower in her arms, she was instantly horrified and took several steps back.
"Big, Big Flower! You! Why are you carrying... why are you carrying a corpse around like that?!"
Fang Youhua heard a voice, looked up blankly at the other person's pale face, and quickly took several steps forward.
The latter was so frightened that he backed away repeatedly, his thin, yellow face filled with fear: "Big Flower! Big Flower, don't! Don't come any closer! Don't come any closer!"
"What's wrong, Auntie?"
Fang Youhua couldn't hear her panicked voice, nor could she see her terrified face. She asked blankly:
"I just wanted to ask you, to ask that beast Wang, Auntie, did you see him today? They said he came to the fields..."
No! No, no! No!
"...Let me ask someone else."
Fang Youhua turned around, holding Xiaohua in a daze, and continued walking to another place. She asked three or four people in a row, and received the same answer from each of them.
No.
No.
No.
no……
No one said they saw Vice Wang go to any field today.
"..." Fang Youhua's steps began to become heavy, and her arms holding Xiaohua'er began to ache.
Xiao Hua'er's body kept sliding down in Fang Youhua's arms, but Fang Youhua pulled her up little by little and pulled her into her arms. Her head slumped on Fang Youhua's shoulder, her eyes closed and she didn't move.
"Little Flower..."
Fang Youhua turned her head and gently rubbed her forehead against her daughter's, seemingly oblivious to the other's cold, stiff expression, and said softly:
"It'll be soon...it'll be soon...these aunties, these older sisters...they've all been tamed by those bad things...wait, wait a little longer, there has to be someone who hasn't been tamed by those bad things..."
"..." Fang Youhua didn't remember how long she had been walking. She just kept walking back and forth in the fields until, as the sun was about to set, she saw a thin figure wearing a headscarf, peeking in her direction.
It was that old lady in the headscarf who was eating sunflower seeds and watching the commotion.
The weather was a bit chilly after autumn arrived. Fang Youhua, feeling cold and hungry after walking back and forth for a while, held her little flower and stared drowsily at the figure wearing a headscarf on the ridge of the field. She opened her mouth to speak.
"Aunt..."
Fang Youhua asked in a hoarse voice, "Did you see which plot of land Vice-Wang went to?"
The old woman in the headscarf was backlit, her face was dark, and her expression was unclear.
"...Big Flower."
After a long while, Fang Youhua finally heard her voice, which was a little hoarse and struggling, "I thought about it all afternoon... In the end, I cooked the meal and went to your house to look for you, but you weren't home. I thought you might be in the fields..."
Fang Youhua's teeth were chattering from the cold: "Auntie... do you know, do you know where Xiaohua's arms and legs are buried?"
The old woman in the headscarf remained silent for a while, and Fang Youhua also quietly watched her dark face without making a sound.
Finally, the old woman in the headscarf sighed slowly, as if she had finally dared to speak, and murmured:
"In that...in that field, right, right there in that field..."
Fang Youhua's fading gaze slowly brightened again.
There it was... so that's where it was...
----------
"Well."
In extreme tension, He Lingling's ankle made a crisp cracking sound when it landed on the flower stamen. As excruciating pain rose from her ankle, He Lingling managed only to let out a barely audible groan.
Gan!
He Lingling endured the pain and knelt on the flower stamen, feeling dizzy and lightheaded from the pain.
My luck was indeed not very good as always.
He Lingling endured the pain while looking up at the center of the flower.
Just as she had guessed, Thumbelina, in the center of the flower, was fast asleep, covered with a blanket of dirty petals, showing no signs of waking up.
really……
He Lingling endured the pain in her ankle and crawled forward on her knees.
As she got closer, Thumbelina's seemingly calm but actually furrowed brows came into view.
Thumbelina...never woke up.
The "distress song" that attracts the fish was not sung by Thumbelina at all.
What exactly is singing?
He Lingling's mind was in turmoil. She pushed aside the agitated emotions in her mind and reached out to nudge the sleeping Thumbelina.
The force gradually increased, and eventually, he even shook Thumbelina's shoulders to force her to wake up.
He Lingling felt a little uneasy as she listened to the increasingly violent sounds of fish being smashed and killed around her.
Ange shouldn't be angry... Actually, I'm not in any danger at all... As the protagonist of this story, Thumbelina must be the safest person around me.
He Lingling selectively ignored another possibility before seeing Thumbelina.
—If the singer really is Thumbelina, then she's essentially walking into a trap, a "buffet" delivered right to her doorstep.
Fortunately, this time, Lady Luck smiled upon her.
Under He Lingling's repeated harassment and prodding, Thumbelina's tightly closed eyebrows and eyes finally began to tremble. She seemed to be gradually opening her eyes, her eyelids spasming wildly, as if she was about to wake up in the next second.
Seeing this, He Lingling disregarded everything else and quickly and forcefully pried open Thumbelina's eyelids, forcibly waking her up.
Thumbelina felt a sharp pain in her eyelids and groaned as she opened her eyes. The moment she opened them, she was met with a pair of huge, black pupils that were very close to hers. Startled, she gasped for breath and quickly rolled to the side.
He Lingling: "..."
He Lingling silently stepped back, knelt down with her hands raised, and whispered:
"I am a human being, just like you."
Thumbelina stared wide-eyed in horror, and it took her several seconds to react.
After carefully examining He Lingling from a distance, she breathed a sigh of relief, patted her chest, and slowly climbed back.
He Lingling just watched her crawl back without moving.
Did you come looking for me?
Thumbelina's eyes looked very clear, like unpolished crystal stones, beautiful yet cold.
"……Yes."
He Lingling was a little worried that her guess was wrong, so she squeezed out a whisper from between her teeth and said first:
"Do you want to get out of here?"
Thumbelina's open mouth froze.
Her beautiful eyes darted around before finally settling on He Lingling's face.
"Leave?" Thumbelina grabbed He Lingling's hand and asked urgently, "Does it mean we can elope together?"
"……Yes."
He Lingling shivered from the coldness of Thumbelina's hand, gritted her teeth and nodded.
"As long as you sing, your singing will attract the kind fish and birds around you to come and save you. As long as your singing can attract them, you can successfully escape the marriage."
He Lingling lowered her voice, trying to make her tone sound less seductive, and added another sentence.
"Thumbelina, your voice is so beautiful, your face so lovely, your kindness can move all the animals... Sing, if you sing, none of us will have to marry that ugly toad..."
He Lingling spoke these words with trepidation, genuinely afraid that Thumbelina might displease her and force her to step down—although, according to the original story, this was almost impossible.