The little girl looked to be only eight or nine, dressed all in white, with two horn-shaped pigtails sticking straight up from her head and a face that hadn’t yet lost any of its childishness. Ye Tianxie was certain this little girl had absolutely not been sitting there when he first appeared in this place, or he would have spotted her immediately. It was more as though she had simply appeared there all at once.
Yaya: Level ???? Grade ???? Age unknown. Yet she seems to have the body and disposition of a girl of eight or nine, forever. No one knows where she came from. It is said she has kept watch in front of the Ice-Severed Wolf Den for a great many years, and only by passing her trial can one enter the Ice-Severed Wolf Den.
The Eye of the Evil Dragon had barely brought back its information when the little girl called out in her clear, crisp voice, “My name’s Yaya! Welcome, big brother, to this place. The ground here is very slippery, but cute little Yaya has magical Snow-Treading Shoes, so you don’t have to worry about slipping on ice or snow at all!”
Ye Tianxie had only just stepped closer when a long panel appeared in front of him.
White Snow-Treading Shoes: white Snow-Treading Shoes. The soles carry simple magical patterning; once worn, you need not worry about your footing slipping on any surface at all. Price: 1,000 gold.
Black Snow-Treading Shoes: black Snow-Treading Shoes. The soles carry simple magical patterning; once worn, you need not worry about your footing slipping on any surface at all. Price: 1,000 gold.
Red Snow-Treading Shoes: red Snow-Treading Shoes. The soles carry simple magical patterning; once worn, you need not worry about your footing slipping on any surface at all. Price: 1,000 gold.
Blue Snow-Treading Shoes…
Pink Snow-Treading Shoes…
Yellow Snow-Treading Shoes…
…
…
“Big brother, look, we’ve got pretty shoes in every color! Oh, and, and — if you don’t put on a pair of these pretty snow shoes, it’s really super easy to slip over inside the Ice-Severed Wolf Den. So for safety’s sake, cute little Yaya doesn’t let any big brothers or big sisters or uncles or aunties in without snow shoes on!” Yaya was smiling as brightly as sunshine. Tie a balloon to either of those pigtails and she would probably float off into the air.
The veins stood out on Ye Tianxie’s forehead. One simple pair of shoes, and she was selling them for a thousand gold — and if you didn’t buy, you weren’t getting into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den! Robbery! Naked, barefaced robbery! A heart this black at that age — when she grew up she’d be knocking over banks… assuming this world had banks.
Even with the urge rising in him to pick her up and smack her backside, Ye Tianxie had no choice but to hand over a thousand gold with tremendous generosity and arrange a smile on his face. “Little sister, your snow shoes are very pretty. I’ll take a black pair, then.”
Ding-dong! Transaction successful. Ye Tianxie now held a pair of black shoes about as unfashionable in style and appearance as it was possible to be… very much like the flat cloth shoes sold ten to a bundle for ten yuan on a country high street.
Yaya’s laugh got merrier still. “Yaa! Big brother, you’re such a good person! Some of the big brothers just now were awful — they even asked if they could have them cheaper… Yaya sells things at the very cheapest prices, and they were so stingy… Oh! And some of the other big brothers actually asked if there was a discount for a group buy. What does group buy mean?”
“A group buy is—”
“Ding ding ding ding! Yaya’s trial mode is now beginning! Big brother, are you ready? Only by passing Yaya’s trial can you enter the Ice-Severed Wolf Den! Yaa! It’s not that Yaya does this on purpose — it’s the task the beautiful Big Sister Creator God gave to Yaya!” Yaya hadn’t given Ye Tianxie so much as an opening to explain what a group buy was; the speech, which she had plainly recited N times already, came shooting out of her like a string of firecrackers.
Ye Tianxie straightened his back. “Go on, then. What trial?”
With the strength he currently possessed, he genuinely wasn’t afraid of any so-called trial… so long as it wasn’t the hunt-for-something sort he’d had at the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins.
Yaya’s eyes flickered; she pouted and shouted, “Ding ding ding ding! Since you’re ready, then the trial from the cutest Yaya of all is coming!”
…There was no denying that her degree of self-adoration was a fair match for Guoguo’s, Ye Tianxie thought.
“Trial number one…” Yaya beckoned with one hand, and a roll of white paper appeared in it. “Fill in the poem!”
Ye Tianxie’s foot caught and he nearly went headfirst into the snow.
“To get into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den you have to save a poor pitiful little wolf, so you don’t just have to have a kind heart, you have to be clever enough too! Which is why you absolutely have to pass Yaya’s intelligence trial! Don’t worry, big brother’s a good person, so all ten of the trials Yaya’s giving you are the very easiest ones, and big brother only has to get five of them right to pass!” Yaya waved the roll of paper about, her childish smiling face blooming like a tender flower. Impossibly cute.
Ye Tianxie took the roll of paper. Once bitten by a snake — (please write in the second half).
Ye Tianxie: “……”
Holding that magic pen of Yaya’s, Ye Tianxie did not move for a long time.
“Yaa! Yaya’s starting the countdown! You only get ten seconds! Ten… nine… eight… seven…”
Ye Tianxie’s hand was trembling. Then at last he set his teeth, scratched away at the paper, finished in three seconds, and handed it back to Yaya.
Once bitten by a snake — (everywhere the birds are singing).
Yaya tilted sideways and nearly fell off the snowman.
Yaya was plainly furious. She bellowed, “Once bitten by a snake, ten years afraid of a coiled rope! Even a three-year-old knows that!! Big brother, you’re so stupid! So stupid!! So stupid!!! You’re a super colossal idiot!! Stupid to death!!”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
He genuinely hadn’t done it on purpose. He genuinely did not know what the second half of that saying was.
Ye Tianxie had never attended primary school, or middle school, or high school… Everything he knew had come from “her.” After they met, she gave him a home, took care of everything for him, and then acted as his teacher as well, teaching him everything…
And of all the subjects Ye Tianxie studied, his worst was foreign languages, and after that classical poetry.
Of foreign languages, he currently remembered only the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. When they were together she would indulge him in everything, and the moment he let slip even the smallest hint of impatience with foreign words and old poems, she would very gently stop making him memorize the things he didn’t want to memorize — and besides, not learning them made no real difference. Instead she taught him a great many things he wanted to learn, and had to learn.
And Ye Tianxie ended up at university because of her too, because she had told him that a life without campus life in it was destined to be incomplete. It was because a great many feelings, a great deal of what makes life vivid, belong only to a campus and cannot be felt or experienced anywhere else. And so, with Zuo Pojun’s help, he had gotten easily into Jinghua University, which countless students dream of…
Only, his campus life lasted less than two months before it became a thing of the past, because she left.
Faced with once bitten by a snake, Ye Tianxie had scraped desperately through every line of verse in his head that he could still recall — a pitifully small number, naturally — and finally picked one that rhymed reasonably well to pair it with… and so a timeless masterpiece of a couplet was born, one that broke Yaya outright.
Once bitten by a snake, everywhere the birds are singing!
“Don’t be angry, little sister. Once bitten by a snake, ten years afraid of a coiled rope — how could I possibly not know something that simple? I was only teasing you to make you laugh. Yaya’s so cute, and even cuter when she smiles.” Ye Tianxie said it beaming, without a blush and without a flutter of the pulse. Damn it — if I can’t handle one little brat like you…
That speech of Ye Tianxie’s would have raised gooseflesh on any normal person, but on a little girl whose brain hadn’t finished developing, the effect was really quite pronounced. Sure enough, Yaya stopped being angry. She cocked her head and thought about it, then squealed, “I knew you did it on purpose! A question that easy, even the stupidest, stupidest idiot in the whole world could do it, so how could big brother not be able to? Otherwise he’d be even worse than the very stupidest idiot!”
Ye Tianxie: “！@#￥%……”
“So then — now begins the fastest, most nail-biting, most exciting quiz of them all! Big brother, the moment has come to prove you’re a clever person, so you’d better listen carefully!!”
A quiz… Ye Tianxie couldn’t stop himself wiping away cold sweat that wasn’t there.
Yaya blinked, and then her eyes lit up at once and she called out, glowing with spirit, “Question two… If a watermelon and a coconut both hit you on the head, which one hurts more?”
“The key to this question isn’t whether it’s the watermelon or the coconut — it’s which of them is bigger. If the watermelon is bigger, then the watermelon hurts more; if the coconut is bigger, then the coconut hurts more.” Ye Tianxie thought for half a second and answered with a completely serious face. Having answered, he felt at once that his answer was seamless. Einstein himself, come back to life, would have been hard pressed to find a more perfect one.
“Wrong! What hurts more isn’t the watermelon and it isn’t the coconut — it’s your head! It’s your head that hurts, coconuts and watermelons don’t hurt at all! Big brother, you’re so stupid!” Yaya shouted up at him.
Ye Tianxie turned to stone on the spot.
“Question three…” Yaya gave Ye Tianxie no room to breathe, asking crisply, “A black cat and a white cat are very good friends. One day the white cat falls into a dirty black river and turns completely black. When the black cat sees her, what’s the first thing it says?”
Ye Tianxie swiftly deployed his imagination, made himself into that white cat, put himself thoroughly in her position for a solid ten seconds, and then said with great solemnity, “It would say: hey! My friend, you look much prettier than you used to!”
“Wrong!” Yaya’s mouth fell open and her pale little hands waved back and forth.
“Then what does it say?”
“Obviously it says ‘Meow~~~‘ — because cats can’t talk in the first place!!”
Ye Tianxie’s face ran with tears.
“Question four… One day the clever, adorable Xiao Ming is walking down the street, and he sees a whole lot of gold coins on the ground and one great big bone. But Xiao Ming picks up the bone and doesn’t pick up the gold coins. Why is that?”
“Because the gold coins are fake,” Ye Tianxie said woodenly.
“Wrong!! Because Xiao Ming is a little dog!!”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
(End of Chapter 187)