“Because I missed Yaya, so I came.” Ye Tianxie led Su Feifei over toward her, grinning as he said it.
“Yaa! Big brother, that sounds so fake, anyone can tell you’re lying. Yaa! Is this pretty big sister next to you your companion?” Yaya was plainly not buying any of it, and punctured Ye Tianxie’s pleasantry without the least courtesy, which wounded him considerably.
“Tianxie, who is this little girl?” Su Feifei asked, puzzled.
“She’s a strange NPC who stands guard here…” And then, in a voice so low only he and Su Feifei could hear it, “Shh, don’t say anything. Watch me handle this little fox.”
“Ha! Yaya is a good child, Yaya is not a little fox at all!” Yaya’s cheeks puffed out and she said it thoroughly annoyed.
Ye Tianxie opened his mouth and in the end had nothing at all to say… This little girl’s hearing seemed a touch too sharp.
“Ahem. Yaya, you misheard. Of course Yaya is a good child… Good child, we’d like to go into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den—”
“You can’t go in twice within three days, Big Sister Creator God said so, and nobody at all is allowed to break it. No, no, no!” Yaya shook her head hard and refused Ye Tianxie’s request flat, with the air of someone entirely beyond negotiation.
Ding-dong… A lollipop appeared in front of Yaya’s eyes — with the wrapper already cleverly peeled off by Ye Tianxie, since it would never have done for Su Feifei to see it.
The moment the lollipop that had no business existing in this world appeared, the rest of what Yaya had been about to say went straight back down her throat, and her eyes glazed over… and then a little stream of drool came pouring out of her mouth and ran all the way down onto the front of her clothes. Heaven only knew — ever since eating that lollipop the day before, she had spent the whole day and the whole night thinking about how it tasted.
Registering her own lapse at once, Yaya hurriedly sucked the drool back in; but the instant she opened her mouth it came pouring out again, quite beyond suppressing, and at a volume that opened Ye Tianxie’s and Su Feifei’s eyes for them.
Yaya reached for the lollipop, and Ye Tianxie pulled his hand back so that she closed on nothing. “Good child. Send us to the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, and then you can eat it.” Ye Tianxie waggled the lollipop in his hand, grinning without a scrap of conscience — and that expression, and that gesture, gave Su Feifei a clear picture of exactly what a creepy old man luring a little girl with sweets actually looks like…
“I… I… I’ll let you two in, all right, big brother… I want to eat it…” Yaya said it swallowing hard the whole time, her eyes fixed longingly on the lollipop in Ye Tianxie’s hand, the words coming out somewhat mangled.
“Good girl, Yaya.” Having won a total victory once again, Ye Tianxie put the lollipop into Yaya’s hand with great satisfaction. Then he flashed Su Feifei a V for victory, and got in return a distinctly odd look. She leaned in at his ear and said quietly, “Tianxie, you don’t go around cheating children like this all the time, do you… and another thing, where did you buy that lollipop? Why have I never seen one for sale in any shop in the city?”
“Secret.”
“……” Su Feifei had nothing to say to that. Another secret!
“Yaya, don’t just think about eating. It’s time you sent us into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den.” Watching Yaya, who was already getting the lollipop impatiently into her mouth, Ye Tianxie had no choice but to prompt her.
“Mm… Yaya promised you could go in today, but Yaya never promised to send you in right away.” Yaya said it with the lollipop in her mouth, her voice muffled and mixed with the sound of her working at it.
Black lines ran down Ye Tianxie’s forehead…
Pop — the lollipop slid out of Yaya’s mouth. Holding it up, Yaya said with enormous concern, “Big brother, and pretty big sister — for your own safety inside the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, you absolutely have to buy the beautiful Snow-Treading Shoes that Yaya made specially for you before you go in. If you don’t buy them, then for your own safety’s sake Yaya won’t send you in. Yaa, Yaya’s beautiful Snow-Treading Shoes really are so beautiful… look, and they’re very cheap too, only a thousand gold a pair.”
Looking at the heap of Snow-Treading Shoes Yaya spilled out in front of them, Su Feifei nearly fainted on the spot… Shoes this shabby in style and material… selling for a thousand gold apiece?!
“All right. I knew you wouldn’t forget to strong-arm people into buying your shoes.” Ye Tianxie was unruffled about it, paid up briskly, and bought two pairs — a black pair for himself and a white pair for Feifei.
“Tianxie, do we really have to wear shoes like these? They’re so ugly.” Holding that frankly unsightly pair of white shoes, Su Feifei said it feebly.
“…They are very ugly, but they’re extremely practical. You’ll see in a moment,” Ye Tianxie answered her, and then said to Yaya, “Yaya, can you send us in now?”
“Ding ding ding ding!! It is now time for Yaya’s great trial of intelligence! To get into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, you must first pass Yaya’s great trial of intelligence, because only the very cleverest people can go into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den and save that poor mother wolf…” Yaya raised both hands high. “And now — begin!!”
Ye Tianxie’s legs nearly went out from under him. Into his head came the scene of taking six straight falls off this little girl the day before, and he said through his teeth, “Yaya, you’re cheating!”
“Yaa! Yaya is not cheating at all. Big brother wasn’t supposed to be able to go into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den today, but big brother is a good person and gave Yaya a lollipop to eat, so Yaya agreed to give big brother this chance… Big brother had better take hold of it and pass.” Yaya said it beaming. As for the standard Ye Tianxie operated at, she had taken his full measure the day before. So for him to pass here today — impossible!
Which meant she would not, in fact, have gone against Big Sister Creator God a second time.
“Yaya, you—”
“Ding ding ding ding! Question one… listen carefully! Two dogs are having a race. The black dog runs fast and the white dog runs slowly. After they reach the finish line, which dog has the most sweat on it? What follows is the fastest, most nail-biting speed-answer mode — you only get five seconds per question! Countdown starting… five… four… three…”
Yaya plainly had no intention of giving Ye Tianxie room to speak; she shrilled the whole of the first question out without a single pause and went straight into counting down… Su Feifei started to say something and thought better of it, but remembering that Ye Tianxie had specifically told her not to make a sound and to leave it to him, she obediently held her tongue and watched to see how he would react.
“…The one that runs fast sweats more.” With Yaya’s countdown down to “one,” Ye Tianxie had to produce an answer in a hurry.
“Wrong! Dogs don’t sweat at all!”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
Su Feifei: “……”
“Question two,” Yaya shouted straight on. “A supreme martial-arts genius and a supreme magic genius get married. What will the son they have grow up to become? Counting down… five… four… three…”
“He’d grow up to be a genius who cultivates both magic and martial arts,” Ye Tianxie said, steeling himself.
“Wrong!! When their child grows up, he’ll become… an adult!” Yaya shouted it out, and then gave the lollipop a hard lick.
Ye Tianxie very much wanted to haul this little girl down off the snowman and bury her in it.
The questions Yaya put were brain teasers of the purest sort, and what they tested was emphatically not ordinary reasoning. To Ye Tianxie, who had never encountered a brain teaser before this, there was simply no line of attack to be found. And going at them with ordinary reasoning… produced a wrong answer a hundred percent of the time.
“Question three… When Xiao Ming walks, his feet never touch the ground. Why is that?”
“Because Xiao Ming is a little bird, and he can fly, so his feet don’t touch the ground.” With yesterday’s Xiao Ming is a little dog behind him, Ye Tianxie had a flash of inspiration and delivered his answer with real excitement… That was it! That had to be it! There was absolutely no way he was wrong this time.
“Wrong!” The merciless verdict came out of Yaya again. “Big brother is a super colossal idiot! Birds fly in the sky, they don’t walk! Xiao Ming isn’t a little bird at all! Xiao Ming is a very cute little boy, and the reason his feet don’t touch the ground when he walks is… because he’s wearing shoes! So his feet don’t touch the ground!!”
That answer made Ye Tianxie want to beat his head against the floor.
What sort of bizarre questions were these?!
And the maddening thing was that the answers were airtight, not the least bit forced… Could it really be that he was just too stupid?
“Question four!! A bow has a shooting range of 100 meters. There’s a little bunny 200 meters away. But the arrow this bow fires hits the little bunny. Why is that? Counting down… five… four… three…”
Why does it hit… how would I know!!
“…Two… one… zero! Time’s up! The answer is… that bow is 100 meters long!! Plus the 100 meters of range, and together that makes two hundred meters!” Yaya delivered the answer around a mouthful of lollipop.
Ye Tianxie’s head swam.
“Big brother, out of ten questions you have to get five right to go in, and you’ve already got four wrong. You’d better put your back into it. Question five is really easy… Mm, who is the most disobedient person in the world?”
“A little brat like Yaya!” Ye Tianxie said it with his teeth clenched.
“Wrong! The most disobedient person in the world is a deaf person, because a deaf person can’t hear anything at all! Yaa, big brother, you’ve already got five wrong, so if you get one more wrong you can’t go in today!” Yaya grinned slyly, licking at the lollipop and pulling a face at Ye Tianxie at the same time.
What Ye Tianxie most wanted to do right now was pick Yaya up and give her backside a thorough hiding. This little girl had plainly decided he would never get one right, which was exactly why she had agreed so readily a moment ago for the price of a single lollipop.
Those questions… were those questions a human being could answer?!
Watching a thoroughly pleased Yaya and a teeth-grinding Ye Tianxie, Su Feifei finally could not stand to watch any longer. She tugged at Ye Tianxie’s clothes and said quietly, “Tianxie, this little girl’s questions… if I answer one, does it count?”
(End of Chapter 200)