9 Ch. 9: Jiangnan

"You care for this girl," Meifeng said matter of factly, her body curled up against a tree trunk only a few dozen yards away from where the slaver had stopped. The fat man was truly heartless, parking the cart with the girls outside while he stayed within a warm inn along the roadside.

The wind howled like a woman who had lost her lover, the sound desolate and depressing as it echoed throughout the abandoned main road. Perhaps it was the wail of a newly widowed wife finding her husband's beloved steed wandering aimlessly at the edge of the rural village. Or mayhap the cries of a mother putting on a show to garner her neighbor's sympathies. Regardless, the only sounds that Meifeng could hear were the sounds of sobs and tears from the nearby cart, causing System's heart to bleed.

"She is just so pitiful, Master," System tried to explain.

The girl huddled in rags turned to look at the floating blue screen. "In a regular system, she would be a side mission wouldn't she?" Meifeng asked to confirm her suspicion.

"Erm..." System started hesitantly, feeling put on the spot out of nowhere. Its Master was exceedingly tricky when it came to toeing the line between what she could and could not know.

"Come now," Meifeng said honestly, "Since there are no side missions available for me, it doesn't hurt to let me know."

She looked earnestly at System, and perhaps because she had been painstakingly accompanying the slaver's cart on its journey or because she looked especially sorry sitting in the dark wilderness alone in oversized clothes, System's heart softened.

"Well if you must know," System said sincerely, "This sort of situation would usually be a side mission. You would have to free the girl and then you would receive a perk, such as better clothes, medicine, or insider information about your mission. Oh speaking of medicine, how are you feeling Master?"

As it was not a physical being, System often forgot about human needs such as eating, sleeping, and staying warm. But at the moment it could clearly hear the shivers of the enslaved girls from not too far away and couldn't help but notice the disparity between them and its pink-cheeked Master.

"I'm fine," Meifeng brushed away quickly. "These side missions, who decides them? You?"

System shook its invisible head. "There are thousands of side missions input into every system by the world creators at HQ. As a system user, every time you run into one, I give you the notification for you to complete it, sometimes within a time limit."

Meifeng pondered over the information as she took a bite of a cold bun.

"Dead, she's dead! Someone, help!" screeched someone from the cart. The entire cart, which had been lifeless, was completely rowdy. In the distance, Meifeng could make out a lone figure lying on the bottom of the cage while everyone else scrambled to the wooden bars to avoid it.

Meifeng didn't get the big deal. Wasn't it just a dead body? Instead of wasting their breath, they should work together to shove it through the bars before it hardens from frost and rigor mortis, forcing them to keep the deceased body around for the rest of their trip to Jiangnan.

System sucked in a shocked breath. "Master," it whispered with dread, "Do you think it is... her?"

"No." Meifeng lightly rolled her eyes. The girl had been in perfect health when they had seen her earlier in the day, she would not deteriorate this quickly from a little wind.

The screams and cries did not diminish for several hours, despite them having long realized that no one would come out from the inn. All the lights from the small, cozy inn were off, save for one on the bottom floor, perhaps the groundskeeper. But as the night wore on, eventually Meifeng was able to snatch a few hours of precious sleep. Her identity was unique, though curiously, even System did not know of it, but to a certain extent she was still human. She still needed to eat and sleep just like anyone else.

Meifeng woke up as the slaver began cursing his newly purchased girls for waking him up in the middle of the night. He smacked his whip against the cage several times, making the young women inside huddle in fear with one another until his ego was satisfied.

"He is too cruel!" System snarled. Meifeng found his method quite effective, as the racket the girls had been making had severely affected the quality of her sleep, leaving her feeling quite muddleheaded in the early, gray morning.

The man made no mention of the dead girl inside, perhaps because he did not want to figure out a way to take her out without letting the other girls escape. There were red undereyes and excess sniffling as the cart headed back onto the main road again, with Meifeng tracking from a distance within the trees.

If one were to look back from the slaver's cart, occasionally they may spy a brown blur in the distance, weaving between black tree trunks on a white canvas. But no one looked back, for they all had nothing to go back to. No one, but the daughter taken the day before. However, she was still in the midst of crying her eyes out, so she did not turn to see the path they had crossed.

When a poor girl was sold to a slaver, there were usually a series of events that followed. She would weep for her sorry fate, shedding enough tears to save a village from drought. After this, a burning hatred would fill her, all directed towards whichever slaver had bought her. But eventually she would realize, as they all eventually realized, that there is no escape. And slowly, the tears would dry and her heart would become hollow as she followed the slaver devotedly so she could get sold somewhere decent. The worst behaved girls typically ended up in brothels and military camps, after all.

A few days later, Meifeng was napping on a tall tree branch that overlooked the parked cart when System called for her.

"Master. Master! Look, she is escaping!" System said frantically with excitement.

The young girl cracked a heavy, eyelid open, gazing down at the frenzy below her. Her pet was indeed correct. The teenage slave from the day prior had managed to somehow get ahold of a branch, a long stick that she had been whittling down with her fingers and the sharp edges within the cart. Her hands were covered in various nicks and scrapes, but she paid it no mind as she jammed it into the iron lock over and over again with a single minded focus.

"So it seems," Meifeng slowly replied as she watched expressionlessly.

Her initial impression of the enslaved daughter had been rather dismal, considering how she had just cried and sobbed throughout the nights while Meifeng had been trying to sleep. But it seemed this little girl, who was actually close to her age, had a few means after all.

The other girls in the cart were still asleep, but a few were beginning to rouse themselves from the sound of wood hitting metal. One was clearly ill, her face an unnatural shade of blue, but the thin blankets inside the cage could not be too useless as she was the only sick person inside.

"What are you doing?" someone hissed in the darkness.

"Escaping," the daughter said, not eager to waste her words.

"You'll die!" the person said angrily.

"If you try to leave, he will punish us all," someone else whispered sharply. They were all vehemently against her escape attempt.

The newly enslaved girl dropped the lock out of frustration and it clanged loudly against the wood cage, startling everyone within the cage out of sleep.

"What's going on?" a filthy girl murmured with bleary eyes.

"This girl is trying to get us all killed!"

"Are you all so eager to die? If so, I can help you!" the daughter arrogantly said, waving around the sharp little stick threateningly. It could be seen that under her teary exterior, this was a woman who wielded her tongue like a weapon.

"Oh really?" someone scoffed incredulously. "Even if you somehow manage to open the lock, where will you go? It's pitch black outside in the middle of winter and we are several days away from the tiny village that you were bought from. You will die before you get anywhere near your home. And even if you do make it back, then what? You'll just be sold again by your uncle before you even manage to dry your socks off by a fire.

I've seen girls like you. Girls who foolishly think that once they run away from a slaver, they can reclaim their lost lives and survive. Do you know where I saw her next? Working a brothel, and not a nice one! The ones that you find near the slums. She was free, but more miserable than me."

Hesitation danced across the face of the daughter, but her determination won out. Her bottom lip curved into an unfriendly frown.

"Then why are you here, huh? Living inside this cage doesn't seem that nice either," she sharply retorted.

"I'll have you know, the only reason why I'm here is because my previous master died and the house didn't want to keep me anymore. But considering I have experience working for a large household, I'll be sure to be bought by an important family and get to eat meat every day!" the other party said.

Hearing the mention of meat, Meifeng could almost visibly see everyone inside the cage perk up.

"D-Do they really feed you that well inside noble families?" someone asked curiously.

The speaker perked up in pride. "Of course! I was an unfavored young miss' personal servant, and even though she was the most neglected within the manor, I always had enough to eat and a neat uniform on my back. And there are so many young personages you can meet. The young masters and young misses were incomparably beautiful, pale as snow and clothed in silks."

"Wow," someone said with starry eyes, "It would be my great fortune to be bought into such a house."

The former servant sniffed indignantly. "A rough thing like you? Even if you took a hundred baths, the recruiting servants for noble families would skip over you in an instant."

"I don't care about working in a noble house or anything like that. I have my own ways of getting by," the daughter said with a sneer. With a click, the lock opened, falling to the snow without a sound.

"No, what have you done?"

"I-I'm not going. I heard a wolf cry not long ago. At least in here, we are safe!"

The door to the cage swung wide open, but everyone within gave it a wide berth as if it was a contagious disease.

The daughter faintly smiling surging towards the door before someone grabbed the back of her dress. It was the arrogant former servant girl.

"If you go, I will scream. Then he will return and beat you until you can't walk," she said viciously.

"If you don't want to escape, that is not my problem. But I will not stay back here with the rest of you!" the daughter replied flippantly, freeing herself and hopping out.

The chill from the snow almost instantly seeped through her thin indoor shoes she had worn when the slaver had arrived, but she relished the feeling of standing on her own two feet. When she had tried to stand in the cage they had previously been in, at best she could only reach a crouch.

"Wan Xiaomei is no more," the daughter murmured as she looked at the cage sadly. She realized that her fellow enslaved were right to a certain extent, returning home was futile. Wan Xiaomei was already lucky enough to have her uncle promise to take good care of her mother, if she went back to her village, she could jeopardize that.

"Someone is escaping!" a girl shrieked at the top of her lungs.

"She is running away! Come grab her!"

Meifeng watched the other girls stay away from the door and call for the slaver to return with a half-smile on her face. The daughter, Wan Xiaomei teetered off into the darkness ahead, her direction the opposite of where they had come from.

As it turned out, they would've all been better off running. Thus, as their decadent, tortured screams reached Meifeng's ears a few minutes later, she turned back over on her sturdy branch and fell into a deep sleep.