Chapter 49 To Hell with Benevolence and Righteousness

"Erya, Erya~"
"Tell me, where is Xiaobao?"
"Did you hide him somewhere?"
"Tell me quickly."

The woman seemed to have suffered a severe mental breakdown, acting completely like a madwoman as she grabbed the girl's arm and shouted loudly.

Hearing the sound of Li Xiao approaching on horseback, she immediately turned her head to look at him.
Then, she shook her head in disappointment: "You are not my Xiaobao."
"Xiaobao, where are you?"
"Mother is looking for you."
"Hurry home."

The woman screamed like a mad person, her cries desperate and painful, sounding like a mother beast that had lost her young, constantly wailing toward the sky, piercing the heart of everyone who heard it.
Her eyes were filled with urgency and bewilderment, her frail figure appearing precarious beneath her tattered clothes.

In her trance, she seemed to hear a child's voice.
She suddenly raised her head, a glimmer of hope on her face as she looked into the distance.
"Xiaobao, is that you?"
"Mother is here, Mother is here!"

The woman wept and shouted, running stumble-weed and frantic toward the outside, falling to the ground several times, covered in scars, yet continuing to run full of hope.

"A child's voice?"
Watching the woman's unsteady steps, Li Xiao felt a trace of doubt in his heart, as he hadn't heard anything just now.
Were the woman's senses sharper than his? Or was it the bond between mother and child?

"Did you hear a child's voice just now?" Li Xiao asked, looking at the girl.

The girl had just noticed Li Xiao walking over, having been busy comforting the woman before.
Although Li Xiao had now removed the leather armor he wore that night and washed the blood from his face, revealing his original, resolute youthful appearance, the girl recognized him at a glance as the young man who had saved her from the Karlluks that night.

Only now did Erya have the chance to carefully observe Li Xiao's appearance.
He was around the same age as her older brother.
Taller and stronger than her brother, his posture was as straight as a pine, his gaze deep, heroic, and somewhat handsome.

Erya took a deep look at Li Xiao's face, then turned her gaze to the woman's stumbling, retreating figure, and shook her head, saying:
"There was no child's voice. It was her hallucination."

Li Xiao nodded gently, guessing that the woman's mind had suffered a heavy blow and she was beginning to lose her sanity.
"I'll go check and have someone help her look for her child."
With that, Li Xiao made to leave.

However, Erya looked at Li Xiao with tearful eyes and gently shook her head, saying, "There's no need."
"Her child is already gone."

"Gone?"
Hearing Erya's words, Li Xiao felt a momentary daze in his heart.
So, the woman's child was already dead.

"She is a cousin-in-law of mine. My cousin was killed by the Karlluks, and her child was less than half a year old," Erya briefly explained the woman's situation to Li Xiao.
"On the day Sanhe Fortress was breached, that child was snatched from her arms by the Karlluks and placed in my family's house, but the Karlluks didn't feed him."
"Not long after, he fell ill, crying incessantly until his voice became hoarse."

"Because the Karlluks found him too noisy in the courtyard, they—"
"They threw the child down and beat him to death alive."

As she spoke, Erya's tears slowly streamed down, her voice turning hoarse, her body beginning to tremble slightly, and her emotions sinking deeper.
She seemed too terrified to recall that horrifying scene back then—
"I was hiding in the cellar at the time, and through the vent, I watched with my own eyes as those Karlluks smashed the child to death."
"Yet I, yet I—"
"Sob, sob, sob—"
"Why am I so useless? Why could I only hide there and watch?" Erya's voice was almost hoarse, every word squeezed with difficulty from the deepest depths of her heart.

Her face was covered in tear stains, her eyes filled with deep self-blame and despair.
Her legs slowly buckled as she squatted down, curling her body into a tight ball, as if doing so could pull her away from those painful memories.

"Smashed to death?"
Li Xiao furrowed his brows, his heart experiencing a slight tremor.
Yet, immediately after, he shook his head slightly. This was a man-eating era.
Some foreign tribes favored eating the internal organs of infants alive.
Dashing an infant to death was precisely something the Karlluks would do.

Looking at the girl's self-reproachful and guilty appearance, Li Xiao sighed softly, stepped forward, and said: "This is not your fault."
"Under the circumstances back then, even if you had stepped out, you couldn't have saved the child, and instead, you would have cost both you and your brother your lives."
"You don't need to feel guilty for this."
"The ones who truly deserve to die are those Karlluks," Li Xiao said in a deep voice.

Recalling the woman's appearance earlier, Li Xiao already knew what she had suffered at the hands of the Karlluks.
Humiliation, defilement!
In fact, not just her, but many women in Sanhe Fortress had suffered the exact same fate.
And such a tiny infant had ultimately been beaten to death alive by the Karlluks simply because he was deemed too noisy.
What a simple reason.

At this moment, Li Xiao only wanted to curse: "To hell with benevolence and righteousness."
When dealing with the Karlluks, benevolence was never necessary.
Only a single word was needed:
Kill!

Toward other ethnicities, Li Xiao could perhaps be lenient, and as long as they behaved themselves, they could be fully integrated into the big family of the Huaxia nation to become his own wings.
However, regarding the Karlluks, they had to be repaid with a hundredfold or a thousandfold cruel retribution.
An endless blood feud!

Even at this moment, Li Xiao felt that what the soldiers of the Four Fortresses had done to the Karlluks previously was far too gentle and kind.
It was merely inflicting the Karlluks' own treatment of the Han people right back upon them.
Still too merciful.

If Li Xiao were to handle it personally in the future, only a single command would be required:
"Level the carriage wheels, slaughter their race and exterminate their tribe!"
"Torture the ringleaders to death with a thousand cuts!"

After all, the Karlluks as a people were inherently filled with betrayal in their bones.
The ordeal the Tang army suffered back then was something Li Xiao would never allow to happen a second time.

Seeing the girl's haggard and weak state, Li Xiao did not leave immediately, choosing instead to continue soothing her emotions.
"Your name is Erya?"
Li Xiao had just learned the girl's name from what the woman had shouted earlier.

"Mm."
The girl's eye rims were still red as she nodded slightly.
"My surname is Wei, and I have an older sister, so I'm called Erya," the girl softly explained.
As she spoke, she raised her head from time to time to look at Li Xiao before her, quickly lowering her gaze again whenever she met his direct stare.

Her name was simply Erya, and people usually called her that every day, and Erya had never felt anything wrong with it.
Yet for some reason, speaking this name to Li Xiao at this moment made her feel a little embarrassed.

Li Xiao smiled slightly and nodded, saying: "It's a lovely name."
This name seemed to naturally carry traits of 'uprightness, kindness, bravery, and fearlessness.'
All of these qualities were reflected in the girl before him.

"My name is Li Dalong, the lord of Hexi Fortress."
"However, I prefer you to call me by my other name, Li Xiao."

Li Xiao?
The girl murmured these two words quietly in her heart.
This name gave her a very special feeling; it sounded wonderful.

"I know you," the girl said.
Her slightly reddened eyes looked toward Li Xiao: "During the two days I've been at Hexi Fortress, I've heard many things about you."
"You are the one who led the men to defeat the Karlluks and rescued the people of Sanhe Fortress."

Over the past two days, the name the girl heard most frequently was Li Xiao.
She had heard so much about Li Xiao's battle achievements that she could almost recite them.
She had also learned that Li Xiao, the lord of Hexi Fortress, was none other than the young man who had saved her earlier.

Only, Erya had been too exhausted at the time and had lapsed straight into unconsciousness, having little chance to converse with Li Xiao.
For the past two days, she had been imagining what kind of person Li Xiao was and how she should repay his saving grace.
Would he be terrifying? Fierce?
After all, anyone capable of killing so many Karlluks must be an intensely formidable man.

Yet through their brief exchange just now, Erya discovered that Li Xiao was actually a very gentle person, not nearly as overbearing or arrogant as she had imagined.
At least, he was that way in front of her.

"This is nothing more than what I ought to have done."
"The Karlluks provoked the war and slaughtered our Han children."
"Any man with a shred of spine would rise in indignation and strike them down."
"Moreover, defeating the Karlluks was not my achievement alone; it belongs to everyone," Li Xiao said softly.

Seeing Li Xiao's modest yet resolute demeanor, ripples stirred within Erya's heart.
"In any case, thank you."
Erya lowered her gaze slightly, not daring to meet Li Xiao's face.