Chapter 1094 — At Least You Have Some Sense
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"That's right - I have!" Master Li made no effort to hide it, blustering as he nodded. "Little girl, the master here has his eye on you. Come home with me and be my concubine at the stronghold. Serve me well, and I promise you the best of everything - food, drink, wealth, and glory besides. Your father's debt will be wiped clean. What do you say?"
"Ah - I -" Yu Yuanyuan was at a loss. To bind herself to a villain she felt nothing for went wholly against her heart. But what good would her unwillingness do? She did not want to - yet she knew that this way, neither she nor her father need die, and the family's crisis would be behind them.
"What's all this 'I' and 'me'?" Little Mule knit his brows, a flash of impatience crossing his face. "Let me spell it out, Yu Yuanyuan. Either you serve Master Li and him alone, or you go to the brothel and earn me back five hundred thousand. The choice is yours."
"I..." Yu Yuanyuan bowed her head in helplessness, tears brimming in her eyes. In that moment she truly did not know what to do. Had she been free to choose, she would rather have died. But she knew too that her death would bring her parents no peace - they would all die.
And if everything Master Li said was true, then sacrificing one to spare the whole family... Serving that villain Master Li was a prospect she hated, but still it beat being sent to a brothel.
"Hmph, a windfall like this and you're still dithering?" Little Mule turned his head away in irritation and said to Master Li, "Master Li, this girl doesn't know when she's being offered a kindness. Why not forget her? Pretty girls are a dime a dozen - why waste time on her? I'll find you another later. Let's just sell her to the brothel instead. A melon plucked by force is never sweet - just look at her, sniveling and faltering. When the time comes she won't serve you properly either. What use would she be?"
"No need - I've had my eye on her, and that's that!" Master Li swept his large hand through the air. "Little girl, your name's Yu Yuanyuan, isn't it? Let me tell you: I may be a rough man, but I know how to dote on a woman. Come with me and you'll never come out the loser, I promise."
"I..." Yu Yuanyuan hesitated, then looked to her father, Yunhai Shuku.
Yunhai Shuku's heart was no easier at that moment. But what could he do? With villains like Little Mule and Master Li, his whole family's lives were clenched in their hands; he dared not offer the least resistance.
"Yuanyuan, what do you think?" Yunhai Shuku was, in the end, a man of principle, and he wanted his daughter to choose for herself. "If you're unwilling, then the three of us in this family can simply go down to the underworld together. One death settles everything - and you'd never have to suffer that humiliation."
"Dad, I... I... I'll go with him!" Yu Yuanyuan faltered for a moment, then finally nodded through her tears. The whole family dying was not what she wanted. And now she need serve only one man - that, at least, was a blessing amid so much misfortune. So long as her parents came to no harm, Yu Yuanyuan would accept it.
"Heh, now that's more like it, little girl - you've got some sense after all!" Little Mule was thoroughly pleased with how things had turned out. He had handed Yu Yuanyuan over to Master Li without a blade ever being drawn - no arrangement could have suited him better.