Samuel Cooper turned to look inside the cage cart. There were still more than a dozen children curled up in the piles of weeds, staring at him with the anxious, wary eyes of small animals, not knowing which one was the person he had just pinned down.

The hope of fleeing to the Great Snow Mountain was shattered. Samuel Cooper could only return to his original path of hope. He reached into his chest to feel for the white silk, wanting to check if it contained the words he most longed to see.

The white silk was gone.

A buzzing sound filled Samuel Cooper's mind. He searched himself from head to toe, but the white silk was truly gone. It was nowhere to be found in the piles of grass around him, either.

Chapter 0007: The Pointed-Face

The white silk must have been lost during the struggle with the bearded man. Samuel Cooper clung to the wooden bars of the cage cart and looked back, but could only see a long line of ox carts. He waited for quite a while, and only when the caravan turned a corner could he see farther back.

The T-junction was out of sight; the caravan had already traveled far.

Samuel Cooper's hands gripped so tightly that his knuckles turned pale. He stared blankly, unable to believe that the family heirloom manual was just gone like that.

"Did any of you... see a piece of white cloth?"

Samuel Cooper turned around and, clinging to a last shred of hope, asked the other children in the cage cart.

Whether they didn't understand Central Plains speech or simply didn't want to answer, none of the children replied. They didn't even look up at the newcomer.

"A piece of white..."

Samuel Cooper gestured with his hands to show the size of the white silk, but the more he spoke, the less confident he felt. Every child in this cart was sallow and thin, dressed in rags—none would be interested in a strip of cloth.

"They can't understand what you're saying."

The ox cart swayed along for a while before a boy in the corner finally spoke up.

This boy was about the same age as Samuel Cooper, with delicate features and a pointed face. Compared to the other children, he was relatively clean. Though the cage cart was cramped, he occupied a corner all to himself, playing with a blade of grass in his hand, and was watching the newcomer with a probing gaze.

"The white silk, a piece of white cloth—did you see it?" Samuel Cooper asked urgently.

The pointed-face boy thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. Is it important?"

Samuel Cooper slumped down, his mind a blank.

"Where are we going?" After a long while, he asked unconsciously.

"Jade Wall City."

Samuel Cooper knew this city—a major stronghold in the Western Regions, a hub where people from all directions gathered, a paradise of drunken revelry and a hell of blades and swords. He had even spent a night there before. And—he suddenly remembered—wasn't Golden Roc Fort just outside Jade Wall City?

Samuel Cooper looked up, meeting the gaze of the pointed-face boy. It was as if there was something strange about him that kept drawing the other's attention.

"Do you know me?" Samuel Cooper asked, a bit annoyed. Out of everyone in the cart, only the two of them could speak Central Plains speech, but having fallen into slavery and lost his crucial family manual, he was in no mood to make friends.

"Rich kid," the pointed-face boy sneered, his tone mocking and full of sarcasm.

"So what?" A surge of anger shot straight to Samuel Cooper's head, though most of it had nothing to do with the pointed-face boy.

"Nothing. When we get to Jade Wall City, we'll all be sold. No one's going to buy you to be a young master again. I'm just giving you some friendly advice: it's not so easy to go from young master to servant. Servants have their own rules and ways to survive. Want to hear my advice?"

What the pointed-face boy said made sense, so Samuel Cooper nodded.

"Keep your ass clean."

The pointed-face boy said this with a straight face, then a smile crept onto his lips, growing wider and wider until he burst into wild laughter.

It took Samuel Cooper a long time to understand what the words meant. At first, he was just annoyed by the boy's unrestrained laughter, but then he slowly realized the lewd implication. However, the best moment to react had already passed. In his short life of luxury, he had never learned how to deal with such a situation.

Having gotten the better of him, the pointed-face boy pressed his advantage. After his laughter subsided, he pretended to be serious and said:

"Don't worry. A former young master like you, still looking pretty clean, when you get to Jade Wall City, there will definitely be people fighting over you. A bright future awaits—ha! Your ass won't get any rest."

This was unmistakably an insult.

Samuel Cooper leapt at the pointed-face boy, but was tripped by the children in the middle, tumbling into a heap. Cries of pain rang out, drawing the attention of a guard, who, without a word, jabbed his stick into the cart.

The children quickly scattered, each taking a fair share of the beating. Samuel Cooper was no exception, but still couldn't reach the pointed-face boy in the corner.

The pointed-face boy had been holding back his laughter. Once the guard left, he clutched his stomach and laughed so hard he could barely breathe.

Samuel Cooper couldn't believe there was someone so infuriating in the world. For a moment, the pointed-face boy even replaced the Golden Roc Fort assassins as the person he hated most.

The pointed-face boy's mischief wasn't limited to Samuel Cooper. He would always fall silent for a while, then suddenly start talking non-stop, hinting or stating outright all the miserable fates that awaited them as slaves, determined to anger or frighten his listeners to tears.