I remember clearly the first time that Jon Bach and Gogo held hands. It was in the late afternoon of the third day of my devilish training with Jon Bach. It doesn't rain much in the spring in the Star Lake grassland, but in the afternoon of this day, there was a sudden north wind and the temperature dropped suddenly. The clouds in the sky looked like marshmallows or white patterns on cows, each cloud a small distance away from the other but not too far apart, each cloud thick and covering the whole sky. I think these are cumulonimbus clouds, which are likely to drop rain whenever there is a cold wind. The air pressure was low and I was a bit out of breath. I thought it would be nice if it rained later, so I could take it easy this afternoon. This Devil Jumbach is too much. He's been tormenting me for the past few days, making my arms ache in my sleep, as Kurtz whispered to me, saying I've been talking in my sleep lately.
As expected it didn't take long for the wind to stop, but the clouds in the sky were like ink being swooshed on rice paper, all the clouds began to fuse together, the light around them dimmed, the original snow-like clouds turned into dark clouds, the water element in the air suddenly became very active and the clouds got lower and lower, accompanied by a dull booming thunder, it looked like it was going to rain.
My joy was not held back, and the corners of my mouth turned straight up and I smiled.
Jambach was standing opposite me at this point, holding his Iris shield in one hand and a large, heavy wooden sword in the other, practising the basics of sword swinging. He was a bit hard on himself, practising 5,000 sword swings, 20 frog jumps around the camp with his shield overlaid, 5,000 shield swings and nearly two dozen other tasks every day. Sometimes I could see him practising from above, and then at night when I sneaked off to Gogo's to practise gathering magic, I could still see him practising in the camp, a training maniac.
"What, did you think it was going to rain, so you could rest?" Strongbach's gaze was as stern as a knife when he was teaching, and I was still scared. Especially in case I got a violent beating from this guy, and I shivered at the thought of being miserable.
I hurriedly shook my head, clenched my teeth to keep my posture intact, and entered a meditative state, the so-called meditative state, which means that I let my mental energy be outside my body, the feeling is like looking down on my whole body from directly above, feeling that my whole body is in a transparent state, and the magical power contained in my body will be revealed at this time like a star map, just operating in a body as transparent as a glass bottle. I had suddenly discovered this the night before when I was practising meditation. When I fell into a meditative state, the aches and pains in all parts of my body would return at a very fast rate, and when I looked at myself in this way, I could clearly see if my movements were out of order.
The cold raindrops slapped me on the face with a loud snap. It brought me out of that strange meditative state, but my senses were incredibly sharp in the meditative state, and a raindrop on my face was like a big slap in the face, which made me jolt. "The raindrops falling from the sky turned from slow to fast to a downpour in just a few moments, and the rain splashed on the grass and turned into a mist in some cases. The sky and the earth were almost in one piece. The sudden downpour of rain did not deter Jumbach from his unanimity as he stood in the rain and kept swinging his sword.
My heart was crying out in pain at the moment, and I was thinking to myself, "Kurtz, you silly rook, you didn't know to send an umbrella to your brother, if there was one! It would have been nice to send my leather jacket.
"Two quarters to go! Put your shield down flat and keep your basic stance."
Motherfucker, it's pouring rain and you're still demanding standard posture, curse you, you thousand-year-old bachelor. Like one song says, it keeps raining and the atmosphere isn't exactly cordial ...
Out of the rain and mist, a water cover suddenly appeared and a woman in a magical robe approached us in the water cover, she was not slow. The first time I've ever seen anything outlandish in this world, the water shield could be used in this way, and I finally learned how tough it was. It was like a transparent glass emerald gem emitting a luster, in the pouring rain rain falling on the water shield is instantly become pulverized.
Sister Gogo didn't care if I wanted to or not, she directly threw the shield in my hand into the rain, the round shield grunted out quite far and fell to the ground with a barrage of water. I was a little reluctant, after all I still had some affection for the round shield, then I was forcibly picked up, that water shield was like air, and I was swept straight into the warm embrace of Sister Gogo. I naturally laid my hands on her fragrant shoulders and smelled the familiar warm scent of her body, my nose felt like it was being stimulated and I couldn't help sneezing.
"Don't hug me sis, look how wet you are." I was actually trying to ease the embarrassment, it's not that being picked up by a young woman is bad, it's the satisfaction and indescribable happiness that can become shameful when you have your knees on someone's soft, smooth belly, your stomach pressed against their peaked and bouncy breasts, and your hands and head on each other's shoulders.
Sometimes my mind mixes between child and adult, sometimes feeling like a child and sometimes feeling like I have to be considered an adult. In this way, under the bondage of my inner morality, I would sometimes excuse myself and stand on the high ground of propriety and despise myself a little. It was such a confusion now, obviously taking advantage of Sister Koko, not being able to say so explicitly, but still trying to reach out to such embarrassment. I do recognize her more as a sister after all.
"Don't talk, you silly! He told you to stand dead, you're going to stand here until you die! How hard the rain is falling, don't you know? You're in physical condition and you want to bring back an old illness? I think you just don't know how to write the word death." Sister Gogo hugged me and walked straight back, causing Qiang Bach to stand at a loss for words.
In fact, when all was said and done, teachers in this world had more power and stood to be more responsible and more like a teacher on a moral level.
As Sister Gogo walked past Strongbach with me in her arms and saw him still standing dumbfounded in the rain, I secretly pulled at Sister Gogo's light brown hair and glanced at Strongbach off to the side. In fact, from a training point of view, Qiang Bach was not at fault in this matter, but I didn't care what he was right or wrong, I was just afraid that when the rain cleared he would make me do the routine all over again, and then I would be worse off than I am now. Sister Gogo twisted her head and glared at Qiang Bach, scolding him, "Are you wooden? What are you still standing there stupidly for?"
Her hand as white as snow and ice directly grabbed the wrist as thick as the chocolate colour of my calf, and the Iris shield fell straight into the rain.
With that, Sister Koko held me with one hand and led Jambach with the other all the way back to her tent. And they were finally sort of done holding hands for the first time.
Sister Gogo stood at the door of the tent and was about to lift the curtain to go in when she looked back at Strongbach. A grunt came out of his nose, "What, still ready to come in and change with the two of us?"
"I ... I I ..."
The other party didn't even get the words out before he was thrown outside the door curtain by Sister Gogo.
The sound of snapping and treading water gradually diminished and I knew the big, big woody was walking back to his tent. But before I entered the tent I stole a glance at Qiang Bach and noticed that his eyes were bright, and judging by my analysis of what I knew about him, this guy should not be angry, but rather a bit excited. I guessed: Django, this look on your face, it's not because of pulling hands for once, is it?
As for the marriage system in the Green Empire, I had only heard Uncle An talk about it. Those who could afford it would be very free, and polygamy or polyandry existed, as long as they could afford it, and also required the consent of the other party, but the latter situation was relatively rare, and most of the time, it was the men who were a bit more powerful. This was particularly the case in the border towns of the Empire, where war and the plunder of the barbarians on the icy tundra had left the northern border towns with a serious gender imbalance, where men died or served, and where, over the years, local ordinances favoured men in order to promote population growth. In such times, it is hard to imagine that there are still men like Jambach who would be half as excited to even touch a woman's hand.
I was pushed into the tent by Sister Gogo, the rain rolling down against my hair that had become soft and tangled, staying along my cheeks and dripping off the tip of my chin onto the wolf-skin mattress in the tent, and soaked through, in an altered leather coat that was not keeping me warm and would still reflect me handsomely, the cold rain dripping down my leather jacket and trousers as well, in as much of a mess as I could get.
"Take off your wet clothes!" Who could understand a five-and-a-half-year-old child stumbling over his own trousers because the old orc had cut them with a not-so-straight leg, after learning the first little tricks of leather-making? Who would have understood that because the leather jacket had no buttons and had to be fastened with string, he would have thought of making his own crude bone buttons, which, although crudely made, had a distinctive look to them. How much of a pushy, fancy person does one need to be? It takes a lot of thought to put so much thought into these things. How much more independent does one need to be, perhaps because one is an orphan?
The craftsmanship of the Grimm Empire was so advanced that I saw the fine gold-covered brass round buttons on Jambach's shirt before I thought he could never have come from too poor a family. At the very least, he should have been knighted or above.
I didn't have time to think about it, but what Sister Gogo had just said was not so much a command to me as it was a declaration of her orders, or simply a mental preparation for me. Those deft, snow-white, slender fingers twisted the bone buttons on my lapel and pulled off my clothes so quickly that at that moment I felt like a demon antelope being skinned by the skinners on a wooden board, my leather jacket and trousers hanging from the hangings at the entrance to the tent, still dripping with water.
The cold rain gradually turned into a hailstorm, which started with rice grains of ice falling with the rain, some melting in the air and others falling into the water on the ground, but now it was getting stronger and stronger, with balls of ice the size of eggs falling and pelting the scattered piles of supplies in the camp with a clanging sound.
Our cowhide tents were also being smashed with a thud like a continuous drumbeat. Someone finally started shouting outside the camp, like a thunder rhinoceros had been startled, and I tried to stick my head out to see what all the fuss was about, but was pulled back by Sister Koko tugging on my ear.
"What are you looking at, it's freezing outside, hurry up and dry your hair."
I turned to reach the dry scarf on the shelf when a pair of cold hands tugged directly at the bottom flap of my shirt and pulled it upwards, stripping off the wet shirt, and before I could react, I was leaned over by Sister Guoguo and pushed down on her knee, stripping off my somewhat pathetic six-part-long shirt, the dry, warm grey wool scarf wrapping my little, bare pig-like body tightly, my hair being wiped by a pair of hands lending the end of the scarf My hair was slicked back twice by a hand on the end of the scarf and held to the dry wolfskin mattress on the other side of the tent.
I couldn't remember a time when my mother had done this to me, the confusing moments of my childhood seemed to be slipping away from me, and there was an inexplicable tingling at the tip of my heart at this time, a feeling that might be called homesickness.
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