"No understanding of romance!"
Ren Yuanhao thought to himself, this little master of mine, a pear blossom pressing against a begonia, with a face to rival Pan An, a master of seduction, who has made countless beauties lose their hearts, yet you call me unromantic?
Clearly, you are the one radiating a 'buddy' vibe!
Ren Yuanhao, of course, couldn't argue with a 'buddy'. He then led his sweat-blooded horse to the black wind where the woman had died.
The sweat-blooded horse lowered its head and sniffed its companion, seemingly annoyed by its companion's death. It snorted a few times and kicked its hind legs a couple of times, completing the 'supervision' between horses.
"Hey, why were they so afraid of you just now? You still haven't told me!"
The woman was still very concerned about this matter.
"Can't help it, maybe I'm just ugly."
The woman lifted the curtain under her straw hat and meticulously examined Ren Yuanhao's face with a pair of emerald eyes. After a long while, she said with great certainty, "Hmm, it's probably really because you're ugly."
Ren Yuanhao's face was covered in dark lines. He thought, I'm being self-deprecating here, and you actually believe it? And what's with those eyes of yours?
Ren Yuanhao cursed inwardly, but on the surface, he said with a smile, "By the way, what are you, a girl, doing in the desert? And what did that leader just say about your sword, what was it, Heluo~"
"Don't ask. If you ask, we're done."
The woman said decisively, with an expression of 'keeping people at a thousand miles distance.'
"Hey, hey, hey, I can't just wander around with a ticking time bomb, can I? It's fine if you explode, but I still have so many important things to do, I absolutely cannot die here."
Ren Yuanhao wasn't lying about this. After all, countless women in the world were waiting for him to save them. The task was heavy and the road was long, but he already had the resolve of 'If I don't go to hell, who will?' Dying in a place like this would be too much of a waste.
"My name is Gukechaer Yidie."
When the woman uttered this name, her face was filled with fear, as if the name itself carried a curse.
"Such a hard name to remember. Can I just call you Yidie?"
Yidie nodded and added, "Although you scared off the enemies with your ugly face, I don't mind your ugliness. Now it's your turn to tell me your name."
"My name is Qin Baobao."
Ren Yuanhao had actually heard that in the desert, there was a profession called Shaman, who could cast curses just by knowing a name. Therefore, concealing his real name was very necessary.
"Your name is also quite strange. From now on, I'll just call you little brother or 'Hey'~"
The woman said casually, and Ren Yuanhao immediately spat out a mouthful of water.
"Hey, hey, hey, do you know how important water is? Now there are two of us. Do you want to die of thirst halfway, or what?"
Ren Yuanhao wiped his mouth and thought to himself, wouldn't it be better if you just called me 'buddy'?
"Forget it, forget it. Considering you saved me by some fluke just now, I'll let it slide for now. By the way, where are you headed?"
As Yidie asked this, she tilted her head and looked at Ren Yuanhao's face. Her clear blue eyes were like a spring, as clear as the washed-clean sky. Ren Yuanhao didn't believe that a woman with such eyes could be an ugly monster.
However, speaking of Ren Yuanhao's destination, it was definitely Guyao City. But the system lady insisted that he first go to the location indicated in the bamboo slip legacy to find the whereabouts of the five elemental energy source nuclei. But this place, even the knowledgeable system lady with powerful search and positioning functions, could not help.
"In this vast desert, I actually don't know where to go."
Ren Yuanhao wasn't lying at all with this statement.
"Wandering around aimlessly in the desert, you're quite something. I guess you're trying to commit suicide because you're too ugly, aren't you?"
Yidie clung to the word 'ugly' and had no intention of letting go.
Ren Yuanhao sighed and said, "Never mind. Let's talk about you. Where do you want to go?"
"Home."
"Home? Sand City?"
Ren Yuanhao's knowledge of desert cities seemed to be limited to this place.
However, Yidie shook her head. "Actually, it's the same as you. I don't know the direction of home either."
She looked at the vast desert, with sandstorms rising and the wind howling. Although there was no sun, the wind blowing in the desert was still scorching hot, somewhat like the boiler room where Ren Yuanhao worked during his summer holidays.
"I left home when I was very young. They said I was a jinx, that I should have died in my mother's womb. But now I've grown up, and I don't think I've brought any disaster to my adoptive parents. So I want to go back and see."
Ren Yuanhao didn't know how to comfort her. Perhaps such a straightforward 'buddy' didn't need comfort at all.
"Your hometown must be in some uncivilized place. Maybe they even have cannibals and people who eat raw meat."
Ren Yuanhao felt that only by displaying his humorous talent to the fullest at this moment could he ease the woman's emotions.
However, Yidie took it seriously.
"I have no impression of that at all, and my adoptive parents don't intend to tell me. They just said that such a place might have already been swallowed by the sandstorms, so I came to the desert."
Ren Yuanhao's face was filled with dark lines. "You came to the desert just because of such a simple sentence? What if your adoptive parents just said it casually~"
"Impossible, because I found this."
Yidie cut him off and immediately took something out of her bag.
However, the moment Ren Yuanhao saw this thing, his expression became extremely strange, showing tension, confusion, and excitement.
He saw that Yidie seemed to be holding a strange hexagonal star-shaped badge in her palm.
The badge was bronze-colored, and the patterns and textures on it exuded an ancient and distant sense of time. Even stranger, the front of the badge seemed to have sliding blocks of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, each about one-fifth the size of a fingertip. They could be moved with Yidie's fingertips, and when the blocks collided, they would emit sounds like clear and resonant bells.
This badge was only palm-sized, but its craftsmanship was more intricate than anything Ren Yuanhao had ever seen, even making him doubt if anyone in this world could make such exquisite and detailed things.
More importantly, Ren Yuanhao had seen this badge on the bamboo slip legacy!
"I heard that this badge was given to me by my birth parents when I was taken away by the tribal wet nurse. They stuffed it into my swaddling clothes. I don't know why, but I shouldn't have any memories at that time. But I remember clearly that the appearance of this badge was carved on those huge round stone pillars, and beneath the stone pillars, there was nothing but yellow sand."
As Yidie said this, she held the badge tightly in her hands, as if it were the last proof of her parents left to her, as if as long as it was there, she could return to her long-dreamed-of hometown.
"So you are very sure that your hometown must be in the desert?"
Ren Yuanhao remained non-committal about her memories, but he was very interested in this badge.