The cannon fodder female supporting role wants to run away, and the madly criticizing prince is red-

"I want to learn martial arts from you."

At noon, it suddenly started raining outside, so the two men got off the carriage and filled their stomachs at an inn.

Lin Qianqian put down the white rice in the ceramic bowl and looked at Shen Jian seriously, "Is it okay?"

Shen Jian, who was sitting opposite, had one foot on the stool and the other foot hanging on the ground at will. He picked up two chopsticks and placed them on the table. When he heard Lin Qianqian's words, he turned his face away and said, "You want to learn martial arts?"

"Yes. I would like to take you as my teacher." Lin Qianqian nodded with a smile.

Then, he lowered his head obediently, and asked tentatively with a hint of flattery, "Is it okay, Master?"

The woman's eyes, full of genuine expectation, shone brightly, like two beams of summer sun. Shen Jian looked away, but the lines on his face remained as tough as before.

"I won't teach you."

"why?"

Lin Qianqian was surprised and puzzled.

The originally bright face became lost and decadent, like a beautiful and blooming crabapple flower that suddenly drooped its head and wilted, making people want to pity it.

"You rejected me so directly? I can't accept it." Lin Qianqian said angrily.

Shen Jian smiled and said with certainty, "First, women cannot endure the hardship of practicing martial arts."

"Do you think martial arts is as easy to learn as what is written in the storybooks? You have to start practicing martial arts at the age of six or seven, and practice continuously for decades. You also need the guidance of a master to become a master."

"Second, you are past the best age to learn martial arts. You can learn some basic self-defense skills, but I don't want to teach you."

Lin Qianqian argued unconvincedly, "Why don't you want to teach me? You are so arrogant, and you are belittling me with your words. Who says women can't endure hardships and work? You look down on me too much. I also want to learn self-defense."

Shen Jian raised his eyes and looked at Lin Qianqian, "Because of your personality."

"My personality?"

Shen Jian nodded calmly, "With your current conditions, it's too late for you to learn martial arts, and it's difficult for you to make much progress. And you have such a strong personality, you will argue with a man if he doesn't accept it. If you learn martial arts, I'm afraid you will fight with people at every turn. It's okay if you meet ordinary people who don't know martial arts, but if you meet a master, your self-confidence, your stubbornness, and your unwillingness to accept will only hurt you."

"Moreover, the children of noble families are good at both civil and military skills since childhood. They learn the "Six Arts of a Gentleman" and have a foundation in martial arts since childhood. They also have excellent teachers who specialize in teaching martial arts. You can't deal with people like them, not to mention that they have subordinates. And the men you are most likely to offend are men like them. They will never allow you to provoke them repeatedly and offend their machismo."

Lin Qianqian was silent...

Is her telling the truth a provocation?

I don’t know if it was Lin Qianqian’s illusion, but she always felt that Shen Jian was suppressing her in a subtle way, asking her to be obedient and to bow her head.

Shen Jian said: "Practicing martial arts is for self-protection. It is a trump card when life is in danger. It is not for fighting with others. You are like a hedgehog, like a porcupine covered with arrows..."

Lin Qianqian opened her eyes wide, "I tolerated you saying I looked like a hedgehog, but you also said I looked like a porcupine. I think you look like a big turtle, a big snail, like an arrogant peacock."

"I want to learn martial arts just to protect myself. If I encounter what happened last night, I can still fight to the death..."

"I also sincerely want to take you as my teacher."

Shen Jian laughed and looked at Lin Qianqian mockingly, "How funny, woman, you... have repeatedly provoked me before. Now you want me to teach you martial arts. You are really shameless. Why should I teach you?"

Lin Qianqian puffed out one side of her cheek, forming an arc. "A real man can bend and stretch, so why can't a little girl bend and stretch? I am learning from men their excellent qualities."

"I can also learn from their spirit of hard work and perseverance." While saying this, Lin Qianqian quietly turned her quick eyes to glance at Shen Jian, observing his expression.

Notice the smile that spread across his face.

Sure enough, this kind of narcissist loves others to flatter him the most, especially a man who is extremely chauvinistic.

Shen Jian sneered, "So you can say nice things."

"A woman who knows the ways of the world but is not worldly."

He seemed a little surprised, sighed, and then said, "Your strength and your edge are elastic."

Shen Jian said, "You belittled me before, and seemed to look down on men like me. You want to learn from me? No way."

After he finished speaking, he threw a peanut into his mouth.

Lin Qianqian reached out and touched her nose. "How could I look down on you?"

"Your martial arts skills are unquestionable. Although I haven't seen them with my own eyes, they are better than those of a rookie like me who knows nothing. I admire talented and capable people, and I especially admire heroes. This has nothing to do with hating a part of your personality. Just like your teacher, his profound knowledge is admirable, but some of his characteristics are annoying. The two are not contradictory. This is how I treat you."

Shen Jian sneered, "Other women want men to protect them, but you want to worship me as your master and have the ability to protect yourself."

Lin Qianqian clasped her hands together and looked at him earnestly with eyes that were begging sincerely. "It is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him a fish. Master Shen is the kind of man with great martial arts skills that I admire the most. He can fly over eaves and walls, and he is capable of doing anything. With just a wave of his hand, heads can fall to the ground. Please, just be my master."

Shen Jian's lips curled up.

She seemed to be deliberately acting cute and well-behaved to please him, but he didn't know if it was his illusion.

This woman is actually trying to act cute. Isn’t she covered with thorns?

Yesterday it was like a hedgehog, and at night it was scared like a frightened and pitiful rabbit, but today it has become a cute and obedient cat that comes to rub against people...

Arriving at Zhijiang Wharf, Lin Qianqian bought some dry food and steamed buns for the journey from a roadside shop and wrapped them all in oil paper.

She walked to the well where the villagers bent down to draw water, took out the leather bag pot she had bought earlier and asked the villagers to fill it with water. A white-haired old man who was sitting by the well to rest helped her enthusiastically.

"Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome, girl."

The skinny old man waved his hand, squatted beside with his pitifully thin waist hunched, and picked up the chipped enamel bowl on the ground.

He stretched out his long, thin arms, took out half a black steamed bun from his arms, carefully broke it into small pieces, and soaked it in a bowl. Then he lowered his head and licked the steamed bun crumbs on his hands clean, not caring about the dirt on his palms.

The arm was so thin that only skin and bones were left, without any fat, like a mummy.

Seeing him eating the steamed buns in the bowl with water, Lin Qianqian seemed to be fixed in place by a spell and stared blankly for a long time.

She opened her mouth and stammered, "Uncle, just eat this."

The old man showed his two teeth and smiled, "It's just rice soaked in water, what's wrong with that? If you eat this every day, you still can't be full. We are not the emperor who eats delicacies from mountains and seas every day, it's good enough to have something to eat."

A huge sadness lingered in Lin Qianqian's heart.

The poor people she has seen in modern times are the dirty, earthy faces of children in the mountains, some of whom cannot afford to go to school, and the poor who are lying in the hospital with serious illnesses but can launch online fundraising...

I have never seen such an old and poor person who wears rags all over his body, eats steamed buns every day.

The despair in his eyes, the lifeless gaze into the distance, the forced smile on his face...

It looks like a "zombie", a "living dead", and can fall into the earth and turn into a pile of bones at any time.

Modern countries are so good, the poor can get help, there are jobs everywhere, and the lower class people will not starve to death... But in ancient times, people really starved to death.

In modern times, Lin Qianqian had no concept of hunger. She lived in the mansion with luxurious clothes and delicious food every day, and she had never experienced hunger.

When she saw this old man, she realized that a person could live on such simple food. He could be so thin that the ribs on his belly were clearly visible, and his abdominal cavity would be sunken into a bowl-sized pit...

It was a skeleton covered with human skin.

Before leaving, Lin Qianqian took out three hot white steamed buns from her bag and stuffed them into his hands along with six copper coins.

She was not very kind, but she saw a miserable scene. That scene has been imprinted in her heart, making her feel guilty, uncomfortable, and reluctant, and making her want to do some insignificant things for that person to alleviate the guilt that she wanted to pretend not to see.

In modern times, when she sees a skinny stray cat unable to walk on the street, she will go to a convenience store to buy a sausage to feed it.

That was not a cat just now, it was a living, zombie-like person.

As she followed the people queuing up to board the boat, Lin Qianqian saw a corpse by the river. A female corpse that had turned white and swollen was lying in the mud.

The soaked flesh completely burst her clothes, and many flies landed on her. Lin Qianqian didn't dare to look closely, but saw a foot that didn't look like a human being, covered in mud, white and swollen, several times larger than an ordinary person's. From a distance, she smelled a disgusting odor that she had never smelled before, which made her run to the side and vomit out all the food she had eaten at noon.

After someone reported the incident to the police, the county magistrate arrived and, after a round of questioning, allowed the group of people who were about to board the boat to leave.

"That woman, it is said, got on a pirate ship and was gang-raped to death by the men."

"The coroner who performed the autopsy just now said that they found semen from many men on her body, more than 40 men."

"Oh, how pitiful."

In the corner of the cabin, Lin Qianqian hugged her bag tightly. She lowered her head and looked at her feet, her shoulders trembling slightly.

Compared to what I experienced last night, it seemed that death was more pleasant than all this. Death was simply a relief.

She suddenly wasn't so afraid of dying.

Lin Qianqian felt as if she had walked into a demonized and terrifying Journey to the West, where everyone she met might turn into a terrifying monster...

Luo Guanzhong is so great, Pu Songling is so great. Aren't those people who eat people monsters? They are describing reality.

Lin Qianqian was holding her head in pain, and suddenly she remembered that in a relatively poor and backward country in modern times, women had a very low status. A woman was gang-raped to death on a bus. How could this be similar?

My God, what kind of hell place had she come to?