Afraid of Horses and Dogs, but Gold Is Hard to Get
It had been his first kiss in this life and in his previous one. He’d been too busy serving his country to date anyone in his previous life, so he’d never lost his first kiss. Who could have imagined that in both lives, he’d end up giving it to a horse? Mo Zhen swallowed back his tears.
The horse kissed with real relish, even sticking out its tongue to lick his face. Mo Zhen’s face darkened, his anger barely contained. Calm down. It’s only an animal. Don’t stoop to arguing with one. But would someone tell him why this horse seemed addicted to licking him? No matter how he dodged left and right, it kept after him. Wait, had it become a demon?
Good grief!
“You beast! Don’t you dare disrespect your master!” At the crucial moment, Xiao Ruizi came to the rescue, punching the horse square in the face. The horse froze, then immediately got angry, glaring at Xiao Ruizi as it pawed the ground in agitation.
This was bad. The horse had a temper. Xiao Ruizi wasn’t helping; he was making things worse. Without another thought, Mo Zhen grabbed him and ran for it.
“Master, slow down! I need to teach that beast a lesson.” Xiao Ruizi was furious. His master was precious from head to toe, and now some lowly animal had dared to take such liberties with his master’s delicate body. It was utterly disrespectful.
“Why are you picking a fight with an animal? We’re people. We should be magnanimous.” He’d already told himself it was only an animal, after all. A magnanimous man like him would never stoop to its level.
In fact, he could hear the horse’s hooves behind him. It was hot on their heels. Mo Zhen wanted to shout at the person in the carriage: couldn’t they just pull on the reins? He really did try calling out a few times, only to find that no one paid him the slightest attention. The passersby merely darted out of the way and watched the spectacle from the sidelines, grinning from ear to ear.
Mo Zhen had lost every last shred of princely dignity. Wasn’t anyone going to step in and stop this?
“Stop, stop, stop!” Mo Zhen dug in his heels and skidded to a halt. Xiao Ruizi crashed into his back, nearly making him cough up blood.
“Master, why have we stopped?” Xiao Ruizi rubbed his head and stuck his head out to look.
“There are three dogs up ahead. See them? If we run past them, we won’t just have the horse chasing us.” Mo Zhen panted. This wretched body was so weak that even a little running left him breathless.
“Then what do we do? They seem to be glaring at us.” Xiao Ruizi furrowed his brows. How insolent! If his master hadn’t been so kind and forbidden him from hurting them, he’d have gone over and kicked each one flat.
“They are glaring at us.” Three wolfhounds that huge! Whose were they, and why hadn’t the owner kept them shut in instead of letting them out to frighten people in the street?
The three black wolfhounds stood as tall as tables, their eyes razor-sharp as they closed in step by step. There was no way out on either side of the street, so they couldn’t run. And worst of all, why was that horse so murderous too, as if it wanted to tear the two of them apart and eat them?
In his previous life, he’d faced a hail of enemy bullets and shells without so much as a tremor. Yet now, cornered with a horse behind him and dogs in front, his whole body was shaking. His legs could barely hold him up.
“Master, hide behind me. Xiao Ruizi will handle them.” Xiao Ruizi stepped in front of Mo Zhen, ready to take on all three wolfhounds by himself. He seemed to have forgotten the furious horse snorting behind them.
Mo Zhen felt utterly pathetic. Why wouldn’t his legs obey him? They wouldn’t stop trembling! There was only one explanation: this body was terrified of these two kinds of animals, absolutely terrified.
Mo Zhen trembled behind Xiao Ruizi. Damn this body. It was weak as a woman, which was bad enough, but it was also afraid of horses and dogs. He only wanted to get some gold, not fetch scriptures. Why was this proving even more perilous than Tang Sanzang’s journey to the West?
No way. If they kept dawdling, the gold would fly off with someone else long before he got to it.