At 11 Yuandun Street, in the garden of General Garcia's house, there is a large patch of sunflowers. It was grown by Miss Adeline herself. Every year at the end of July, a large field of sunflowers blooms, quietly decorating the garden with a bright golden color. On autumn afternoons, Adeline would come to the sunflowers in the afternoon, close her eyes and sit quietly, listening to the wind.

People don't know why Adeline loves sunflowers so much, and when this golden flower lit up people's eyes in the sun for the first time, Adeline's image in people's hearts was associated with sunflowers. Only a few people know the story of Adeline's past, a story that began around a large field of sunflowers.

Sunflower means "silent love" in the Rhodok language, and Adeline silently pays silent love in the sunflower's meditation for many years, and the sunlight quietly leaks through the flowers more than three meters high, and the spots hit Adeline's face. Adeline tries to remember the past, but most of those stories only go back to when she was four years old, and beyond that, she can't remember anything again.

Adeline is not General Garcia's biological child. When General Garcia returned home from the Salander front, he was stationed on the edge of a sunflower field, and at that time, Salander's scouts often penetrated deep into the heart of Rhodok and wantonly burned the grain to be harvested. At that time, it was past the sunflower harvest period, but Garcia saw that the flower garden was not harvested, and it was obvious that the owner had abandoned it. A village dozens of miles away burned quietly in the night, and Garcia and the group around him silently watched the obviously looted village, but could not do anything.

The Rhodok of that era was full of legends and suffering, and the Rhodoks had just done their best to defeat the invasion of the northerners, and the Salanders seized the opportunity to follow. Garcia remembers the scene before the fall of Garmicschburg, when he had just sent off one of his venerable Swadia comrades. After several battles with the Salanders on the border, the Rhodoks felt that they could not hold all of their territory, so after sniping the Salanders on the border for several months, they retreated into Garmic and several surrounding castles. At that time, Garcia, who was holding a light crossbow, was standing on the battlements, and it was raining lightly in the sky, and he heard the sound of rain hitting his helmet. He saw that everywhere on the horizon were the campfires of the Salanders, and the thousand tent lamps at night. Those fires burned in Garcia's heart for many years, and at that moment, he realized his insignificance. Fear never crept up his chest like it did then. Guided by the crescent moon banner, the Salanders stormed the fortified castle of Gamic again and again.

Before they retreated into the castle, they burned the fields. As they burned the grain in the field, Garcia watched as the sky-high flames lit up the land, and in a matter of hours the flames burned up months of the farmers' toil. The flame-scorched air was thin and trembling, as one poet described: "The air trembles as if the sky were burning." ”

"Don't leave a single grain for the people of Saland", this is an order from above. Garcia felt a deep sense of loss in the firelight, he remembered the village flute in his hometown, he remembered the murmuring of the flowing water in his hometown, and he remembered the boyhood when he watched the white clouds fall asleep quietly. But at this time, he and his soldiers easily burned out the quiet pastoral dream here with hundreds of torches. At the gates, Garcia took one last look at the red plain, as if to feel the temperature there, and then straightened his helmet with both hands, and strode into Garmic's castle, behind him, the heavy wooden door creaking shut.

On Day 2, the Salander strikers appeared.

On the 4th day, Gamici was completely surrounded.

After the 42nd day, the night before the fall of Garmic. The garrison commander gave the order to break through. When Garcia Smeared led the soldiers out of the gates, the garrison commander closed them at the end. Garcia looked back in surprise at the officer at the head of the city, the man felt his defeat in the night, and his herald delivered his last order to Garcia at this time: "I will die with the city." Garcia, your future is a sea of stars. I'm going to hell here with the Salanders. ”

Garcia understands his chief, he knows the character of this respectable middle-aged man: once he decides, he cannot change it. He looked at his mentor and commander silently, pulling the restless war horse under his crotch. Garcia knew that he could not scream, that would kill hundreds of exhausted soldiers around him, and in the oppressive darkness of the night, Garcia could only gently take off his helmet as a last tribute to the garrison commander. Unexpectedly, the soldiers around Garcia followed Garcia's movements, and hundreds of people took off their helmets in unison after understanding their general's choice, and the farmers without helmets also took off their hoods, as if attending a requiem mass for their loved ones in a holy church. The Guardian of Garmic pressed the sword at his waist in the darkness, the Silent Watcher for his own final glory.

Ten days later, Garcia, who had retreated to the rear, led the remaining 100 men to tell a heroic story: "The guardian of Garmici died with the city, he watched over a lonely city with the belief of death, he died on the city wall, and the crescent moon banner never flew on Garmici before he died." "The hero's story rose to the front with Gamic's fame, and the Rhodoks rushed to the Salanders with a roar of oaths under the name of "Watchmen of Gamici". The war dragged on for several years, and King Salander finally conceded his defeat and signed an armistice with the Rhodoks. But to Garcia's pity, the armistice treaty brought the battle to recover Garmic to an abrupt end, and Garcia had to regret returning to Viruga.

Salanders everywhere began to evacuate, and sporadic clashes persisted. The Rhodoks guaranteed the safe departure of the Salander infiltration forces, but could not prevent their own militia units from firing the Salander retaliatory arrows.

When Garcia came to Cherez, he saw sunflowers, stars in the sky, and a quiet burning village in the distance. Garcia reminisced about his path as if recalling a nightmare drenched in a cold sweat. That night, Garcia heard crying, and that night, Garcia saw Adeline roaming in the Kwai Garden.

Garcia took the girl who was crying in the dark. The child doesn't remember anything but Adeline, she says she's looking for her sister, she says her parents have left the two sisters, and she doesn't say anything about it. Garcia roughly guessed Adeline's background: abandoned by her parents.

Adeline said that she had a younger sister, and Garcia had the soldiers look around but didn't see anything, and that there might be a younger girl missing in the Kwai Garden. After searching to no avail, a tired soldier did not want to look any further, and he whispered to Garcia: "General, there are wolves here at night. ”

Garcia was shocked, and after thinking for a moment, he squatted down gently: "Little girl, why don't your parents take you away?" ”

"Adeline... Adeline looks... I can't see anything. Daddy didn't like it... I don't like Adeline, too... I don't like my sister, he says she can't see it even after that. My sister can see, she smiles every time I approach her cradle, she can't see it, it's not like Adeline..."

Adeline saw a white shadow everywhere, her vision was limited to her arm, and as she stretched out her arm as best she could, she saw her arm disappear into a cloud of white fog from near and far, just like Garcia looking at a flagpole on a foggy day.

Garcia eventually adopted the little girl and treated her as if she were his own child.

Garcia discovers that excessive fear and pain seal a portion of Adeline's memories. But Adeline's love for sunflowers seems to have been precipitated in her genes. Adeline had been following her gardener since she was a child, and she could only see but follow the old man with an iron kettle, listening to the old man's clattering of branches and leaves; Listen to the old man with his hoe to pick out the hard clods of earth and crumble them; Listen to the old man spend the last afternoon building a flower garden out of bricks. Adeline couldn't see it, she just sat quietly and listened to the old gardener at work. Hand him the kettle to the old man when he summons. Once the gardener forgot to hang his scissors on a branch while building a branch, and after a while the old man looked for his scissors from side to side, not knowing where he had left the tool. Adeline suddenly said, "Grandpa, the scissors are hanging on the south branch of the second tree on the right." ”

The surprised old gardener followed Adeline's words and looked at it, and sure enough, he saw his own scissors. Thinking it was a coincidence, he deliberately lost his tool a few more times, and found that as long as the tool had ever made a sound, Adeline had always remembered it, and knew where it stopped the moment its sound disappeared.

The astonished old gardener told Garcia of his discovery: "Mademoiselle's sense of hearing and orientation is so awe-inspiring that she can almost completely substitute her sense of hearing for ordinary sight." ”

Garcia experimented with the gardener's words a few times, and found that it was so. After discovering Adeline's talent, he taught her simple martial arts techniques in the afternoon after her literature, history, and dance classes, and the doctor said that Adeline must exercise regularly to maintain her physical fitness, which is essential to regain her eyesight one day. Garcia used the afternoon class to train Adeline's body and teach her self-defense. Adeline is a quick learner, and while she still can't knock down a man under normal circumstances, who would defend a blind woman who looks weak under normal circumstances?

Remember, in the most dangerous moment, you only have one chance to plunge the dagger between the middle two ribs of the enemy's left chest, and you must be guaranteed to kill with one hit. Hopefully, you won't be in a situation where you need to wield a sword.

Adeline's life was simple, memorizing poetry, learning to dance, and then learning simple and effective techniques to protect herself under her father's tutelage.

That afternoon, Adeline had just seen a doctor, and the doctor prescribed Adeline some medicine as usual, and told her to take it on time.

She listened to the wind, to the rustle of sunflower trays rubbing against each other, to the quiet fall of autumn leaves. Then she heard the steady footsteps of the butler, who knew her well and always knew where to find her.

"Miss, sir, please get ready, here are the guests. The lord asked me to tell you that this is Huo. Arcadio's son. ”

General Garcia loves spicy food, and the dinner food included grilled fish, spicy soup, ****, ham and a few plates of delicious southern specialties and a bottle of seventeen-year-old wine.

"Boy, this is the Aaron wine that your father wrote to me when you were born, and now you have oral wine"

At this time, the evening wind blew from the porch, and the room was not yet lit, and the room was dark and warm, and the last few red rays of the sunset poured into the room. My father was chatting with General Garcia, and Wright was on the side. Servants came and went, bringing food and flowers, and candlesticks.

At this time, my father heard footsteps on one side, and when he turned around, he saw a girl.

The girl was not pretty, she was wearing a gray dress, I don't know what kind of fabric it was, and it was slightly shiny. The girl wore her hair up and looked very capable, and she sat down on a stool pulled by the butler without squinting.

"This is my daughter, Adeline," Garcia said to my father, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief that he had just finished chewing.

My father smiled and nodded at the young lady opposite.

My father noticed that the young lady's eyes were a little light. He saw the girl smile at him, but didn't seem to look at him.

His eyes were a little empty, as if he was looking at him and thinking about something. My father thought of sunflowers inexplicably, of the golden flower plate that trembled a little in the breeze, and my father was so anxious that the book about Rodok had said: "Sunflower, Rodok means 'silent love' in the word Rhodok."