Chapter 99 Chapter 99 Drought Demon

Drought?

The name popped into Pingyu's head.

Rice paddies and farming both require water. Unlike cities, rural areas lack water storage and are therefore more susceptible to drought. Due to global warming, reservoir levels in Pingyu's time often dropped rapidly. During the summer holidays, when the sun was so intense that someone died of heatstroke, the elders would always say, "The drought demon has come."

Pingyu only knew that the drought demon would dry up riverbeds, crack the earth, and cause all living things to die from dehydration. Beyond that, she knew nothing. The description of the severed hand clearly matched her understanding of this being. Thus, the girl's already wary heart became even more vigilant.

If this severed hand really is a drought demon, then she'll have to bury it in even deeper water!

The severed hand, unaware of the girl's hidden thoughts, said, "I... I just remembered... it's because I always feel so thirsty, almost dying of thirst on this mountain."

"Are we going to die of thirst on the mountain?"

Ping Yu asked curiously, "What was your identity before you were separated? Could you have been a villager who was lost in the mountains?"

The severed hand was even thrown into the lake, where it was almost soaked in water; there was no sign of it dying of thirst.

The man with the severed hand said, "I don't remember. I only know that someone came to bring me water, one bowl after another. Then the water delivery was discovered, and a man with a yellow paper came and scolded me."

Ping Yu frowned slightly; the person holding the yellow paper must be a Taoist priest.

"People were afraid I would steal their water, so they tore my body apart."

The severed hand was disconnected from the body; it was now just a hand. Therefore, not only was thinking extremely difficult and laborious, but its speech was also incoherent and illogical. Like a person with prefrontal cortex damage, it paused for a long time after the aforementioned statement, saying nothing more. Only when Pingyu's patience ran out did it utter the last half of its sentence with strong conviction: "In short, you must collect me."

"Because you're going to be reincarnated, right?"

Pingyu repeated her previous words, adding, "If you can't properly tell me why you were left here like this, I can't help you. And..."

The girl paused, then asked, "Do you remember where you were thrown away?"

"I don't remember," the severed hand replied. "There are many things I can't remember, but I know I'll slowly remember them once my body is back... Little sister, you have to help me."

She sensed Pingyu's refusal and quickly added, "Because there's a voice in my head telling me that I have to wake up now."

"Because of my arrival, some things will be marked in the world."

.

After the conversation ended, Pingyu woke up.

She opened her eyes and instinctively looked around, but there was no sign of the severed hand. It was as if the hand was just a bizarre dream, but what the other person said did indeed seem to be a random string of words from a dream.

Recalling what she had been told, it seemed she had been divided up like this by the Taoist priest and some villagers. In this world, begging for food is difficult, but begging for water is easy. If she was punished for drinking too much water, it must have happened during a severe drought. It takes time to recover from meditation, and the girl, still trying to calm her thoughts, suddenly twitched her nose: the air was filled with a salty-sweet smell of smoke.

Her stomach rumbled, and she turned around to look. Not far away, a campfire was slowly rising. A makeshift wooden frame was set up on it, and four plump, juicy rabbits were roasting on it. Her cheap master was brushing honey onto them with a willow twig while humming a strange little tune.

It feels like this old man's mouth never stops all day long... Pingyu was embarrassed: I even gave him a BBQ.

Lu Ya didn't even look up as he greeted her, "You're awake, why don't you come and eat?"

“Master.” With business at hand, Pingyu walked over and said to him, “I’ve discovered who was talking to me at the bottom of the lake yesterday. It was a talking severed hand.”

The Taoist priest was completely focused on the roasted rabbit, and gave a soft "hmm" to signal her to continue.

Ping Yu continued, "She asked me to help her piece it together so that some kind of omen could be brought to the world."

The fire seared the rabbit, the intense heat forcing out the thick layer of fat beneath its skin. The sizzling sound of the fat filled the air. After turning the rabbit over, Lu Ya finally looked at his little apprentice. He asked, "So, what do you think?"

"Me?" Caught off guard by the question, Pingyu pointed to himself. The Taoist nodded: "Do you want to help her?"

"That hand said that when others separated her, they said that if they separated her, rain would fall from the sky, and if they put her back together, a great drought would come. What if, after I put her back together as a body, a great drought really comes as she said?"

After saying that, Pingyu asked with a hint of doubt, "Master, is she a drought demon?"

“I cannot make a judgment without seeing that hand,” Lu Ya stroked his beard and said, “but if she says that she was pieced together to bring about some kind of omen, then I think you can try to help her.”

Why?

"Do you still remember the old man with long horns from Ba Lai?" The Taoist seemed to know her past experiences intimately: "The divination book says: 'When a person grows up with ox horns, it is an omen of feudal lords raising troops to rebel and defy their superiors. Such a person is called 'human disease.' If 'human disease' appears in each dynasty, it proves that the world's格局 (geju, a concept encompassing the overall situation, the overall structure, and the overall situation) will change. Pingyu, have you ever heard this saying?"

"So-called unusual celestial phenomena foretell great calamity." Ping Yu was absorbed in her master's words. She saw the other man's ruthless iron hand grab a scalding hot rabbit leg and tear it off, the juicy, succulent flesh pointing at her like a sword: "We were going to overthrow King Zhou. Emperors rise and fall, the world changes hands. King Xin's tyrannical rule will eventually end, and the people will welcome a wise ruler. With the long-horned old man of Ba Lai as an example, doesn't this make the drought seem somewhat understandable?"

In ancient times, plagues were often linked to the rise and fall of dynasties in historical records. The nation's mountains and rivers were considered vital; the collapse of mountains and the drying up of rivers were signs of national demise. If the hand in the lake truly was a drought demon, then the phrase "rivers drying up" would indeed fit the description.

but……

“I feel like something’s not right,” Ping Yu frowned and frowned. “One minute she’s acting like a human being, saying that she can use her body to be reincarnated, and the next minute she’s saying that her body is exactly what the world needs. These contradictory statements are really hard to trust.”

A talking hand is no ordinary thing; who knows if it's a powerful demon who lies to deceive people into releasing the seal? Don't let good intentions backfire and bring disaster to the mortals here.

"How can a child like you have no drive at all!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Pingyu felt a sharp pain on her head. Lu Ya slapped the girl's head with his greasy hand, the Taoist saying with exasperation, "Why think so much? Just do it. Anyway, with your master here to back you up, do you think there's anything your master can't solve?"

Pingyu knew her master wasn't exaggerating; after all, he had never been defeated in the entire Investiture of the Gods. Even if he were captured, he could always escape before she made a mistake. But that wasn't what she cared about now. The old man's oily hands clung to a few strands of her hair, and after Lu Ya received no reply for a while, he noticed that his little disciple's face was visibly red.

He glanced at his hands, then at the other person, a sense of foreboding creeping into his heart. Ping Yu suppressed his urges, his anger threatening to erupt like a volcano. Lu Ya gasped, seizing the opportunity, and quickly changed the subject: "However!"

This turn of events did not quell the girl's anger; her face darkened as she waited for the other party to offer an excuse. The disheveled old man rummaged in his robes and finally pulled out a book that was completely out of character for him. Although the pages were yellowed, the book itself was free of stains and damage, which was enough to prove the owner's care for it. As he handed the book over, he said, "Grandma, it won't do to be ignorant if you're going to become a cultivator. Mortals look at your divination abilities first, not your ghost-catching skills. You need to brush up on some relevant knowledge, lest you be mistaken for a charlatan after you graduate."

Pingyu took the book; there were no words on either the cover or the pages.

Lu Ya suggested, "Try injecting spiritual energy."

Pingyu tried channeling her spiritual energy into the book, and words instantly appeared on the withered pages. The first few pages were the table of contents, which she read quickly. By the third page, the girl understood why her master had given her this book. The words "Ba Nu" (魃女) were clearly listed in the table of contents.

She turned to the corresponding page and was confronted with a passage of text:

“There is a mountain called Xikun, and a platform of Gonggong. There is a person dressed in green, named Huangdi’s daughter, Ba.” [1]

Ba, also written as "Nüba".

She was the daughter of the Yellow Emperor and was once an ancient goddess.

"Huh?" These few lines alone were enough to shatter Ping Yu's understanding: "Master, aren't drought demons zombies?"

The drought demon, as the elders of my hometown say, is the manifestation of a person who has died and whose body has not decayed for a hundred days. The drought demon would fetch water from villagers' homes at night; whichever house it fetched water from would have a bountiful harvest, while the fields of others would yield poor harvests. Only by burning the drought demon could the harvests return to normal.

The drought demon is a monster covered in hair with eyes on its head. But the hand in the lake is fair, slender, and boneless—it is the hand of a beautiful woman.

"This book was passed down from my ancestors. Nüba was the daughter of the Yellow Emperor, a heroine who exhausted all her divine power to break Chiyou's sorcery in the Battle of Zhuolu." Lu Ya smiled mysteriously: "However, other people's records are always suspected of being fabricated, and even I dare not say that everything I say is correct."

"If you want to know the truth, you should investigate it yourself." The Taoist priest had learned his lesson; he threw away the bone in his hand and used a cleansing spell on himself. Ping Yu was turned towards the lake by being pressed down on his shoulders.

Lu Ya, who advocates for practical application, bent down and said, "After all, the real person involved may be right in front of you."

Pingyu stared at the lake for a while.

Seeing that she already had an answer in her heart, Lu Ya gently pushed her. Ping Yu staggered towards the lakeside, and her master's voice sounded behind her: "Go, tell her yourself."

She sat back down by the lake, her fingers dipping into the water. Closing her eyes, the pure white space of her mind reappeared before her. The severed hand stood upright, waving and greeting her: "Little sister, you're back!"

"I'd like you to help me find a body."

When women's history is written by men, it is often distorted for various reasons.

Pingyu said, "I want to know who you really are and what you are like."

The severed hand said, "Once I get my body back, I'll have all my memories, and I'll tell you everything then!"

“But if you’re really bad, I’ll hide your head and not give it back to you.” Pingyu stepped forward and picked up the severed hand, threatening, “So don’t try anything funny with me.”

"Okay~" The severed hand said lightly, holding up three fingers: "I swear I'll be a good boy!"

It's a deal.

After he finished speaking, the space around his mind began to collapse.

Countless white fragments began to peel away and fall to the ground, eventually pushing the spirit back to the reality of the physical body. Pingyu opened his eyes and felt a soft object in his arms.

The severed limbs at the bottom of the lake were held in Pingyu's arms, just as they had been in the Lingtai. She stood up and said to Lu Ya, who was waiting, "Master, she doesn't know where her body was sealed. But since she was thrown up here, it proves that there must be a village nearby. So we have to go down the mountain!"

“Yes, there are villages nearby. I can take you down there. But there are no ‘us,’ only you.” Lu Ya reiterated, seeing his disciple’s incredulous expression.

"I won't stay with you."

Author's Note: [1]: From the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Great Wilderness North Classic