Children's Temple

"Zhuo Chi, people with different ideals cannot work together. You have your own Young Master Lan to attend to, and I have my own things to do. You are a divine helper to me, but I am... a nuisance to you."

"Is it because of the rumors among the Lan disciples that you want to... leave me?"

Lan Zhuochi knelt at her feet, holding her hands and looking up at her. "I've taken care of everything. From now on, I have the final say in Canghua Mountain. No one dares to say anything bad about you anymore."

He leaned over her knees, pulled her hand against his cheek, and hugged her calves tightly.

"There will never be any bullshit like we have different philosophies and cannot work together between you and me. There is no need for you to compromise or sacrifice yourself. I will always follow your path as my own."

Lan Zhuochi still looked as if he was about to be abandoned. However, the next second, his expression changed. The fox ears and tail reappeared. Although they were translucent, you could actually feel the warm, fluffy fur.

"If you abandon me, I will bite you to death."

As he finished speaking, the ruby ​​ring he wore on her finger continued to shine brightly, making it impossible for her to ignore it, nor could she ignore the words he had threatened her with.

"Let's go together, let's go together."

"Okay~"

His fox tail wagged merrily, like a happy puppy.

Since Lan Zhuochi was going too, Yun Qique stopped hiding her thoughts and pondered them on her own. She took out all the information papers that the little monsters had secretly collected for her and spread them out in front of him one by one.

"There's an ancient legend in Lynx Town, I wonder if you've heard of it. It's said that five or six hundred years ago, a child ascended to heaven and became a deity. Since then, a statue of the child has been placed in the stone cave where it resides. Only pilgrims with good fortune can see it. Anyone who sees the stone statue of the child god will be rewarded with a wish. The child god has compassion for all living beings, and the more miserable and lonely a pilgrim's life, or the more deeply wronged they are, the more likely they are to see the statue."

"The version I heard is slightly different from the one you heard. It's roughly what you said, but there are more ways and conditions to see the Child God stone statue manifest. You can also see it by deliberately causing suffering and bringing certain sacrificial offerings that the Child God likes. Whether the wish is good or bad, it will help you fulfill it. Under the bayberry forest where the Child God stone cave is located, there are corpses with extremely deep grievances buried underground. Moreover, the Child God stone cave came first, and then the corpse formation was deliberately buried."

"I heard from the Peach Demon that mortals often build temples and shrines in areas with numerous corpses, using the divine Buddha's light to dispel and suppress negative energy. But why would the people of Lynx Town deliberately plant a corpse formation in the bayberry forest? Where did all those corpses come from? Did some tragedy happen there?"

"There was a tragic incident. A widow massacred most of the residents northwest of Lynx Town. That night, she was found hanged in a bayberry forest, dressed in red. Her body was covered in yellow talismans drawn in blood. A weight weighing four pounds and four ounces hung between her bound feet. Each of its five sides was engraved with miniatures of the Eighteen Hells. There's no other weight like it in the world. Furthermore, a blood-written letter detailing the widow's grievances was hung on each bayberry tree in the forest. After the incident, widespread discussion arose, with suspicions of accomplices due to the widow's death, but none of them could be her accomplices. To this day, hundreds of years later, the case remains unsolved."

"So, those murderous corpses were all killed by the widow?"

“Yes, but not entirely.”

Lan Zhuochi got up and took out a stack of yellowed old files from the dark study in his room. He spread them out flat and saw the first picture should be the scene of the widow hanging in the bayberry forest.

The second and third pictures are paintings of the blood letters hanging on the bayberry trees in the bayberry forest at that time.

The fourth one is a rubbing of the five-sided carvings of the Eighteen Hells, which are hung on the weight between the widow's bound legs.

The next dozen or so sheets of paper depicted the scenes after the bodies of each person killed by the widow were discovered. The methods of death were extremely cruel and varied. There were even a few crude words carved on their faces with a dagger. It was very likely that they were tortured to death.

The only thing they had in common was that in their hollowed-out chests, there was a white cloth with a confession written on it, with words embroidered with thread.

The sins listed in the confession letter are exactly the words tattooed on their faces.

There is also a part of old files, which contains the county government's investigation records of the case at that time and the confessions of surrounding villagers.

Reading the whole story, this murder was the widow's revenge.

The widow Chen Yuefeng was a miserable person.

After her mother gave birth to her, she boasted to everyone about how hardworking, obedient and sensible her daughter was.

Chen Yuefeng's mother said that she gave her this name because she hoped that Chen Yuefeng could live as clean and dazzling as the moon in the sky in the future, and also hoped that she could live as noble and free as the phoenix.

Chen Yuefeng's birth was also regarded as a treasure and celebrated with joy.

However, when Chen Yuefeng was five years old, all eight members of her family died in a fire. Only she, who was abused by her stepfather and daughter and forced to go up the mountain to collect firewood, escaped the disaster.

Poor girl, she was repeatedly abandoned and adopted by various new families. She was adopted by almost every family in Yangmei Village for a period of time. When no one was willing to take her in, the village chief decided to let her grow up by eating at other families' homes in the village.

They live in a small house converted from the abandoned granary of the village chief.

A straw bed made of wooden boards and a bench, a long "lame" square table, and a small square stool for a young child to sit on were all the belongings in the room she lived in.

According to villagers' confessions, she would always offer to help the family with whatever chores she could after meals. She would also observe their cues and, if they didn't eat much, she would never touch any meat or fish unless they offered her a helping. She was a talkative person and would never reveal the villagers' secrets. Even when bullied by village children, she would never fight back, only run away.

She also had a good friend named Chen Abao, the youngest son of a village butcher, who often stole food from his home to feed her.

Unfortunately, Chen Abao, who became her best friend at the age of seven, drowned in the river at the age of ten.

At this point, she returned to the lonely days of not having enough food to eat and not having warm clothes to wear.

Gradually, the villagers of Yangmei Village subconsciously believed that since she grew up eating food from hundreds of families in the village, she should belong to Yangmei Village.

Therefore, when she came of age, her good looks and figure attracted the favor of a wealthy family in Lynx Town who had been married for many years without having children. When the rich man's proposal failed and he tried to force her to marry him, he almost succeeded, but the villagers of Yangmei Village worked together to save her and drove away the rich man's men.

Because of this incident, she, who didn't know the villagers' true identities, was very grateful to them and worked even harder.

But, a year later, Chen Abao miraculously resurrected and returned home, his whole body wet, as if he had just crawled out of the water and died, with riverbed weeds stuck in his hair.

The villagers of Yangmei Village were extremely scared. After all, Chen Abao's father was a butcher with a wide network of contacts. When Chen Abao was buried, almost the entire village attended.

It's quite strange.

When Chen Abao was buried, the coffin was being carried by everyone, but before it was lowered into the ground, the thick hemp rope suddenly broke into several pieces, and the coffin fell heavily to the ground.

A gust of cold wind blew over, making it impossible for people to stand steadily. The coffin lid was lifted up by an invisible force. It was obvious that before the coffin was moved, coffin nails were hammered in to nail the coffin lid and the coffin body together.

This sudden incident allowed everyone to see Chen Abao's body lying in the coffin.

His body was also very strange and contrary to common sense. His swollen body was gray-purple and milky white, and there were bloody bruises on his wrists and ankles where people had grabbed him.

On the bruises and bloodshot, there was a talisman paper from an old witch in Zhang Village.

The old witch in Yangmei Village is very skilled in fortune-telling and performing rituals, and she almost never fails. Her status is very important in the hearts of the people, and as long as they see her talismans, they will definitely assume that some strange haunting incident has occurred.

When everyone saw this scene, they all turned around and ran away.

In the end, Chen Abao was buried by Chen's father and several cousins.

After Chen Abao's miraculous resurrection, the villagers of Yangmei Village quietly stayed away from their home, believing that the resurrected Chen Abao was not a human.

But when Old Man Chen took Chen Abao to find the village chief, took out a dazzling silver ingot and a small box of copper coins, and wanted the village chief to decide whether Chen Yuefeng should marry Chen Abao, everything changed.

No one in the whole village objected.

Chen Yuefeng was very clear-headed. She certainly knew that the returning Chen Abao was most likely not a human being. No matter how much she loved and appreciated Chen Abao, she would not be stupid enough to even think of agreeing to this marriage.

However, no one cared about her thoughts.

Forcing the cow to drink water by pressing its head, and forcing the bride to marry if she doesn't want to.

On the day of the wedding, except for the old witch, all the villagers went. After eating and watching the ceremony with fear and trepidation, they went to the village chief's house to collect their share of silver and copper coins without telling the bride, and returned home happily.

No one noticed anything wrong. After all, the old witch often dealt with ghosts and spirits, so she never attended wedding banquets.

However.

The next day.

Chen Abao is dead.

Old Man Chen blamed Chen Yuefeng for being unlucky in marriage. The rumors became more and more unpleasant. The gossips in the village even started saying that she was unlucky in marriage to her father, mother, family and husband.

After Chen Abao died, he appeared in Chen Laodi's dream and told him that he was worried about Chen Yuefeng and that he couldn't drive her away because she was pregnant with his child. So Chen Jiaer really kept her, but he often beat and scolded her to get angry, and he treated her harshly and was annoyed with her.

Sure enough, more than a month later, Chen Yuefeng was diagnosed with pregnancy.

The villagers started talking about her again.

The unpleasant things he said were nothing more than that: the child was not Chen Abao's biological child, widow Chen Yuefeng was having affairs with other men, Chen Yuefeng was pregnant with a ghost baby, Chen Yuefeng might even be unlucky in having children, and Chen Yuefeng must have an adulterer...

It's so unbearable to listen to.

Old Man Chen also heard some of it and often looked at her with suspicion.

Later, Chen Yuefeng had a difficult labor and was in pain for a whole day and night, but she couldn't give birth to the baby. On this rainy night, the old witch came to her door.

According to common sense, people like old witches should avoid women giving birth.

The old witch told Old Man Chen that this child was a ghost fetus and could not be conceived. If it was born, it would bring disaster and ruin the entire Yangmei Village. Old Man Chen went to the temple of children and prayed for several days on behalf of the poor Chen Yuefeng, but the child god did not appear to help her. This was the best proof of this.

Old Man Chen believed it.