Chapter 111 Green Grapes, Let Me Rest Properly...
The memories of her hands and head pieced together, connecting with the previous recollection. The restless thirst within her body was greatly satisfied, and Ba's consciousness finally began to return. Opening her eyes, she saw the sun halo obscured by five heads huddled together. The children's innocent faces were looking at her curiously, and the banana leaves that had been there earlier, now completely dry, sheltered her head like parasols.
Who are you?
Ba heard her own voice fall to the ground, hoarse like sharp sand. She hurriedly covered her mouth, somewhat at a loss. The girls looked at each other, then scattered. Ba thought they had been frightened away, but to her surprise, the girls returned after a short while.
They thought the demon was still thirsty, so they fetched another leaf of water.
"Drink up!" the children said. "You look like you're dizzy because you're so thirsty, hurry up and drink!"
The water had a strong earthy taste, and when swallowed, sand and dirt would remain on the tongue, a thick layer that felt like a layer of grime when licked between the teeth. Yet, it was precisely this kind of water that made the children's mouths water. Even though she tried her best to control herself, Ba could still feel the children's eyes fixed on the leaf she was drinking from. Their faces were sallow, and their skin was dry and flaky.
Ba took only one sip and then handed the leaf to her, saying, "Let's drink together."
The children shared the water, but they refused to eat the fruit together.
Without taking any food, Ba pushed all the fruits back. She asked, "How did you get into the deep mountains? It's dangerous here; it's not a place for children."
The girls all huddled behind the girl in the lead. The girl said, "There's a drought down below the mountain. We've come here to ask for water and food."
The child speaking is named Arno, and the children behind her are named Xiaoyun, Shuishui, Daoguo, Yun'er...
They were very thin, as thin as a malnourished, withered tree trunk buried in the ground.
Ba felt that they seemed to never grow up and could break at any moment.
A year of drought had struck the area below the mountain, leaving not only irrigation for the fields but also drinking water for daily life a problem. Every household's well was nearly empty, and to alleviate the pressure on their food supplies, they had no choice but to venture into the mountains to hunt for wild game. However, with everyone scrambling for food in the mountains all year, the outer forests had yielded little. To stockpile more food, they had to venture deeper into the mountains. But as soon as they entered a small area, they found Ba lying alone on the ground. At first, the group thought Ba was dead, and they were terrified. Fortunately, Arno, who had been holding the banana leaf, remained calm and bravely checked Ba's breath.
Her fingers felt the steady breathing of the demon, and as she leaned down, she heard the demon's lips whisper:
Water...water...
So they brought muddy water from the nearly dried-up stream and shared some of the fruit they had gathered. Although Ba had white hair, she looked pitiful lying unconscious in the forest. Only someone with no home to return to would venture so deep into the mountains; perhaps she was being ostracized because of her unusual appearance? Out of selfishness, Ba didn't tell the children her true identity. She confirmed their suspicions and only said that she was a homeless wanderer from a neighboring village.
There was no food in the mountains, of course, since the mountains that bore her were the first to suffer from the drought. Looking around at the withered grass and trees, Arno gradually fell silent.
As evening approached, the children bid farewell to Ba and headed down the mountain. Ba didn't know how long she had been unconscious; she felt the thirst in her throat had subsided. The water the girls fed her seemed to have oil in it, rekindling her compassion for humanity. Her thawing consciousness followed Ba's emotional fluctuations, and she followed her down the mountain under the cover of night. There was only one village at the foot of the mountain, the predecessor of the present village. The moon was bright in the sky, but the people showed no signs of sleepiness. Craftsmen were trying to drill wells, attempting to find any remaining water sources in the village. Others were futilely scooping water from the wells, using old clothes to collect damp sand and mud, wringing out the clothes to try and squeeze out the remaining water droplets from the wet sand.
It wasn't until late at night that the people, having gained nothing, dragged their weary bodies back to their houses to rest.
The demon came to the well.
She stared silently at the well opening for a long time before finally putting her hand in.
This perspective made Pingyu feel dazed; she thought of the dreams of Zhang the widow's daughter and Wang Tao. They said they dreamed of a white-haired woman in a blue dress leaning against a well, and that she reached her hand in and said, "Don't worry, it's going to rain."
The actions of the demon are unraveling the secrets of the dream.
Immediately afterwards, Pingyu felt pain in his body.
All the remaining divine power in her body was scraping against her meridians and blood vessels, and drops of clear water slowly dripped from her fingertips. For a long time, Ba had been absorbing water. This was the first time she had tried to squeeze out the water she had swallowed in the past, and it felt as if her body was about to shatter from this forced action. Cold sweat evaporated into white mist as soon as it reached her forehead.
Finally, there was water at the bottom of the well.
Water droplets fall into the water, drip-drip-drip.
Hearing this melody, Ba laughed for the first time in a hundred years.
She left the village before the rooster crowed, but unexpectedly, the girls went up the mountain again.
Knowing that the demon didn't want food, they brought up another leaf of water.
The girls smiled, and their sallow complexions, which had appeared due to their thinness, seemed to have faded considerably.
"Sister," Arno eagerly shared with her, "The village well has water! My dad said that as long as the well keeps flowing and everyone uses it sparingly, we can definitely last until the drought is over. We'll bring you some water when we go up the mountain from now on, although it's not much... but if we use it sparingly, we can drink it all day!"
"That's wonderful," Ba replied gently, not daring to touch them, "thank you for the water."
"But how about we keep our meeting a secret?"
She cannot be discovered by others, otherwise she will be driven away.
The demon was tired and wanted to stop and rest.
Although they didn't know why, the naive girls agreed to her request.
He went to keep the well running at midnight and watched over the girls who were gathering mountain fruits during the day, telling them not to encounter any danger.
This mutual care seems to have become the norm.
Unfortunately, the good times didn't last long.
Before the birth of Ba, drought already existed in the world.
The change of regime also meant a change in the world, and a drought that affected the entire land quietly arrived.
It took Ba a long time to drain the water from her body, but even that was almost gone. Finally, on a day when the earth was as hot as a branding iron, the early rising sun awakened Arno. Ba, unable to escape in time, was discovered.
She discovered that the only well that hadn't dried up was being kept alive by the demon, and her white-haired sister looked over in terror with her bloodshot eyes.
A lot happened that day.
An old man who had been traveling around discovered the traces of the demon based on the charred footprints.
The girls immediately knew who the Taoist priest meant by the female demon. They exchanged glances and shook their heads at each other.
The well in the village has always been maintained by my older sister; she is not the culprit behind the drought.
This Taoist priest must be lying.
You mustn't tell anyone about your sister.
As if worried that frequent meetings would give them away, the girls never went to the mountains to search for Nüba again after that day.
Ba was unsure whether she had brought about the drought; her relationship with heaven and earth was too chaotic, and she couldn't distinguish between herself and others.
The demon was preparing to leave.
But the Taoist priest found her through a compass and divination.
“I won’t stay here,” the demon said during the standoff. “However, I hope you can wait for me to fill the village well with water again. I will leave once it’s full.”
She lingered in one place for too long, and the ensuing raging fire threatened to burn it dry. Out of guilt, and for the few children who had shown her kindness along the way... no matter what, Ba was determined to give the last of her strength to the village. But the Taoist priest, upon seeing her true face, revealed a deeply moved expression. Humans are visual creatures; those who are attracted to beauty only see stunning looks. Ping Yu secretly remembered that look. It was the old man from his youth; not everything he said was a lie.
The old man truly fell in love at first sight with the inhuman-looking Nüba.
But he put aside this idea and presented himself as a righteous and awe-inspiring Taoist priest.
"good."
He granted the celestial maiden's request.
Ba prepared herself mentally and went to the village at midnight as usual. She tried her best to squeeze the water out of her body, but suddenly flames rose all around her. The villagers came with torches, the firelight illuminating their hateful faces as they surrounded Ba.
"The Yellow Emperor sent you to the wilderness, but you insisted on staying in our village!"
"You are manipulating the drought, offering a little water as if it were charity, in an attempt to enslave us!"
A barrage of insults rained down, leaving the exhausted Ba feeling dizzy and disoriented. The Taoist priest hadn't told the villagers her original intentions; he exaggerated and maliciously smeared Ba. He told everyone that the drought was caused by Ba, that she was no longer a goddess but a demon who hated mortals because she couldn't return to heaven.
The girls couldn't bear to see Ba being slandered. They didn't understand the Taoist priest's intention in framing Ba, so they rushed out alone to stand in front of the goddess.
They cried out, "No, no! If it weren't for our sister, we would have died of thirst long ago. If it weren't for the drought she brought, she herself would have almost died of thirst in the mountains!"
Such a pale explanation is sufficient; when it comes to matters concerning demons, they can discern whose words to heed.
The girl's cries brought her back to consciousness. Unable to defend herself, she weakly addressed the enraged villagers, saying, "Wait until I finish filling this well, wait until I've filled it to the brim."
But nobody was listening.
Everyone was engrossed in their own quest for revenge.
It was as if as soon as the witch died, a torrential rain would immediately fall from the sky to wash away the scorching heat.
At this moment, no one remembers the fear brought by the floods caused by the Wind God and Rain Master, and the contributions of the Demoness were also forgotten the moment she lost her value.
She was back in the time when she was despised by the common people at the Yellow Emperor's encampment, faces overlapping, seemingly no different from one another. But the girls before her wept so bitterly, holding hands and forming a circle to protect her. Tears could frighten away the mind-corroding black insects, and pity and hate waxed and waned, neither yielding. Ba curled up in agony, torn apart, struggling. In a daze, she looked up, and a smiling face suddenly filled her eyes:
The Taoist priest was laughing.
His hand holding the copper coin sword cast a shadow, making him appear both smiling and stern.
She openly displayed her emotions behind the backs of others; it was not that no one in the Heavenly Realm had suitors, she realized.
The water she squeezed out was formed from the little spiritual power within her body, and when the well was full, she was closest to being a mortal. The demon was powerless and fragile, and to receive help, she had to seek assistance from a Taoist priest.
So this is what the old man meant by "mutual understanding".
The Taoist priest, who fell in love with Ba at first sight, began plotting from the moment he agreed to let her descend the mountain:
To make the heavenly maiden submit, it's not enough to just let her feet touch the ground. You must ruin her reputation, trample her into the mud, and make her the only one she can rely on when she's constantly hitting walls.
The girls' cries, the villagers' protests, the demon's sudden realization, the Taoist's silent threat—all the cacophony simmered together, adding the village as a seasoning. The children's parents frantically tried to pull them back, while the villagers, driven mad by the demon's indifference, prepared to attack. Arno turned back and whispered, "Sister..."
A stick caught the eye of the demon, and in the chaos, the villagers, indiscriminately pointing their weapons at the child who was in the way.
The demon raised its hand.
The rise in well water was forced to stop, and what gushed from her body was no longer water vapor but heat waves...
The demon unleashed its true power.
The scorching heat emanating from her pushed everyone away, the intense heat making everyone dizzy and disoriented. Steam rose from the well, as Nüba was drawing water back from it, everything shrouded in white mist. Nüba possessed the divine power to quell wind and rain, and could surely also scorch the heavens and earth in flames. This terrifying heatwave even reached the Yellow Emperor, who knew that Nüba had gone out of control and had no choice but to petition the Heavenly Court to send troops to help her.
The scene shifts, and Pingyu sees himself through Ba's eyes.
The Fairy Qingti arrived on a cloud, landing anxiously on this scorched earth. The surrounding vegetation was withered, and a bitter smell filled the air. Qingti saw the demon, carefully protecting her children, her scarlet eyes calmly surveying everyone present.
Ba said, word by word, "I was invited down from heaven by the Yellow Emperor not because I wanted to participate in the power struggle. I just felt that Chi You was inhumane, allowing the Wind God and Rain Master to bring down torrential rains and floods, causing innocent mortals to lose their lives because of their lust for power. You are all children that Goddess Nuwa cherishes, and I did not want to see others treat human life as worthless, so I descended to earth to help. The Wind God and Rain Master are not easy to deal with, and it was not my wish to be reduced to this state."
"I was just too tired from walking and wanted to rest. I never intended to hurt you. There was a drought before me, and now there is a severe drought. I don't know if this disaster was caused by me... But it doesn't matter anymore."
Qingti listened quietly to her friend's confession. She saw Qingti gently push the children away and then turn her head. Only then did Ba speak to her friend who had descended to earth: "Droughts occur because I am alive; rain will come after I die. I don't want to go to the wilderness anymore; if I walk too long, my feet will be dragged down by mortal mud… I can no longer return to heaven. Mortal blades cannot harm me, but thankfully you are here. Qingti…"
"Fantasy is too torturous, and anticipation is like being cut by a knife."
Her heart was filled with despair as she pleaded, "Please let me get some rest."
Author's Note: 4,000 nutrient solutions have arrived!! Thank you for your support, my darlings~ The next bonus chapter will be 5,000! This dungeon will end in the next chapter, and our little couple will finally be able to meet in the next dungeon TT... But while writing this, I really felt that Nuwa was too tragic. Sure enough, if a person loses their value, they will be used up and then discarded like an object.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
