Chapter 23 (changed to "Great Wisdom Appears as Foolishness", hence the title "...")
Just thinking about how Nezha, after transforming into a lotus flower, chased after his father and tried to kill him...
Ping Yu felt that it was not surprising at all that he could say such things.
Tong'er felt as if he had opened the door to a new world. He pressed his knuckles and moved closer and closer to the peddler. The man, seeing Tong'er's increasingly gloomy face, couldn't help but panic.
"Wait, wait a minute!"
He panicked to the point of stuttering.
The girl silently looked away. She had seen too much red today; if she looked any longer, she wouldn't be able to eat!
After several rounds of fighting, most of the candlelight in the main hall had gone out. Everything was pitch black, making one feel drowsy. To try and stay awake, Pingyu turned his gaze towards the door:
The case was a bit far away, and Pingyu had to squint to see it clearly.
She remembered that Jinzha had called it an altar when they were in the side room. The wooden tabletop was square with four regular corners and a long surface, resembling a coffin from a distance. Pingyu found it strange because in her mind, a table needed offerings, statues of gods, or portraits of the deceased to be considered a "shrine." But this wooden table under the tree was empty above, only receiving a pool of cold moonlight.
"What are you looking at?"
A sound rang in my ears.
Pingyu was startled and trembled. She turned her head and saw Jinzha looking at her curiously.
The girl hadn't uttered a sound since the beginning, seemingly uninterested in Tong'er's plan to execute the peddler. Yet, she had been the one with the strongest reaction from the moment she heard the wronged ghost's plea for help. Ping Yu, who also had a question, continued along the young man's lines: "There's no shrine or offerings under the tree... I'm wondering, how did the eldest young master and Nezha figure out that it was an altar? After all, no matter how Ping Yu looked at it, it just seemed like an oddly positioned table."
"because……"
The young man was about to explain when his mind went blank.
Jinzha suddenly felt a little lost.
He realized he was trapped by preconceived notions. Seeing the layout of the houses, the young man assumed that the wooden table there was destined to exist as a ritual altar.
Pingyu's mind was still racing. Because they had been on guard against the Guhuoniao's attack, they hadn't paid much attention to the details. Now that the biggest monster in the area had been subdued, all the suspicious points in the house had come to light.
The girl wrapped the long strands of hair she had left on both sides around her fingers. As if asking a question, or perhaps talking to herself, she sorted through the known clues: "Let's assume the altar is under the tree. The shade of the tree is used to accumulate yin energy, attracting spirits and evil ghosts from the surrounding area. And the threshold that was removed in front of the house is to invite these evil spirits gathered by yin energy into the house. If ghosts and monsters want to enter the house, they will inevitably affect the living people inside. That's why we subjectively think that the table under the tree is an altar, right? After all, its function is to make the wife be haunted by ghosts, to divert the target of evil spirits."
Jinzha went over Pingyu's words and nodded in agreement: "That's right, feng shui is a whole, and you can't just look at the parts. From the perspective of the layout of the whole house, the altar serves this purpose."
The two did not lower their voices during their conversation.
Tong'er's fist nearly struck the man's face, but upon hearing Ping Yu's voice, he paused and lowered his hand. Nezha, who had been watching with his arms crossed, raised an eyebrow upon hearing this and listened quietly to the two talking.
Seeing that everyone was looking at him, Pingyu simply turned back around.
The three people and two ghosts formed a circle around the peddler.
She said, "But it seems we've forgotten something."
"What?" This time it was Nezha who asked.
“If I remember correctly, you said the big tree is directly facing the door, called a 'piercing heart evil.' The gathered yin energy is just a byproduct. The tree's most fundamental function is to kill the head of the family. The bigger the tree, the more ferocious the evil, and the more tragic the death of the head of the family.” The girl placed her hand on the bow, and with the movement of her arm and fingers, silently drew back the invisible string. Ping Yu lowered his head, aiming the fully drawn bow at the man with his head bowed.
Pingyu asked, puzzled, "Why didn't you die?"
She released the arrow, and a breeze from outside swept through the room, ruffling the man's clothes as if piercing his heart. He looked up in surprise, meeting the girl's eyes, clear as water droplets on a blue stone.
This question, which could be described as "sharp," contained not a trace of malice. It was as if she was simply asking a question, seeking an answer to a doubt.
She lowered her hand and continued, "I've been wanting to ask this since just now: why are you not only alive, but also full of energy and enjoying life's pleasures? Apart from today, perhaps you haven't even encountered any misfortune... Why? This makes no sense." This time, Pingyu was dissecting the matter, as if she were asking herself.
The peddler remained silent and was thrown to the ground, bound by the silver rings of the Dragon-Diving Pillar.
Although Pingyu was just a child, his position made him appear superior to him. The girl bent down to face the man and looked him in the eye, saying, "Aren't you the head of the family?"
He felt a strange sense of pressure from Ping Yu's pretty face.
The peddler blinked more frequently after that sentence, as if a fly had landed in his eye. He smiled and calmly replied, "Yes, that's me."
“That means there’s someone of higher status than you,” Ping Yu straightened up and turned to ask the infant spirit siblings, “I remember that in the past, families would keep ancestral tablets at home. Tong’er, Xiao Bei, does your family have that?”
"No."
Tong'er and Xiao Bei shared a head, and when suddenly asked a question, they both seemed a little dazed. They shook their heads together, lost in memories. Tong'er, who could speak, said uncertainly to the group, "Mother said that Father was an orphan who almost starved to death on the streets. It was my kind-hearted grandparents who took him in and made him Mother's childhood husband. But not long after their funeral, Grandpa and Grandma's memorial tablets were lost. Father said that Grandpa and Grandma had been taken away by the ghost messengers and entered the cycle of reincarnation. He forbade my mother to set up a memorial tablet again, so as not to delay the two old people's reincarnation."
"So you're a son-in-law who married into the family." Ping Yu looked completely bewildered. "What's a son-in-law doing calling himself the head of the family? He really doesn't know the rules." He didn't realize that after he uttered that word, the previously composed man suddenly became furious.
Nezha slowly stood behind the girl, glanced at the man who seemed about to curse but stopped himself, and whispered in the girl's ear:
"Ping Daitou, you've rambled on and on, have you come to a conclusion yet?"
Pingyu's ears were tickled by the boy's address. She shrugged one shoulder and widened her eyes at his way of addressing her.
"Where did this nickname come from?!"
She asked.
You're such an annoying elementary school boy!
Pingyu's eyes turned into a silent, lifeless gaze.
Nezha laughed after speaking, his long eyelashes brushing against the girl's cheek like feathers. Pingyu felt the tickling intensify, and angrily turned her head to look. But the first thing she saw was Nezha's crescent-shaped eyelids, curved upwards from laughing.
The moonlight was cold and clear, and the boy's authoritative face instantly extinguished the fire in Pingyu's heart. She was caught between being angry and not being angry, and could only stare intently at his face several times.
Beauty is a treasure. If someone makes me angry once, I'll just look at them a few more times! She thought somewhat pathetically: Sooner or later, I'll see all of Nezha's belongings!
At this point, the girl took a deep breath and went around to Nezha's back.
Perhaps because of their shared experience of life and death, the two people of the same age quickly overcame their initial awkwardness and distance. Pingyu also became bolder, daring to push Nezha from behind.
The boy remained unmoved, calmly letting her push him with all her might.
As Ping Yu pushed the cart, he said to the group:
"Let's go check out the altar first. I already know where Tong'er and Xiao Bei's mother is. I'll tell you my thoughts after we've scouted the place."
Nezha finally took a step and let the girl push him away.
The group quickly arrived at the tree.
As soon as she stepped into the shade of the trees, Pingyu felt a sudden chill. She shivered, rubbing her arms and curling herself up: "It's so cold..."
“This place is a gathering place of Yin energy, and you are weaker than others, so it’s understandable that you feel cold,” Jinzha said, and began to observe his surroundings.
He picked up his finger again and saw that it was covered with a thick layer of dust.
The young man turned to the girl with trembling teeth and asked, "How are you, Pingyu? Can you tell me what you were thinking about in the main hall earlier?"
"Wait for me a minute..."
When the topic turned to business, the girl straightened up. Everyone watched as she circled the table with a serious expression, Pingyu observing intently, causing everyone to hold their breath. After a short while, she raised her head again.
"Can someone light a fire?"
...
Everyone staggered.
Nezha's temples bulged with veins as Pingyu saw him swing a heavy punch at him.
The straight punch stopped just short of her face, the powerful force lifting strands of the girl's hair.
She blinked, and the other person held up an index finger in her line of sight.
Are you disgusted? You're pointing the wrong finger.
Nezha glared at her, thinking, "So talkative and long-winded!"
The next second, his wrist was grabbed.
Pingyu used the boy's hand as a torch, pulling him along to the wooden table. The ground beneath the tree roots wasn't flat; weeds grew outside, their prickles tickling the ankles. Previously, they had relied on moonlight to discern things, making it difficult to see clearly where the ground was obscured by tree shadows. Now, with Nezha's fire illuminating the scene, the anomalies on the grass became clearly visible:
With overgrown weeds on all sides, the weeds under the table were short, drooping, and dilapidated.
Jinzha and Tong'er also witnessed this scene. The human and the ghost exchanged a glance, then moved closer to Pingyu. The girl led the group to crouch down, their four figures arranged from tallest to shortest, like mushrooms unevenly covered by rain. She pointed to the obviously odd patch of grass and said, "I think I was right."
"What?"
The other three asked.
“The Yellow-Mouthed Wine Cup.” Tong’er took out the cracked wine cup from his bosom again. He was really puzzled, so he asked, “But Mother didn’t die. The demon sealed her lifeline.”
She continued, "I think that because her bones were removed, the Heart-Piercing Demon would think that it had killed the head of the family. But the peddler sealed her lifeline. As long as she has a breath left, the title of head of the family will never fall on her. He can also set up an altar and take advantage of the situation to draw all the ghosts invited into the door to her as well."
Killing two birds with one stone.
"Of course, this is just my deduction. And if I were to draw a conclusion..."
Pingyu stood up as she spoke, and she used her hand to brace against the table and push it away.
The wooden table wasn't large, so it wasn't too difficult to push it. Once the table was completely moved, its underlying structure was fully revealed.
The crushed grass was a size larger than the table.
Pingyu brushed the dust off his palms and said to the other three who were still squatting on the ground, "Tong'er and Xiaobei's mother should be down here."
"Although women are not allowed to enter the ancestral hall, it is the dead who are buried there."
A note from the author:
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