Chapter 29 Golden Lotus
The lotus has no name; the lotus is simply the lotus.
She was born a demon, but she always thought about doing good deeds. She didn't like cultivating, and she didn't kill demons. She was an anomaly among the demon race.
Fortunately, most demons wouldn't engage in battle if the opponent had no will to fight. Therefore, Lotus grew up quietly. She cultivated into human form on her own and worked quietly in Shenlan Cliff. Most of the demons in Qishan knew of her.
That strange little lotus flower.
Lotus was very lucky in the first half of her life. She grew up on the best mountain in Qishan and took human form in a pond. There was an old man with a locust tree next to her who would tell her stories.
The tigers in the vicinity only liked to eat meat and not flowers. With the nurturing of the mountain and the protection of the tigers, Lotus grew up happily. Later, she even found herself a good job as a nursery worker for the demon race.
There was nothing she could do. She liked doing good deeds, but there wasn't much good to do among the demons. Apart from helping demons collect their corpses, she could only teach children.
The demon race has an unspoken rule that children under the age of five cannot be maliciously harmed or eaten. Therefore, most of the children Lotus takes care of are very small demon dolls. Among them, there is one girl who left a particularly deep impression on Lotus.
It was a small flower, but a particularly mischievous one.
She liked to run out and fight during the afternoon nap time set by Lotus, liked to steal leaves from the old locust tree, and liked to chatter incessantly—
Later, he even enjoyed singing in the literacy classes invented by Lotus, singing merrily but terribly.
If Lotus hadn't listened carefully several times, she wouldn't have even been able to tell that Little Flower was singing the nursery rhyme she had taught her.
Okay, although she was very naughty, Lotus really liked Little Flower. That naughty little girl would come back from a fight and limp to bring her flowers. She would use her singing to calm the noisy classroom atmosphere. She would even fight with Little Tiger for her. Whether she won or lost, she wouldn't tell her. Instead, she would run to Old Man Locust Tree and nibble on his hair. If she won, she would nibble happily; if she lost, she would nibble angrily.
At that time, Grandpa Locust Tree told Lotus that Little Flower was almost eating away all his hair. The old man was so worried that his hair loss worsened, so he came to her hoping that she could take care of Little Flower.
Lotus was stunned. She thought to herself, "No wonder those little tigers have been so well-behaved in class lately, not fighting or flipping tables." Then she smiled as she thought about it. She picked up her little flower and kissed her with great joy.
Lotus said, "Little Flower was taught by Sister Lotus. She was the most mischievous child and also my favorite."
Little Flower had just returned from a fight, her face flushed with joy despite her bruised and swollen nose. She exclaimed, "Of course! I'm the prettiest and most powerful Little Flower! Sister Lotus definitely likes me the most! I knew that all along!"
...
"Sister Lotus, I want to become an even more powerful demon, like the demon lord of our clan, the kind that is extremely, extremely, extremely powerful!"
"I've already made arrangements with those tigers who can't beat me. They'll protect you on this land, and no demon will dare to harm you."
"I plan to go to Qishan to take a look, and then venture into the human world. I've made up my mind. Once I have enough strength and reputation, I will take over Qishan and become the Great Demon Lord of Qishan. At that time, I will set aside a separate mountain for you, so you can do what you like every day, and all the demon children will be under your command!"
Ten-year-old Xiaohua patted her chest and ran to say goodbye to Lianhua. The little girl was small, but her eyes were full of boundless spirit and ambition. Lianhua smiled at her, and she nodded exaggeratedly in response, saying to Xiaohua,
“Great! Then all the demons of Qishan will know that their demon lord was raised by me. I, Lotus, am the most powerful lotus in the mountains.”
The lotus is the best lotus in the mountains.
One day, while she was teaching the tiger cubs, one of them asked her what the human world was like.
Lotus smiled and said, "The human world is full of mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, the four seasons, wind and rain, pavilions, towers, famous sites, and historical relics..."
The little tigers were confused. They chattered and asked questions, and Lotus was also in a dilemma. All she knew about the human world was what Grandpa Locust Tree had told her, and she didn't know anything else.
Among a group of tiger cubs, one eager-to-learn cub asked a series of questions: What are people like in the human world? Who is more powerful, the cultivators in the human world or the mountain king? Why is the human world called the human world? Why isn't it called the Mountain of People? Why isn't it called the Mountain of Many People?
He asked a whole bunch of random questions, and finally he asked Lotus.
"Has Sister Lotus ever been to the human world?"
Has Lotus ever been to the human world? No, she hasn't. Is she curious? Of course she is.
Lotus couldn't sleep because of this problem. She wanted to go to the human world to see the human world that Grandpa Locust Tree had talked about. Moreover, judging from the time, Little Flower was also in the human world. Maybe she could meet Little Flower.
Grandpa Locust Tree laughed at her, saying that the world is very, very big, and she would never see Little Flower again.
Lotus disagreed. She thought, how big could the human world be? Besides, she wanted to see what the human world was really like so that she could answer the little tiger's questions about the human world when she came back.
Grandpa Huai couldn't stop her, the tigers couldn't stop her, and Lotus was determined to go.
Finally, Grandpa Huai said to her, "Little Lotus, when you come to the human world, don't do too many good deeds."
Lotus was puzzled, but Grandpa Huai smiled and comforted her before leaving her hometown.
So she set off without hesitation, heading towards the retribution called kindness.
A monster who was illiterate, knew nothing of objects or people, but had a kind heart, went to the human realm.
Lotus didn't really want to talk about what happened afterward; it was nothing more than being deceived, deceived, and deceived again.
However, it wasn't long before Lotus couldn't take it anymore. She used her demonic power and injured people, but she was never good at cultivation and never killed demons, so her strength was really weak. Two cultivators from the Demon Suppression Pavilion easily captured Lotus and imprisoned her.
If she had died like that, Lotus would have had nothing to say, but fate seemed to have taken away the fertile soil that had been her roots for the first half of her life, and then turned around and sprinkled countless muds.
She was rescued by a weak cultivator who worked odd jobs at the Demon Suppression Pavilion, an insignificant cultivator in the pavilion.
When Lotus opened her eyes, she found herself on an extremely barren land, which could barely be considered a small hill, Lotus thought.
The rest of the story is much simpler. The junior cultivator used the Demon Suppression Pavilion's method to trap Lotus in a small house. Lotus wanted to get out, but the junior cultivator remained silent.
At first, the young monk said that he had saved Lotus, and Lotus only needed to give him some lotus seeds.
Lotus gave him many lotus seeds.
Later, the young monk said that if Lotus wanted to leave, she needed to be given more lotus seeds.
Lotus was a little scared. She felt strange and wanted to refuse, but the young monk comforted her, saying that it was only because the girls in their village were not good at getting pregnant, and Lotus's lotus seeds could help them. She was doing a good deed.
Lotus nodded blankly and gave away all her lotus seeds.
Later, the lotus was still not released by the young cultivator. She could not see water or sky, her body grew weaker and weaker, and the young cultivator's gaze towards her grew more and more somber.
Finally, one day, the young monk knelt at her feet and said that he had spent a lot of effort building a shrine for her and even changing the name of the whole town, just to repay her kindness in giving him lotus seeds.
Lotus was somewhat pleased. She thought that she had done a good deed, because only by doing good deeds would the human race build temples and shrines to worship the gods.
Of course, Lotus was a little flustered at that time. She was a demon, how could she presume to call herself a god?
The young monk looked up; the man's eyes were unfathomable.
He said that the lotus is his deity.
And finally, on a stormy night, he blasphemed the gods.
That night, the wind howled, the rain poured, and thunder roared. Several disobedient women in the town tried to run away, but after eating lotus seeds, they became pregnant or pregnant again very soon. The men in the town also became stronger and more vigorous because of the lotus seeds.
No one could escape that darkness, not even the lotus that grew in the mud.
"Squeak squeak squeak—"
Finally, during the long and painful night, a rat demon risked its life to break through the earthen wall of the lotus room.
Blood dripped from Lotus's fingertips. Her eyes were vacant as she let the cold wind blow. In her ears, she heard the truth that the rat demon had revealed with his life.
The old village chief of Ershan Town was the first person to traffic women.
He was a young man who had been defeated by his own pride and ambition. When he had no other way out, he made up his mind and kidnapped the daughter of a wealthy merchant in the city.
He didn't think he would succeed, but fate made him succeed.
And just like that, incredibly, he brought back a clever, beautiful, and even noble woman to his impoverished hometown.
After that, in the same way, Ershan Village brought back one flower after another that had grown in fertile soil to this barren land.
The village gradually transformed into a town, and the evil in people's hearts turned into indifference that they had become accustomed to.
Those flowers, their proud spirit broken in the wind and rain, trampled and humiliated on the high platform, refused to be reborn in hell.
They grow on the branches, then fall heavily to the mud, where they become trapped and cannot escape.
They either drift away or sink into oblivion.
Countless bones were buried, and amidst the falling petals, a few rats gently gnawed at their flower corpses. Finally, after countless nights and days, even the rats gained intelligence.
When evil people are everywhere, even rats become saviors.
Raindrops pounded heavily against the window. Two rat demons risked their lives to break the formation that trapped the lotus flowers. They squeaked with their blood, telling of the evil deeds that had happened here and lamenting the pain of the flowers.
Lotus finally stepped out of the house.
After the rain, the sunlight shone on the woman's fair and translucent profile. Lotus thought sluggishly that perhaps the true god had finally heard the cries of those women, so he sent two mice to expose the evil here with their lives. When the blood had all been drawn, the mice had completed their mission and died peacefully.
And what about her?
Who is she?
A deity? An accomplice?
Lotus just stared blankly at the sky, her figure gradually fading in the sunlight. After killing the junior cultivator, she was already at her last gasp.
The townspeople couldn't see the lotus flowers, but the ground was covered with lotus seeds. The lotus flowers just kept walking and walking, walking all over the town, walking it countless times.
She finally saw it all: the silent weeping in the darkness, the arrogant humiliation on the high platform, and the sin that belonged to her.
Finally, Lotus arrived at the town's shrine, and at the young monk's insistence, Lotus's shrine was placed inside the shrine.
Lotus looked at her idol, and they gazed at each other.
Lotus wondered, who was she?
As Lianhua was thinking this, many people arrived at the ancestral hall without her noticing.
It turned out that the young monk had died. The townspeople were panicked and frightened. They gathered together and pulled down the shrine inside the temple.
The lotus platform collapsed, and his Dao heart shattered.
When no one was watching, the mayor's wife, seeing this scene, gave her husband a shove.
The mayor's health had been deteriorating over the years, but no one expected that a fall during the shoving would take his life.
Since everyone did it, no one can find a reason to blame the mayor's wife.
Amidst the clamor of voices, the mayor and his wife stared at each other. In the man's eyes was disbelief and certainty, while in the woman's eyes was a mountain of hatred and pain.
The man dragged back the first flower.
In order to survive, the flower allowed the soil to stain its pistils black, and then it took deep root in this soil.
No one could have imagined that after taking root for many years, this flower would gradually and bit by bit entangle the man until he died.
No one saw it, but the lotus saw it.
She suddenly laughed out loud, softly, and it seemed that someone in the ancestral hall heard the woman's laughter.
They retreated in a panic, the lotus shrine inside the ancestral hall collapsed, and the goddess statue lay peacefully on the ground, unchanged.
Lotus thought, "Who is she? She is Lotus."
She is the best lotus in Qishan, known throughout the entire Qishan. She is that strange yet kind monster, Grandpa Locust Tree's little baby, and the lotus sister of countless monster babies.
She is the owner of all the lotus seeds in Ershan Town. She is one of the pitiful and tragic women who were deceived, and also an accomplice to the suffering of those women.
Lotus knows she was wrong.
At that moment, she finally understood what Grandpa Huai hadn't said before he left—
Those who cannot discern the situation are extremely prone to doing evil when they try to do good.
With that moment of realization, the lotus gently entered the shrine, merging with the statue, and the demon spirit vanished.
The goddess lowered her eyes, and as the candlelight flickered, she vaguely recalled that she had once taught a very beautiful and interesting demon doll, who had taught her a very interesting formation.
The little girl loved to fight, but back then she was weak. When she was beaten, she would plan to ambush someone at night. In order to get enough rest during the day, she developed a strange formation that allowed her to sleep during the day and stay awake at night.
In the small classroom by the stream back then, Lotus tried to wake up the girl who was fast asleep, but found that she couldn't wake her up no matter what she did, and Lotus was almost terrified.
Later, the little girl told her that it was just an interesting formation, but it couldn't be used too often. Using it for too long would be very torturous, the kind that could actually kill people.
Lotus sighed at her mischievousness and said, "Alright, alright, then you should be more careful yourself." The little girl laughed at her helpless expression, full of energy, shaking her head and insisting on teaching her this formation.
Lotus thought that it was indeed a very interesting formation.
...
The goddess sits gracefully on a lotus throne, gently looking down upon all living beings.
Since she is a god, she must dispel the countless causes and effects of this evil town.
This is her way.
A path where good and evil are both eliminated.
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