Chapter 48 048 Those who play with time have not yet been abandoned by time...
"Grandma Zhuang, your last name is also Zhuang, the same as Sister Rong'er's..."
Shui Wu sighed, but didn't realize that something was wrong with her "Sister Rong'er".
But Ah Huai could keenly sense Zhuang Rong'er's stiffness and tension.
He tilted his head to look at her, and carefully held Zhuang Rong'er's fingers with his own. Sure enough, they were as cold as he expected.
……Why?
His eyes fixed on Zhuang Rong'er's expressionless face, and he immediately realized that the so-called "Grandma Zhuang" must be an old acquaintance of hers.
"...Go to the east side of the city."
Her voice was normal, but Ah Huai could hear the complex hesitation contained in it.
He could only tighten his grip on her fingers. The flying sword obeyed his thoughts and flew towards the east of the city.
Her question, carried by the wind, drifted to the ground.
"…Is she doing okay?"
"Are you talking about Grandma Zhuang?" Lu Baozhen paused for a moment before saying, "I don't think she's doing very well, but I'm not really sure. Grandma Zhuang lives alone, lonely, and no one talks to her. No one knows much about her. I've only met her once... A few days ago, I went to the east city to pick up my husband and helped sweep the snow from her doorway. She asked my name and offered me a bowl of hot soup to warm me... Here we are, look, that little house down there!"
Lu Baozhen didn't need to remind her; the little house was quite eye-catching.
It sits alone on the edge of the town, not connected to any buildings on any side. It looks simple and old, but there is light inside.
The warm candlelight reflected on the curtains, but strangely, no zombies approached.
Even though the group of mad infected people were originally running after their flying swords below, after approaching the hut, they seemed to have encountered some invisible obstacles and could only wander around the periphery unconsciously.
Even Shui Wu noticed something mysterious and muttered, "Grandma Zhuang lives here? She must be something special..."
As she finished speaking, the shadow on the window cloth solidified slightly. Someone sat down behind it. Then, the window was pushed open.
The light from her room also spilled outside, making the environment seem even darker for no reason.
The first thing that caught the eye was a wrist with skin as dry as old tree bark. On that wrist was a jade bracelet. The color of the jade was obviously very crisp and green, but it only made the hands look even older.
Apart from a simple bracelet, the old woman did not seem to have dressed herself up deliberately. She was wearing very ordinary coarse linen clothes, with only a velvet blanket draped over her.
Even though only half of her face and a shriveled neck were exposed, and they couldn't even look each other in the eye, she still exuded a calmness and solemnity as she sat there that made people dare not underestimate her.
Shui Wu looked down at the old woman whom she didn't even recognize from afar, and felt inexplicably uncomfortable.
She felt as if all the hairs on her body were standing on end, but she couldn't describe why.
"Here I come."
When the old woman uttered these two words quietly, she shuddered violently. The sound was actually nothing special, but it made people feel endless pressure, even if those two words were not spoken to her——
The person who reacted was Zhuang Ronger.
She flew down from the sword again.
But this time, Ah Huai understood and didn't follow. He just watched Zhuang Rong'er's back from behind, watching her push open the wooden door of the cottage as if she was visiting an ordinary relative or friend, but it seemed as if he could see her tightly clenched hands through her clothes.
The propped-up window was closed, and the three of them were blocked from seeing the outside.
Shui Wu's teeth were still chattering, and she vaguely heard Ah Huai ask her, "Don't you know that old woman?"
She wanted to say, of course she didn't know.
But at that moment, she suddenly felt like she was struck by lightning. A flash of inspiration, rare in her life, flashed through her mind. Some memories that had long been sealed away in her childhood were once again opened up, and a fragment of a certain afternoon emerged in her mind...
At that time, she was lying on her brother's back, crying because of some trivial things, until two needles pierced her fingers. She was in great pain but could no longer shed tears. She opened her eyes in panic and saw an old woman in black clothes and white hair staring at her.
The silver needle was her work, and she actually bullied her in front of her brother! How could she bear such an injustice? She wanted to complain, but not only did she become as quiet as a quail after the old woman's glance, even her brother, who was like a world-destroying devil, lowered his head very low...
She heard her brother respectfully admit his mistake, saying, "Ghost Grandma, it's my fault that I didn't teach her well and disturbed you..."
The ghostly old woman in her memory and the half chin she had just glanced at clearly did not overlap, but Shui Wu knew that they were the same person!
"It's... Ghost Grandma, that's Ghost Grandma!" Shui Wu pulled herself away from her memories, her face turning pale and red. She met Ah Huai's inquiring gaze and said in a trembling voice, "She's the previous master of Cuihuan Valley! She's Sister Rong'er's... master? Why is she here?"
…
"Why are you here?"
Zhuang Rong'er knelt on the mat, looking at the ghost lady sitting opposite her across the simple wooden table.
Her silver hair was loosely tied up and pinned with an inconspicuous wooden hairpin, the body of which was a little cracked. Her face, like the hairpin, was covered with traces of time.
Her skinny figure and sunken eye sockets made her look older than she did a hundred years ago.
The room was filled with an indescribable smell, like the fragrance of medicine, or some kind of corrupt and musty smell.
The Ghost Grandmother did not answer, but slowly sorted out a string of old bone beads in her hand, and stared down at the tortoise shell on the table.
Zhuang Rong'er then looked over and saw that the cracks on the tortoise shell were a mixture of new and old. She had predicted this reunion.
She knew she would come.
"Why?" Ghost Grandma said slowly, "In a hundred years, a person can go to many places."
“But you stopped here.”
"..." The Ghost Grandmother paused fiddling with the bone beads. Her nails, trimmed extremely short and faintly bluish-black, were embedded in the beads, exuding a sense of death. "It's freezing cold, and even snakes, insects, rats, and ants can't survive—and neither can I."
Zhuang Rong'er looked at her, feeling as if she were in another world.
It seemed that a hundred years had not passed so long, as if she was still the girl who would rest on a butterfly while practicing insect control.
There is no battle in the abyss, no revenge for taking over other people's bodies.
She had never seen the young man in white in the bamboo forest, nor had she suffered many tortures in many experiences. She did not understand the complex and changeable love in the world, nor was she numb to the Ghost Lady's changeable attitude towards her.
...Why have so many things happened in the meantime?
Zhuang Rong'er remained silent.
Perhaps the Ghost Grandmother also felt something. Her old eyes looked at her quietly for a long time, and then she said slowly, "You have made some progress."
The seemingly light words were actually compliments that Ghost Lady rarely expressed.
In this life, she must have received only a handful of words from the Ghost Grandma, and this greeting, which was exchanged nearly a hundred years apart, was one of them.
There was no more dialogue, and it seemed that they had nothing to say to each other.
Zhuang Rong'er's breathing became lighter and lighter as she sat there, because she suddenly realized something.
The ghost lady predicted their meeting, but had nothing to say to her, which meant that this meeting was to say goodbye.
Unlike the departure from Cuihuan Valley a hundred years ago, this time, it was a real farewell.
"Do you want to leave here?" she asked subconsciously.
The ghost lady shook her head.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said, a smile breaking through her wrinkled face. "My time is almost up."
…
When Zhuang Rong'er walked out of the wooden house, she looked normal and there was nothing unusual.
Behind her, the lights in the room went out.
Shui Wu gritted her teeth to overcome the fear in her bones, stuck her head out to look around, and carefully examined Zhuang Rong'er's body to see that there were no extra wounds.
No one asked why they didn't take Granny Zhuang with them anymore. Shui Wu waved her hands quickly, almost urging them to leave, and shouted, "Sister Rong'er, let's go!"
Strangely enough, the zombies who were originally fearful seemed to become even more agitated. They even seemed to no longer care whether they had stepped into the hut's territory. Their originally slow movements suddenly became fierce, and they actually jumped into the courtyard step by step and pounced on the low-spinning flying sword!
Pairs of dead white hands stretched out from below, and some extremely violent ones grabbed the hem of Lu Baozhen's skirt while roaring.
"Ah—help!"
Lu Baozhen screamed and dodged frantically, but stumbled in mid-air and was about to fall. Zhuang Rong'er and A Huai attacked together, but the silk ribbon that was wrapped around her body was gone. Fortunately, A Huai's hand holding the back of her collar was strong enough to steady her back.
But a shocking change happened in an instant. A zombie suddenly pounced from the roof. While everyone's attention was on Lu Baozhen, he attacked Ah Huai with an extremely agile sneak attack. It was likely that he was also a cultivator before being infected, and had extraordinary explosive power, and he actually took advantage of the loophole in defense.
Ah Huai reacted very quickly to avoid the frontal attack, but he was still a moment too slow. The man grabbed his arm through his sleeve, and a burning pain immediately came from the place he touched.
In shock and anger, Zhuang Rong'er had long forgotten her insistence on "keeping a glimmer of hope for the living". She pulled out a snake bone whip from her sleeve and suddenly stabbed at the living dead that Ah Huai had opened with his backhand.
The man's still twisted body was cut in half by the powerful air wave, bringing out a splatter of black blood, and he fell heavily to the ground with a roar.
As the blood fell on the snow, wisps of white smoke emerged. The snow was quickly corroded into dark holes one after another. The stench spread in the cold wind. Perhaps even the people around them smelled this smell. Their crazy postures were restrained for a moment, and they showed pathetic dullness again.
Zhuang Rong'er flew onto the sword and grabbed Ah Huai's arm that had just been grabbed. Seeing that his sleeve was not torn, she felt relieved, but still rolled up the sleeve. Fortunately, there were no cracks or scratches.
If your skin is scratched by the living dead, you will be infected with corpse poison.
Although "corpse poison" was called poison, it was not in the same category as the poisons she controlled. This time, she really couldn't refine the poison with her own body. Her blood was even less of an antidote. She could only consume it, not dissolve it into bones...
Lu Baozhen and Shui Wu were stunned by the sudden change. They hugged each other and took a long time to react.
Zhuang Rong'er wanted to find some medicine from her Qiankun bag, but Ah Huai stopped her and shook his head, saying, "It's okay, she wasn't scratched."
Even though he definitely felt the pain at that time.
Zhuang Rong'er stared at him for a few seconds before nodding and saying, "Let's leave here as soon as possible and go to Wanjian Mountain."
…
As the long swords flew across, the figures of several people gradually merged into the darkening sky.
After they completely disappeared, another guest came outside the lonely little house.
The body that was cut in half by Zhuang Rong'er was still lying in the snow, and the dirty blood had spread in several circles. The other living zombies had also calmed down from their violent state, and were walking around the hut in a daze, searching.
When the guest appeared, their cloudy pupils couldn't help but drift towards him, but none of them showed any attacking movement.
So, in a completely non-threatening state, the man walked with a relaxed posture. The small red mole on his forehead looked like a plum blossom in the snow, and the laughing Buddha mask hanging around his waist gently patted his legs until he stopped outside the hut.
"Knock knock." He hooked his fingers and knocked on the wooden door.
No one in the room responded, and he didn't seem to need to respond. He walked in naturally, and knocking on the door was just a formality.
In the dim, narrow wooden house, one of the cushions was empty, while on the other cushion sat an old woman with a pale face and closed eyes.
The bone beads coiled around her withered hand like an evil snake... Unfortunately, it was motionless and had "frozen" along with the old woman.
Qinghailou's gaze moved from the tortoise shell on the table to the old woman's face, and he slowly sat down on the empty cushion.
He picked up the tortoise shell with one hand, staring at the burnt cracks on it, and said thoughtfully: "Time is so cruel. It has taken away everything from you, even your name."
"You've become a ghost lady, an old woman, and even I'm almost forgetting your name."
"Zhuang Baozhen, you've misunderstood." Qing Hailou smiled subtly and sighed softly, "Those who play with time have not yet been abandoned by time."
"Only someone like you who respects it so much will be suppressed by it and unable to fight back."
He was the only one speaking throughout the whole process, and no one responded. He was silent for a moment, and put the tortoise shell back in the middle of the table. Because he had put away his outward expression, he showed a bit of Buddhist piety.
"Zhuang Baozhen, our era is over."
"...and I am here to collect your body." He finally said.
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