Zhu Zhenghe accidentally discovered a secret room in Zhao Wan's courtyard. Unexpectedly, he saw that the usually gentle and shy Zhao Wan could torture a person so badly that he was unrecognizable without batting an eye.
The hunched-over man, his skin torn and bleeding, nearly insane, let out a hoarse roar when he realized he was coming, but he couldn't utter a single word.
His tongue had long been pulled out.
Zhao Wan was not surprised by Zhu Zhenghe's arrival, and it was only at this moment that Zhu Zhenghe learned the true nature of the Moon Goddess Temple.
There were many temples dedicated to the Moon Goddess in the Southern Yue Kingdom, but the one in the capital was called the Temple of the Moon Goddess.
It was a dazzling and magnificent place, but it was all show and no substance!
No one knows who created the Temple of the Moon Goddess, but the story of the Moon Goddess is just a fabricated gimmick that conceals a rather cruel form of evil magic.
The Moon Goddess Temples scattered throughout the country were originally intended for selecting suitable seeds, but they were exploited by unscrupulous people and turned into dens of pleasure.
It is said that all the temple priests of the Moon Goddess Temple possess a kind of evil magic that can bewitch people and confuse their minds.
But Zhao Wan knew it was fake.
When she was twelve years old, she was sent to the Moon Goddess Temple. As she dreamed of kneeling and worshipping the Moon Goddess, she secretly got up at night but failed to inhale the medicinal fragrance. She watched as the usually kind and amiable temple keeper ordered a room full of girls to do strange things.
At that time, she did not understand what it was. She was still a child and had never experienced anything, but her instinctive reaction made her feel terrified. She dared not make a sound and hid outside the house until midnight when the temple keeper left and everyone consciously returned to their beds.
She waited anxiously for dawn, and the next day she asked others, only to find that no one remembered what had happened the night before; they all said she had a dream.
She looked terrified when she saw the temple keeper, but fortunately, there were many girls who had come up the mountain with her, so she went unnoticed.
During the day, the temple keeper acted as usual, treating the villagers who came to offer incense and kowtow with courtesy, which made Zhao Wan wonder if she was really dreaming.
That night, Zhao Wan tossed and turned in bed. Suddenly, she smelled a strange fragrance. After that, she couldn't remember anything. When she woke up, she was still in bed, as if nothing had happened. But, there was a curly hair under her fingernail.
She didn't understand. There were many things she didn't understand at that time, but no one in the temple would answer her questions, because the older sisters who had been there for a long time had also come at the age of twelve, and they had no one to teach them either.
The temple keeper taught them to kowtow and recite scriptures every day. Each person had their own tasks, such as farming or cleaning.
The temple opens its doors to Buddhism during the day, but at night it opens the gates to hell.
When Zhao Wan was fourteen, she had her first period. Her older sister told her that she would be a grown woman from now on. She didn't understand why, and her sister couldn't explain it either, only saying that it meant she was growing up.
Five days after her period ended, she woke up in the morning feeling a painful bloating in her lower abdomen and blood on her skin. She was afraid that she had fallen ill, but the temple keeper told her that she was just tired and gave her a day to rest. Sure enough, nothing else happened.
At that time, although she had doubts, there was no one to answer them or anyone to ask for help, so she felt that everything was fine because the other sisters were in the same situation.
Until she was seventeen, the messenger of the Moon Goddess Temple came to select so-called Moon Attendants. Those selected were qualified to go to the Moon Goddess Temple in the capital, which was different from the small Moon Maiden Temple. Only there could one truly be favored and blessed by the Moon Goddess.
The selection process would take several days, so the dozen or so envoys who arrived stayed temporarily at the temple.
It was at that time that Zhao Wan fell into a true abyss of hell because she secretly went to accept the small gifts that Zhu Zhenghe had given her.
She quietly returned to her shared room and was terrified by the sounds coming from inside. The sounds seemed to be in great pain, or perhaps...
She didn't know how to describe it, but she felt terrified. Her heart was pounding, and she instinctively wanted to run away. But in her panic, she tripped over her own dress. When she got up, she found a man standing in front of her.
She stared at the man in terror, her body trembling uncontrollably. She crawled, trying to escape, but he grabbed her long hair and dragged her into the house.
It turned out that those people had already discovered her absence, but they were emboldened by the fact that she would return, so they had been waiting.
Zhao Wan was thrown into the room, and when she looked up, she saw a filthy, chaotic, and disgusting scene. All the girls in the temple were here, seemingly unaware, letting those bandit-like beasts do whatever they wanted.
Zhao Wan turned pale with fright, tears streaming down her face. The man who had dragged her in found it amusing, and roughly pinned her to the ground. While she was still fully conscious, he took turns humiliating her.
Afterwards, two girls were taken away, but Zhao Wan was not among them.
She was the only one who remembered what happened that night. No one believed her, and she didn't even know how to describe what had happened.
When her mother came to visit her at the temple, she cried and poured out her heart. Unexpectedly, her mother slapped her and told her not to talk nonsense, to stay in the temple and wait until she turned eighteen to go down the mountain to get married.
Zhao Wan was bewildered after being beaten. She didn't understand why her mother looked at her with disgust. She didn't understand why she was being beaten when she had done nothing wrong.
But even her closest mother said so, and she didn't know what to do. She had been locked in the temple for too long, and even the village was unfamiliar to her; she didn't have the courage to escape.
From that day on, she was targeted by the temple keeper, and even during the day, she could not escape his clutches.
In those dark and hopeless days, she lived in a daze, not knowing what shackles bound her so tightly that she could neither break free nor escape.
The only way for her to leave is on her eighteenth birthday, the day she can descend the mountain.
She also knew that she would marry Zhu Zhenghe after she went down the mountain. She thought that Zhu Zhenghe would treat her very well and would not bully her. As long as that day came, she would no longer be in pain.
With this thought in mind, she counted the days, enduring one day after another, until her birthday. Even though it was the Ghost Festival in July, she insisted on going down the mountain.
Finally, back in the village that was both strange and familiar, she felt free.
Upon hearing that Zhu Zhenghe was leaving after his marriage, Zhao Wan did not experience much emotional fluctuation. She didn't really know anything about love; for her, marriage simply meant living together.
She vaguely understood Zhu Zhenghe's apology and expressed her understanding. As long as she didn't have to go back to the temple and was free, she didn't mind living her own life.
On the eve of her wedding, while looking at a book on sexual initiation, Zhao Wanru was struck dumb. Only then did she understand what all that she had suffered meant.
So much so that she didn't realize that on her wedding day, she would be going to the Moon Goddess Temple to enter the bridal chamber.
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