Chapter 46: Madam Yu? Scales? Fever? ...
We arrived at Yunshui Village just before dark. As soon as we entered the village, it was already dark. Lights were lit in every household, their orange glow filtering through the window paper, casting a warm glow on the bluestone pavement. The air was filled with the aroma of food, and the faint sounds of stir-frying and children's laughter could be heard.
"Gu——" My stomach growled. Nezha glanced at me, a mischievous smile curling up at the corner of his mouth.
"What are you looking at!" I was furious. "Don't gods need to eat?"
"Only a god would be so rude." He said this, but then he walked towards the village, "Hurry up and buy some food from a family."
We followed the direction of the thickest smoke and unexpectedly arrived at the home of the old woman we'd met earlier. Inside the low-fenced courtyard, the old woman sat by a stone mill, picking vegetables. Upon seeing us, she was startled, then shakily stood up.
"You two..." She wiped her hands awkwardly on her apron, "If you don't mind my humble abode..."
I quickly waved my hand, "Don't say that, Grandma. We're the ones bothering you." Then I secretly tugged at Little Nezha's sleeve, signaling him to tone down his arrogance. Little Nezha pouted, but for once, he refrained from rude remarks.
The house was cleaner than expected. A coarse earthenware bowl held steaming wild vegetable porridge and a dish of pickled bamboo shoots. The old woman then brought out a plate of golden cornbread and said, "There's nothing good in the village, so Immortal, please make do with this."
I was about to thank her, but I noticed that the old woman seemed to be hesitant to speak. Her cloudy eyes remained fixed on my face, as if confirming something.
Suddenly I remembered that when I first saw the old woman by the lake, her eyes were so complicated.
"Mother-in-law," I put down my chopsticks, "you looked at me strangely before. Is it because of who I look like?"
The old woman's withered fingers suddenly trembled. She stood up and walked into the inner room. A moment later, she brought out a faded wooden box. She peeled back the layers of red cloth and found a yellowed portrait inside.
"This is..." I gasped. The woman in the painting was dressed in a light blue dress, her features were picturesque, and the most striking thing was that her face bore a striking resemblance to mine.
"It was Madam Yu," the old woman's voice was choked with sobs. "More than sixty years ago, she was the one who brought us here to escape the disaster."
As the oil lamp crackled, the old man's tale took us back to the war-torn era. Yu Niang, the daughter of a prominent family, saw her entire clan ravaged by the war. She led the surviving elderly, weak, women, and children on a thousand-mile journey, sheltering refugees along the way and crossing mountains and ridges to reach this valley.
"I was nine years old that year, and my mother woke me up in the middle of the night by splashing cold water on me." The old woman's fingers gently stroked the edge of the portrait. Her voice suddenly became clearer, and a strange light shone in her cloudy eyes. "My mother stuffed a bundle into my arms and told me to follow Madam Yu in blue and never look back."
The chirping of night insects could be heard outside the window. The oil lamp cast the old man's shadow on the earthen wall. The hunched outline gradually straightened, as if she had turned back into the little girl with pigtails.
"More than a hundred of us fled into the mountains overnight. Madam Yu walked in front, holding a glass lamp that would not go out."
Nezha suddenly interrupted: "A perpetual lamp made of mermaid oil?"
The old woman didn't respond, but continued on her own: "The most difficult part is the Cliff of Broken Souls. The plank road on the cliff has been in disrepair for a long time, so Madam Yu took off the ribbon from her waist and threw it into the air—" She gestured, "The ribbon turned into a rainbow bridge!"
Nezha suddenly sat up straight. "Then Madam Yu is a Taoist practitioner? I wonder who her master is?"
"What happened next?" I asked, my voice tense.
"Later..." The old woman suddenly started coughing violently, and I quickly patted her back. When she recovered her breath, her eyes became cloudy again. "Later, we finally arrived here and built a village here, and Madam Yu became the village chief." Tears welled up in the old woman's eyes. "The following year, there was a severe drought, and it was Madam Yu who prayed for rain again. The village wanted to build a shrine in her honor, but she said..."
"say what?"
"She said that once the world is at peace, someone will come to pick her up." The old woman looked at me deeply, "My dear, you look so much like Madam Yu, could it be..."
She suddenly fell silent and stared out the window in horror. The chirping of insects and frogs had vanished without a trace, and in the dead silence came a rustling sound, as if something enormous was sliding across the village road.
Nezha stood up with a swish, and the Hun Tian Ling moved without wind. At this moment, a heart-wrenching scream suddenly came from the distance:
"Ancestral Hall! Something happened in the ancestral hall!"
When we rushed out, the whole village was in chaos. People were running eastward, torches in hand. In the light, I saw the cypress tree in front of the ancestral hall shaking wildly. No, something was twisting and wriggling in the tree!
As I got closer, my blood froze. It was a giant black python, as thick as a bucket, its scales a dark red like rust. It slowly tightened its grip around the cypress trunk, the bark making a teeth-grinding "crunch."
The strangest thing is that the python's head was hanging in front of the main gate of the ancestral hall, and its scarlet tongue kept moving in and out, as if it was sniffing something?
"It's coming..." The old woman came over without me noticing, her skinny fingers tightly grasping my sleeve, "It's here to find Madam Yu..."
The giant python suddenly turned its head, and its golden vertical pupils locked onto me.
The moment it was locked onto him, a bone-chilling chill ran up his spine. Its scales glowed an eerie dark red in the firelight, moving slowly with its breath, making a metallic grinding sound.
Little Nezha pulled me behind him and said, "Don't get in the way!" The Hun Tian Ling soared into the air like a dragon, streaking a dazzling red light in the sky. The young general rode on the Wind Fire Wheel, his Fire Spear pointed directly at the giant python:
"No matter who it goes to! Today I will make sure it never comes back!"
I comforted the old woman: "Little Nezha is very powerful, don't worry, grandma!"
The giant python suddenly leaped up and attacked, its thick tail sweeping across like a steel whip, stirring up a gust of fishy wind. Little Nezha's eyes gleamed brightly, his wind-fire wheels spewing blazing flames, and he soared into the sky like an arrow from a bow.
The Hun Tian Ling wound around the giant python like a dragon in mid-air. The beast was cunning, twisting its body strangely and slipping through the cracks in the red silk. Its scales rubbed against the magic weapon, sending out a string of dazzling sparks.
A golden light flashed in Nezha's eyes, and his Fire Spear suddenly burst out with a dazzling red light! His body was as fast as lightning, drawing a perfect arc in the air, and the tip of the spear pointed directly at the giant python's seven inches -
"The monster is seeking death!"
The Fire Spear, swirling with the True Fire of Samadhi, pierced the giant python like a meteor. The python twisted its body frantically to avoid it, but Little Nezha's spear was fast and accurate.
“Puff—”
The sharp spear tip pierced through the scales, burying itself seven inches deep into the python. Scalding snake blood gushed out, splashing onto Nezha's face, adding a touch of ferocity. The python let out a shrill roar, its body twitching violently, and it tumbled wildly with the flaming spear.
"Want to escape?" Nezha sneered, gripped the gun barrel tightly with both hands, and twisted it violently!
"boom!"
The Samadhi True Fire erupted instantly, igniting the giant python from the inside. The red flames spread along the snake's body. The giant python struggled painfully in the sea of fire, and its scales burst and fell off.
“Hiss—Roar—”
The giant python's screams resounded through the night sky. It used its last bit of strength to swing its tail, wanting to die together with little Nezha!
He was totally overestimating his own abilities! But Nezha had been prepared. He stepped on the Wind Fire Wheel and soared into the air, recalling the Chaos Sky Ribbon at the same time.
"receive!"
The Hun Tian Ling wrapped around the giant python like a spirit snake and suddenly tightened! With a crisp "crack", the giant python's spine was broken into several sections!
In the flames, the giant python's golden pupils gradually lost their luster, and its massive body collapsed to the ground, stirring up a cloud of dust...
Nezha landed lightly, raised his hand to wipe the snake blood from his face, and swung the Fire Spear into a beautiful flower in his hand before retracting it behind his back. He turned to look at the stunned villagers and grinned, "Well? I mean what I say!"
He raised his eyebrows at me again: "Have you seen enough? This giant snake is really weak. It can't even exert one ten-thousandth of my strength!"
Under the moonlight, the young general's red robe fluttered, the golden ring around his neck gleaming. Although covered in dust, he was still so dazzling that it was impossible to look away.
However, at this moment, something strange happened!
The python's corpse suddenly began to rapidly decompose, turning into a pile of grayish-white bones in the blink of an eye. In the center of the bones, a scale slowly rose, emitting a faint blue light.
scales? ?
Suddenly, I remembered a scale that had appeared in the Yunshui River! Nezha had fished it out of the river, but he said it quickly rotted and disappeared...
Little Nezha frowned as he took the scale. However, as if sensing the warmth of his palm, the scale quickly rotted, then transformed into a silver-blue light and disappeared...
At the same time, I felt my body temperature gradually rising. The heat came on suddenly and intensely, as if someone had ignited a fire within me. First, my chest felt hot, then the heat quickly spread through my blood vessels to every part of my body. My skin began to flush, beads of sweat formed on my forehead, and my breathing became rapid.
"What's wrong with you?" Nezha was quick to notice my anomaly and rushed to me. His cold fingers just touched my forehead and he suddenly pulled back: "It's so hot!"
Not knowing what he was thinking of, a murderous look suddenly appeared in his eyes, "Could it be that scale?" He stretched out his hand, and the strange scale disappeared from his palm.
"Damn it!" Little Nezha cursed, grabbing hold of me as I swayed. His palm rested on my back, slowly infusing me with a cool, refreshing magical power. But this coolness was quickly swallowed up by the surging heat within me.
I opened my mouth, but found I didn't even have the strength to speak. The world before me began to spin, and my ears were buzzing. The most terrifying thing was that I could clearly feel the heat in my body colliding with something...
I grabbed Little Nezha's hand with all my strength and said, "I...I'm going to faint, don't...don't fall face first!"
Before I could finish my words, my consciousness sank into darkness. I vaguely heard the anxious cries of little Nezha and the trembling voice of the old woman: "Don't worry, don't worry, the young lady has a fever. I have medicine here..."
In a trance, I heard someone calling me:
"Ayu..."
"Ayu..."
"I won't let you die..."
Is that... Little Lotus' voice?
I seem to have made a mistake...
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