At this moment, Li Huai and Lu Tianhe also fell silent.
Although Chen Hua's methods were extremely cruel, his deep-seated hatred for the villagers was real!
This left them unsure how to evaluate the situation.
The following letters were sent after a long interval, and the handwriting became calm and cruel.
Chen Zhen: I heard that strange things have been happening in the village lately. Animals are dying inexplicably, and the well water is turning red and smells foul. Don't panic, this is just the beginning, hahaha.
I consulted the forbidden techniques of my sect and traveled far and wide in the martial world, finally finding a gift suitable for Blackwater Village.
I sent you money and food before, but that didn't satisfy you at all, so I'm sending you this big gift instead.
Besides, don't you believe in ley lines and like to draw in earth energy?
Very well, I will grant your wish. I will make this land a true den of iniquity!
Let every villager become nourishment for this decaying land and participate in it personally!
And you, my dear senior brother, I won't harm you. Just watch as the village you want to protect gradually falls into the abyss. This is what you deserve!
"Oh, right, I also thank you for your hateful pedantry and for adhering to the ironclad rule established by that bastard Master that you must not kill your fellow disciples."
With Chen Hua's letter ending here, we finally understand how Blackwater Village became such a strange place.
And then there's Seventh Uncle, he's really incredibly pedantic, actually sticking to this rule.
I was also incredibly curious as to why he didn't stop the villagers when they were in the village, since they were his junior apprentices!
The one buried alive was his own niece!
From the initial letters, I could tell how close the friendship was between the two senior brothers.
Even when he was out venturing out into the world, he would often write letters to his senior, but in the end, things turned out this way.
At the beginning of each letter, Chen Hua would always address Chen Zhen as his senior brother with utmost respect.
Later on, he started calling him by his full name, which was enough to show the change in his feelings.
The last letter was written in a completely different handwriting than the previous ones, which gave us a jolt of excitement. It seemed that this letter was written by our seventh uncle!
One can see the weariness, guilt, and unspeakable helplessness in Uncle Qi's handwriting.
"Junior Brother Hua: Receiving your letter has been heartbreaking."
What happened to Ying'er was indeed my fault. I have failed my master's instructions and have no face to face you and my siblings!
However, on the day I went out to treat patients in a neighboring village, when I returned, the tragedy had already occurred. I was powerless to change anything. The elderly people in the village conspired to keep it from me, and by the time I found out, it was too late to undo the damage.
I obeyed my teacher's instructions and did not punish the villagers, indeed because I was stubborn and cowardly.
I feel the hatred in your heart, and your revenge is also a cycle of cause and effect. This is the real reason why I didn't stop you.
However, killing a few culprits should have been enough. Involving innocent descendants and even creating blood accomplices has gone beyond the scope of revenge!
The village is now like a ghost town; old debts have been repaid, but new evils arise. When will this ever end?
This concludes the letter.
The four of us remained silent for a long time, our hearts filled with mixed emotions.
The truth is far more heavy and complex than we imagined. Chen Hua is a pitiful person consumed by hatred. His revenge has its roots, but his methods are too extreme.
Seventh Uncle was burdened with immense guilt and bound by the rules of his sect.
For decades, they watched with immense pain as the village degenerated.
He may have tried, but failed to change anything.
"So that's how it is. Chen Hua was such a happy and fulfilled person, but now... Sigh, I understand now why he was so extreme."
Li Huai sighed. When we checked Chen Hua's information, we found that he was unmarried, and we thought he was like Luo Linhe.
Passing through a sea of flowers, not a single petal clings to me.
He was originally a devoted lover, but after his wife's tragic death, he stopped looking for a partner.
Seeing that Li Huai was even showing sympathy, I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
“His initial revenge was nothing, and I would even give him a thumbs up, thinking he was a good man.”
"But everything he did afterward, just as Uncle Qi said, went beyond the scope of revenge!"
"Is the refining of Blood Stasis, the constant search for people like you whose fates are auspicious or inauspicious, truly still for revenge? Or is it simply to satisfy your own selfish desires!"
I said in a deep voice, "Perhaps he was once a husband and father focused on revenge."
However, he is now a businessman who will stop at nothing to make a profit.
He became one of the top entrepreneurs in our city, and I wonder how many dirty and bloody methods he used behind the scenes.
"Given Uncle Qi's character, he wouldn't have left us these letters just to gain our trust; there must be something we need down there!"
Suddenly, Old Chen spoke up with great confidence.
Hearing this, we rallied and continued searching through the oilcloth bundles. Sure enough, at the very bottom of the letters, we found a thin booklet made of animal hide.
I flipped through it casually at first and found that the entire booklet was drawn with cinnabar!
The first page is covered with complex runes, which at first glance look like scribbles, but they also conform to some kind of pattern.
The following sections contain detailed descriptions of earth veins, earth guiding, yin energy, and various related rituals.
I can imagine that my seventh uncle must have put in a lot of effort to collect this information.
This booklet is very complicated. It's impossible for me to learn it in a short time. Not to mention anything else, just those scribbles-like runes would take me a month or two to memorize completely.
Uncle Qi couldn't possibly be unaware of this, so I'm certain there must be an even simpler method later on.
I glanced at each page briefly before turning the page.
Until I saw a page with a huge locust tree drawn on it, its roots intertwined and reaching deep into the ground, absorbing black lines from different directions that seemed to represent yin energy.
This locust tree seems to be the core of Chen Hua's blood sacrifice ritual.
Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind, and I understood some things from before.
No wonder it's safe under the locust tree at the east end of the village.
It turned out that because that locust tree was particularly important, Chen Hua probably gave a strict order that those zombie-like villagers must not approach that locust tree!
However, these methods cannot help us completely solve the problem!
I continued flipping through the booklet quickly and found that the last page contained information about a magical artifact called the Yin-Breaking Nail.
To my relief, that page also contained detailed information on how the artifact was made and how it was used.
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