Chapter 14 The Heavenly Soul is Damaged and the Ghost King is "Father".
Qingliao Kingdom, Yangjiang County, Shiga Village, East, Dilapidated Temple.
On the 29th day of the first lunar month, a cold wind swirled snowflakes, burying most of the mountain village in a white blanket.
"Grandma, I hunted a wild rabbit! We'll eat a plump rabbit tonight! We can even save half for the New Year!"
A clear, melodious voice came from outside the door, and the creaking of boots on the snowy ground conveyed the unique joy of youth.
Bitao, carrying a fat rabbit that had been dead and frozen for a long time, rushed into the dilapidated temple that was drafty on all sides.
This is her home.
It's the home she and her mother-in-law share.
But the fire that used to burn was extinguished by the cold wind from the four corners of the dilapidated temple at some unknown time, along with the life of the person in front of the fire who was wrapped in scraps of animal skin for warmth.
Bitao stood at the door and saw the emaciated person sitting there, her aged neck drooping unnaturally in the animal skin, her disheveled white hair neatly combed, which did not obscure the peace on her face.
Without even going up to test it, you can tell that the person must have been stiff for a long time, just like the rabbit in her hand.
It must be as cold as a block of ice.
It turns out that people whose time is coming to an end really know when they will die. That's why, early in the morning, he insisted on sending Bitao to the deep mountains after the heavy snow had blocked the mountain pass, to check a trap that she had set two months earlier, and even said that she must have hunted some New Year's goods.
The dilapidated door, which wasn't properly closed, slammed against the wall with a bang as the cold wind swept through.
The sound, carrying a chilling cold, struck her like a thunderbolt, jolting her awake.
But Bitao stood there, letting the cold wind erode her, and didn't move for a long time.
From as far back as she can remember, she and her mother-in-law have lived together, relying on each other for survival.
She was born to a family surnamed Li at the west end of the village, but because she was a girl who couldn't bring honor to her ancestors and still had a mouth to eat, her father, who was eager for a son, picked her up and threw her into the mountains without even wrapping her in a cloth.
These days, human life is as worthless as grass, and a girl's life is even less than that of grass.
Of course, all of this was told to her by her mother-in-law.
It was her mother-in-law who kindly took her back, saying that luckily she was abandoned in mid-April, when the weather was already warm, and she survived being left out for so long without dying, and she even cried very loudly.
It was under a wild peach tree that was in bloom in the mountains when her mother-in-law found her. She was covered in peach petals.
Therefore, she was named Bitao.
The two depended on each other for survival, but there wasn't anything particularly touching about it. From the time Bitao could remember, her mother-in-law was always stern and had deep vertical lines on her face. No matter what she did, it always seemed like she was being forced to do it.
She was an old, widowed woman who had lost all her relatives and had ended up here due to famine, taking refuge in this dilapidated temple.
Bitao asked her more than once: You have a hard time living and you are getting old, why did you bring her back?
My mother-in-law always says it's because she wasn't meant to die.
She saved Bitao, but she didn't seem to like Bitao much. She never treated Bitao kindly, and sometimes she wouldn't speak to her for seven or eight days in a row.
Regardless of how much fun Bitao had munching on mud bugs when she was little, or how badly she fell while climbing trees as she got older.
Even if she was beaten so badly by the village lads that her head and buttocks were indistinguishable, they wouldn't ask her a single question or arrange for her to be treated.
It was as if as long as she was alive, that was enough.
He had no expectations of her whatsoever. It was like raising a dog. When it was time to eat, he would call her to eat, but she would always be served dry whole grain flatbread with water.
When asked, they said they got it from the village.
As a result, when Bitao was a child, she always felt that everyone in the village was a good person and that they made a lot of mixed flour cakes to give to them.
As Bitao grew up and became increasingly beautiful and graceful, those boys who had once beaten and kicked her and called her a wild dog began to fawn over her with ulterior motives. Only then did she realize that the villagers were not so kind.
They themselves don't get to eat mixed grain cakes all year round. Their own daughter just threw them away because they didn't live through a famine year, so they had nothing to give her.
Bitao did try to get to the bottom of things, and even followed her mother-in-law.
However, she later fainted several times for no apparent reason, and then she stopped pursuing the matter.
Even now, looking at her stiff, cold face, which was not much different from her childhood memories, Bitao knew that she should rush over and weep bitterly.
But she couldn't find anything to feel sad or upset in her heart, and even breathed a sigh of relief.
After all, she was an old woman who had been plagued by illness for nearly twenty years. Bitao had consulted all the doctors in the surrounding villages and towns, but none of them could figure out what was wrong with her. However, they had seen her vomit blood many times.
For most people, vomiting blood indicates a terminal illness and impending death, but my mother-in-law only vomited blood and did not die.
Not only did she somehow manage to produce twenty years' worth of mixed grain flatbread, but she also didn't gain a single wrinkle over all these years... What's most amazing is that sometimes she sleeps for three to five days straight, and when she wakes up, she forgets to eat. Bitao secretly counted that the longest her mother-in-law could go without food or drink was nine days without dying.
This is all so illogical.
Bitao originally planned to take her to live in a remote and deserted place after the New Year.
After all, the villagers had begun to suspect that the old woman was a witch and were secretly plotting to burn her to death.
Because the village chief, the only educated man in the village, once said, "An old man who doesn't die is a thief," the old witch, the old woman, stole all the grain from the entire village by herself.
Otherwise, how can you explain that this old homeless woman has survived all this time without starving and has managed to raise such a beautiful young woman?
Fortunately, just as Bitao had thought, her mother-in-law did not intend to survive the winter and was burned to death by the villagers next spring.
Bitao didn't even feel that she was dead, but rather that she had finally unloaded her "burden" and returned to where she came from.
She must have had a tough time all these years, enduring so much hardship.
Although Bitao couldn't understand what was wrong with her mother-in-law, there were too many things she couldn't understand, just like how she had never understood why she suddenly knew certain things since she was a child.
For example, those thugs who ganged up on her couldn't beat her in a couple of years. She could break a wooden stick and dance with it, leaving afterimages, and beat them until they were covered in bruises.
For example... she often went to the mountains and found that she could not only climb trees, but also jump between two trees that were not too far apart, just like a monkey.
It was as if the tree branches had a spirit, supporting her as she played wildly.
He knew how to deal with wild animals without being taught, how to make traps, how to make bows and arrows, and he also had more and more tricks for wielding a stick.
Moreover, she had secretly read a few pitiful "books" belonging to the cultured village chief. She had never received formal education or attended any classes, but she could read.
He knows all the words.
Bitao ultimately concluded that she was probably a gifted genius, born with innate knowledge and destined for high office.
They were held back by this poor, remote mountain village.
With that thought in mind, Bitao finally threw the rabbit in her hand to the ground.
She turned around, closed the tattered door (which was of little use), and bolted it shut. Then, Bitao walked to the fire.
I took a closer look at my mother-in-law and thought she looked much the same as when she was asleep.
He poked at the fire with a stick a few times and found a few embers buried in the ash. He quickly added some soft firewood stored in the house, blew on it, and it caught fire.
Set up the wood and the iron pot, and start boiling water.
As she watched the water boil, Bitao felt the cold wind howling even more fiercely around her. She shivered even though she was wearing a whole animal skin, as if ice water had been poured into her bones.
She quickly moved closer to the fire.
"Stay a little further away. Your yin energy is too strong. Be careful not to expose yourself."
“Something’s wrong with her. No one can be so calm in front of a dead person. Besides, that was her mother-in-law, the only person she had left. Shouldn’t she cry for me?”
A tall, imposing man, dressed in a pure black robe and with hair that almost dragged on the ground, was pulled back by his companion, but he stared intently at the back of Bitao's head.
He lamented his "death": "She actually had the nerve to boil water and cook rabbit."
She didn't even care about the kindness of raising her for so many years.
The man had striking features, but because he worked in the underworld and fed on evil spirits for years, he appeared particularly sinister.
His expression was gloomy, and the surrounding area was filled with ghostly energy, making him extremely terrifying.
The people around him were also wearing the same pure black robes, clearly the same style. In fact, this was the uniform of the underworld's Fiends.
Although his face was also pale, he looked more "human," though his expression was somewhat indescribable.
Withdrawing his hand from pulling his colleague, this ghost king, who was more "human," sighed earnestly, "Bai Duo, you're too into the role."
"She's a fairy, a fairy from the Nine Heavens. She's just here to make a brief appearance. If there hadn't been a mishap during the teleportation, which injured her celestial soul and caused her to forget some things, it wouldn't have been our turn..."
After several attempts, he finally found a suitable expression: "care and upbringing".
The man called Bai Duo couldn't tell whether he had listened or not; his face was gloomy as he said, "Eighteen years. Logically, raising her to sixteen would have been enough, but I was afraid she would be deceived by those lowly men in the village, and that she would have a child with a human-immortal hybrid when she first fell in love... so I raised her for two more years."
They even violated regulations by filling the homes of villains who attempted to force Bitao into marriage, or who even plotted to arrest her, tie her up, and release her after she had children and behaved herself, with a sinister atmosphere.
May they be plagued by illness and suffer from the torment of ghosts and monsters.
"It seems she doesn't care at all." Bai Duo pursed her lips, her ghostly aura intensifying, threatening to engulf the entire dilapidated temple.
Yin energy is different from simple cold. While extreme cold can damage the body, an explosion of yin energy can freeze a person's soul.
His colleagues were both amused and exasperated by him, and couldn't help but tease him: "You've transformed into an old woman, treating people like dogs. A few years ago you said you didn't want to do this anymore, that raising children was like going to the eighteenth level of purgatory. How come you're so reluctant to let go now?"
“Eighteen years…” Bai Duo’s voice squeezed out from the ghostly aura. “Zhuo Xian, even raising a dog for eighteen years should have resulted in some affection.”
Seeing the dense, choking aura of evil spirits, it was likely that this fairy, now stripped of her divine spirit and merely a mortal, would be "frozen" to death in a little while.
The colleague called Zhuoxian couldn't stand seeing Bai Duo's domineering and handsome face display such a disgusting, heartbroken expression, and roared, "That's enough!"
His almond-shaped eyes widened as he looked up at Bai Duo and roared, "Wake up, my ancestor... that's not your daughter, and you're not worthy to be her father!"
"Besides, you've transformed into a withered old woman, right there. Look at yourself, and think about what you've done. Who would be attached to such a caregiver?"
Bai Duo has been a ghost for over a thousand years, and it's rare for him to feel such intense reluctance to part with someone.
As the King of the Earthly Fiends, even the little ghosts of the underworld cower in fear of him, and his colleagues are all scheming against each other.
The underworld is dark and cold; eating evil spirits is boring and uninteresting.
Nothing is more interesting than raising a little girl from a young age, watching her grow from a tiny flower into a graceful and vibrant young woman.
He felt so good being a father; this was the only kind of fun he'd had in thousands of years, so it was no wonder his paternal love erupted.
Bai Duo initially didn't want to take on this job. Why did the Heavenly Realm have to compete to select high-ranking immortals, but instead have to pull them, who were already busy to the point of exhaustion, to do hard labor?
They treat ghosts like they're not human.
It's one thing to supervise the exams, but why should we also care whether these immortals who have problems live or die?
So what if they're dead? They've been dead for so many years and they're still living well.
The underworld is indeed under the jurisdiction of the celestial realm, but the flow of time is different in all realms and in the celestial realm.
Their underworld time flow is synchronized with the time of any celestial realm in which the beings reincarnate.
Moreover, the celestial and underworld realms rarely intersect, and the underworld governs the life, death, and reincarnation of mortals, having long been a separate realm.
They had long been dissatisfied with being controlled by the Heavenly Realm.
So at the beginning, when Bai Duo took over Bi Tao, this "immortal" whose heavenly soul had problems, he left her to her own devices and hoped that she would accidentally kill herself.
As for whether she loses or fails in the competition, what does it have to do with a mere underworld demon king?
Even if she returns to the Heavenly Realm in the future, will she still disregard her status and descend to the Underworld to seek revenge on him, the Earthly Fiend Ghost who failed to raise her properly?
However, as time went by, Bai Duo gradually became addicted to raising children.
Bitao is so cute. She doesn't cry when she's in pain, she doesn't fuss when she's hungry, and she cares about him a lot.
Although it is his incarnation.
The older Bai Duo got, the more confused he became. He treated Bi Tao so badly, yet Bi Tao went on a hunting spree to earn money and then paid for his medical treatment.
put on a show?
Having regained his Heavenly Soul memories, is he trying to build connections?
However, many of these speculations have been gently erased with time.
No one can make a play that lasts for so many years.
She doesn't save any money for herself, nor does she buy herself any jewelry or pretty clothes like a young girl. She doesn't even eat meat, and she sells whatever she hunts for money, all of which goes to pay for his medical treatment, this "old hag".
He felt particularly heartbroken every time he coughed up blood.
Bai Duo only regretted that he couldn't transform back into his original form and tell her the truth.
She could only disguise herself as an old woman, but because she was participating in the competition, she dared not show any affection.
Even now, he has raised Bitao to adulthood and still has to take care of his duties in the underworld. He pretends to sleep from time to time, but in reality, his soul leaves his body to return to the underworld to take up his post, traveling back and forth between the two worlds... He has gradually come to regard this dilapidated temple as his home.
There was always a little one waiting for him at home, staring at him with those beautiful peach blossom eyes, and saying most often, "Grandma, are you hungry? I made some food."
Ghosts don't eat things from the mortal world, yet he's been eating them for so many years under those expectant and fawning eyes.
The struggle to resolve the difficulties couldn't outweigh the cuteness of her seeing him eat and letting out a sigh of relief.
Although the dilapidated temple was hardly worthy of being called a "home," he had poured all his emotions, both human and ghostly, into Bitao.
He even secretly worried for Bitao more than once, fearing that her soul was now damaged and she would have no hope of winning the competition.
If he accidentally dies and ends up in the underworld, he can use his influence to help her get a good job.
However, evil spirits and malevolent beings are prone to suspicion, overthinking, anger, and vexation; their meager "emotions" are like karmic fire.
It doesn't warm people; it even harms their health and kills them.
Seeing that Bitao had not shed a tear or felt sad because of his departure, and was even thinking about eating meat, he was already furious and filled with resentment.
She was so intelligent; she must have been fully aware of the various unusual hints she was making within the rules.
She must have always felt like a burden and wanted him to die soon!
Bai Duo's face was gloomy and twisted, even showing the ruthlessness of Bi Tao. It would be better if he devoured her evil thoughts!
Fortunately, there was his colleague, the Ghost King Zhuoxian, who was always the most gentle and clear-headed of the underworld's Fiend Kings.
He stopped Bai Duo's Yin energy from devouring Bi Tao and advised, "Bai Duo, this fairy lives in the Heavenly Realm. The time flow between the Heavenly Realm and this mortal star realm is one day in the Heavenly Realm equals ten years on Earth. Our Underworld's time flow follows the mortal star realm. In terms of age alone, she is definitely older than you."
"Besides...why do you harbor such deep-seated resentment?"
Zhuoxian sighed, "She has no idea you exist..."
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