91 Visiting graves
How could the heroine of the Red Flower Cry?
Since it was Sister Mu who came, it was obvious which grave they would visit.
There's hope! A huge weight was lifted from her heart. Honghua excitedly jumped off the chair, wrapped a cloth around her entire face, including her eyes, and then prepared to go out.
This was specially made by her mother; the fabric around her eyes was thinner than the rest, so she could barely see without exposing her eyes. Seeing her like this, Aunt Huang quickly scolded, "Come back! Are you really going to the grave?"
Without turning her head, Honghua picked up her little wooden sword and said with great enthusiasm, "Mother, don't worry! I'll be right back!"
Aunt Huang wanted to follow and continue to dissuade her, but Uncle Huang stopped her.
"Do you remember how my leg healed?" he asked.
His leg, which had been lame for over a decade, was healed in less than half an hour after that young lady Mu made a move.
There are not only monsters in this world, but also gods.
Upon hearing this, Aunt Huang's legs went weak, and she sat down limply, supporting herself on the edge of the table.
Uncle Huang sighed, gazing in the direction of the Ying family next door, and murmured, "It's all fate."
————
Originally, Du Zhijin thought that Ying Jianhua's grave was also in the back mountain. After all, Ying's husband and mother were buried there, which she had seen on her first day in Wuling Village. Logically and emotionally, the whole family should be buried together.
But Uncle Zhao was clearly not leading the way to the back mountain, so she asked the question that had been bothering her.
Zhou Shitou, who was carrying paper money, paper flowers, and offerings, answered on his behalf: "People cannot be buried on the back mountain."
You can't bury people? There wasn't such a rule when she passed away.
Uncle Zhao explained, “Miss Mu, you don’t know this, but Tiger’s Eye Pool on the back mountain is the lifeblood of our village! Anyone who gets conjunctivitis can be cured in less than three days just by washing their eyes with the pool water! In order not to pollute the water, we all joined together and moved all the old graves on the side of the back mountain. Now the area on the east side is the new graveyard, where Doctor Ying and his parents are buried.”
Upon hearing this, she couldn't help but frown.
She had been submerged in Tiger's Blood Pool, and there was clearly nothing at the bottom. If there was anything special about it, it was that she had shattered the Flame Demon's core there. But she had used all her strength in that attack, shattering the core beyond repair. Afterwards, Zui Lan soaked at the bottom of the pool for over ten days, absorbing most of the remaining demonic power. Therefore, the water of Tiger's Blood Pool shouldn't possess such strange properties.
It could only be that a demon tampered with the water. But why did it create the "red eye disease" and then use the pool water to cure the villagers?
After what happened with Niu Shoutian, Du Zhijin knew that the villagers could not be trusted. If he wanted to find out more information, he had to wait for Honghua to arrive.
Uncle Zhao was right; a row of large and small earthen graves had indeed been newly erected on the east side of the village. Without saying a word, Zhou Shitou picked up a hoe and began clearing weeds from Ying Jianhua's grave.
The small, mound-like grave in front of her was quite new, and compared to the other graves, it had relatively few weeds, indicating that someone regularly weeded it. She asked Zhou Shitou, "Did you also have conjunctivitis?"
He nodded, hesitated for a moment, and pointed to his father-in-law: "My father, my mother, and Xiao Cui all have to go, but they can clean the pond."
Is there anyone in the village who hasn't had this disease?
Zhou Shitou thought for a moment and honestly shook his head: "I don't know. I seem to remember that everyone has had this before. Don't worry, Miss Mu, just wipe the water in the pool and it will be fine."
She remained noncommittal, but when she caught sight of Uncle Zhao approaching out of the corner of her eye, she said nothing more.
After the three finished paying their respects at the grave, Du Zhijin excused himself, saying he wanted to speak with Ying Jianhua alone. Uncle Zhao, being quite perceptive, then led Zhou Shitou away first. Before leaving, he specifically instructed, "Honghua is very ill; Miss Mu, you'd better not go looking for her."
She nodded slightly, watching the two leave, before turning her gaze back to the grave in front of her.
The tomb of the painter should be seen...
Even though she knew the person in the grave wasn't the one she longed for, she still couldn't help but reach out and brush the dust off the tombstone.
When a person dies, it's like a lamp going out. No matter how big or small a person is in life, they will eventually turn into a small handful of yellow earth and be buried underground.
A wave of sadness washed over her; she couldn't imagine Amo truly becoming a skeleton lying in a coffin. All things are destined to die; if cultivators or demons cannot ascend to immortality, they too will decay like humans.
Even the emperor, who held the highest position, could not avoid it, and neither could she and Amo.
"Sister Mu!"
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by the girl's clear voice. Du Zhijin turned around in the direction of the voice and saw... a head wrapped in gray cotton cloth?
"I am Red Flower!"
As she spoke, Honghua came running down the hillside, rushing into her arms like a calf. If she hadn't cultivated her skills for many years, she probably would have been sent flying several miles.
Smelling the familiar scent, Honghua could no longer hold back her tears, sobbing, "Waaah... Sister Mu, you're finally, finally back..."
She held the calf tightly, gently stroking it and comforting it, "Don't cry, don't cry. It's your fault for being so late. Our Honghua has been wronged."
After overcoming her initial struggles, Honghua gradually calmed down and realized she felt embarrassed.
She's a big girl now, a heroine! How can she cry?
So she tried hard to hold back her tears and shook her head, saying, "It has nothing to do with Sister Mu, it's all the work of the monster! Sister, let's go and chase the monster away! I've been staying in the house for half a month!"
"Tell me, how exactly does conjunctivitis develop?"
Honghua then told her everything: "I caught the strange illness after returning from the Orchid Bathing Festival. At first, my mother and I thought it was a minor illness that would get better in two or three days. But the more it went on, the more I felt confused. My eyes hurt, my ears hurt, and my head hurt. And there was always a voice in my head telling me to go to Doctor Ying's house."
"I thought to myself, this is definitely not an illness, because Doctor Ying told me about the symptoms of conjunctivitis, and mine are much more severe than that! Later, my mother kept seeing me standing in the ruins of the Ying family's house, and I wouldn't respond when she called me. She suspected that my soul had been lost. But how could my soul be lost out of the world? Unless... some kind of demon or monster has been targeting me."
At this point, Honghua's voice trembled slightly, clearly showing some fear. However, before Du Zhijin could comfort her, she mustered her courage again and continued, "Not only me, but Erzhu and the others who used to play with me also got a strange disease, followed by Erzhu's parents, grandparents... Red eye disease is contagious, so Village Chief Grandpa Zhao told us not to go out for the time being and to seal off the village."
Du Zhijin nodded inwardly, thinking that this was probably why there wasn't a single villager from Wuling Village at the market. She continued, "So how did you come up with the idea of finding Lu Ping? Why didn't you just set off fireworks?"
Why go through the trouble of handing it over to Lu Ping when simply setting off fireworks would have been enough to notify everyone? But then she remembered Lu Ping's description of Honghua: "like a puppet in a puppet show," "unable to make a sound"—could it be—
"I can't do it, sister. I... I can't light this firework." Honghua was so anxious that she was about to cry again, clutching her clothes tightly.
Du Zhijin squatted down and touched her forehead with a finger. Honghua obediently closed her eyes, feeling a cool sensation seep into her brain from her forehead, which made her hum softly in comfort.
Du Zhijin's divine sense was helping her clean up the remnants left by the demon. According to her initial plan, the meager spiritual power that Honghua possessed was more than enough to activate the firework tube, but she overlooked one point: when the master was being eroded by demonic power, the spiritual power would be the first to resist the invasion, leaving it unable to spare any energy.
"...Although I couldn't light it, there were always others who could. The yamen patrols every month, and that constable named Lu Ping is very meticulous. I wanted to give it a shot. I didn't expect to actually get it! Unfortunately, I couldn't finish my sentence before my body started to turn back uncontrollably." Honghua said dejectedly, her dusty little head gradually drooping.
Du Zhijin pinched her cheek and smiled encouragingly, "You've done a great job, Honghua is awesome! After this is over, I'll take you somewhere else to play, okay?"
"Really!" Honghua exclaimed, throwing herself into her arms again, twisting and turning shyly. "Sister Mu, you're the best! You and I are the best of friends in the world!"
The two kindest people in the world left the cemetery and went to the back mountain. On the way, Honghua told her the reason why the pool water could cure diseases: "It is said that it was in the dream of Village Chief Zhao that the Zhao family was cured by the pool water. When others saw that it was really effective, they all went to the back mountain to fetch water. In the past, people would not have gone there easily."
Tiger Pool became known as a miraculous healing spring, and Village Chief Zhao even arranged for two or three people to patrol the area, fearing that people or wild animals might pollute the water source.
Honghua was incredibly excited as Du Zhijin carried her on her sword. They darted away in a flash, and the two patrolling men seemed completely blind, utterly unaware of their arrival.
After setting down the sturdy little figure, Du Zhijin carefully observed the pool water he had scooped up and made a plan in his mind.
"Red Flower, did it rain on the day of the Orchid Bathing Festival?"
Honghua was taken aback, then nodded blankly, "Sister Mu, you're so amazing! You even know this. But what does it have to do with rain?"
She used her magic to collect the water from the pool and said, "That rain was the culprit that caused you to get sick. The other villagers didn't get sick because of you, but because of the fog."
She arrived at the village as night fell and noticed that the air was strangely heavy, as fog was condensing. Later that night, she went out alone and found that the thick fog lingered like a miasma, spreading silently.
The demon poured its demonic power into the pool, and when the water condensed into mist at night, it would infect every villager without their knowledge. The so-called healing power of the pool water only made their "illness" worse, which in turn affected their cognition and made them susceptible to the demon's manipulation.
Lu Ping "saw" the fish in the chicken coop and the people walking backwards because he was completely unaffected and was fully conscious. Hong Hua unknowingly walked onto the ruins and suddenly became dazed and speechless because she had been affected by the fog, but her spiritual power had been weakened, so she could still remain conscious. Even Du Zhijin herself had a hallucination after entering the village, thinking that Niu Shoutian had not been hurt by her.
Without exception, all the other villagers in Wuling Village suffered greatly as a result.
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