Chapter 72 Follow the Light, Don't Look Back (1)
Pushing aside the last withered reeds, a turbid and swift river lay before her, blocking her path.
Black, a river.
The river wasn't wide, but for her, whose legs were almost crippled at the time, it was an insurmountable chasm.
Lin Chujiu looked around anxiously, searching for a place to cross the river.
I heard that Linxian County is surrounded by rivers.
Once we cross the river, we should be able to escape Linxian County.
However, just as her gaze swept across the murky river surface, her eyes suddenly froze.
The blood in my body seemed to freeze instantly—
Beneath the river water, which was covered with dark green foam, and in the shallow mud near the shore... countless tiny bodies lay dormant.
They were all girls.
They wore tattered or brightly colored clothes and maintained various contorted postures as if they had drowned.
Some were just born, while others grew to a few years old; almost all of them looked to be a few years old.
Some lay face down, their long hair spread out like seaweed; some lay face up, their pale, swollen faces and dark, hollow eyes staring at the gray sky; some were curled up, seemingly still seeking refuge in the womb; some stretched out their arms, fingers spread, as if desperately trying to grasp something…
The river water washed over their already cold bodies, some of which were mutilated by fish and shrimp.
They were piled up in this river, which seemed to be specifically designed to dispose of them, like carelessly discarded garbage.
The sunlight could not penetrate the thick clouds and murky river water, and could only cast a deathly, eerie light over the still water.
This is a horrifying... underwater graveyard!
The comments section was filled with shock when it saw this!
What is that...? Ugh...
This is terrifying! What are these things?!
My God, a little girl who died instantly.
[Ghost marriages, foot binding, infanticide—what exactly is this village trying to do?]
[Birth, all of it is birth!]
Even if I threw all my exes into the river, there wouldn't be this many.
Lin Chujiu covered her mouth tightly to prevent herself from screaming.
Her stomach churned violently, and extreme fear and overwhelming grief made her tremble all over, even temporarily numbing the pain in her feet.
Are her... "older sisters" among them?
Those layers upon layers of heads, each one representing a life that was easily taken away.
This river is no ordinary river.
It is this village, the silent graveyard of countless female infants and children under this cannibalistic feudal system.
Lin Chujiu remembered the day her sisters came; her face was ashen and her body was swollen.
It was clearly a drowning.
No wonder the "older sister's" power is related to water, so cold and resentful.
"Splash..."
Just then, a sound different from the current seemed to come from the water not far upstream, accompanied by a faint, metallic dragging sound.
Lin Chujiu was suddenly jolted awake from her immense shock and grief, remembering the warnings from her "sisters"—
"Someone's coming..."
Her face was deathly pale as she took one last look at the small corpses in the river.
Then, gritting his teeth and enduring the excruciating pain, he dragged his almost numb legs and scrambled away from the riverbank.
Behind me, the murky river continued to flow, sobbing as if countless cries had been uttered but could not be uttered.
And something colder, more orderly, and ominous is approaching this cursed village step by step, along the river or some invisible path.
————
Lin Chujiu found a quiet place to hide, surrounded by grass, which made her feel much more at ease.
She reviewed the rules in her mind.
She had been living in fear and anxiety at my Lin family's house before, and what she saw was not very clear, so she only has a little time now to review the rules.
That monster must really be her sister.
Moreover, they were all her sisters who were killed by her parents.
The parents favored sons over daughters and were unwilling to have daughters, but all their previous children were daughters, so they were unwilling to raise them.
So, like the other villagers, they resorted to extreme measures—
Drown them.
This custom, called "washing the woman," also existed in Lin Chujiu's original world and was extremely vulgar.
They believed that only after the daughter was "washed away" would the son come.
They only stopped after the birth of Young Master Lin, which is why Lin Chujiu, the last child born, was able to survive by sheer luck.
The Zhou and Lin families had arranged a marriage between their children from the very beginning, and the Lin family had always been cultivating Lin Chujiu as a chastity arch to be given to the Zhou family in the future.
In exchange, Zhou Ruoruo did the same.
Both families had a well-thought-out plan: a marriage between two families of similar social standing, no dowry, and an exchange of brides.
Just waiting to get married.
But despite all their calculations, they never imagined that the two young masters would do something so shameful in the middle of nowhere.
Then the two men eloped, leaving behind two unmarried daughters.
According to old customs, a man who dies without a spouse is considered to have an incomplete body.
Of the three unfilial acts, the greatest is having no offspring.
The elders in the family must find him a wife, and then she must go down to the underworld to serve them and have grandchildren.
To make my son's life complete.
And so, the daughters of both families were again forced into a ghost marriage.
However, there are many ways to have a ghost marriage.
The most common type is the "widow who waits for her husband's death," which refers to an unmarried woman who remains a widow for her deceased fiancé and completes a formal marriage ceremony.
This is also the mildest type.
In addition, there are bone marriages, memorial tablet marriages, and surrogate marriages.
Bone marriage is the practice of finding the remains of a deceased man and woman and holding a joint burial ceremony, which is considered to complete the marriage.
A memorial tablet marriage is a marriage ceremony where the surviving spouse marries the deceased using their memorial tablet as the object of the marriage, and then remains a widow or single.
Surrogate marriage, where a living person stands in for the deceased to complete the wedding ceremony, is essentially a formalized procedure of feudal superstition.
None of them are likely to be fatal.
However, the Zhou and Lin families chose the opposite method: to suffocate and bury the living person alive.
To prevent the bride's soul from escaping, they even cruelly used a ritual implement, bone nails, to try and fix the bride to the coffin.
She will serve her husband's family for all eternity, never to be reborn.
That's absolutely vicious.
The evil in this instance comes from Lin's parents and the villagers.
They are also the bosses of this instance.
The villagers developed vicious customs, which Lin's parents practiced.
As for Zhou's parents, they are another player's boss.
The system's announcements continued throughout the process of her guessing these things:
[Congratulations, host, for revealing 15% of the truth...]
[Congratulations, host, on your departure...]
【Congratulations……】
Finally, it stopped steadily at 90% without moving.
It will never go up again.
Lin Chujiu was a little confused. Where was she stuck this time?
She was unwilling to give up, so she asked the system.
"Where is it stuck this time?"
The system said slyly:
"you guess."
Lin Chujiu rolled her eyes. She shouldn't have relied on the system.
She was carefully avoiding any potential dangers, completely unaware that Zhou Ruoruo was making a completely different move.
Moreover, the commotion was quite significant.
The Lin family.
Zhou Ruoruo sat on the ground, her clothes disheveled, her eyes filled with dejection.
Pei Yu, standing to the side, looked at her with disgust.
Zhou Ruoruo stumbled to her feet and tried to climb onto Pei Yu's arm again, as usual.
But this time, Pei Yu ruthlessly shook off her hand.
"Enough!"
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