Jiang Xu nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m Gou Wazi’s great-aunt.”
Zhao Jianhua??
Gou Wazi’s great-aunt?
“Who is Gou Wazi?”
Jiang Xu thought for a moment, a hint of doubt in her tone. “He should be called Jiang Zhiye?”
Zhao Jianhua’s heart skipped a beat. ”Uncle Jiang?”
“You’re Uncle Jiang’s great-aunt?”
Zhao Jianhua stared at Jiang Xu’s youthful face, unable to believe it.
“You…”
“Gou Wazi’s grandfather is my eldest brother,” Jiang Xu said.
“Then you…”
Zhao Jianhua still wanted to say something, but Gu Hanzheng, who was carrying Jiang Nan on his back, stopped his brother-in-law.
Let him do the asking.
“Comrade Jiang, you do know that it’s now 1975, and Xinhua Nation was founded decades ago?”
Gu Hanzheng spoke up.
Jiang Xu let out an “oh.” ”No wonder.”
She wasn’t particularly surprised.
Gu Hanzheng, on the other hand, was a little puzzled. “If what you say is true, then you’re a person from the Republican era. Do you know what that means?”
“No idea.”
Jiang Xu’s specialty was giving simple answers.
The corner of Gu Hanzheng’s mouth twitched.
He couldn’t help lowering his gaze to look at the young woman beside him.
“A young lady born in the Republican era, still looking eighteen years old decades after Xinhua Nation was founded—if word got out, no one would believe it.”
Jiang Xu let out another “oh” and nodded. “What happens if no one believes it?”
Gu Hanzheng…
Judging from her tone, she really didn’t care at all!
Gu Hanzheng patiently continued explaining the current situation to her.
As well as the problems she might face.
Jiang Xu finally understood.
She still wasn’t afraid of her identity being known, but she disliked trouble even more.
Quickly, she made her decision. “I see.”
Gu Hanzheng looked at her. “You see what?”
Jiang Xu raised her eyes, her gaze sweeping across his face.
Meeting his serious look, her red lips curved into a faint arc.
“I just need to kill all of you who know my secret.”
Gu Hanzheng froze.
What a cold joke.
Beside them, Zhao Jianhua jumped in fright. “Little comrade, don’t scare people like that.”
To this day, he still didn’t believe that Jiang Xu was really from the Republican era.
“And another thing—don’t go around talking about killing people. Murder is against the law. We can’t break the law, you know.”
Zhao Jianhua admonished her like an elder.
Jiang Xu didn’t argue.
In a good mood, she followed them along the road into the village, heading toward the shortest, most dilapidated house at the village’s end.
Before they even got close, Jiang Xu heard waves of crying coming from inside.
Zhao Jianhua realized something was wrong and immediately pushed open the unlatched wooden door, stepping into the barren little courtyard.
Gu Hanzheng, carrying Jiang Nan on his back, was about to step into the courtyard.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Jiang Xu standing at the doorway with no intention of going in.
He asked her, “What’s wrong?”
Jiang Xu pointed at the shabby courtyard in front of her, disdain written across her features. “So poor.”
Gu Hanzheng…
He looked carefully at what Jiang Xu was wearing.
Though it was a simple black cloth skirt with a blue side-fastened top, and the fabric wasn’t very thick, there was an indescribable air of nobility in her every movement.
“Your family used to be well-off?”
Gu Hanzheng asked.
Jiang Xu thought about it seriously. “I heard my eldest brothers say our family was the richest in Beicheng?”
She had left home when she was still young, so she had no real concept of the family’s wealth.
After coming of age, she had gone down the mountain once, attended her eldest brother’s sixtieth birthday celebration, shared a meal with the family, and taken a big group photo.
Then she returned to the mountain, and not long after falling asleep, she was swept here by the water…
Her expression was earnest—she didn’t look like she was lying.
Although Gu Hanzheng still found it hard to understand, he chose to believe her.
“Then as for what happened to the Jiang family, we may need to ask Old Master Jiang.”
“Old Master Jiang?”
Jiang Xu didn’t catch on for a moment. “You mean my eldest brother?”
Her mind was a bit muddled.
She had forgotten the sixty years that lay in between.
Gu Hanzheng smiled slightly. “I mean Old Master Jiang Zhiye.”
“Oh…”
Jiang Xu’s spirits weren’t particularly high.
As her words fell, she withdrew her gaze from surveying the low, cramped house and stepped into the courtyard.
The moment she crossed the threshold, a thick stench of decay hit her nose.
Jiang Xu stood in the courtyard.
Gu Hanzheng set Jiang Nan down on a stool to the side, propping him against the wall.
He walked over to Jiang Xu. “Comrade Jiang, is something wrong?”
Jiang Xu nodded.
Before she could speak, Zhao Jianhua’s desperately anxious voice came from inside the house. “Uncle Jiang! Uncle Jiang!”
And at the same time, Old Lady Xu’s tearful voice rang out as well.
“Old man! Old man!”
“Old man, don’t scare me like this! Nan hasn’t come back yet—you have to wait for him to come back, old man!”
Jiang Xu glanced at the corner of the courtyard, then lifted her foot and quickly walked into the house with its half-closed door.
She pushed the door open and stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light.
In the small earthen house, Zhao Jianhua was supporting the frail Old Man Jiang, continuously patting his back to ease his breathing.
At the foot of the bed stood Old Lady Xu, the bowl in her hands trembling uncontrollably.
Hearing the door open, they instinctively looked toward the doorway.
Against the backlight, Jiang Xu’s figure was hard to make out.
But she seemed to carry a soft glow about her.
The room, once dark and damp and always carrying a strange, stuffy odor, grew fresh with her arrival.
It was like the scent of sprouting grass and trees.
“Who… who is that?” Old Lady Xu murmured.
Jiang Xu looked at Old Lady Xu and recognized her. “Yadan.”
Old Lady Xu’s eyes went wide!
That was a childhood name she hadn’t been called in many years. How did this young girl know it?
Jiang Xu offered no explanation. She walked over to Zhao Jianhua’s side, reached out, and lifted Old Man Jiang’s eyelid to take a look. “Bring me a bowl.”
She spoke, her fingers resting on Old Man Jiang’s wrist, monitoring his life force.
His life force was slowly draining away.
If she had arrived a step later, he would have died.
“The bowl! Yadan!”
Jiang Xu’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was full of authority.
Old Lady Xu snapped out of her shock and quickly handed the bowl she was holding to Jiang Xu.
“This… this… here…”
Jiang Xu glanced at the pitch-black gruel in the bowl and frowned. “What is this?”
Old Lady Xu was too embarrassed to answer.
Zhao Jianhua coughed lightly beside her. “It’s coarse flour paste.”
“Auntie didn’t want Uncle Jiang to go on his final journey on an empty stomach, so she cooked some flour paste…”
“Flour?”
Jiang Xu’s brow furrowed even deeper. “This stuff has something to do with flour?”
Old Lady Xu…
Zhao Jianhua…
“Bring another clean bowl.”
Although she didn’t believe this blackened stuff was flour, she still respected them.
She didn’t pour it out.
As soon as the words fell, Gu Hanzheng handed over a chipped but clean coarse porcelain bowl.
Jiang Xu took it, and between the fingers of her other hand, she was already holding a talisman.
She softly murmured a few words, and when she placed the talisman into the empty bowl, the yellow talisman burst into flames in an instant.
Old Lady Xu, “Ah…”
Zhao Jianhua, “What is this?”
Gu Hanzheng, “Hss…”
Three people in the room, three different reactions.
Jiang Xu glanced at them from the corner of her eye, then produced a small porcelain bottle out of thin air, opened it, and poured the water inside into the bowl.
Holding the bowl, she shook it gently, then fed the dissolved talisman water into the mouth of the gravely ill Old Man Jiang.