6 – Saving the Rural Demon
“You unfilial descendant! You’ve completely disgraced the Lu family!” sighed an elder of the Lu family. As the only household with a different surname in the village, he felt utterly humiliated.
Clods of dirt and rotten leaves were thrown at Lu Li, leaving him in a wretched state.
Qin Xing was the last to leave. She glanced at Lu Li, disgusted by the foul stench clinging to him.
She never imagined things would end this way. She had thought Qin Yue and Lu Li had long been mutually affectionate and, finally together, would be like dry wood meeting fierce flames. According to her plan, the moment the door was forced open, the villagers would witness the two entangled. At that point, even if Qin Yue jumped into the Yellow River, she couldn’t wash herself clean. But to think… it was a miscalculation, a grave miscalculation.
Qin Yue was carried home on Qin Zhong’s back. Her mother, Ma Xiaoni, came running over, wailing loudly, “My daughter, you’re finally back! I’ve cried so much I’m nearly blind.”
Hearing these sobs, Qin Yue felt a pang of sorrow. In her original world, her mother had passed away not long after her father’s death, barely over forty years old.
“Mother, I’m fine. I’m hungry—could you make me something to eat?”
Qin Yue held her mother’s hand, smiling faintly. She hadn’t eaten dinner and had been through half the night’s turmoil; her stomach was growling with hunger.
“Alright, you rest for a bit. I’ll go make you something right away!”
Relieved to see her daughter safe, Ma Xiaoni hurried to the kitchen to prepare food.
But this world was desperately poor—even the village chief’s household had no surplus grain.
Staring into the empty rice jar, her mother sighed repeatedly. Finally, she scraped the flour jar with a kitchen knife, gathered two handfuls of white flour, and hand-rolled a bowl of fine, white noodles for Qin Yue. After boiling the noodles, she stoked the stove fire, drizzled in a bit of oil to sauté some fresh green scallions, and thus a bowl of fragrant scallion oil noodles was ready.
Ma Xiaoni inhaled deeply several times—it had been so long since she’d smelled anything so delicious. But she only savored the aroma; she couldn’t bear to eat a single bite, serving the entire bowl to Qin Yue.
“Mother, you have some too.” Noticing her mother’s fixed gaze on the noodles, Qin Yue picked up a few strands with her chopsticks and held them to her mother’s lips.
Ma Xiaoni quickly pushed them back. “I’m not hungry. You eat quickly, before the noodles get cold.”
Seeing her refusal, Qin Yue had no choice but to eat alone. She thought her mother truly wasn’t hungry, unaware that Ma Xiaoni had only had a bowl of wild vegetable soup for dinner.
With a warm bowl of noodles in her stomach, Qin Yue felt much better. Full and content, she soon fell asleep.
Watching her daughter’s peaceful sleeping face, Ma Xiaoni smiled with maternal tenderness. She poured half a bowl of hot water into the bowl Qin Yue had used, swirled it clean, and drank it down.
Just as Qin Yue drifted off, a young man rushed in anxiously and said to Qin Zhong, “Chief, it’s terrible! Grandma Qin in the east end has starved to death, and her grandson insists on cooking her to eat. You must come quickly!”
Qin Zhong, who had been puffing on his long-stemmed pipe, stood up urgently and hurried off with the young man to Grandma Qin’s house in the east end.
In this world, three consecutive years of locust plagues had wiped out the grain harvest. Starvation deaths occurred repeatedly in the village, and if one wasn’t careful, the deceased would be cooked and eaten by their own relatives.As a neighboring village, Sangyu Village possessed considerable resources. Although the locust plague had left them with no grain harvest, they owned a vast mountainous area where they could hunt and gather wild fruits and vegetables. Thus, Sangyu Village remained unaffected by the threat of famine.