“Great Aunt, does your head still hurt? Was it Aunt Wufeng who pushed you?”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Great Aunt, I’m telling you, Aunt Wufeng isn’t a good person. Last time, when Second Great-Grandpa came back from the city, he brought Great-Grandma lots of delicious things. Great-Grandma gave me some sesame cakes. I couldn’t bear to eat them, so I took them with me when I went out to gather wild vegetables. She saw them and snatched them away. She even said that if I went home and told my mother, she’d throw me into the mountains to feed the black bears.”
Tang Yuan held Yingzi’s hand and slowly walked forward.
Her brows furrowed.
The whole family really is rotten from top to bottom.
“Did you tell your mother?”
“No. I told my brothers. My older brothers took me to confront her. She refused to admit it, and her brother even tried to come over and bully me. Later, my brothers beat him up.”
Tang Yuan couldn’t help laughing.
The two continued walking slowly.
By now, more people had appeared on the village paths. Most were either heading to their fields or going up the mountain to gather wild vegetables.
After being cooped up all winter, eating nothing but Chinese cabbage and radishes at almost every meal, everyone was desperate for something fresh.
The vegetables planted around the houses weren’t ready yet, but there was a place on the mountain where some green leafy vegetables had sprouted early.
So all the young wives and unmarried girls in the village were flocking there.
Just then, a woman hurried out of a house on the western side.
Tang Yuan recognized her and remembered that she should call her Peach Blossom Sister-in-law.
Old Turtle Ditch was considered a fairly large village, with roughly a hundred households.
About half of them had the surname Tang and belonged to Tang Yuan’s clan, having migrated here several decades ago.
Another half had the surname Cheng and were local residents who had lived there for generations.
There were also around a dozen households with other surnames.
Peach Blossom Sister-in-law was a member of the Cheng family.
When Tang Yuan saw her from a distance, she smiled and called out, “Sister-in-law!”
She also told Yingzi to greet her.
“Oh my goodness, Yuan’er! You’re better!”
“Thank heavens! You have no idea how scared I was when I saw your brother carrying you down from Old Turtle Mountain that day. You were covered in blood! It was terrifying. Thank goodness nothing happened to you!”
“That wicked Huang Huacai really is incapable of raising a decent daughter. That useless Wufeng has a black heart and a vicious hand, just like her mother, Huang Huacai!”
Peach Blossom Sister-in-law spoke with righteous indignation.
Tang Yuan quietly listened and casually responded a few times.
When she was about to leave, Peach Blossom Sister-in-law grabbed her again.
She leaned mysteriously toward Tang Yuan’s ear and whispered,
“Yuan’er, did you really go to the underworld? Did you really see that guy from the opera stories, Zhong Kui, eating little ghosts? One bite at a time? My goodness, wasn’t that terrifying?”
Tang Yuan was stunned.
Wait.
Who spread this around?
Didn’t Great Grandma specifically say not to tell anyone?
While thinking about it, she casually asked,
“Sister-in-law, who told you that?”
“What? You still want to hide it from me? It’s not just me. Everyone in the whole village knows!”
“It was your Eighth Great-Grandpa’s family. Your First and Second Aunts told everyone. They described everything in such detail that you’d think they’d witnessed it themselves!”
“Your Eighth Great-Grandmother was so frightened that she even got sick and went to Old Medicine Grandpa to get some medicine!”
Peach Blossom Sister-in-law looked at her as though she could see right through any attempt to deceive her.
Tang Yuan felt a headache coming on.
How did this spread so quickly?
“Hey, did you hear? The day before yesterday, someone saw those two old people from that family taking several of their sons to your grandparents’ graves to burn paper offerings.”
“It was Second Phoenix’s mother who told me. She said your Eighth Great-Grandpa and Eighth Great-Grandmother have been having nightmares at night and can’t sleep properly. Every time they close their eyes, they see your grandparents.”
“And early this morning, they even borrowed a bullock cart from someone in the village. Seven or eight of them went together, carrying offerings, saying they were going to the temple to worship the Bodhisattva.”
“Do they even know how far that temple is from our village? It takes almost a whole day just to make the round trip!”
“Serves them right! They did such wicked things, so now they’re getting their punishment!”
After saying this, Peach Blossom Sister-in-law spat on the ground in disgust.
Watching her walk away, Tang Yuan scratched the uninjured side of her head.
Heh.
The effect is actually pretty impressive.
I barely had to say anything, and that whole family has already been thrown into chaos.
That’s satisfying.
But now that the story was spreading throughout the village, she wasn’t sure whether it was actually a good thing or a bad thing.
The two continued walking until they reached the area near the village entrance.
From a distance, Tang Yuan could see the several blue-brick tiled rooms that had once belonged to the original owner.
They stood out quite conspicuously among all the surrounding rammed-earth houses.
The more Tang Yuan looked at them, the more something seemed wrong.
The front entrance of her family’s large tiled house faced a long, straight path.
And behind that path was an even larger road—the main road leading out of the village.
There were no bends.
No obstacles.
From a distance, it looked exactly like an arrow, pointing straight toward the entrance of her family’s house.
Tang Yuan’s expression became serious.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then her heart sank.
What an overbearing Piercing-Arrow Sha!
In her previous life, Tang Yuan had been an architectural designer.
She wasn’t an expert in feng shui, but she knew enough about these basic principles.
And now that she thought about the original owner’s family home, things suddenly seemed very wrong.
These blue-brick tiled rooms had been built later.
She remembered her original owner’s mother mentioning that when the family had lived in the old house, the grandparents had always been healthy.
Her father had always had a weak constitution, but it had never been so bad that he couldn’t get out of bed.
That’s right.
Everything had started after they moved into this new house.
After moving in, her father’s health gradually deteriorated.
He died first.
Then the grandparents, who had always been in good health, passed away shortly afterward.
Three years ago, a bout of pneumonia took her mother’s life.
And then there was the original owner herself.
If Tang Yuan hadn’t arrived, wouldn’t she have died too?
This was practically a total family wipeout!
Fierce.
Too fierce.
There’s absolutely no way I can keep this house.
When she returned to Great Grandma’s house, Tang Yuan was still sitting on the kang with a troubled expression.
She was considering whether she should tell everyone about what she’d discovered.
Because if she refused to take back the house, Eighth Great-Grandpa’s family would certainly continue living there.
After all, it was a large blue-brick tiled house.
It was extremely valuable.
If they continued living there for a long time, nothing might happen immediately.
But what about years later?
Who knew what could happen?
The bloody example of the original owner’s family was right there.
That family might be wicked and greedy, but not every single person in it was truly evil.
If something happened to the entire family, Tang Yuan would feel guilty.
Perhaps I should give them a subtle warning.
That was what Tang Yuan decided.
Just then, it was time for lunch.
Her eldest sister-in-law had already come inside and set up the table. She and Second Cousin’s wife were bringing the dishes in one by one.
“Come, Yuan’er. Have a bowl of fish soup first.”
“Today’s soup turned out wonderfully. Dakui and Erkui were lucky. They caught this bigheaded fish in the large ditch behind the village.”
“It weighed a full eleven jin!”
“I chopped off the fish head and made soup with it for lunch. There’s still a huge section of the body left. Tomorrow I’ll stew it with some fermented soybean paste. That’ll give us another whole meal.”
Dakui and Erkui were the sons of Tang Yuan’s eldest cousin.
The brothers were twins and had grown into tall, sturdy young men.
Although they were several years older than Tang Yuan, they still had to respectfully call her Great Aunt.
There was nothing they could do about it.
Her generation was higher than theirs.
Her grandfather had been forty years old when he finally had her father, and her father was already thirty when he had Tang Yuan.
So although Tang Yuan herself was only fourteen, she had a surprisingly senior position in the family hierarchy.