"You… are you alright?" Gu Congshan stopped in his tracks and spoke tentatively, watching Ming Zhu, whose condition he couldn't quite discern.
He naturally wanted to run, but if not for Ming Zhu's presence the day before, whether he could have walked out of the Wuyin Forest unscathed was anyone's guess.
Now that Ming Zhu appeared to be in a dire state, Gu Congshan simply couldn't bring himself to turn a blind eye and walk away.
As his words left his mouth, Ming Zhu raised her head with difficulty. When their eyes met, Gu Congshan realized that the eyes looking back at him held nothing but deep, ink-black darkness—nothing else.
Her eyes?!
He was so startled he nearly cried out. What in the world was going on?
The way Ming Zhu looked right now, she didn't seem very human at all.
Yet, suppressed by the seal-script runes swirling around her, she seemed unable to resist such power, not even having the strength left to stand.
Gu Congshan caught the pain revealed in her expression and hesitated over whether to step forward.
She had only just swallowed a monster… she hadn't hurt anyone…
He tried to convince himself inwardly, but his legs still felt weak, and he couldn't bring himself to take a step forward.
"Young hero?" Just as Gu Congshan was hesitating, Bai Zhi's voice suddenly came from behind him.
Looking up at the falling flames of the red cloth, there was a hint of surprise in her eyes. Fortunately, she had already learned of Gu Congshan and Ming Zhu's identities as cultivators, so she had some preparation for such a situation.
Hearing her approach, Gu Congshan's heart tightened. Without time to think, he instinctively turned around and used his own body to block Bai Zhi's line of sight.
They had only met Bai Zhi by chance, with limited understanding of each other. Gu Congshan truly didn't know how Bai Zhi would react if she saw Ming Zhu's abnormality.
He only knew that in this world, being treated as an anomaly was never a good thing.
For this reason, Gu Congshan's body moved faster than his mind, choosing to stand in front of Ming Zhu, trying to use himself to shield her from Bai Zhi's probing gaze.
Burning red cloth strips continued to fall from above. He swiftly removed his outer robe and draped it over Ming Zhu's head, so that she wouldn't be seen.
Bai Zhi, who was surveying the mess around the earthen platform, noticed Gu Congshan's movements and asked hesitantly, "Is Miss Ming Zhu injured?"
As Gu Congshan had thought, with the moonlight being faint and now blocked by the clothing, Bai Zhi—being a mortal without cultivation—couldn't clearly see Ming Zhu's condition.
Remembering that she knew medicine, Gu Congshan panicked slightly, afraid that Bai Zhi would come forward to help. He quickly made up an excuse: "No, no! She's just exhausted from subduing that evil entity. She just needs to rest for a while."
As he spoke, he lifted Ming Zhu onto his back, shielding her behind him.
The brilliant golden seal-script runes still firmly bound Ming Zhu, robbing her of most of her mobility and preventing her from reacting to Gu Congshan's actions.
"Evil entity?" Bai Zhi looked at the shattered clay statue on the earthen platform. Was this referring to the earth deity worshipped in Zhuxi Village?
"The clay statue worshipped in Zhuxi Village somehow gained consciousness, but it is by no means a deity. Anything that feeds on human life essence can only be called an evil entity."
The villagers' worship and offerings had fueled its power. These villagers who believed in the so-called earth deity had unknowingly had their life essence stolen by it and were driven at its will.
It was precisely for this reason that Gu Congshan, Bai Zhi, and even Sang Niangzi had been completely unaffected when the villagers of Zhuxi Village all lost their wits.
They did not believe in the so-called earth deity of Zhuxi, nor had they ever offered it sacrifices.
Bai Zhi had heard of evil entities born of unauthorized worship. She suddenly recalled the fierce fever outbreak that had swept through Zhuxi not long ago. When she had treated the villagers, she had found it strange that most of their pulses showed signs of qi deficiency.
A handful of people could be excused, but for over a hundred households to all show the same symptoms—that was rather unusual.
It was precisely because most of them were weak and deficient in qi that the fever had spread so relentlessly through Zhuxi.
According to Gu Congshan's explanation, everything now made sense. But Bai Zhi had not fully believed his words; she simply did not show it on her face and walked with him toward the village.
Gu Congshan was well aware of her skepticism, but much of what he had said was based on conjecture. Without solid evidence, anything more he said would still lack persuasiveness.
By the time they returned to Zhuxi, the night had deepened. Bai Zhi raised her torch and saw the villagers bound in vines lying sprawled across the ground, no longer struggling in the slightest—peaceful to an almost unnatural degree.
The scene before them looked rather ominous.
Bai Zhi stepped forward to examine them and confirmed that they were merely still in their dreams, their lives not in danger. Only then did she truly relax.
At that moment, she finally believed seven parts of what Gu Congshan had said.
Gu Congshan set Ming Zhu down and, seeing this, also let out a breath of relief.
If anything had happened to these villagers as collateral damage, he and Ming Zhu would never have been able to explain themselves.
He glanced at Bai Zhi, who was checking on the villagers one by one in the distance, and confirmed she was too occupied to pay attention to them. Only then did he carefully turn to Ming Zhu and ask in a lowered voice, "Are you alright?"
Ming Zhu raised her head. The brilliant golden seal-script runes on her face were finally beginning to fade, but her eyes still showed nothing but ink-black darkness.
Meeting such eyes, it would be a lie to say he wasn't afraid. Gu Congshan averted his gaze, not daring to look at her directly.
Perhaps because of the restraint of the seal-script runes, Ming Zhu's voice was somewhat hoarse as she asked, "Aren't you afraid of ghosts?"
Why wasn't he running away in a panic, and instead covering for her?
Ming Zhu could naturally tell that Gu Congshan had deliberately helped conceal her identity in front of Bai Zhi.
"I am afraid of ghosts, that's true…" Gu Congshan hesitated, not knowing how to put it. He scratched his head. "But if I just left you here and washed my hands of it, that would be too disgraceful."
"Besides, you don't eat people…" At this point, Gu Congshan paused mid-sentence, looked at Ming Zhu, and asked dryly, "You don't, right?"
Hearing this, Ming Zhu did not immediately confirm. Instead, she thought it over seriously before replying, "I don't know."
Gu Congshan fell silent, though inwardly he felt unexpectedly a little lighter. Perhaps because Ming Zhu could still speak to him with her wits intact, the situation wasn't too dire after all.
If Ming Zhu had lost her mind, Gu Congshan didn't think he had the strength to stop her from doing anything.
"Maybe if we wait a little longer, it'll pass," Gu Congshan said, trying to comfort her, worried she might be afraid.
Ming Zhu said nothing. She was not actually afraid of the strangeness in her own body; she simply found Gu Congshan odd.
Odd in the same way as the person who had brought her back to Yugu Mountain.
Having finished checking on the villagers, Bai Zhi walked toward Gu Congshan. Tonight's matter was not yet over—they couldn't very well leave these people lying outside all night.
But for the two of them to carry everyone back…
Looking at the villagers sprawled across the ground, Bai Zhi and Gu Congshan exchanged a glance and immediately reached an agreement—they might as well just wake them all up.
But if they woke everyone up like this, and they found themselves inexplicably sleeping outside their homes, it would be no wonder the villagers panicked.
Anticipating the chaos to come, Bai Zhi swept her gaze across the crowd and accurately spotted the white-bearded village head among the group.
Those who could serve as village head were elders with some prestige in the countryside, able to restrain the villagers to some extent—it would be best to explain the situation to him first.
Gu Congshan thought Bai Zhi's reasoning was sound, but when he stepped forward and called out twice, the village head kept his eyes tightly shut, looking for all the world like someone sound asleep.
What to do now? Gu Congshan instinctively looked at Bai Zhi.
She studied the village head, then pulled a silver needle from her sleeve and said unhurriedly, "No matter. A quick prick will do."
The moment she finished speaking, the village head, who had just had his eyes tightly shut, slowly opened them and said in a trembling voice, "Gentlemen, I have an eighty-year-old mother at home and a three-year-old child. Take whatever you want, but please spare my life…"
A physician who could bring the dead back to life, indeed.
Hearing the string of words tumbling out of the village head, Gu Congshan couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth—this village head looked like he was nearly eighty himself.
Bai Zhi had stayed in Zhuxi for some time and knew the village head fairly well, so she sighed helplessly and said, "Village head, we mean no harm."
When Gu Congshan had called to him, the village head had already woken up, but he had taken them for bandits and so kept pretending to sleep.
After hearing Bai Zhi's words, the village head still looked at them with suspicion, clearly unconvinced. Look at all these people lying around—if they meant no harm, why would they have tied them up?
"It's to save you," Gu Congshan couldn't help saying. If they hadn't bound them, who knew what they might have done while controlled by the evil entity.
"If I wanted to do something, why would I have bothered treating all of you before?" Bai Zhi said.
That made some sense. The village head spoke shakily, "What on earth is going on?"
Bai Zhi told the village head about the evil spirit born of unauthorized worship, but before she could finish, he thundered, "Nonsense!"
This was the earth deity they had worshipped in Zhuxi Village for years—how could it be an evil spirit!
To disrespect the deity would surely bring divine punishment!
Perhaps accustomed to being revered, the village head began lecturing Gu Congshan and Bai Zhi as he spoke, demanding they correct their attitude toward the deity.
If he saw that the clay statue on the altar platform had already been destroyed, who knew how he would react. Bai Zhi felt a headache coming on.
She had never been one to believe much in deities, and besides, what Zhuxi worshipped was most likely not a deity at all, but an evil entity that devoured their vital essence.
But Bai Zhi could also guess that most of Zhuxi's villagers probably shared the village head's view, and more importantly, they would not easily change such beliefs.
Changing these villagers' deeply ingrained notions was far too difficult, so Bai Zhi didn't intend to waste more words. A wandering healer held low status, and in the years she had followed Sang Niangzi, she had encountered no small number of troubles—she had her own methods for handling the situation at hand.
Bai Zhi pointed at Gu Congshan and said, "This is an Immortal Master who exorcises evil spirits."
At her signal, Gu Congshan suddenly understood and cooperatively showed off a bit of his skill.
He circulated his spiritual breath, and instantly several balls of flame materialized around him, highly conspicuous in the night.
In the firelight, the village head paused mid-sentence, immediately changing his attitude and stammering, "Spare my life, Immortal Master! This old man failed to recognize your greatness…"
Good, Bai Zhi thought without surprise—it seemed they had finally reached an agreement.
Regardless of what he truly thought, at least on the surface, the village head had accepted Bai Zhi's explanation.