“Brother Bai Yu…”
That soft call carried a sorrow enough to freeze the soul, and the vicissitudes of a hundred years.
Bai Yu’s body went completely rigid. He slowly turned around. At some point, the wooden ladle in his hand had slipped free and fallen onto the slick bluestone slabs with a faint “pat.” The sound was not loud, yet it was like a heavy hammer striking the deathly still back courtyard—and striking the soul that had, in that instant, been seized by immense shock.
He saw Xiaoxi.
She was still standing beneath the eaves by the back door. The earthenware bowl that should have been filled with water had long since shattered on the ground, just like her heart at this moment.
Her small body was trembling slightly. No longer was there that innocent, guileless brightness on her face. Instead, there was a grief Bai Yu had never seen there before.
Those eyes, which should have been as clear as a mountain stream, were now brimming with crystalline tears. They were not tears shed by a child because she had been wronged, but like two pieces of amber polished by the years a thousand times over.
She was no longer the little girl who hopped and skipped while humming eerie nursery rhymes. In this moment, it was as if an ancient soul had possessed her; what emanated from that tiny body was a sorrow that made heaven and earth mourn with her.
“I…” Bai Yu opened his mouth, only to find his throat so dry that he could not utter a single word.
How was he supposed to explain? Say that he had done it to survive? Say that he had done it to repair his soul, which was on the verge of collapse? Before this “child,” who seemed to bear the tragedy of the entire village, any reason centered on himself seemed so pale and powerless.
“I thought… I thought you were different.” Xiaoxi’s voice was still childish, but her tone had become ethereal and distant, as though it came from another time and space.
Her tears finally slipped down her cheeks, no longer able to be held back. They fell into the turbid puddle beneath her feet, yet strangely, they did not stir even the slightest ripple. Instead, like holy dew, they silently melted in, making the small patch of filthy water around them grow a little clearer.
“Every outsider who comes here wants to drink the water from the well. Some are greedy, some are afraid, some are mad… They all want to obtain something from the Saintess. But they do not know that with every drop of ‘tears’ they drink, the Saintess’s power to protect this village weakens by a measure. The Mountain God’s ‘rain’ comes one step closer to us.”
As she wept, she looked at Bai Yu with eyes sorrowful to the extreme and gently shook her head.
“I thought you were different from them. There was no greed in your eyes, only exhaustion and confusion. On you, there was a clean scent different from Father and Mother and the others. I thought… I thought you were the person I had waited for, for so very long… But you still drank it…”
That sigh was filled with endless disappointment. Like the softest knife, it stabbed fiercely into Bai Yu’s heart.
Bai Yu fell silent. He did not defend himself. He merely looked quietly at the weeping “child” before him.
The “Xiaoxi” before his eyes was no longer Xiaoxi. Or rather, she had never been. She was a guardian, a lonely soul carrying memory and hope.
He struggled to rise from beside the well and bowed deeply to Xiaoxi.
“I’m sorry.”
There were no unnecessary explanations, no hypocritical excuses. Only the simplest three words.
He admitted to his act of “theft,” and he also admitted that he had failed this “trust,” perhaps misplaced as it was.
Xiaoxi seemed not to have expected this reaction from him. She froze for a moment, and the tears in her eyes flowed even more fiercely, but that sorrowful aura that had almost been enough to crush a person seemed to weaken by a trace because of it.
“You… you’re not going to explain yourself?” she asked between sobs.
“I drank the water from the well. That is the truth.” Bai Yu raised his head, his gaze open and sincere. “No matter what my reasons were, to me, this was an act of ‘survival’ in order to live. But to you, and to the ‘Saintess’ you protect, it was a kind of ‘theft’ and ‘harm.’ So I apologize.”
He paused, then looked into Xiaoxi’s tear-blurred eyes and said in a gentle yet solemn voice, “But before I accept any punishment, I want to tell you something. Something… about you, about the Saintess, and about the true story of this village. Perhaps after hearing it, you will understand that my arrival here was not by chance.”
Xiaoxi’s sobs gradually ceased. She looked at Bai Yu with those reddened eyes, puzzled, as if she did not understand the meaning behind his words.
Bai Yu gave her no more time to think. This was his only chance—the only chance to connect all the clues and gain the trust of the “well spirit” before him.
“Haven’t you always wanted to know what happened ‘that day’?” Bai Yu’s voice grew low and distant, as if he were narrating a piece of history he had witnessed with his own eyes. “Now, I will tell you.”
He recounted everything he had seen in the real world, inside that ancestral hall shrouded in resentment, after drinking that cup of “wedding wine” formed from a hundred years of the groom Lin Sheng’s hatred—without omitting a single word.
What he spoke of was no longer the cold words written in the diary, nor the desperate conjectures in the predecessor’s last words, but scenes he had experienced firsthand.
“Long ago, this village was not yet called Luoshui Village. It must have had a more beautiful name. In the village, there was a kind and beautiful girl. Her name was A-Wan.”
The instant Bai Yu uttered the two words “A-Wan,” Xiaoxi’s body jolted violently. In those eyes, where the tears had already stopped, endless sorrow surged up once more like the tide.
“She had a beloved young man named Lin Sheng. He was not from the village. Perhaps he was merely a scholar passing through, but his love for A-Wan was pure and sincere. Beneath the old tree at the village entrance, he would weave the cutest little rabbits out of willow twigs for her. He would promise her the most peaceful future with all the tenderness he possessed.”
Bai Yu’s voice was very soft, yet it seemed to carry a kind of magic, once more unfolding a history sealed in dust for a hundred years, along with scenes full of sunlight and hope, within this cold curtain of rain.
Xiaoxi listened quietly. She forgot to cry, forgot to question him, and only stared blankly at Bai Yu, as if through his eyes, she could see those happy times long since gone.
“But a sudden plague shattered all that beauty.” Bai Yu’s tone shifted, becoming heavy with sorrow. “In their fear, the villagers became ignorant. They attributed the disaster to the Mountain God’s anger. And the village’s pedantic elders, those wise men who should have protected the village, made a cruel decision under the Mountain God’s secret bewitchment—a sacrifice. They chose the purest and most beautiful girl in the whole village, A-Wan, to marry that invisible Mountain God in order to quell the so-called ‘divine wrath.’”
“They forced Lin Sheng. With the village’s greater good, with hundreds of lives, they held his love hostage. Lin Sheng resisted. He roared. But in the end, he was only an unarmed scholar. He watched helplessly as the girl he loved was dressed in that glaring red wedding robe and sent as a lifeless offering into that bottomless cave in the rear mountain…”
At this point, Bai Yu stopped.
He saw Xiaoxi’s body trembling violently. What flowed from those eyes was no longer tears, but grief and hatred that could not be dissolved. Her small hands were clenched tightly, her knuckles whitening from the force.
“You… how do you know… how do you know all this…” Her voice was no longer the crisp voice of a little girl, but had become the voice of a young woman filled with endless sorrow.
“Because I drank Lin Sheng’s ‘resentment.’” Bai Yu looked straight into her eyes and spoke each word clearly. “I felt his heartbreak. I experienced his despair. When he saw that after the plague subsided, those villagers who had once forced him were cheering and celebrating in front of the ancestral hall, treating his pain as a sacrifice that was only natural, the last trace of hope in his heart was extinguished completely.”
“So, wearing the red ceremonial robes that would never welcome a bride, he used his own life and his deepest resentment inside the ancestral hall to cast the most vicious curse upon this village he had once loved, this village that now had nothing left but betrayal. He wanted everyone to remain, to wait with him for this wedding that would never end. He wanted this village to be forever immersed in the day he lost his beloved, day after day, year after year.”
“This is the true origin of the village you have been protecting.”
When Bai Yu finished the final word, the entire back courtyard fell into silence.
Only the endless threads of rain continued to fall with a rustling sound, as though the whole world were weeping for this sorrowful story.
“…He… thought that way…?”
After a long while, Xiaoxi… or rather, A-Wan’s lingering obsession, asked softly in a voice filled with endless heartache.
“He hated them, and hated this village as well… So that was why he refused to wake up, refused to end this wedding… is that right?”
“Yes.” Bai Yu nodded. “His resentment is the core sustaining that ancestral hall and that terrifying wedding banquet. But his resentment was also used by the mastermind behind it all—the ‘Mountain God.’ The Mountain God twisted his curse and turned this place into a breeding ground that could continuously produce ‘despair,’ while it enjoyed all of it from the shadows.”
“The Mountain God…” When A-Wan’s lingering obsession spoke that name, her voice was filled with hatred engraved into the bone. “It was it… it used the plague to take my life, it used lies to deceive the ignorant villagers, it… destroyed everything I had, and destroyed everything Lin Sheng had as well…”
She slowly raised her head. Those sorrow-filled eyes shone with an incomparably resolute light. She looked at Bai Yu and said in an extremely solemn tone, “Outsider, I believe everything you have said. You are the only one who can see through the deep love hidden behind Lin Sheng’s hatred, and you are also the only one who knows who our common enemy is. You are right. Your arrival here was not by chance. You… are the hope I have waited a hundred years for…”
As her voice fell, a strange change began to happen to her body. The small, thin figure in blue cloth began to turn transparent, rippling like a reflection in water. In its place, the illusory figure of a young woman wearing a plain white dress, tall in form and holy in bearing, slowly emerged from that tiny body.
Her face was still shrouded in a soft halo and could not be seen clearly, but Bai Yu could distinctly sense that pure beauty.
She was the Saintess of Luoshui—A-Wan.
“I do not have much time.” A-Wan’s illusory figure looked at Bai Yu, her voice ethereal and urgent. “This dream constructed by me is already on the verge of collapse after sharing all the truth with you. And my power, after opposing the Mountain God’s cursed rain for a hundred years, has long since nearly run out. I cannot personally awaken Lin Sheng, nor can I fight that powerful Mountain God. All of this can only be entrusted to you.”
“What should I do?” Bai Yu immediately asked.
“Return to reality.” A-Wan’s illusory figure pointed toward the ancient well. “You must leave this prison of memory and return to where your companions are. The true battlefield is outside. The awakened Lin Sheng, that terrifying ancestral hall—they are all waiting for you. You must find a way to stop the Mountain God before it completely fuses Lin Sheng’s resentment with that aggregate of resentment!”
“But how do I stop it?”
“Awaken him!” A hint of pleading entered A-Wan’s voice. “Though Lin Sheng’s resentment is deep, at the very depths of that resentment there must still remain his purest love for me. That is the part of him that belongs to ‘humanity.’ The Mountain God can use his ‘hatred,’ but it cannot defile his ‘love.’ You must find a way to make him remember that love, to wake him from the nightmare of revenge! Only if he himself is willing to let go of the curse can this wedding truly end!”
“I understand.” Bai Yu nodded heavily. This was the most difficult core of the task.
“But before you leave, I have one final gift to give you.”
As A-Wan’s illusory figure spoke, she slowly extended that hand formed of light and pointed at the shabby wooden ladle Bai Yu had used to drink water, now lying on the ground.
Under her guidance, the wooden ladle slowly floated upward.
“You cannot take the ‘tears’ from this well with you. But my power can reside in this vessel you once used.”
A-Wan’s illusory figure began to grow even more transparent, as though she might dissipate into the wind at any moment. She transformed all her power into streams of gentle, pure-white light threaded with specks of gold, pouring them continuously into the hovering wooden ladle.
The already dilapidated wooden ladle began to undergo a transformation akin to rebirth under the infusion of that light.
All the cracks and rot upon it rapidly vanished, changing into a texture as warm and smooth as jade. The entire wooden ladle took on a holy milky-white hue, and golden patterns resembling ripples in water naturally emerged upon its surface.
A pure, vast aura filled with compassion and purifying power emanated from that small wooden ladle, even forcing back the cursed rain around it by several degrees.
“Take it.” A-Wan’s voice had become extremely faint, and her figure was so pale it was almost invisible. “It can temporarily purify the Mountain God’s rainwater, providing you and your companions with a small patch of pure land. Perhaps… at the most critical moment, it can also allow you to see certain ‘truths’ concealed by resentment. Remember, what the Mountain God fears most is not powerful strength, but… true ‘love’… that it can never contaminate…”
“…Lin Sheng… my beloved… I… am waiting for you…”
With that final sigh, filled with endless love and reluctance, A-Wan’s illusory figure—the Saintess’s lingering obsession that had guarded Luoshui Village for a hundred years—finally dissipated forever within this sorrowful curtain of rain, like the first wisp of morning mist at dawn.
And that holy white wooden ladle gently fell into Bai Yu’s outstretched hand.
It felt warm and smooth in his grasp, as if he were holding an angel’s palm.
At the same time, the entire dream world began to shake violently.
The dark clouds in the sky seemed to be stirred by an invisible giant hand, forming a massive vortex. The floodwaters on the ground began to flow backward, and houses collapsed amid distortion.
This final refuge constructed from obsession, after fulfilling its mission, had finally reached its end as well.
Bai Yu tightly gripped the wooden ladle in his hand. What he held was not merely a powerful “sacred object,” but A-Wan’s final love, Lin Sheng’s only salvation, and the last hope of the entire Luoshui Village.
He bowed deeply once more in the direction where A-Wan had disappeared.
“I promise you.”
An irresistible repulsive force surged from the center of the collapsing world, crashing fiercely onto his consciousness.
His vision went dark, and Bai Yu completely lost consciousness.
…
“Cough… cough, cough!”
A bout of violent coughing made Bai Yu suddenly break free from the endless darkness.
Air mingled with the stench of blood and rot rushed madly into his lungs, making his body, which had only just recovered slightly, feel uncomfortable once more. He abruptly opened his eyes. What he saw was no longer that eternal curtain of rain, but An Mu’s face, filled with anxiety.
“Bai Yu! You’re awake!” An Mu’s pleasantly surprised voice sounded beside his ear.
Only then did Bai Yu realize that they were in the black mountain forest shrouded in blood mist. Mo Fei and Lan Ce were protecting them on the left and right, and everyone’s face was filled with fatigue and vigilance.
“I… came back…” Bai Yu’s voice was hoarse, yet filled with the relief of having survived a calamity.
He instinctively reached toward his pocket.
In the next second, his pupils contracted sharply.
Inside his pocket, a white wooden ladle, warm and smooth to the touch, lay there quietly.
It had not been a dream.
He had returned. He had returned with the last tears of the Saintess of Luoshui, with the only hope of the entire village.