Li Qiuchen followed the white-clad girl to the Mountain God’s cave abode with his heart full of joy, thinking Senior Jiang was going to give a junior another helping hand.
Yet he had never expected that the moment he entered, he would see an unfamiliar middle-aged man sitting beside Jiang Tingyue.
The man looked scruffy and unkempt, with a stubbly beard and very casual clothes. He did not look like any proper sort of person.
Li Qiuchen thought the man did not look proper, and the man did not take Li Qiuchen seriously either. His gaze merely swept over him before landing on the white crane behind Li Qiuchen.
Before Jiang Tingyue could introduce them, the man got straight to the point and said loudly, “You’re the youngest of the Bai family? Your elder brother searched everywhere for you but couldn’t find you. Before he left, he entrusted me to look for your whereabouts here. As long as you’re alive, that’s good. Come home with me!”
The white crane stared at the man warily, not moving half a step.
Who the hell are you?
Only then did Jiang Tingyue speak. “Brother Chu, with nothing but your word, how are you supposed to win anyone’s trust?”
“Oh, right!”
The man slapped his forehead, only then remembering something. He took out a palm-sized bronze token from his robes and waved it at the white crane. “See that? Your elder brother gave it to me. My name’s Chu Dahe. I’m not a bad person. I’ve dealt with those brothers of yours before, and I know your father too. Your father is bald, but when he’s out and about, he usually wears a wig…”
Whether he was a good person or not was still unclear, but Li Qiuchen could tell that this man probably had a screw loose.
The white crane was so embarrassed its toes nearly dug into the ground.
How the hell could he say something like that in front of so many people?
“Gah!”
“Huh?”
Chu Dahe asked in confusion, “You’re not going home? What do you want to do?”
He frowned and looked at Li Qiuchen beside it. He seemed about to say something, but after glancing at his age, swallowed the words back and changed his tune. “Whose kid are you? Where are your adults?”
My adults? My adults were all burned to ashes ten years ago.
The remaining relatives and friends are all hanging from the old peach tree.
Li Qiuchen could also tell that what Chu Dahe had originally wanted to say was, Did you brat kidnap my sworn brother’s bird?
So he turned to the white crane and said softly, “You should go home with Senior Chu.”
The white crane puffed out its chest and gave a forceful gah.
If I go, we go together!
Jiang Tingyue had said before that she would entrust a friend to send it home, but the white crane had not agreed then either.
On one hand, it was having fun outside; on the other, it could not stop worrying about Li Qiuchen.
It still had not repaid the life-saving grace.
Not only had it failed to repay it, it had been saved twice.
“The karma of your Bai family is yours to settle. I won’t bother with any of that.”
Chu Dahe understood what the white crane meant and waved his hand impatiently. “One sentence: are you going or not? After I send you back, I still have other things to do.”
“Go!”
“Gah!”
Li Qiuchen and the white crane spoke at the same time, then looked at each other.
“If you don’t go home, what are you staying here for?”
Li Qiuchen advised it earnestly, “Are you going to stay and crawl through mountain caves with me? Don’t you know how much you can eat in one meal? Once you’re gone, who knows how much effort I’ll save. If you really feel you owe me anything, come back next year and bring me some gold, silver, jewels, spirit pills, miraculous medicines, or whatever, and compensate me a little, all right?”
“Gah gah gah!”
The white crane was furious. It kicked him, then turned its head away in a huff and ignored him.
Chu Dahe laughed. “Not bad, kid. You’re pretty righteous. Don’t worry, the Bai family clearly distinguishes gratitude and grudges. You saved a child of the Bai family; in the future, they will naturally compensate you with benefits. If the Bai family can’t come back…”
Sensing the subtle gaze Jiang Tingyue cast at him from the side, Chu Dahe laughed and changed his words. “Then I’ll take on this karma on behalf of the Bai family. Three years from now, go to Hongyan Tower in Xuanbing City and find me. When the time comes, I’ll send you a fortune!”
So what exactly had the Bai family gone off to do?
Why did those words sound a little off?
…………
The white crane left.
A bird from a wealthy household, in the end, still had to return to a wealthy household.
Li Qiuchen had always found the myth of Dong Yong funny when he heard it in the past. You steal one article of a fairy’s clothing, and she marries you? Are you even from the same world as her?
No matter how stupid that stupid bird was, as long as it was still alive, its family would do everything they could to find it.
Li Qiuchen had no such worries.
One person fed, the whole family not hungry.
The grain he had stored up really had been somewhat insufficient when the stupid bird was around.
But now that the stupid bird had left, looking at the food piled all through the cellar, Li Qiuchen was troubled again.
How long would he have to eat all this?
Even the newly built two-bedroom, one-living-room dwelling looked less pleasing to his eyes.
Li Qiuchen had originally thought he had long since grown used to living alone in solitude. After all, during those years in Songlin Village, he too had grown up alone in an empty house.
But after the stupid bird left, he discovered that this place was excessively quiet.
The stupid bird had not taken away its share. It left behind the Spirit Gathering Pills and the Black Pearls, but still warned Li Qiuchen that he was not allowed to misappropriate them.
Even blood brothers had to settle accounts clearly; next spring, it would come back.
When the time came, it would ride in on seven-colored auspicious clouds to repay his kindness.
Li Qiuchen only hoped it would keep its mouth in check and stop eating random things, so that it would not end up spraying seven-colored auspicious clouds in the sky.
After the stupid bird left, he suddenly felt that living alone on the mountain and enduring the long winter was an especially foolish thing to do.
So Li Qiuchen decided to go down the mountain for a stroll.
The corn cobs in the village had already been harvested. Golden-yellow corn kernels were spread out on the threshing ground to dry, while another portion had been strung together directly and hung up inside people’s homes.
The ones drying outside were the taxes to be handed over. The ones hanging at home were what they kept for themselves to eat.
A donkey pulled the stone mill, grinding the corn kernels into coarse cornmeal. This stuff was also called bangzi flour.
Aside from the cornmeal, there was also newly hulled yellow millet set beside it, dou by dou, waiting in line.
Although there had been some mishaps in the middle that delayed the farming season somewhat, overall, this year’s harvest seemed fairly good.
Li Qiuchen, disheveled and dressed like a beggar, slipped into the village under cover of darkness… although with his current cultivation, there seemed to be no need for that. But his personality was simply rather cautious.
Better to be steady. Being careful never led to major mistakes.
The old village chief had only just lain down when he heard someone gently knocking on the door outside. He immediately shuddered, climbed out of bed, and walked to the door while putting on his clothes.
Seeing Li Qiuchen standing outside, he was overjoyed. Without another word, he was about to kneel and kowtow.
Li Qiuchen hurriedly helped him up.
He chatted with the old man for quite a while and extracted quite a bit of useful information from him.
The villagers had no memory at all of an old Daoist ever having come here. They were only astonished by those big trees that had suddenly appeared in the village, thinking it was some demon from who knew where causing trouble.
Later, however, mounted government soldiers entered the village, chopped down all the big trees, and then went door to door conducting inspections. No one knew what they were checking for.
The soldiers entered the mountain and dug up a strange old tree from the lakeside. They placed it at the village entrance and burned it into charcoal ash in a single fire.
Two half-grown boys knelt there, wailing like ghosts and howling like wolves for half the night. Then they gathered up the charcoal ash and left together with the soldiers.
Li Qiuchen asked for the name of the soldiers’ leader, but the old man shook his head repeatedly, only saying that he had heard those soldiers call him “Young Master,” and that his surname was Tu.
A new book needs everyone’s support. Please, my lords, don’t be stingy with the monthly tickets in your hands—throw them hard in my face!