Chapter 205
Chapter 205
Cheng Miao pushed the gate open and went inside. They had indeed returned at the right time. Qin Musong had almost finished cooking.
Lin Zhu carried a plate of scrambled eggs and a plate of cold chicken. Yang Ke followed behind with a bowl of cabbage soup.
The table was already set up, and Qin Musong stood beside it serving rice. He had put out only seven bowls.
Apparently, Fang Jing and her companions hadn’t lifted a finger to help in the courtyard. Now that the food was ready, she had started guilt-tripping them.
The courtyard gate stood open. With her back to it, Fang Jing hadn’t realized Cheng Miao’s group had returned.
Even Ma Yang and Kong Fan couldn’t stand it and tried to pull her away, but she shook them off. “Yes, I’m talking to you. You’re a big, strong man, and you’re not that young anymore. Don’t you know how to look after other people?”
When Fang Jing had made snide remarks at her earlier, Cheng Miao hadn’t lost her temper.
Now, seeing her give Qin Musong a hard time, she suddenly couldn’t contain her anger.
At the abrupt darkening of Cheng Miao’s expression, Qiudong looked at Fang Jing for the first time and narrowed his eyes.
Only when the footsteps drew closer did Fang Jing realize Cheng Miao and the others had returned.
Truthfully, she wasn’t afraid of Cheng Miao. Cheng Miao might seem cold and distant, but one look told you she wasn’t bad-tempered.
Fang Jing bit her lip, annoyed that Qiudong had seen her behaving like that.
Cheng Miao stepped in front of the tall, imposing Qin Musong without even looking at Fang Jing. She calmly watched Zhu Cong, who had kept trying to restrain Fang Jing only to be shaken off each time.
“If you can’t keep your teammate under control, I don’t mind doing it for you.” Cheng Miao had cleared plenty of instances and taken the lives of plenty of ghosts.
So when she stopped holding herself back, the killing intent she radiated forced Zhu Cong to regard her in silence.
Zhu Cong knew perfectly well that nobody on this team was easy to deal with. Qin Musong alone was his equal.
Cheng Miao and Lin Zhu might not attack people, but they too had been tempered by bloodshed. They were different from the people on his own team.
The delicate little girl who always followed Cheng Miao carried the strongest air of bloodshed. He had no doubt that if she really acted, she wouldn’t care about taking a human life.
As for the excessively handsome man beside Cheng Miao, he was far too mysterious. Yet instinct had kept Zhu Cong on edge around him all along.
His intuition told him that this man absolutely must not be provoked.
Unfortunately, Fang Jing had no brains.
Unfortunately, however brainless she was, she resembled his late wife.
“Sorry.” Zhu Cong let out a long breath. Ignoring Fang Jing’s struggles, and not even stopping to consider whether he was hurting her, he pulled her behind him. “It won’t happen again.”
Cheng Miao watched coldly as Zhu Cong silently dragged Fang Jing back to their team. Fang Jing kept turning to look at Qiudong. Hearing Ma Yang and Kong Fan complain came as no surprise.
“Why did you have to provoke them? One look tells you they’re serious players. Great, now you’ve offended the whole lot.” Ma Yang had disliked Fang Jing for a long time. Originally, there had been only three of them, and Zhu Cong had always been their capable, steady older teammate.
Until they met this woman, who was all looks and no use.
Who knew what Zhu Cong saw in her?
“You want to latch onto them, but they wouldn’t want you anyway.” Fang Jing rubbed the wrist Zhu Cong had hurt when he pulled her away, looking resentful.
Stung by the remark, Ma Yang tried to hold back, but ultimately couldn’t. “You think having a pretty face means you can go preening in front of him? Take a look at Miss Cheng. What does she lack compared to you? And she’s a hell of a lot more capable.”
Women understood women best. Ma Yang looked Fang Jing up and down, her tone contemptuous. “If I were you, I’d be too embarrassed to keep parading in front of him. Has he even looked at you once?”
“You!”
“Enough! Both of you, give it a rest.” Zhu Cong frowned and spoke in a low, sharp voice. Ma Yang pouted and fell silent. Fang Jing gave a cold laugh and didn’t respond to him at all.
Over on the other side, Cheng Miao’s group paid no attention to their team’s infighting. They had already started eating.
Song Guoqiang and his companions went into the kitchen too. Before long, they emerged with a bowl of egg fried rice.
The three grown men couldn’t make complicated dishes, but filling their stomachs wasn’t a problem.
Soon, the aroma of food filled the courtyard. Only Zhu Cong’s group of four had nothing to eat.
Zhu Cong looked at the sky, then at Fang Jing, who was clearly still sulking. He went over and asked quietly, “Hungry? I have some dry rations in my bag.”
There were indeed a few boxes of cookies in his backpack. He had meant to save them for emergencies, but while the rest of them could go without dinner, Fang Jing certainly couldn’t.
Fang Jing wrinkled her nose, anger flaring inside her. “Who wants to eat that stuff?”
Zhu Cong sighed, turned, and left the courtyard.
Ma Yang and Kong Fan hurried after him, shooting Fang Jing sharp looks as they went.
“Find anything?” Qin Musong was good-tempered. Although he felt no sympathy for someone like Fang Jing, she wasn’t worth getting angry over either.
Seeing that Cheng Miao’s expression was still dark, he could only take the initiative and ask.
Cheng Miao came back to herself and shared her conversation with the older woman.
“Why does this sound more and more like the story of the luohua cave brides?” Freckles was attentive to details. She and Yang Ke had been taking only vegetables and eggs. There wasn’t much chicken, and they knew to be considerate, so they had hardly touched it.
Cheng Miao couldn’t watch them do that any longer and placed some meat in both their bowls. “Yes, it really is very similar to the story of the luohua cave brides.”
The idea had occurred to Cheng Miao when she’d first heard the announcement, but there had been too little information then for her to draw a conclusion.
“What are luohua cave brides?” Yang Ke was a college sophomore in the real world, two years older than Lin Zhu. They had quite a bit in common to talk about.
“Hundreds of years ago, before Huaxia[^huaxia] had expanded to its present size, a place called Xiangxi was known for three sinister practices: corpse driving[^corpse-driving], gu sorcery[^gu-sorcery], and the luohua cave brides.”
Cheng Miao ate at an unhurried pace as she explained to them.
“Luohua cave brides are a phenomenon where young women of marriageable age are chosen by supposed spirits. They live in caves for several days without eating or drinking, yet don’t die. When they return, their eyes shine like stars and their complexions glow like peach blossoms. They don’t speak. They put themselves and their homes in order, then die with smiles on their faces a few days later.”
“Locally, people say the women have married the spirits. After they die, their families hold weddings instead of funerals.”
Cheng Miao took another couple of bites of egg. “But that doesn’t quite fit this instance. The most obvious difference is that the stories of luohua cave brides all concern girls, while in Shushan Village, men can marry the spirits too.”
“I think I’ve read about that legend. But the text I read said the phenomenon of luohua cave brides was caused by the immense pressure a male-dominated society placed on women’s chastity and the repression of their sexuality. It led to depression, and ‘luohua cave brides’ was a romanticized way of describing it.”
Cheng Miao nodded in agreement with Lin Zhu. “Yes, that was the scientific explanation given at the time. Which brings us to the second difference: Shushan Village isn’t a village where men oppress women.”
As she spoke, Cheng Miao keenly sensed something approaching from behind.
[^huaxia]: Huaxia is a traditional name for Chinese civilization; here it is the name of the story’s country.
[^corpse-driving]: In Xiangxi folklore, corpse driving means ritually leading the dead back to their home region.
[^gu-sorcery]: Gu is harmful magic associated in Chinese folklore with poisonous creatures.