Chapter 114
Chapter 114
Bai Su finished her story.
I was completely dumbfounded.
Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that the truth would be so thrilling, dangerous, and utterly incredible.
The scene Bai Su described went far beyond anything I had experienced so far.
There were actually people bold enough to attack a River God?
And a divine treasure existed that could instantly multiply someone’s power when eaten, without producing a single side effect?
The sheer weight of all this information left me reeling.
I wasn’t stupid. I could tell whether the rabbit spirit in front of me was lying.
Her tone, the look in her eyes as she spoke, her movements, and even the fluctuations in her aura made one thing obvious: every word was true.
I was still stunned by the earth-shattering secret I had just heard when Bai Su continued.
“Not long ago, I went deeper into the mountains to look for medicinal herbs for Huihui. I got careless and stepped into a hunter’s steel trap, then a flying log knocked me into a pit lined with blades. One of them cut a deep gash in my leg.
“Fortunately, I’m still fairly strong. I destroyed the trap and managed to flee all the way back here. But I’m a spirit, and I don’t have flexible human hands. I couldn’t clean and dress such a complicated wound properly, so all I could do was endure it.
“Huihui must have seen how weak I was and how much pain I was in. I suspect he slipped out to find help while I was unconscious.
“It’s a blessing that he met an upright practitioner like you, Young Mr. Wu. Otherwise, the consequences could have been unthinkable.”
At that, Bai Su turned and gave Huihui a fierce glare.
“If you ever dare run off like that again, you won’t be my little brother anymore!”
The little gray fox lowered his head, looking deeply aggrieved. He squeaked twice. “Susu, I know I was wrong. I won’t do it again.”
I smiled and tried to smooth things over.
“You don’t need to be too hard on Huihui. Very few people in this world possess unusual abilities. The overwhelming majority are ordinary. Huihui may be young, but at his current level, he’ll have no problem protecting himself from ordinary people.”
Huihui nodded eagerly and shot me a grateful look, probably thanking me for getting him out of trouble.
It was obvious that he was usually terrified of Bai Su. A fox afraid of a rabbit–the idea was almost comical.
Bai Su continued, “Young Mr. Wu, I truly can’t thank you enough for healing my leg. I don’t own anything particularly valuable to repay you with, but there are some fairly old medicinal herbs in the cave that I gathered in the deep mountains. Please accept a few. Huihui, go bring them over.”
“Okay, Susu!”
The little fox squeaked twice, swished his bushy tail, and went to fetch the herbs from a corner of the cave.
I didn’t refuse.
I had helped them, after all. There was nothing wrong with accepting a reward.
As society developed, valuable medicinal herbs from remote mountain forests were becoming harder and harder to find. Perhaps only spirits like them could still track such things down.
While Huihui was gone, I asked Bai Su another question.
“Miss Bai, do you remember any distinguishing features of the riverbank you visited? Where exactly was it along the Chuan River near Lianghe Town?”
My heart pounded. A bold suspicion had begun forming in my mind.
But until Bai Su confirmed it, I couldn’t be certain.
“The location and its distinguishing features…”
She tilted her enormous rabbit head as she searched her memory. I had to admit, she looked rather cute.
“Oh, right! The moon was full that night, and the moonlight was very bright.
“I remember that stretch of the Chuan River curved in a huge bend, shaped like the character ji turned on its side toward the left. The current was very slow. I think there was a small pier nearby too.
“I also sensed people living farther away, so there was probably a village nearby…”
My head began to buzz before Bai Su had even finished, as if a thunderbolt had exploded inside my skull.
Of course!
There was no mistake.
It was Xiaowan Village.
The place where Bai Su had seen those people wage a fierce battle against the River God–and where she had accidentally swallowed the mysterious fragment of black leaf–was Xiaowan Village.
Shock rolled through me.
I couldn’t help sucking in a sharp breath.
“No wonder the River God and all the sunken dead in the surrounding waters swarmed over there. They were coveting that mysterious object on the riverbed!”
Old Cao, Li Miao, and I had already imagined that the thing must be extremely valuable.
Not only could it create sinister corpse-fiends like living corpses, but it could also strengthen a person’s soul. It had even attracted the River God’s greed.
But I had never imagined it could be this extraordinary.
Merely eating one tiny fragment of a leaf had made Bai Su’s body and aura grow explosively, gifting her the equivalent of fifty years of cultivation.
If word got out, everyone who heard it would be driven mad with desire.
I felt as though the troubles that had been plaguing me lately were finally revealing the tip of the iceberg.
Bai Su noticed my strange expression and asked what was wrong.
I didn’t hide anything from her. I told her everything about Xiao Sheng, the living corpse from Xiaowan Village whom I had encountered recently.
Bai Su was surprised when she heard the story.
She probably hadn’t imagined that her innocent little fox brother could wander onto a road looking for someone to treat her injured leg and stumble into a connection like this.
Watching the thoughtful light flicker in Bai Su’s rabbit eyes, I had an idea. I probed carefully.
“Miss Bai, this is connected to your master’s death, and we’re investigating it now. Would you like to join us?”
To be honest, if she had been any other spirit, I would never have extended the invitation–even under the same circumstances.
I had no desire to burden someone else with an inexplicable karmic debt, much less expose them to mortal danger.
But Bai Su was different.
The strange events beneath the river at Xiaowan Village were already deeply connected to her.
She had witnessed a mysterious operation more than two years ago, and her master–the formidable feng shui master Mr. Bai–might also have been involved in the whole affair.
Bai Su hesitated when she heard my offer.
“I…”
She clearly wanted to learn how her master had died.
But what she had experienced more than two years earlier must have left her deeply afraid, so she couldn’t make up her mind.
I understood.
According to Bai Su, the eerie black glow rising from beneath the river had filled her soul and blood with terror. It may have been even more frightening than facing the River God’s colossal body and overwhelming aura directly.
Anyone who hadn’t experienced it firsthand would find it hard to understand.
After one or two breaths, Bai Su gave a firm nod.
Her crystal-red eyes met mine.
“Mr. Wu, I’ve decided to join you. You and your companions are investigating the strange events at Xiaowan Village out of a sincere desire to do what’s right, while I also need to uncover the truth behind my master’s death. I have even more reason to see this through without hesitation.”
I smiled and waved a hand.
“Don’t make me sound so noble. I’ve never claimed to be some great person. The main thing is that the Xiao family paid us, so we owe them a solution.”
The money Xiao Mao had given us would have supported an ordinary family in town for two or three years.
We couldn’t take the money, then treat the child corpse Xiao Sheng the way Coroner Huang of neighboring Dangkou Town had treated the living corpse merchant Zhou Mu in that story from the *Fubei County Gazetteer*, could we?
That would be downright shameless.
Since we had accepted payment, we needed to determine exactly what had turned Xiao Sheng into a living corpse and find the right cure.
Of course, on a deeper level, the boundless curiosity and thirst for knowledge I had been born with also drove me onward.
Now that Bai Su had decided to join us, I shared more of what we knew with her.
We discussed the clues and came to a conclusion: the mysterious object in the river at Xiaowan Village, which could turn people into living corpses and had drawn both the River God and the sunken dead, was probably an extremely unusual plant.