Chapter 153

Chapter 153

Deng Liqian pleaded in a meek, submissive voice.

“Xiao Nan, I truly didn’t mean to hurt you. I only…”

Smack!

Before Deng Liqian could finish, Yao Nan struck her hard across the face.

“Yao Nan, I…”

Smack!

Another slap came from the back of her hand.

Bright red five-fingered marks appeared on both sides of Deng Liqian’s face.

“Qianqian!”

A trace of anguish flashed through the old woman’s eyes. I shifted one step and blocked her path, then said coolly, “You can’t even bear two slaps? They didn’t so much as break the skin.”

Deng Liqian was already covering her face and sobbing.

Wang Dachun stared at Yao Nan with an exaggerated expression and rubbed his eyes.

When he had offered her the stool, he’d only meant to joke around and scare Deng Liqian. He hadn’t expected Yao Nan to actually do much of anything. He’d figured he would probably have to lend her a hand in the end.

After all, in Wang Dachun’s eyes, Yao Nan was always refined and delicate. Surely she didn’t know how to hit anyone…

He had never imagined she would be so decisive once she actually made a move!

And judging by the sound of those slaps, she hadn’t held back much strength either.

The sight, however, left me deeply gratified. An almost imperceptible smile even appeared at the corner of my mouth.

“That’s more like it! She repaid your kindness with ingratitude, used venomous gu to hurt you, and tried to make you mute. If you let her go just because she looked poor and pitiful, that kind of stupid kindness without the slightest edge would be truly infuriating.”

If anything, my opinion of Yao Nan rose a little.

This was exactly the kind of decisiveness she needed!

After slapping Deng Liqian twice, Yao Nan seemed to want to kick her as well–only to realize that she was wearing a skirt today, which made raising her leg inconvenient.

So she gave up on the idea.

She merely stared coldly at Deng Liqian and said in an equally cold voice, “I don’t want to see you again. Leave Lianghe Town and apply for a transfer.”

Transfer schools?!

Deng Liqian panicked the moment she heard that.

With a thud, she actually dropped to her knees before Yao Nan.

She even reached out to grab Yao Nan’s skirt.

“Please! Please don’t make me transfer… I still want to study hard, get into a top high school, go to college, and give my grandma a better life. Please.”

Our school, Lianghe District Middle School, had the best teaching quality among the middle schools in several nearby towns.

It could even hold its own against the schools in Fubei County’s urban center!

Unless she went to school in the county seat, the schools in other towns were nowhere near as good as ours.

Yao Nan, however, merely took a few steps back. Disgust in her eyes, she avoided Deng Liqian’s hand and looked down at the girl kneeling on the floor.

Then, in an even voice, she said, “You have to transfer. I can’t keep a heartless ingrate around me. I’d be afraid you might hurt me again at any moment! I trusted you completely and went out of my way to help you because I thought you were my dear friend. Yet you did something so cruel to me over some inexplicable jealousy.”

“Of course, considering how poor your family is, I’ll take pity on you one last time. I’ll pay your transfer expenses. If I remember correctly, two thousand yuan should be enough to transfer from the district middle school to another town, right?”

Yao Nan’s family must have been quite well-off. At the very least, they were no worse off than Wang Dachun’s family!

Children from rich families really could be this extravagant… She wouldn’t even need to bother her parents. Her saved allowance and Lunar New Year money would probably cover it.

“Ahhh!”

Deng Liqian let out a despairing wail, collapsed facedown on the floor, and burst into loud sobs.

“Qianqian, Qianqian, don’t cry. We can live just as well in another town…”

The old woman tottered over and helped her up from the floor.

Deng Liqian cried so hard that tears and snot covered her face.

“Are you trying to drive me to my death? You rich people are horrible! Why were you born with parents who love you, big comfortable houses to live in, pretty clothes to wear, and delicious food to eat? Everybody likes you. Why do I have to be so miserable? I refuse to accept it!”

I burst out laughing.

“Everybody likes them? Not necessarily. This guy Wang Dachun used to annoy people and dogs alike. If I hadn’t kept him in line, he probably would’ve gone down the wrong path sooner or later.”

“Boss, we’re in front of outsiders. Leave me a little dignity…”

Wang Dachun scratched his head and muttered an embarrassed protest.

Ignoring him, I continued to look at Deng Liqian.

“Besides, I’m poor too. My family lives in Wujia Village, more than twenty li from town, deep in the mountains. It takes several hours of walking along mountain trails to get there. Both my parents are farmers. Yet I didn’t become as twisted as you.”

“And you’re jealous of Yao Nan and Wang Dachun, aren’t you? As far as I know, Wang Dachun’s father was so poor as a child that he couldn’t even get enough to eat. He walked twenty li to school every day. His food for the entire day was a single steamed bun. In the end, he got into college and left the mountains to study in the city. He didn’t even have shoes–he went there barefoot.”

“Sometimes a person’s destiny isn’t theirs alone, but the accumulation and combined result of several generations of their family’s fate.”

Wang Dachun had told me this before.

His grandfather had come from generations of impoverished peasants. Fortunately, his father had studied relentlessly and changed his fate through education.

“People can’t change what family they’re born into, but they can decide their own future. Classmate Deng Liqian, that’s all I have to say. What you do from here is up to you.”

“Yao Nan, Dachun, let’s go.”

With that, I turned and left.

Yao Nan and Wang Dachun hurried after me.

When I reached the door, I looked back again.

“Oh, right. Remember to come to school tomorrow and complete the withdrawal and transfer procedures. Otherwise… hmph!”

…

After leaving the shabby little house Deng Liqian rented, none of us spoke.

It wasn’t until we had walked out of the alley and reached the main road on Yakou Street that Yao Nan asked softly, “Wu Zhong, did I go a little too far just now in what I said and did to Deng Liqian?”
I turned around. Yao Nan had returned to her usual quiet, refined self, and a trace of melancholy lingered in her bright, sparkling eyes.

I shook my head.

“No! You handled it very well. If you’d merely cursed at her a few times and then forgiven her so easily, I would’ve been very unhappy.”

“Really?”

Yao Nan looked at me. Her gaze was timid and vulnerable, like a little rabbit’s.

All the coldness and domineering force she had shown earlier were gone.

I laughed heartily. “Even the ancient sages said, ‘Repay resentment with justice and kindness with kindness!’ Of course you did the right thing.”

That line came from the Xianwen chapter of the Analects.

The original exchange went like this–

Someone asked, “What do you think of repaying resentment with kindness?”

Confucius replied, “Then what would you use to repay kindness? Repay resentment with justice, and kindness with kindness.”

In plain language, it meant–

Someone asked Confucius, “I intend to repay evil deeds with kindness. Is that right?”

Confucius answered, “Then what will you use to repay kind deeds? We should repay evil with fair and impartial punishment, and kindness with kindness.”

Those were the true words of a sage!

During the Han and Tang dynasties, Confucian scholars were even expected to master the Six Arts. They had to mount a horse and kill enemies in battle, then dismount to read and govern the country. Every one of them was a true gentleman.

Only later did they gradually become frail scholars incapable of even tying up a chicken, all while shouting foolish things like “repay resentment with kindness”…

If Confucius knew his teachings had been distorted this way, he might become so angry that he rose from the grave to beat those unworthy descendants himself.

The only question was, what exactly counted as “fair punishment”?

That part was somewhat troublesome.

So perhaps the only thing a person could do was consult their own conscience!

When Master discussed this matter with me, it occurred to me that some of the principles of our lineage… seemed rather similar to those of the ancient Confucian sages.

Weren’t we clearly much closer to Daoism?

In any case, I personally thought Yao Nan’s punishment of Deng Liqian was perfectly reasonable. After all, I had taken the gu manual from Leidong Miao Village that belonged to her grandmother…

Wang Dachun also chimed in beside us, saying she’d done exactly the right thing. Someone like Deng Liqian deserved to be made to leave school and get lost!

“By the way, according to the rules, Deng Liqian should have been turned mute. But since I took her grandmother’s book, that punishment was reduced. The right to decide was clearly yours, yet I was the one who benefited. Is there any compensation you want?”

I looked at Yao Nan and spoke very seriously.

She hurriedly shook her head.

“Classmate Wu Zhong, you’re my benefactor. How could I ask you for compensation? If it weren’t for you, I’d probably already be mute. I wouldn’t even know who had hurt me.”

“No. Those are two separate matters!”

After thinking for a moment, I finally said, “How about this? I’ll owe you a favor. In the future, you can ask one thing of me. As long as it doesn’t violate morality or my conscience, I’ll do my best to make it happen.”

“There’s no need…”

“It’s settled!”

I didn’t waste any more words with her and made the decision final.

By the time we finished dealing with Deng Liqian’s matter, it was already very late.

After all, evening study hadn’t ended until nine thirty. Then we had followed her all the way to the southernmost end of town and spent so long handling everything there.

I checked the time. It was nearly midnight.

The streets were almost completely deserted. Only the dim yellow streetlights stretched our shadows into long shapes.

For safety’s sake, I escorted Wang Dachun and Yao Nan home one after the other.

Along the way, Yao Nan curiously asked about some of the things I had done before, including driving the possessing evil spirit out of Wang Dachun…

I gave her a general account of everything I could tell her.

At least she and Wang Dachun now knew the same amount about this side of my life.

…

I headed back alone.

From far away, I saw Wang Hu drifting back and forth along the street where the coffin shop stood.

I smiled. “Uncle Hu, still wandering around outside this late?”

He smiled when he saw me too. “I didn’t have anything else to do, and I could wait for you to come back while I was at it. Young Mr. Wu, why did school let out so late today?”

“I helped a classmate take care of a minor problem. Come on, let’s head back to the coffin shop.”

After we returned, I told Old Cao what had happened at school and how I had handled it.

Then I took the gu manual said to have been handed down by Leidong Miao Village from my schoolbag and passed it to him.

I asked whether he could read gu script.

The moment Old Cao saw the book, his eyes went wide.

His face filled with shock, and he couldn’t stop himself from blurting out, “Damn! Th-this thing is… How is that possible?”

He snatched the book from my hands and gently stroked its cold, black, chitinous cover with his callused fingers. His gaze seemed filled with memories.

“That’s right. There can be no mistake! This book was made from the hide of a century-old wild-born gu–the Black-Ice Giant Earthworm. A book like this would be an absolute sacred treasure in any traditional Miao village. And yours is so thick. Leidong Miao Village must once have been extremely powerful.”

A century-old wild-born gu? The Black-Ice Giant Earthworm?

The moment I heard those words, I knew Old Cao had to know quite a bit about this!

I hurriedly pressed him for details, my curiosity surging.

Old Cao sighed.

“Actually, I don’t know that much either. It was when I was young… nearly forty years ago now. I followed my master and grandmaster on a trip to western Hunan.”

“At the time, a friend of a friend of my grandmaster had someone send word that there was a very troublesome coffin over there that needed to be carried. I was only seventeen then and not very skilled, so I wasn’t deeply involved.”

“In any case, during that coffin-carrying job in western Hunan, we came into contact with several gu practitioners from traditional Miao villages. After the matter was resolved successfully, my grandmaster became acquainted with the Gu Saintess of a powerful Miao village. During the banquet, we saw their clan’s sacred book. It looked exactly like this one.”

“My master was curious and asked about it. The other side couldn’t very well refuse my grandmaster, so they gave us a general explanation…”