Chapter 15
Chapter 15
The Ancestral Hall enshrined a statue of Shennong. Since the Ghost Mother was a subordinate of Chiyou, she should have some degree of fear toward him. Moreover, when I was heading up the mountain, Fifth Grandpa had said that if a Wild Man grabbed my shoulders, it would be my good fortune.
The village ancestors must have produced a Ghost Mother before, so they might have a way to suppress her.
On our way to the Ancestral Hall, screams rose and fell from the nearby houses. Some villagers stumbled out of their homes, crawling and scrambling toward the hall.
When we burst into the Ancestral Hall, Fifth Grandpa was already there. Wang Dalin and Sister Wang were present as well, while Wang Yangyang sat on the floor, dazed and bleary-eyed.
Fifth Grandpa was beating his chest and stomping his feet, wailing loudly.
“What a sin! The Ghost Mother was supposed to be trapped in Xiaoyang forever! Why could she return to the village?!”
I walked over, grabbed him by the collar, and slapped him twice across the face.
“Stop your caterwauling! Think of a way out of this, now!”
Fifth Grandpa froze, finally snapping out of it.
“Quick! All the men come over here! Drip your blood into the Altar! Everyone, hold a stick of incense!”
The villagers reacted quickly, each doing as Fifth Grandpa instructed. They held their incense as the doors to the Altar were tightly shut. Outside, the screams gradually began to fade.
Amidst the frantic discussions of the crowd, we gradually pieced together the truth of the matter.
It turned out that the residents of Maogou Village were indeed the descendants of the Ghost Aunt Clan. According to their clan traditions, as long as a Ghost Mother was produced within the clan, the entire village’s fortune would flourish. The more people the Ghost Mother killed, the stronger the village’s fortune became.
The Ghost Mother was kept under watch by the Xiaoyang. The Rune I had wiped away at the Tree Hollow was likely what had been suppressing her. The Xiaoyang would capture living people and bring them back to feed the Ghost Mother. That massive pile of white bones inside hadn’t been left by the Wild Men; they were the remains of those eaten by Wang Cuiping.
Every ten years, the village would send a woman to Wild Man Gully. If the Wild Men didn’t take a fancy to her, the villagers would use the woman as bait to hunt and kill a Wild Man to eat the Wild Man Meat. The Xiaoyang tribe tacitly allowed this behavior.
If they did take a fancy to her, that woman would become a Ghost Mother, trapped in Wildman Valley to boost the village’s fortune.
Either way, it was the women who suffered, while the men reaped all the benefits. This bullshit tradition was certainly a calculated one.
This village had committed so many sins over the years that falling to this state was simply karmic retribution. I truly didn’t want to get involved. However, I was the one who had released the Ghost Mother. Once she finished slaughtering the village, she would inevitably move on to harm other places, so I couldn’t just ignore it.