“I’ll help you cut it,” Luo Cheng’an said, following Uncle Zhang over.
The watermelon was cut into neat slices, cool to the touch and taking the edge off the summer heat.
Luo Cheng’an was getting hungry. Xi Yu lightly slapped his hand. “You haven’t eaten all morning. Wait a little longer before you eat.”
“Oh.” Luo Cheng’an reluctantly replied, “Fine.”
The men and women of the village sat around several tables. With the breeze passing beneath the shade of the trees, it wasn’t particularly hot.
Halfway through the meal, Xi Yu’s phone rang. Seeing that it was Luo Zhixing, he got up and went to answer it.
Taking the opportunity, Luo Cheng’an quickly asked Uncle Zhang, “Uncle, what did you mean by what you said earlier?”
“What did I say?” Uncle Zhang didn’t understand at first.
“You said that without Brother Xi Yu, you wouldn’t have had the good days you have now.”
“Oh, you mean that.” Uncle Zhang put down his wine cup. He figured that since Xi Yu had brought these people into the village, they must have a very close relationship. Still, he hesitated before cautiously asking, “Do you think Xiaoyu is different from ordinary people in any way?”
Shen Qing and Luo Yuan exchanged a glance. After thinking for a moment, Luo Yuan said, “Not long ago, someone left something in our house that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Xiaoyu saved us.”
So they knew.
Uncle Zhang relaxed and slowly began, “When you first arrived, did you notice how heavy and beautiful the rice paddies looked?”
Luo Cheng’an slapped his thigh. “Absolutely. They were growing incredibly well.”
Uncle Zhang took a sip of wine. “But there were two years when the fields produced absolutely nothing, and many people died.”
The smile on Luo Cheng’an’s face faded.
Uncle Zhang shook his head. “But don’t be afraid. That’s all in the past.”
Luo Cheng’an wasn’t afraid. He quietly listened.
“The year Xiaoyu’s parents died, a tragedy happened here.”
“The one who died was Er’ya, the girl who lived at the entrance of the village. I still remember how lively she was, always smiling whenever she saw someone. But such a good girl happened to have a drunkard for a father.”
“Er’ya’s mother had died when she was little. She couldn’t endure being beaten by that drunkard anymore, so she jumped into a well and died, leaving Er’ya alone to suffer.”
“That drunkard was lazy and worthless. After his wife died, no one dared marry him again. Every time he got drunk, he would start cursing, saying that having a daughter at home was just wasting food. He wouldn’t give her anything to eat or drink.”
“The villagers couldn’t bear to watch. We secretly helped her whenever we could, but there was only so much we could do.” Uncle Zhang sighed. “Eventually, Er’ya grew up. We thought things would get better if she married and left, but she had that kind of father. Auntie Hua tried to find several families willing to marry her, but as soon as they heard about her family situation, none of them dared agree.”
…………………….
“Eventually, there was finally a family who didn’t mind. But that drunkard demanded five hundred thousand yuan right off the bat. We were all farmers making a living from the land—where would they get that kind of money? So that family backed out, and a marriage that had nearly been arranged fell through.”
“Er’ya was a beautiful girl. When that drunkard realized he couldn’t get the bride price he wanted, he actually cruelly decided to sell her to a widower in the village whose three previous wives had all died.”
Uncle Zhang slammed his hand against the table in fury. “That widower was a fucking beast!!!”
“All three women he married had been tortured to death by him. If Er’ya fell into his hands, how could she possibly survive?”
“But no matter how Er’ya begged or cried, the drunkard had made up his mind. He took the money, and that very night she was sent to the widower’s house.”
“Within just a few months, Er’ya had been tortured until she was almost unrecognizable.”
Luo Cheng’an’s expression darkened. “Then why didn’t anyone call the police?”
“The police?” Uncle Zhang gave a bitter laugh. “Of course we did. That was precisely when things got even worse!”
“The police in town actually knew that widower. Er’ya was taken away by the police and then brought back. That widower was worse than a dog or a pig!!!” Uncle Zhang’s eyes reddened. “He handed Er’ya over to the police… and then…”
Uncle Zhang couldn’t bring himself to continue. Luo Cheng’an could guess what had happened.
Shen Qing and Luo Yuan were listening too. At some point, everyone else had put down their chopsticks.
Auntie Hua wiped away her tears.
“Later, he decided Er’ya was no longer ‘clean,’ so he locked her in a cellar and started using her to make money.”
Shen Qing’s heart tightened. As a mother herself, hearing something like this felt like a knife cutting through her heart.
Auntie Hua spat to the side. “Plenty of people in the village went there. Every one of those bastards deserved to die! Not one of them was even human!”
Someone beside her patted her back.
Uncle Zhang continued, “There were people who wanted to save Er’ya. They secretly tried to get her out, but that drunkard found out. He brought a group of people and broke one of the man’s legs. After that, no one dared interfere anymore.”
“Not long afterward, Er’ya’s belly started growing. The widower thought the pregnancy would interfere with business. After she gave birth, he strangled the baby to death right then and there.”
“On the very day the baby died, Er’ya waited until the widower had gotten drunk and secretly escaped from the cellar. She picked up a stone and smashed it into the widower’s head while he was drinking beside the rice fields, killing him. Then she used a knife to cut his body into pieces and threw them into the fields before killing herself. The blood dyed the water in the rice paddies bright red.”
Shen Qing’s face had gone deathly pale. “What happened afterward?”
The village chief lowered his voice. “Afterward, the haunting began.”
“A haunting?”
“Yes. After Er’ya died, every month, one person would die in their own rice field. None of the villagers’ rice would grow anymore. It continued like that for nearly two years.”
“At that time, Xiaoyu wasn’t even three years old. The villagers felt sorry for him. He was just a little child with no one to raise him. Auntie Hua would feed him for a couple of days, then I would feed him for a couple of days. Most of the time, he stayed at the village chief’s house.”
“Later, people in the village kept dying. The village chief went around looking for people to perform rituals and had no time to look after Xiaoyu, so he left him at my house.”
“But no matter how many rituals we performed, nothing worked. People in the village kept dying, one after another.”
Luo Yuan asked, “Didn’t anyone think about leaving?”
“How could we not? Several of the men who had gone to the cellar tried to flee as soon as the trouble started. But the moment they left the village entrance, they suddenly bled from all seven orifices and died.”
“Their families buried them, but that very night, their bodies would appear in the rice fields, soaked in water until they were completely unrecognizable.”
“After that, no one dared to leave.”
“But if we stayed, the crops wouldn’t grow. There was nothing to eat, and eventually everyone would die in the village anyway.”
“When the rice jars were almost empty and everyone had run out of options, one night, all the men in the village gathered at the place where Er’ya had died. They knelt there and burned paper offerings, begging her to spare everyone.”
“That very night, a huge amount of water suddenly burst out of the fields. Even the rice paddies that had refused to grow suddenly began growing wildly, desperately pulling us toward the fields.”
As Uncle Zhang spoke, fear appeared on his face.
“That night, if it hadn’t been for Xiaoyu, everyone would have died…”
At the time, the men had gone outside, leaving their children and wives at home.
“When our lives were hanging by a thread, Xiaoyu somehow came running out.”
“Xiaoyu called out to Er’ya as soon as he came out. He kept saying something over and over. That tiny little child bit into his own hand until it bled. I don’t even know what he drew, but the rice plants that had been wrapping themselves around people suddenly let go.”
“My head had already been pushed into the water. If Xiaoyu had arrived even a moment later, I would have been dead.”
“At that time, Xiaoyu could barely run properly. He stumbled his way into the fields and kept talking toward some particular spot. We were too far away to hear what he was saying clearly, and none of us dared go closer.”
“We only saw Xiaoyu cut open his palm. It was more than half an hour before he finally came out of the fields.”
“When he came out, his face was frighteningly pale. He collapsed to the ground and fell unconscious for three days.”
“After Xiaoyu woke up, he told us to rebuild Er’ya’s grave and burn every piece of paper offering we could. Only after that did the crops begin growing again, and no one died anymore.”
“But for a long time afterward, Xiaoyu would still frequently lose consciousness. We figured that this child must have been some kind of immortal reincarnated into the human world. He had probably used half his own life to send Er’ya away. Otherwise, everyone in Qingliang Village would have died that night.”
Shen Qing and Luo Yuan felt their scalps prickle as they listened, and their heartache for Xi Yu only deepened.
They had seen what Xi Yu was capable of, but they had never seen what he had been like as a child.
A child that young had managed to resolve something like that. Whatever he had sacrificed back then must have been far greater than anything he could endure now.
And afterward, he had suffered from poor health for such a long time.
How difficult must it have been?
Xi Yu hung up the phone and turned around.
The scene was unnaturally quiet. Countless pairs of eyes were staring straight at him.
Luo Yuan, Shen Qing, and Luo Cheng’an all looked like they were about to cry again.
Xi Yu asked in confusion, “What’s wrong with all of you?”
“Brother! Waaaah…”
Xi Yu: “…”
He understood.
Apparently, they had been talking about what happened more than ten years ago.
“Stop howling,” Xi Yu said. “Hurry up and eat.”
The village chief spoke up. “That’s right. Eat, eat. What happened in the past is in the past.”
“I’ll say the same thing I always do: do more good deeds.”
If they hadn’t done good deeds back then—feeding Xiaoyu one mouthful at a time—there would have been no chance for them to be saved.
Auntie Hua had just picked up her chopsticks when she suddenly slapped her thigh.
“If you hadn’t said that, I would’ve forgotten! I forgot to leave food for that crazy girl at the village entrance. I’ll take some over right now.”
As she spoke, Auntie Hua grabbed an old bowl, filled it with rice and dishes, and hurried outside.
Luo Cheng’an immediately became curious again. “What crazy girl?”
The village chief sighed when the subject came up.
“About two years ago, a girl who was half out of her mind came here. She didn’t even have any shoes on, and she had a fever. She nearly froze to death.”
“We couldn’t help Er’ya back then, but we thought that if we could help this girl, we should. We treated her illness and even registered her case at the local police station in the city, hoping that if her family saw the report, they might come looking for her.”
“But it’s been two years without a single word. A couple of days ago, Auntie Hua went into the city to buy some things and asked again.”
As the village chief spoke, Auntie Hua returned carrying the old bowl.
“That crazy girl is fine sometimes and completely out of it at other times. She was perfectly fine when I brought her food this morning, but now she’s started saying something again. She keeps saying she’s really Liu… Liu-something. It’s pretty creepy.”
…………………….
Xi Yu’s hand paused around his chopsticks.
At the village entrance, someone suddenly thought of Xi Yu and turned his head toward him.
“Xiaoyu, would you have time to go take a look later? There might be something attached to that girl.”
The incident with Er’ya had been so bizarre that it had left a deep impression on everyone. People who made their living from the land depended on the heavens for their livelihood and naturally believed in ghosts and spirits. After what had happened back then, they were even more convinced.
Even now, on the first and fifteenth days of every lunar month, the villagers would take turns visiting Er’ya’s grave.