Chapter 174.2

After throwing everyone onto the second floor, Xue Liangliang went back downstairs alone.

Grandpa Tian watched his back, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

He had seen all the others before at the Zhao family home in Shitou Village. Only this man was new.

He seemed to belong to that group, yet judging from the way he carried himself, he did not quite seem like one of them.

At the same time, that strange sense of affinity Grandpa Tian felt whenever he came into contact with him only made him more uneasy.

Xue Liangliang walked over to the two disciples of the Corpse Gu Sect, sat down casually in front of them, and lifted the lid off the pot before them. Inside, meat congee was bubbling away.

“I’m hungry.”

The two Corpse Gu Sect disciples merely looked at him without saying a word.

“Could you share a bowl of hot congee with me? I was soaked in the water for so long. I just want something warm.”

The two exchanged a glance.

This was the first time anyone had ever dared eat their food.

If he were an outsider who knew nothing, that would have been one thing. But he clearly knew the people upstairs, so there was no way he was from outside the circle.

Besides, Zhao Yi’s group had already made them deeply wary, and this man had just directly ordered Zhao Yi’s group around.

And as for all those unconscious wounded people who had been carried in earlier... he was probably the one who had saved them all by himself.

“Go ahead and eat.”

“Thanks.”

Xue Liangliang served himself a heaping bowl.

“Uh, do you have chopsticks?”

The woman took out a pair from her sleeve. They were gray, and she looked at Xue Liangliang with a half-smile.

Without hesitation, Xue Liangliang reached out and took them. He stirred the congee in his bowl and started eating at once.

Poison or not, he had no choice.

Still, the congee really did taste good.

He asked, “What kind of meat is this? It’s delicious.”

The man was just about to answer when Xue Liangliang cut himself off first:

“Forget it. Pretend I didn’t ask. I don’t want to ruin my appetite.”

“Want some wine?” the woman asked.

Xue Liangliang shook his head. “Drinking can cause trouble.”

The woman said, “We brewed it ourselves. It’s very mild. It won’t get you drunk.”

“In that case, I can have a taste.”

The woman placed both hands on her knees. Then a third hand emerged from inside her clothes, holding a gourd out to Xue Liangliang.

That hand was deathly pale, mottled with corpse spots. Yellow mud was lodged beneath the fingernails. It was like a block of ice, even giving off a faint white mist.

Xue Liangliang set down his bowl and chopsticks. With his left hand he took the gourd, while with his right he caught that hand, spread open its palm, and studied the lines. Then he casually felt along the wrist and up the arm.

“Heh, this won’t do. How come there isn’t even the slightest bit of warmth?”

That reaction made the man sit up straight.

The woman, on the other hand, looked puzzled. “Warmth?”

Xue Liangliang pulled out the stopper and took a sip. The wine was sweet, a little cloying, but in the mountains in winter, it was just right.

“At the very least, it ought to be a little warm. More like a living person.”

The woman asked, “Can the dead become alive?”

Xue Liangliang said, “Is that so hard?”

The woman shook her head. “I wouldn’t know how to do it.”

Xue Liangliang said, “Use your own head and think.”

After pondering for a moment, the woman offered a guess. “Grafting living limbs onto it?”

The mouthful of wine in Xue Liangliang’s mouth nearly sprayed out. He tried his best to hold himself back and avoid giving himself away, but the more he tried to suppress it, the harder it was to endure.

“Cough, cough... cough, cough...”

To keep them from seeing his face, he covered his mouth, lifted his head, and coughed.

The woman also lifted her head to look at the sky. Was this some taboo that even Heaven’s law could not be allowed to know?

She immediately rose to her feet, bowed deeply to Xue Liangliang, and said sincerely, “Thank you for your guidance, Senior. How may I repay you?”

After he finished coughing, Xue Liangliang put down the gourd, picked up the half bowl of congee still at his feet, and said:

“It’s all in the wine, and it’s all in the congee.”

The woman looked at the man, and the man looked at the woman. The two of them already felt it was no longer quite appropriate to remain seated.

The man crossed his hands before him and asked, “Does Your Excellency not know who we are?”

Xue Liangliang replied, “You tell me. Do I know or not?”

The man asked again, “Since Your Excellency knows our identities, why would you still guide and help us?”

Xue Liangliang fell silent for a moment, then said:

“When you look at a problem, you cannot look only at the surface. You have to look at it from a developmental perspective, especially when dealing with regional issues. You must respect objective factors such as history, geography, customs, and so on. You cannot just condemn everything with one sweep. Only after gaining a deep understanding can you guide things properly, so that in the future, forces may be united.”

Teach without discrimination?

Both of them tensed up all over again.

After Xue Liangliang finished that bowl of congee, the woman stood and proactively took his bowl to serve him more, while the man bent over to add firewood. In any case, both of them busied themselves and did not sit back down.

The second bowl went down quickly, and Xue Liangliang began quietly waiting for the poison to take effect.

If there was poison in the congee, he was dead for sure.

He looked here and there, not knowing what to say, yet unable to let the atmosphere go cold.

Seeing that the man and woman were both squatting by the campfire now, he asked, “Why aren’t you sitting?”

They exchanged a glance and each gave an answer:

“We’ve been sitting too long.”

“The stone is hard.”

“True enough.” Xue Liangliang nodded. He shifted himself too and sat on the ground. Being closer to the fire made the warmth against his body far more comfortable. “By the way, are you two a couple?”

The woman lowered her head.

The man said, “We cannot marry.”

Xue Liangliang asked, “Why not?”

The woman brushed her hair aside. “Only a person and a person can marry.”

Xue Liangliang shook his head and casually tossed a little wood chip into the fire.

“Your thinking is too narrow.”

The man looked stunned, while the woman looked delighted.

Xue Liangliang thought of her and said, “Even if one of them isn’t human, they can still marry.”

At those words, both the man and the woman began breathing faster.

Xue Liangliang thought of his unborn child and said:

“Not only can they marry, they can even get pregnant and have children.”

Lies require acting. Truth does not.

Only someone who had truly experienced it could reveal such genuine emotional texture.

The moment Xue Liangliang finished speaking, the two of them turned at the same time and faced him in a half-kneeling posture.

“Please teach us, Senior.”

...

On the second floor, Xu Ming was no longer standing with his arms crossed or leaning against a pillar. Instead, he was staring down into the courtyard with an extremely serious expression.

On the roof, Sun Yan had also stopped swinging her legs. She even had the birds beside her move a little farther away as she watched what was happening below.

These two people from the Corpse Gu Sect were the clue their team had picked up in this wave. The legendary Saintess of Miao疆 from history whom they were investigating had come from this very sect.

They were not afraid of the pair, of course, but they had never once let down their guard around them.

Grandpa Tian was also watching the scene below. After ladling out a bowl of medicinal broth, he carried it carefully into the room.

The two people from the Corpse Gu Sect downstairs did not know who the young man’s group was, but Zhao Yi’s group did.

No matter how far the Dragon King’s clan had declined, it was still the Dragon King’s clan. And now that two branches had become one, though their numbers were few, every last one left behind was someone not to be trifled with.

Take that one from last time, for example. Their young master had apologized in front of him by undergoing the punishment of three cuts and six holes, not daring to be the slightest bit perfunctory, nor daring to ask the family elders to plead on his behalf.

“Young Master, the medicine is ready.”

“Mhm, give it to me.”

Grandpa Tian wanted to bend down and whisper something in Zhao Yi’s ear.

Zhao Yi raised a hand. “If you have something to say, say it plainly. Brother Yuan isn’t an outsider.”

Zhao Yi thought to himself, This stupid old man, did he forget this guy has excellent hearing? No matter how softly you whisper to me, to this young man it’ll sound like you’re blasting it through a loudspeaker.

Grandpa Tian’s old face twisted with hesitation. He did not know how to say it, and in the end he could only force out one sentence:

“I was worried the medicine might be bitter. Should I bring some sugar cubes?”

Zhao Yi shot him a glance and said again, “Whatever you were trying to say just now, say it. Stop hiding it.”

Having received a clear order, Grandpa Tian said, “That man who brought them in seems very unusual. The two people from the Corpse Gu Sect are already kneeling in front of him.”

“Oh, got it.” Zhao Yi waved him off.

Grandpa Tian left the room, wiping sweat from his brow.

Zhao Yi picked up the spoon and fed Li Zhuiyuan the medicine. Li Zhuiyuan cooperated and drank it.

When he was done, Li Zhuiyuan smiled.

He had remembered the time Ah Li fed him medicine.

Back then, he had gone blind from overexertion. Every morning, Ah Li would carry over the medicine Aunt Liu had decocted and come to his bedside to feed him. Once, by accident, she had poured the whole bowl right over his head.

“Brother Yuan, what are you smiling about?”

“I remembered some happy things from the past.”

“You’re thinking of the one who used to feed you medicine, aren’t you?”

“Mhm.”

Zhao Yi stood up, went to the washbasin, washed his hands, then picked up a towel and dried them as he walked back.

“On the way here, I heard cries for help coming from the tulou, so I got itchy hands and broke open the formation. Those two told me the whole village was full of ghosts, then ran up the mountain.”

Li Zhuiyuan nodded at that.

Zhao Yi had deliberately let them go. He had probably followed them to the Zhao Jun Temple on the mountain as well, and had also discovered the cracked stone stele there with nothing inside it.

“Brother Yuan, that was my oversight. I really didn’t expect you’d set up such a simple formation. If it had been even a little more complicated, I never would have dared break it open directly.”

“Mhm.”

“But Brother Yuan, I truly admire you. I followed the clues and rushed here as fast as I could, and even so I still arrived a step too late. This wave, which should have been completed by the two of us working together, was actually finished by you alone while leading the team.

So now all I can do is applaud you.

Not only did I not even get a sip of the soup, I now have to hurry up and worry about the next wave.”

Li Zhuiyuan looked at Zhao Yi, and Zhao Yi looked back at Li Zhuiyuan.

Then Zhao Yi crouched down and brought his face close, speaking to Li Zhuiyuan seriously:

“The Corpse Gu Sect likes hunting strange corpses. They may have a master-disciple lineage, but they have no mountain gate. And among themselves, open rivalry, dirty tricks, and mutual slaughter are the norm.

Without a mountain gate, they have no ties holding them back. They’re a bunch of lunatics who dare do anything and fear nothing.

Brother Yuan, tell me, if I take my people and leave right now, and those two are left behind, what do you think they’ll do next?

Whatever the two of them do, it’ll have nothing to do with me.”

As he said this, Zhao Yi leaned even closer, almost right beside Li Zhuiyuan’s ear, and whispered:

“I’m betting that guy downstairs is only pretending to be an expert.”

Li Zhuiyuan’s expression remained calm as ever. He said lightly:

“Once the bets are placed, no more hands off the table. You only get one chance to place your wager.”