??

  Some people say that aura is something innate, like I'm always a harmless good kid wherever I go, and the fat man belongs to the typical bad boy type. Neither of us has the potential to be a leader, Zha Wenbin is the kind of person who is calm and collected in his work, while Ye Qiu is the type that if he doesn't make a move, then nothing will happen, but once he makes a move, it will be earth-shattering.

  Whether it's a friend or an enemy, you can never guess what he wants to do next because his thinking is always 0.01 seconds faster than yours. This kind of person is born for the battlefield. He has incomparable killing intent and an icy heart, with ruthless and accurate moves, and emotional fluctuations that can be controlled within a range of zero.

  Zha Wenbin said that apart from me, Ye Qiu is the most unsuitable person for cultivation. This kind of person has only one faith in his heart, and that is himself. Only he can control himself, convince himself, and any external force is just a fleeting cloud to Ye Qiu.

  That woman would bite me and cower in fear at the sight of Cha Wenbin, but in Ye Qiu's arms she was exceptionally calm, her slender body hanging from that somewhat slightly thin man, dragging the last faint light to slowly walk towards the distance.

  The woman surnamed Cheng had a very nice name, Cheng Ziyin. This name must have been taken from the sentence in the Book of Songs "Qingqingziyin, youyouwuxin". She lay quietly in Ye Qiu's arms and fell asleep, perhaps she had never slept so sweetly before. All the way back to the dormitory, she still clung tightly to Ye Qiu and refused to let go.

  The onlookers dispersed, and no one would really risk their lives to gamble on being a hero. It wasn't until that night at dinner that Director Huang finally revealed the truth: this woman had originally been bought by that man.

  Huang Shouzhang poured me a glass of wine and said, "Our family is poor, in order to let our son marry a daughter-in-law, we sold this girl here. We are all distant relatives who can't be honest with each other, so let's just turn a blind eye. Xia Laoxiong, you should also be more tolerant, it's not easy to make a living these days."

  "How did it go crazy?"

  "Huang sighed and said, 'It's all because they didn't listen. That girl is stubborn, and that man is lazy and gambles every day. The business he does is also shady.'"

  "It doesn't seem like it," interjected Cha Wenbin, "I think that girl's eyes are not unfocused, but rather clear and bright, not like someone who has lost their mind."

  "Mr. Cha, she went to the hospital for a check-up and they said there's nothing wrong with her, but you've seen it yourself, as soon as she came back, she was like that."

  "I know!" Yuan Xiaobai smiled slyly and said, "You men don't understand women at all. That sister is deliberately making herself look sloppy and pretending to be crazy, she doesn't want that man who bought her to...".

  "Hmm, Xiaobai makes sense. I think she's quite good with Lao Er." I also chuckled and said to everyone, "Could it be that Lao Er's spring is coming?"

  The crowd dispersed, and the woman was still hanging in Ye Qiu's arms. Yuan Xiaobai walked in with a basin of water and said, "You go out first, I'll help her clean up."

  Ye Qiu was stunned for a moment, and Yuan Xiaobai laughed and scolded: "I still want to change her clothes, do you want to stand here and watch?" She handed the towel in her hand to Ye Qiu's face and said: "Or are you coming?"

  I happened to be passing by the door and bumped into Ye Qiu, who came out of the room with a bright red face. This is a rare thing, this guy can actually be shy too... I wanted to go in and take a look at what was going on, but Yuan Xiaobai came over and gave me a cold shoulder, saying: "Get lost, get lost, get as far away as you can."

  Looking at the river on the opposite bank of Zhuangyuan Village, my thoughts and those of Cha Wenbin surged up again. The coal mine from back then no longer exists, and half of the mountain was blown away by Dragon King. I heard that it was around that time when the people of Zhuangyuan Village began to slowly decline, and the lifespan of this village is just like the ancestral hall inside, already nearing its twilight years.

  "This is my third time here, this time I don't want to return empty-handed, if alive see the person, if dead see the corpse."

  "Hmm." He calmly responded with a single word.

  "Wen Bin, how about letting that woman be Ye Qiu's wife? I think they're quite a good match."

  "Ha! You should ask him yourself. When did you start acting as a matchmaker? Bringing back a crazy woman isn't going to bring him good fortune, is it?"

  "You said she wasn't crazy, didn't you?" "That wasn't me, it was Xiaobai." Cha Wenbin paused for a moment and then told me: "Although this woman's eyes are clear, there is a faint black aura swirling between her eyebrows. I suspect that she may have encountered some unclean thing."

  It's not surprising to encounter dirty things in this area, you know that the big temple just a few hundred meters away from us is full of such things. Cha Wenbin's analysis makes sense, I think that woman is quite pitiful and doesn't seem to be pretending.

  "Why don't we finish eating and go out for a walk?" he suggested to me.

  This person usually doesn't have this hobby. Based on my understanding of him, I reckon he's got some ideas: "Are you going to go find his husband?"

  "You're clever, go get Ye Qiu up here, I'm no good at reasoning with barbarians."

  "You can go find my uncle-in-law to understand the situation first." My uncle-in-law is Zhou Bocai, a native of Zhuangyuan Village. He came today but hasn't gone to pay his respects yet, so I went to the village's small grocery store and bought two bottles of wine and a pack of cigarettes, bringing Cha Wenbin and Ye Qiu over with me. Seeing me arrive, he was very polite, and knowing what had happened in the afternoon, he got straight to the point.

  His name is Zhou Yuanhua, and he belongs to the more backward class in this village. A few years ago, his family received a dividend from the village, and the old man fell ill in bed. Zhou Yuanhua is an unfilial son who never cares about his father's life or death. He is proficient in eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling, and in just a few years, he has ruined his family to the point of bankruptcy.

  At first, Zhou Yuanhua still had some spare money, and this girl was bought by Zhou Yuanhua. He said that when the Zhou family married a daughter-in-law, something unexpected happened. According to their local customs, when the bride arrived at the gate of the house, she could not get off the sedan chair. She had to go to the ancestral hall first, recognize her ancestors and return to her clan, so that the clan leader could write her name into the genealogy, which was considered a proper marriage.

  It turned out to be in the ancestral hall.

  Because the girl herself was forced, so all the way she was crying and wailing. At that time, the old patriarch was still there, and the sedan chair had not yet entered the ancestral hall gate. A sedan bearer in front tripped and fell, directly throwing the bride out of the sedan chair. At that moment, the old patriarch's face turned black. Why? This is the ancestor refusing to recognize her and not allowing her to enter the door.

  "Don't look down on our village, it's got a lot of rules. Zhou Yuanhua's dad and the clan leader are cousins, and that relationship was passable when the old man could still hold up the family gate. It took a few red envelopes to persuade the clan leader to put aside his pride and let us into the ancestral hall."

  "In our ancestral hall, there is an old ancestor, the old ancestor of the Zhou family. You must not go out and talk nonsense about this." My uncle-in-law specially reminded me: "This old ancestor left a rule at that time. People who enter the Zhou family ancestral hall must first be recognized by him. The girls from outside have to cut their fingers and drip blood on the coffin of the old ancestor. If the blood seeps in, it means consent; if the blood stays on the coffin, it means refusal."

  "What's the result?" I asked.

  "Hey, that girl didn't know what was going on either. All ten of her fingers were cut open by someone, and the blood she shed was a whole big bowlful - not a single drop seeped into the ground." My uncle's wife said vividly: "I was there in person at the time, I saw it with my own eyes. The father and son of the Zhou family knelt down to kowtow and beg for mercy, they made that girl suffer so much. In previous years, whoever got married would go through this ritual, including when your aunt came here to get married, she also shed blood. According to what I heard, the girl from the Yuanhua family was the second person in Shuangyu Village's history to be disowned by her ancestors - the first one was during the Ming dynasty, Wan Liyuan's time. It's said that after being disowned, that first person was immediately chased out."

  "Then why did they keep her?"

  "That's not just money, the Zhou family spent 3,000 yuan to buy it!" Brother-in-law stretched out three fingers and shook them: "Three thousand, at that time, one year's savings would be around 100 yuan. Our village is considered good, with some extra dividends, which is over 300 yuan. This is equivalent to the income of an ordinary family for twenty years."

  "My maternal uncle continued: 'The ancestors do not acknowledge, the Zhou family father and son naturally went to retreat, but the girl's family does not acknowledge either. The person is clear and white, let you take her away, the sedan chair has been sat, the suona has been blown, and the matchmaker and witnesses are all present. Now who knows what happened to the girl? A married daughter is like spilled water, and besides, for the sake of his son's marriage, he spent a lot of money, but now he doesn't want to acknowledge it.'"

  "Then bring it back?"

  "It's not like that, after making a fuss for over a month, the girl's family was just a bunch of lazy bones. After bringing her back, the clan leader naturally refused to acknowledge her, and even told Zhou Yuanhua that if he had an illegitimate child with this girl, the Zhou family father and son would disappear from Shuangyuan Village forever. The ancestral bloodline that is not recognized by the ancestors must not appear here, and it's a threat to take away their share of the profits, so Zhou Yuanhua was stuck and couldn't do anything about it. Several times, he tried to find someone to marry her off to someone else, but as soon as people heard that this girl was a widow-maker, a unlucky star, whoever married her would be unlucky, this rumor spread far and wide, and Zhou Yuanhua ended up marrying a woman who could only be looked at but not touched, and kept her at home."

  "What happened to him later?"

  "Actually, that girl is really not bad, she's also pretty, especially when it comes to her old husband, there's nothing to say. After she entered the house, Old Zhou soon had a stroke and was bedridden, with feces and urine all over his pants. At first, it was always that girl who took care of him. Later, I guess Yuanhua that kid was scared, he had no place to vent his anger, and didn't dare touch her, they say whoever sleeps with her will die, it's a curse. So he started beating her, sometimes in the middle of the night after getting drunk, sometimes early in the morning, even breaking several thick wooden sticks."

  "Doesn't the village care?"

  "Big nephew, you're joking, how can this be managed? From a reasonable perspective, she hasn't even crossed the threshold yet. But from a practical perspective, he bought her back with his own money. Whoever dares to speak out of turn will get a response: if you can't stand it, then buy her away yourself and pay up! That's how it is, and everyone got used to it later on. Saying she's crazy was just something from last year, the police even came to deal with it, but in the end, nothing came of it. It's really quite pitiful."

  ...