Chapter 349
Chapter 349
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 349
>Chapter Title: Stele
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Looking at the blurry afterimage before her eyes, Bai Lingmiao remembered. That child was her from when she was little. This was something that had happened long, long ago.
Bai Lingmiao watched as her grandfather picked her up and placed her on his neck, running and jumping among those ceramic figures like a child, shouting noisily in his mouth to make her younger self giggle nonstop.
She silently followed behind them, gradually recalling everything that had happened to her in this place back then.
“Wah wah wah wah~ Wah wah~~” Bai Lingmiao watched as her younger self burst into tears, sitting in the corner wearing crotchless pants, head thrown back wailing loudly. Her body and hands were covered in mud.
“What’s wrong? Little girl? Who bullied you?” An old woman with graying hair hurried over and picked up that Bai Lingmiao.
“Wah wah wah~~ Wah wah” Nestled in the old woman’s arms, Bai Lingmiao pointed her chubby little finger at the corner, babbling words from her mouth with three teeth that only she herself could understand.
“Oh~ So it scared our good little girl, huh? Don’t cry, don’t cry. Watch Grandma get revenge for you!”
The old woman took Bai Lingmiao’s hand and went to the wall, stomping her foot while saying, “Hey! For scaring our good little girl, you bad thing! I’ll stomp you dead, stomp you dead!”
Once Bai Lingmiao saw her younger self stop crying under her grandmother’s comfort, an extraordinarily terrifying scene suddenly jumped into her mind, and her expression changed inexplicably. “I remember now.”
“Remember what?”
“I remember what it was that scared me back then!” Bai Lingmiao rushed forward, scattering her past self and past grandmother.
She came to the wall and raised her sharp black nails, inserting them into the unusually solid rammed earth and starting to dig.
“Miaomiao! What’s wrong with you?” Chun Xiaoman walked over, looking at her good sister digging at the ground with great concern.
After asking several times with no answer, she steeled herself, drew her long sword, and stabbed it into the rammed earth, digging along with her.
Seeing this, Gao Zhijian on the side rushed over as well, removing a piece of armor from his body and viciously inserting it into the soil, prying it up with force.
“Treasure? Is there treasure buried in the soil?” Gouwa rushed over too, his face full of excitement as he joined in to help.
This activity didn’t last long. With Gouwa’s blood-curdling scream, everyone’s hands stopped.
Bai Lingmiao’s trembling hands reached toward the woman buried in the mud with her eyes tightly closed. Her eyeballs were shriveled and sewn shut with thread, her face ashen blue and looking utterly horrifying.
A large hand reached out and blocked Bai Lingmiao’s hand. “…This……this is... this is a human pillar... pillar...”
Before he could finish, Bai Lingmiao continued digging. More and more corpses were unearthed from the soil. They were pressed tightly against each other, like bricks stacked closely together.
Not just adults—the buried ones ranged from young to old, all ages.
After digging for a while, Bai Lingmiao stopped. She could already see that these people weren’t buried randomly. Their positions were right along the edge of the entire great hall, and each had a lotus flower drawn on the back of their hand. Clearly, it was deliberately designed.
“They’re using people to build the foundation. Covering such a huge area completely—how many dead bodies must be buried underground? What kind of people would be so heartless?” Looking at the shocking scene before him, Gouwa said in utter shock.
As soon as Gouwa spoke, he realized he’d said the wrong thing and instinctively covered his mouth, glancing toward Bai Lingmiao.
This place was the Bai family ancestral hall. Anyone could guess who had buried all these dead bodies underground.
Bai Lingmiao tried hard to hold it in, but how could she possibly hold back on something like this? She cried as loudly as she had back then wearing her tiger-head hat, only this time there was no grandmother to comfort her.
All of Bai Lingmiao’s fond memories of her hometown collapsed in this moment. Even more tragic was that she didn’t even have anyone left to question or blame now.
They had all been burned to ashes by Li Huowang, not a single one left.
“Why?! Dad! Mom!! Why did you kill so many people?! Why did you become such bad people?!”
“Don’t you know these people might be someone else’s dad or mom! Someone else’s grandpa or grandma? Do you know how much it hurts to lose family?!”
Seeing Bai Lingmiao on the verge of collapse, Chun Xiaoman quickly pulled her into her arms and softly comforted her. “It’s okay, this isn’t your fault, this isn’t your fault.”
Gradually, Bai Lingmiao’s crying stopped. She had cried enough, and she already understood that crying wouldn’t change anything.
Bai Lingmiao wiped her forcibly held-back tears and crawled out from her embrace. “No, this is my fault. This is the Bai family’s fault! Since it’s our fault, then as a Bai family member, I have to take responsibility!”
One by one, the stiff corpses were dragged out from that secret chamber, then carted by wagon to Niuxin Mountain and buried.
Their bodies were extremely rigid, as if filled with lead, completely set like stone, so much so that Bai Lingmiao couldn’t even give them a proper burial.
For every corpse that was buried and had a stele erected, Bai Lingmiao would kowtow three times, offer incense, and apologize. She knew it might be useless, but it was the only thing she could do.
There were many dead in that secret chamber. They were busy for a very long time, until Lv Zhuangyuan’s opera troupe returned from touring before they finally finished burying them all.
By the time they were done, Bai Lingmiao looked extremely haggard, her face gaunt and thin.
Bai Lingmiao lifted her head after kowtowing three times to the stele, her pink pupils bloodshot as she looked at the row of graves before her. Her chapped lips parted slightly as she asked Chun Xiaoman beside her, “Sister Xiaoman, since they did such evil things, why did they raise me to be so kind-hearted?”
“If I’d turned out as bad as them, I wouldn’t feel this bad right now.”
Chun Xiaoman had no answer to this question.
Lv Zhuangyuan, who was helping shovel dirt nearby, paused his work, wiped his sweat, and sighed. “Little lady, this old man’s a father too. I reckon I can guess what your dad and mom were thinking.”
“Truth is, your dad and mom knew doing this kind of thing too much would bring heavenly retribution, so they didn’t want you involved. Plus, you’re a girl.”
“A married daughter is like spilled water. As long as they kept it from you until you were older, found you a good husband to marry into, then whatever happened back home wouldn’t have anything to do with you. In the end, they were doing it for your own good.”
“For my own good?” Bai Lingmiao awkwardly opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but it stuck in her throat.
Chun Xiaoman sighed and gently hugged her in comfort. In a situation like this, anything an outsider like her said would be pointless.
“Sister Xiaoman.”
“Hm? What is it?” Chun Xiaoman tilted her head slightly, gently nuzzling Bai Lingmiao’s white hair.
“Even if my family were all such evil people, I still can’t forgive Senior Brother Li for killing them in my heart.”
(End of chapter)