On the east side of Liuxi Village, the innocent village chief was carried out by the villagers of Liuxi Village.
Granny Sun's authority in the village seemed to far surpass that of the village chief. Furthermore, she used the argument that "the village chief is blind and is an outsider in disguise" to justify her claim. The blind Villagers couldn't tell whether the village chief was real or fake, so everyone naturally listened to Granny Sun.
Several young men abandoned the village chief outside the village and were about to turn and leave when the village chief struggled to his feet and roared, "You all believe that old hag, but you don't believe me?" He suddenly grabbed one of the young men by the collar, "Fifth brother, we grew up together. Can't you tell if I'm real or not?"
The young man paused, then murmured, "Your voice... it sounds a lot like my fourth brother's, but Granny Sun has no reason to lie to us... Besides, if you really can't see, how could you spot me so easily in the crowd?"
The fifth brother was in the crowd at the time, and the village chief did indeed grab him immediately.
Those around immediately echoed—
"Yeah, how can you see where Xiao Wu is?"
"If he can see it, it definitely isn't Fourth Brother!"
" Granny Sun is right, he must be an outsider, pretending to be our village chief to steal our treasure!"
"Maybe he stole the stones from Aunt Qin's house!"
Hearing the growing skepticism around him, the village chief paused, then dejectedly released his grip, saying, "That old hag, it's definitely her doing. She's in such a hurry to drive me out of the village because I've always suspected her..."
Suddenly, a girl's clear voice rang out from the side: "You should leave now, our village doesn't welcome outsiders."
The speaker was Xiao Qing, Granny Sun's apprentice. The village chief looked up at her and met her eyes, which seemed unfocused yet also seemed to be staring at him.
He paused, then smiled wryly, " Xiao Qing, you don't trust your fourth uncle either?"
Liu Qing said earnestly, "My fourth uncle has been blind since he was a child, we all know that."
village head:"..."
The dozen or so relatives and friends in front of him all looked wary. Clearly, the continuous thefts in the village over the past two days had caused widespread panic, and Granny Sun was taking advantage of this to slander him as not being the village chief. He could indeed see the things, and even four mouths couldn't clear his name.
After the Villagers left, he reluctantly turned and walked towards the farmland, intending to sleep there for the night and figure out an explanation the next day. However, he had only taken a few steps when a tall man gently placed a hand on his shoulder, and another man smiled and said, "Hello, village chief, we have some questions we'd like to ask you. Would you like to come with us?"
The village chief's expression changed: "Who are you?!"
Without saying a word, Yu Hanjiang twisted his hands behind his back, covered his mouth, and dragged him away.
The village chief's eyes widened as he began to struggle frantically: "Ugh... let me go... ugh..."
Xiao Lou: "..."
Captain Yu is too ruthless; he's simple and brutal, just kidnapping people.
The village chief probably thinks of them as bastard kidnappers.
Xiao Lou sighed and tried to speak gently, "Don't worry, we mean no harm. We just want to know some things."
To avoid being discovered by the Villager and causing unnecessary trouble, Yu Hanjiang simply tied the village chief up in Peach Blossom Spring.
The village chief struggled with muffled noises until he entered a new world filled with peach blossoms. His eyes widened suddenly – he had never seen such a beautiful place in all the years he had lived in the village!
Seeing him in a daze, Yu Hanjiang released him and said calmly, "This is our Outsider territory. You can think of it as a kind of sorcery or illusion. You won't be discovered here, so feel free to talk to us."
Xiao Lou smiled and handed him a bamboo tube of water: "Drink some water and calm your nerves. I had no choice but to tie you up earlier. If the Villagers come back, it will be very difficult to handle."
The village chief's face was grim: "What do you want to do with me after you've tied me up here?"
"Our goal is actually the same as yours: to find out why the Villagers of Liuxi Village are blind." Seeing the village chief's strange expression, Xiao Lou continued, "Of course, you probably don't believe that we are trying to help the Villagers out of kindness. You can think of it as us being hired by someone else to investigate this matter. After we find out the truth, we can get a generous reward."
Ye Qi glanced at Xiao Lou with mixed feelings, thinking to himself, " Professor Xiao is really good at bluffing. He's got the village chief completely bewildered by him!"
Yu Hanjiang also looked at Xiao Lou and saw that Xiao Lou looked serious. Yu Hanjiang did not expose him, but instead echoed, "That's right. We came to Liuxi Village because we heard that the village has very precious jade resources. The boss asked us to investigate the reason why the Villagers went blind. If you, the village chief, are willing to cooperate, perhaps we can uncover the secret of Liuxi Village together and restore the sight of your descendants."
Xiao Lou followed up, saying, "In your village, only you can see. Your companions can't see anything. You're still so young, you'll definitely get married and have children. Do you really want your children to be blind in the future?"
The village chief's face paled slightly; clearly, Xiao Lou's words had struck a nerve.
He turned around, slumped down on a stone under the peach tree, sighed softly, and said in a low voice, "That's why I haven't dared to get married. Yue waited for me for five years, but I didn't dare to marry her. I was afraid that our child would be blind like other children born into other families..."
He deeply
Taking a breath, she looked up at Xiao Lou: "I've always suspected that the Villagers of Liuxi Village are blind not because they're cursed, but I can't figure out why. Can you really help me find out?"
Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang exchanged a glance and nodded simultaneously: "Of course, but we need your cooperation."
The village chief was driven out. He couldn't explain why he could see. Besides, the Villagers trusted Granny Sun more than Ren Yuan, the young village chief. He was alone and helpless. Although he couldn't completely trust these outsiders, he was now desperate and had no choice but to take a gamble.
He thought about it carefully, and finally gritted his teeth and nodded: "If you can really help our descendants regain their sight, you can take all the jade resources in the village! Anyway, if we can't see, there's no use for those broken stones!"
Xiao Lou smiled and said, "It would be best if you could think it through."
Yu Hanjiang asked directly, "What's your name? How did you become the village chief at such a young age?"
The village chief smiled wryly and said, "My name is Liu the Fourth, and I am the fourth son in the Liu family this generation. It is said that because my grandfather was the village chief and my father was also the village chief, they made me continue to be the village chief after I grew up."
Xiao Lou exclaimed in surprise, "Can the village chief really pass down his skills like this?"
Liu the Fourth said, "The village chief is just a title. Our village only celebrates the festival once a year. People don't interact much otherwise and each celebrates their own. My role is to organize the Autumn Harvest Festival every year. After the wheat harvest, everyone holds a ceremony on the east side of the village to commemorate the dead. Granny Sun usually presides over it."
Yu Hanjiang frowned: "Offering sacrifices to the dead? Did she say who she was offering sacrifices to?"
Liu the Fourth said, "They say it's to commemorate our ancestors."
Granny Sun is clearly lying, because the Villagers ' ancestors should be buried in the dilapidated temple on the western hill, in that bone pit that buried dozens of people. Xiao Lou and his group didn't dig deeper, so there might be even more skeletons down there.
If it is truly to pay homage to one's ancestors, one should go to the dilapidated temple in the western hills, not to the wheat field in the east.
Two cat's-eye stones are placed in the wheat field. Perhaps the Villagers are not commemorating their ancestors, but rather the girl wearing the bracelet.
Yu Hanjiang asked, " The villagers can't see, so why can you?"
Liu the Fourth explained, "I've been able to see it since I was little. When I was a child, I didn't understand much. They told me that the world was black, and that everything in front of me should be one color. I couldn't understand it because I could see many different things…"
At this point, a hint of anger flashed in Liu the Fourth's eyes: "Because I was different from my peers, I was very scared when I was little. I thought everyone else was normal and that I was the only one who was sick. So, I tried my best to imitate other people's actions. When I saw my friends fall down, I would fall down too. When I saw them accidentally bump into trees, I would bump into trees too..."
Xiao Lou felt a pang of sympathy as she listened to his story.
The little child didn't understand anything. He was surrounded by blind people, and he was the only one who could see. He instinctively thought he was sick, so he imitated the other blind people by falling and bumping into things. At that time, he must have felt very helpless.
Liu the Fourth took a deep breath to calm himself down and continued, "Maybe I imitated it too well. After that, Granny Sun gave me less and less medicine, and my eyesight got better and better. I could see every road and every person clearly. I found that I could do everything faster than others. That's when I realized that it wasn't me who was sick, but everyone in the village who was sick, and only my eye was normal."
Yu Hanjiang asked, " You haven't actually been taking the medicine Granny Sun gave you?"
Liu the Fourth nodded with a stern face: "When I was a child, I would vomit after taking medicine when I got home, but I didn't dare to tell the adults, so I would secretly hide the medicine residue. Over the years, I have rarely taken the medicine Granny Sun gave me, and I have thrown most of it away."
That's why he escaped unscathed.
Xiao Lou frowned and said, "All the children in your village, from birth, have had their prescriptions written by Granny Sun? They've been taking medicine since they were very young?"
Liu the Fourth said, "She's the only doctor in the village. When we have a headache or fever, we can get better quickly by seeing her, so everyone trusts her. After the baby is born, we will take the baby to her first so that she can check if there are any problems."
Xiao Lou grew increasingly furious as she listened—how could anyone be so heartless as to harm those innocent babies!
Liu the Fourth said, "I suspected Granny Sun had a problem several years ago. She was always brewing medicine in the middle of the night, and people living nearby said they could smell the medicine coming from her house. The villagers trusted her a lot and often went to her for treatment. I can't explain why I can see, and I don't understand those medicines, so I didn't dare to bother her because I knew that even if I said she had a problem, no one would believe me..."
As he said this, he lowered his head in frustration. The feeling of despair was palpable; nothing he said mattered when everyone around him trusted Granny Sun.
Xiao Lou gently patted the village chief on the shoulder. His time as village chief was filled with hardship. As a child, he suspected he was ill and imitated the other blind people, stumbling and groping. Later, he realized his eyesight was normal, yet he found it difficult to accuse Granny Sun, the suspected murderer. He was constantly conflicted, afraid to marry the girl he liked, remaining single into his thirties.
To make matters worse, Yu Hanjiang impersonated him to try and extract information from Granny Sun, but his plan backfired, and the poor village chief was kicked out.
Xiao Lou said gently, "Don't worry, we will help you."
Yu Hanjiang stated directly, " Granny Sun is definitely involved. We have evidence that she adds dead people's bones to the medicine every time she brews it."
The village chief was slightly taken aback, then realized what he meant and immediately started gagging beside him.
Xiao Lou: "..."
Captain Yu, could you please not be so direct? Xiao Lou looked up at Yu Hanjiang and met the man's upright and serious gaze.
Yu Hanjiang was indeed stating the facts, forgetting that the village chief had also taken Granny Sun's medicine.
Village Chief Liu vomited for a while, almost bringing up the acid in his stomach. His face was as pale as paper as he looked at Yu Hanjiang in disbelief and said, "Everyone in the village is drinking medicine brewed by Granny Sun. You mean, she uses the bones of dead people to brew medicine?!"
Xiao Lou rubbed his temples helplessly, trying to be as tactful as possible, but Yu Hanjiang still said directly: "That's right, we saw with our own eyes that she added dead people's bones to the medicine pot when she was brewing the medicine, and she also had a rice jar of bones hidden in her kitchen, which may have been used for a long time."
Village Chief Liu leaned over and vomited again.
Xiao Lou thought to himself, "The way Captain Yu said that Village Chief Liu might be traumatized and never dare to take medicine again in his life."
Yu Hanjiang followed up, "Oh, right, there's also the jar of rice wine in Old Madam Qin's kitchen, which also contains seven dead human bones."
Village Chief Liu: "......"
Yu Hanjiang raised an eyebrow: "You didn't drink it before, did you?"
Village Chief Liu looked utterly hopeless. He suppressed the urge to vomit his entire stomach and said with difficulty, " Aunt Qin's rice wine is something we all drink during our annual Autumn Harvest Festival. Everyone drinks... a bowl."
Everyone: "..."
The poor Villagers are fed medicine made from human bones, and their rice wine is also soaked in human bones. That old lady Qin and Granny Sun are truly depraved; they're taking advantage of everyone's blindness to torment them like this.
From what Village Chief Liu said, we can infer that the Autumn Harvest Festival is the most important festival in Liuxi Village every year.
On this day, everyone would go to harvest the crops together, then worship their "ancestors" in the fields to the east, and drink the rice wine distributed by Old Lady Qin. From the fact that Old Lady Qin deliberately soaked dead bones for everyone to drink, it can be seen that her hatred for this village has not been resolved.
She was tormenting the villagers in her own way to gain psychological comfort.
Her statement, "Those who bully the blind will be punished," was truly profound.
Yu Hanjiang asked, " Granny Sun and Old Lady Qin aren't from Liuxi Village, are they?"
Liu the Fourth shook his head, his face pale: "I don't know. They were already in the village when I was born. Why do you say that?"
This time, Yu Hanjiang didn't directly say, "When I was pretending to be you and trying to get information out of her, she let it slip." Instead, he offered a more palatable reason: "Because Granny Sun knows a lot about medicine and treats your Villagers. If she's also from this village and was born blind, where did she learn her medical skills? There's a mirror in Old Mrs. Qin's house. If your Villagers are cursed to be blind, why would she keep the mirror?"
Liu the Fourth paused, seemingly finally realizing that something was wrong.
From a young age, everyone was instilled with the idea that if they felt unwell, they should go to Granny Sun, as she would treat them. In the minds of the villagers in Liuxi Village, Granny Sun's ability to treat illnesses was taken for granted. And since the children were initially educated by Aunt Qin, these ideas were instilled by her, and everyone accepted them naturally.
No one ever wondered why Granny Sun would go to the doctor.
If she was also from the village and was cursed to be blind since childhood, who taught her medicine?
Liu the Fourth, pale-faced, fell into deep thought.
Yu Hanjiang said in a low voice, "I have a guess that Granny Sun and Old Lady Qin are relatives of the girl who wore the bracelet back then. After that girl came to Liuxi Village, something happened and she was killed by your ancestors. So, these two killed all the Villagers to take revenge, buried all the Villager corpses alive in the mountain temple, leaving only the young children to continue their revenge."
Xiao Lou looked at the village chief and continued, "That girl might have been blind and bullied by your ancestors. So their way of taking revenge was to make all your descendants blind, and to make them eat medicine made from your ancestors' bones and drink wine made from your ancestors' bones every day, and to collectively worship them on the Autumn Harvest Festival every year... which is likely the anniversary of that girl's death."
The village chief was horrified, clearly unable to believe such a terrifying retaliation.
Ye Qi, Shao Qingge, and Liu Qiao looked at each other in bewilderment.
They eat medicine made from the bones of their ancestors and drink wine brewed from the bones of their ancestors.
May our ancestors never find peace in the afterlife, and may our descendants be forever shrouded in darkness.
Ye Qi couldn't help but curse, "This method of revenge is just too damn perverted!"