Card Room (Rebirth)

In the east of Liuxi Village, the innocent village chief was carried out of Liuxi Village by the villagers.

It seemed Grandma Sun’s prestige in this village was far greater than that of the village chief. In addition, she used the excuse that ‘the village chief can see and must be a disguised foreigner.’ The blind villagers couldn’t tell if the village chief was true or not so they would naturally listen to Grandma Sun.

The young people left the village chief outside the village and were ready to turn away when the village chief got up from the ground and roared, “You believe in that old witch but you don’t believe me?” He suddenly grabbed a young man’s collar. “Old Wu, we grew up together. Can’t you tell it is me?”

The young man was startled and muttered, “Your voice is very similar to my Brother Si but Grandma Sun has no reason to deceive us… and if you really can’t see, how did you grab me out of the crowd?”

Old Wu had indeed been inside the crowd and the village chief had caught him at once. The people around him immediately agreed.

“Yes, how can you see where Little Wu is?”

“He can see. It definitely isn’t Brother Si!”

“Grandma Sun is right! He must be a foreigner posing as the village chief to steal our treasures!”

“Maybe the gem in the Qin house was stolen by him!”

Listening to the growing doubts around him, the village chief let go of his hand and said, “That old witch, she definitely is up to no good. She is anxious to drive me out of the village because I have been doubting here…”

Then a girl’s clear voice was suddenly heard. “You go, our village doesn’t welcome foreigners.”

The one who spoke was Grandma Sun’s apprentice, Little Qing. The village chief raised his eyes to her. Her eyes seemed to have no focus as they watched him.

He snorted and smiled bitterly. “Little Qing, you also don’t believe Uncle Si?”

Liu Qing spoke seriously. “My Uncle Si can’t see from an early age. We all know this.”

The village chief, “…”

The dozens of relatives and friends in front of him were all on guard. Obviously, they had lost too many things in succession these two days and this caused panic. Grandma Sun took advantage of it to slander the village chief. The village chief could see this but he couldn’t explain it clearly.

Once the villagers left, he reluctantly turned to the fields, intending to sleep in the field tonight and find a way to explain it to them tomorrow. He had just taken a few steps when a tall man grabbed his shoulder while another person smiled in front of him. “Hello, Village Chief. We have something to ask you. Can you come with us?”

The village chief’s face changed. “Who are you?”

Yu Hanjiang said nothing. He twisted the village chief’s hands behind his back, covered this person’s mouth and dragged him away. The village chief stared and started to struggle wildly. “Um… let me go… um…”

Xiao Lou, “…”

Group Leader Yu was too fierce and rough, he directly captured the person. It was estimated that the village chief must be thinking of them as bastard kidnappers.

Xiao Lou felt helpless and spoke to the other person as gently as possible. “Don’t worry, we don’t have any malice. We are just looking for you because we want to know something.”

In order to avoid being found by the villagers and unnecessary trouble starting, Yu Hanjiang simply pulled the village chief in the peach blossom spring.

The village chief had been struggling the whole time until he entered the new world of the peach blossom spring. His eyes suddenly widened. He had never such a beautiful place after so many years in the village!

Seeing how dazed he looked, Yu Hanjiang let him go and spoke lightly. “This is our foreigner’s world. You can understand it as magic or an illusion. You won’t be found here and can freely talk to us.”

Xiao Lou smiled and handed a bamboo tube filled with clear water. “Have some water. We had to grab you just now because it would’ve been hard if the villagers returned.”

The village chief looked ugly. “In the end, what do you want to do?

“Our aim is to find out why the villagers of Liuxi Village are blind, just like you.” Xiao Lou saw the village chief’s strange expression and continued. “Of course, you don’t believe that we are trying to help the village. You can think of it as we received a request from someone to investigate the matter and will receive a rich reward if we can discover it.”

Ye Qi’s mood was complicated as he looked at Xiao Lou. He thought that Professor Xiao was really good at fooling people based on the village chief’s stunned expression.

Yu Hanjiang also glanced at Xiao Lou and found that Xiao Lou looked serious. Yu Hanjiang didn’t pierce his bubble and agreed. “Yes, we came to Liuxi Village because we heard that there are precious jade resources here. The boss had us investigate the case of the villagers’ blindness. If you are willing to cooperate with us, perhaps we can uncover the secrets of Liuxi Village together and restore light to your descendants.”

Xiao Lou followed closely. “In your village, you are the only one who can see. Your companions can’t see anything. You are still young and can marry and have children. Do you want your children to become blind in the future?”

The village chief’s face was white. It was clear that Xiao Lou’s words had poked at his sore point. He turned, sat on a stone under the peach tree and whispered, “It is because of this that I haven’t dared married. Ah Yue has been waiting for me for five years but I dare not marry her. I’m afraid that our children, like other people’s children, will become blind…”

He took a deep breath and looked up at Xiao Lou. “I have always suspected that the blindness of the villagers’ isn’t due to a curse but I couldn’t find the reason. Can you really help me find it?”

Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang nodded as one. “Of course, but you need to cooperate.”

The village chief was driven out because he couldn’t explain why he could see, not to mention the villagers’ trust in Grandma Sun was far more than the young village chief. He was alone and helpless. He might not be able to trust these outsiders but he was forced to make the gamble.

He thought about it carefully before finally gritting his teeth and nodding. “If you can really help the children restore their vision then you can take away all of our village’s jade resources. In any case, we can’t see and it is useless for us to keep these broken stones!”

Xiao Lou smiled. “You have thought well.”

Yu Hanjiang directly asked, “What is your name? How did you become the village chief at such a young age?”

The village chief smiled bitterly. “My name is Liu Si (Si=4) because I am the fourth generation of the Liu family. It is said that my grandfather was the village chief and my father was also the village chief. Once I grew up, the let me become the village chief.”

Xiao Lou was surprised. “The village chief had such a family history?”

Liu Si said, “The village chief is just a name. Our village holds a festival once a year. Apart from that, we usually act on our own. My role is to organize the Autumn Harvest festival every year. Once we have collected the wheat, we do a ritual in the east of the village to mourn the dead. This is usually presided over by Grandma Sun.

Yu Hanjiang frowned. “Mourn the dead? Did she ever say who you were honouring?”

“It is said that we are honouring our ancestors.”

This Grandma Sun was obviously lying because the ancestors of the villagers should be buried at the ruined temple on the west mountain. The bone pit had dozens of people buried. Xiao Lou’s group hadn’t dug deeply and perhaps there were more bones below. If it was really paying respects to their ancestors then they should be going to the temple on the western mountain, not the wheat field in the east.

There were two cat’s eye stones in the wheat field and perhaps the villagers weren’t paying tribute to their ancestors but the girl with the bracelet.

Yu Hanjiang asked, “The other villagers are blind. Why can you see?”

Liu Si explained, “I could see from an early age. When I was a child, I wasn’t very sensible. They told me that the world was black and my eyes should only be one colour. I couldn’t understand it because I could see many different things…”

At this point, Liu Si’s eyes flashed with anger. “Since I was different from my peers, I was very scared when I was a child. I thought everyone was normal and only I was sick. Thus, I tried to imitate other people’s movements as much as possible. Whenever I saw my companions fall, I learned to fall. Whenever they accidentally hit a tree, I also hit the tree…”

Xiao Lou listened to his experiences and couldn’t help feeling some distress. A little child didn’t know anything. He was surrounded by blind people and instinctively thought he was sick. This meant he helplessly learned to fall and act like the other blind people.

Liu Si took a deep breath to calm down. “Maybe I learned too much. After that, Grandma Sun gave me less and less medicine and my eyes became better and better. I could see every road and every person. I found I was doing everything faster than others and then I discovered that I wasn’t the sick one. The entire village was sick and only I was normal.”

Yu Hanjiang asked, “In fact, you actually didn’t take the medicine Grandma Sun gave you?”

Liu Si nodded with a calm face. “As a child, I would go home and vomit after taking the medicine. I didn’t dare say it to any adults and secretly hid it. Over the years, Grandma Sun gave me medicine and I took very little. Most of them were thrown away.”

That’s why he escaped.

Xiao Lou frowned. “Grandma Sun was in charge of giving prescriptions to all the children in your village since birth? You’re been taking medicine from a very young age?”

“She is the only doctor in the village and we usually look for her when we have a headache or fever. We look for her first and all trust her very much. After a baby was born, we will first take the baby to Grandma Sun to see if there are any problems.”

The more Xiao Lou listened, the angrier he became. How cruel was it to act against innocent babies?

Liu Si continued, “I suspected a few years ago that Grandma Sun had a problem. She is always making medicine in the middle of the night and people living nearby say they can smell medicine from her house. People in the village trust her a lot of and often go to see her. I didn’t know why my eyes could see or understand any drugs. I didn’t dare disturb her so even if I said that she had a problem, no one would believe me…”

He couldn’t help lowering his head with frustration. He couldn’t say anything while everyone around him trusted Grandma Sun, making him feel desperate.

Xiao Lou patted the village chief’s shoulder. This village chief had a bitter life. As a child, he suspected that he was sick. He grew up and understood that his eyes were normal but was unable to identify Grandma Sun as suspicious. He was in a dilemma and didn’t dare marry the girl he liked. Even more unfortunately, Yu Hanjiang pretended to find Grandma Sun and directly drove out the poor and clumsy village chief.

Xiao Lou told him, “You don’t have to worry, we’ll help you.”

Yu Hanjiang spoke directly, “Grandma Sun must have a problem. We have the evidence. Every night, she makes medicine and it is medicine made from the bones of the dead.”

The village chief was stunned for a moment. Then he reacted by throwing up.

Xiao Lou, “…”

Could Group Leader Yu not be so direct? Xiao Lou looked up into Yu Hanjiang’s honest and serious eyes. Yu Hanjiang was indeed stating the facts and had forgotten that the village chief also drank Grandma Sun’s medicine.

Village Chief Liu vomited for a while until he was throwing up the acidic water of his stomach. His face was white as paper as he looked at Yu Hanjiang with disbelief. “Everyone in the village has been drinking the medicine made by Grandma Sun. Do you mean to say that she used the bones of the dead to make the medicine?”

Xiao Lou helplessly rubbed his temples and tried to soften things, but Yu Hanjiang spoke directly. “Yes, we saw her adding dead people’s bones to the medicine pot when boiling it. There was also a rice jar of bones in her kitchen which might’ve been used for a long time.”

The village chief started retching again. Xiao Lou thought that Group Leader Yu might’ve left a psychological shadow on the village chief, so that he would never dare drink medicine again in his life.

Yu Hanjiang followed closely. “Yes, Grandma Qin’s jar of rice wine in the kitchen also has seven bones soaking in it.”

Village Chief Liu, “……”

Yu Hanjiang raised his eyebrows. “You shouldn’t have drunk it, right?”

Village Chief Liu looked helpless as he endured the urge to vomit. He spoke with much difficulty. “A-Aunt Qin’s rice wine is what we drink every year during the Autumn Harvest Festival. Everyone drinks…a bowl.”

Everyone, “………”

The poor villagers. They took the medicine containing the bones of the dead and the rice wine they drank also contained the bones of the dead. This Grandma Qin and Grandma Sun were really perverted. They made everyone blind and then even made them suffer like this.

It could be inferred from Liu Si’s words that the Autumn Harvest Festival was the most annual event of Liuxi Village. On this day, they gathered together to collect the crops before paying attention to their ‘ancestors’ in the east farmland. There they would drink rice wine from Grandma Qin. It could be seen from Grandma Qin intentionally soaking the bones of the dead for everyone to drink that her hatred for the village hadn’t been resolved.

She was torturing the people of this village in order to gain psychological comfort. Her phrase about how bullying the blind would have consequences was meaningful.

Yu Hanjiang asked, “Grandma Sun and Grandma Qin aren’t people of Liuxi Village, right?”

Liu Si shook his head. “I don’t know, they were in the village when I was born. Why do you say that?”

Yu Hanjiang didn’t directly say that ‘she let it slip when I pretended to be you.’ He found a better reason. “If she is also a person in this village and born blind, where did she learn her medical skills from? Grandma Qin’s home has a mirror. If the villagers were cursed to be blind then why does she keep the mirror?”

Liu Si was startled and finally reacted to what was wrong.

Everyone had been indoctrinated from an early age with the idea of seeing Grandma Sun when they weren’t feeling well. In the hearts of the villagers, it was natural to go see Grandma Sun since she was a doctor. In addition, these children were educated by Grandma Sun and their ideas instilled by her, so they naturally accepted it.

No one ever thought about how Grandma Sun became a doctor. If she was also a villager and cursed blind from an early age, who taught her medicine?

Liu Si was pale as he fell into contemplation.

Yu Hanjiang whispered. “I have a guess. Grandma Sun and Grandma Qin should be relatives of the girl with the bracelet. That girl came to Liuxi Village and something happened, causing her to be killed by your ancestors. Therefore, these two people killed all the villagers for revenge, buried their bodies in the mountain temple, leaving only the young children. Then they continued with their revenge.”

Xiao Lou looked at the village chief. “That girl might’ve been blind and bullied by your ancestors. Thus, their means of revenge is to let the children and grandchildren, future generations all become blind. You will take medicine made of your ancestors’ bones every day and drink wine made from your ancestors’ bones at the Autumn Harvest Festival… it is likely that you are paying your respects to that girl on this day.”

The village chief was full of horror and clearly couldn’t believe such a terrible thing.

Ye Qi, Shao Qingge and Liu Qiao faced each other.

‘Take the medicine made from the bones of your ancestors and drink the wine made from the bones of your ancestors.’

The ancestors couldn’t rest in peace and future generations would live forever in the darkness.

Ye Qi couldn’t help cursing. “This means of revenge is too fucking abnormal!”