WBICDPH Chapter 72

Chapter 72: Withered Youth and Faded Blossoms

Zhu Eryao did not marry Fang Daming.

Nor did she marry Zhou Wencai.

She returned to the Zhou household.

She was a woman with no trade to her name. Other than cooking and doing chores, she knew nothing. So she remained in the Zhou home, doing odd jobs in exchange for meals.

The villagers had all heard about the chaos on her wedding day. They called her a seductress, shameless, said she had bewitched the top scholar and poured some kind of love potion into his ears. They called her vile names and said she had ruined two fine young men from the Zhou and Fang families.

They laughed at her too. After making such a spectacle of herself, she had married neither Fang Daming nor Zhou Wencai. All that fuss, and in the end, she had only destroyed her own reputation. No one, they said, would ever want her now.

Fang Daming came to see her once after that day. But when Zhu Eryao saw him, she found herself unable to speak. She was afraid. She felt guilty. She could only sit there and cry.

He stood beside her for a long time and watched her cry for a long time. In the end, he said nothing. He simply turned and left.

He never came again.

Later, gossip at the village entrance said that Fang Daming had arranged another marriage, this time with a good girl from Sishui Town. His parents were deeply satisfied. The engagement was quickly settled, the wedding held, and now they were a happy family.

Zhu Eryao listened quietly from the side. From the bottom of her heart, she was happy for him.

And from the bottom of her heart, she was heartbroken.

Afterward, she went alone to the fields and cried again.

She thought she truly was not strong. Whenever something happened, she cried. Whenever she became emotional, she could not speak. No wonder she was always bullied.

Worse still, after the wedding-day debacle, she cried more and more easily. It was not only when something happened—sometimes she would be alone, doing nothing at all, and tears would fall.

She felt herself growing less happy.

She smiled less and less.

She drifted through her days in a daze.

She kept the bead Zhou Wencai had given her. She would take it out and look at it when she had nothing else to do. But the man who had promised to return and marry her never came back.

She waited.

She kept waiting.

This time, too, she waited in vain.

Day after day, she sat at the village entrance. The best years of her youth slipped past. She became the “ruined woman” people mocked, the subject of gossip across neighboring villages.

Then, unrest broke out beyond the countryside. Word spread that a prince had rebelled. People lived in fear that war would reach them.

That year brought one natural disaster after another. The harvest failed. In Double Happiness Village, families who relied on their crops could barely survive, living on thin rice gruel each day. The villagers pinned their hopes on the Mountain God, wearing a path back and forth to the temple, praying for mercy and a handful of grain.

The Zhou family drove Zhu Eryao out.

Their food was scarce. They said she wasted grain and told her to fend for herself.

With no choice, after two days without food, she went to the back hills to search for wild vegetables or fruit.

Carrying a small bamboo basket and a rusted sickle, she wandered the hillside and found a small slope thick with edible greens.

She was overjoyed.

As she crouched and dug carefully, someone called out, “Miss?”

Startled, she looked up. It was an old man in Daoist robes, perhaps in his fifties or sixties. His hair was thin and white; when he spoke, his yellowed teeth showed. Strange ritual objects hung from his body.

“I’m looking for directions,” he said with a smile. “Is there a village called Double Happiness nearby? I’ve gotten lost.”

Wiping sweat from her forehead, she pointed down the path she had taken. “Follow this trail downhill. That’s Double Happiness Village.”

“Thank you.”

The Daoist’s murky eyes lingered on her from head to toe several times. At last, he let out a strange chuckle, stroked his beard, and shuffled away.

Zhu Eryao paid him no mind. She filled her basket with wild greens, thinking only of cooking them to fill her stomach.

She worked slowly. By the time she descended the mountain, it was already dark.

Normally, no one would be outside at that hour. But today, the villagers gathered strangely along the main road.

When they saw her, every pair of eyes fixed on her. The look in them was hard to describe—like wolves with glowing eyes.

Fear tightened in her chest.

“What’s in your basket?”

Madam Zhou pushed through the crowd first, sharp-eyed as ever.

Zhu Eryao trembled. She slowly removed the basket. “Wild greens… I found them on the hill. If you want some—”

She had meant to say that she knew everyone was hungry and could share.

But before she could finish, the villagers rushed forward and snatched the basket from her hands.

She was shoved to the ground.

Helpless, she opened her mouth to protest, but no sound came.

The greens she had dug all afternoon were gone. Not even a torn leaf remained for her.

They threw back only her crushed bamboo basket.

Holding the broken basket, her nose stung. Tears welled again.

“Witch!”

A voice suddenly rang out from behind the crowd.

The villagers parted, revealing the same Daoist from the afternoon.

Now he waved a filthy flag and shouted theatrically, “This witch possesses powerful sorcery! She specializes in bewitching hearts, especially men’s! She has committed too many sins. You tolerated her for too long, and the Mountain God, enraged, has sent disaster upon this land! That is why calamity and famine plague you!”

“Just as I thought!” Madam Zhou cried first.

Clutching her face, she wailed, “It was her! My poor son was bewitched, insisting he would marry no one but her, even committing that outrageous bride-snatching! I took her in out of kindness, treated her like my own daughter—how blind I was!”

The villagers murmured in sudden understanding.

“No wonder Fang Daming was confused by her too!”

“So that’s why the harvest failed!”

“You were too kind, Madam Zhou, keeping a demon all these years!”

“Kill the witch!”

Zhu Eryao sat on the ground, clutching her basket, trembling at the faces before her—twisted and monstrous.

She wanted to say she was not a witch.

She had been born here. She had grown up here.

Why were they saying this?

She grabbed the village chief’s hem. She wanted to say, Uncle Zhaokang, I once rode on your shoulders. I’m not a witch.

He kicked her away in disgust.

She looked at Aunt Zhuang. She wanted to remind her of the market trips, the sugar figurines she used to buy for her.

Aunt Zhuang avoided her gaze.

She looked at Madam Zhou.

But Madam Zhou ignored her entirely and instead asked the Daoist eagerly, “Reverend, what must we do so the Mountain God will forgive us?”

Silence fell.

The Daoist shook his head gravely. “Dress her beautifully. Offer her to the Mountain God. I will conduct a ritual. If the god is pleased, he will spare you.”

The villagers thanked him profusely.

Then they turned on Zhu Eryao.

They called her a vixen, a serpent reborn.

They “dressed her beautifully.” The woman wrapped red dye around her fingers, but she struggled, and the color smeared messily across her fingertips like blood.

They pulled out the wedding dress her mother had left her. Her mother had wished she would wear it and smile as she married the man who would make her happy.

Now she wore it as she wept, dragged step by step toward hell.

They tied her hands to the hind legs of a black donkey and forced it forward.

As she was dragged, people on both sides of the road threw stones at her. The Daoist said it was to drive away evil.

At first, she struggled.

Later, she realized her struggle meant nothing.

She let herself be dragged along that endless road, stones striking her body. She only wondered when it would end.

Thunder rolled in the sky. She thought distantly that it might rain.

They carried her up the mountain and threw her onto the altar in the Mountain God’s temple.

The villagers bowed devoutly.

At last, they left.

The Daoist shut the temple doors. He tossed aside his tattered flag and bared his yellow teeth.

“You’re quite a beauty,” he said. “Not a waste of all the effort I made to bring you here.”

Tears slid down her face.

She lay on the altar, looking at the serene statue of the god, then beyond it at the churning storm clouds.

What did I do wrong? she wondered.

If I truly were a witch, then at least this suffering would be deserved.

Pain.

She was always afraid of pain.

Rain finally fell, washing over her wounds and carrying her blood across the altar.

The Daoist left without looking back.

Cold.

So cold.

Come, Zhou Wencai.

Why aren’t you here?

Her vision was filled with red.

Through the blur, she thought she saw someone at the temple door, walking toward her.

She could not see his face.

She only heard him ask:

“Do you hate them?”

Yes.

“Do you want revenge? Do you want to kill those who hurt you?”

Revenge? Kill?

“So much resentment… why can’t you become a ghost?”

Why couldn’t she?

If she became a ghost, then her suffering would make sense. She could commit wrongs to justify it.

But she did not want to.

Doing wrong costs too much pain.

She did not want to hurt anymore.

Nor did she want others to hurt as she had.

She closed her eyes.

She wanted only to die.

Yet before she lost consciousness, a force entered her body, tearing her soul free, dragging her farther and farther from the release she could almost touch.

Why, even in death, must she still suffer?

A final tear slid from her eye.

The red coral bead fell from her clothing. Her blood-tinged tear mixed with rain and landed upon it.

The tear fused with the bead.

I don’t want to wait anymore.

But I have no choice.

I must keep waiting.