A Single Flower Of The Village - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

In the past, when eating hot pot, there was only herself and the civet cat, and Lu Shouqiu found it boring. The retired gatekeepers didn’t dare share a table with her, feeling that it would be offensive. They would respectfully address her as “Lady Shouqiu.” From initial fear to later respect, it was all sincere, but they just weren’t willing to be her friends, and she had been sad about that for a long time.

Sigh, who doesn’t want a few drinking buddies? The relationship doesn’t need to be very deep; being a “meal companion” is enough.

She said she wanted hot pot, but she didn’t prepare it herself, sitting there sighing and being all sentimental.

Knowing that she couldn’t count on this rascal, Ruan Jingluo grumbled while washing and cutting vegetables, and under Lu Shouqiu’s instructions, took the pot out of the cabinet.

This was a pot specifically for “live oil” hot pot. It had three levels: the top was a small, bowl-shaped pot for dipping sauce; the middle was a soup pot for blanching vegetables; and the bottom level, which looked like a pot lid, was for grilling various ingredients.

Lu Shouqiu loved spicy food and loved Houttuynia cordata (fish mint). She put an excessive amount of fermented chili paste and roasted chili powder into her dipping sauce, and the “soul” of the bowl—the fish mint—was piled up to an absurd degree.

Seeing this made Ruan Jingluo’s temples throb. It was hard to tell if Lu Shouqiu was eating hot pot or just fish mint. Ruan couldn’t stand the stuff at all, so she mixed a small bowl of dipping sauce for herself that wasn’t very spicy and had no fish mint. She hadn’t eaten spicy food before, but the roasted chili powder here in the Cloud-Qian region was so fragrant that she couldn’t resist. Gradually, she could eat a little bit.

The way to make roasted chili powder is simple: take seeded dried red chilies, stir-fry them until fragrant and discolored, and then crush them. Some places don’t even bother removing the seeds; it depends on personal preference.

Today’s roasted chili powder was stir-fried by Lu Shouqiu. She placed a small tile over the charcoal fire, using chopsticks to turn the chilies while talking nonsense with Ruan Jingluo. That was the only work she was willing to do now; she couldn’t do any more because she was lazy to death.

The food included the old pickled fish from Auntie Daohua today, and the stall owner from the Ghost Village had sent over smoked meat in the evening. There was also leftover cured meat in the Drum Tower. Like the pickled fish, the outer layer was covered in bright red chilies, and when sliced, the fat and lean layers were distinct. It could be eaten directly, or fried, stir-fried, deep-fried, or steamed. The texture was fragrant and glutinous, and one could taste the sweet, sour, and spicy flavors upon the first bite. Grilling it on the pot and then eating it with dipping sauce was not greasy at all and left an endless aftertaste.

When Lu Shouqiu tossed meat into the cat’s bowl, Ruan Jingluo wanted to stop her. She hadn’t raised a cat in real life, but she had “raised cats in the cloud” (online) for over a dozen of them and knew that cats shouldn’t eat spicy or salty things. However, seeing the civet cat lower its head and eat happily, and looking at its layer of fat and its glowing, shiny mottled fur, she swallowed the words that were on the tip of her tongue. After all, this was a mountain king who dared to catch mutated rats; how could it not handle some cured meat?

“It’s been eating like this since it was little,” Lu Shouqiu said, as if she knew what Ruan was thinking. “If I feed it cat food, it will sneak into my room at night and pee on the bed.”

Ruan Jingluo’s chopsticks almost dropped into the blanching pot. She laughed dryly, “…Quite a personality, huh.”

“That’s right. Don’t look at who raised the cat. As someone as unconventional as me, could the pet I raise be the same as those raised by you mundane people?” Lu Shouqiu didn’t know the meaning of the word humility; her face could cover the sky, and her skin was thick enough to be a city wall.

She kept dropping vegetables into the pot, devouring everything like a whirlwind. Her eating style was bold. The fish was mostly gone, and there weren’t many vegetables left in the basket. These had also been sent by the immortals: small bamboo shoots, dandelion sprouts, and tender Bupleurum buds. They were all seasonal wild delicacies from the mountains, easy to pick a basket full of them. They were also sold at the market and were quite popular with living people.

Some immortals grew mushrooms in greenhouses on the farm. Everything else was fine, but Lu Shouqiu’s absolute favorite was the button mushroom. She would break off the stem, place them face-up in the pot, and grill them. Juice would bubble up—a natural, fresh sweetness different from any seasoning. One bite per mushroom—it was very satisfying. The only downside was that they took a long time to grill, which made her anxious.

Ruan Jingluo was already full, but she didn’t leave her seat, staying behind to help Lu Shouqiu grill mushrooms. It wasn’t that she suddenly wanted to be a good person, but she couldn’t bear to watch Lu Shouqiu eat them half-raw.

“Are you a reincarnated starving ghost? How can you eat so much?” Don’t expect any nice words from her mouth. If Lu Shouqiu wanted to hear nice words, she would have to pay a salary. She wasn’t even asking for much; if she could get five thousand a month, she would kneel down and call her “Mom.”

Lu Shouqiu used two matsutake mushrooms to sandwich a piece of grilled beef rib. The farm’s beef and mutton were hot commodities, but no matter how popular they were, the herdsmen would always send the best cuts to her.

Ruan Jingluo had eaten a lot of good things tonight. The beef on the table had marbling like snowflakes and was so fresh and tender it melted in her mouth. In an outside restaurant, it would cost at least several thousand yuan. A poor wretch like her couldn’t even lick the meat scraps.

“Nope,” Lu Shouqiu said with a mouthful of meat, her cheeks bulging. She couldn’t speak clearly, but she tried very hard to explain, “I am a vicious ghost—vicious with a capital V.”

Ruan Jingluo let out a “heh” and crudely threw the grilled mushrooms into her bowl. Luckily, the juice inside didn’t spill, or Lu Shouqiu would fight her to the death.

“You certainly have a very clear understanding of yourself.”

Looking at how small-minded she was, just because she didn’t get a salary, she nagged Lu Shouqiu about being a “Zhou Papi” (a notorious miser) all day long. Lu Shouqiu squinted at her. “It’s meaningless for you to keep doing this. I made it clear to you before the contract was signed. If you didn’t want to do it, you shouldn’t have signed. You signed, and now you keep complaining. I’ve never seen anyone like you.”

Ruan Jingluo retorted grumpily, “Did I have a choice?”

She was so poor she couldn’t even afford to cook, had no place to live, and had no career prospects. She couldn’t keep doing part-time jobs forever. She couldn’t even pay her social security next month; without an employer, it would cost over a thousand yuan to pay it herself, and she was worried sick about it.

That was true. Who told you to offend someone so that others couldn’t tolerate you? Lu Shouqiu started acting cheeky again. “Oh, the farm is so big. I could approve a piece of land for you to grow things. Didn’t I tell you that before? But you wouldn’t do it.”

Ruan Jingluo had asked the villagers about market prices today and had asked several city dwellers who came to shop; there was indeed good money to be made. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been tempted. Now that Lu Shouqiu brought it up again, she wasn’t as adamantly refusing as before. She promised to consider it and said she would talk about it in a few days.

She wasn’t even sure how long she could work here; she might just run away tomorrow.

“It’s a good thing, then, that I’m leaving for a few days, so you can think it over slowly,” Lu Shouqiu said. “You have to look after the house well while I’m away.”

As soon as Ruan Jingluo heard that, she didn’t want to help grill mushrooms anymore. She dropped her chopsticks. “Look after it my ass, I’m not a dog you raised.”

Once Lu Shouqiu left, she would move everything out of here; she wouldn’t leave a single thing.

On the third day of Ruan Jingluo moving into the Drum Tower, Lu Shouqiu left just like that. She rode the stupid donkey she raised, swaying lazily away along the dirt road below the village. She didn’t bring anything. Not only did Ruan Jingluo predict that she would starve to death on the way, but she also mocked her for riding a donkey instead of driving, calling her completely insane.

“Cars can’t get there.” The shuttle bus could only travel between the Underworld and the human world; it couldn’t reach where she was going.

The depths of the farm were another world. There were thick, ancient trees from billions of years ago with crowns that blocked the sun and sky, towering into the clouds. Dinosaurs, which had turned into fossils in the human world, ran through the jungles. In the distance, the vast sea billowed with smoke and waves. A Kunpeng spread its wings and flew past, and the sky instantly went dark.

Nocturnal birds and beasts began to move, competing, fighting, and hunting. The primitive immortals who coexisted with them were accustomed to this; they did what they had to do. If they felt the beasts were in the way, they would drive them to other places and tell them not to fight in front of their doors.

The primitive immortals were extremely fierce and possessed infinite strength. They could kill a huge dinosaur with their bare hands and had no soft spots for the rare beasts that fought to their doorsteps every day. They would just close their eyes and give them a beating, then stand with hands on hips and curse: “Who stepped on the jade mushrooms I planted! You bunch of useless things, you’re just begging for a beating. Get out of my territory, get out—”

The cursing carried far. Those who found it unpleasant covered their ears, but soon they opened them again, holding their breath and listening carefully. Huh? It seemed to be Lady Shouqiu’s singing.

A girl in a festive silver-decorated outfit bounced happily along the forest path, waving a peacock tail feather she had picked up from somewhere. Her melodic folk songs leaped through the treetops like elves. The living creatures no longer hid, pouring out to surround her, dancing excitedly, chirping and chatting to greet the girl, asking her why she had come after so long—they had missed her.

A small bird landed on the silver ornaments atop the girl’s head and complained: “The Mountain God punished us to work for her again. And the Sea Master, every time, she gives very little reward, which is not what was promised. You have to be the judge for us.”

Lu Shouqiu let the naughty little thing jump onto her finger, held it up to eye level, and tapped its fluffy little head, laughing: “Nonsense, the Mountain God and the Sea Master are always reasonable. It must be that you were naughty and made them angry.”

In the depths, there were the Ten Immortal Mountains, namely Buzhou, Kunlun, Qingqiu, Danxue, Zhangwei, Changliu, Tiandi, Huangren, Penglai, and Zhaoyao. Each immortal mountain had a Mountain God guarding it, along with countless other small immortal mountains. They connected to the four seas of the East, West, South, and North. Each sea had a Sea Master who managed the creatures in the water.

Occasionally, they would ask the birds and beasts of the immortal mountains to help clear barnacles from the bodies of big fish and divine turtles, then transport the overflowing oysters, shellfish, shrimp, and crabs to the border to sell to the immortals on the outskirts. The latter could keep them to eat or put them in the market for sale. The “Pig-Patterned Spot” (a type of fish), revered by living people as dragon meat, came out from there.

Lu Shouqiu would come to the depths for inspection every once in a while. If she encountered creatures that even the Mountain God and Sea Master couldn’t suppress, she would take them away and settle them elsewhere. This world had no end, and there were plenty of undeveloped places. Those abysses that contained sins, where one could never take a step out for generations after entering, were the nightmares of all creatures. They would rather stay outside and farm than be sent there.

Every time, they would first complain to Lu Shouqiu and secretly hope that the Mountain God and Sea Master would commit some wrong so they could be sent by Lady Shouqiu to the bottom of the abyss to do hard labor. Lu Shouqiu knew their little thoughts very well; she would just lecture them a few times and wouldn’t really do anything to them. There weren’t many creatures that could annoy her enough to make her take action; the last time was when heaven and earth were first opened, and it was officially divided into the Three Realms.

She was an emotionally stable vicious ghost who would not abuse her power.

“A rare guest,” the Mountain God Zhangwei came out to welcome her. They hadn’t seen each other for days, so it was inevitable to make a few jokes. “What wind blew you here? You came at a bad time; today I don’t have good food or wine to host you.”

Zhangwei was tall, with long, fine curly hair and honey-toned skin. She was a sunny, cheerful, beautiful woman. She dressed very casually. Despite what she said, she still invited Lu Shouqiu to her small courtyard for tea.

On the peak of Zhangwei Mountain, there was an ancient tea tree that had existed since the beginning of chaos. Its crown was like a cloud, and Biyi birds (birds with one wing) nested on it. It just so happened that the branches sprouted buds during the Biyi bird’s incubation period. The mother birds were extremely fierce; any creature that got close would get a face full of blood. Picking was extremely difficult, and Zhangwei had paid a high price to pick a small jar.

Lu Shouqiu didn’t like tea; she felt it was bland, but she loved to use the leaves of the ancient tea tree to boil tea eggs. The taste was incomparable to ordinary tea leaves, so she asked Zhangwei for the remaining tea leaves.

Zhangwei slammed the teacup down, pained. “You glutton, every time you come, you collect my good things, and I’ve never seen you bring anything to trade.”

“I don’t have anything valuable. It’s all junk. If you don’t mind, you can go to the Drum Tower and pick some yourself.” Lu Shouqiu was always shameless; she smilingly put the tea jar into her storage bag.

“Forget it, you don’t have anything I can use,” Zhangwei waved her hand, then remembered and asked, “I heard you recruited a new gatekeeper and you two get along very well. Is that true?”

This news was like the wind, spreading across the land of the Nine Provinces. Everyone was curious, and many gods and monsters who could enter and leave the depths freely had secretly run to the Drum Tower to see. Zhangwei wanted to go too, but she hadn’t had time lately.

Lu Shouqiu, who had a belly full of tea, was ready to go to the next place. “Yeah, I like her very much. Next time you come, I’ll introduce you.”

Zhangwei stood up and sent her to the door. “Where are you going next?”

“Just looking around, picking a few baskets of jade mushrooms. I promised Auntie Daohua I’d bring her some.”

Jade mushrooms were like their name; their texture was like white jade. They were a type of fungus that could only grow in the depths. Their shape was like an oil-paper umbrella, as thick as an arm. The taste was crisp, with a unique fragrance. They were suitable for stewing soup or stir-frying and were not suitable for drying. Lu Shouqiu remembered that Ruan Jingluo hadn’t eaten them yet, so she asked the immortal who grew them for an extra basket.

Ruan Jingluo’s resentment had been huge over the past two days. She kept counting her meager savings—just a few hundred yuan, which she had saved from her part-time jobs. She wanted to apply for unemployment benefits, but she didn’t meet the conditions. She searched online on how to withdraw money from her medical insurance account, added a bunch of strangers’ contact information, and found out they were all scammers telling her to transfer money first. She was so angry that she kept grumbling all day long.

Bringing back some good things for her will make her temper fade. Oh my, I really am a very good farm owner. Lu Shouqiu gave herself a thumbs-up and let the immortals help her send the jade mushrooms to the foot of the mountain. “My donkey is there. You can hand them directly to it; it knows how to keep watch.”

She wanted to wander around a bit more. There were many good things on Zhangwei Mountain. It was the season for the flat peaches to mature; she could pick two baskets of peaches to carry back, and then stop by the South Sea to catch a few baskets of fish. She could also get some big scallops. The seafood stock in the Drum Tower had been eaten by her, and now that there was an extra Ruan Jingluo, she had to enrich the dinner table.

The immortals followed the instructions and carried the jade mushrooms to the foot of the mountain. They saw a black-haired donkey sneakily provoking nearby creatures. Relying on the fact that it was Lady Shouqiu’s mount, the creatures didn’t dare do anything to it, but it was so wretched that people wanted to hit it.

The immortal called it back and instructed: “Lady Shouqiu went to the South Sea along the mountain road. We don’t know when she will return. She ordered you to keep an eye on these baskets of jade mushrooms; don’t lose them.”

The stupid donkey lowered its head and sniffed the basket of jade cabbage that came with the gift. It was greedy and wanted to eat it.

The immortal pinched its ear and warned: “No stealing.”

While Lu Shouqiu was searching for ingredients in a sightseeing style, Ruan Jingluo, who was left alone in the Drum Tower, ushered in a thrilling night.

Ruan Jingluo didn’t see the civet cat come back for dinner. She was worried; thieves who steal dogs and cats had been rampant in recent years. She was afraid the cat would be caught. Before going to bed, she used a flashlight to search around the Drum Tower, but still couldn’t find it.

She didn’t know where the owl at the gate had gone, either. It was very quiet inside the Drum Tower.

She sat alone in the main hall for a while, unable to believe that she would have a day where she felt lonely. Clearly, she had lived by herself for so many years—going to work, then coming back to her rental apartment to wash up, and then lying down to sleep. She was already so tired that she didn’t have the energy to reflect on life. Why did she become this sentimental after only living here for two or three days? People really shouldn’t eat until they’re too full.

Looking down at her palm with the “simian line” (traditionally seen as a sign of ill omen), she let out a harsh, mocking laugh.

“Don’t get all grateful to that rascal just because you’ve had a few full meals. Who are you to worry about someone else? Forget it, wash up and go to sleep.” She talked to herself, as if laughing at herself.

She went upstairs and stopped in front of Lu Shouqiu’s room. It was really a bit uncomfortable not to have the sound of that rascal talking nonsense in her ears.

Returning to her room, she clicked on Lu Shouqiu’s WeChat, wanting to ask when she would be back. She said she would go for a few days when she left, but how many was “a few days”? She didn’t say exactly.

A message suddenly popped up from the top, and just the remark on the sender made Ruan Jingluo very agitated.

“Dad asked me to ask you, why haven’t you transferred money this month?”

She cursed in a low voice. Transfer money, my ass.

“None. There’s no more money from now on. If you have the ability, tell him to come and kill me.”

Being interrupted like this, she didn’t send a message to Lu Shouqiu. She threw her phone aside, fell into a daze, and slept until the middle of the night, when she was woken up by persistent knocking on the door downstairs.

Her brain short-circuited; she thought it was Lu Shouqiu returning and even cursed her for forgetting her keys.

She opened the door with an angry look on her face, only to be met by two “coffin faces” outside. A chill wind blew against her face, and all her sleepiness vanished.

Two strangers appeared in the middle of the night, and there was a car parked behind them. Ruan Jingluo frowned. Damn it, her vigilance had dropped; she had opened the door without finding out who they were. If they were criminals, she wouldn’t even have time to run—they were two tall, sturdy men.

“Who are you looking for?” She could only harden her heart and ask.

Fan Wujiu was born with a cold face and didn’t like dealing with living people, so he stood to the side without a word.

Xie Bi’an gave Ruan Jingluo a smile that could be considered kind and said, “We are Qiuqiu’s relatives, we came from a very long way.”

He had already received notification that Lu Shouqiu had something to do and was going out, so he wasn’t surprised that it was Ruan Jingluo who opened the door.

Relatives? Ruan Jingluo remembered the day Lu Shouqiu had acted like a psycho and insisted on dragging her to eat street-stall hot pot, and had mentioned that the shop owner was a relative. She had only known Lu Shouqiu for a few days and had no idea about the structure of her family. Thinking about it, it was impossible to run such a big farm by herself; behind her, it was probably some big clan or a wealthy family.

She couldn’t verify the identities of the two people in front of her. If she let them in rashly, what if they were criminals?

“Lu Shouqiu is not here. I am the one she hired to look after the gate.” (Now she really had become a watchdog). “How about this, let me confirm your identities with a phone call first.”

Quite vigilant. Xie Bi’an nodded in understanding, took out a silver mobile phone from his pocket and handed it over. Seeing Ruan Jingluo’s confused face, he explained, “You want to call Qiuqiu, right? Then use mine. Your phone can’t contact her right now.”

There was nothing obviously wrong with that statement, but Ruan Jingluo just felt it was weird. She took the phone with suspicion, found Lu Shouqiu’s name on it, and called her directly via video.

Since she had to confirm their identity, video was more reliable than audio.

It rang a few times and Lu Shouqiu picked up. She was sitting on a big whale, sailing out to sea. The moonlight was bright, the sea was sparkling, and mermaids were singing in the distance.

The camera only scanned Lu Shouqiu’s upper body and a patch of the sea behind her; nothing else could be seen.

Ruan Jingluo heard nothing but chaotic and noisy sounds on her end, and it was hard for her not to roll her eyes. She was home looking after the gate, while Lu Shouqiu was out sightseeing, floating on the sea in the middle of the night. Why didn’t she fall into the sea and drown?

She flipped the camera to face the two at the door and said grumpily: “They say they are your relatives. What’s going on now?”

“Yeah, they are my eldest cousin and second cousin. They are here to handle some business and will stay at the Drum Tower for a few days. You can let them in; don’t worry about anything else.” Lu Shouqiu was afraid that the wind was too loud for Ruan Jingluo to hear her, so she shouted very loudly.

Ruan Jingluo covered one ear. “Got it, got it. That’s it, hanging up.”

Very decisive, without any hesitation.

Returning the phone, she let the two people outside come in.

When arranging their accommodation, she was stunned again. There didn’t seem to be any extra rooms on the second floor, and she hadn’t been up to the third floor.

“You…” Where are you sleeping? She wanted to ask.

Since they were cousins, they must be more familiar with the environment than she, the part-time worker, right?

There were three ghosts sitting in the shuttle bus, and Xie Bi’an didn’t want to cause any extra trouble, so he took the initiative to say, “We will arrange it ourselves. You go and rest.”

Ruan Jingluo breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to her room.

“Dressed like Black and White Impermanence…” she muttered to herself.

Black and White Impermanence behind her: Indeed, they were the real deal; if we told you, you’d be scared to death.

She couldn’t sleep. Ruan Jingluo took out her phone and checked the time. Which relative would suddenly show up at 2:30 AM? It’s not like someone died and we need to announce the funeral.

Lu Shouqiu didn’t even tell her.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She sent Lu Shouqiu a message: “Next time, if you don’t tell me in advance that relatives are coming, I will treat them as thieves.”

Lu Shouqiu didn’t reply; she was probably still playing wildly. That rascal.

She tossed and turned until past 3 o’clock when she finally felt a bit sleepy, only to be woken up by a loud banging sound.

It came from downstairs; it sounded like someone smashing the car door.

She lifted the quilt and sat up, walked to the door barefoot, and listened with her ear against it. She was dying of curiosity, and in the end, she couldn’t help but open the door to look.

The shuttle bus was still parked at the door. The soul that had been escorted tonight had a very heavy murderous aura and refused to be honest inside the car, constantly hitting the car window and trying to get out. Its pale face was pressed against the glass, right in the eyes of Ruan Jingluo, who was looking inside.

“Ah! Ah!”

Thump!

Ruan Jingluo was scared unconscious on the ground.

The Black and White Impermanence, who ran out upon hearing the sound, looked at the person lying on the ground. Their silence was deafening.

This familiar scene, sigh!

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