"Pretty women really are strange."
Chen Shi shook his head. "She wants to come up, yet she's dripping with sweat and shivering with ague, completely unwilling to come up. She just loves staying down below."
Li Tianqing shared the sentiment entirely. "That's why I've lived for twelve years and still don't understand how women think."
Chen Shi nodded. "I'm already eleven, and I don't understand women either."
The two of them sighed heavily, feeling this was an entirely unfamiliar territory to them.
"You two little things haven't even held a woman's hand, what are your wild imaginations running about for?" Jin Hongying's voice came from beneath the earth slope.
Li Tianqing said in a soft voice, "I've held my mother's hand. She washed clothes at the Li family, and her hands were very rough."
Chen Shi said, "I've also touched Yuzhu's hand. It wasn't as strong as mine."
They came beneath the crooked-necked old tree, and Chen Shi offered incense to the stone tablet godmother, saying in a low voice, "Godmother, please protect us, let us safely survive this demon transformation, and keep the villagers safe and sound."
Green light drifted over the stone tablet like the vapor of rosy clouds, but other than that, there was nothing unusual about it.
Li Tianqing was scrutinizing the crooked-necked old willow tree before him with considerable astonishment, saying, "Little Tenth, all the other trees outside the village have turned into porcelain trees. Why hasn't this old willow tree porcelainified?"
Chen Shi was stunned and couldn't help looking at this old tree.
He was too familiar with everything here, and thus hadn't noticed that the old willow tree hadn't porcelainified. Observing closely now, he saw that not only did the old willow tree show no signs of porcelainification, it was even verdant and