The sun had just set, and the sky had not yet completely darkened. In the Lian Clan, seven or eight children and several women surrounded Jiang Xiaorou's home.
The youngest of the children were only seven or eight, while the oldest were about the same age as Yi Yun. Every one of them wore ragged clothes and was filthy from head to toe. They held cow dung in their hands, tossing lump after lump at Jiang Xiaorou's door.
"Smack! Smack! Smack!"
The filthy cow dung burst across Jiang Xiaorou's door and outer walls, filling the air with a stench that could fumigate the heavens.
Behind the children stood an old woman dressed in a long black robe, looking like a witch. She hopped wildly around on the ground as though suffering a fit, muttering incantations under her breath.
"All the gods from every road are my brothers, all the Bodhisattvas from every road are my sisters. Illness and disaster, stay far from me! Demons and monsters, hurry and get away! Fox spirits and evil ghosts, reveal yourselves at once! Ahhh... wah wah wah... ahhh..."
The old woman puckered her toothless mouth, howling like a ghost without pause, as though she had reached the height of ecstasy.
And as the old woman's voice climbed to its peak, the children around her became as frenzied as if they had been injected with stimulants, flinging cow dung with a clatter.
All this cow dung had been obtained from the Lian Clan's cattle farm. The farm had accumulated a great deal of it, and now they had shoveled over a huge pile.
The villagers wanted the cow dung to ward off evil spirits.
The matter of Yi Yun bleeding from all seven orifices had already spread throughout the Lian Clan.
People dying in the