Named after "purple," it should have been a fine name, but the meaning behind Yu Zi's name was not so auspicious. "Evil Purple Seizes Vermilion" came from the Word Spirit of the Analects: "I detest purple for usurping vermilion; I detest the music of Zheng for throwing the elegant music into disorder; I detest glib tongues for bringing ruin to states and families."
"Purple" meant flawed.
It was not a proper color, but a blemish among the five colors.
"Vermilion" was a proper color; "purple" was a mixed color.
Thus, in the eyes of the world, "purple" had also been given the meaning of "heretical" and "evil." Yu Zi knew this, yet still chose "purple" as her name. And that village, along with that "grandfather and grandmother," happened to be surnamed Zhu. From this, one could see her stubbornness and resolve.
If Heyin was a land of barren mountains and wicked rivers, then Zhu Family Village was the "cream of the crop" among such places. The terraced fields cultivated near the village were mostly poor land, with fertility ranging from low to middling; good fields were few.
Dozens of households lived deep in the mountains.
The village was extremely remote.
Because it was difficult to travel in and out, apart from those who went out to "do business," ordinary villagers only left once a month, on the first or fifteenth, to attend the market. They exchanged the crops they had grown for rice, money, or other necessities. At first glance, it seemed no different from an ordinary village.
When Kang Shi led his people there, he saw wisps of cooking smoke rising from the village, whose thatched cottages stood scattered about. Looking around, he spotted two or three women in thin clothes, bent over as they weeded the fields. A