One Short of Four

Liu Chang'an squatted by the river and washed his hands. He had only adjusted that man's bones and joints and smoothed out his meridians, but people with filthy, lecherous hearts inevitably made one feel dirty just from touching them. He needed to wash his hands.

The river water was unexpectedly clear. Many aquatic species had gone extinct, but at least the water quality was far better than it had been twenty or thirty years ago.

In the shallow waters by the bank, he could see countless tiny aquatic corpses floating, settling, and being consumed by the environment that had birthed and doomed them, returning once more to nature's cycle.

Before natural science explained progress, there had already been stories of people entering hell after death and reincarnating. Was that simply a plain understanding of the material cycle of life?

He turned to look at the middle-aged man still vomiting on the beach, then at Bai Hui, who obediently kept her eyes facing forward. What a stark contrast between ugliness and beauty.

Liu Chang'an admitted that the night and the river breeze were not particularly beautiful themselves. They merely adorned the scenery around Bai Hui.

"Let's go," Liu Chang'an said as he walked up behind Bai Hui.

"What did you do just now?" Bai Hui had been pretending to calmly play with her phone, but she could not help pricking up her ears to listen.

She did not dare turn around now, afraid that the middle-aged man might no longer be intact—missing an arm or a leg, perhaps.

"Do you know about flood-dragon people?" Liu Chang'an kicked aside a pebble and headed toward the riverside scenic walkway.

Bai Hui glanced at the river beside them. There were plenty of myths and legends related to it, but merfolk did not seem to