Staying the night

"Nothing." He quickly tucked the invitation inside his clothes.

Aunt Wang straightened up and leaned toward Li Xian, her eyes sweeping over him. Finding nothing, she sat back down and murmured to herself:

"Where was I? Right... the River God. The River God killed a lot of people with the rain..."

Aunt Wang's unnerving rambling put Li Xian on guard. Although she did not seem particularly aggressive at the moment and could even be considered a victim, villagers who could condone Li Xiaojuan being sent to her death could hardly be judged as "normal people."

"I..." Li Xian tried to find an excuse to leave, but Aunt Wang interrupted him. She reached out and seized his wrist with a grip far stronger than an ordinary woman's.

"I haven't finished yet."

"Only after that rain did everyone believe we really had angered the River God. Another night passed, and the village chief said that if we wanted the River God to forgive us, we had to choose another bride to offer him."

"You can count the young people in this village on one hand. There were only two young girls, Xiao Mei and Xiaojuan. Now that Xiao Mei is gone, the only one who can be the bride... is Xiaojuan."

"She's an orphan. She has no ties. It was the most sensible choice."

"Her life alone could save everyone in our village."

"We had no choice. We wanted to live too, didn't we?" Aunt Wang's grip tightened, almost leaving a mark on Li Xian's wrist.

Li Xian looked up and saw a madness verging on the grotesque in Aunt Wang's eyes. She stared at him intently and asked with desperate urgency:

"I wasn't wrong, was I?"

[Holy shit, she was fine a second ago. Why did she suddenly go crazy?]

[Maybe she's been bottling it up too long? Because she had a daughter herself, unlike the other villagers, she feels guilty about sending Li Xiaojuan to her death.]

[That makes sense. Besides, she can't talk to the other villagers about this at all. So when she met the streamer, an "outsider," she readily told him about her daughter's death and started desperately seeking confirmation that she was "right."]

[It feels like Aunt Wang is the only villager with any conscience left. None of the others seem troubled or guilty about this at all.]

[Too bad the streamer's the one paying for it...]

"Aunt Wang, calm down. Nobody blames you." Seeing things take a bad turn, Song Qingzhang tried to soothe her from the side.

But Aunt Wang seemed not to hear him. She kept muttering, "I wasn't wrong, was I?? I didn't do anything wrong, did I???"

Unable to reason with her, Li Xian tried to shake off Aunt Wang's hand and leave immediately, only for rain to suddenly fall from the previously clear sky.

Unlike the earlier rain, which had gradually grown heavier, this downpour came without warning. Rain poured down in an instant, and the sky darkened just as abruptly. Dense raindrops battered the ground and windows, brazenly announcing their arrival.

Aunt Wang turned toward the window, and her eyes finally regained some focus. She slowly released Li Xian's hand, seemingly coming back to her senses.

She turned to Song Qingzhang:

"...You just said nobody blames me?"

Song Qingzhang nodded furiously.

As though seeking confirmation, Aunt Wang turned her gaze back to Li Xian and asked, "What about you? Do you think so too?"

Li Xian nodded against his conscience. "There was nothing else you could do."

Only then did Aunt Wang stop questioning them, as though she had finally received her answer. She looked at the heavy rain outside. "This rain probably won't stop anytime soon."

That was exactly what worried Li Xian. It was already close to sunset. If the rain did not stop soon, he probably would not be able to return to the village chief's house.

The two sat quietly inside and waited, watching the clock on the wall move from four to five. Just as Aunt Shen had said, the rain outside showed no sign of letting up.

Song Qingzhang was on pins and needles, while Li Xian's heart gradually sank.

Aunt Wang prepared a room for them to stay in for the night.

That empty room was where Shen Xiaomei had lived before her death.

The room was small and meticulously clean. Li Xian searched it thoroughly without finding a single personal possession. He did not know whether Aunt Wang had put everything away because the reminders were too painful, or whether there was some other reason.

The bed seemed to have been made to suit the mother and daughter's heights and was only a little over a meter seventy long. Fortunately, it was wide enough for both men, so Song Qingzhang and Li Xian lay on it with their legs bent.

Raindrops kept battering the window, and the damp smell slipped through the gaps and into their noses. A scene that would ordinarily have been soothing now left everyone uneasy.

"Li Xian? Are you asleep?" Song Qingzhang asked in a hushed voice.

"No."

Song Qingzhang seemed unable to sleep and wanted to find something to talk about to ease his unease. "Where do you think the bride is?"

"Which one?"

"Which one? The one the village chief told us to find..." Halfway through, Song Qingzhang understood what Li Xian meant. "Oh, there are two brides now."

But he immediately grew troubled again. "The clear condition is to put the bride's body in the coffin... which bride does the task actually mean?"

"I don't know."

Li Xian was sparing with his words.

"Ugh, whichever one it is, we don't have any clues right now. Shen Xiaomei's body is missing, and we don't know where Li Xiaojuan is either..."

At that point, Song Qingzhang seemed to suddenly notice something interesting.

"I just realized, Li Xian, that missing bride has the same surname as you."

Li Xian's eyelid twitched. His only regret was not pretending to be asleep when Song Qingzhang called him.

"That surname's pretty uncommon too. What a coincidence. Maybe you're not actually here on vacation, but you're her long-lost older brother who came to the village looking for family?"

Song Qingzhang chuckled, apparently realizing how far-fetched his own guess was.

Seeing that he was still in the mood to laugh foolishly, Li Xian suddenly felt something more complicated than anxiety.

Was he optimistic, or just stupid...?

"I'm going to sleep."

Li Xian unilaterally ended the conversation.

Although Li Xian had barely responded to him, Song Qingzhang inexplicably felt much calmer, and drowsiness gradually crept over him.

Yet Li Xian, who had been the first to suggest sleeping, found his mind growing clearer instead.

He closed his eyes and silently sorted through the clues he had gathered that day.

He carefully recalled what Aunt Wang had said, feeling that something was strange.

"Our village has always been like this... we've coexisted peacefully like this for years."

Coexisted peacefully? Wouldn't the normal way to put it be "lived peacefully"? There were only villagers in the village. Who had they been "coexisting" with all this time?

The only explanation at present was the River God, but that meant the villagers had always known about and believed in his existence... and that was strange.

Why would they keep believing in something that had never appeared? And if they believed, why wasn't there a shrine in the village to worship the River God?

Just what was the River God to them?

Li Xian felt he had caught hold of a line of reasoning, but before he could explore it further, he heard the wooden door creak-

It opened.