Dead people weren't frightening.
For the Seventh Master and me, people who died and then rose again were understandable too.
But people who died, rose again, and could still think as they had in life felt somewhat eerie.
This woman really wasn't an ordinary reanimated corpse. She still retained some of her thinking from life, only her thoughts were a little slow, and she couldn't speak. The single breath remaining in her body couldn't sustain its functions.
I thought for a moment, then said to her, "For the questions we ask next, nod if the answer is yes and shake your head if it's no. Nod if you understand."
The woman's eyes, like peeled lychees, shifted between the Seventh Master and me, then she slowly nodded.
"Were you... trafficked here?"
She nodded.
"Is there more than one woman in this village who was trafficked here?"
She nodded again.
The Seventh Master and I exchanged a glance, our expressions darkening again.
I only had a few days left of my vacation. I hadn't expected to run into something like this at our last stop.
Before we started this short journey, the Seventh Master had told me that traveling was about cultivating the heart. Although cultivating the heart wasn't the same as cultivating the Dao, cultivating the Dao couldn't be separated from cultivating the heart.
Although we were folk Daoist priests, we still had to hold ourselves strictly to the standards of Daoist followers, keeping righteous hearts and rejecting injustice, unfairness, wrongdoing, and all forms of falsehood.
The woman before us looked several years younger than me.
And in her current condition, after all the abuse she'd suffered... she was probably even younger than she looked, possibly still a student. Her parents were probably still at home, hoping to find her.
She