For a moment, Yun Manman considered how to describe it. She rubbed her chin and pondered for a while before finding the words.
"I can't kill them yet. I need to teach them a lesson first, then find a way to kill them later. So which kind would that be?"
"Wow, Master, you've asked exactly the right person!
This pill was tailor-made for what you need. Just hold it beneath someone's nose and let them take a little sniff, and they'll immediately fall into a nightmare. Once they wake up, their whole body will feel as though their bones have been pulled apart and their skin peeled off. They'll wish they were dead.
It lasts seven days!"
Yun Manman praised Guagua in amazement. "You're incredible!"
"Of course!"
Guagua smugly performed a sultry dance. Yun Manman felt that it really did scorch the eyes.
Late that night, just after the start of the midnight hour (around 00:00).
Yun Manman's eyes were still darting about. She had thought through her situation.
In the end, she decided to accept reality. Since she couldn't earn silver through cooking or medicine like the transmigrated heroines in novels,
she would use what she did best: earn silver with her martial prowess and brains.
Determination flashed through her clear, pure eyes. She picked up the black cloth beside her and covered her face.
A figure approached the courtyard entrance, quietly opened the gate, and raced toward the other end of the village.
It wasn't that she couldn't climb over the wall.
It was that her family's wall might not support even her scrawny body!
Looking at the large blue-brick house with its tiled roofs before her, Yun Manman's gaze brimmed with frost.
Sure enough, once you had a stepmother, you had a stepfather too. That old man lived in a house like this, yet still coveted her family's little bit of food.
Yun Manman nimbly leaped onto the courtyard wall, then vaulted inside.
She swept her gaze over the arrangement of the rooms. The largest room in the middle
should have been the best room in the courtyard. Presumably, that old hag must have lived there.
Yun Manman raced over, pushed the door open, and entered.
Hmm???
There was actually no one there.
The room was clean and tidy, as though someone stayed there occasionally. A plain bamboo-curtain screen divided it in two, with a bedroom on one side and what looked like a study on the other.
"So this is the room of Yun Fa's eldest son, Yun Zecai." The very scholar and future top imperial graduate the old Yun family kept talking about.
Looking at the books on the poplar-wood desk, Yun Manman disdained them as dirty and didn't touch them. She only took the fresh paper, brushes, and ink from a box.
She turned and entered the room next door.
Old Man Yun slept on his side. Old Woman Yun wore her underclothes, her scrawny, sallow legs draped over his waist.
Yun Manman felt thoroughly disgusted.
It simply scorched the eyes.
She held the pill beneath Old Woman Yun's nose for her to sniff.
Guagua's voice rang out. "There's silver and a banknote under the pillow."
Yun Manman opened the box beneath the pillow. Inside were pieces of silver and a banknote worth a hundred taels.
Without the slightest ceremony, Yun Manman waved her hand, and the box became completely empty.
She turned toward Yun Wang's room next door. Before she even pushed open the door, thunderous snores sounded from within.
Yun Manman dragged a hand over her face. Fuck, what on earth am I doing?
Where's that aloof head of the Yun Family?
She gritted her teeth and gently pushed the door open anyway. Since she was already here, she might as well settle in. Leaving this undone would only make her feel worse.
With Guagua's guidance, Yun Manman took every last bit of money in the room.
Looking at the sky, which threatened thunder and rain, Yun Manman was in an excellent mood.
"Even heaven is helping me!"
With her current martial arts, destroying a few roofs was no trouble at all.
Yun Manman acted at once. As lightning flashed and thunder boomed overhead, she hurled the true qi in her hands toward the Yun family's roofs.
Rumble... rumble...
Then, watching the rain come pelting down in torrents, Yun Manman slipped into her space to observe.
Apart from Old Woman Yun and Yun Wang, who were trapped in nightmares,
everyone in the Yun family startled awake at the rumbling. The moment they opened their eyes, they saw earth and roof tiles crashing down.
Yun Fa was just about to scramble up and run when he saw that his youngest son was still asleep. With no time to wake him, he scooped him up and prepared to jump off the kang.
The tiles and clods of earth had already fallen, burying half of Yun Fa's body on the kang.
Yun Fa hissed, his expression dark. "Damn it, these rotten tiles cut my foot."
Seeing the roof collapse, Old Man Yun hurriedly pulled up the quilt and wrapped himself in it. He kicked Old Woman Yun. "Old woman, the roof's collapsing!"
Then the old man rolled beneath the table, clutching the quilt.
Unable to wake Yun Wang, his wife held the children and shouted outside,
"Disaster! Lightning's blasted our roof apart!"
The corners of Yun Manman's lips curled up. This was exactly the result she wanted.
She left the old Yun family beneath their star-view roofs, drenched by rain, battered by wind, and buried in dirt.
She herself strolled home through the rain. After all, water was desperately scarce at home, so this counted as a bath.
Early the next morning.
Yun Manman practiced martial arts in the courtyard. Old Father Yun's face held shock and barely concealed delight.
Yun Manman raised an eyebrow and deliberately asked, "Dad, what's got you so happy?"
Somewhat surprised, Old Father Yun said, "Huh? Is it that obvious?"
Yun Manman nodded earnestly. In any case, even if it wasn't obvious, she would make it so.
"Manman, lightning struck the old Yun family's house last night. Every single roof was blasted down. Can you imagine?"
Yun Manman calmly shook her head. "I can't."
Old Father Yun chuckled and raised his eyebrows.
"And that Old Madam Yun and Yun Wang slept so soundly last night that they got buried under the roof tiles. Later, the old Yun family dug them out, but then both of them started hurting all over like they were dying. I heard they're rolling around on the kang. You can hear their screams all around the village entrance."
"Really? Then it looks like it still doesn't hurt enough. Otherwise, how would they have the strength to scream?"
Old Father Yun nodded in wholehearted agreement.
"The villagers say they provoked something unclean and got tangled up with an evil spirit. The old Yun family is in complete chaos now."
A cold glint crossed Yun Manman's eyes, but her voice remained light and pure. "Perhaps. After all, when you've done enough things to weigh on your conscience, some retribution is bound to come."
Yun Manman stayed home for several days, concentrating on cultivating the first level of the Lotus Heart Art.
Every day, Old Father Yun roamed the front lines of melon-eating, sharing the freshest gossip with Yun Manman.
The gossip: the old Yun family had no silver to repair their roofs, so they could only cover them with thatch and barely make do.
Old Woman Yun had smashed her kneecap in her agony. Her mind had cleared, but her leg was crippled.
Unable to bear the pain, Yun Wang had attempted suicide, only to sever the tendons in his left wrist.
Now his mind was clear, but his left hand was completely useless.
Yun Manman: This is only the appetizer.
In the central command tent in the northwest,
a man dressed in snow-white robes looked at the report in his hands. His bearing was noble and effortlessly graceful, his entire figure shrouded in a cold, distant air. His blue eyes, deep as lake water, lifted slightly, and he exuded an innate authority.
"Have you still not found that woman?"
The guard behind him hurriedly replied, "Master, I have failed in my duty. I've investigated all the women in the northwest who know martial arts, but found no news."
"Have you checked the surrounding villages? Never mind. Someone with skills like hers couldn't be a peasant girl. Search elsewhere."
"Yes."