236: Chapter 236 The Story by the Campfire

"A curse?"

Inside the spacious Miao stilt house hall, Helena asked doubtfully.

In the codices of the Western Holy See, a curse was usually a blasphemous spell chanted by an evil witch beside a cauldron brewing green venom.

It was a vicious magic inflicted upon a certain person or a certain family.

As long as it was washed with high-tier holy water, or the caster was tied to a stake and burned to ashes with the fire of adjudication, the curse would naturally be easily resolved.

"Your Excellency the Chief Priest, in the extraordinary system of the West, any curse must have a source."

"As long as we find the demon or evil spirit that inflicted the curse and completely purify it, the medium of the curse will be severed."

Helena used the language of Great Xia to raise the question within her cognitive system.

"Since you all know that something is suppressed beneath this ancient village, why haven't so many generations of Great Shamans from your Wangu Ancient Tribe joined forces to completely eliminate it? Instead, you have every generation of the Saintess go and… go and sacrifice herself?"

The firewood in the fire pit emitted a crisp "crackling" sound of bursting.

A speck of orange-red spark bounced out, landed on the dark cyan stone slab, rapidly dimmed, and finally turned into a small pinch of cold ashes.

The Chief Priest did not immediately answer Helena's question.

This silver-haired old woman slowly pulled out a smoking pipe from her waist.

With her rough fingers, she pinched a pinch of dark green cut tobacco from an old tobacco pouch and stuffed it into the pipe bowl little by little.

The eldest uncle sensibly picked up a piece of red-hot charcoal from the fire pit and leaned over.

The Chief Priest leaned closer to the charcoal and took a deep breath.

"Hoo!"

A wisp of fishy-sweet blue smoke carrying strong bitter herbs was exhaled from her shriveled lips.

The smoke lingered above the fire pit, making her vicissitude-lined face appear even more obscure.

"Little girl, what you call eliminating demons and defending the Dao is the rule of you Westerners."

"It is also the fine words that most prominent and upright sects in this world like to keep on their lips."

The Chief Priest's voice was terribly hoarse, exuding a sense of heaviness and desolation.

"However, there are some things in this world that you cannot kill, because they are not monsters, not ghosts, nor are they the demons in the mouths of you Westerners."

The Chief Priest raised her head, and through the lingering blue smoke, she took a deep look at the silent Ayugu.

"Lassie, you are all outsiders. The wind in this Ten Thousand Mountains is very strong, and the night is very long."

"Since you have walked here for my Bao'er, this old woman will tell you three old-fashioned stories tonight."

Lin Ye leaned against the backrest of the low stool, crossing his hands behind his head.

"Aunty, please tell them. Anyway, the long night is long, and we have tea and wine here. Consider it listening to storytelling to pass the time."

Lin Ye casually picked up the bowl of red sour soup from the side and took a sip. His posture was lazy, but his ears had already pricked up.

Leng Yue sat quietly by Lin Ye's side, her gaze quietly watching the leaping flames of the fire pit.

As for Frost Star, she was hugging a freshly baked sweet potato right now, gnawing on it until her face was covered in dust.

For her, as long as there was food, it didn't matter what story she listened to, as long as there were no female ghosts in the story trying to snatch her brother-in-law.

The Chief Priest took two puffs of dry tobacco, and her eyes gradually became hazy, as if she had fallen into distant memories.

"This first story happened in that ancient era when our ancestors of Miao Border had not yet learned to drive Gu insects."

The Chief Priest slowly opened her mouth, her voice echoing in the spacious stilt house hall.

"At that time, there was no poisonous miasma in the Ten Thousand Mountains, nor were there so many demons and ghosts."

"The ancestors established a secluded village in a valley named "Baishui". The men farmed and the women wove, living off the mountains. Although life was bitter, it could still be considered a place where lost items on the road were not picked up and doors were not bolted at night."

"Until one year, the Ten Thousand Mountains suffered a once-in-a-century severe drought, crops failed completely, and prey fled the deep mountains one after another."

"The ancestors of Baishui Village starved to death everywhere, and even tree bark and Guanyin clay were gnawed clean. People starved to death every day, and corpses piled up in the gullies, attracting flocks of vultures."

"There was a beggar named Agou in the village. He was originally an outsider who had fled famine. Because he was thin and small and had a lame leg, he usually could only barely survive by relying on the leftover scraps given by the villagers."

"But this was a year of severe drought, and everyone couldn't even feed themselves, so naturally no one cared about him anymore. Agou was so hungry that he went crazy. Dragging his lame leg, he crawled into the riverbed of the Baishui River, which had dried up to the bottom, attempting to dig a few dead fish or grass roots in the mud to fill his stomach."

The Chief Priest paused here for a moment.

"Agou dug in the stinking silt for a whole day and night. He didn't dig up any fish, but his fingers touched a soft thing emitting a strange and exotic fragrance."

"With his last strength, he dug that thing out of the silt. It was a translucent "flesh lump" the size of a millstone."

"This flesh lump had no bones, just like a flesh-colored lotus blooming in the mud. What was even weirder was that not only did it lack the foul smell of decay, but it also emitted an exotic fragrance."

"Agou had lost his reason from hunger at that time. He didn't care whether this thing was poisonous or not, and directly opened his mouth, like a wild beast, fiercely biting off a small bite from that piece of meat and swallowing it whole."

Hearing this, Helena couldn't help slightly frowning.

Just listening to this picture made one's gastrointestinal tract feel uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, Frost Star stopped the action of gnawing on the sweet potato.

Her different-colored pupils blinked, seeming to seriously ponder what kind of texture that piece of "meat" actually had.

"That small bite of meat went down into the stomach……"

The Chief Priest's voice suddenly rose a few decibels.

"A miracle happened."

"Agou not only instantly felt no hunger, but the withered Qi and blood in his body began to surge crazily like great rivers!"

"His lame leg of more than ten years, in the short time of half an incense stick, had its bones reorganized and muscles grown, and actually completely returned to normal!"

"Even, he felt that his whole body was filled with endless strength, and the perception of his five senses became very acute, as if as long as he was willing, he could smash the boulders of this Ten Thousand Mountains with one punch!"

"Immortal meat! This is the immortal meat bestowed by the Mountain God!"

"Agou was ecstatic at that time. He could have swallowed this piece of meat alone and then fled far away, but human nature at that time after all still retained a trace of simple kindness."

"He remembered the few mouthfuls of rice soup that the villagers occasionally almsed to him in the past dozen years. Therefore, he laboriously carried that huge piece of immortal meat back to Baishui Village."

"Agou offered the immortal meat to the most respected old clan leader in the village, and demonstrated the miracle of his broken leg regeneration in public."

"The old clan leader was so excited that tears streamed down his old face, believing that this was a life-saving divine object sent down by heaven to pity the ancestors of Baishui Village."

"That night, the old clan leader gathered everyone in the village, fairly cut the immortal meat into more than a hundred fingernail-sized meat cubes, and distributed them to every dying villager in the village."

"All villagers who ate the immortal meat not only immediately got rid of hunger and illness, but even some dying elderly people grew black hair and recovered their physical fitness of their prime years."

"The entire Baishui Village ushered in an unprecedented rebirth in the desperate situation. They knelt in front of the ancestral hall, thanking heaven for its grace and Agou for his selflessness."

The Chief Priest sighed heavily here.

"If the story ended here, then this would indeed be a myth about gratitude and redemption."

"But human beings are the creatures least able to withstand tests."

Lin Ye sat on the low stool, his fingers rhythmically tapping on the tea table.

Hearing this, a sarcastic arc hung on the corners of his mouth.

"Once the floodgates of desire are opened, they can never be closed again, right?"

Lin Ye casually chimed in.