Chapter 212: The Child

Chapter 212: The Children

Returning to Naganzhai, the group made quite a show of force. Tao Shiyi knew the way like the back of his hand, driving the carriage straight to the headman’s home. The headman’s bamboo fence was flimsy, and the horses kicked the bamboo gate clear across the yard, startling those who were meeting upstairs.

A dozen people hurried down the stairs, dumbstruck to see Song Tingzhou and Meng Wan back again.

Meng Wan picked up a dry bamboo stick from the ground that had been kicked by a horse, fiddling with it as he taunted, “Well, look at all these folks gathered here, huh? Plotting how to tip off Tan Wo?”

The people opposite stared back, confused and scared.

Meng Wan’s hand froze. Right, forgot again—these folks don’t speak Mandarin.

Song Tingzhou didn’t waste words. “Take ’em all!”

When the runners moved in, the headman of Naganzhai and his men all squared up to resist.

Meng Wan turned to Wei Kai, who was skulking at the back, claiming he had other business in Naganzhai, “We’re just taking you before the tribal elder of Nao Zhai. If you resist or attack, next time it won’t be the elder you face, but troops sent to arrest you. You know what to say, don’t you?”

Wei Kai limped out from the back, wiping sweat from his brow, and croaked something in Zhuang to the headman.

The headman wrestled with it for a moment, then finally stopped his clansmen from resisting. The group was escorted outside by the yamen runners.

At the village gate, Xuesheng fell in with the group, hauling a big sack. Tao Shiyi cleared a spot for him on the cart. “Brother Xuesheng, you caught the person?”

“Mm.” Xuesheng set the sack down, revealing gray-white fur through the opening. He said to Meng Wan inside the carriage, “Fulang, I found the place, but the kids were terrified of strangers. I didn’t dare go in.”

Meng Wan sighed again from inside the carriage. “Whatever. When we get back to Nao Zhai, have the elder tell their parents to come pick them up.” Who knew if those kids would even recognize their own folks now.

—

The Elder Hall of Nao Zhai was the most formal venue in the Zhuang villages, second only to the ancestral shrine. It served not only as a place for elders to pass down traditional culture to the younger generation but also as a meeting hall where headmen and the tribal elder set village rules and mediate disputes.

A gong hung outside the Elder Hall was struck. Just about everyone who heard the gong crowded over to see what was up.

Meng Wan sat way in the back, listening to the Zhuang folks murmur around him—it felt like being in Thailand.

Song Tingzhou sat at the head of the hall, with the tribal elder and the shaman on either side of him, both looking grim.

They sat there for a solid hour, until nearly all the seats were filled. At least half of the Zhuang villages’ headmen had come; only those from the farthest villages had yet to arrive.

The tribal elder rose from his seat and, shakily, addressed the crowd in Zhuang. Instantly, every Zhuang person inside and outside the hall went dead quiet, all eyes locked on Song Tingzhou.

“Bring them in,” Song Tingzhou instructed Tao Ba beside him.

Tao Ba pushed his way out of the hall and, a moment later, brought in the Naganzhai people, plus Wei Kai and Nongle.

The headman of Naganzhai stood at the front. After bowing to the tribal elder, he began recounting how they had been brought there, pointing at Song Tingzhou with a look of grievance.

Song Tingzhou could understand Zhuang well enough, but not as fluently as a native. And since Meng Wan was here and couldn’t follow, the shaman stepped in as translator.

The tribal elder asked the Naganzhai headman sternly, “You claim you don’t know why you were brought before me? Then explain why you sent people out of the village to report to Tan Wo in the prefectural capital!”

He was old and liked to sweep things under the rug, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know about his people’s little schemes.

The Naganzhai headman grumbled, “I did it for my folks.”

He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Tan Wo was the biggest shot to come out of Naganzhai; if Tan Wo told him to keep an eye on the village, he’d just do it. All to make the village better off!

He was stubborn as a mule, thickheaded, and there was no reasoning with him. The tribal elder had no way to deal with him.

Then Song Tingzhou cut in, “You say you did it for your people. Then do you know how Dalun died?”

The Naganzhai headman had clearly gotten the story from Dani Mei. Without thinking, he replied, “Dalun was bitten to death by a mountain hag.”

“A mountain hag?” Song Tingzhou said in a deep voice. “There never was any legendary monster—just the evil in people’s hearts. Xuesheng, bring up the mountain hag!”

The crowd grew restless. Everyone thought they must’ve misheard.

“A mountain hag? There really is such a thing?”

“Of course! Last winter, my grandfather saw one while gathering firewood by the mountain—looked exactly like a white-haired monkey.”

“I saw one the year before too!”

“Can a mountain hag be caught?”

Because some had truly seen something, word spread like wildfire. In this isolated village, rumors clouded most people’s judgment. So when the truth was finally revealed, everyone was incredulous.

“Is this... the mountain hag?”

Xuesheng carried the sack in and set it down gently.

When the sack was removed, inside was this bloated figure, barely a meter and a half tall. Its gray-white hair cascaded from the top of its head to its heels, tangled and matted, with many clumps caked with dried blood and dense lice eggs.

As the crowd watched, both curious and scared, Xuesheng parted the hair. No surprise—there was a human face underneath. Though grimy beyond recognition, it was indeed a person, with deep wrinkles, likely in their sixties or seventies.

She had been drugged in the forest by Xuesheng hours ago. As the drug wore off, she started twitching. Her long, sharp fingernails scraped the wooden floor, making a faint scratching sound. Her eyes rolled restlessly in their sockets; the corners of her mouth, crusted with blood, twitched occasionally, like she was trying to snarl but couldn’t manage it.

Though the image was terrifying and she looked nothing like a normal person, no one could honestly call her a mountain hag.

After all, the legendary mountain hag was covered in fur, hair obscuring the face, could speak human language, and specifically tricked young children.

A Xun brought over a basin of water, wrung out a cloth, and began wiping the hag’s face. Some stains had accumulated over years and could not be cleaned right away, but the features gradually became visible.

“Is that Yaxi’s mother?”

“Impossible—Yaxi’s mother died long ago. Besides, she looks more like Yaxi herself.”

“Is it Yaxi? Is it really her? But if she were alive, she’d only be in her forties, right?”

Meng Wan raised an eyebrow and asked the shaman, “Who is Yaxi?”

The shaman hadn’t dared look at Yaxi ever since she was brought in. At Meng Wan’s blunt question, he finally looked up with tears in his eyes.

“Yaxi... is my daughter.”

“What?” Meng Wan was surprised. He said to A Xun, who was still beside Yaxi, “A Xun, take a closer look.”

A Xun was fourteen. Though his medical talent wasn’t as profound as Qing Xing’s, he’d picked up maybe seventy or eighty percent of Doctor Miao’s skills.

He first felt Yaxi’s pulse, then examined the bones of her body. Finally, he said with certainty, “Meng Fulang, this woman is between forty-two and forty-five years old. Her face is aged and ugly because there is a toxin in her body eroding her internal organs.”

When it came to poisons, Chu Ci was the most knowledgeable. Hearing A Xun’s diagnosis, Chu Ci stepped forward to examine Yaxi’s eyelids and tongue, then gestured to Meng Wan: “Indeed, she has been poisoned. But it’s not a lethal poison; it’s likely the result of long-term consumption of toxic plants. The poison accumulates in the body, not enough to kill swiftly, but now she has less than a year to live.”

Meng Wan’s gaze swept over the shaman’s sorrowful, guilty face. “Why did your daughter become a mountain hag? Are you still not gonna talk? My son says she has only a year left.”

The shaman seemed unsurprised by Yaxi’s poisoning. “I did not deliberately hide it. In her youth, Yaxi was the most skillful and clever girl in the Zhuang villages. She fell in love with Tan Wo of Naganzhai. When Tan Wo left to seek his fortune, she waited for him. Until Tan Wo returned with a wife and children... Yaxi went mad.”

Everyone in the Zhuang villages knew this. After going mad, Yaxi ran into the mountain forest and was never seen again.

No one knew that the Mountain Hag who later appeared was her; the surprise on everyone’s faces was genuine.

The shaman’s voice was anguished and bleak: “When I was young and served as a shaman for the Zhuang people, I held a high status. I... I looked down on Axi, thought she was a disgrace. That day, after she ran away, I intentionally didn’t go after her.”

“Later, Tan Wo came to the village to buy cloth. He told us old men...”

“Aliao!” The Tribal Elder furrowed his brow tightly, his face taut with reproach as he scolded the shaman.

The shaman had already worked through a lot on this journey. His wife died young, his son had a strained relationship with him because of his sister’s situation, and his daughter had only a few months left to live. This secret and guilt had robbed him of sleep and appetite for years. “Tribal Elder, there’s no need to hide it anymore. Our decisions back then may not have been right.”

Resolved to reveal the secret he had kept hidden for half his life, the shaman said, “Tan Wo told us old men that he had a rival in the prefectural city who was always trying to dig up his background. He asked us to close off the village and never let the cloth of Zhuang Village leak out. Otherwise, not only would the women in the village lose this income, but they might be captured by his rival. After that, several children went missing in the village, and the legend of the Mountain Hag spread.”

A few of the elders had guessed as much but looked the other way. And then the people of Zhuang Village believed it.

You could call them ignorant, yet they protected their own. You could call them clever, but they were too stubborn to question things, believing whatever others told them.

Meng Wan stood up and took a piece of brightly colored cloth from his traveling bag. It featured a meander pattern, woven with auspicious combinations of flowers, birds, fish, and insects. The design was structured yet varied.

“This cloth—you spend fifty days weaving it, and Tan Wo only pays you eighty wen?”

The Headman of Gan Village was clearly very familiar with the cloth of his own village. “This was woven by Dani Mei, right? In the whole Zhuang tribe, only she can weave such beautiful cloth. No one else’s is this good.”

Grinding his teeth, Meng Wan pulled out another piece from the bag—a thinner one, covered in geometric patterns. It was clear that this cloth was made with fewer steps than Dani Mei’s, but it was still striking. “This was woven by Dani Mei’s mother. Do you think selling it for eighty wen is reasonable?”

His words left everyone bewildered. If not for eighty wen, then how much? It was just a piece of cloth. Even if they didn’t sell it, the women and girls of Zhuang Village wove it every day anyway.

Meng Wan’s expression turned grim. “This ‘ordinary’ cloth in your eyes sells for at least two taels of silver per bolt outside!”

“Two taels?”

“But we only use it for quilts and headscarves. How can it be worth so much?”

Instead of shock or outrage, the crowd was utterly puzzled.

Meng Wan exchanged a helpless glance with Song Tingzhou. Song Tingzhou sat calmly at the head, looking at the two old men who looked bewildered, and said slowly, “So, you were tricked by Tan Wo.”

Silence fell over the Elder Hall. After a long while, someone finally caught on to the essential point, “Then the children we lost in previous years—Tan Wo deliberately abducted them?”

They had sincerely respected this tribesman who had left the mountains, but he had used their children to threaten them into never leaving Zhuang Village?

The Tribal Elder looked at the angry faces and had to admit how terribly wrong he had been. He murmured, “It’s my fault. It was all because of my foolishness that I was deceived by Tan Wo.”

The people’s anger was hard to quell. The Tribal Elder was so guilt-ridden he wished he could die to make amends. At that moment, Meng Wan stepped forward. “Those children are not dead. I know where they are.”

Many of the clan members who had lost children were not in the Elder Hall. When they heard the children were still alive, their relatives immediately went to inform the families.

Led by Xue Sheng, a large group set out in the direction of the mountain forest bordering Gan Village and another village. It included the Tribal Elder, Song Tingzhou, Meng Wan, and the Headman of Gan Village, whose deception had just been exposed.

Because Tan Wo was from Gan Village, this Headman had been the closest link between Tan Wo and the entire Zhuang Village. He had never imagined that by maintaining this facade of peace for so many years—acting as Tan Wo’s lookout and delivering messages—he had actually harmed his own people!

The dense forest of Zhuang Village was deep, with quite a few wild beasts. Fortunately, their group was large and carried weapons, so no ferocious animals dared approach.

The shaman did not know the exact location after all these years. Xue Sheng had been there once. He released Axi, whose sedative had now worn off.

Having lived alone in the dense forest for so many years, Axi had become somewhat delirious from eating poisonous plants over a long period. Her behavior was completely feral. Once free, she crawled on all fours, quickly put distance between herself and the crowd, then bared her teeth at them angrily from afar.

“Quick, follow her! Axi hid those children somewhere.”

The shaman had been the first to discover this years ago. His conscience wouldn’t allow him to speak up, but he occasionally brought old clothes, cotton, and food to this spot, leaving when he saw Axi take them away.

Xue Sheng moved fastest. The rest followed him and Axi in a frantic run until they finally found their hiding place in a cave.

The children there—the youngest seven or eight, the oldest fifteen or sixteen—did not crawl like Axi. Led by the oldest, they walked and talked like normal human children.

They looked pale and undernourished, but every single one was alive and well.

The oldest child instantly recognized her parents in the crowd. Tears streaming down her face, she rushed toward them, but fear that this was just an illusion stopped her from embracing them.

“Naya!”

“Dalin... wuwu... It’s all Mama’s fault.”

“Meng Ba, come here! Don’t you recognize your father?”

The reunion of parents and children after hardship is always the most tear-jerking scene in the world.

Song Tingzhou looked at the elders and headmen, including the shaman and the Tribal Elder, and said with conviction: “The development of Zhuang Village has never been about standing still. As the most populous ethnic group in Xiwu Prefecture after the Han people, have you never thought about how you progressed in the past? If you maintain this situation under Tan Wo’s deception, in a hundred years, will the Zhuang Village also wither and crumble like the Yao and Miao villages?”

“The Zhuang people need to trade with the outside world. And you are no longer fit to manage Zhuang Village!”