Npc 68

Cao Youfeng curiously looked at the wriggling tentacle in Jiang Yan's hand: "What exactly is this thing?"

The misunderstanding that "Jiang Yan can control system NPCs" had been cleared up, but neither the main system nor Jiang Yan had provided any explanation for the tentacle so far.

Could it be that Jiang Yan can’t control system NPCs, but he can control system bosses?

"I don't know," Jiang Yan answered calmly, clearly not wanting to say more.

[Don't know? What the hell is that?]

[Jiang Yan's evasion technique when faced with questions he doesn't want to answer: I don't know, I’m not sure, I guess.]

Jiang Yan was expressionless at this moment.

Let’s not even mention the fact that, as a "bride," it made sense for him to know his "cousin" Cang Rou, but if it came to this thing in his hands, it would involve "breaking his persona"—a problem.

What could he say?

This thing was from his perverted ex-husband ??

How embarrassing!

With that thought, Jiang Yan roughly shoved the tentacle back into his clothes.

He didn't want to say more, and no one pressed him for answers. After all, the focus now was on the curse that had fallen on the entire town.

"You just said that it wasn’t the Red Ghost Lady who cursed the ghosts, but that the ghosts cursed the Red Ghost Lady?" Jian Hou looked at Ding Wanyu.

"Yes," Ding Wanyu nodded and answered.

He spoke slowly: "Back then, she drowned the child in the Fushou Well. But the child didn’t fall in by accident; the child was deliberately drowned."

"Two children, four soul-gathering yellow talismans, and six exquisite paper figures."

At this point, Cang Rou smiled sadly: "The paper figures were something I asked my mother-in-law to make for offering on the tomb. I personally made them."

"And then I found out that they were used to trap my daughter—using two living young girls as sacrifices for the well, one to honor the gods and the other to prosper descendants."

"This descendant only refers to sons and grandsons, not daughters and granddaughters."

Her black, wet, long hair clung to her pale, decayed face. She smiled, but there was not a hint of joy in her smile. Her memories were like a thin mist now before everyone’s eyes.

By the damp, moss-covered Fushou Well, built from dark blue stones, yellow and white paper money scattered the ground. The bodies of her two daughters lay, sprawled on the pile of paper money, covered with white silk adorned with soul-binding banners—two small, swollen, pale corpses.

She watched everything helplessly and disbelievingly. She didn’t cry. She didn’t know why she wasn’t crying, but everyone around her was smiling.

She didn’t understand what they were laughing at, but they were definitely all laughing.

A kind-hearted elder even came over and softly patted her back, trying to comfort her: “Alright, alright! It’s done. Take the children and wrap them in a straw mat and take them back with you.”

She stared blankly at her motionless daughters lying on the ground. Not one, but two.

Her entire family was gone. Not a single one was left for her.

It was pitiful. She had just found out, the moment before her two daughters were thrown into the well, they had tugged at her husband’s sleeve and asked: “Daddy, we’re hungry. Can we eat before we jump down?”

They didn’t understand what it meant to jump down. It was like the death row prisoners who still get a final meal before execution. They didn’t even get a full meal.

A drop of blood-tear slid from her eye, but she didn’t want to look back.

“I know that in some regions, there are customs where girls are abused and killed to scare the souls of girls, so that they won’t come back and be born into this family, in order to achieve the goal of asking for sons,” Yu Jia exhaled a puff of white smoke.

“Does this... work?” Jian Hou asked, shocked.

Yu Jia mocked, “Once the daughters are all killed, what’s left? Only sons, right?”

“Then why does this town have a custom of only allowing one son and one daughter per family? And why, with this custom and tradition, does every family still have to dress up a woman?” Jian Hou asked, puzzled.

“It’s because the gods said so,” Cang Rou’s gaze fell on the "Mountain God Picture" on the altar in the center of the ancestral hall.

“I told you I met a god on the mountain—this is the truth. I really did meet one,” she spoke slowly.

“The god was very shocked and angry. In order to prevent my daughters’ tragedy from happening again and to ensure gender equality and balance between yin and yang, the god set a rule that each family in the town can only have one son and one daughter.”

“The god said that when the people in the town no longer distinguish between sons and daughters, this rule will be lifted, and they can go back to freely reproducing.”

“The god also enforces family planning,” Cao Youfeng commented.

“But how can you ensure whether the baby in your belly will be a boy or a girl?” he continued.

“I remember the mayor said you had your ways,” Tao Shi looked at her.

At this, she grinned: “The method is simple—if the first child is a boy, and the second one is also a boy, then the second child is drowned, and this continues until a daughter is born. The opposite is true as well.”

“Do you see the little stone towers in front of every family’s door? Inside are the children who shouldn’t have been born.”

“This is the rule, and also the curse.”

Everyone fell silent.

Although they had guessed it roughly before, they were still shocked into speechlessness when they heard the truth.

“No wonder the town has such heavy yin energy, and the surrounding area is full of locust trees,” Jia said.

“Using feng shui to trap the entire town in this deep mountain, forcing you all to reproduce in such an unhealthy way, this must be an evil god,” Jian Hou commented.

Cang Rou glanced faintly at Jian Hou: “I’m not sure what kind of god it is, but it has always lived on the mountain. Everyone in the town calls it the Mountain God.”

“And what does this have to do with you and the curse on the town?” Tao Shi asked.

“The god set the rules for the town’s reproduction, but many people didn’t follow them at first, so the god made me the supervisor, overseeing the town’s procreation, and gave me the power to punish and kill those who broke the rules,” Cang Rou’s voice was calm.

“I promised the god that as long as anyone in the town violated the rules of reproduction, I would stay in the town to supervise them.”

“When I made this vow, I thought I would dedicate the rest of my life to this task. After a hundred years, the people of the town would have restored normal order. But now, it’s been over a thousand years…”

“A thousand years, I’ve been trapped in this town, unable to reincarnate, unable to be reborn, forced to watch them drown different daughters in the water again and again, then raise the sons disguised as daughters, watching them give birth to children for their sons…”

She looked at everyone: “So, isn’t this them cursing me?”

“What about the ghosts?” Tao Shi asked.

As soon as the ghosts were mentioned, Cang Rou’s expression instantly darkened, and with her pale, decayed skin and eerie white pupils, her face looked even more terrifying.

Her voice turned sharp and piercing: “They are evil spirits that crawled out of the graves to fight against the god!”

The ghosts were not a living person; they crawled out of the grave—the same one who had comforted her by the well that day.

The person had secretly drowned her children but claimed it was an accident, that they had tripped and fallen into the river.

She would never forget the moment she first saw them, the shock of seeing their skin as red as blood, still smiling, just like when they had comforted her by the well. But this time, their smile had stretched to the ears, with the gums exposed, their teeth were stark white and horrifying.

She still didn’t understand what had happened, why everything suddenly changed.

But from that day on, the "ghosts" spread throughout the town like a virus.

They blocked and interfered with her supervision of the town.

The souls of her daughters were scattered throughout the town, and she would often call out for them at night, searching. These lowly ghosts would follow her, repeating her calls over and over again, disturbing her search for her daughters, while also signaling to those who had broken the town’s rules.

“So, the ghosts are actually protecting the people of the town? Their loud noises at night are signals for the people of the town?” Cao Youfeng asked, stunned.

“Yes!” the Red Ghost Lady gritted her teeth.

Ghosts... a whole group of ghosts?

Jiang Yan quietly lowered the curtain.

“The feng shui of this town is extremely bad, it’s normal for the dead to turn into ghosts,” Yu Jia’s smoke flickered in the dim ancestral hall. “The living ones probably became ghosts because of the corpse poison and their obsessions. As for their obsession... it was probably about having sons back then.”

Then he said with some mockery: “So the ghosts aren’t here for the Red Ghost Lady, they’re here for their own descendants.”

“Why?” Cao Youfeng couldn’t understand. “Why, even if they defy the gods, lose their lives, and turn into vengeful ghosts, must they have a son?”

“Even though I’ve been someone’s son for 19 years, I still don’t get it,” Tao Shi said

At this moment, Jiang Yan's mother, who had been silent, sighed and said, "You’re still young, but once you're married, you'll understand."

Everyone’s gaze instantly fell on the only married person present.

Jiang Yan: "..."

He pulled the corner of his mouth in exasperation. "In my marriage, I don’t plan on having children, thank you."

Whether it was his current role as the "bride" in the instance or his real-world self, he would never have a child.

When he and Yu Xiu got married, his mother had asked if they wanted to adopt a child. Without even discussing it with Yu Xiu, they both rejected the idea on the spot, very much in sync.

This was also one of the reasons why he chose to marry Yu Xiu. As he told Jian Hou before—he was compatible with him.

Although Yu Xiu and he had very different personalities, and the guy could be incredibly annoying, they always somehow clicked at certain moments. There was never any burden or hesitation when they were together.

Though every time others upgraded to parents, he genuinely felt happy for them.

But he really had no interest in children and was even disgusted by them!

No matter how well-behaved the child was, after just an hour of watching, he hated it! Especially boys!

He even disliked the younger version of himself!

If it were up to him, humans should have evolved past the childhood phase.

Jiang Yan was lost in thought when he suddenly felt a chill on his neck—a sharp, gleaming dagger had unknowingly been pressed to his throat.

"Clink."

[Player: Fang Rui -- Polluted.]

Jiang Yan: "..."

What the hell

Previous Chapter NPC 67 Next Chapter NPC 69