Volume One, Chapter 115: Ping Shui Town 3

“Where?” Qiao Sheng followed Qin Yu’s outstretched finger and peered toward the spot. “That’s the village, isn’t it? What else could it be? Still, that direction looks like the Bianan Sect’s newly built clubhouse.”

Qiao Sheng was always trying to wring a few coins out of Qin Yu, but she was too sharp for him, every time shutting him down neatly before he could even ask.
He left in a huff.

As soon as he was gone, Qin Yu quietly stirred her spiritual energy.

Around here the ambient qi had been ruined almost beyond use, and from the leftover traces she could find no useful clues.
All she could sense was the sheer misery of the people living on this land.
She narrowed her eyes and stared toward the distant place where smoke billowed in ragged layers, deep in thought.

Night fell.

Qin Yu lay on her back, tossing and turning. At last, unable to bear her hunger, she sat up clutching her stomach.

“This Qiao Sheng is so greedy he’d probably charge for a sip of water!”

At that moment, a familiar presence returned.

“Little Yu, guess what I found after following that child?”

Qin Yu was so hungry she was all bone and breath, and had no desire to play guessing games with him.
She leaned weakly against the bedframe. “We’ll talk later. Go find me something to eat.”

Ten minutes later, Mu Ling returned with a few cornbread cakes.
Qin Yu looked at them, then at Mu Ling, her face plainly saying, *Is this all you’ve found for me?*
Mu Ling felt just as helpless; he had searched through Qiao Sheng’s house and found only those few cakes.
“Just make do with this,” he said. “No one here has been tilling the land for ages.”

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Remembering what she had seen when she first entered the village, Qin Yu silently chewed the cornbread.

“Poor wife…”

“Master, just send us an address and we’ll mail you some food.”

“Are you trying to get yourself killed? Don’t you understand how dangerous your situation is now? If you send anything, won’t it be discovered?”

Before arriving, Qin Yu had hidden her drone with an invisibility talisman and a silence talisman, so no one in the village knew she was live-streaming.

After eating, her strength returned a little.
She asked, “What did you find? Just tell me plainly.”
“I think with things like this, you should see it with your own eyes. It’s far more shocking.”

So Mu Ling led her behind a small knoll.
Qin Yu gazed at what lay there, stunned into silence for quite some time.

Behind that little rise hid twenty or so children. The youngest was about as small as the child she had met at the village gate; even the oldest looked no older than fourteen or fifteen.

What shocked her most was that each of them lived inside a ceramic jar, half a person’s height.
The jars were half-buried in the ground, their mouths so small only a head could protrude.
It was easy to imagine that inside them they either had broken limbs or none at all.

Cold, sparse moonlight fell over the scene, and the land felt both bizarre and unnerving.
At any sound from this side, all those heads turned here in unison.
They were so thin, so gaunt that their features were sunken inward.
Their dark eyes fixed on Qin Yu as if they could strip her alive.

“Get out! Go on, get out!”

From a corner came a child’s familiar, still-young voice.
It was the child from the village gate.
She held stones in her arms, hurling them at Qin Yu one after another.

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Qin Yu dodged quickly, but still feared a stray stone might graze her temple.
She glared at the child in irritation.

The child’s blood-bright eyes looked back at her as though fear did not exist.
The expression was as fierce as a small leopard’s.

“I told you to leave! Did you hear me?”

Qin Yu’s eyes shifted, and before stepping forward she cast a quick glance at Mu Ling.
The moment she disappeared from the hill’s line of sight, the faces in the jars began crying out in a rush:

“Duck Egg, I’m starving!”
“Duck Egg sister, I’m starving—so starving!”
“Duck Egg little sister, go fetch that person back!”
“We haven’t eaten in such a long time. If we wait much longer, we’ll die of hunger. Duck Egg, would you let us starve?”

The child called Duck Egg stood with her hands on her hips and threw the remaining stones at those heads, though she did not truly strike them.
In the silent night, each impact was only the sharp clatter of stone against clay.

“Enough! You are human, not monsters. Only monsters eat people!”
“As long as I’m here, you won’t starve. You are not to think of eating people again!”

Right after Duck Egg finished scolding the heads, she felt suddenly weightless, as if something had lifted her.
A bitter cold flared in her eyes.

“If you’re brave enough, make me a jar-person too!”

Mu Ling had never seen such a chilling, hard aura in such a small child, and he shivered. “Who would dare make you a jar-person?”