Erzhuang was taken aback.
Jiang Yan took out the red bean bun Shen Xiaoxiao had given her and gently placed it on the windowsill. “This is my apology.”
Silkworm Village was extremely remote, and Erzhuang had never left since he was born. The village was mostly self-sufficient, with someone only occasionally going out at New Year’s to buy cheap goods. He hadn’t eaten city snacks in ages.
Erzhuang looked at Jiang Yan with some hesitation.
Jiang Yan smiled kindly. “It’s sweet. Want to try?”
If Cheng Guang were here, he’d probably hurry off at Jiang Yan’s smile, but Erzhuang was still young, not knowing that every “gift” from Jiang Yan came with an unspoken price. He quickly let down his guard, grabbed the bun, tore open the wrapper, and took a big bite.
He ate quickly, and after a few bites, looked again at the windowsill.
Now there was an exquisitely packaged bag of sandwich cookies.
This time, it was Shen Huanhuan who had left them.
Shen Xiaoxiao loved snacks, and Shen Huanhuan was used to carrying all kinds of them with her. Today was no exception. She winked at Jiang Yan—as if to say she didn’t know what Jiang Yan had said, but kids really were the best at getting information.
Jiang Yan: “Want some more?”
Erzhuang nodded eagerly.
Jiang Yan coaxed, “This sister has more snacks, but she only gives them to good-looking kids in the village. If you help us pass them on,” she glanced toward the door, “as a reward, you’ll get some too.”
With that, Jiang Yan signalled for Shen Huanhuan to step back, then walked over to the hut’s door.
A few breaths later, the door was quietly pushed open. Erzhuang tiptoed out, carefully closed the door, and followed the two to an open patch of ground.
Once certain he wouldn’t wake his dad, Erzhuang asked eagerly, “Really?”
Shen Huanhuan, playing along, pulled out a bag of candy and waved it at the boy.
Erzhuang swallowed. “But they can’t eat these things.”
Jiang Yan understood. “Because all the good-looking kids are still very young?”
“Yeah, the babies don’t even have their teeth yet,” Erzhuang rubbed his hands. “But I can eat for them!”
Jiang Yan refused. “Forget it then, you’re not good-looking.”
Erzhuang admitted it, but he still wanted that “reward” for helping pass on the snacks, so he racked his brain. After a while, his eyes lit up. “I got it!”
Jiang Yan: “Hmm?”
“I can give them to the babies’ brothers and sisters first! Then they’ll save them, and when the babies grow up, they’ll get them!”
A truly childlike solution.
Jiang Yan chuckled, “That’s a great idea.”
“But how do you know they’ll keep them safe? If it were me, I’d probably sneak a bite.”
Erzhuang pouted. “They wouldn’t dare. If they got caught stealing from the babies, they’d get caned.”
Shen Huanhuan heard something off. “Get beaten?”
Erzhuang nodded matter-of-factly, “Right. Only the good-looking ones get to eat first and pick the tastiest food. The ugly ones can’t compete. The babies are the best-looking in the village, so everything should be the best for them! That’s… um, right, it’s called social rules, I think,” he said, arms akimbo like a little grown-up, “My dad told me about you, you’re from a big city, right?”
Shen Huanhuan nodded.
Erzhuang continued, “There must be lots of good-looking people in the city. With your looks, you’d be last to eat, right? Especially you, you’re so scary-looking, must be hungry all the time.” He cocked his head to point at Jiang Yan.
Shen Huanhuan looked bewildered. She realized she couldn’t follow the boy’s logic anymore, never mind the so-called social rules, but calling Jiang Yan ugly…
She’d never seen anyone better-looking than Jiang Yan in her life.
Just as she was about to correct him, Jiang Yan spoke first.
“No, I always eat my fill,” she said.
“There’s delicious food everywhere in the city, so much that even the good-looking people can’t finish—so the rest of us eat as much as we want. Where do you think these snacks come from?”
Shen Huanhuan blinked, glanced at Jiang Yan, then the boy, half-understanding, half-baffled.
Erzhuang had never been to school. All his ideas had been taught by the villagers; he’d never thought them through. Now, hearing Jiang Yan’s version, he found it actually made some sense.
He scratched his head. “I guess that’s true.”
“No wonder Teacher Xia Qing always had so many snacks. I thought she stole them.”
“Teacher Xia Qing?” Jiang Yan caught the hint and asked, “She’s from the city?”
Shen Huanhuan snapped from her thoughts and looked up.
Wasn’t Silkworm Village supposed to dislike outsiders?
Wang Baomin’s hostility wasn’t faked, even for guests staying just a few days—so what about a teacher living here long-term?
Erzhuang nodded resolutely. “Yup.”
“I think she was sent here from somewhere. Dad said she’s a volunteer teacher, and she’s really ugly too, but she always gave us tasty things!” Erzhuang said. “My sister and He Miaomiao’s brother both studied with her before.”
Shen Huanhuan figured out what kind of person this Teacher Xia was—probably a university student sent to teach in the countryside, teaching at Silkworm Village out of duty. Since she came on a government assignment, the villagers would treat her as well as they could, even with reluctance.
She asked, “Is the teacher still in the village?”
Erzhuang shook his head. “Nope.”
Shen Huanhuan sighed. Since she was an outsider, it would be easier to speak with her. She had been planning to ask the teacher where she held classes.
“When did Teacher Xia leave?” she asked offhandedly.
“She died,” said Erzhuang.
*
According to Erzhuang, last December, the volunteer teacher Xia Qing suddenly disappeared from the village, as did four children.
The villagers searched all night and finally found four bodies downstream, but the last body has never been found to this day.
Upon hearing this, Jiang Yan immediately thought of Wang Baomin’s attitude toward the creek earlier.
—He insisted there couldn’t be anything wrong with the water and pressed Xiong An to consider other causes for the silkworm deaths.
She’d thought there was a reason; now she was sure.
Why wouldn’t Wang Baomin go near the creek?
Was it dislike, fear, or something else… Jiang Yan thought of a possibility and lowered her eyes to ask Erzhuang, “Does Wang Baomin have children?”
Erzhuang munched on the cookie and nodded. “Yeah, Brother Wang Sun. He and my sister were found together…”
Speaking of his dead sister, Erzhuang slowed down, then stopped, holding half the cookie in his hand.
“My sister never ate these,” he said.
“My mom hadn’t had my brother yet back then. My sister always saved snacks for me, she never ate them…”
The once chatty boy now hung his head, eyes turning red. Maybe because he was young, his emotions surged suddenly and strongly; pouting, two lines of snot streamed down his filthy face, like a pitiful stray kitten.
Shen Huanhuan sighed.
She took out more cookies and two bags of candy from her backpack, “All for you, go ahead and eat them.”
Erzhuang sniffled. “I’ll just eat one bag, I’ll bury the rest for my sister.”
“Okay,” Shen Huanhuan used a tissue to wipe his nose.
But Jiang Yan wasn’t so sentimental. She cared only about staying on this show—there were lots of questions she wanted to ask, such as whose body was never found, and whether other outsiders had come—but before she could, the sound of a door closing sounded behind them.
Erzhuang’s father was awake.
Shen Huanhuan startled. They’d already asked too much—far more than students would usually dare. For whatever reason, even though she was supposed to be the one protecting Jiang Yan, she instinctively looked to Jiang Yan.
Jiang Yan was very calm.
She bent down to Erzhuang. “Remember what we told you just now?”
Erzhuang, puzzled, tried to recall.
Jiang Yan watched the faces—hers and Shen Huanhuan’s—rise slowly above his head, then reached out to scatter them.
“Let’s go,” she told Shen Huanhuan. “I put a ‘memory-makes-your-head-hurt’ spell on him.”
Stunned for a moment, Shen Huanhuan burst out laughing:
“That’s called a magic incantation.”
“Is Abbot He inventing new spells again? Amazing.”
*
They collected what Xiong An had asked for and went to find the others.
Neither spoke; both were lost in thought over the conversation just now. Halfway, Shen Huanhuan slowed down and broke the silence: “Jiang Yan, do you think that boy was telling the truth?”
“Some of what he said just didn’t make sense… it all seemed wrong…” Shen Huanhuan was hesitant.
“He was telling the truth,” Jiang Yan said.
Shen Huanhuan was surprised.
Jiang Yan lied easily: “I used a ‘nobody-can-lie-to-me’ spell.”
Another strange spell Shen Huanhuan had never heard of, but different schools all had their own methods—it would be rude to ask, so she nodded, not pressing the point.
She asked, “Isn’t the boy’s idea of beauty and ugliness kind of strange?”
At first, Shen Huanhuan hadn’t noticed; Jiang Yan had quickly called the boy ugly, and she’d thought maybe Jiang Yan just had odd, maybe unhealthy standards. But she soon realized Jiang Yan did it deliberately—going by the boy’s face, he fully accepted her judgment and even mocked her and Shen Huanhuan in turn.
Different people have different aesthetics, but to insist that Jiang Yan was ugly was deeply odd to Shen Huanhuan.
Jiang Yan: “It is strange.”
Since the info had been traded for Shen Huanhuan’s snacks, Jiang Yan decided to share some. She crouched, picked up a stone, and with Shen Huanhuan watching, drew a quick sketch: “This morning, I spoke with two other kids.”
Shen Huanhuan knew that—she’d sent Shen Xiaoxiao to fetch Jiang Yan back herself that morning, and now listened closely.
“They were drawing, comparing whose brother was better-looking—these are the pictures they drew.” Jiang Yan finished, tossed aside the stone, and gestured for Shen Huanhuan to look.
Goosebumps crawled up Shen Huanhuan’s back at the picture.
She swore she’d never seen anything so bizarre. They barely resembled humans—more like disassembled features put back together, but the eyes had been misplaced on a lopsided puzzle.
And thanks to the stick-figure drawing, it looked not funny, but creepy and frightening.
After a long moment, Shen Huanhuan let out a deep breath.
“Let’s review what we know,” she said.
Jiang Yan nodded.
She summarized what they’d just learned: “So far, everyone with a terrifying appearance is a newborn baby too young to eat snacks.”
“Their older siblings look normal.”
“At home, these babies have far higher status than their older siblings.”
Shen Huanhuan added, “The village has its own rules, and they think those strange ones are beautiful.”
“I suspect this rule wasn’t always in place—it must have started when those terrifying babies appeared, just in the last few months!”
“After all, before those babies were born, the villagers all looked normal, so it would be hard to set fixed beauty/ugliness rules—everyone was average. How would you even rank people?”
She paused, then added, “And the boy said before his mom gave birth to his brother, his sister always saved snacks for him. That sounds like normal sibling affection—not that weird rule about beauty.”
“So now it seems more like… after the boy’s brother was born, his family suddenly told him he was ugly, but his brother was beautiful. Supposedly, there’s a rule that ugly people must serve the beautiful—and under that new rule, he must always put his brother first!”
Jiang Yan nodded in agreement.
Shen Huanhuan’s mind worked rapidly, organizing what they had: “Could it be that a supernatural entity cursed this village?”
“Several months ago, a psychic noticed a surge of chaotic energy at Silkworm Village, but that doesn’t mean the problem started then—it might have simply gotten worse at that time.”
“So the curse could date back a year, before the women got pregnant. Or maybe it hit just a few months ago, when some were already expecting. Either way, it would result in women having babies with terrifying appearances.”
Jiang Yan rested her chin on her hand. “So, it’s one of those two times.”
Shen Huanhuan kept working through the logic: “A supernatural entity cursed the village at one of those two moments, causing all the villagers’ sense of beauty to become abnormal. That way, even if a woman gave birth to a creepy-looking baby, the villagers wouldn’t fear it—they’d even dote on it. Because of that, they’d marginalize the older, normal-looking children and set up their new rule.”
She paused, then kept going, almost to herself: “So the issue now is to find who did the cursing. Maybe the ginseng spirit—but I didn’t find any sign of it on the back hill, so let’s put that aside for now.”
“It could also be that someone who died cursed the village—after all, four months ago, five people drowned. The timing matches.”
Here, Shen Huanhuan seemed to suddenly realize something and looked up at Jiang Yan: “Could it be Xia Qing?!”
Jiang Yan asked curiously, “Why?”
“Because all the kids who died were born here—they’d have no reason to curse the village. But the volunteer teacher is the outsider, and died here!” The more she spoke, the more convinced she sounded, her eyes lighting up. “And maybe the body they never found was hers. If I were her, I’d want my body found, not left in the water or some dark, airless place—I’d want a proper burial. That would be my obsession as a ghost!”
Jiang Yan smiled, “Makes sense.”
But quickly, Shen Huanhuan frowned again. “But then why would she curse the babies?”
She tried to imagine why. “Maybe she wanted to send a message to the villagers, to scare them so they’d call for help and recover her corpse? But the villagers’ sense of beauty is now wrong, so they don’t fear those babies, and no one calls the police. If that’s the case, why make that curse at all…?”
Shen Huanhuan’s thoughts stalled.
Jiang Yan stayed silent.
Some of her logic made sense, but she didn’t know the village women had consumed lots of supplements before giving birth—a connection must exist. And the curse surely didn’t include “making everyone’s sense of beauty abnormal”; maybe only the mothers were affected, or perhaps there was no actual disorder—the adults were pretending, and the children’s own standards were simply imprinted by their parents.
After all, this morning, the amazed and even admiring looks from villagers were not something you could fake.
Plus, since Xia Qing shared snacks, it was unlikely she’d curse innocent babies after death. Most importantly, the missing body might not even be hers; just because she was an outsider didn’t mean she’d placed the curse.
Sure enough.
Before they’d found the rest of the group, they ran into Cheng Guang coming back.
As soon as he saw Jiang Yan, he handed her an old, waterlogged and nearly ruined paper crane.
There was writing on the crane; though blurred by water, a few characters could still be made out.
—“Niao Niao, the crane of Chuan Zhe’s clan, come home.”
Cheng Guang explained briefly, “I saw a boy folding paper cranes by the creek. I asked, and he said he was seven, named Xu Liangzuo. His best friend fell in the water, and her body’s never been found.”
“The girl who died was called Niao Niao, only seven years old.”
Jiang Yan looked at Shen Huanhuan.
Shen Huanhuan pressed her temples, troubled.
—Her reasoning had been disproved.
The girl whose body was lost in the creek wasn’t Xia Qing.