Tricked 013: Parentage

Once this was confirmed, all the following deductions became smooth.

Jiang Yan tossed her plastic wrapper into the trash and lay back down on her bed. The top priority now was sleep—no guarantee there would be a peaceful night tomorrow.

A dreamless night.

When Jiang Yan woke, it was still dark. Shen Xiaoxiao was lying beside her playing on her phone, snow-white chin-length hair swaying slightly as she muttered under her breath.

“Always have to draw the worst luck, totally unfair!”

“Others already have five hubbies and can pamper whoever they want—I haven’t got even one, this game is—”

“What?”

Shen Xiaoxiao started coughing in panic, then looked sheepishly at Jiang Yan: “You’re up?”

Jiang Yan: “Mm.”

Shen Xiaoxiao grinned flatteringly, “Don’t tell my sister I just swore, okay?”

Jiang Yan looked around. No sign of Shen Huanhuan. “Where is she?”

“Went to the kitchen to get breakfast. The rain just stopped, and there’s water in the yard, so we’ll eat indoors.”

When Shen Huanhuan brought the food, her hair was clearly damp.

Jiang Yan: “It rained again?”

Shen Huanhuan answered softly, “Yeah, but just a little. Who knows if it’ll get heavier later.”

She put the food on the table and turned to go back out.

“Hey, Sis, where are you going?” Shen Xiaoxiao asked, puzzled.

“There are clothes on the drying rack in the yard—I’ll go collect them.”

Shen Xiaoxiao: “Oh, oh,” she jumped off the bed, “I’ll help too!”

Shen Huanhuan waved her off: “It’s just two pieces, I can handle it. You eat, don’t skip breakfast.”

Jiang Yan looked out the window. Two of Wang Guilan’s garments whipped in the wind, the fragile rack creaking as if it would snap at any moment. She stood up and, imitating Shen Huanhuan, said: “I’ll go. You dry your hair, or you’ll catch a cold.”

Shen Huanhuan blinked, not following, and Jiang Yan took the umbrella and went out.

The twins sat side by side on the bed.

Staring ahead, Shen Xiaoxiao said, “Sis, your face is red.”

Shen Huanhuan: “It is not.”

Shen Xiaoxiao: “With our skin colour, it’s obvious.”

Shen Huanhuan: “…..…”

Shen Xiaoxiao sang out in a cutesy voice, “Be good~”

Shen Huanhuan lifted her fist.

Shen Xiaoxiao dodged fast, “Who wouldn’t want a beauty to call them ‘be good’, huh? Don’t hit, hitting your younger sister is illegal!”

Shen Huanhuan stuffed a bun in Shen Xiaoxiao’s mouth.

Outside, Jiang Yan stood by the drying rack, face close to Wang Guilan’s clothes.

These were what Wang Guilan had worn out in the middle of the night.

She’d approached Wang Guilan so quietly last night for two reasons: to check if there was also a mole on her chin, and to see if she carried a scent—after all, from scent, she might guess where Wang Guilan had gone that night.

That time, she’d caught the smell of incense.

A subtle, fleeting scent, but Jiang Yan had smelled it many times before and recognized it instantly.

It was the expected scent.

Because of the “ten yuan.”

The first night in Silkworm Village, hungry, Jiang Yan had snuck out and taken two edible herbs from baskets in the yard, each type stored separately. After eating, she’d tucked a ten yuan bill under the hawthorn basket.

But the next morning, Shen Xiaoxiao returned the ten yuan. That was no big deal. The big deal was what Wang Guilan said at breakfast.

—“You only ate a few goji and dried hawthorns. Eat more to fill your belly, or you’ll be starving by noon.”

Jiang Yan already found it odd. She’d only hidden the ten yuan under the hawthorn basket—how did Wang Guilan know she’d eaten goji too?

All the herbs were in heaping baskets; goji is tiny, and she’d only taken four or five. There was no way anyone could tell by sight alone.

The answer was obvious: though a bit odd, it could only be this—

Wang Guilan had counted them.

That day, upon finding a ten yuan note under a basket, she must have thought someone had eaten from it. For some reason, she then spent time counting every single piece in each basket—finding another basket where herbs were missing.

This hinted at two things.

First, she knew the exact number of herbs in every basket.

Second, these herbs were not for home use or for sale. They had another purpose—there were times when not even a single piece could be missing.

Food for the home or store would never be counted this carefully. That left only one use: they were for giving away.

But there are two ways to “give” things: either willingly or by obligation. In the first case, maybe she’d respect the recipient and stick to an exact count out of habit; in the second, the recipient did the counting, so Wang Guilan wouldn’t dare give too little.

But who would count “pieces” out of goodwill?

—“Here are 1,183 goji berries, and 1,648 pieces of dried hawthorn.”

Ridiculous—so that couldn’t be right.

That way of giving made Jiang Yan think of ancient sacrificial rituals, when tribes offered up livestock to their gods. Without modern measurements, the quantities would be precise to the piece.

So this village must have an ancestral hall, offering to forebears and gods, with spiritual support. This had basically been clear to Jiang Yan on her first day here.

At the time, it didn’t seem so odd. After all, people live on faith.

But now, things were different.

Clearly, these people had used the god as cover for something, for example…

Jiang Yan started to smile.

After confirming Wang Guilan’s incense scent, she slung the clothes over her arm and returned indoors. Inside, the twins sat quietly on the bed. Shen Huanhuan was absorbed in drying her hair.

Noticing Jiang Yan’s return, Shen Huanhuan set the table: she’d stacked up the suitcase to make a low desk, and the three sat on the floor with a paperboard mat.

Jiang Yan started her livestream.

Shen Huanhuan noticed her touching her earring and called for Shen Xiaoxiao to start the stream as well.

Shen Huanhuan quietly briefed the stream on their status, then, as they ate, reviewed the clues with the other two. Halfway through, she seemed to realize something troublesome and sighed.

“If only that ginseng spirit had come again last night.”

Jiang Yan stirred her millet porridge and said plainly, “It did.”

Shen Huanhuan paused.

Last night, they’d agreed to wake each other up if the spirit appeared, but she quickly understood: “Did something dangerous happen?” So there hadn’t been time to wake her.

“No, they gave me a dream. Or tried to scare me in my dreams—once I woke, they were gone.”

Shen Huanhuan caught the key part.

“—They?”

Jiang Yan spooned in some porridge. “Mm, at least three.”

Since it was three layers of dreams.

Jiang Yan’s powers were special—even damage in dreams affected her for real, so it shouldn’t be that after one dream was broken, another immediately replaced it.

More likely, three ghosts were working together to create the dream.

Shen Xiaoxiao chimed in, “Why three?”

Jiang Yan swallowed her porridge and briefly explained what had happened last night. Shen Xiaoxiao sucked in a sharp breath, “Thank goodness it was fake, or big sis would’ve been beheaded…”

Shen Huanhuan slapped her hand, “Don’t say that. Jiang Yan knows those things aren’t me.”

Jiang Yan smiled.

Actually, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

That last “Shen Huanhuan” who said “That’s good” when the spirit didn’t appear—she rationally knew it wasn’t really Shen Huanhuan, but who could be sure what a sleepy person might say?

But she replied anyway, “Of course, I knew it wasn’t you.”

“Any plans for later?”

Shen Huanhuan glanced out the window. The rain hadn’t gotten heavy, but the wind was up; outside, things crashed to the ground in the dark, an oppressive atmosphere with none of the morning’s light.

A phrase popped into her mind—“a mountain storm is coming.”

“Not yet…” she said, unconsciously lowering her voice, as if afraid to disturb something. “No one will go to the silkworm house on a day like this. This is a good chance to investigate, but in this weather, villagers won’t go out either… Where can we find clues?”

Jiang Yan: “Ancestral hall.”

Shen Huanhuan didn’t catch it. “What?”

Jiang Yan repeated, “I’m going to the ancestral hall. Are you coming?”

Shen Huanhuan was confused.

So was the livestream chat.

【Does this village have an ancestral hall? I’ve watched every minute of the stream and haven’t seen it.】

【Actually fairly normal, lots of villages have them.】

【But some villages don’t. Ancestral halls are rare nowadays, not like before…】

Shen Xiaoxiao voiced the chat’s curiosity: “Huh, does this village have an ancestral hall?”

Jiang Yan: “It should. Could be a temple or something else.”

Shen Xiaoxiao: “……….”

It was Shen Huanhuan who got Jiang Yan’s meaning first: “You’ve figured out something?”

Jiang Yan summarized her current deductions. There was no need to hold back info on stream; she needed to prove her contribution, so she could step back when it came time to capture the ghost.

Shen Xiaoxiao’s face grew ever more incredulous, her mouth practically big enough for a boiled egg, as Jiang Yan finally stopped.

It took her a while to respond. “You mean Wang Baomin and Wang Guilan are husband and wife?”

Jiang Yan kept eating her porridge. “It’s just a possibility.”

“Not just them, other families might be the same. After generations of close-kin marriages, harmful genes could surface more and more, especially in the current batch of babies.”

【………】

【Yes, if the village had generations of inbreeding, the bad genes would get “purified”—so the number of genetically ill kids would definitely go up…】

【I had a classmate whose parents were cousins; he was healthy, but his brother was terrifying—no fingerprints, face like a throwback, weak and died young】

Shen Huanhuan was silent, clearly thinking over the possibility.

Shen Xiaoxiao sat there, still processing: “Damn… If true, why would they all insist on inbreeding?”

Shen Huanhuan automatically tried to fit the news to Jiang Yan’s theory, tracing it to the source: “I read news stories like this. Experts said sometimes it was due to closed-off thinking and the elders’ superstitions, like outside genes would ‘pollute’ the village.”

“If inbreeding starts, it may be okay at first, but with everyone getting more and more closely related, hereditary illnesses are bound to show up—at first, rarely, then more and more. It’s all possible.”

Shen Xiaoxiao: “And now it’s happening a lot.”

“With Erzhuang’s brother’s generation, it’s exploding.” She looked to Jiang Yan, almost seeking confirmation.

Jiang Yan suddenly smiled.

Shen Huanhuan’s heart jolted. She felt like she’d missed some crucial point.

“Then what’s with the village rules?” Jiang Yan asked.

Shen Huanhuan fell into deep thought.

Yeah, if there were no curse and the babies posed no threat, why did the villagers denigrate the normal kids? Even if they pitied the deformed ones, there’s no need to twist the other children’s sense of beauty or worldview. Erzhuang did nothing wrong—healthy kids aren’t at fault.

After a moment, Jiang Yan stated, “I hear most mothers love their own children, healthy or not.”

Shen Huanhuan’s eyes flew open.

So…

“Those healthy, denigrated kids—are they really their own children?”