With the questions unfinished, Jiang Yan set down her pen and gazed at the winding river.
The riverbank was crowded with people, a mass of black-haired heads shifting and stirring. They wore the same moon-white robes as the girls; yet in their eyes, there was no resentment, no fear of the unknown, only a calm composure, silent hopes and quiet blessings.
The people of Taoyuan Village possessed a kind of innate divinity.
Such divinity could not be cultivated later in life—it was born within, a legacy of the Cow Immortal.
Because each person was born with this sacred nature, their personalities seemed to float above the mundane—they did not resent their children for being chosen or not, did not conspire when their child was not the one selected. Self-sacrifice was imprinted in their souls; even when they stumbled upon the truth, they instinctively chose to conceal it.
They did not feel bitterness for their own fates, nor anger for having been born in this village. They were human, yet somehow not entirely human.
Their character was great, but it was never truly real, for they had never truly descended among ordinary people.
Shen Huanhuan murmured, “This place is like a dream.”
“To place the ruler among Yao and Shun; to restore pure custom,” Zhang Du spread his hands, “perhaps this is what the ancients sought: a village so ancient, so honest, devoid of cunning.”
Yu Renwan whispered, “But I think those girls’ personalities were very real.”
Shen Huanhuan nodded. “The shackles of divinity were broken for them. The more anger, the more real they became, the more alive, the more like people.”
After a moment’s silence, Shen Huanhuan sighed.
She was always keenly empathetic—not just with individuals, but with an entire village.
She gave her conclusion: “I think… perhaps we need not wait another eighteen years.”
The others looked at her in confusion.
Shen Huanhuan gave a bitter laugh. “We need not wait until the Cow Immortal dies. Taoyuan Village is likely to be destroyed very soon.”
“The moment the first child leaves Taoyuan, the instant this village fully connects with the real world, it will be erased—precisely because it is higher and purer than all the villages of the world.”
Jiang Yan did not dispute her judgment.
That was her own conclusion as well.
Taoyuan Village was hidden in its own dimension, existing as a divine village; the moment it emerged into the real world and became a village of mortals, it would not conform to the complex laws of human nature and would be directly erased by the world’s will.
This village was far too selfless. Far too sacrificial.
It was not ugly enough.
The boats of sacrifice would soon enter the cave; time waited for no one. Jiang Yan flicked her pen and completed her answer.
[After leaving Taoyuan Village, you wove for yourself a dream—a dream in which you were wronged by all.]
[Only the part about sacrificing girls was true. The village favoring boys was true. Being abandoned by your best friends was true. You needed it to be true, so you would not be crushed by guilt.]
After Zhou Xiahua died, such desires swelled within her without limit, until, at last, this energy field was formed.
Thus, if one did not attend to all the tiny details, one would only see sacrificed girls, villagers numbed and inhuman, oppression and abuse, betrayal by friends, siblings turning against one another—nothing but the illusion of evil, never the reality.
Zhou Xiahua was the most human among all those in Taoyuan Village.
Because she used to be the angriest of all.
The progress bar on the answer sheet reached [100%]
A crisp “ding-dong” rang in everyone’s ears, and the world before them blurred, then resolved: a distant scene came into striking clarity, as if it were right before their eyes.
The shaman stood on a stone by the riverbank and played the xun, the ancient instrument spilling forth a music so simple, so pure. A girl with a high ponytail sat at the mouth of the cave, watching as the younger version of herself from decades past drifted down the river toward the cave.
Zhou Xiahua sat on the fifth boat. Freeing herself from the ropes, she sat up. The song of Yun Mingyue and Ye Tian echoed, rising and falling; Wu Mei, from the corner of her eye, stole a glance at Xiahua.
Xu Xing pulled a folding fan from her sleeve; snapping it open with flourish like a wandering sage, then closing it again in storyteller’s fashion and tapping her palm.
“As the saying goes—” she shook her head theatrically.
On the first boat, Yun Fanxing turned her face. “Goes how?”
Xu Xing was just about to reply when Yun Fanxing’s boat slipped into the cave. A pained bellow echoed out; Yun Fanxing, who had just been smiling, vanished from her boat in the next instant. A ghastly scraping sound rose, and blood spattered in every direction.
She died so abruptly that her soul scattered to smoke; the last glimpse she left the world was a smiling backward glance.
*
Yun Fanxing had known since she was little that she was loved.
Her memories began late; she learned to walk and talk much later than other children. Thinking back, she could really only recall what happened after she was six or seven.
Back then, she was always coughing—sometimes so severely she’d black out, almost faint. Every time she collapsed in the courtyard, she’d awaken to find herself on a soft bed. Her parents would gaze at her with complicated eyes; her mother, face cold, would come over and slam the bitter decoction down before her.
If she refused to drink, her mother would pinch her nose and pour it down her throat.
“You’re hopeless,” her mother would say.
“The worst misfortune of my life was giving birth to you, my little medicine jar.”
Fanxing also felt her mother was unlucky. Lying there, weak enough to take up only a tiny bit of space on the bed, whenever she looked at her mother in fear, her mother would stomp off with the medicine bowl, as if she were a terrible disaster.
She was always exhausted in spirit. Her brother would come into her room with little trinkets their mother bought him; she never felt jealous, only envious that he got to run around healthy and free. She knew very well that her medical expenses had swallowed most of the family’s savings—enough for her mother to have bought all manner of treats and toys for her, had it not been spent on medicine.
If she got medicine, she could not ask for anything else.
Fanxing understood this and never demanded more.
On her brother’s eighth birthday, their mother bought him osmanthus cake—perhaps to spread some happiness. Her brother tore off a little piece and stuffed it in Fanxing’s mouth. She couldn’t bear to swallow, chewing it for ages before finally letting it go down. She hugged his hand, pressing her face to his arm; startled by her sudden closeness, her brother fled.
He ran off just as her mother did, clutching the medicine bowl.
After that, her brother started occasionally sneaking her bits of this or that, feeding them to her like one might feed a favored pet. But Fanxing never thought he saw her as an animal; it was just that her brother insisted that’s how it was.
She was certain her brother truly liked her.
Her parents liked her too. If only she drank less medicine and cost less money, they would like her even more.
So Fanxing took her medicine dutifully, and when she had the energy, she exercised in her room, kicking her legs and twisting her waist, hoping to grow healthier. When her parents saw her at it, their eyes grew even more complex.
Her mother would watch for a moment, reach out as if to spank her for her foolishness; but after a few words, she’d start to cry instead—and then run from the room. Her father seemed like he wanted to touch her head, but would always draw back halfway.
“Can’t you learn from your brother?” he scolded. “Always making us worry.”
He said, “Your mother’s tears are all your doing; your brother never upsets her. She only smiles when looking at him.”
Fanxing was weighed down by guilt.
It seemed she was always the first to blame herself. No one told her that was wrong, but she wondered how she could cause so much trouble. She never blamed others, so all confusion and misery reflected straight back onto her.
She became melancholy at a young age.
She often dreamed of being abandoned, woke up at night crying, coughing up bitter water until her eyes rolled white. Once, her older brother caught her this way and hurried to wake their parents to fetch the shaman.
Fanxing loved that shaman—her eyes held pity, and calm, and she was skilled in everything. Her mother said all Taoyuan’s shamans looked the same, with the same gentleness—but if Fanxing pressed further, her mother would end the conversation.
After the shaman left that day, Fanxing, barely able to stand, went to the door.
She heard the shaman tell her parents that this child was inherently sentimental, far too sensitive, unlike others.
Without love, she wouldn’t survive.
“Let it be,” the shaman said.
“Let Fanxing grow up as she is.”
Fanxing was grateful for those words all her life. From then on, she grew up feeling loved. As her spirit flourished, her health improved too. Looking back, though, she realized she didn’t really get more love—it just grew from hidden to obvious.
Fanxing lived to be sixteen.
The village drew lots; her mother was chosen, and her mother chose her.
She truly felt no resentment—though seeing the other girls so angry, she thought perhaps she ought to be angry too. So she let herself be pushed toward rage, but soon wearied of it.
Her spirit was too easily exhausted. Anger was far too draining for her.
Perhaps she’d never learn to be angry. But she could push others forward.
The first time she did so, she pushed Xiahua.
She and Xiahua were close friends and neighbors. Xiahua was bold and brash, but always took care of her, afraid she’d shatter; though, in fact, Xiahua was a few months younger than her.
Fanxing always felt a bit embarrassed, wanting to find some way to repay her. The chance eventually came—offered by Ye Tian.
Ye Tian and Yun Mingyue discovered Taoyuan’s secret and, at the shaman’s request, masqueraded as the cave’s sacrificial girls. They made peace with their pasts and set aside old anger. All that remained was resentment that their parents had hidden the truth—but this was a truth that had to be hidden. No one chose it; pain and choices were equally insurmountable.
So their anger, too, became irresolvable.
Yun Mingyue managed to live with it; Ye Tian, though, was caught in a dead end.
The night they returned, she secretly slipped out of her house to the dorm, wrote the truth on a slip of paper, and left it on Zhou Xiahua’s pillow.
When you know you are destined to die, the hope in a living heart can grow unbearably dazzling in your eyes.
Zhou Xiahua was stubborn, not clever, passionate and naive, blaming all who’d ever hurt her.
But it was precisely such a person who could go on living.
She knew nothing, and so she could live.
Ye Tian could not understand, could not accept; so she forgot the sweetness she’d once known, and dark thoughts festered inside. She wanted to drag Zhou Xiahua down into the crowd.
But as soon as she left the school, she regretted it.
She rushed back to the dorm, but the paper was gone.
Yun Fanxing stood in the moonlight, holding the slip.
Ye Tian broke down in guilt and wept, but Yun Fanxing only shook her head.
She handed the slip back. “I saw it—so what? I couldn’t have survived anyway.”
She begged Ye Tian, “Just never let Xiahua read it, all right?”
Ye Tian tore up the paper before her eyes.
The second time Fanxing pushed someone, she tried to push Xu Xing.
Xu Xing was the cleverest person she’d ever known, studying surveying and astronomy, immersed in dense, esoteric texts. Fanxing believed that, once Xu Xing left Taoyuan, she was bound to do something great.
Her portrait would appear in every home, painted with mountains, rivers, sun, and stars.
But Xu Xing was too clever. When Fanxing tried to pick a fight with her to spur her on, Xu Xing simply laughed.
She said, “So you figured it out, too.”
All Fanxing’s pride and courage in that instant turned to grief.
Xu Xing also couldn’t escape.
Xu Xing told her, “I’ve always found Taoyuan so strange.”
“It’s as if everyone but our few families is perfectly happy. Only my parents make me cut my hair and wear trousers, but the other uncles and aunts let me live freely. Even Xiahua’s mother, who’s clearly biased at home—once, she saw me and told me I should learn defiance.”
“She seemed to walk straight out of a play, caught between acts, unable to hide her own nature.”
“That night we stole the boat, I heard a few words from the village chief—which told me the real truth of Taoyuan Village.”
Xu Xing looked straight at Fanxing. “Our aunts and uncles really are good people.”
“By all rights, your situation is a wasted spot, but no one ever objected—not even when it became clear that the Cow Immortal’s spirit had fused with us. So what if it had? Without enough anger, there was no way out. In other places, parents would be scheming for their own child’s escape, saying you didn’t deserve a place, that Yun Mingyue and Ye Tian should be replaced. Or, even worse, they’d drag the whole village to destruction. But in Taoyuan, no one said a thing.”
“There’s no envy and no resentment.”
“They worked eighteen years to keep peace on the surface, every rule carefully made so we could grow up healthy. Taoyuan nurtured us these eighteen years, and now that we can’t leave, should we not do as they did—help the girl beside us, however unrelated by blood, to escape?”
When Fanxing left, she felt Xu Xing truly was remarkable.
Even if her portrait could never hang in every home, she was still a dignified and noble girl.
The third time she tried to push someone, Fanxing sought out Wu Mei.
But the moment she opened her mouth, Wu Mei told her she already knew.
So the two stood at the window together and watched the same sunset.
Wu Mei rambled about her own confusion, saying she liked Xiahua’s older brother—who was actually a girl—then, after a few days, figured she probably liked real boys more…but maybe not.
Fanxing had no experience with such things and could only nod along solemnly.
Wu Mei, who was always dosing her eyes with mugwort, always smelled so fresh; as they parted, Fanxing felt she took the scent with her, like a mugwort rice dumpling.
The fourth time, Fanxing went to Han Yinghuo.
Han Yinghuo was exercising in the dorm, lifting iron weights up and down. Fanxing felt like she herself was another iron weight: she could be picked up without effort and swung around.
When Fanxing entered, Han Yinghuo wiped her sweat and, as if presenting a treasure, tossed her backpack into Fanxing’s arms.
“Touch the left shoulder strap.”
Fanxing obliged.
Han Yinghuo sat down beside her, as if to reveal another secret. “Now touch the right.”
Fanxing obeyed, and after testing both, concluded, “The left one’s wider than the right.”
Han Yinghuo nodded. “I just realized—my mom sewed it that way because I always use my left arm, makes it easier to carry.”
A wave of dread swept over Fanxing. She raised her voice involuntarily: “So what? She still doesn’t love you!”
Han Yinghuo’s smile froze.
She straightened up reflexively. “I know.”
“But…she never told me about it. She sewed it in secret.”
She emphasized, “In secret!”
Fanxing suddenly didn’t know what to say.
After a long while, she said, “So what if it’s a little kindness?”
“Why in secret? Afraid you’ll get the wrong idea, that’s all.”
Han Yinghuo’s dark face was almost as black as charcoal. She shoved Fanxing out the door. “Go away, I don’t want to hear you talk.”
Fanxing stood outside for a while.
At last, Wu Mei came and pulled her away.
“Some kids are just like that,” Wu Mei said, “Get a little love and they won’t let go, paying it back ten or a hundred times over. Han’s mom gave her a single sign, and that’s dangerous—I’ll talk to her tonight and tell her to snuff that spark out.”
But that spark was never snuffed out.
Yinghuo became obsessed with searching for proof that her mother loved her: the wrapped knife handle, mended clothes, a new dress at the back of a drawer, and finally, that day they drew lots.
“My mom’s always had me earn money to put my brother through school, but if that were really so, why did she push me forward that day?” she shouted. “She shouldn’t have pushed me forward!”
Fanxing thought Han Yinghuo was rather silly, desperate to prove her mother loved her. But so what, even if she couldn’t?
They loved her all the same.
Looking around, Fanxing saw that only Xiahua might escape.
Yinghuo, perhaps.
They were the only two who knew nothing of the truth. But Han Yinghuo’s chance was always less than Xiahua’s.
Because only Xiahua had always remained angry.
She’d been shown too much of the ugliness of the world. She had every right to be so enraged.
Time hurtled by.
Hopeful or hopeless, all awaited things would arrive. The sacrifice began by the river.
The distant river became near, the trees along its banks shed yellowed leaves, drifting atop the water—wavering, dissolving, while countless faces watched the river, only to turn away when their gaze fell upon the cave. Mothers holding their husbands’ hands, grandmothers taking grandfathers’, the ancient melody and the xun’s lament, every villager humming nameless songs in syllables they could not explain, holding no clear meaning.
It was all a blessing.
On the river, Xiahua swiftly undid her ropes—faster than ever before.
“I’m getting even better,” she said to the others.
Except for Yun Mingyue and Ye Tian, everyone managed to free themselves in turn. Xu Xing coolly fanned herself; Wu Mei softly recited a poem.
Xu Xing asked what she’d said.
Wu Mei pointed at the inscription on her fan.
“Never again, the journeys of youth.”
Xu Xing snapped open her fan once more, then tossed it into the river.
“The shaman said once we’re in the cave, we can touch water. Don’t look at the banks—just jump in and swim for it, all right?” said Xiahua, glaring at Xu Xing. “Is this really the time to act—”
Hearing the commotion, Yun Fanxing looked back at them with a smile.
Xiahua’s last word was cut short by a spray of Fanxing’s blood.
Boat after boat entered the cave.
The scraping echoed within the darkness.
Xiahua stood dazed on her boat. She lifted her head as warm blood dripped constantly onto her cheek.
“Jump!” Yun Mingyue, ahead of her, spun around and shouted.
Before Xiahua could wonder why Yun Mingyue had stopped singing, Xu Xing hauled her straight into the water.
The river was icy cold.
With no desire to shield them, the Cow Immortal devoured Yun Fanxing in a few bites, then seized its next victim.
In mid-air, Ye Tian waved at Xiahua, dimples smiling, tears in her eyes:
“Sorry, Xiahua.”
Xiahua never understood why Ye Tian apologized; she never heard the explanation.
The surging river churned her guts, and as Xu Xing was seized, she pushed Xiahua toward Yun Mingyue.
The cave was endless, it seemed.
Stunned by the violence, Xiahua—who had never witnessed such carnage—heard the sickening snap of bones, saw water run crimson. Yun Mingyue, the best swimmer, said nothing, just dragged Xiahua forward with all her strength.
Until Yun Mingyue, too, was seized.
“Who knew this young mistress would—” she pointed accusingly at Zhou Xiahua, “be clothing for another’s glory!”
“What are you waiting for? Swim! You and Han Yinghuo, swim!!”
The Cow Immortal’s vast hooves split the river, raising waves to the sky.
It loved to save the tastiest for last; thus, Xiahua and Han Yinghuo were left behind.
Five white spirit-lights hovered in the air; the Cow Immortal’s eyes grew a touch clearer.
Its chewing slowed.
The raging river swept them along. Xiahua, tumbled under, nearly felt her lungs burst. Her friends seemed to know more than she—the outline of truth dawned on her at last.
Han Yinghuo’s gaze was even clearer.
She, who had once blundered around making silly assumptions, saw them all destroyed one by one. Now that her friends were dying, all that proved she’d been right after all.
Swimming forward, she sputtered urgently, “I knew it. My mom loves me.”
Shortly after, the five white spirit-lights became six.
The Cow Immortal stilled.
It parted the river for Xiahua, who looked back once, then, without hesitation, flung herself out of the cave.
Faintly, she heard Han Yinghuo’s final call.
“Swim.”
“Swim on, Xiahua.”