Chapter 157: Moving In and Suspicious Guests

Old Man Ma averted his gaze. "You don't need to know that. In any case, if you run into her again in the future, stay as far away as possible."

The old man was keeping a lot of things from me and didn't want me to know. I felt somewhat resentful. I could understand him keeping secrets—doesn't everyone have their own privacy? But no matter what, I was his apprentice now, we had gone through danger together, and we had even made enemies together, yet he wasn't telling me anything!

To this day, I still had no idea what kind of grudge existed between that Bug-User Girl and Old Man Ma, nor why we had to hide away in this remote, deep mountain village! And as for the matter with Tuer, I hadn't even interrogated the old man about that yet!

Noticing my displeasure, Old Man Ma said, "That is all in the past. If there is a need, I will tell you."

When would it ever count as a "need"? I had followed him into hiding here, unable to make a single phone call even during the Lunar New Year, not even allowed to turn on my phone. Did he really not plan to explain anything at all?

Suppressing the irritation in my heart, I asked, "What was it you wanted to tell me earlier?"

Old Man Ma instantly flared up. The gloomy look on his face transformed into sheer fury in a split second. "Just thinking about that makes me furious! Damn it! What kind of lousy place did that bastard Qu Xinchen pick out? Was he deliberately wishing for this old man's death, trying to kill me by some crooked means? It infuriates me to death! If I ever run into that good-for-nothing scoundrel again, see if I don't settle accounts with him! $%&￥#@*%!"

Since I was already harboring resentment toward the old man anyway, seeing him this angry secretly brought me a bit of satisfaction. However, considering that him being in danger meant I was in danger too, I couldn't help but become alert.

I said, "Calm down for a moment, Old Ma. What is this all about? What's wrong with that guy Qu Xinchen?"

Old Man Ma's anger had not subsided, and he said huffily, "Do you have any idea why the people here also practice the custom of 'The Mice Marrying Off Their Daughter'?"

"Why?" Such customs weren't dictated by any single person; furthermore, Guangdong and Guangxi were close neighbors, so shared customs weren't strange at all. But since Old Man Ma asked it this way, the origin of this custom was definitely extraordinary.

For an old Guangdong custom to appear in a remote Guangxi village—either it had been passed along over time, or else...

"The people in this village migrated here from Guangdong!" Old Man Ma said indignantly.

Sure enough, these people had migrated from Guangdong. With this place being so remote, it wasn't strange that they preserved their original old customs. I just didn't understand why they had migrated into this godforsaken deep mountain wilderness, and from beginning to end, I had never heard them mention this matter once!

"Dammit! I already felt the snake pit business was deeply suspicious before, so I specially went to drink with them tonight to sound them out, and sure enough, I was right! It makes me so mad I could die! That scoundrel Qu Xinchen definitely did it on purpose! He even had the nerve to ask him for help—if I ever ask him for help again, I'm a son of a turtle! *&%￥@#￥#@#￥!"

Seeing that Old Man Ma was about to start cursing again, I quickly stopped him. "What did you manage to find out?"

Overwhelmed with fury, Old Man Ma recounted what he had learned.

The old man didn't like meddling in irrelevant excitement, but the reason he drank with the villagers tonight was precisely because he had doubts and wanted to investigate the situation. The villagers had seemed normal enough, eating and drinking. It wasn't until firecrackers were being set off that an old man got drunk and let slip some past secrets.

Every single person in this entire village had migrated from the Guangdong side, arriving in this place for unknown reasons and putting down roots here! The older generation had never explained the reason for the migration, and had even concealed the matter from their descendants.

Although the villagers vaguely knew from the mouths of people in surrounding villages that their ancestors had migrated here, they had no idea where exactly they came from. Only a handful of old folks in the village knew, but they were completely in the dark regarding the reason for the migration.

Migrating into the deep mountains for unknown reasons wouldn't be a big deal by itself, but the coincidence was that right here in these deep mountains, there was a snake pit used for refining serpents!

"You mean these people are connected to that snake pit!" I said.

Old Man Ma said angrily, "What else could it be?! Where would such a massive pit come from for no reason? If outsiders had dug it, there's no way these people wouldn't have noticed! How could they possibly have let it remain until now?!"

I had been extremely puzzled before: such a massive pit, containing so many snakes—even if it had been dug a very long time ago, with a project of such scale, there was no reason the villagers wouldn't have known about it. At the very least, their ancestors would have mentioned it. In the end, it was the ancestors of this very village who had done the deed!

In other words, the ancestors of the villagers had migrated from Guangdong, dug that deep pit to refine snakes, and then settled down right here—most likely to guard that snake pit. But I couldn't understand: since they were guarding the snake pit, why didn't they tell their descendants? Or had some kind of drastic change occurred midway?

Old Man Ma was furious, still cursing and continuously paying respects to Qu Xinchen's female relatives, knowing full well that this "hiding spot" had been found for Old Man Ma by Qu Xinchen.

Even if that snake pit was the handiwork of the villagers' ancestors, they ultimately knew nothing about it now, and they themselves had suffered deeply from the persecution of the two-headed snakes. However, when Qu Xinchen arranged for us to come here, had he known about the snake pit from the very beginning, or was he completely oblivious?

"What are your plans for the next step, Old Ma?" I asked.

"What plans? What other plans could there be? Since the snake pit business is linked to them, this place is a place of right and wrong. Besides, the Five Ghosts Carrying Coffins have tracked us all the way here, so it's about time to leave. Once we get through these couple of days of the Lunar New Year, we'll go deal with that snake pit and then get the hell out of here! That grandson Qu Xinchen! If I ever run into him, I will definitely not spare him!"

Old Man Ma started cursing again, and I let him vent his anger. To be fair, aside from the snake pit incident, this place was actually quite nice, truly achieving complete isolation from the outside world.

The village lively celebrated the Lunar New Year for a few days. Those middle school students were exceptionally diligent; even during the New Year, they didn't forget to help me write my self-criticisms. This was probably the most earnest time they would ever write a self-criticism in their lives.

When the fourth day of the Lunar New Year arrived, Old Man Ma informed the village head about his intention to leave, as well as his plan to deal with that deep pit.

Although the two-headed snakes had already been cleared out, the corpses in the pit were still there. With so many corpses, lacking the nourishment of the Yin and evil energy of the two-headed snakes, they would soon rot and stink.

The village head quickly rallied the men, summoned hands, and made preparations. Everything was arranged by the next day. Since it involved corpses after all, it was inconvenient to involve people from other villages, so only villagers—along with sturdy and courageous women—joined the ranks of those handling the cleanup.

After recuperating over the past few days, my leg had mostly recovered. Though there was still some numbness and pain, I no longer needed a cane.

Early in the morning, a large group of people followed Old Man Ma in a mighty procession deep into the mountains.

Burning those corpses was out of the question; the only option was to find a way to bury them. But with such a massive pit, relying purely on human labor without an excavator to fill it in would take until who knows when. Therefore, they had to resort to a shortcut: cutting down large trees nearby to fill the pit, and only after roughly patching up the pit with wood would they cover it with earth.