The ultimate master in the city

Chapter 6 Untitled

After quietly following the group for an hour, Zhou Fengchen arrived at a small village. Looking around, he realized with a jolt that one of his junior high school classmates lived in the village and had even come here to raid bird nests when he was a teenager.

The fat monk and his companions entered a large tiled house courtyard in the west of the village, where people were already waiting to greet them.

Zhou Fengchen had no reason to follow them in, so he wandered around the courtyard aimlessly. After a while, the fat monk came out of the house again with his men. He walked around the courtyard, flicked his prayer beads, and said, "Amitabha, this humble monk already knows the cause and effect. Go and prepare wine, food, and a bed. After this humble monk has a good meal and a good sleep, I will definitely catch this beast tonight."

Zhou Fengchen rubbed his nose, feeling that this monk was a bit strange. He was swinging his prayer beads aimlessly and his body seemed unsteady. He didn't seem like someone who practiced martial arts or cultivated himself. Instead, he seemed like a swindler who traveled the world. However, his confident demeanor and tone didn't seem to be an act.

It was still early, so Zhou Fengchen stopped a passerby selling sesame oil, bargained, bought a bottle, and took it to visit his classmate at the back of the village, planning to come back for a check-up later that evening.

The classmate was quite happy to see him. Both of them had dropped out of high school in their first year and hadn't been in touch for several years. He immediately dragged him to play a few rounds of Street Fighter.

Once you start playing, you get hooked and play until two or three in the afternoon.

The classmate was home alone, as his parents had gone out to work. Feeling hungry, he went to the kitchen and cooked a silver carp, stir-fried some pickled vegetables, and made a tofu salad with scallions. After finishing, he went to a small shop, grabbed a bottle of Qinling Daqu liquor, and started eating with Zhou Fengchen.

After drinking more than half of his wine, Zhou Fengchen remembered the female ghost from last night and casually asked, "Do you know of a woman around here who kept a donkey? Later, the woman died, and the donkey died too."

The question was a bit odd, and Zhou Fengchen chuckled dryly, preparing to rephrase his statement, when the classmate slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "Holy crap! How did you know that?"

Zhou Fengchen asked, "What? It really is?"

"Yes, it's in our village. Let me tell you, it's really creepy. I'm too scared to sleep at night if I talk about it too much..."

This village is called Hewan Village. It is not far from the Yellow River. The men in the village farm when they are busy and work as boatmen on the Yellow River when they are not busy.

In the west of the village lived a family surnamed Wang. They had two sons, both of whom were skilled at farming and boating. However, they were short and ugly, and were almost thirty years old and still hadn't found wives.

Once, Wang Da was away on a boat when he brought back a widow from another place named Zhang Miao. She was fair-skinned, beautiful, tall, and slender, which made Old Wang and his wife very happy. A few days later, they arranged for the two to get married.

After marriage, Zhang Miao was virtuous and filial, managing the household perfectly and was very capable. But as the saying goes, good things that come too easily arouse suspicion. Old Wang's wife began to wonder how her son, such a coward, had managed to find such a beautiful woman.

In the past, every time she asked, her eldest son would stammer and evade the question. So she secretly went to the boat captain who worked with her eldest son to inquire. As a result, she learned that Zhang Miao was from Songlai Town, had been married twice before, and was unable to give birth and was considered a jinx.

Old Wang's wife was shocked and rushed home to discuss it with Old Wang. However, Old Wang did not believe those claims, and the couple even had an argument.

Old Wang's wife has lost her temper. Zhang Miao is too good, beautiful and capable. Besides, who knows if the rumors about her being a jinx and unable to have children are true or not?

So she found a bunch of folk remedies for her eldest son to eat, hoping that Zhang Miao could give birth to a son or daughter and break that superstition. Sure enough, after eating those random herbs, her eldest son became very virile and fertile, and he made babies every night. The strange noises could be heard by the neighbors.

Half a year passed, and Zhang Miao still hadn't gotten pregnant. Meanwhile, the eldest son went out to work on a boat, but he encountered a violent storm, fell into the Yellow River, and drowned.

This time, the curse really came true. Old Wang's wife was a mean-spirited person who forgot the past relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. She caught Zhang Miao and beat and scolded her, saying that she was a hen that couldn't lay eggs and had killed her own son, and that she would drive her out of the house.

Zhang Miao was also a pitiful person. She had no relatives or friends, had been married to three husbands and all three of them died. She had nowhere to go, and she endured beatings and scoldings, only asking that they not drive her away. She was willing to serve Old Wang and his wife for the rest of her life.

Old Wang's wife was unwilling, since their eldest son had already been cursed to death, and the three members of the family might also be cursed to death. However, Old Wang was concerned about his reputation and was afraid that the village would say he was unrighteous, so he decided to give Zhang Miao a room so that she could live separately from him.

When Zhang Miao followed Wang Dalai, she received a black-haired, white-hoofed donkey from her previous husband's family. After the separation, she had no means of livelihood, so she drove the donkey to the Yellow River beach to haul goods, barely earning enough to eat.

As for Wang Er, he was in the prime of his life and thought about women all day long. When his elder brother was alive, he would often peek at his sister-in-law when she and her husband were making love every night. The way she was doing it made him drool.

When her elder brother was alive, things were fine, but now that he's gone, he's started having bad ideas. Every few days, he sneaks into Zhang Miao's room to do something naughty. Zhang Miao is a principled person. She can be shameless with her husband, but she absolutely won't do it with outsiders. At first, she pushed Wang Er out with a stern voice, but one time she couldn't help but curse him, which attracted the attention of Old Wang and his wife.

Wang Er, the villain, filed a false accusation, saying that Zhang Miao had seduced him first. Old Wang's wife had recently been making unfounded accusations, hearing that Zhang Miao was always flirting with other men outside. She had long been unable to tolerate it, and this time she completely lost her temper. She grabbed Zhang Miao by the hair, tore off her clothes, and hurled nasty insults at her, causing a disturbance in the whole village for several days.

Unable to endure the torment any longer, Zhang Miao, on a stormy night, dressed in a bright red robe, first slaughtered the donkey he depended on for survival, and then hanged himself.

Afterwards, fearing bad luck, the Wang family bought a coffin and buried Zhang Miao, and even abandoned the house she lived in.

They thought the matter was over, but on the seventh night after Zhang Miao's death, the Wang family began to be haunted. First, Old Wang got up in the middle of the night and found a disheveled woman in red standing in the yard, which scared him half to death. Then, Old Wang's wife talked nonsense and slapped herself in the middle of the night. Then, Wang Er took off his clothes and ran around the village, slapping himself and cursing himself as a bastard.

The classmate took a swig of his drink and said, "Isn't this strange? The Wang family is still making a scene. Old Wang's wife and Wang Er are on their deathbeds."

Zhou Fengchen thought to himself, "What a coincidence! It's probably the same ghost that the fat monk caught." Remembering Ge Lao Er's affair, he asked, "Did Zhang Miao really seduce men before she died?"

The classmate shook his head and said, "Hey! There's always gossip around a widow's door. Zhang Miao is good-looking, and all the fearless bachelors from far and wide want to test if the curse is real. Zhang Miao is also very polite to everyone, so the story gets twisted over time."

Zhou Fengchen asked, "Do you know Ge Lao Er, the scissors sharpener in our town? Does he have any connection with Zhang Miao?"

"Haha." The classmate laughed heartily and said, "Scissors Ge looks very honest and upright, but he's actually quite wicked. He's quite old, but he's the most troublesome one. He said that as long as he could sleep with Zhang Miao for a year, it would be worth it even if he were cursed to death. He always runs to our village when he has nothing to do. He even cried after Zhang Miao died."

Zhou Fengchen's face twitched. He thought to himself that he had never realized Ge Lao Er was this kind of person. Instantly, he imagined a scene in his mind: Ge Lao Er was walking home in the middle of the night when he encountered Zhang Miao's ghost. Zhang Miao remembered that this old man was interested in her, so she tested him. Ge Lao Er had lost his mind and really wanted to do something good. After taking off his clothes, he was strangled to death and stuffed into a pile of yellow earth...

This classmate was a chatterbox, and having had a bit too much to drink, he went on and on about Zhang Miao, then started talking about young women and wives, all the way up to humans landing on the moon, landing on Mars in the future, and developing a second human settlement. Zhou Fengchen wasn't listening and had no idea how he got off topic.

It was already afternoon after they finished drinking, and this classmate dragged him to play some games. But while they were playing, he stopped moving and fell asleep.

Zhou Fengchen also felt a little sleepy, so he climbed into bed and fell asleep.

When Zhou Fengchen woke up, the room was pitch black. His classmate was lying on the floor snoring. Zhou Fengchen slapped his forehead, peered at the clock on the wall in the darkness, and saw that it was almost midnight. He cursed and ran out.