Elder Zhao’s Curse
“I-I don’t know.”
“I remember he lived in this village, didn’t he?” Mu Yu questioned.
“I-I really don’t know. I don’t want to die!”
The man dropped his pickaxe and went hell for leather with his hands covering his head.
Mu Yu hollered, “Hey, your pickaxe! The heck? I won’t eat you. Sheesh, he’s fast, going around the corner of that estate without even slowing down.”
Mu Yu asked several villagers on the way deeper into the village, only to garner the same reaction as the tanned man out of them.
Xiaoshuai hopped onto Mu Yu’s shoulder. “Mu Yu, it must be because your ugly looks are scaring them off. Let me try.”
“Give it a rest. If you speak out, they’ll likely treat you as some weirdo and inspect you. Unlike us, it’s natural for them to feel scared after what they witnessed. They don’t know the value of spirit stones, and I don’t have money to offer. Man…”
Mu Yu heard a man, who sported stubble and sat at a paddy around the corner of a cottage, sigh loudly. Thus, he Mu Yu sat down and tried to make idle chatter – you know, break the ice before diving deeper. “Mister, why are you sighing? Is your harvest not ideal?”
“I’ve never seen you before. Where you from?”
“I’m just passing by from another village,” Mu Yu responded in a friendly tone.
The elder heaved another big breath. “This year’s harvest doesn’t look optimistic. I don’t know where a new breed of pests came from. They just won’t die no matter how I try to kill them. What can I do besides watch them wreak havoc?”
Mu Yu scanned the paddy to see pests smaller than mosquitoes on the ear of rice, chewing away.
“They’re withered-leaf fiend mosquitoes. They love to live in groups. The annoying buggers will eat anything,” informed Xiaoshuai.
“Are you talking about yourself?” jibed the dragon vine.
“I look handsome, though. Anyway, the best way to deal with them is to use insect heart flowers’ scent to drive them off. Mu Yu, that’s your cue.”
“I can drive them off for you, Mister.”
“Don’t crack those kinds of jokes, kid. We’ve tried everything. You don’t appear to be someone who works in fields, even.”
Mu Yu summoned an insect heart flower to his hand and chuckled as he planted it in the paddy. With a flick, its scent spread, sending the withered-leaf fiend mosquitoes fleeing helter skelter. A twirl of his wrist revitalised the punctured crops. He then dusted his hands and stressed, “This plant is called an insect heart flower. As long as you plant it here, no withered-leaf fiend mosquitoes will come within one square metre of the flower, so don’t pull it out.”
“How did you know about this? Regardless, thank you.” The elder ran over to check on his crops. “The crops they eat have somehow grown back?!”
“By the way, the flower is the natural nemesis of those pests and can remedy crops they damage,” Mu Yu lied.
“I had no idea. Thank you again!”
Seeing the elder smiling from cheek to cheek, Mu Yu affably expressed, “I have a question I’d like to ask. Please enlighten me as repayment.”
“Fire away. I will answer any question you have.”
“I heard Elder Zhao returned from the dead. What happened there?”
The elder hissed and bolted, only to stop after two steps. He checked the area around and jogged back to whisper, “Why are you asking about that? It’s taboo.”
“Taboo?”
“Yes, taboo. If I mention it, I’ll die. The village chief’s big-mouthed second wife told a group of immortal masters about it a few days ago, but she suddenly choked and died before she could finish. It’s Elder Zhao’s curse; he’ll kill anyone who mentions it.”
“If you can’t speak it, you can write it out, right?”
“I can’t even read, let alone write!”
Mu Yu focused his gaze on the elder and gradually sensed an unidentified aura on him. To explore his hunch, he grabbed the elder’s hands.
“What are you doing?” exclaimed the elder, trying in vain to break free.
“Someone has cast a formation on you. Who in the world would be so vicious?”
The grey qi underneath the elder’s eyes was barely noticeable and resembled the aura Ghost Gate’s members exuded. Howbeit, it wasn’t their aura. The formation, which was the grey qi, was set to kill the elder once certain conditions – Heartstealer Formation. Mu Yu hadn’t cast the forbidden formation before. Nevertheless, he was positive he was on the money.
“Formation? I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is that we’ve been cursed. If we speak, we die.”
“Have you felt suffocated and some chest pains recently? Have you had periods where your breathing was erratic, eyes would sometimes ache and find yourself seeing everything in grey?”
“H-how do you know? Right now, everything is black and white to me.”
Mu Yu released his hold on the elder and affirmed, “You have been cursed and will be killed when you broach a certain topic.”
“I told you so. Don’t ask me about it. I’m grateful you helped me drive of the pests, but I can’t help you with your question.”
“Trust me. I can dispel the curse.”
“Y-you can?! You are an immortal master?”
As Mu Yu nodded, he released Primordial Yin Yang qi onto the elder, lifting him into the air. Mu Yu implanted black and white formations lines into the elder’s body, sending a zap through him and relieving him off the suffocated sensation.
“Th-that’s it?”
Upon returning to the ground, the elder confirmed his chest didn’t hurt and that the swelling under his eyes was gone. Mu Yu stopped him as he went to offer a bow and promised, “You can tell me all about it now. You’ll be fine. Trust me on it.”
The elder glanced back and his crops and touched his chest. “Okay, it’s all or nothing. As per our village customs, everyone in the village had to join the procession for Elder Zhao’s funeral. We intended to head home after pushing his coffin into the valley. All of a sudden, though, it floated back up and opened. He actually came to life again; we thought he came back to punish his horrid descendants. Oh, he released a sinister black gas from his body that wiped out his entire family. It only took him the blink of an eye!”
That sounds like the work of Ghost Gate for sure, Mu Yu inwardly confirmed. “Did Elder Zhao say anything?”
“After he killed his descendants, he guffawed in a scary, screechy voice. Then, he said that now that the seal h-, argh, hargh!”
The elder clasped his mouth. His enlarged eyes darted back and forth as his veins started to surface. His entire body straightened out similarly to rope with the slack pulled out of it.
Didn’t I remove the formation? Mu Yu wondered.
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