Chapter 688: Chapter 233 Heart Matters_3
The woman stopped in front of the thicket.
"Look," she said.
Lu Tong looked over and immediately felt chills down his spine.
In the heart of the dense vegetation loomed rows upon rows of dark earthen mounds. Lu Tong hadn’t made them out at first, but upon a clearer look, she couldn’t help but feel a tingling on her scalp.
Those were rows of graves.
Buried rather carelessly and shoddily, yet during the great epidemic in Changwu County, numerous such haphazardly made graves could be found on the edges of fields; she had seen too many of them.
Lu Tong’s voice trembled, "This is..."
"These are your sixteen elder brothers and sisters," Lady Yun explained with a smile.
"They were all about your age," the woman said softly, "and also spent time with me on Luomei Peak, it’s just that they were too frail and had too few days with me."
"Little Shiqi," Lady Yun said, "you should stick with me a bit longer."
Lu Tong was shaking with fear.
Lady Yun kept calling her "Seventeen," and she didn’t understand why. Now, amidst these rows of graves, she began to glimpse a hint of the truth.
She would become the seventeenth one buried here; she was the seventeenth dead.
As if amused by her sudden pallor, Lady Yun seemed surprised, "What’s with that expression? Did you think I was going to kill you?"
The woman stroked her head and chided, "Silly child."
She was so terrified that she couldn’t move, her legs went soft as if she were a puppet, letting Lady Yun lead her back to the cottage.
"Little Shiqi, when you saved my family, you told me that you could do anything,"
Lu Tong looked at her, her heart sinking, "What would you like me to do, Miss?"
Lady Yun walked over to the stone table, picked up the medicine bowl full of soup from before, and handed it to her with a faint smile.
"Drink it."
The brownish medicinal soup rippled slightly in the bowl, reflecting her panicked, fear-stricken face.
She had no choice.
Lu Tong finished the medicinal soup in the bowl, and Lady Yun took out a handkerchief to wipe the moistened medicine at the corner of her mouth, speaking with a smile.
"Don’t be afraid, it’s not poison, nor will it take your life. It will just make you a bit uncomfortable."
"Seeing how decisively you drank the medicine just now, it seems you’re a good child who isn’t afraid of suffering."
Lady Yun gave her a gentle push back into the cottage, then with a "click," the door was locked. Lu Tong came to her senses and rushed to the door, pounding on it. She heard the woman’s voice, tinged with laughter, coming from outside.
"The medicine you just drank is called ’Crossing Ant Formation.’
"After taking it, you’ll feel a bit of pain after an hour, as if ants were crawling over you, with no relief in sight. If you can endure it for three hours, once the effects pass, you’ll be fine, but if you can’t bear it, you should be careful."
"That Little Sixteen sister before you just couldn’t endure this bowl of medicine, hung herself from the beam with a rope. When she was taken down, her appearance was quite awful."
"Little Shiqi," she said, "you have to hold on."
The footsteps outside grew fainter, and no matter how she pounded on the door, there was no response—the woman, Lady Yun, had already left.
She was left alone in the room.
The room was dim, the windows were locked, and she had nowhere to go. She retreated step by step, but her foot stumbled upon something, almost causing her to trip. She looked down to find a piece of rope.
The rope was thick and covered with dark bloodstains. Lu Tong suddenly recalled what Lady Yun had just mentioned, "That Little Sixteen sister before you just couldn’t endure this bowl of medicine and hung herself from the beam with a rope."
It was the very rope the previous Medicine Man had used to hang himself.
As if pricked by a needle, Lu Tong’s hand let go and the thick rope dropped to the floor with a thud.
She hastily moved away.
Lu Tong rushed to the door, pounding again: "Miss, Lady Yun! Let me out! I want to leave!"
Only silence answered her.
Until she collapsed, exhausted and weary, from the door—there was still no echo. Lu Tong sat behind the door, her shoulders hunched, staring at the bloodied rope, feeling utterly hopeless.
She was going to die; she certainly couldn’t endure it. Sixteen had already died before her, and sooner or later, she too would be buried in the meadow, turning into a quagmire.
She would never be able to reunite with her parents and siblings.
Parents, brother, sister...
She cried for a long time, her voice turning hoarse, yet in the midst of her extreme confusion, she gradually calmed down.
No, she couldn’t die.
If she died here, no one would know, and her parents would never find out in their lifetime.
Not now, at least!
Suddenly finding strength from somewhere, Lu Tong got up again. The thick, bloodstained rope was still on the ground. Mulling over it, Lady Yun had only mentioned enduring the pain, so she had to get through it, but how...
Her eyes scanned the room, and Lu Tong’s gaze landed on the scissors on the table.