Chapter 346: Stele

Chapter 346: The Stele

Gazing at the hazy shadow before her, Bai Lingmiao recalled—it was the child she once was, a memory from long ago.

Bai Lingmiao watched as her grandfather lifted her up and placed her on his shoulders, running and leaping with a child’s joy through the ceramic figures, her voice full of laughter and chatter that made her younger self burst into giggles.

She silently followed behind them, watching, and gradually, memories of her past in this very place began to surface.

"Waaah waaah waaah～ waaah~~" Bai Lingmiao saw her younger self crying, sitting in the corner of the wall in a diaper, crying loudly with her head tilted back. Her body and hands were covered in mud.

"What's wrong? My little darling? Who hurt you?" An elderly woman with gray hair hurried over and picked up Bai Lingmiao.

"Waaah waaah waaah~~ waaah!" Buried in the old woman’s arms, Bai Lingmiao pointed with her chubby fingers toward the corner, her mouth full of three tiny teeth, making muffled sounds only she could understand.

"Oh~ It scared our sweet little darling, didn’t it? Don’t cry, don’t cry, let Grandma teach it a lesson!"

The old woman took Bai Lingmiao’s hand and walked to the wall, stomping her foot as she said, "Hey! You scared our sweet little darling, you bad thing, step on you, step on you!"

When Bai Lingmiao saw her younger self stop crying under her grandmother’s comfort, a horrifying image suddenly flashed in her mind. Her face changed for no reason. “I remember now.”

“What do you remember?”

“I remember what scared me back then!” Bai Lingmiao rushed forward and pushed away the past version of herself and her grandmother.

She went to the wall, raised her sharp black nail, and dug into the solid rammed earth, starting to dig.

"Lingmiao! What’s wrong with you?" Chun Xiaoman came over, deeply worried, watching her best friend digging.

After asking several times without an answer, she clenched her jaw and pulled out her sword, stabbing into the earth alongside Bai Lingmiao.

Gao Zhijian, seeing this, also rushed over and removed a piece of armor from his body, driving it into the ground and lifting with all his might.

"There’s treasure? Is there treasure buried in the soil?" Gouwa ran over, eyes bright with excitement, joining in.

But their efforts didn’t last long. With a blood-curdling scream from Gouwa, everyone stopped.

Bai Lingmiao’s trembling hands reached out to touch the eyes of a woman buried beneath the earth—eyes tightly shut, sunken, stitched shut with thread, her face pale and ghastly.

A large hand reached out and blocked Bai Lingmiao’s hand. “…This… this is... this is a human pillar… pillar… pillar…”

Before he could finish, Bai Lingmiao continued digging. More corpses emerged from the earth. They pressed tightly together, like bricks stacked one upon another.

Not just adults—children of all ages were buried here.

After some time, Bai Lingmiao stopped digging. She realized these weren’t randomly buried; they were positioned precisely along the edges of the great hall, and each had a lotus flower drawn on their hand. Clearly, it had been planned.

“They used people to build the foundation. This whole area has been dug over—how many dead bodies are buried underground? Who would be so heartless?” Gouwa said in shock.

As soon as she spoke, she realized she’d said too much and instinctively clapped her hand over her mouth, looking at Bai Lingmiao.

This place was the Bai family ancestral hall. Even a fool could guess who had buried so many dead people underground.

Bai Lingmiao tried to hold back her tears, but how could she not cry? Her sobs were as loud as when she herself wore a tiger-head cap and cried. Only this time, there was no grandmother to comfort her.

All her beautiful memories of home crumbled in that moment. Worse still, she had no one left to blame or question.

They had all been burned to ash by Li Huowang—none left alive.

"Why?! Father! Mother!! Why did you kill so many people?! Why did you become evil?!"

"Don’t you know these people might have been someone else’s parents, grandparents? Do you know how painful it is to lose loved ones?!"

Seeing Bai Lingmiao nearly collapse, Chun Xiaoman quickly embraced her and whispered softly, “It’s okay, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault…”

Gradually, Bai Lingmiao’s sobs quieted. She had cried enough. She knew crying wouldn’t help.

Wiping away her tears, Bai Lingmiao pulled away from her embrace. “No... this is my fault. This is the Bai family’s fault! Since it’s our fault, I, as a Bai family member, must take responsibility!”

Each stiff corpse was dragged out from the dark chamber and loaded onto a cart to be buried on Niuxin Mountain.

Their bodies were so rigid, as if filled with lead, completely solid like stone. Bai Lingmiao couldn’t even give them a proper burial.

Every time a body was buried and a stele erected, Bai Lingmiao knelt and offered incense, apologizing. She knew it might not help, but it was the only thing she could do.

There were many corpses in the dark chamber. They worked for a long time, and it wasn’t until the Lü family opera troupe returned from performing that they finally finished burying them.

By the time everything was done, Bai Lingmiao looked utterly exhausted, her face gaunt and pale.

After bowing three times to the tombstones, Bai Lingmiao raised her head, her pink eyes streaked with blood, gazing at the rows of graves before her. Her cracked lips parted slightly as she asked Chun Xiaoman beside her, “Sister Xiaoman, if they could commit such evil deeds, why did they teach me to be so kind?”

“If I had become as evil as they are, I wouldn’t feel this pain…”

Chun Xiaoman couldn’t answer that question.

Lü Zhuangyuan, who had been helping shovel dirt, paused and wiped the sweat from his brow, sighing. “Daughter, I’m a father myself. I can guess what your parents were thinking.”

“To tell you the truth, your parents knew doing such things would bring divine punishment, so they didn’t want you involved. Plus, you’re a girl.”

“Once a daughter is married, she’s like water poured out. As long as you’re kept in the dark and married off to a good family, any trouble that happens here won’t involve you. In the end, they were trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” Bai Lingmiao opened her mouth hesitantly, wanting to say something, but the words stuck in her throat.

Chun Xiaoman sighed gently and held her close in comfort. In this situation, anything she said would be useless.

“Sister Xiaoman…”

“Hmm? What is it?” Chun Xiaoman turned her head slightly, pressing her white hair against Bai Lingmiao’s.

“Even though my family are all such evil people, I still can’t forgive Li Senior Brother for killing them…”

———Author’s Note———

Three chapters tomorrow.