Chapter 90: Girl

Chapter 90: The Little Girl

"Hee hee, you've broken the rules." The voice was thin, somewhat like a woman's, yet not entirely so.

The moment he heard it, Li Huowang was inexplicably reminded of the woman with bound feet who had once summoned the God of Joy; she had possessed the very same voice.

As Li Huowang led the others out of the house and into the courtyard, their faces taut with vigilance, they spotted a small head propped up against the left wall of the house.

A sallow-haired little girl, looking no older than five or six, was perched atop the high wall, peering in with a giggling smile, the twin horn-like braids tied with a red cord on her head sticking up pert and high.

"Red!" The moment Li Huowang saw the red cord on her head, his heart gave a violent jolt.

"Could this child be the Eighteenth of the Twelfth Month?"

Watching the girl still giggling there, Li Huowang pondered for a moment before slowly asking, "I broke the rules, but you're no better than I am. Aren't we forbidden to go out at night? Why are you still out here?"

"I'm just a child! You adults aren't allowed out, but of course we children can come out to play." Facing Li Huowang and the others, the child showed no hostility whatsoever.

She shifted her head slightly to the side, then continued with a beaming smile, "If you give me some candy, I won't tell anyone else."

Seeing the child's head move, the others instantly widened their eyes in shock; the walls of the Wu family compound were exceedingly high, at least twenty feet tall.

Yet this little girl was moving along the top of the wall with such ease, meaning she wasn't standing on a ladder, but simply standing there in midair!!

Li Huowang stared at that tiny head, and the dusty, towering wall beneath it.

He simply could not fathom what kind of physical structure a child with an ordinary little head could have if she were twenty feet tall—a stick insect?

"Hee hee, are you going to give me candy or not? If you don't, I'll start shouting for people," the little girl on the wall edge kept saying.

"I'll give it to you, of course I will, don't rush. I don't have any candy on me right now, I have to go fetch it first, don't I?"

Playing along with her words, Li Huowang then leaned sideways and whispered instructions to Gouwa beside him.

Upon hearing Li Huowang's words, deep terror instantly flashed across Gouwa's face, but when Li Huowang stuffed the Daoist bell into his arms, Gouwa ultimately nodded, turned, and walked back into the house.

"Alright, he's gone to get the candy, let's wait a bit. Since we're bored, how about we chat for a while?"

"Okay, okay, I love chatting," the little girl sounded exceedingly innocent.

Facing this entity of unknown allegiance, Li Huowang kept his tone extremely gentle.

"Whose child are you? How come I haven't seen you at the village entrance before?"

"I don't know whose child I am either. They all say I'm the Kitchen God's child, but I clearly don't look anything like the Kitchen God's portrait pasted on the wall," the girl replied.

"Oh? You don't look like the Kitchen God? I think you look quite a bit like him, both of you love eating candy so much. I still remember that during the old sacrifices to the Kitchen God, my grandfather would always smear pastries on the mouth of his portrait."

As Li Huowang spoke, his right hand silently reached back to rest upon the red bamboo slips behind him.

The twin braids atop the girl's head swayed back and forth as she shook her head, "You're talking nonsense! The Kitchen God clearly has four pairs of eyes and five hands, and he doesn't even have feet. Where do I look like him at all?"

Hearing her speak such words with absolute guilelessness, everyone present felt a chill run down their spines; this was completely different from the Kitchen God in their minds.

"Little girl, you're making this up, aren't you? How could the Kitchen God have five hands? And if he has no feet, how does he walk?"

Hearing Li Huowang's deliberate skepticism, the little girl immediately grew agitated.

"How am I making it up? I saw it with my own eyes! Besides, who says you can't walk without legs? The Kitchen God can clearly make his red intestines slither out of his belly button to use as feet!"

No sooner had the words left her mouth than Gouwa's voice, terrified to the point of near tears, came from the other side of the wall.

"Senior Brother Li!! This wretched girl has no body at all!! She's nothing but a head!"

With a whoosh, the girl's head instantly ducked below the wall, immediately followed by Gouwa's most agonizing, blood-curdling scream.

"Ring the bell!!" Li Huowang gritted his teeth and swiftly dashed toward the gate of the Wu family compound.

When they reached the other side of the wall, they saw Gouwa trembling violently, wailing and kowtowing on the ground, his trousers completely soaked.

Li Huowang glanced left and right at the pitch-black alley around them, went to Gouwa, yanked him up by the collar, and snatched back his bell. "Stop kowtowing! Speak up! Where did that head just run off to!"

Seeing Gouwa's trembling finger point toward the east, Li Huowang tossed him aside, grabbed his sword in one hand and his lantern in the other, and gave chase.

In the pitch-black surroundings, everything seemed to have transformed into man-eating monsters, baring their fangs and brandishing their claws between the darkness and the lamplight.

Yet after sprinting for a long while, Li Huowang failed to catch up with the girl's head, instead finding himself in an unfamiliar environment; it looked as though he had reached the end of the village, with a bamboo forest in the distance.

Finding nothing, Li Huowang cursed under his breath, turned around, and headed back to regroup with the others who were hurrying over with their lanterns.

No matter what that girl was, he could basically surmise that even if she wasn't the Eighteenth of the Twelfth Month, she was closely related to her; he hadn't searched in vain, the Eighteenth of the Twelfth Month was right here.

As Li Huowang approached those lanterns, he froze in shock; they were all his companions, yet they were standing perfectly still in place, holding their lanterns and facing uniformly away from him.

"What are you all doing??" Li Huowang took a vigilant half-step back, gripping the Daoist bell tightly in his hand.

The moment he asked this, everyone turned around simultaneously, and their faces had changed! Every single face had transformed into that little girl's face!

These identical female faces smiled in unison. "Hee hee hee, you've broken the rules again. Since you won't give me candy, I'm going to tell the others, and they'll come looking for you."

"Jingle jingle jingle jingle~~!!" The instant the piercing bell rang out, those figures vanished rapidly, like darkness dispelled by light.

And the piercing bell was undoubtedly highly attractive in the darkness; before long, Li Huowang saw his other senior and junior martial siblings gathering around, though this time their faces had not been replaced by the little girl's head.

After cautiously verifying some information known only to the disciples of the Qingfeng Temple with them, Li Huowang finally breathed a sigh of relief; these people were real.

"Senior Brother Li, what's wrong? What just happened?"

"It's nothing, just an illusion," Li Huowang shook his head, scanned the surrounding darkness in a full circle, and finding nothing amiss, led the others back the way they came.

Yet not long after they had just left, a pair of blood-red eyes opened in the darkness.

(End of Chapter)