The Unruly Immortals

Gazing at the blurry remnants before her, Bai Lingmiao remembered: that child was her younger self, though what had happened seemed so very long, long ago.

Bai Lingmiao watched as Grandpa lifted her up, slung her around his neck, and pranced around like a child among the porcelain figures, clamoring playfully and making her younger self giggle nonstop.

She silently followed them, gradually recalling everything that had happened to her in this place.

"Waaah, waaah~~" Bai Lingmiao watched her younger self cry, sitting in a corner with open-crotched pants, looking up and bawling with mud all over her hands and body.

"What's wrong, Nannan? Who's bullying you?" An elderly woman with streaks of gray hair hurried over and picked up Bai Lingmiao to comfort her.

"Waaah, waaah~~ waaah waaah," Bai Lingmiao nestled in the old woman's arms, pointing with chubby fingers toward the corner of the wall, her three-toothed mouth mumbling incoherently to words only she could understand.

"Oh, did it scare our sweet Nannan? Don't cry, don't cry, look, Granny will take care of it for you!"

The old woman pulled Bai Lingmiao by the hand to the wall, stamping her feet and saying, "Hey! You scared our sweet Nannan, you bad thing, I'll stomp you dead, stomp you dead!"

As Bai Lingmiao watched her younger self stop crying comforted by her grandmother, a terrifying image suddenly burst into her mind, and her expression changed inexplicably, "I remember now."

"Remember what?"

"I remember what it was that scared me back then!" Bai Lingmiao rushed forward, dispersing her past self and her grandmother.

She arrived at the side of the wall, raising her sharp black fingernails and beginning to dig into the exceptionally sturdy rammed earth.

"Miaomiao, what's wrong with you?" Chun Xiaoman came over, looking worriedly at her dear friend digging in the earth.

After asking several times without a response, she steeled her heart, drew out her longsword, and began to dig into the earth as well.

Seeing this, Gao Zhijian also charged over, removed an armor plate from his body, and viciously thrust it into the earth, leveraging it forcefully.

"Is there treasure? Is there treasure buried in the earth?" Doggie ran over excitedly, eager to help as well.

This activity did not last long; as Doggie's blood-curdling scream echoed, everyone's hands stopped moving.

Bai Lingmiao's trembling hands reached out toward the woman with closed eyes buried in the mud, her eyeballs shriveled and stitched shut, her face a horrific shade of dark blue.

A large hand reached out, blocking Bai Lingmiao's hand, "... this... this is... this is... a human pillar...pillar...pillar..."

Before he could finish, Bai Lingmiao continued digging, and more and more corpses were unearthed from the mud. They nestled tightly against each other as if they were bricks closely stacked together.

Not only adults, but corpses of all ages, from young to old, were buried in the earth.

After a while, Bai Lingmiao stopped digging. She could see that these people hadn't been buried haphazardly; their positions corresponded exactly to the edges of the great hall, and each had a lotus flower drawn on the back of their hand. It was clearly a deliberate design.

"They were using people as foundation stones, laying them throughout such a vast area; how many corpses must be buried beneath? What kind of person could be so cruel?" Doggie said, staring in shocked disbelief at the gruesome sight before him.

No sooner had Doggie spoken than he realized he had said the wrong thing, instinctively covering his mouth and looking toward Bai Lingmiao.

This place was the ancestral temple of the Bai Family. Anyone could guess who was responsible for the numerous bodies buried underneath.

Bai Lingmiao tried her best to hold back her tears, but how could she possibly restrain herself? She cried as loudly as the little girl with the tiger-headed hat once did, only this time there was no grandmother to comfort her.

All the beautiful memories of her hometown crumbled in that moment, and what was more tragic was that she now lacked even a target for her questions and accusations.

They had all been turned to ash by Li Huowang's fire, not a single one remained.

"Why, Father! Mother! Why did you have to kill so many people? Why did you choose to be villains?!"

"Don't you realize that these people might be someone else's fathers and mothers, someone else's grandfathers and grandmothers? Do you know how much it hurts to lose a loved one?!"

Seeing Bai Lingmiao nearly breaking down, Chun Xiaoman quickly wrapped her in an embrace, whispering comforting words. "It's alright, this is not your fault, this is not your fault..."

Gradually, Bai Lingmiao's sobbing subsided. She had cried enough, but she had also realized that crying would accomplish nothing.

Bai Lingmiao, wiping away stubborn tears, wriggled out of the embrace. "No... It is my fault, it's our Bai Family's fault! Since it's our mistake, then as a Bai Family member, I must take responsibility!"

One by one, the stiff bodies were dragged out of the dark chamber, then hauled by carts to be buried on Niuxin Mountain.

Their bodies were exceedingly rigid, as if filled with lead, completely fixed like stone such that Bai Lingmiao couldn't manage to give them a dignified burial.

As each body was buried and a tombstone erected, Bai Lingmiao would kowtow and offer incense in apology. She knew it might be pointless, but it was the only thing she could do.

There were many dead in that dark chamber, and they were busy for a long time, not finishing until Lv's Troupe returned from their performances outside.

When the work was done, Bai Lingmiao looked utterly haggard, her face gaunt and drawn.

After kowtowing three times loudly against the tombstone, Bai Lingmiao looked up, her pink eyes bloodshot, and asked Chun Xiaoman, with chapped lips slightly parted, "Sister Xiaoman, if they could do such evil deeds, then why did they raise me to be so kind-hearted?"

"If I had become just as bad as them, I wouldn't be suffering like this…"

Chun Xiaoman had no answer to this question.

Top Scholar Lv, who was helping shovel the earth, stopped his work and, wiping the sweat from his brow, heaved a sigh. "Girl, I too am a father, and I think I can guess what your parents were thinking."

"Actually, your parents knew that such deeds would incur divine punishment eventually, so they didn't want you to get involved. Plus, you are a girl."

"A daughter married off is like water poured away. If they simply kept you in the dark until you were grown and found you a good family to marry into, whatever happened in your natal family would no longer be your concern. In the end, they did it for your sake."

"For my sake?" Bai Lingmiao tried to say something, her voice awkward, but the words were stuck in her throat.

Chun Xiaoman sighed and gently pulled Bai Lingmiao into an embrace, a gesture of comfort. Anything she, an outsider to the situation, would say was futile.

"Sister Xiaoman..."

"Hmm? What is it?" Chun Xiaoman tilted her head slightly, pressing her white hair gently against Bai Lingmiao's.

"Even though my family were such evildoers, I still can't forgive Brother Li for killing them…"