Chapter 348: Monument

Gazing at the blurry afterimages before her, Bai Lingmiao remembered: that child was her younger self. This had happened a long, long time ago.

Bai Lingmiao watched her grandfather lift her onto his shoulders. He ran and jumped among the ceramic figures like a child, shouting excitedly, which made her younger self giggle with laughter.

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

“Waaah! Waaah!” Bai Lingmiao saw her younger self crying. Wearing split pants, she sat in the corner, throwing her head back and wailing. Her body and hands were covered in mud.

“What’s wrong, Nannan? Who bullied you?” A white-haired old woman quickly walked over and gently lifted Bai Lingmiao.

“Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!” Nestled in the old woman’s arms, Bai Lingmiao pointed her chubby little finger at the corner of the wall, muttering incomprehensibly with her three-toothed mouth, words only she could understand.

“Oh, so it scared our sweet Nannan, did it? Don’t cry, don’t cry, Grandma will get even for you!”

The old woman led Bai Lingmiao by the hand to the wall, stamping her foot as she said, “Hmph! How dare you scare our sweet Nannan, you naughty thing! I’ll step on you, I’ll step on you until you’re dead!”

As Bai Lingmiao watched her younger self stop crying under her grandmother’s comfort, an exceptionally terrifying image suddenly flashed into her mind. Her expression inexplicably changed. “I remember now.”

“Remember what?”

“I remember what scared me back then!” Bai Lingmiao rushed forward, scattering her past self and her past grandmother.

She reached the wall, raised her sharp black fingernails, and began digging into the exceptionally solid rammed earth.

“Miaomiao! What’s wrong?” Chun Xiaoman walked over, looking at her good friend digging with great concern.

After asking several times and getting no answer, she steeled her resolve, pulled out her long sword and plunged it into the rammed earth, and began digging alongside her.

Gao Zhijian, who was nearby, also rushed over upon seeing this. He detached a piece of armor from his body, forcefully thrust it into the earth, and pried with all his might.

“Treasure? Is there treasure hidden in the earth?” Gouwa also rushed over, his face full of excitement, and helped out.

This activity didn’t last long. With a horrific scream from Gouwa, everyone’s hands stopped.

Bai Lingmiao’s trembling hands reached out to the woman buried in the mud, her eyes tightly closed. Her eyeballs were shriveled and sewn shut with thread, and her face was ashen, making her look exceptionally horrifying.

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

Before he could finish his sentence, Bai Lingmiao continued to dig. More and more deceased people were unearthed from the mud. They were pressed tightly against each other, as if stacked together like bricks.

It wasn’t just adults; people of all ages, from children to elders, were buried in the earth.

After digging for a while, Bai Lingmiao stopped. She could already see that these people were not buried haphazardly; their positions were precisely along the edges of the entire grand hall, and a lotus flower was drawn on the back of each person’s hand. It was clearly a deliberate design.

“They’re using people as a foundation!” Gouwa exclaimed, utterly shocked by the horrifying scene before his eyes. “To lay a foundation for such a large area, how many dead people must be buried underground? What kind of people are so depraved?!”

No sooner had Gouwa spoken than he realized he had said the wrong thing. He instinctively covered his mouth and looked at Bai Lingmiao.

This place was the Bai family’s ancestral hall. Anyone with half a brain would know who had buried so many dead people underground.

Bai Lingmiao tried hard to hold back, but how could she possibly hold back from something like this? She cried as loudly as her younger self, wearing the tiger-head hat, had cried, only this time, there was no grandmother to comfort her.

All of Bai Lingmiao’s fond memories of her hometown collapsed at this moment. Even more tragically, she now had no one left to question or blame.

They had all been burned to ashes by Li Huowang, not a single one remaining.

“Why?! Father! Mother! Why did you kill so many people?! Why did you have to be evil?!”

“Didn’t you know these people might be someone else’s parents? Perhaps someone else’s grandparents? Did you not realize how painful it is to lose loved ones?!”

Seeing Bai Lingmiao on the verge of collapse, Chun Xiaoman quickly pulled her into a hug and softly comforted her. “It’s alright, this isn’t your fault, this isn’t your fault…”

Gradually, Bai Lingmiao’s sobs subsided. She had cried enough, and she also understood that crying would accomplish nothing.

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

Stiff corpses were dragged out of the hidden chamber and then transported by cart to Oxheart Mountain to be buried.

Their bodies were incredibly rigid, as if filled with lead and completely set like stone, making it impossible for Bai Lingmiao to arrange a proper burial for them.

Each time a body was buried and a gravestone erected, Bai Lingmiao would kowtow and burn incense in apology. She knew it might be useless, but it was the only thing she could do.

There were many dead people in the hidden chamber. They worked for a long time and finally finished burying them only when Lü’s opera troupe returned from their performance.

When they were done, Bai Lingmiao was utterly haggard, her face so thin it was unrecognizable.

Bai Lingmiao, who had just bowed three times to the gravestones, raised her head. Her bloodshot pink eyes gazed at the numerous graves before her. Her chapped lips parted slightly as she asked Chun Xiaoman, who stood beside her, “Sister Xiaoman, since they were capable of such evil, why did they raise me to be so kind-hearted?”

“If I had become as wicked as them, I wouldn’t feel this sad…”

Chun Xiaoman had no answer to this question.

Lü Zhuangyuan, who was helping to shovel earth nearby, stopped his work. He wiped his sweat and sighed, saying, “My girl, I’m a father myself, and I can probably guess what your father and mother were thinking.”

“The truth is, your father and mother knew that doing such things too often would incur heavenly retribution, so they didn’t want you involved. And besides, you’re a girl.”

“A married daughter is like spilled water. As long as they kept it hidden from you while you grew up, and then found a good family for you to marry into, whatever happened with your birth family wouldn’t concern you. Ultimately, they were doing it for your good.”

“For my good?” Bai Lingmiao awkwardly opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but the words caught in her throat.

Chun Xiaoman sighed and gently hugged her in comfort, knowing that anything she, an outsider, said in this situation would be futile.

“Sister Xiaoman…”

“Hmm? What is it?” Chun Xiaoman tilted her head slightly and gently pressed her cheek against Bai Lingmiao’s white hair.

“Even though my family members were such evil people, I still can’t bring myself to forgive Senior Brother Li for killing them…”