Chapter 25: Joy upon the Plum Tips

“Then, what should we do now?” Feng Yu asked.

“Go to the He household,” Ning Zhe answered without hesitation. “Zhang Yangxu said Ye Miaozhu died at the He household—let’s go see.”

“Huh?” Feng Yu instantly grew tense. “Going there now… won’t it be dangerous?”

After all, Ye Miaozhu died there.

“Yes,” Ning Zhe did not deny it. “If we go in unprepared, like Ye Miaozhu did, charging ahead blindly, we’ll almost certainly die.”

But things are different now—he has stolen a portion of the Snake God’s identity. If there is ever a moment to venture into the unknown and risk everything, it is now.

Ning Zhe stepped lightly over the uneven stone pavement, nearly tripping as his too-light steps caught his toes in a crack—but his superhuman reflexes corrected his posture instantly, and he continued forward.

“Even a Snake God suffers misfortune if he breaks the rules…” Ning Zhe sighed.

Rules apply equally to all; they do not change based on who you are. The Snake God breaks the law, and he is punished as a commoner would be.

The two left the ancestral hall and walked north along the main street of He Family Village. Daylight offered far better visibility than night—they could clearly see the distant emerald mountains, the edge of the basin where the village lay, layered in lush green, boundless and vast.

The streets still bustled with people: elderly men sat in wicker chairs after meals, eyes half-closed, watching their children and neighbors’ kids chase and play along the roadside, yellow paper stuck to their faces fluttering in the wind.

Sometimes they would pause, curiously watching Ning Zhe and Feng Yu stroll past, their eyes following the two as they moved far upstream toward the river.

Had it not been for the identical dry, ancient yellow papers pasted to each face—crookedly inscribed with their names—this scene might have seemed warmly familiar: the stone pavement beneath their feet, the tiled roofs above, both ancient and gentle, as if stepping into some forgotten ancient town where the weight of history and the fragility of human presence were equally visible.

At a crossroads, two clumps of deep green flanked the road; several black-feathered, white-spotted birds perched motionless on the branches, neither flying nor calling.

“What kind of birds are those?” Feng Yu looked up at the birds, puzzled.

“Magpies,” Ning Zhe said casually. “Black base, white spots, deep blue wings, a touch of bright yellow on the tail—the classic magpie.”

You actually recognized them at a glance… Feng Yu had only spoken up to break the heavy silence, tossing out a random topic—she never expected Ning Zhe to answer so readily.

Ning Zhe continued: “By the way, those two trees are wild plum trees, ungrafted. Look at the main trunks—you’ll see. Wild plum trees, like osmanthus, have no single thick, clear trunk; they grow more like shrubs in scattered clumps. Those tall, upright ones were all artificially grafted.”

“Wild plum trees?” Feng Yu blinked in surprise.

She looked up at the deep green canopy of the plum trees at the crossroads, then at the magpies sitting silently on the branches, and a phrase slipped unbidden from her lips: “Joy upon the plum tips?”

“Joy upon the eyebrows?” Ning Zhe paused, then immediately understood: “Oh—you mean ‘Joy upon the plum tips’? You’re referring to the Qinzhou folk custom? It’s said that when a newlywed couple sees a magpie perched on a plum branch, it’s an auspicious omen of harmonious, blissful marriage.”

Feng Yu nodded vigorously. “Yes, the older generation believes it strongly. When I got married, my father specially hired a master painter from Yunzhou to paint a ‘Joy upon the Plum Tips’ ink painting, saying it would bring good fortune and a peaceful life.”

“Nice,” Ning Zhe offered no further comment on others’ personal affairs—he couldn’t afford to hire a Yunzhou ink master for his own wedding anyway.

He wouldn’t marry at all. Ning Zhe looked up beneath the magpie-perched plum tree, gazing at the quiet birds perched motionless on the branches, a question stirring in his mind.

He remembered the scene from the vision he’d seen—presumably part of the Snake God’s memories—a girl leaning by the window, humming to a light drizzle, clad in a bright red gown, loose without a waistband, her lips vividly red as if freshly painted with rouge.

“Is that the traditional Qinzhou bridal attire?” Ning Zhe wondered.

Merely seeing this vision alone wouldn’t stir much thought—but if similar clues appeared elsewhere, the matter changed.

“A woman dressed in bridal attire, but without facial features.”

“Magpies on plum branches at a crossroads—motionless, silent.”

Is there a connection between the two?

Tucking the question away, Ning Zhe and Feng Yu continued upstream along the river.

Beyond the crossroads where the plum trees grew, the streets on either side began to show patches of pink—discarded firecracker paper, soaked through by last night’s and this morning’s rains, turning the roadside puddles pink and releasing a faint scent of gunpowder.

“Looks like we’re on the right path,” Feng Yu whispered. “According to Zhang Yangxu, he and Xie Sining followed a road lined with firecracker paper until they reached the large He household.”

“It’s bearable in daylight. Walking this road at night must be suffocating.”

Ning Zhe scanned the surroundings. When had the people vanished? Now, the street was utterly empty. He looked around—houses, gates, all deserted, not a soul in sight.

He strolled over to a two-story house, reached out, and touched the clay chimney built into the wall: “Still warm.”

The chimney was still warm—but no one was in the kitchen.

The shops along the street stood open, their interiors clearly visible: a pharmacy’s scale held a small bundle of licorice root; a half-basin of water sat on the front steps; a broom of bundled bamboo twigs lay toppled in the center of the road.

Every detail indicated that people had been active here not long ago—many of them. This had been a bustling market. Yet what lay before Ning Zhe was an eerie, abandoned stillness.

Feng Yu glanced sideways and saw a rocking chair placed outside a fruit stall, swaying gently, then slowing to a stop—as if the person who had been sitting on it had just risen and walked away.

“Strange. Where has everyone gone?” Ning Zhe grew more alert, carefully avoiding the pink firecracker paper clinging to his soles, stepping lightly forward.

Suddenly, faintly, he thought he heard a sound.

“What sound?”

(End of Chapter)