Chapter 30: Grand Banquet for the Serpent God

After the three strings of firecrackers were finished, the banquet officially entered the main course stage. The He family servants ran back and forth between the courtyards, skillfully removing the appetizer cold dishes originally placed on the tables to make room for the next main courses.

Qinzhou belongs to the southern state, and the banquet dishes are generally divided into three parts: appetizer cold dishes, main course, and after-meal snacks. The first dish of the main course is soup. A white fish soup was served on the table in a porcelain bowl like white jade. It looked like crucian carp.

The table used for the He family banquet was a standard twelve-palace style, but there were not 12 people sitting at this table, and several seats were empty. Everyone at the same table as "He He Yulan," who was replaced by Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe, was female, and some women even had children who looked only seven or eight years old on their laps. But whether it was a married woman with children or a toddler who was just learning to speak, everyone in He Family Village had a withered yellow paper pasted on their faces that just covered their faces, with names written on the paper.

After the first dish was served, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe didn't rush to serve himself soup, but sat in his original seat and took a deep breath, closing his eyes.

As he entered the room and sat in the chair, everyone else at the table accepted his identity as "He He Yulan," and the ghost's rule of replacing others was triggered again and again. The same person's identity was refracted at different angles in the eyes of different people, and silhouettes with different postures were pieced together on Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe. The memory belonging to He He Yulan surged into his heart like this.

Without any obstacles, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe easily digested these memories: 1. The identity of this He He Yulan was not special, just an ordinary peasant woman in He Family Village, with two sons.

2. Just like Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's previous guess, this banquet was indeed a wedding banquet. Tomorrow was the day when the owner of the He family residence, Old Master He, married off his daughter. Old Master He was marrying off his youngest daughter, named He Nianjun, 18 years old. According to the traditional customs of Qinzhou, the day before the groom brought people to pick up the bride, the bride's side had to hold a banquet first, and then another one when the bride arrived at the groom's house.

3. Just like what Gu Gu Yunqing said before, the time when the Serpent God caught the mad disease was 18 years ago. From then on, the Serpent God would clearly mark the auspicious and inauspicious signs of the day on the almanac every day, but since catching the mad disease, one of the Serpent God's eyes went blind. From then on, there was only inauspiciousness on the almanac, no auspiciousness, and He Family Village became more and more trembling day by day.

4....

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe quickly organized and sorted out the useful information in He He Yulan's memory. Soon, the second dish came up.

The second dish of the wedding banquet was stir-fried eel slices. There were dark traces on the inner wall of the eel slices, which was dried blood. The method was very authentic.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe picked up a piece of eel slice and sent it into his mouth, chewing carefully. He already knew what to do next.

"I hope Auntie can hold on until then without going crazy..." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe whispered to himself.

Time passed minute by minute, and one hot dish after another was placed on the dining table.

In Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's impression, whether it was a wedding or a move to a new house, the banquet for a happy event was always lively. From the guests chatting and laughing at the table to the helpers busy in the kitchen, everyone showed a lively scene of noisy human voices. The lively atmosphere would gradually fall back until the end of the banquet.

However, this banquet held in the He family residence was not lively at all, but quiet and terrifying.

Except for the three strings of firecrackers crackling outside the gate, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe had not heard any other noise since entering the He family residence. The quiet guest room was so quiet that only the sound of chewing food could be heard. The little baby sitting in his mother's arms only ate food obediently, without crying or making trouble.

The main course consisted of 12 dishes in total, and soon it was time for the final dish, steamed pork with rice flour, to be served.

But this time, the servant carrying the dish pushed the guest room door lightly, but couldn't push it open.

The servant knocked on the door and shouted: "Serving dishes~"

With a creak, the door opened a crack, and He He Yulan's head poked out from inside: "Are there any more dishes? The table is already full."

"The last dish, the old master ordered that..."

Before the servant finished speaking, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe pushed the guest room door completely open, took the steaming steamed pork with both hands, and then kicked the servant's crotch.

Only a scream of "oh" was heard, and the man knelt on the ground in pain, his whole body curled up due to extreme pain. Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe placed the dish on the threshold, picked up half a brick, and smashed it heavily on the back of his head.

The servant died. Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's expression had no waves. He stood up calmly, placed the plate with the steamed pork on the table. No one screamed or exclaimed because of his heavy blow to the servant just now, because they were all dead.

He killed everyone in this room.

He locked the guest room door and carried the servant's corpse on his back, rushing past the albizia tree.

He was going to dispose of this corpse in a way that violated taboos.

From He He Yulan's memory, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe learned that she saw an albizia tree located in the corner of the courtyard wall that had withered and died on the way to the He family residence. The He family servants dug out this dead tree and prepared to transplant a new one, but because they were busy preparing for the young lady's wedding banquet, they didn't take care of it.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe dragged the servant's corpse straight to this unfilled pit, threw his corpse directly into the pit, and filled it up with the withered tree seedlings leaning against the courtyard wall along with the soil.

Qinzhou had the customs of tree burial and water burial. Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe was very sure that what he was doing now undoubtedly violated the taboo of "burial."

As for the funeral, there was no time.

Because Old Master He was about to start a grand banquet for the Serpent God.

After burying the servant he killed, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe didn't delay for a moment and rushed toward the south of the main building.

The people of He Family Village all believed in the Serpent God. Every wedding, funeral, and happy event, the most important link must be to worship the Serpent God in public. Either it was to ask the Serpent God to send off the deceased, or to ask the Serpent God to bless the living. The large group of people who kowtowed to the ancestral hall early in the morning today was the ceremony to invite the Serpent God out of the ancestral hall.

"If there are no accidents, the servants of the He family are already blowing trumpets toward the ancestral hall. They will move the Serpent God statue out of the ancestral hall and invite it to the main building of the He family residence for people to worship and pray for blessings."

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe couldn't help but speed up his pace: "This is my best and last chance."

Because of the continuous violation of taboos, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's luck could be said to be extremely bad, and the not-so-long journey was also stumbling and embarrassed, falling and bruised on the pebble road. But Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe didn't care, because it was He He Yulan who fell, what did it have to do with him, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe?

He, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe, absolutely had to do something more awesome.

"Let me try, can I kill both the Serpent God and the ghost..."

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe wiped the nosebleed on his face, climbed up from the ground with stumbling steps, and continued to run toward the main building.

After running a few steps, he fell to the ground again, his chin hitting the ground directly, and his mandible cracked.

But this time it wasn't because his feet were tripped by stones, but because the koi in the pond didn't know why it jumped out, jumping on the ground, and just happened to jump under Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's feet.

In this situation, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe could only be glad that he was using He He Yulan's identity to walk this road, otherwise he would have already been dead before reaching the place.

"I hope Auntie's situation there can be better than mine..." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe thought in his heart.

Then he hit the rockery by the pond and hit his head and bled.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 31 =====