Chapter 24: 23. Wine and Medicine

23. Wine and Medicine

The people soon noticed the strangeness in their kin and hurriedly crowded around the wine shop's steward, demanding an explanation.

The steward frowned at the swarming crowd before him, visibly impatient: "Their madness has only just been cured—their three hun and seven po aren't even settled back in their bodies yet, so naturally they'll seem a bit dull and stupid—just wait!

Wait a few days, a few months, and they'll be fine!"

"A few months?" someone called out in a high, trembling voice.

"It's still better than him going mad and dragging his whole family to their deaths.

I'm only asking you to wait a few months… if you dare make trouble, the lads here at my shop can open a few holes in you too!

Get lost!" The steward's gaze suddenly turned fierce.

With a wave of his hand, he summoned the burly wine shop hands.

The hands came forward with blades and spears in hand, and the people quickly grabbed their kin and scattered like a flock of startled birds.

"Once their family's madness is cured and their souls settled, they'll have to come back and thank us!"

The wine shop steward pointed at the scattering crowd, put on a mocking smile again, and bantered a few lines with the wine shop thugs.

"A-Chang!"

At that moment, Zhou Sanji pushed his handcart over, with Yang Rui walking just ahead of him.

The old man saw Zhou Chang standing behind the wine shop steward and was suddenly overjoyed: "You can stand? You can walk?!"

"He must have been having a delusion before, thinking he was a cripple who couldn't move.

Now that the wine shop has nearly cured his delusion, naturally he can walk and move again." The steward switched to a smiling face and said to Zhou Sanji, who was fussing over Zhou Chang, "But his madness isn't fully cured yet—he has to keep lying in the wine cellar tomorrow."

"As long as the method works, that's wonderful!"

Zhou Sanji had Zhou Chang move his hands and feet on his own, even more unable to contain his joy.

The wine shop steward then turned to Yang Rui and said: "Your boy here doesn't have any madness or delusion. After spending a whole day in the wine cellar, not a single stray thought came out of him.

He's probably just been in the habit of scaring himself with his own imaginings.

Still, the shop sees he's clever and sharp and wants to take him on as a 'water watcher.' What do you say?"

Yang Rui, who had been looking Stone Eggzi over this way and that, knit his brows tightly at the steward's first words, seeming somewhat displeased.

Once he had heard the steward out, his eyes were already full of doubt: "You're saying Stone Eggzi doesn't have madness?

How could that be?!

I saw with my own eyes a weasel-ghost possess him—he looked like that at the time—that couldn't have been faked!

Is it that your wine cellar didn't do much for the ghost on him…"

The wine shop steward, hearing this, immediately looked displeased and said with a cold laugh: "What kind of person are you? It's as if you're unhappy that your boy didn't catch the madness?

Our Wen Yongsheng Wine Shop has been in business for over a hundred years. Whether locals or out-of-towners, every day people stream in without end, asking us to cure their madness and delusions—never once has there been a mishap!

We kindly cure your boy, and yet you doubt our wine shop?"

Yang Rui said nothing, only shook his head, the doubt in his eyes deepening.

Zhou Chang looked at Yang Rui. He felt that this Uncle Yang was indeed unhappy because Stone Eggzi hadn't caught the madness, giving Zhou Chang the sense of a wish falling through.

The more he looked, the more he felt Yang Rui was stranger than Stone Eggzi.

"Asked you—shixiong (senior martial brother)?

The man's asking whether you want Stone Eggzi to be a water-carrier at the wine shop?" Zhou Sanji, seeing the atmosphere between the two sides was off, hurriedly tugged at Yang Rui and called the frowning, brooding Uncle Yang back to his senses.

He then turned to the grim-faced wine shop steward and said with a fawning smile: "Steward, if Stone Eggzi works as a water-carrier here, how do you figure the wages?"

"Wages…"

Seeing that someone was finally willing to talk business with him, the wine shop steward's expression cleared a little. He looked at the stone-faced Stone Eggzi and said thoughtfully: "He's young, so we won't expect him to do any heavy work.

He just needs to watch over Jade Maiden Pool and make sure no one relieves themselves there and pollutes the water source.

How about this… the wine shop will provide him with two meals a day, morning and evening, and pay him twenty copper coins as wages!"

Twenty copper coins was actually less than half a month's keep for a half-grown lad.

But in the present times, half-grown lads like Stone Eggzi were a dime a dozen, and most couldn't even find work to earn money.

So those twenty copper coins, again, seemed like a fortune.

Yang Rui's expression darkened, and he asked Stone Eggzi: "Do you want to go be a water watcher?"

Stone Eggzi's eyes were blank, and he suddenly looked at Zhou Chang across from him.

Perhaps because he and Zhou Chang had 'shared hardship' together in the wine cellar, or perhaps because among the people present now, only Zhou Chang knew his secret of playing ghost tricks.

So at this point Zhou Chang had actually become his mainstay.

The look he gave Zhou Chang was full of inquiry.

Zhou Chang gave him a nod.

Zhou Chang guessed that the wine shop must be planning to keep him and Stone Eggzi in the shop.

Whether it was having him keep lying in the wine cellar to cure his madness, or taking Stone Eggzi on as a so-called water watcher at Jade Maiden Pool, it was all just a pretext.

The real reason was perhaps that among this batch of people sent down to the wine cellar, only he and Stone Eggzi could, after a full day of the feast-qi's assault, still be lively and well, without turning into walking corpses like the others.

If they refused the steward now, the wine shop would secretly find other ways to keep the two of them in the shop.

—Just like those two rotten-faced men.

"I want to go." Stone Eggzi, seeing Zhou Chang nod, replied softly.

"Good." Yang Rui raised his head and held up three fingers to the wine shop steward: "Thirty copper coins."

"Agreed."

……

"We're late picking you up today mainly because your Uncle Yang insisted on having me go with him to check out the Iron Threshold Charity Burial Ground."

"The end of the month is almost here, the 'Iron Threshold Gathering' is about to start. When the time comes, let's see if our family has enough to donate a 'threshold fee' for you, so you can go inside Iron Threshold Manor and meet those horse caravan figures and corpse herders."

"Perhaps I can learn to 'make zombies'?"

On the road, Zhou Chang took the handlebars of the handcart from Zhou Sanji; he pushed the cart while listening to Zhou Sanji chatter away with a beaming face.

Yang Rui beside them walked with a furrowed brow and head down, followed behind by the equally silent Shi Danzi.

Hearing Zhou Sanji's words, Yang Rui turned his head and said to Zhou Sanji, "Where is it so easy to learn to 'make zombies'?"

"Maybe they'll take a fancy to Ah Chang?"

"You're thinking too much..."

The two old men bickered back and forth, gradually walking ahead of Zhou Chang and Shi Danzi.

Shi Danzi stepped closer to Zhou Chang in small steps and said gloomily, "Brother... Zhou, thank you for today."

"No problem."

Zhou Chang shook his head, glanced at the depressed Shi Danzi beside him, and asked, "Since you weren't actually possessed by the so-called 'Weasel Ghost', why did you deliberately pretend to be like this?"

Hearing this, Shi Danzi hesitated for a moment before saying, "So I could eat my fill..."

"Hmm?"

"Master thought I was possessed by the Weasel Ghost, which is why he was willing to take me in and accept me as his disciple.

If I hadn't been possessed by a ghost, he definitely wouldn't have paid any attention to me..."

"Precisely because you seemed possessed by a ghost, did Elder Yang agree to take you as his disciple?

What is his reason..." Zhou Chang looked at Yang Rui ahead and frowned slightly.

'Ghost' can refer to all Thought Demons; it also refers to the prototype of all Thought Demons, beings born to threaten the lives of the living.

Normal people do not raise ghosts as pests.

If the truth is indeed as Shi Danzi said, what exactly does Yang Rui intend to do?

Instead of avoiding ghosts, he actually tries to approach the ghostly kind?

At this moment, Yang Rui, walking ahead, took a gourd from his shoulder bag, shook the wine inside vigorously, unscrewed the stopper, and took a huge gulp.

The pure, rich aroma of the wine, carrying the unique earthy fragrance of the clay cellar, drifted in wisps into Zhou Chang's nostrils.

He heard Zhou Sanji's conversation with Yang Rui: "Drink less wine; didn't you see that in front of the winery, there are people everywhere who have gone mad from drinking?"

"Hehe, wine is medicine; it can cure heart sickness."

"Sigh..."

That elegant, mellow aroma of aged wine still lingered around Zhou Chang's nostrils.

He smelled that this wine was produced by the Wen Yongsheng Winery.

For some reason, Zhou Chang's heart sank; he turned his head to look back—

Desolate, dilapidated houses clustered around the gravel-paved path, rising up into vast, thick, indissoluble shadows under the glow of the setting sun.

In this deathly silence of shadows, living creatures were rarely seen.

Only in the street-facing houses near the winery did one open its central door, where a fat woman in blue coarse cloth clothes and an outer leather apron, along with her two daughters, hung a triangular banner in front of the door.

The banner bore the three characters 'Li Braised Meat'.

Such a cooked food shop could perhaps only do some business if opened around the Wen Yongsheng Winery.

Zhou Chang looked at the banner fluttering in the wind; the character 'Braised' on the flag seemed crumpled by the wind.

In a fleeting moment, it looked as if the three characters 'Li Human Meat' were written on the flag.

Zhou Chang's heart gave a jolt; his gaze moved forward.

The towering, spacious gatehouse of the Wen Yongsheng Winery rolled over like a mountain, pressing the dilapidated houses on the street until they swayed, as if they would collapse at any moment.

The sounds of people under that gatehouse, even now as twilight turned to darkness, showed no sign of ceasing.

There were people there who sang and rejoiced day after day, seemingly untroubled by heart sickness.

Yet Zhou Chang clearly realized that a supremely fierce ghost-spirit must be sealed and hidden within that winery.

Just how many people drink the nectar of the Wen Yongsheng Winery?

Judging by the scale of the crowded crowd in front of the winery, a single Qingyi Town is likely far from enough.

And just how many people send those who have gone mad or suffered from hysteria to the Wen Yongsheng Winery, hoping to obtain a cure?

Zhou Chang's gaze moved upward—

He saw that behind the winery's gatehouse, vast clouds of distilled wine vapor boiled up; those great, billowing white clouds of wine aroma piled up in the sky like clouds, spreading over more than half of Qingyi Town's sky.

Beneath the wine clouds, how many people stretched their necks hard, trying to inhale a breath of that fragrant wine vapor?