Chapter 70: 69, Rain

69, Rain

“Ssshh, ssshh—”

Wen Si clamped both hands over his ears and sprinted wildly; he could hear only his own ragged breathing.

Brother Wen San pulled the bolt from the black-lacquered wooden door leading to the outer yard; as the hinges turned, even though Wen Si had his ears covered, he seemed to hear a drawn-out “creak.”

The noisy light from outside surged into the dark, sunless inner chamber, illuminating Wen Si’s pupils.

The light was too fierce, stinging his eyes until they turned red and tears streamed down.

—He had not seen the light of the outside world in a very long time.

As Wen Si stared at the daylight flooding in, Wen San suddenly turned, seized his arm, and dragged him through the black-lacquered door, running out!

In the outer yard, the distillery workers, towels slung over their shoulders, laughed and chatted around the large stills.

Fermented koji was piled atop the stills; as fire blazed beneath, thick steam rose from the tops, and the wine flowed continuously through bamboo pipes into the large vats before them.

The distillery workers bustling before the stills suddenly saw two face-rotted men burst from the inner chamber and froze in shock.

The crowd stirred slightly.

“Run! Run!”

Wen San, running ahead, clamped his hands over his ears and shouted loudly.

Some workers frowned at the two face-rotted, mad-looking men;

others hurried to report the situation to Zhu the Manager guarding the front hall;

still others stared, edged closer to Wen San and Wen Si, trying to block them.

Not a single person obeyed Wen San’s command and fled immediately.

“Don’t listen! Cover your ears! Don’t listen to the sound! Don’t listen!”

Wen Si joined in shouting, following his brother, dodging and weaving through the gathering crowd, fleeing desperately toward the side gate at the back of the distillery.

The distillery workers in the outer yard had never seen Wen San or Wen Si before.

Seeing these two face-rotted men burst from the inner chamber, acting mad, they instinctively assumed the pair were having a fit and tried to restrain them to prevent further chaos.

Obstacles ahead of Wen Si grew thicker.

More and more workers blocked their path, swinging tools and striking at them from all sides.

A wave of despair surged into Wen Si’s heart.

Wen Si saw several tall, strong workers raising shovels to encircle him and Wen San; his legs trembled, and he felt the little strength left in his body being swiftly drained by fear and despair.

At that moment, something caught the attention of the tall workers ahead.

They dropped their shovels and looked up at the sky.

The people crowding around also stopped, turning their faces in the same direction, staring curiously upward.

Wen Si read their moving lips and thought he heard their voices:

“Look!”

“A dragon— a long dragon flew out of the inner chamber!”

“So long a dragon… heads! Those are all heads!”

“What official rank? What official…”

The tall worker muttering “What official rank” suddenly turned deathly pale.

He closed his eyes, shut his lips, and his confusion and shock vanished instantly.

A head, cold and expressionless, detached from his body, rode the wind, wobbling through Wen Si’s vision, then flew beyond his sight into the sky!

“Ahh—ghosts!”

“Ghosts have come!”

Wen Si screamed in terror!

In that instant, the heads of everyone around him, like the tall worker’s, severed one after another and floated upward!

Only trunk-like bodies remained, headless, on the ground.

“Aaaaaaah!”

Extreme terror shattered Wen Si’s mind; he clutched his own head tightly, terrified his precious neck would, like everyone else’s, fly away without reason!

He crouched among the forest of headless corpses, curled into a tight ball.

But now, more and more people were drawn to the drifting “long dragon” in the sky—

A “Grass-Headed Dragon of the Dead,” formed by heads linked to spirit plaques, floated high above, each head murmuring softly, spreading a question: “Do… you hold official rank?”

“Do… you hold official rank?”

Each question, a call for death!

The Grass-Headed Dragon grew longer, soaring over the towering gatehouse of the front hall.

People who had spent their days idle, enslaved by alcohol, gathered in the open space before the gatehouse.

Amid the white steam rising from the distillery stills, the crowd stretched their necks, greedily drinking in the wine-scented air—these necks, stretched wide, beheld a sight so strange they could never forget it, even drunk:

Heads covered in fungal threads, strung together by black spirit plaques, formed a dragon flying over the sky above Yongsheng Distillery.

The dragon’s tail was bound by chains glittering with gold.

At the chain’s end, a shapeless, dazzling mass—like a cocoon woven from the most radiant, hallucinatory light—swayed gently.

As the dragon of heads and plaques rose higher, the golden chain behind it tightened straight, each link studded with bright yellow square-holed copper coins.

“Om! Be! Sawa naya! Soha!”

Obscure, incomprehensible words drifted intermittently from the dragon of heads and plaques.

The square-holed copper coins embedded in the golden chain began to fall, pattering down like a rain of coins onto the open ground before the distillery!

“Money!”

“So much money!”

“Grab the money, grab it—!”

Below, the crowd watched the torrent of coins pour down, their eyes turning into square-holed copper coins themselves.

They howled with joy, arms wide open to catch the falling rain of copper coins—yet in that instant, their heads severed first and flew away!

Countless heads streamed together toward the center of the sky, the Grass-Headed Dragon.

The imperial decree chain attached to the dragon’s tail, now fully studded with coins, shattered in an instant!

The aggregation of countless offerings, appearing as a hallucinatory cocoon of light, did not fall—it dissolved silently in midair.

The illusory, shimmering offering-qi merged into every passing breeze, every drifting cloud.

The Grass-Headed Dragon, riding the convergence of wind and clouds, pierced the unreachable sky and vanished.

The heavy wind, saturated with complex offerings, swept into the multicolored clouds—and a rain of illusory, shimmering droplets fell, drenching the entire Qingyi Village!

Every person in the village was a grain nourished by the rain.