The Heroine Fell Deeply For Her [Quick Transmigration] 220p1

Chapter 220: What’s This About Marrying First and Loving Later? 5(1)

“You’re not willing?” Tao Ning asked.

Looking again at the items in the corner of the room, Tao Ning had assumed Xiao Zhen wouldn’t refuse such a request. This answer was truly unexpected.

“What would a confused fool like you know? It’s such an honor to marry the Mountain God, you simply don’t understand…” Xiao Zhen became increasingly agitated, even pushing Tao Ning away from the window and slamming it shut.

Tao Ning, nearly falling from the small wooden building, barely managed to steady herself. This time, no matter how much she knocked on the window, there was no response.

It seemed Xiao Zhen was determined to stay in the small building and wait for her wedding, unwilling to leave.

Tao Ning had to temporarily abandon the plan of taking her place, preparing to go downstairs and leave. The beams outside the wooden building were quite narrow, making it difficult to maintain balance.

Following the way she had come, Tao Ning carefully moved downwards, her movements practiced. She wasn’t worried about disturbing the other villagers.

To them, it didn’t matter who got married, especially a fool who often spoke nonsense. Anything she said wouldn’t be surprising.

Perhaps in Xiao Zhen’s mind, Tao Ning was only willing to marry the Mountain God because she thought the new clothes were beautiful, and she hadn’t worn new clothes in many years. She had said this last year.

It was just that the village chief felt she wasn’t suitable and unwilling to choose her, but he hadn’t said why she wasn’t suitable.

A puzzled voice came from below: “You… are you Tao Zi? What are you doing here?”

Tao Ning turned around at the sound. Standing below was the female student she had met on the first day, still carrying her backpack with a white puppy plush keychain hanging from it.

She was young and vibrant, looking like a university student waiting for the bus home for the weekend.

In fact, she was indeed a student preparing to go home for the weekend. She had been leaning against the bus stop sign, waiting, when in the blink of an eye, she found herself on a moving tour bus.

The female student asked curiously, “What were you doing just now?”

Actually, she wanted to ask if Tao Ning was trying to steal something, because her nimble and agile movements made it seem like she had another side hustle in Lingxiu Village.

Soon, Tao Ning’s feet touched the ground. The female student took a few steps closer, the bell on the puppy keychain on her backpack jingling, and looked up curiously.

According to what she had learned from the homeowner’s child, the Mountain God’s bride lived in this small building, moving in a month before the wedding and not allowed to touch the ground.

According to custom, after being chosen as the bride, she was no longer considered an ordinary mortal, transcending the mundane, and thus couldn’t mingle with ordinary people and be tainted by their aura.

The female student felt that this was just feudal superstition, a nonsensical rule to prevent the bride from escaping.

However, Sister Liang had warned them that the bride was very important to the villagers, and they mustn’t do anything foolish because of anything the bride said, including sympathizing with her or letting her go.

Of course, she had also learned Tao Ning’s name from the homeowner’s child. After learning her name, she felt it was strange.

Everyone else in the village had both a given name and a surname, so why did her parents give her this name?

A sarcastic smile appeared on the child’s dark yellow face, his tone innocently cruel: “Because her mother fell to her death while picking peaches on the mountain. The village chief said that changing her name to this could atone for her sins.”

The female student asked, “What was her original name?”

The child shook his head: “I don’t know, no one cares about her anyway, any name is fine.”

Her thoughts returned to the present. Every time she saw the person in front of her, it was hard to believe that someone who looked like this was disliked by everyone in the village.

Tao Ning’s calm face showed no expression: “I came to play with Xiao Zhen, what are you doing here? No one took you on a tour?”

The ancestral hall was nearby, and people who came here were all heading for the ancestral hall, where the statue of the Mountain God was enshrined.

Being asked, the female student remembered the housewife who had come with her, turning her head to say, “She said she had something urgent and needed to borrow the toilet from a nearby house, why hasn’t she come back yet?”

While waiting, she had been walking and looking around, unconsciously arriving at the ancestral hall, her attention drawn by the figure on the small wooden building, almost forgetting about the housewife.

“I’ll go find her, I’ll talk to you later!” The female student finished speaking and hurried towards the house the housewife had entered.

Tao Ning also followed. In Lingxiu Village, nothing cost money, but other things had to be exchanged.

The female student obviously also thought of the rules she had been told, her expression not looking good. She should have advised the housewife not to go in.

She was afraid of seeing the ominous bloodstains like this morning. Two people had already died on the first day, the mortality rate clearly exceeding everyone’s expectations.

However, when they arrived, nothing like what they had imagined happened. The house’s doors were closed, a tree planted in front of it, its leaves dark green, almost black, looking from afar as if it had been watered with blood.

Two people were standing under the tree. The housewife was clearly still in shock, constantly patting her chest.

A stranger stood beside her. Dressed in antique indigo cloth, he blended in perfectly with Lingxiu Village’s environment. A long sword was strapped to his back, and he looked vigilantly at the closed door.

Noticing the movement, he turned his head, his eyes sharp and alert.

Although he hadn’t introduced himself, Tao Ning only needed one glance to have an answer appear in her mind – the Taoist priest, Chu Que.

The female student hurried forward, her tone anxious: “Sister Qu, are you alright?”

The housewife hadn’t fully recovered, one hand clutching her heart, the other waving: “My heart isn’t good, let me rest for a bit and I’ll be fine.”

She was helped to her feet by the female student. Chu Que suddenly spoke: “Who is that?”

It was strange for Chu Que to see an unfamiliar face in this sparsely populated village.

The female student was busy checking her companion’s condition, replying casually: “A villager, Tao Zi.”

“How come I haven’t seen her, where does she live?” Chu Que said, about to walk forward.

After taking just one step, his sleeve tightened. Sister Qu, who had just been frightened, grabbed him, her expression nervous: “Taoist priest, please don’t go, my heart really can’t take it. That family insisted that I help them grind beans into flour, promising to let me go after I finished one basket.”

“But after I finished one basket of beans, they gave me another. I was grinding and grinding, and I almost put my hand inside. Fortunately, the Taoist priest appeared in time and pulled me out.”

The female student’s face turned pale. If the Taoist priest hadn’t appeared, would Sister Qu have been ground to death by the stone mill?

The incessant chatter rang in his ears, and Chu Que listened calmly, a hint of impatience in his brow.

Clearly, this was all useless information to him, and he was impatient to continue listening.

However, it wasn’t completely useless. At least he had gained the trust of two outsiders. The one surnamed Lei seemed to know something about the village, but refused to say, very vigilant.

The villagers were stubborn and set in their ways. Instead of dealing with them, it was better to cooperate with the outsiders. No matter their purpose, they would always be biased towards him, a fellow outsider.

Chu Que said calmly, “I suspect this is all related to the entity in the ancestral hall. I’ll go in and check.”

Sister Qu still refused to let go: “The ancestral hall has always been there, we can go anytime, why don’t we wait a bit before going in? Xiao Liang said never enter a temple alone…”

Chu Que was unmoved, tugging at his sleeve, but it wouldn’t budge. He had underestimated a housewife’s strength.

“Average cultivation, but the thing on his back is interesting.” Tao Ning only glanced at them from afar, turning towards the ancestral hall and walking in through the half-open door.

The merged small world’s energy was chaotic, its operation inefficient, only giving the necessary tasks.

As for the various entanglements within, Tao Ning needed to explore them herself.

Now that Chu Que was mingling with the tourists, it wasn’t a good opportunity. The task could be completed anytime, but not now.

“She went in?”

Chu Que, having missed the opportunity, could only stay and continue to infiltrate this group of strange people whose purpose he didn’t know.

Chu Que looked at the female student: “Where did you find her just now?”

The village’s ancestral hall wasn’t small, spacious and grand, a stark contrast to the outside.

Tao Ning rarely came to this place. Every time, the atmosphere was solemn, and she wasn’t allowed to look around. She only remembered that the main hall enshrined the Mountain God, and the side hall housed the ancestral tablets.

In such a barren place, they had exhausted the entire village’s resources to build this temple and even created a statue, showing how deep their faith in the Mountain God was.

She didn’t enter the side hall, heading straight for the main hall, stepping over the high threshold.

The spacious main hall only enshrined the Mountain God, the statue located in the center, the offering table filled with tributes.

Dust had settled on many of the offerings. Someone would come to replace them in the evening, discarding the old ones like consumables.

They wouldn’t take the offerings home to eat, because the offered food was bitter, even fruit would have a disgusting bloody taste.

As for meat, no one would touch it.

Tao Zi had eaten the fruit before, bitter and astringent, she had thought she was eating some kind of extremely unpalatable creature raw, and that was why she didn’t like coming to the ancestral hall.

The advantages of being an NPC were evident at this time. Tao Ning didn’t need to follow any rules, free to come and go in Lingxiu Village. As long as it wasn’t nighttime, she was basically safe.

Approaching the offering table, Tao Ning looked up at the statue of the Mountain God, enshrined high above, and fell silent.

520, upon logging in, saw this enormous entity: [Wow, is this the Marriage Group’s mascot?]

The statue of the Mountain God was actually a giant egg, not ferocious in appearance, but not perfectly round either, oval in shape, countless red threads wrapped around it, giving it a simple and clumsy feel.

A thick layer of faith power clung to the outside of the giant egg. The inside was empty, without any strange entity residing within.

Looking further down, rows of small wooden plaques were placed beneath the statue of the Mountain God. Walking to the side, one could see that the names of the Mountain God’s brides were carved on these plaques, without their ages.

The wooden plaques, resembling miniature spirit tablets, were placed beneath the statue, like a mountain suppressing them.

This was the Mountain God that the villagers had been devoutly worshipping for years, a crudely made, strange, hollow egg wrapped in red thread.

This “hollow” didn’t refer to the hollow statue, but to the emptiness within, devoid of any soul.

520 also saw this, saying: [I take back what I said earlier, the Marriage Group can’t handle this unlucky thing.]

Tao Ning tapped the outer shell with her knuckles: “It’s solid. Wrapped with so many red threads, you can’t even see what it originally looked like.”

After looking for a while, Tao Ning walked around the main hall. Murals depicting the story of the Mountain God were painted on the walls.

These murals had been passed down from generation to generation. When the colors faded, villagers would repaint them. The story depicted was simple.

During a time of war, the villagers of Lingxiu Village migrated here, settling down and staying away from the conflict.

But the good times didn’t last long. This secluded paradise was eventually discovered, and the war was about to reach Lingxiu Village, hidden at the foot of the deep mountains.

In this time of crisis, a young person who had fled here with the villagers stepped forward, displaying extraordinary abilities, moving a river to lie in front of Lingxiu Village.

The river blocked the flames of war, and from then on, the village, nourished by the river’s water, lived in peace and contentment.

However, the next mural showed that due to overexertion, the young person lost their life, turning into a stone statue on the spot, its shape oval and inhuman.