The two sides ultimately didn’t come to blows.
Ren Tan exchanged a few words with the village elder, confirmed their intentions, and both parties set aside their hostilities. The elder then had the villagers disperse and invited them inside.
This village was far larger than the little mountain hamlet they had encountered earlier in the Long River Mountains. It boasted over a hundred households and several hundred residents.
Yin Luan glanced around and noticed that the scenery here had a peculiar quality to it.
The distant mountains didn’t quite look like mountains, and the distant river didn’t quite resemble a river. Everything felt hazy and indistinct.
“Xiao Luo, don’t you think… Huh? Where is everyone?”
She turned her head and discovered that the two sprites who had been following behind her had vanished into thin air. In their place on the ground lay a radish and a lily flower.
“How strange—they were right behind me a moment ago,” Little Snake Demon said, her face full of bewilderment. “Oh well, I’ll just eat this radish for now. They should catch up on their own later…”
With that, she reached down as if to yank the radish out by the roots.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?!” came a highly childish voice from the radish. “Can’t you tell we’ve reverted to our true forms?”
“Huh? Am I hearing things? radishs can’t talk. Whatever, let me just take a couple of bites to see how it tastes…”
“Stop right there! You’re about to pull out my hair!”
Xiao Luo trembled a couple of times.
“What are you two up to?” Yin Luan patted the radish and the lily flower, asking, “Trying to give me a scare?”
“Who’s scaring whom here… We have no idea why, but the moment we entered the village, we turned back into our original shapes.”
“Yeah,” Lily chimed in. “We were just walking along, and suddenly we rooted right into the ground. There has to be something strange going on in this village.”
“Is that right…”
Little Snake Demon scratched her head.
There really was something odd about it—why hadn’t she reverted to her original form?
Leaving them there wasn’t a good idea, either. What if someone actually pulled them up and ate them? Then there’d be nothing left to find.
Yin Luan fetched a flower pot, planted them inside, and jogged off to catch up with Ren Tan and the villagers.
“Where are Xiao Luo and Lily?”
Ren Tan asked.
Little Snake Demon handed over the flower pot.
The Eldest Young Lady was sharp as a tack and immediately grasped what had happened, though she struggled a bit to accept it…
This was her first time seeing sprites in their true forms, after all.
They actually looked pretty tempting, especially the radish. It seemed downright appetizing…
Once they reached the village center and found a spot to rest, the Village Chief—leaning on his cane—spoke up slowly.
“I don’t know what brought you here, but there are no treasures in our village.”
“But the clue to the treasure points straight to this village,” Ren Tan explained patiently. “They say it’s an artifact that can summon wind and rain, control the weather—turning clear skies dark with clouds or instantly dispersing roiling storm clouds…”
Just like the ability that young maiden had demonstrated earlier.
Ren Tan refused to believe the village had no connection whatsoever to the treasure.
The Village Chief listened to her description without immediately refuting it. He simply gripped his staff and fell silent.
The Eldest Young Lady didn’t press the issue.
In the end, they were the ones being unreasonable, insisting on taking someone else’s treasure. Compensation or not, it still smacked of banditry.
“Can you tell me how you got in?” A long moment later, the Village Chief spoke again. “The village isn’t open to outsiders yet. You shouldn’t have been able to enter.”
“Open to outsiders?”
Ren Tan considered her words carefully before answering honestly.
“We happened to find a map and followed its directions to enter the village from underwater.”
“A map… a map…”
The elder repeated the word a few times, and new wrinkles seemed to etch themselves into his face in an instant.
“In the end, we couldn’t hold it back forever. There will always be those who think of the world outside…”
“Would you like to see the map?” Ren Tan offered. “Perhaps you’d like to know who sent it out?”
“No need,” the Village Chief shook his head. “It doesn’t matter who anymore…”
The revelation seemed to shatter some inner barrier. The elder let out a string of sighs, a mix of regret and resignation.
“Even with a map, the fact that you could enter means it’s beyond what we mortals can withstand,” he said slowly. “Very well. If you want answers, then follow me.”
Ren Tan breathed a sigh of relief and cupped her hands toward him.
Easing tensions without sparking conflict was the ideal outcome.
The Village Chief led the way personally, with the Eldest Young Lady close behind and Little Snake Demon hugging the flower pot as she hurried to keep up.
“Ah, I think I figured it out!”
Lily spoke up from inside the flower pot.
“What did you think of?”
The radish, half-buried in the soil, chatted with her.
“I was wondering why we reverted to our true forms,” Lily said. “Don’t you think this village feels a little strange? While we’ve been here, we haven’t sensed any of those powerful auras from outside at all. That doesn’t add up.”
“You’re right. Judging from the distance we’ve traveled, we shouldn’t be out of sensing range. Unless… the village is enveloped by some invisible force?”
“Exactly!” Lily cried. “It has to be the power of that treasure!”
This barrier isolated the village from the outside world, which explained why those powerhouses couldn’t locate the place no matter how hard they tried.
It was likely this same power that had suppressed the two sprites, forcing them back into their original forms.
“Such an incredible treasure?” the Little Snake Demon said in surprise. “Is it the legendary Demon-Revealing Mirror? The one that shines on you and turns you right back into your true form?”
That was way cooler than summoning wind and rain!
As the three of them chatted, the Village Chief led them to the center of the village. There stood a building that resembled an ancestral hall.
The Elder entered first. Once permission was granted, Ren Tan and the others followed one by one.
The ancestral hall contained no spirit tablets, no ancestral shrines, no incense burners—nothing for worshiping forebears.
There was only… a sacred pond placed atop a stone platform.
Crafted from bluestone, the pond measured about five feet across and ten feet long, with a depth roughly the length of an arm.
The Elder approached the stone platform, knelt down, and offered three pious bows before explaining in a quiet voice.
“We possess no treasure. All our blessings come from… ‘Her’.”
Yin Luan, cradling the flower pot, started forward but was held back by the Eldest Young Lady.
This object was undoubtedly sacred beyond measure to the village—not even the Village Chief dared come within three feet of the stone platform.
The Little Snake Demon had no choice but to rise on tiptoe, craning her neck to peer into the pond.
Inside swam a golden little carp.
“Hiss, hiss.”
She sniffed at the scent in the air.
This was no ordinary fish.
Definitely not—regular carp didn’t smell this fragrant.
She patted the two sprites in the flower pot, but received no response. It was as if they had truly become a radish and a lily.
“This…”
Ren Tan stood rooted in place, her expression shifting over and over.
So the “treasure” that could summon wind and rain, that controlled the weather… it wasn’t some “object” at all. It was a… “fish”?
