Yan Xiaohang finally realized that his perfection was not in the moment of spreading his wings to protect Fu Shenyi, but when a pair of hands appeared out of thin air to support him when he was about to fall.
He slightly bent down, wrapped his arms around Fu Shenyi’s waist, lifted him up, and pressed him against the nearest tree, blocking his dry and parched mouth.
A cool breeze passed, and the leaves rustled.
As the two were about to leave, a sudden commotion erupted from the distant Xishan Village, with a woman’s wailing piercing the night sky. Lanterns lit up in many households, and many people opened their windows, shouting, “What happened to the Tian Cheng household?”
Fortunately, it was late, and many households were already closed, so their communication was mostly through shouting, allowing the two men on the hillside to hear the gist of it. Someone replied, “Tian Cheng is dying, he’ll be carried to the ancestral hall, and he’ll be sent away tomorrow night!”
The woman cried heart-wrenchingly, “Uncles and aunts, he can still be saved! I’ll take him to the city to see a doctor!
Please don’t send him to the ancestral hall…”
A loud male voice said, “No! We can’t go to the county town. Are we going to burden the entire village for one person?”
Fu Shenyi and Yan Xiaohang exchanged a glance. Something was indeed suspicious in Xishan Village. Why would they be afraid of burdening the whole village by taking a sick person to the county town for medical treatment?
A sudden ominous guess flashed through Fu Shenyi’s mind: “Could it be… a plague?”
After the patient was sent to the ancestral hall, Xishan Village returned to calm. Yan Xiaohang and Fu Shenyi sneaked into a household’s courtyard and listened by the wall for a long time. They pieced together the context: the patient had contracted an incurable disease, and the villagers believed this to be an ill omen. They were planning to perform an exorcism ritual by the river the next night.
