Chapter 63: Birthday Present

Lu Qingjiu's birthday is in March, when spring is in full swing and the world is full of life. Lu Qingjiu loved the busy spring, the warm spring sunshine, the melting streams and the scent of grass and trees in the wilderness. When Lu Qingjiu's grandmother was still alive, she would cook Lu Qingjiu a bowl of special chicken noodle soup for his birthday. Their family was not well off and did not have much money to buy cakes, so for Lu Qingjiu this bowl of noodles was very satisfying. The chicken noodle soup was usually filled with three fried golden eggs, which Lu Qingjiu could eat in two bites.

Later Lu Qingjiu left Shuifu Village and did not taste her cooking again for a long time. He remembers that his parents wanted to take her away, but she refused, determined to stay in this remote village, as if she was waiting for something.

On the morning of the thirtieth, Lu Qingjiu woke up in bed and the first thing he did when he opened his eyes was to reach for the wooden box sitting on the bedside.

The wooden box still has the locks on it, and the writing on these locks changes every day. Lu Qingjiu inspected the locks as usual today, but when he saw them clearly, he looked aghast.

He found three very familiar characters, Lu Qingjiu, his name, in the text lock. Lu Qingjiu immediately remembered what the monk Xuan Yu had said to him, that his grandmother had left him a gift before she died, and that the gift must be the wooden box in front of him.

Lu Qingjiu's hand trembled slightly as he slowly twisted the lock, bringing the three words Lu Qingjiu to the same level. The moment the three words were twisted flush, the wooden box made a crisp sound and the tightly locked lock just opened.

Lu Qingjiu held his breath nervously as he slowly removed the literal lock and lifted the wooden box to reveal its contents.

It was a thick notebook that looked to be somewhat old.

Lu Qingjiu reached out to take the notebook out, but saw a black object fall out of it. He froze and picked it up, and when it was in his hand, he found that it was actually a black scale, somewhat similar to the one he had obtained last night. The only thing was that the scale was covered with scratches, as if its owner had suffered a serious injury.

Lu Qingjiu got a little confused, his previous suspicions were confirmed, it seemed that his grandma, did know about non-humans too, not only knew but even had some kind of intercourse with them. As for the black scales, were they Bai Yuehu's or his own clan's but what exactly were Bai Yuehu's clan, were they dragons yet there were so many kinds of dragons too, in the Shan Hai Jing alone there were quite a few

With hesitation, Lu Qingjiu received the scales in his pocket and flipped open the notebook in his hand.

The notebook had been left for so long that the paper had turned an old yellow colour, but the beautiful handwriting was still very legible, in the handwriting of Lu Qingjiu's grandmother.

Turning to the first page of the notebook, there are a few words written on it: Shuifu Village is watered.

Lu Qingjiu frowned and looked puzzled, indeed, he had found the name of the village strange. After all, most of the time, the name of a village is based on some local characteristics. The simplest example is that there are more people with the surname Li, so the village would be called Li Family Village.

After flipping through a few more pages, Lu Qingjiu finally decided that the notebook in front of him seemed to be his grandmother's diary. There is no specific time, just a few notes written on it when he thought of it, but judging from the general description in it, the notes were kept from the time when his grandmother was young, and were kept by her side until her death.

"I quite like it here and the tenant is quite interesting and good looking, haha, I think he's much better looking than me." So wrote the grandmother, "Just a bit too much food and felt a bit too much to feed."

Lu Qingjiu's expression froze, and he had a bad feeling.

Soon, as he turned more and more pages, his bad premonition came true. The notebooks were telling Lu Qingjiu that his grandmother seemed to be going through the same thing as he was. She too had met a beautiful tenant, one with a big appetite, only with a temper very different from Bai Yuehu's, gentle, considerate and "warm as the sun in spring."

"I really like spring." The girl, who was young at the time, soon fell in love, "just like him, and he made such a delicious lunch today that I asked him if he could make it for me all the time, and he smiled and nodded his head."

Looking at such warm words, Lu Qingjiu's heart felt hard. As far as he could remember, he had never met his grandfather. He had asked his grandmother about it when he was a child, but she had told him not to ask again.

"You don't have a grandfather." Grandma said, "Don't ask again, good wine."

Since then Lu Qingjiu has never been asked again.

Lu Qingjiu continues to look back and finds that a large part of the diary has been torn out, and I can see that when the back part was torn out, Grandma was particularly emotional, as she even almost tore the diary in half.

"I know." Grandmother wrote later, "I was willing to make that choice because I at least had him, it was enough to have him, it turned out they wanted me back because of that, Lu Family it was just me left, I was the only one, it was my duty."

Lu Qingjiu did not understand what this responsibility meant, but his heart grew heavier and heavier as he felt that something was happening to his grandmother.

There are many blank pages in the diary afterwards, as if the grandmother had lost interest in recording them, and then there are words that make Lu Qingjiu particularly uneasy.

"He's changed, how did that happen."

"How that happened, I don't understand."

"They sent a new tenant over but I couldn't take it."

"Why, why why why, why, I don't want to give up, I don't want to give up."

"I'm pregnant."

"It's all over."

Lu Qingjiu held onto her notebook for dear life. Being pregnant out of wedlock was a major crime in the past, but fortunately, because of the Lu Family's high status in Shuifu Village, she was not kicked out, except that she was not allowed to go to formal occasions and occasionally met with blank stares from the villagers. After Lu Qingjiu's mother was born, her grandmother sent her away from Shuifu Village so that she could live and grow up outside. However, when his mother and father became too busy to care for him, he was sent back to his grandmother, where he spent his childhood with the kindly old man.

What had happened between Lou Lou and her beloved tenant and what did she mean by changed Lu Qingjiu felt as if he were standing in front of a black abyss into which he would fall if he lifted a step forward. His reason told him to stop, but his curiosity drove him on.

Lu Qingjiu flipped the notebook to the last few pages and saw a paragraph left by her grandmother for herself.

"Sake, I should be gone by the time you read this note, and I want to say sorry to you that the death of your parents was not an accident, but someone killed them. It's just that the murderer has been duly punished and not by choice, so please don't blame him. Shuifu Village has many secrets and I don't know how many you know, but I don't want you to know too much if you can."

Lu Qingjiu looked at the text, but felt his body coming more and more

The colder it gets.

"We Lu Family have a special bloodline and were born to be the guardians of Shuifu Village, but the Lu Family bloodline is so thin that I don't know when it will be cut off. I am glad that you have left Shuifu Village and I hope that you will not come back and put an end to this once and for all. But I still fear that something will happen to me after I leave and you will return here confused, so I have left you this note, and how I hope you will not open it or see it."

But apparently, her prayers were not successful and, driven by fate, Lu Qingjiu returned to this isolated village.

Lu Qingjiu A lump in his throat as he continues to look down.

"But if you see it, maybe it's not such a bad thing, you have your own path to follow and Grandma can't make decisions for you. Shuifu Village is a very special place, a place that connects the two worlds, and the Lu Family has been here for a thousand years, but it is not the village we are guarding, it is the people. Sake, you, too, have met a new tenant. It is he who will keep Shuifu Village alive, but if he dies, or if something happens to him, there will be serious consequences. You must never get attached to a tenant, it is absolutely wrong and Lu Family people will pay a terrible price for it."

Lu Qingjiu wondered how his grandmother felt when she wrote this, was she thinking of the man she had loved so much, but it was clearly contradictory, using all her strength to guard someone, and how could she not have feelings for him?

The grandmother apparently didn't have a perfect answer either, she left the sentence "Sake, I love you, if something bad happens to you, look in the box more often." After that, the note ends abruptly.

The last paragraph is scribbled very badly, so it is clear that the person who wrote it was in a very bad state.

Lu Qingjiu's fingers rubbed over the paper, feeling the roughness of the touch on it. He held the notebook firmly to his chest and got up to look for Bai Yuehu.

Bai Yuehu is still sleeping, lying in bed, his cheeks buried in the soft bedding, his long black hair cascading like silk on the white sheets, his face, beautiful as a painting.

Human beings are superficial creatures, and what they like, has always been delicate skin.

Lu Qingjiu sat down beside Bai Yuehu, his movements were gentle, but Bai Yuehu opened his eyes anyway, only with some sleep in them and no defensiveness, he said, "What's wrong"

Lu Qingjiu said, "I have something I want to ask you."

Bai Yuehu's eyes moved to the box Lu Qingjiu was holding: "You opened it."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Hmm."

Bai Yuehu said, "Ask away."

Lu Qingjiu hesitated slightly: "Do you know what happened to my grandmother?"

Bai Yuehu said, "I know some of it."

Lu Qingjiu immediately tensed up: "Which"

"She was your grandma," Bai Yuehu says. Bai Yuehu says, "the Lu Family who used to guard Shuifu Village."

Lu Qingjiu: "What else?"

Bai Yuehu said, "Her lover had caused a great deal of trouble and was imprisoned." His tone was light, but his words made Lu Qingjiu's body tremble slightly.

"Do you you know what trouble her former lover has gotten into?" Lu Qingjiu continued.

"I don't know." Bai Yuehu said, "These things are confidential, sake, what's wrong"

Lu Qingjiu laughed bitterly, "He ate my parents."

Bai Yuehu frowned slightly, "Impossible."

Lu Qingjiu: "Why not"

Bai Yuehu: "If he wanted to eat, he would have eaten your grandma first, why would he go after your parents"

Lu Qingjiu: "What do you mean? Why do you say that?" He didn't understand Bai Yuehu's logic at all.

Bai Yuehu sat up straight and slowly approached Lu Qingjiu, his eyes seemed to burn with fire, making Lu Qingjiu reflexively want to back away, but Bai Yuehu grabbed his arm, he slowly said, "What are you afraid of?"

Lu Qingjiu's throat twitched slightly, "I just don't understand what you mean."

Bai Yuehu said, "In our clan, unless we are facing an enemy, what we eat down to our bellies is what we like. Your grandma was by his side at the time, and if he ate it, he would have eaten your grandma first."

Lu Qingjiu: "But the truth is that he ate my parents."

Bai Yuehu: "Maybe he didn't do it by choice."

Lu Qingjiu: "You will also be forced"

Bai Yuehu said, "We will not be forced, but we will be contaminated." He says, "Beyond Shuifu Village, everything is a foreign land."

Lu Qingjiu tried to break free from Bai Yuehu's hand, but it felt like Bai Yuehu's hand was made of iron, stuck firmly in his arm, almost immovable. Shuifu Village?"

Bai Yuehu watched Lu Qingjiu's expression and came up with the answer, "Because of your parents."

"Right." Lu Qingjiu said, "I was told that my parents didn't die by accident." He looked to Bai Yuehu, "He was right."

Bai Yuehu: "Who told you that?"

Lu Qingjiu said, "The old tree."

Bai Yuehu furrows his brow.

Lu Qingjiu said, "He said that my parents were not meant to die and that their deaths in Shuifu Village were man-made and not an act of God."

Bai Yuehu said, "You believe it."

"I didn't believe it when I came, but now I do." Lu Qingjiu said, "He was right, my parents didn't die from a mudslide, they were eaten."

It is no wonder that even Yin Xun, who was the god of the mountain at the time, did not find the bodies of his parents, but only relics, when he should have known that it was no accident at all and that they had been eaten by something.

Lu Qingjiu looked to Bai Yuehu, his eyes moist and watery as he thought of the despair in his grandmother's notebooks, of the scenes as he dealt with his parents' funeral, and asked, "Will you eat me?"

Bai Yuehu opened his mouth slightly, knowing that the best answer at this point, was denial, but his soul spoke of a longing for Lu Qingjiu, a longing that made him hesitate a little, to the point that he could only watch the light in Lu Qingjiu's eyes dim.

"Can't you answer?" Lu Qingjiu said.

Bai Yuehu felt his heart tighten a little, it was such a wonderful feeling, his heart was obviously not hurt, but why did it hurt a little he said, "I don't know."

Lu Qingjiu smiles bitterly.

Bai Yuehu said, "But I will try to restrain myself." He grabbed Lu Qingjiu's hand and sniffed his fingers delicately, his lips sliding over the skin on the back of his hand, feeling the warmth that belonged to a human being, and he said, "It's hard for me to explain to you how it feels, like a big piece of delicious cake walking around in front of you, and you like that cake so much that you want to swallow it, but know that if you eat it, it's gone, so you have to keep holding back."

Lu Qingjiu was a bit down, but was amused by Bai Yuehu's metaphor: "But I'm not a cake."

Bai Yuehu: "Yeah, you're more tempting than cake."

Lu Qingjiu said, "Are you complimenting me on the quality of my meat?"

Bai Yuehu: "Count it"

Lu Qingjiu burst into laughter, and as he laughed, he burst into tears: "Where is the non-human who ate my parents now, does he know that grandma is gone?"

"I took you to see it." Bai Yuehu said, "Remember our scary storytelling sessions? The dragon you saw was the one that ate your parents, of course, that's what they said, and I didn't believe them, only the dragon didn't defend itself for some reason." It seems that he is certain that the dragon did not eat Lu Qingjiu's parents, but this is a very different story from that of his grandmother, and Lu Qingjiu is not sure who is telling the truth.

"It's a bit hard for me." Lu Qingjiu says, "I didn't think the birthday present would be this." It would be such a heavy truth.

Bai Yuehu: "It's not hard." He raised his hand and gently stroked the back of Lu Qingjiu's neck, as if to comfort him in the same way Lu Qingjiu had comforted the little fox.

Lu Qingjiu was a little tickled by his touch and tried to avoid it, but Bai Yuehu grabbed him tightly.

"Will you go," Bai Yuehu asked, "will you leave here?"

Perhaps Bai Yuehu himself didn't realise that he sounded a little nervous when he asked the question.

Lu Qingjiu thought for a moment, "No way."

Bai Yuehu breathes a sigh of relief.

"It seems that if I leave here, there is nowhere else I can go." Lu Qingjiu's heart was bitter when he said this, having lost all his family long ago and having no place to stay elsewhere. Shuifu Village was not just his home, it was a warm home for him.

There is Yin Xun waiting for his return, Bai Yuehu guarding the place, cute little pigs, and furry foxes.

This is a warm place for Lu Qingjiu.

"Don't go." Bai Yuehu reached out and hugged Lu Qingjiu, he rubbed his head gently against Lu Qingjiu's cheek like a big pampered cat, "Stay here."

Lu Qingjiu watched Bai Yuehu's movements, but felt that the fox spirit in front of him was probably so emotional that he could not help but make the movements that the prototype often did. So, he was about to ask what kind of dragon Bai Yuehu's prototype was, but he felt that Bai Yuehu was very concerned about this matter, so he swallowed the words in his mouth again.

"No go." Lu Qingjiu said, "Just let go, I'm going to make breakfast."

Bai Yuehu said, "I'm really not going."

Lu Qingjiu said helplessly, "I'm really not leaving, if I lie to you, you'll eat me, okay?"

Bai Yuehu said, "It's okay." He was serious.

Lu Qingjiu said, "Let me digest all this for a while." It was a good thing that he had long accepted what had happened about the non-humans and was mentally prepared; if he had known all this as soon as he arrived, I'm afraid he would have been scared off the next day.

"Hmm." Bai Yuehu nodded in agreement.

Lu Qingjiu carried the box back to his bedroom and carefully closed it before placing it at the foot of his bed again. He carefully touched the box, thinking of the last words his grandmother had left him, that if something bad happened, he should look inside the box again Thinking that his grandmother had wanted to comfort Lu Qingjiu with her own experiences.

Only Lu Qingjiu felt nothing but sadness, and it was hard for him to imagine the despair his grandmother felt when she learned that her lover had devoured their child.

After sitting in the house for a while, Lu Qingjiu adjusted his mood and got up to go out and cook dinner.

Although he knew the sad story of what had happened here before, life went on, and besides, it was his birthday, and he didn't want his bad mood to spread to others.

When he gets outside the kitchen, Lu Qingjiu hears a rattling sound coming from inside, and when he listens carefully, he finds Zhu Miaomiao arguing with Yin Xun, while Jiang Buhuan persuades him.

"Wow, can you even eat this?" Yin Xun said, "I told you to put in two less eggs, and look at this cake."

Zhu Miaomiao: "Oh my God, I would have ordered one if I knew you were such a good cook, hurry up, it's late, the sake is getting up"

Yin Xun: "Don't rush, don't rush"

Jiang Buhuan said, "Put it here and be careful."

Lu Qingjiu looked in the door and saw three men with flour on their bodies and faces carefully carrying a cake, which looked strangely shaped, if I had to describe it, like a pile of melted poop.

Lu Qingjiu: ""How on earth did they make the cake look like this?

The three of them did not notice Lu Qingjiu peeping at the door, and when they managed to move the cake into the box, intending to put the cream on it, Lu Qingjiu thought better of it and simply left the kitchen to the three of them, turning around and going back to his room.

After another twenty minutes or so, an excited Zhu Miaomiao knocked on Lu Qingjiu's door to wake him up. Lu Qingjiu pretended he had just woken up, yawned and said, "Sorry, I'm late today."

"It's okay, it's okay." Zhu Miaomiao said, "Come on over, we've prepared breakfast."

Lu Qingjiu said, "You also made breakfast, who made it?

Zhu Miaomiao didn't know how terrible Yin Xun's cooking was and was a bit confused: "What's wrong with Yin Xun cooking breakfast?

Lu Qingjiu: "Forget it, it's nothing." He didn't tell Zhu Miaomiao that the scariest thing about Yin Xun's cooking was that it looked and tasted like the food he was tasting, but afterwards he would get absolutely diarrhoea, as if some strange ingredient had been used.

Lu Qingjiu didn't want to spoil the fun since everyone had been busy for half a day celebrating his birthday, and eating Yin Xun's food was only a day's worth of diarrhea anyway!