Chapter 74: Zhu Rong

Ju Mang left, and soon returned with a handful of black seeds, which he handed to Bai Yuehu and said were the seeds of the eyeballs.

Bai Yuehu instructed Lu Qingjiu to take the seeds, before returning the black umbrella to Ju Mang. Ju Mang finally got his black umbrella back and touched it for a long time, as if it was alive, and rubbed its surface against Ju Mang's cheek, just like a couple who had been separated by a disaster and were now reunited.

Lu Qingjiu took the seeds, which looked no different from ordinary seeds, except that they were a little heavier and the shells looked hard, and he put them carefully into his cloth pocket when he heard Bai Yuehu say, "How was the Spring Festival?"

"That's it." Ju Mang said, "There's not much to do this year."

"There is nothing to do" Bai Yuehu seems a little puzzled by this.

Ju Mang said, "Yeah, it's okay." He sounded a little careless, but the next sentence caught Lu Qingjiu's full attention.

Ju Mang said, "They're all busy looking for dragons."

The dragon is the black dragon that escaped Lu Qingjiu's ears perked up, and although his eyes were looking at the seeds, his ears were listening carefully to the conversation between Ju Mang and Bai Yuehu.

"Why haven't you found it yet?" Bai Yuehu asks.

"I don't know." Ju Mang put his umbrella away, "I didn't ask my lovely umbrella brother to come to Shuifu Village to check it out because I couldn't find it, but who knew you'd catch me and eat it for so long." So he grumbled.

Bai Yuehu sneered, " Shuifu Village is whose territory you don't know who told you you need to come over here to see."

Ju Mang seemed to be in a bit of a bad way about this, and when he heard Bai Yuehu's comment, he didn't raise his voice to refute it.

"Keep looking." Bai Yuehu said, "If you don't find it, you'll all be responsible."

Ju Mang grunted and turned with the intention of leaving, just before leaving the courtyard he spoke one last word to Bai Yuehu, he said, "Be careful these days, Zhu Rong might come over too, after all, no one is at ease until that dragon is found."

Bai Yuehu did not say anything, but Lu Qingjiu noticed that at the name Zhu Rong, his eyes visibly darkened and his whole face took on a cold look.

After Ju Mang left, Lu Qingjiu couldn't resist asking about Zhu Rong.

Zhu Rong is the mythical god of fire, the god of summer, and one of the more widespread gods among the people.

Bai Yuehu, however, seemed to be less than impressed with Zhu Rong, and when he heard Ju Mang say that Zhu Rong was also coming to Shuifu Village, he didn't look too good.

"Why did Zhu Rong come to Shuifu Village," Lu Qingjiu said, "he also came to look for the dragon."

Bai Yuehu nods.

Lu Qingjiu said, "Why are you unhappy?"

Bai Yuehu said, "He is the executioner."

Lu Qingjiu was stunned at first, then understood what Bai Yuehu meant by the torturer. The black dragon had had its horns cut off, its eyes gouged out and its tongue cut out before it was imprisoned, and Lu Qingjiu wondered who could have done such a cruel thing to the dragon. He thought the executioner was one of Bai Yuehu's clansmen, but never expected it to be Zhu Rong, the legendary god of fire.

"For some reason, Lu Qingjiu's heart tightened slightly as he remembered the gentle look the dragon had given him the last time they met.

"Well." Bai Yuehu said, "They all said he had done something wrong, and he didn't defend himself." He sighed slightly, "So then he was punished." If the dragon had wanted to escape, he could have done so, but no one could understand why he had confessed to all his crimes and stayed behind voluntarily, accepting such a cruel punishment. The two places that dragons don't like to be touched are their horns and their scales, but that black dragon had its horns severed, a part that many dragons would rather die than lose, a pride of being a dragon.

Bai Yuehu didn't understand, and with him, he couldn't feel good about the executioner either, so when he heard Ju Mang say that Zhu Rong was coming over, he was naturally in a bad mood.

Lu Qingjiu thought for a moment and continued, "Then he came to Shuifu Village to find the dragon as well."

Bai Yuehu said, "Roughly."

Lu Qingjiu was silent, he wanted to say something to comfort the depressed Bai Yuehu, but felt that his words were superfluous, after all, although he was not a dragon, he felt the same discomfort when he saw the black dragon's wretched state, not to mention Bai Yuehu, who was of the same race as the black dragon.

Not knowing how to comfort Bai Yuehu with words, Lu Qingjiu cooked a big meal in the evening with the intention of soothing Bai Yuehu's heart.

He had Bai Yuehu kill a chicken, stuffed its belly with all sorts of accessories and roasted it in the oven. The roasted chicken was crispy on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside, even the bones were crispy. The family's chickens are really good, not only in terms of fighting power, but also in terms of flavour, and the rich aroma that emanates from them as they spin around in the oven is already mouth-watering. Lu Qingjiu also plans to go to the town to buy some rabbits to raise, as they have a habit of eating rabbit meat, which is white meat with no fat at all and fewer bones than chicken.

After eating, Bai Yuehu was in a better mood and said that the seeds given by Ju Mang could be

to be planted.

"Where should we plant them? Let's plant them in the backyard." Lu Qingjiu said, "If these seeds produce eyeballs and people see them, our family will be treated like monsters by the other villagers."

"Yes." Bai Yuehu thought about it and seemed to think that Lu Qingjiu had a point, "Let's plant it next to the well."

Lu Qingjiu nods his head.

Because of the popularity of the hair-growing water, the circle of light above the well in the backyard has become more and more intense, even in the dark, so bright that even the street lights are not turned on, and in Yin Xun's words, it even saves the family a lot of money on their electricity bill. In Bai Yuehu's words, the female ghost in the well might be able to take on her original form and become a god in time. Yin Xun, who is the god of the mountain, has mixed feelings after hearing this, feeling that he is not as powerful as the female ghost in the backyard, even though we are both gods.

Lu Qingjiu pats him on the shoulder in reassurance that it is the well in their backyard that has done the most for the family

After planting the black seeds in the hole, Lu Qingjiu filled them with a thin layer of soil and watered them, but although Bai Yuehu said to leave them alone, Lu Qingjiu was still a little worried that they would germinate properly.

"It's no problem, we have Dangkang at home." Bai Yuehu said, "Let them come and play in the backyard more often and run around on this piece of earth, if they can't do it anymore, they still have me."

Lu Qingjiu even suspects that they will bear fruit this autumn, without having to wait years like other farmers.

Bai Yuehu, a small helper in agriculture and a good partner in farming.

According to Bai Yuehu, the seeds were planted and the fruit that came out looked like eyeballs and tasted fruity, so Lu Qingjiu and Yin Xun, who had eaten the eyeballs, were looking forward to it.

Lu Qingjiu forgot all about Zhu Rong after Ju Mang had been gone for a few days and there was no sign of him.

A man of action, he said he wanted to buy rabbits and made a trip to town the next day and came back with some cute little white rabbits that he planned to keep next to the chicken coop.

The bunnies are not shy and soon mingle with the fighting chickens, expanding their range of activities to include the whole yard.

Lu Qingjiu originally wanted to raise some ducks and geese, but their house was too far away from the creek and there was no living water, so they couldn't let the ducks swim in the well in the backyard, so the plan was put on hold for the time being, thinking that they could talk about it later.

The weather is gradually starting to warm up and before you know it, the trees have completely shed their winter doldrums and become lush and green.

Spring is a good time to pick mushrooms in the mountains, and as Shuifu Village relies on the mountains, the villagers would not forget this income-generating activity. But this year, the rainfall was so poor that it affected the production of mushrooms, and at the end of April, it finally rained for several days in a row.

Yin Xun beckons Lu Qingjiu to say that there are a lot of mushrooms growing on the mountain, do you want to go and pick some to eat?

Wild mushrooms are delicious, whether fried over high heat or in a stew, but there is a problem: it is not easy for the average person to tell which mushrooms are poisonous, and many people go to hospital every year because of eating them.

Lu Qingjiu had been away from Shuifu Village for a long time and had no idea how to tell the difference between mushrooms and mushrooms, but luckily they had Yin Xun, who assured them that there were no mushrooms on the mountain that he didn't know.

Lu Qingjiu then took a bamboo basket and Yin Xun to the mountains to pick mushrooms.

Bai Yuehu had nothing better to do than to follow behind with a basket. After the rain, there can be wild mushrooms everywhere under the damp leaves, and sometimes you can see a large one when you lift the leaves.

Yin Xun knows the mountains very well and almost all the places he visits are full of wild mushrooms, some of the Lu Qingjiu he picks are recognisable, such as the Chanterelle mushrooms, but some of the Lu Qingjiu are unfamiliar and he has never even seen them before.

"Lu Qingjiu looked suspicious when he saw Yin Xun put a red mushroom into the basket.

"Yes, I can." Yin Xun said, "This is delicious."

"It's fine," Lu Qingjiu said, "I'm a real human being, eating poisonous mushrooms would kill me."

Yin Xun: "It's fine, if there's something wrong there's still Bai Yuehu."

Bai Yuehu raised her eyes and gave Yin Xun a mischievous look.

Yin Xun quickly shrank back.

The mushrooms are picked, cleaned and used in chicken stews at night if they can be eaten straight away, and dried in the sun if they cannot. Dried mushrooms are less toxic and safer to eat.

Lu Qingjiu saw that the chicken soup was almost done, so he added fresh mushrooms to it, then covered the pot and prepared to go into the courtyard to pinch some spring onions.

The man was tall, with long red hair and a small fire-red tattoo on his eyebrow. By definition, red hair would have made people feel a bit frivolous, but on this man, it didn't feel frivolous at all, but rather made people feel that he was very serious and didn't dare to make any jokes in front of him.

The man heard Lu Qingjiu's footsteps and looked up towards him, his pupils were also red, but the moment he saw Lu Qingjiu, they turned back to their normal black colour.

The man's appearance was so obvious that even if Lu Qingjiu had never seen him before, he would have guessed his identity, and he would have been the Zhu Rong that Ju Mang was talking about.

" Lu Qingjiu " Zhu Rong called out Lu Qingjiu's name in a low voice.

"Lu Qingjiu wanted to call him Zhu Rong, but somehow he felt it was inappropriate to call him by his first name, so he changed his name.

"Just call me Zhu Rong." Zhu Rong said, "How have you been?"

"Not bad." Lu Qingjiu was a bit overwhelmed by his familiar way of greeting him, they had met for the first time, but Zhu Rong's attitude was as if they had known each other for a long time.

Zhu Rong could also see Lu Qingjiu's nervousness and tugged at the corners of his mouth to reveal a stiff smile as he said, "Don't be too formal. I could see that he was trying to be friendly in front of Lu Qingjiu, but as he was a hard man himself, his smile became more and more ominous.

"Old acquaintance," Lu Qingjiu said in surprise, "you know my grandma."

"Hmm." Zhu Rong said, "She's a good cook."

He was a good cook, so he must have eaten his grandmother's cooking, but somehow he had never seen these old people when he was young, or perhaps they had deliberately avoided his presence Lu Qingjiu had some suspicions in his mind, but since he was an old acquaintance of his grandmother's, he was considered his elder, and he said, "Then you, would you like to stay for dinner? "He wanted to know how much Zhu Rong still knew about his grandmother.

"No." But Zhu Rong refused Lu Qingjiu's offer and looked at Bai Yuehu, "I have some other business to attend to."

Bai Yuehu has not spoken much from the side, but his gaze is cold.

"Oh, that's fine." Lu Qingjiu felt that Bai Yuehu and Zhu Rong seemed to be at odds with each other, so he didn't press the issue.

Zhu Rong nodded, "If you ever see that prisoner dragon, remember to tell me, as long as he's out there, you're in danger."

"I Why did he eat me?" Lu Qingjiu asked.

Zhu Rong's expression was a little strange at that, " Didn't Bai Yuehu tell you?"

Lu Qingjiu: "Mmm"

Zhu Rong said, "They only eat two kinds of people in the dragon clan, one is the enemy and the other is the beloved one."

Lu Qingjiu froze: "I am his enemy"

Zhu Rong frowned and gave Lu Qingjiu an odd look, but did not reply to Lu Qingjiu's words, waving his hand to indicate that he was leaving.

Lu Qingjiu watched his reaction, but an unbelievable suspicion emerged in his mind, a suspicion he had had before, but had always found it too absurd to keep hidden in his mind.

Bai Yuehu saw Lu Qingjiu's stony expression and he sighed, reaching up to pinch the corners of his eyes and sighing tersely, "I knew there was nothing good about him coming to ask, right?"

Lu Qingjiu: "He is my grandfather"

Bai Yuehu pursed his lips in silence, and only after a long time did he slowly spit out a word under Lu Qingjiu's gaze: "Yes."

"He is my grandfather, the dragon is my grandfather," Lu Qingjiu was not happy to get the answer to his question so easily, but he remembered the sad and tender expression of the prisoner dragon, and the wretched way it looked when it was imprisoned at the bottom of the pit, "Why, why did he Why did he eat my parents? Was it because he loved them?"

Bai Yuehu: "I don't know, but I think it's a misunderstanding." As a dragon, he knew the habits of his race, and if Lu Qingjiu's grandfather was out of control, it would be Lu Qingjiu's grandma he would eat first rather than his own children; after all, he had left her side when she was pregnant and had never seen his own children once.

Lu Qingjiu was shocked by this truth, he had so many questions he wanted to ask, but for a while he didn't know what to ask, and in the end he could only hold back a sentence from his mouth, "So I am a descendant of dragons and also have dragon blood"

Bai Yuehu: "Haven't you ever wondered why you can see things that other people can't see and hear things that other people can't hear?"

Lu Qingjiu: "I thought I was the protagonist of a novel."

Bai Yuehu laughed dumbly: "Maybe now you are too."

Lu Qingjiu: ""Hey, that kinda makes sense, but seriously, he never seriously thought about why he had special powers and thought it was a coincidence, but now that he thinks about it, there aren't that many coincidences in the world.

Every accident is caused by a myriad of necessities.

Lu Qingjiu: "There's so much I want to ask, no, I have to go back and make a list."

Bai Yuehu had expected Lu Qingjiu to react violently when he found out the truth, but he didn't expect Lu Qingjiu to come up with this, and he even planned to go back to the list.

Lu Qingjiu: "Mmm"

Bai Yuehu: "If you knew the truth, you wouldn't be scared off, would you?"

Lu Qingjiu is baffled: "Where to run?"

Bai Yuehu: "Isn't there a dragon that wants to eat you?"

Lu Qingjiu: "Yeah, it's still my grandfather."

Bai Yuehu: "There's nothing you want to say"

Lu Qingjiu thought for a moment, then his face sank and he suddenly slapped his thigh: "No good."

Bai Yuehu was also nervous: "What's wrong?"

Lu Qingjiu: "I forgot the chicken was still simmering in the pot"

Bai Yuehu :""

Before he could say anything, he saw Lu Qingjiu rush into the kitchen like a gust of wind, followed by a miserable cry from the kitchen, "Holy shit the stew is dry."

Bai Yuehu: ""At the thought of losing such a delicious pot of chicken soup, he actually started to hate Zhu Rong.

As a result of the explosive news brought by Zhu Rong, the three of them went from a beautifully moist chicken soup to a dry chicken nugget with dehydrated mushrooms for dinner.

Yin Xun went back in the afternoon, not knowing what had happened, and said to Lu Qingjiu, "Have you no humanity, you just drank the soup behind my back and didn't even leave me a mouthful.

Lu Qingjiu looked at him like this and his head was spinning, "I said the chicken soup was accidentally boiled dry."

Yin Xun: "I don't believe it, I don't believe it, you can forget Bai Yuehu, can you forget it?"

Bai Yuehu listened to the secret grinding of teeth, almost did not break the chopsticks in his hand, yes, usually he will certainly not forget, but that situation, can he remind Lu Qingjiu that the chicken soup is about to dry up this if really reminded, it is not only the loss of a pot of chicken soup so simple thing.

Lu Qingjiu: "Okay, okay, don't cry, I'll make you some hot water to eat, okay?"

Yin Xun: "Wow, do you have any humanity, even if the chicken soup is gone, you still want me to drink plain water."

Lu Qingjiu: "What to do then?"

Yin Xun: "Let's make another pot tomorrow, I'll keep watch."

Lu Qingjiu: "Okay."

The three of them finished their dinner sullenly and then went off to do their own thing. Bai Yuehu left the house and went off somewhere, Yin Xun went home rubbing his belly, and Lu Qingjiu sat down in his bedroom and took out a piece of paper and started to list the questions he wanted to ask, and he had to say that there were so many that one piece of paper was not enough. Looking at the list of questions on the paper, Lu Qingjiu sighed again, his eyes noticing the wooden box next to his pillow and the diary on top of it, as well as the black scales on the diary.

At this point, he finally understood what his grandmother meant when she said, "Don't get attached to the tenants"; she had become attached to a dragon and was even pregnant with a child. But the story ends tragically, with the tainted dragons eating their child and imprisoning it cruelly. And Grandmother, in her grief, leaves this world.

Lu Qingjiu took out the dragon's scales and, upon closer inspection, realised that the scales had been touched many, many times, so much so that some of the uneven areas on them had been touched very smoothly. Lu Qingjiu also took out the black scale that had fallen off Bai Yuehu's body, and the contrast between the two scales was striking, one as shiny as new, the other dull. His dragon was indeed the most beautiful of all, and when he thought of this, a smile unconsciously appeared on Lu Qingjiu's lips, and then he unconsciously picked up the scales and kissed them gently.

Why would he want to kiss Bai Yuehu's scales? Was it because they were so beautiful? Lu Qingjiu didn't dare to think about it further and hurriedly put the scales back into the cloth bag he had prepared, while clipping the scarred dragon scales back into his diary.

I wonder what Lou Lou was thinking when she stroked this dragon scale for so many years was it with deep love or was it hiding unspeakable hatred Lu Qingjiu can't think of it and can only guess.

Yet his speculation was doomed to go unanswered, for the man in question was long gone.

Lu Qingjiu slowly put everything back into place and looked at the numerous questions on the note, but Lu sighed, crumpled it up into a ball and threw it into the nearby bin.

He realised that asking Bai Yuehu would not give him the right answer, and that if he wanted to know what had happened back then, he would have to find the imprisoned dragon, his grandfather.

But thinking about Zhu Rong's intentions, Lu Qingjiu knew that it would not be easy to see his grandfather now.

The author has something to say.

Revise one of the previous settings, grandma did not tell Lu Qingjiu that grandpa was a dragon, he guessed it all by himself

Lu Qingjiu: Bai Yuehu, you have something on your mind.

Bai Yuehu: I

Lu Qingjiu: Go ahead, I'm willing to listen to anything.

Bai Yuehu: I

Lu Qingjiu: What

Bai Yuehu: If we don't get to the kitchen, the chicken soup will run dry

Lu Qingjiu.