Chapter 8: Mushrooms and chicks

Yes, Goddess He, who didn't have much hair on her head, now had long, lush hair that was so shiny it looked like the long black hair in the shampoo commercials on TV.

"After all, it was his own well, so Lu Qingjiu had to ask what had happened to Goddess He. Although this is the result of Goddess He's poor workmanship

"No more." Goddess He said, "If there were any other after-effects, I'd still be walking here in my old bones."

"And did you find anything different when you returned?" Lu Qingjiu could only try to ask.

"Something different." Goddess He thought about it and whispered, "I went back and made chicken soup, and it didn't seem to taste quite like what I usually have."

Lu Qingjiu :""

Yin Xun :""

The two men fell into a bewildered silence, both remembering the time when Goddess He had sworn to tell them that the chicken used as a sacrifice was not to be eaten.

"Did you really eat the chicken?" Yin Xun said reluctantly, "What's the difference between the chicken and the usual?"

Goddess He: "Well it seems to smell particularly good."

Yin Xun: "Are you showing off?"

When Lu Qingjiu saw Yin Xun's sad face, he hurriedly changed the subject and asked Goddess He if there was anything wrong with her, but Goddess He said she was fine for the moment and would have to wait a few days. Lu Qingjiu told her to come to him if she needed anything, and in order to comfort her heart, which had been hurt by her black hair, he had to give Goddess He half a catty of pork to cook for lunch.

Goddess He went away happy, but Yin Xun was depressed, feeling that he had lost his wife's life.

Lu Qingjiu ignored him and quietly went into the house, called Bai Yuehu, who was still sleeping, up and told him about the goddess.

Bai Yuehu yawned softly, her pretty phoenix eyes opening a slit as she lazily said, "It's okay, I can't die."

"Is it true that you can't die?" Lu Qingjiu said, "Didn't you say there's still wish power in the well or something?

Bai Yuehu rolled over, propped his chin up and looked at Lu Qingjiu, saying, "Is long hair a bad thing?"

Lu Qingjiu: "Not really."

"That means no." Bai Yuehu said.

Lu Qingjiu said, "Bai Yuehu is a much more reliable fox than Goddess He, and since he said he was fine, he should be fine.

Goddess He was worried for a while, but when she saw that the hair did not have any side effects, she slowly relaxed. She was actually embarrassed to ask Lu Qingjiu for an explanation, after all, they had paid her to solve the problem.

Lu Qingjiu didn't see Goddess He for a while after that, until he and Yin Xun saw him walking down the street with an old man, holding hands and looking sweet. When he went back to the village, he found out that Goddess He was no longer in the business.

"The old widow from the next village has taken a liking to her and she has stopped exorcising evil spirits since she got married," the gossipy aunt tsked. It's quite pretty."

Lu Qingjiu, who heard this, averted his eyes in an instant of weakness.

About a month after the exorcism, Lu Qingjiu finally found out what had happened in the well from the local news.

A year ago, a girl and her boyfriend went out for a trip and had an argument over some matters. In the end, the boyfriend killed her and dumped her body at the old mansion in Lu Qingjiu, after which he disappeared. Because the place where they lived was far away from here, so although the police suspected the man of murder, they never opened a case because they could not find the body. It was only six months later that the man suddenly quit his job and returned to the area again. No one knew why he came back, the man's colleagues just said that the man was very strange for a while, his hair kept falling out, but in just a week, his head had gone completely bald, and they thought at the time that the man was suffering from some serious illness.

The man who returned never left, and the official story is that he was crushed by his inner guilt and threw himself down a well. But the police and Lu Qingjiu know that it's not that simple. But with the killer dead and the body found, the case is closed.

Only Lu Qingjiu would put a bowl of rice at the well on festive occasions and put a few incense sticks on the rice as a tribute to the ghost girl who was extraordinarily obsessed with her hair.

As the spring season begins and the temperature rises, Yin Xun wants to go to the mountains to pick mushrooms, as it has been raining for the past few days.

Lu Qingjiu said, "You're just staring at the chickens in the yard."

Yin Xun clings to his last stubbornness: "I bought the chicken cubs myself"

"But I don't know any mushrooms." Lu Qingjiu said, "In case we pick poisonous mushrooms."

Yin Xun grinned, his little tiger teeth glowing white in the sunlight as he patted his chest and said with conviction, "It's okay, I know."

"Really?" Lu Qingjiu looked at him suspiciously.

"I really know them." Yin Xun said, "Oh, let's just pick the ones I know and eat them, and let's not pick the ones we don't know."

Lu Qingjiu agreed to Yin Xun's proposal and before he went up to the mountain, he said to Bai Yuehu that he could make do with the village's beef noodles for lunch today.

Bai Yuehu said, "You are going up the mountain."

"Well." Lu Qingjiu said, "Yin Xun insisted on going up the mountain to pick mushrooms, it had just rained in the morning, so he thought he'd pick some mushrooms for the chicken stew.

Bai Yuehu didn't seem to approve of Lu Qingjiu going up the mountain until he heard the words "chicken stew", and Lu Qingjiu clearly saw Bai Yuehu's eyes seem to light up for a moment as he said, "I'll go with you."

Lu Qingjiu figured this out and didn't dwell on it, saying, "Yes, if you want."

So the three of them packed up their things, took their lunch and baskets and headed off into the woods. Shuifu Village is very remote, surrounded by almost untouched, dense jungle, and sometimes animals can be seen. The ground was still wet from the morning's rain, and the air was filled with a moist smell of earth and trees mixed together, with a somewhat refreshing scent.

On the edge of the village there is a path that winds through the dense jungle, Lu Qingjiu carries a basket and as he walks, he observes the roadside and in a few moments he spots a white mushroom that has just emerged from the grass.

"Mushrooms," Lu Qingjiu exclaimed, as someone who hadn't seen many wild mushrooms.

"You can't eat that mushroom." Who knows that Yin Xun took one glance and withdrew his gaze, saying, "The outer layer of this mushroom is dark yellow, it's poisonous."

Lu Qingjiu: "Oh, what kind of mushrooms can I eat?"

Yin Xun said, "The more common, the better... Oh, there are so many mushrooms in the summer and autumn.

"Eat them all," Lu Qingjiu asks.

"Yeah, ate it all." Yin Xun says, "The grass is now over five metres high in the graves."

Lu Qingjiu: ""Don't you say anything.

The deeper they went, the more they finally found a large white mushroom under a huge old tree, which Yin Xun examined and said was edible.

Lu Qingjiu then put down the basket and bent down and started to pick the mushrooms in earnest. The mushrooms have to be picked carefully, not broken in the middle, otherwise they will not be fresh any more and the roots have to be pulled out from the mud. You have to pull the roots out of the mud, but you can't finish them, otherwise they won't grow the next year.

There were so many mushrooms that the basket they had brought with them was soon full, and Yin Xun said, "Come on, let's go home."

Lu Qingjiu nods, stands up and takes two steps forward with the basket, only to almost step into a puddle.

"Crap." Lu Qingjiu was taken aback, "Why is there a pool of water here?"

"Water," Yin Xun looked at it with a puzzled expression, "wasn't it there when we arrived a while ago?"

"I didn't notice," Lu Qingjiu said, "it looked really strange."

If water had accumulated on the ground, it would not have been a big deal, but the problem was that Lu Qingjiu was stepping on a flat area covered with fallen leaves, and this puddle of water appeared in the area where the leaves were piled up for no reason, soaking them as well, but the leaves around it were dry.

Lu Qingjiu threw a small stone into the puddle and saw it disappear with a thud into the leaf-soaked puddle, and his eyes widened as he judged from the sound of the stone falling into the water that the puddle seemed very deep.

"What is this thing, a hole?" Lu Qingjiu looked to Bai Yuehu, intuiting that he would know the answer.

"It's not a hole." Bai Yuehu's voice was soft, "It's a kind of animal." He paused for a moment and added, very solemnly, "Not very tasty."

Lu Qingjiu: ""There seems to be something wrong with the focus.

What the author has to say: Lu Qingjiu: Do you like chickens?

Bai Yuehu: Average.

Lu Qingjiu: Hey don't foxes like chickens?

Bai Yuehu: Take it back, I actually like chickens.

Lu Qingjiu: Well