After dinner ended and everyone dispersed, someone visited Meiren once again. At first, she thought it might be Sugi-chan, but it wasn’t. It was the woman who had been stuffing her face with rice cakes while breaking down in tears the previous night.
“I have a place I’d like you to come with me, Sensei.”
The woman seemed deeply troubled and restless. She must have pretended to go home to avoid being noticed by others, only to secretly return.
“It’s about Wangqi’s illness.”
“I understand.”
Meiren asked Lan Xin to take care of cleaning up and headed into the dark forest with the woman.
They proceeded along a narrow path that looked like deer had carved it out, relying only on the light of a torch. Though the withered grass was overgrown, the branches sticking out were swept aside, suggesting that farmers occasionally passed through here.
“My name is Zhu. Shortly after my baby passed away, both my husband and my young son fell ill. It’s been twenty days since they first fell into their sleep. Their cheeks grow more sunken by the day, and their arms are thin like sticks… I can’t bear to think what might happen if they stop breathing by morning.”
Zhu spoke in a trembling voice, as if compelled to keep talking to stave off the fear and tension that threatened to suffocate her.
“My husband is such a hard worker. And even though my son is only eight, he’d help his father plow the fields, saying he wanted to make life easier for me… But now…”
“The boy must have a larger crystal attached to him, doesn’t he? And his condition is worse, isn’t that right?”
“How can you tell without even examining him? You truly are a Sensei.”
Wiping her tears with her sleeve, Zhu spoke as if clinging to Meiren.
“You said there’s no such thing as a curse… My husband and my son, they’ll be saved, right?”
“If we can dissolve the source of the poison, I can surely prepare the medicine. I promise.”
As they ventured further into the forest, an unimaginable sight spread out before them.
Crystals. Transparent hexagonal crystals jutted out, overlapping each other, from the sandy ground where no grass grew. The clusters of crystals reflected the moonlight and shimmered silently. Perhaps there was a vein of minerals underground.
“This is Mizuchi-sama’s sacred spring… the god’s fountain.”
It was only when she mentioned the spring that Meiren realized.
The crystals encircled a spring, forming a ring around it. In the darkness, it looked like a bottomless pit. Peering into it revealed nothing but darkness, akin to the gaping maw of a serpent; the water was completely indiscernible.
“Mizuchi-sama is part of Wangqi’s local beliefs, is that right?”
“Mizuchi-sama is a benevolent god who brings rain and promises abundance. Normally, this spring is full of Mizuchi-sama’s water, but after the earthquake in the summer, the water level has been dropping day by day… I wondered if the crystals around here resemble the ones covering the eyes of the sick.”
Meiren touched the pillar of crystal to examine it.
The crystals found on the patients were cloudy, but it was undoubtedly the same substance.
Crystals dissolve in water. To be precise, they dissolve into water and then crystallize. Normally, it takes an unfathomable amount of time for such crystals to form, but if harmony is disrupted, natural laws can also warp. When the poison of gold intensifies, crystals can grow overnight.
As Meiren pondered, Zhu called out to her.
“Sensei, is it Mizuchi-sama’s curse after all…?”
At that moment, someone shouted, “There they are!” and a group of torch-bearing villagers surrounded them.
“I thought something was off, so I followed, and look at this!”
Sugi-chan, arriving late, raised his voice.
“Hey, Zhu. This young lady may be a good person, but an outsider is still an outsider. Stop doing things that might anger Mizuchi-sama further. What will we do if the curse worsens?”
Meiren replied, exasperated.
“This isn’t a curse; it’s poison.”
The spring was clearly filled with gold poisoning.
Once again, crystals dissolve in water. And humans are made of about 50-60% water. Children, being composed of about 70% water, were more susceptible to the crystals spreading through their bodies.
But the essence of this poison was gold toxicity. Gold overcomes wood. It damages the eyes, which correspond to the wood element, and even withers crops in the fields.
“You said it started with the earthquake, didn’t you? After the earthquake, the spring’s water level dropped, and abnormalities appeared in the fields. It’s likely that the earthquake caused a crack beneath the spring, connecting it to an underground aquifer. Or perhaps a fissure at the bottom of the spring itself triggered the earthquake.”
The villagers’ gazes grew sharper as Meiren delved into the truth. Sugi-chan shook his head, warning her to stop talking. Meiren ignored him and pressed further.
“You said ‘any more.’ Does that mean you’ve done something else to provoke what you call a curse?”
Silence followed. If they wouldn’t speak, she’d expose it herself.
Meiren took a torch from Zhu and threw it into the spring. For a brief moment, the fire illuminated the bottom of the spring, revealing the figures of humans—entirely crystallized—standing still.
A hellscape of transparent crystals.
Some appeared to be screaming for help, while others lay lifelessly.
(So this is what they wanted to hide.)
Meiren understood.
“What you feared wasn’t Mizuchi-sama’s curse. It was the curse of the people you murdered and threw into the spring, wasn’t it?”
The villagers’ faces stiffened, their expressions a mixture of fear and anger. Lit by the fire, their faces looked like demons in the darkness.
It had seemed strange from the start.
Sugi-chan had said that the official household succumbed to the plague, but judging by the state of the manor, it had been uninhabited for about a year. If that were true, the officials’ household would have been the first to fall victim to the plague, which didn’t align with the timeline—the earthquake had occurred in the summer.
Moreover, the manor’s windows bore clear signs of being smashed, likely by someone breaking in to attack or abduct the family.
(The government officials who came to investigate were likely infected because they brought back the source of the poison—the crystals. Just like Lan Xin had thought.)
But it was unlikely that the local officials would have tried to sell the crystals. People often overlook the value of things readily available to them.
In other words—
“The bodies at the bottom of the spring are the officials’ family, aren’t they?”
Sugi-chan’s face twisted in anguish.
“If you know that much, I can’t let you return to the capital. It’s a shame, young lady.”
He raised his staff and struck Meiren. Before she could cry out, she collapsed to the ground. Her vision blurred, and her consciousness faded.
Someone screamed and rushed over—it was Zhu.
She held Meiren protectively, crying out,
“Don’t kill her! If you kill her, there’ll be no going back for us…”
As Zhu’s desperate plea echoed, Meiren’s consciousness slipped into darkness. The last thing her green eyes saw was the full moon shining in the night sky.
