"Actually... actually, I don't remember very clearly either... In these two years, I probably only killed tw... twenty or thirty of them..." Mèng Chāojūn stammered under everyone's gaze.
As he was speaking, a small stone suddenly hit his head.
"Ah! Who threw that stone?" Mèng Chāojūn covered his head where he had been hit and turned his head to look around.
Wei Zhongjun raised her hand and said, "I hit you. Because you are still lying! What 'twenty or thirty', that's not even close! And you all guessed wrong—he didn't kill those cats for food!"
Her words drew varying reactions from the crowd, the most significant being from Mèng Chāojūn; his face suddenly turned pale, and his eyes grew panicked.
The others were all looking on with confusion and curiosity. The Taoist priest asked her, "Not for food? Then it is..."
Wei Zhongjun said, "I can see that he has no intention of telling the truth, so I will tell it for him. In these past two years alone, he has killed over a hundred and twenty cats. He goes out every single night to catch stray cats. When he can't catch stray cats, he starts catching the house cats raised by others."
Having said this, she jumped down from her chair and walked over, circling Mèng Chāojūn as she spoke:
"You brought those cats you caught back just to torture them and watch them die in agony, right? Watching them struggle painfully while being unable to escape your clutches, that gives you a very happy sense of sadism, doesn't it? I'm not wrong, am I!"
"You... you're talking nonsense! I didn't..." Mèng Chāojūn clearly did not want to admit these things Wei Zhongjun said. Seeing that Wei Zhongjun was just a child, and adding that no one knew about what he did and there was no evidence, he could completely deny her words.
"You used fire to burn their fur, put them on scorched iron plates to sear their paws, threw them into boiling water, or grabbed them by their tails to smash them to death alive, and stuck sewing needles into their bodies. Isn't that right?" Wei Zhongjun said while walking.
Then, she changed the subject: "It doesn't matter if you don't admit it. Your grandfather has already blocked a calamity for you once, but do you think it's over just like that? You should go back and wait! All those sufferings you put them through, they will return them all to you."
After saying this, she turned to the Taoist priest and said: "Go and check where Great-Uncle San lived. Look around the ground near the house to see if he buried anything there. Only when that thing is found can he be successfully laid to rest. Otherwise, his coffin won't be able to stay in the ground."
Listening to her words, the others looked at Mèng Chāojūn with suspicion, half-believing and half-doubting, unable to hide their skepticism.
"Ah-Jun, what she said couldn't be true, could it?"
"Yeah, did you really do those things? Something about burning with fire... or scorched iron plates... and boiling water... you didn't really do such things, did you?"
"This is hair-raising! If you kill so many cats, will you end up killing people later!"
"Oh, right! I remember seeing him come back about two months ago, and he had an argument with Great-Uncle San. Why did you argue with your grandfather that time?"
The villagers started asking him questions all at once until someone suddenly mentioned that he had been back two months ago and had had some sort of dispute with Great-Uncle San.
However, Great-Uncle San had not revealed this matter, so everyone did not know what they had argued about.
Upon hearing someone mention this, Mèng Chāojūn's expression went pale again, and his forehead began to sweat.
The Taoist priest, after hearing Wei Zhongjun's words, looked at Great-Uncle San's remains with a heavy expression, nodded to Wei Zhongjun, and said, "I will go now."
Having said that, he picked up his things and left.
Seeing him about to leave, the others suddenly panicked and hurriedly called out to him:
"Hey Master, if you leave, what will happen here? What if... what if when you are not here... Great-Uncle San makes some movement... then what should we do? We are all ordinary people; we have no way to handle this kind of stuff."
The Taoist priest, upon hearing this, immediately pointed at Wei Zhongjun and told them: "With this little friend here to oversee things, what are you afraid of? Moreover, only I can find the things she just mentioned; if I let you go, you might not be able to find where they are."
Seeing him point to Wei Zhongjun, everyone turned their heads to look at Wei Zhongjun with subtle expressions.
After Wei Zhongjun finished saying those words, she no longer circled Mèng Chāojūn but stood next to Great-Uncle San's remains.
She took a glance at the remains and her eyes flickered slightly.
After the Taoist priest left, everyone felt as if they had lost their backbone. They were afraid, yet someone had to watch over the place. Consequently, Wei Zhongjun, who had been named by the Taoist priest, immediately became everyone's psychological reliance.
Meanwhile, Yè Ān'ān, who had been dragged home by Yao Manhua, was locked in her room again. Yè Ān'ān kept calling out: "Great-great-grandmother... Great-great-grandmother..."
"Stop shouting! It's improper! Calling a little child 'Great-great-grandmother'! Your Great-great-grandmother is long dead. Who does she think she is to be a Great-great-grandmother!" Yao Manhua scolded her a few times from outside the door and warned: "Stay inside properly; if you run out again, be careful, or I'll break your legs!"
"Great-great-grandmother... Great-great-grandmother... um, Great-great-grandmother..." Yè Ān'ān just clawed at the window and called out to Wei Zhongjun. Suddenly, her complexion changed, and she recoiled from the window several steps, her eyes fixed tightly on the corner of the windowsill.
She saw a triangular, green snake head probing in from the edge of the window, its slender, forked tongue flicking in and out.
After the Green Snake seemed to observe the room and saw that only Yè Ān'ān was inside, it began to wiggle its body in.
"Mm... Ugh..." Yè Ān'ān began to retreat in fear. Watching the Green Snake's body slide into the room from the window, she instinctively ran to the bed, curled up in the corner, and cried out in fear and helplessness: "Snake! Snake... ugh... snake..."
The Green Snake crawled to the corner of the bed and moved onto the mattress. It was a very thin and long snake; although only as thick as a chopstick tip, its body was over a meter long.
After climbing onto the bed, it slowly crawled toward Yè Ān'ān.
Yè Ān'ān was terrified and had nowhere left to retreat, so she could only huddle in the corner of the bed, shaking and sobbing.
But the Green Snake did not crawl onto her; instead, it stopped half a meter in front of her, curled into a circle, and kept staring at her.
On the other side, Wei Zhongjun suddenly seemed to sense something and turned toward the direction of Old Meng's house. She softly said: "Maomao, go and catch that green snake for me. It keeps bothering An'an—it certainly has a lot of nerve!"
A light breeze brushed over her shoulder, as if something had just been resting there.