Medicine Master Disciple’s Cultivation Notes

Chapter 151: The Problem Lies in the Memories

The illusory realm trial Hu Caiyi was about to undergo, Twin-Lock, was located along the banks of the Dragon Scale River.

Some distance from the spot where they had come out for a spring outing last time.

The surroundings here were green hills and clear water... or rather, they had been.

The northern frontier sky turned cold without warning.

When they had entered the great mine pit just a few days ago, the weather had still been reasonably warm.

In that short span of time, the hills had turned entirely yellow, and autumn had made itself fully known.

Autumn came quickly. Winter came even faster.

By the time you saw the leaves falling, the ground was already freezing over in the mornings, and the first snow might arrive at any moment.

The villages here still maintained the most traditional way of life, forming a striking contrast with the industrial structures of the great mine pit.

It felt something like stepping directly from a cyberpunk city of 2077 back into a primitive society.The abruptness of this visual shift was primarily attributable to the great cold tides.

The arrival of a great cold tide was not a simple matter of freezing a city under ice and thawing it out several hundred years later.

When the cold tide receded, it brought dramatic changes in hydrology and weather patterns. Floods and disasters would redirect rivers, turning vast stretches of once-fertile land into a vast watery expanse.

The cities of the past would be swallowed by the thawing earth.

Only the rare shelters built upon particular geological formations could survive the profound changes of thousands of years.

"There really isn't going to be any danger, is there?"

When it actually came down to it, the self-assured Hu Caiyi who had been confident right up to the moment of departure faltered again.

Her timid nature had not changed in the least.

Li Qiuchen had no choice but to use provocation. "Well, even my Tang young miss earned a first-class rating. You can decide for yourself what that means."

"She performs better than me to begin with!"

Hu Caiyi didn't want to accept this unpleasant reality, but she had no choice.

They ate together, slept under the same roof, played together every day. So why did she have better marks?

Were Rakshasa ghost brains and fox spirit brains structured differently?

"No danger."

Tang Xiaoxue said what she had to say simply and plainly. "Don't pay attention to whatever he tells you. Just go in and have fun."

It had to be said that her attitude was precisely what the illusory realm trials required.

As long as your composure remained intact, a lower exploration score had no real impact on the overall rating.

Unfortunately, almost nobody else had a mental state this well suited to the task.

"Fine, I'll go... but you two are not allowed to go far!"

Hu Caiyi raised her voice in warning. "If I come out and can't find you, then I'll... I'll..."

"No chicken for a month?"

"Absolutely not. Why would I punish myself?"

After considerable coaxing and reassurance, the young miss was finally sent inside.

The moment Hu Caiyi disappeared, Tang Xiaoxue grabbed Li Qiuchen's hand. "Let's go catch fish in the river!"

Could she please consider what the temperature was like before suggesting they wade into the river?

"Or take me to that underwater cave you mentioned last time?"

Li Qiuchen said helplessly, "I don't know the Water-Parting Technique. I can't get down there."

"Tsk."

Tang Xiaoxue was displeased.

"Then what are we supposed to do? We can't just stand here waiting for the annoying little fox, can we? I heard that the two of you while I was away..."

"Young miss."

"I know, I won't call her an annoying little fox to her face."

Tang Xiaoxue patted her small chest. "I'm not stupid. Look how many rude words I've learned, and I've never used a single one in front of outsiders."

Then don't learn them in the first place! What good does that do anyone?

Tang Xiaoxue had been behaving so well lately that Li Qiuchen had nearly forgotten she was fundamentally still a hyperactive young creature with a fierce streak. The moment the fox was away, her true nature came out.

He needed to give her something to do.

"There's something that has been on my mind for quite a while, actually. Do you remember that spring when we encountered the demon by the river?"

"Of course. What about it?"

"Why do you think the demon specifically wanted to kill that family?"

"Didn't the demon get driven off?"

"It was driven off, yes. But the questions from that time were never resolved. The senior brothers and sisters from the inner hall searched along the river for many days and came up with nothing."

"I seem to remember something about a ritual sacrifice."

"The villagers couldn't make it clear either. I think the investigation was looking in the wrong direction."

Li Qiuchen was not particularly interested in this matter himself, but he needed to give Tang Xiaoxue something to occupy her.

Tang Xiaoxue took the bait exactly as expected and said with curiosity, "So how are you planning to investigate?"

"I haven't decided yet. But I was thinking of going to the village where the victims lived and asking around."

"Do you know which village it is?"

"No, but I should be able to find out."

An entire family wiped out with only a young pair of siblings surviving. That kind of event would have been remarkable enough to cause talk even in a city, let alone a rural area.

Li Qiuchen asked a local and found that it wasn't far, just over ten li upstream.

Ten li was nothing to him now.

Before dark, Li Qiuchen brought Tang Xiaoxue to a place called Zhelo Hollow.

The name alone told you there were plenty of taimen fish in the area.

The village was small, appearing from the outside to contain only around fifty or so households.

In a place this small, as the saying went, if an old woman broke wind at the east end of the village, people at the west end could tell you the details.

So how had an entire household been conducting ritual sacrifices year after year without anyone in the village knowing anything about it?

Strictly speaking, nothing useful should be obtainable here anymore.

Li Qiuchen had a thorough understanding of the moral threshold of his senior brothers and sisters in the inner hall.

For all their composed and proper appearances in everyday life, when genuine need arose, none of them would have the slightest hesitation about using a soul-searching technique on an eighty-year-old grandfather.

He was referring, of course, to what Senior Brothers Wang and Du had done at Blue Stone Platform back in the day. And those two were comparatively courteous individuals.

Sure enough, after asking several people, everyone either claimed complete ignorance or offered only information that was already known.

Most accounts centered on the flood dragon causing trouble in the river and the Bai family keeping it under control.

When Li Qiuchen got to one elderly man, he suddenly thought of something and pressed further. "Do you still remember specifically when that flood dragon first started causing trouble in this river?"

The old man looked blank. "Can't remember that. Must be thirty or forty years at least. It's all a very long time ago."

"Back then, did every village along the river contribute to the offerings each year?"

"Well... not exactly..."

The old man's hesitation made Li Qiuchen aware of a faint irregularity.

"It should have been a collective offering."

"What do you mean, should have been? Surely you'd remember something as significant as that?"

"It's been so long. I just can't recall."

That shouldn't be something a person couldn't recall.

Because, looking at the conditions of this village, preparing the three sacrificial animals every year would already be an extravagance.

The three sacrificial animals referred to pig, ox, and sheep.

Pig and sheep were manageable enough. But killing an ox every year?

Every village killing an ox?

In a small fishing village like Zhelo Hollow, there were no fewer than fifty to a hundred similar villages within a hundred li along the river.

A hundred oxen every year?

All right, even if they could somehow raise the money for that.

And when it came to the demand for a boy and a girl, did every village contribute a pair of children every year?

That was clearly impossible.

The logical alternative was that all the fishing villages had pooled resources together, the children were chosen by lottery, and this kind of sacrifice happened once a year collectively.

That sounded more plausible.

But an undertaking like that would require dozens of riverside villages to coordinate and deliberate together. How could anyone genuinely not remember the details?

Carrying this question with him, Li Qiuchen visited a few more elderly residents.

He found that every single one of them had the same vague, uncertain recollection on this particular point.

They could confirm that it had happened, but who had organized it, what the process had been, they had no concept of any of it whatsoever.

Even when some of them managed to produce one or two details, cross-referencing revealed the accounts didn't match.

After making the rounds, Li Qiuchen went to the village headman's house and put a question to him.

"If a flood dragon caused trouble again and demanded child sacrifices, what would you do?"

"Well, we'd have to report it to the authorities."

"Why didn't you report it to the authorities back then?"

"Can't remember. Maybe we figured it wouldn't help."

"Didn't you consider finding an expert to subdue the demon?"

"We didn't know anyone like that..."

"Then who was it that organized the riverside villagers to carry out those sacrifices back then?"

"Can't remember."

Again, can't remember.

"How many people in your family?"

"Eight."

"Your eldest son is already married?"

"He is. Two children already."

"Is your daughter-in-law from around here?"

"No, she's from Shuilanzi Village."

"Did your eldest son have any serious illness as a child?"

"Let me think... he did, actually. Nearly didn't pull through."

"How old was he at the time?"

"Three years old."

Confirmed. The village headman's memory was intact. His memories concerning himself and his own life showed no irregularities, no signs of age-related decline.

Only when the conversation touched on that particular matter did everything become vague and uncertain.

The moment Li Qiuchen pressed for specific details, the man could recall nothing whatsoever.

The feeling was exactly like conversing with a scripted NPC in an illusory realm trial.

"There's something I'm not sure I've mentioned to you."

Moving to a spot where no one could overhear, Li Qiuchen said quietly to Tang Xiaoxue, "When I killed young Master Liu back then, I noticed something off. His memories seemed to have developed a problem. He appeared to have mistaken me for someone else."

At that time, Li Qiuchen had not yet entered the inner hall's illusory realm trials or earned two consecutive first-class ratings.

No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't work out how words like genius or fortuitous encounter could possibly be connected to himself.

At the time he had simply assumed young Master Liu had suffered a mental breakdown.

But considered alongside the clues gathered here...

"You mean those people's memories were altered?"

Tang Xiaoxue said, puzzled, "What would be the point of altering their memories and fabricating a story out of nothing?"

Who could say. Perhaps someone with too much time on their hands.

Li Qiuchen stood at the river's edge for a while in thought, then turned and asked, "If we're looking for the root cause, doesn't the origin of this whole affair trace back to the Bai family? If they had simply killed the flood dragon and left no loose ends back then, would that family have had to die?"

Tang Xiaoxue looked blank. "How can this possibly be traced back to the Bai family?"

Li Qiuchen shook his head. "Ordinarily most people wouldn't think that way, of course. But there's always the possibility that some people's reasoning runs along different lines."

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