Li Shentan decided not to listen to the women gossiping anymore. Instead, he sat a ways away and rested his chin on his hands while waiting eagerly for the garlic paste in the cauldron to dry.
Initially, he thought he would not have to do any work himself. But by the evening, the situation had changed.
Due to the drying of the garlic paste, the bonfire party tonight was canceled.
When the women saw it had turned dark, they started bidding farewell to Lian Yi one by one. “Chief, I have to go home and wait for my ah’zhu to jump in through the window…”
“Chief, I just saw my ah’zhu entering through the window. He’s waiting for me right now.”
After a while, all of the women left to go back to have their happy time with their ah’zhus. Only Lian Yi, Li Shentan, and Little Liren were left.
When Little Liren saw that something was amiss, she excused herself by saying she wanted to go back to her room to sleep.
When only Lian Yi and Li Shentan were left sitting next to the cauldron, Li Shentan could sense a green glow coming from her eyes, a terrifying wolf gazing at him.
Lian Yi’s large eyes were blinking and staring intently at Li Shentan. She looked like she was about to carry Li Shentan into the house.
“Ahem, I’ll go and flip the garlic paste in the cauldron.” Li Shentan got up and ran over to the large cauldron. He picked up the shovel and started stirring the paste inside.
He kept wondering what was with this situation. He had been kind enough to help treat the villagers’ illnesses, but the entire group of women who were working ended up heading off to have fun, leaving him, a legendary superhuman, to flip the garlic paste in the cauldron!
Lian Yi’s voice came from behind him. “Are you that afraid of me? Do you know how many people in this village want to be my ah’zhu? But I don’t fancy them.”
Li Shentan did not even dare to turn around and answer her. All he wanted to do was flip the garlic paste.
However, he heard Lian Yi say, “The Scarlet Gu is very difficult to refine. The worm’s body is as thin as a silver needle, so it’s very difficult to find them. After finding one, I have to refine it for 49 days before I can successfully refine it into a gu worm. During the 49 days of refinement, I have to take care of it every hour and feed it blood. In other words, I haven’t had a good sleep for the past 49 days, all so that I could use it to find a lover.
“When I was young, my mother told me that if I met someone I like, I should open the window and let them in. If I didn’t like them, I should just keep looking for someone else. But I don’t think that’s the proper way. It doesn’t suit my style. I should continue liking the person I fancy, not keep cycling through them.
“But Mother said that I was too naive. All men are fickle, no exception. The sincerity that I’ve put in will definitely be let down. Later, when I grew up, I realized that some of my older sisters’ lovers became other people’s lovers after just a few days. It was just as Mother had said. All men really are fickle.
“So I made up my mind to find the Scarlet Gu and use it to search for someone who’ll be loyal to me.”
Li Shentan listened quietly to the words and suddenly felt that Lian Yi was actually quite cute. At the very least, she was cuter than most of the people he had met before.
Hypnotism was about making others surrender their subconsciousness. When Li Shentan first mastered this power bestowed by Heaven, he enjoyed hypnotizing the psychiatric hospital’s guards and making them reveal their darkest thoughts.
Such experiences really broadened Li Shentan’s horizons. The dark thoughts he heard were all the darkest things that festered within the guards’ minds.
Later, he became a little disappointed in human nature and stopped playing those little games.
In Li Shentan’s opinion, the human heart was the most fragile thing in the world. It was precisely because he had seen too much darkness that he found it a little piercing when he saw the ray of light that Chen Wudi was. Li Shentan was touched by his warmth.
So it turned out there were still people in the world who remained true to themselves and were always a bright light for others.
Li Shentan had promised Ren Xiaosu that he would be a good person not only because he wanted to be friends with Ren Xiaosu but also because he really wanted Chen Wudi to come back.
Right now, Li Shentan felt that Lian Yi’s longing for love was very pure.
Li Shentan suddenly said, “I’m not afraid of you, nor do I hate you. It’s just that I still have some unfinished business to attend to, so I can’t stay here.”
“Where are you going?” Lian Yi asked.
“The Prosperous Northwest,” Li Shentan said with a smile as he turned around.
The flame in the fireplace was burning in the house not far away. When the light shone out through the door and illuminated Li Shentan’s body, his mid-length white hair swayed in the breeze. When he turned around and smiled at Lian Yi, she could not help but say, “You look really handsome. Even without your strange black outfit, you still look really handsome.”
Sensing that it was a good opportunity, Li Shentan said with a smile, “Why don’t you come with me to the—”
Lian Yi interrupted him and said in a serious tone, “But to prevent you from leaving, I have to find an opportunity to implant the Scarlet Gu in you sooner rather than later.”
Li Shentan’s expression immediately crumbled. “You’re ruining the moment!”
“When you become my ah’zhu, the entire village will be yours. After you learn how to refine corpses, there’s still a gold corpse in the village waiting for you to take control of it,” Lian Yi figured. “At that time, all of Xiuzhuzhou will also belong to you. In any case, outsiders won’t dare to come here due to the noxious night air.”
“Forget it, I’ll just continue flipping the garlic paste.” Li Shentan sighed. ‘I only wanted us to join the Prosperous Northwest, but I didn’t expect that you only want…‘
After the garlic paste was dried, Lian Yi, who had been waiting, fell asleep on the ground. She was very quiet.
Lian Yi was a little different compared to the daytime. Awake, Lian Yi was full of vigor and exuded a unique energy. But asleep, Lian Yi was as quiet and obedient as a rabbit.
Li Shentan stared at her for a while before glancing away. He started scraping off the dried garlic paste in the cauldron and transferring it onto the millstone to grind it into powder with the roller.
He gave it some thought before eventually taking off his jacket and putting it over Lian Yi so she would not catch a cold.
When dawn broke, the village women came out to work again in high spirits. Li Shentan and Lian Yi acted as though nothing had happened and instructed everyone on how to distill the homebrew wine multiple times.
The alcohol content of the homebrew wines in the village was very low, with none of them undergoing a second distillation. Therefore, they did not meet the requirements for soaking the garlic powder.
According to Hu Shuo’s instructions, they had to turn the homebrew wine into a strong liquor first before pouring the garlic powder in and soaking it in a low concentration allicin solution.
During the distillation process, Li Shentan watched numbly as the older women could not help sneaking a few sips of the wine. Sip by sip, they ended up having too much to drink. And then, they dragged their ah’zhus back to their houses in broad daylight.
Li Shentan thought to himself, ‘What the hell is going on? The people in this village are way too laid-back!‘
But to be honest, it was not really their fault. The aroma of the wine that wafted out during the distillation process was so enticing they wanted to have a taste of it.
However, the women in the village had never drunk such strong liquor before, so they got dizzy after a few sips.
It was not only those women. Even Lian Yi could not resist the temptation of the liquor. After a few sips, she went into her house and fell asleep.
Before entering the house, she even reminded Li Shentan not to run away and that the gold corpse elder was standing guard at the entrance of the village. If he tried to run away, the old man would beat him up.
When Li Shentan heard this, he nearly dropped the wine jug in his hand onto the ground.
What the hell!
