Chai Xiaomi lifted the hem of her skirt, taking large strides as she chased after Song Yueyao toward a mountain ravine drum tower.
Seeing Song Yueyao's figure dart through the main doors, she followed closely behind without a moment's hesitation.
The moment she lifted her foot to cross the threshold—
A blindingly intense white light rushed at her face, instantly swallowing her whole.
Chai Xiaomi squeezed her eyes shut, instinctively raising a hand to shield her face.
The next second.
The crisp chirping of cicadas pierced the silence, flooding her ears.
A faint, almost imperceptible scent of green bamboo floated in the air, crisp and clean.
Chai Xiaomi slowly opened her eyes.
...Where is this?
She looked around, surprised to find herself standing in the Voodoo Clan village where Wu Li lived.
But she had just been in front of the drum tower in the dead of night. How did she return here in the blink of an eye, and in broad daylight no less?
'Youtiao, Youtiao!'
Chai Xiaomi called out in her mind a few times but received no response.
Even the system had disappeared.
The blazing sun hung high in the sky, scorching the earth.
A noisy commotion suddenly came from a distance, faintly mixed with a few words she had become exceptionally familiar with lately:
"Bastard."
Chai Xiaomi's heart tightened.
She immediately turned and hurried toward the source of the sound.
The closer she got, the clearer the curses became; they seemed to be complaining about someone working too slowly.
She hid in a bamboo grove and saw a small, solitary figure working busily in the clearing before the sacrificial altar.
He looked to be only a three or four-year-old boy, yet he lacked the plump innocence typical of his age.
He was shockingly thin, almost skin and bones. His messy hair was puffed on his head like dry grass, and he wore a loose, ill-fitting old Miao garment that hung emptily over his frail frame.
At this moment, he was holding a heavy stack of clay bowls, carefully placing them on the offering table one by one.
He was simply too short and too small.
With every bowl he placed, he had to strain to stand on his tiptoes and stretch out his thin arms just to barely reach the tabletop.
His body swayed occasionally, like a fragile reed in the wind.
However, despite his young age, he was exceptionally focused on his task.
The bowls were meticulously aligned with one another, arranged in perfect order.
He seemed completely deaf to the harsh laughter and curses from the group of children behind him, just keeping his head down and his lips pursed, silently and stubbornly finishing the work at hand.
Chai Xiaomi watched this scene in disbelief, her heart twisting fiercely as if wrung by an invisible hand.
Such a tiny Little One.
It was bad enough that he was being ordered around to do chores, but they actually dared to complain he wasn't fast enough?
"Can you hurry up, you little bastard!"
The cursing rang out again. The older boy leading the group seemed completely enraged by the little boy's silence.
He rushed forward in a few steps, raising his leg to viciously kick that thin little back, sending the boy tumbling to the ground.
The little boy was kicked down like a withered leaf. The clay bowls in his arms crashed down, shattering all over the ground.
He fell into the messy pile of broken porcelain, the sharp shards slicing open his palms.
Gushing blood instantly poured from his hands.
"Oh no! The little bastard broke all the sacrificial bowls!" The boy who had kicked him immediately started yelling at the top of his lungs, his voice dripping with malicious excitement. "Go tell the Clan Chief and the High Priest! Let him get a good punishment!"
"You lying little brat! You're the one who caused it!"
Chai Xiaomi ground her teeth in anger, jumping out and roaring at the top of her lungs.
However, after she finished shouting.
Nothing happened.
She suddenly realized that none of these people could see her, nor could they hear her speak.
No one cared about the little boy's injuries. The crimson blood reflected in the eyes of the older children seemed like a victorious carnival just for them.
They ran off laughing excitedly, scrambling over each other to report a crime that wasn't even his.
Only that small figure remained, curled up motionless in the middle of the ruins.
Only after the noisy crowd faded away did he finally move.
The little boy raised his bleeding hands and stared blankly for a moment. Just when Chai Xiaomi thought he was going to clean his wounds, he instead started gathering the shards on the ground.
She walked slowly to him and looked down at him for a long time.
Such a small body, so well-behaved, so adorable, yet so quietly heartbreaking.
He picked up the shards very carefully, stacking each piece in order from largest to smallest. He was truly a good boy, taking everything he did so seriously.
Chai Xiaomi suddenly crouched down and reached out, wanting to gently rub his head.
But her fingertips passed straight through the tips of his hair, touching only emptiness as her intangible hand phased right through him.
She froze, then after a long while, sighed and asked somewhat sadly, "Why aren't you crying, Little One."
Holding it in will make you sick; only by crying it out will your heart feel a little lighter.
The little boy's picking up motion paused slightly.
Chai Xiaomi instinctively shrank her neck, almost thinking he had heard her, but he just lifted his head and gently pushed aside the messy hair hanging in front of his eyes.
On his dirty little face, only those heterochromatic eyes were clean.
So close at hand, they were as clear as two deep pools untouched by the mortal world, reflecting the daylight, and also reflecting the currently stunned her.
Chai Xiaomi froze in place.
It was Wu Li.
More accurately, it was Wu Li (child version).
Could this be the villain's childhood that was never mentioned in the original novel?
Chai Xiaomi watched helplessly as little Wu Li was dragged to the punishment platform.
Unwarranted charges were carelessly pinned on him, and no one spoke a word in his defense.
The Clan Chief looked around, his voice cold and hard: "Is there anyone willing to take the punishment for Wu Li?"
The entire area was dead silent, save for the suppressed snickers floating through the crowd.
"Twenty lashes, you will have to bear them alone." The Clan Chief's gaze fell back on him. "Do you admit your wrong?"
Wu Li's voice was childish, yet it carried an aloofness that shouldn't belong to his age:
"I know I was wrong, Grandpa."
"Call me Clan Chief!" the old man rebuked furiously. "Your mother, as the Holy Maiden, had no sense of shame. She had an illicit affair with an outsider and gave birth to you, this vile spawn, breaking the lineage of the Holy Maidens! I have no such despised daughter, and I certainly have no such grandson!"
The long thorny whip lashed down viciously!
Wu Li bit his lip tightly, not making a single sound.
"Stop it!" Chai Xiaomi was burning with anxiety. She fiercely spread her arms to block in front of Wu Li. "He's so small, he'll be beaten to death!"
But it was all in vain.
Under the apathetic and even gleeful gazes of the onlookers, the shadow of the whip fell again and again.
Wu Li's thin back was soon torn open, dripping with blood, with hardly an inch of intact skin left.
Until the twenty lashes were finished.
He finally couldn't hold on any longer. His body slumped forward heavily, and he completely passed out.
Chai Xiaomi couldn't imagine what kind of tenacious willpower was hidden within someone of this age to withstand blow after blow without even a single muffled groan.
With the scorching sun directly overhead, he was abandoned on the punishment platform to bake in the heat.
No one treated his wounds, and no one even gave him a sip of water.
Chai Xiaomi knelt beside him, vainly trying to use her body to shield him from the vicious sunlight, only to hate the fact that she didn't even have a shadow.
She felt the sheer helplessness of a wandering ghost.
Just then, she saw several white worms slowly crawling out from those hideous wounds.
They squirmed and fed amidst the flesh and blood, and in turn, the bleeding gradually stopped, and the skin began to heal at a visible rate.
It turned out that the Crimson Blood Silkworm had been planted inside his body so early on.
Feeding on his flesh and blood, it was, in a way, a blessing in disguise, as it allowed his wounds to heal at an incredible speed.
Chai Xiaomi stared blankly, suddenly recalling that Wu Li had just addressed the clan leader as Grandpa.
She looked curiously toward the direction in which the clan leader had left.
Earlier, she had overheard someone in the dispersing crowd mention that the clan leader was going to speak with the High Priest.
This was not the first time Chai Xiaomi had heard the title of High Priest; it seemed to represent the highest authority within the Wugu Tribe.
