Ning Yitao didn't hesitate for a moment and stepped right in.
Duan Qinghuai suddenly reached out to stop her and asked, "How about I go first?"
"It's okay. I'll do it." Ning Yitao flashed him a smile.
Duan Qinghuai closely followed behind her, still a bit worried.
After Duan Qinghuai came out of the illusion, he always unconsciously wanted to stand in front of Ning Yitao and shoulder all the dangers.
But Ning Yitao had always been refusing. Duan Qinghuai lowered his head dejectedly.
Ning Yitao moved quickly and had already reached the pitch - black area. It was so dark around that they could only hear each other's breathing in the silence.
But her steps didn't falter. Chu Zhiyuan took the rear position, while Xie Qian walked in the middle.
When everyone saw the light, they noticed a small figure standing at the exit.
Xie Qian widened her eyes and took a closer look. The figure was her son, Di Sumu.
Seeing her child unharmed, the fear in her memory after Di Sumu was abducted was replaced by joy. She excitedly rushed forward.
Just as she was about to touch Di Sumu, a powerful force from behind pulled her back. The force was so strong that Xie Qian felt as if she was hanging in mid - air.
A white light flashed before her eyes. A sword slashed down at the spot where she had just been standing. Her hair, which hadn't had time to swing back with her movement, was completely cut off when it touched the sword's edge.
Looking at the soft, short hair floating to the ground, Xie Qian felt a chill on her neck.
"If no one had pulled me back in time, it would be my neck on the ground now," Xie Qian said with a pale face. Her nerves were tense to the extreme, and only then did she feel scared.
Ning Yitao pulled Xie Qian back and threw her backward. As they passed each other, Ning Yitao said, "Don't run around."
Chu Zhiyuan caught Xie Qian.
Looking up, they saw that this underground room was only lit by a few dim light bulbs. It was extremely spacious.
After coming down the stairs, the first thing that caught their eyes was a table at the end of the room filled with memorial tablets.
This was the ancestral hall of Di Village, and all the memorial tablets were of the Di family.
In the very center of the ancestral hall, there was a golden statue carved in the likeness of Ye Zheng for the Di family to worship.
It was really ridiculous that they had given the ancestral hall to someone who was about to massacre the whole village.
Ye Zheng had brought quite a few children to the ancestral hall, and all the children in the village were here.
Ye Zheng was hiding behind the group of children. The children she had just captured tonight were locked in cages. They hadn't been domesticated yet and were too noisy.
This place gave Ye Zheng a great sense of security. She even dared to provoke Ning Yitao:
"It'll soon be too late. At the full - moon time, everyone in the formation will die. They'll all pave the way for me. Then no one will be able to stop me. I'll regain my beauty, and I'll achieve immortality."
As she spoke, Ye Zheng showed a crazy and obsessed expression.
The row of children standing in front of Ye Zheng were just like Di Sumu, expressionless, emotionless, with dull eyes and numb looks.
Ye Zheng was acting like a madman, but the children showed no reaction at all.
In their dazed gazes, there was a kind of mechanicalness and slowness. These soulless children made people can't help but worry about them.
They were like puppets, only obeying Ye Zheng's orders.
What Ye Zheng didn't expect was that Ning Yitao wasn't in a hurry at all.
She calmly found a chair for herself and sat down leisurely.
Ning Yitao lowered her head and fiddled with the bracelet on her hand. For no apparent reason, she started chatting with Ye Zheng about something else.
"Guess how that A Lai is doing now?"
Ye Zheng's calm expression changed for a moment, and then she said indifferently:
"Since he was unable to protect me, I don't care what happens to him later. A loser. Even if he comes back, I'll kill him without mercy."
Ning Yitao had a smile on her lips. "Oh? So you don't care?"
Her fingertips unconsciously tapped on the chair. "Indeed, you don't care. The one who should care should be Ye Jin."
The smile on Ning Yitao's face widened as she looked at Ye Zheng and said, "Right, Ye Jin? You went to so much trouble to save A Lai. You shouldn't want him to die again, right?"
Ye Zheng's face turned alternately black and white. She gritted her teeth and said, "What do you mean? Ye Jin has been dead for a long time. What on earth are you talking nonsense about?"
Ning Yitao shrugged. "Okay, if you say she's dead, then she's dead."
Ye Zheng was confused by her ever - changing attitude and didn't know what to do.
Ning Yitao clapped her hands behind her.
Chu Zhiyuan behind her carried a small wooden box over and handed it to Ning Yitao. It seemed quite heavy.
Ye Zheng stared at Ning Yitao warily, afraid that she would make a move the next second. But she didn't believe that Ning Yitao would attack this row of innocent children.
These children protected her safety. They would protect her even if it meant sacrificing their own lives. With them around, Ye Zheng wasn't worried about her safety at all.
She firmly believed that Ning Yitao wouldn't make a move, but what she didn't know was that in her memory, it was Ye Qianmo, not the current Ning Yitao.
Ning Yitao slowly opened the lid of the wooden box. She leaned in to take a look at the contents inside.
She looked at Ye Zheng with a half - smile and seemed to be in deep thought. After a moment, she sighed. "Alas, it's a pity."
As she spoke, she reached into the wooden box and took out a head.
It was A Lai's head.
His body had been chopped into several pieces by Ning Yitao and thrown into the Soul - Washing Pond so that his body couldn't be restored and put back together.
A Lai's head had been cut off by Ning Yitao and brought with her. His mouth was gagged so he couldn't speak.
Ning Yitao was really curious as to why the self - awareness of the living dead A Lai wasn't affected at all.
It was just that his intelligence had remained at the level of a child. He was very stubborn but also very sensible.
In the cave, Ning Yitao asked him why he would obey Ye Zheng's orders.
If he was willing to talk, Ning Yitao promised to fulfill one of his wishes.
Only then did A Lai fall back into his memories.
It had been a long time, so long that A Lai was almost forgetting that her name was Ye Zheng. It had just become a kind of obsession. He only knew that she looked like his mother, but his mother was nowhere to be seen.
**********
A Lai still remembered that when he was very young, his mother and the current witch were sisters. Aunt Ye Zheng often came to his home to find his mother, Ye Jin.
But every time Aunt Ye Zheng came to the house, she would storm into his mother's room angrily and cry, saying things he didn't understand.
Aunt Ye Zheng cried very loudly. Even though his mother had closed the door tightly, he could still hear her cries.
She would say that another fox - like woman had seduced the master, that the master had beaten her, and that the master disliked her for being old and haggard...
These were the same few sentences every day. Little A Lai could almost recite them by heart. But when he asked his mother what they meant, he was scolded for eavesdropping on adults' conversations.
But it was Aunt Ye Zheng who had spoken too loudly.
When did his mother and Aunt Ye Zheng fall out?
He remembered this very clearly.
It was on a rainy night. When his mother said she was going to have a little sister for him, his mother's belly was so big. She held A Lai's hand gently and said:
"A Lai, soon you'll have a little sister. Just like the child of Sister Yiyi. Will our A Lai become a brave and responsible elder brother?"
A Lai immediately jumped up from the bed. "I want to be a brave elder brother to protect my sister. I'm sure I'll be the best elder brother in the world."
A Lai smiled brightly.
In the middle of the night, A Lai was in his dream. Everyone in the mansion was bustling in and out of Ye Jin's room. The mansion was brightly lit, and the noise woke A Lai up.
He rubbed his eyes and got out of bed. He saw a lot of people gathered in front of his mother's room.
He wanted to go into his mother's room, but he was stopped by his anxious father. The servants around were all saying that men weren't allowed to go in and see those dirty things.
But that was his mother. How could she be dirty?
A Lai struggled to break free from his father's embrace and crawled into his mother's room through a small hole he had dug before.
"No one will find me now," A Lai thought to himself proudly.
He didn't dare to be discovered by the other servants, or he would definitely be driven out of the room.
He hid inside the cabinet, squatting there. He watched the people coming and going through the crack. The sound of his mother's cries made A Lai feel heart - ache.
He wanted to wait until the servants left before coming out.
But instead, he waited until Aunt Ye Zheng and an old woman were talking about something.