Netherworld Painted Skin Scroll

Chapter 10 Stove
In the middle of the night, Xue Baoping vaguely heard a "bang" in the yard, which frightened her. She sat up in bed and listened outside, but there was no other movement, only the crickets in the crack of the threshold of the outer room slowly chirped again, so she went back to sleep, thinking that perhaps a wild boar from outside the town had pushed the door open.

When it was dawn, she yawned and opened the back door of the room, only to find that the stove had burned down.

The wing room had doors at the front and back. She usually went in through the back door when she was in the yard to move in some firewood, food and the like. Later on, she would dismantle the four front door panels and put small stools on them, and they would become four tables for guests to eat at "Xue's Restaurant".

The stove is on the right side of the entrance to the wing room.

When she was over three years old and just able to remember things, her parents were still alive. At that time, the Xue family store was doing well, and the stove was not on this side, but on the left side of the door. One day, when her father opened the door in the morning, he saw a Taoist priest sleeping outside the door, with dishevelled hair and dirty face, and a sore on his neck. He carried the Taoist priest back home, took good care of him for half a month, fed him some homemade sugar water and herbs, and finally saved him.

After the Taoist recovered, he claimed that he was worshipping Siming Zhenjun, also known as the Kitchen God. He saw that Xue's shop was a food store, and it must be the Kitchen God that was worshipped, so he collapsed outside the door and asked for help. In order to thank her father for saving his life, he helped her family check the stove, and then instructed her father to build another stove, which is the one we have now.

Taoist priests said that when people worship the Kitchen God, they often throw food or living things into the stove as sacrifices, but this is not very effective. The real offering should be to keep the stove fire burning, so that the incense can penetrate the nine heavens and reach the wonderful place where the God of Destiny is.

Therefore, after the new stove was installed, the fire in Xue's shop never went out. This naturally consumed a lot of firewood, but the business really got better. When Xue Baoping was six years old, her family rebuilt the house - the east-west room and the blue-tiled house where she sleeps now were built at that time.

But the good times didn't last long. Her father got lung disease after the new house was built, and soon her mother was infected. It took more than half a year, and the family's money was exhausted, and both died. Fortunately, Jinshui Town had been in turmoil for a while more than 30 years ago. There are many empty houses in the town now, so no one coveted her remote house in the east of the town. She supported herself and grew up until she was 17 years old.

Xue Baoping remembered her father's words before he died. Her father said that the Taoist priest said that offering incense to the Kitchen God without extinguishing it is good for the present and future generations. Even if a person dies, his soul can follow the incense to the wonderful land above the nine heavens. But this kind of offering cannot be easily interrupted, otherwise if the soul of a person is halfway to the sky and the stove fire suddenly goes out, then he will be neither up nor down, and will be subjected to the strong winds above the nine heavens forever, and will not be able to reincarnate.

So Xue Baoping continued to keep the stove burning for more than ten years, until today -

A corner of the stove collapsed, and broken bricks and yellow earth were scattered on the ground. Because of the big hole, the firewood that could have been simmering all night had long gone out, and white ash flew out due to the heat, and the ground looked like snow.

She stared blankly for a while, then slowly leaned against the door and sat on the ground with her knees hugged, wondering whether her father and mother had reached the wonderful realm above the nine heavens.

After a while, she wiped her eyes, stood up, and went to the stove to pick up the broken bricks. Of course, she couldn't open the door today, but she just thought that she didn't plan to open the door in the future.

Before her parents passed away, they were unable to teach her any skills. Three years ago, she felt that the stove was burning, so she put up the board of "Xue's Store". But she only knew how to cook some melons and vegetables, and even noodle soup could only make unripe noodles. She thought that adding more meat and oil would make it more fragrant, but she herself had to eat bran and vegetables occasionally to fill her stomach, so meat and oil were naturally not available all the time. Therefore, only some merchants who occasionally passed by from other places would come here to fill their stomachs. The locals were too lazy to patronize. Since the store was collapsed, it would be better to go out of town to cut firewood and sell it, and maybe they would live a better life than now.

She was sneezing and picking up the broken bricks, and then she saw something in the white ash.

It was golden and about the size of a soybean. She initially thought it was melted copper, but after picking it up from the ashes and blowing on it, she discovered that it was more like a small cocoon. The outside of the cocoon seemed to be covered with a layer of skin, but it was burnt in the fire, revealing a bit of gold underneath. She took it to the door and looked at it in the light of the morning sun, and could clearly see the exposed layer of gold -

It seemed that under the leather, there was another layer of extremely fine copper or gold wires, and inside, it seemed to be filled with fine silk threads. Xue Baoping was stunned for a moment, and wanted to take the thing to the water tank to wash it. But at this time, the door panel in front was not removed, and the room was still a little dim. She accidentally tripped over the firewood on the ground at the water tank, and reached out to support the stove, and the little thing fell into a small basin of male pheasant blood next to it. She quickly fished it out, put it in a bowl, and scooped some water in to wash it clean.

When clean water was poured in, the chicken blood on the thing began to swell at the bottom of the bowl. Xue Baoping was about to rub it clean with her fingers when she suddenly found that the blood was sucked into the small ball through the hole where the copper wire was exposed. She was stunned for a moment, but in this moment of distraction, she saw the small ball suck up twice in a row, swallowing all the blood like a fish sucking water.

This is a living thing.

Xue Baoping took a few quick breaths, turned around and slowly sat on the stove, looking at the little thing in the bowl from the side.

She thought of her parents, the yard of her childhood, the locust flowers in April, the red stove, the hot steam and the voices in this room in the past. Then she wishfully thought that this little thing, whether it was a moth cocoon or some other small insect, might have been given to her by her parents through the Kitchen God to keep her company.

Thinking of this, she felt a little relieved, so she slowly cleaned up while looking at the little thing soaked in water. Seeing that it had absorbed all the blood at the bottom of the bowl, she broke off a branch from the firewood and dipped it in some chicken blood and dripped it in.

Just like that, when the house was almost cleaned up, she found that the thing seemed to have grown a little bigger. The black color of the originally burnt area became lighter, and the broken area that previously exposed the gold wire underneath was also covered with a very thin layer of pink film, as if new skin had grown.

At the same time, she also knew why the stove collapsed - she finally picked up a blue brick from the ash pile. It seemed that there were some runes carved on the outside, but the inside was hollow and divided into two layers, which looked like a small house. However, no matter what was originally placed inside, it was now completely burned and broken into two pieces.

Xue Baoping thought that this might have been put in there by the Taoist priest when he instructed his parents to build a new stove, just like when ordinary people renovate their houses, they would bury talismans to ward off evil spirits in the beams or foundations. However, this brick was hollow, so it might not be fire-resistant. After burning for more than ten years, it finally exploded and collapsed the stove.

So she did not pile the two broken bricks with the other broken bricks, but carried them back into the house carefully like the bowl of water, placed them on the windowsill, and then went to the yard to fetch water.

After a while, ripples appeared in the bowl and a bubble came out of the small thing - Li Wuxiang exhaled.

His mind was in a state of confusion, his consciousness was like a ball of veil that had been curled up. He vaguely knew that he had escaped from the prison and the sea of ​​fire, but he was not sure where he was.

The only thing that was certain was hunger, a hunger that surpassed everything and reason. A few drops of blood could not relieve his hunger at all, and he wanted more flesh and blood. But another voice and will suppressed his instinct, telling him to curl up again temporarily, anxiously waiting for the opportunity to grow and eat.

　This is the first update.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)