The package has assigned me way too many objects.

Hmm... there's been absolutely no change. I was wondering how such a dilapidated house could suddenly become brightly lit in the middle of the night.

But when Yan Liu's gaze shifted to the grove of trees next to the hot spring house, she began to doubt her own eyes.

There was a woman with her hair tied up squatting under a tree, gently stroking the little white fox's head. The woman stood up to leave, but perhaps noticing Yan Liu's gaze, she looked up.

The two women's eyes met in the vast darkness of the night.

Yan Liu was able to see her true appearance, and indeed, just as Chu Yinan had said, she was an extremely beautiful woman. Her attire, from her hair to her bathrobe, was impeccable. The width of the white inner lining revealing the collar was obsessively consistent. Her tranquil temperament blended seamlessly with the night. If it weren't for the white fox's swaying tail, Yan Liu felt that she might not have even noticed that there was a woman under the tree.

After exchanging nods, the woman in the kimono left. Yan Liu sat by the window and finished her water, thinking that the little brat might not have been sleepwalking last night.

The temperature rises before dawn, and the plump and beautiful young woman feels a bit hot.

The rustling of the sash made a sound as the yukata slid down her fair, smooth shoulders and arms to the ground.

Yan Liu returned to her bed and found that her daughter was hugging her younger brother too tightly, so she hugged them both and drifted off to sleep peacefully.

Chapter 111 Watching the Sunrise

The following morning, they changed their offensive.

Although he went to bed quite late yesterday, on the third day of this family trip, Chu Yinan's excellent biological clock regained control, and he woke up just before dawn, while Yan Liu and Bei Yutang were still asleep.

Chu Yinan tried to get up, but found himself being "suppressed". Bei Yutang was holding him on his right, and Yan Liu was holding the two siblings on his left. Under the layers of restraint, he struggled to get out of bed.

"I knew I was sweating so much yesterday that I had to take off my clothes. It must have been because Yu Tang and Aunt Liu were stuffing me up." Chu Yinan saw the bathrobe that Aunt Liu had tossed aside and knew what had happened.

He helped them tuck in their blankets. Although it was quite warm for a while at night, it would get cold again during the daytime until the sun came out and the earth gradually warmed up.

If they aren't covered up properly now, they'll catch a cold.

This small movement startled Bei Yutang awake. She probably thought her younger brother was sleepwalking, and with sleepy eyes, she pulled Chu Yinan back into her arms.

"What are you doing?" Chu Yinan asked in a low voice. Luckily, his sister's body was soft and fleshy, otherwise he might have bumped his head.

"Sleepwalking?" Bei Yutang said, squinting. This time she wasn't pretending to be asleep; she genuinely wasn't fully awake.

"I'm already awake, it's getting light. Want to come watch the sunrise with me? If you don't get up soon, you'll miss it." Chu Yinan had heard before that the most interesting place in the entire scenic area was the mountaintop.

Bei Yutang wanted to sleep a little longer. Putting aside the fact that she had specifically set an alarm last night to check if the little one was sleepwalking, even under normal circumstances, she would not get up this early.

That makes sense, since we've all come out to play, missing the sunrise here would be quite a pity.

"Okay, wait a minute, I'll get dressed... I'll come back to wash up after watching the sunrise. Chu Nan, go wake my mom up and ask her if she's coming." The slender girl sat up and took the clothes her younger brother handed her.

Having just been hugged by her sister, Chu Yinan instinctively sensed danger and rejected the suggestion.

"I'll go get you some bread and water for breakfast. You can ask Aunt Liu."

"Okay." Bei Yutang gently nudged her mother, who was still fast asleep. After a while without any response, she tried shaking her. "Mom, are you planning to get up?"

Yan Liu was also preoccupied with Chu Yinan's matter. Her consciousness was slightly awakened by her daughter's noise, and she pulled her over and hugged her.

"Mom, what are you doing so early in the morning? Are you trying to scare me?" Bei Yutang was startled by her mother's sudden attack.

Yan Liu pinched the cheek of the person in his arms, felt that something was wrong, squinted his eyes to check, and then closed his eyes again, but continued to hold Bei Yutang.

"Yu Tang, it's you? Where's Xiao Chunan? Did he sleepwalk away?"

"He's already up. He was sleeping soundly. Now he's getting ready to go to the top of the mountain to watch the sunrise. Do you want to come?"

sunrise?

Although Yan Liu really wanted to go, she simply didn't have the energy to get up. Getting up in the middle of the night when she was sound asleep affected her sleep quality.

"Forget it, I don't have the energy for it. You and Xiao Chunan go, and remember to take a beautiful picture."

"Okay, then let go, I'm getting up." Bei Yutang's face was pressed against her mother's chest.

She was carried around like this when she was little, and after Chu Yinan came, he was basically the one who suffered. Many years later, Bei Yutang experienced this treatment again.

Yan Liu did not respond and quickly went back to sleep. Bei Yutang guessed that she was probably like herself last night, worried that Chu Yinan had sleepwalked away and disappeared, so she got up in the middle of the night to check.

Otherwise, my mother wouldn't be so tired at this hour.

*

It's better to arrive at the right time than to arrive at the right moment.

Just as Bei Yutang and Chu Yinan reached the mountaintop, they were just at the moment of sunrise.

Neither of them knew how to take photos, but fortunately, modern mobile phones have moved beyond the rudimentary "point-and-shoot" mode. The moment you take out your phone and point the lens at the sunrise or sunset, it can recognize that you're about to photograph a natural landscape and intelligently take a picture for you.

Of course, it's perfectly fine to film it yourself. Even if the film is terrible, at least you'll feel like you've participated.

Chu Yinan doesn't really like taking photos because he was once falsely accused of taking pictures up a female senior's skirt with his phone. But who can he blame? He just wanted to take pictures of people walking by, but he happened to pass by a group of tall female seniors who were good at sports.

click-

The photo shoot is complete; we now have the "evidence" to commemorate this family trip.

Wearing sunglasses, Bei Yutang witnessed the sunrise gradually rising from the horizon, the sunlight changing from the pale white of dawn to a dazzling red.

"Chu Nan, aren't your eyes hurting? I've seen you staring at them for a long time."

"Young man, being able to stare directly at the sun is basic skill, don't make such a fuss," Chu Yinan said calmly, then suddenly cried out as if he had been blinded by the light, "Ouch, why is it so dazzling?"

He wouldn't tell his sister that, in fact, until the very last second, he had seen the sunrise that was visible from his height.

Damn, how can a tree be so tall? I should have climbed the stairs to the water tower to see it.

Mature people always plan ahead. Before his sister could laugh at him, Chu Yinan preemptively changed the subject:

"I suddenly remembered something. The yokai proprietress at the hot spring shop asked me to guess who the murderer was. I had a guess in my head, but I was so sleepy that I thought I had told her."

Bei Yutang sighed. How could she not know what her younger brother was thinking? She pulled Chu Yinan toward higher ground, saving face for his fragile pride, and did not expose him.

"Why don't you take a nap later and see if you can continue the dream and tell her the answer in your dream?"

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep. I took a long nap yesterday during the day."

Chu Yinan felt it was a pity. If he could continue the dream, he really wanted to extend it for a few more seconds and tell her the answer.

"Yutang, how's your research going? Have you got any inspiration yet?"

"So-so." Bei Yutang didn't take her own affairs to heart, but this wasn't modesty; it was genuinely because progress was mediocre.

Although I have come to the land and environment described in those literary works, it is actually completely different from the world mentioned in the books. This land has lost its soul.

It is beautiful, but all that remains is a faint sense of bleakness and desolation.

Even the sea is no longer the sea it once was.

"Um... I remembered a bit of the explanation I had in the dream back then, and I deduced a little bit of the story details, but since my memory is incomplete, would you like to hear it? This is a dream that this land entrusted to me! It's definitely inspiration."

"Okay, write it down. I'm afraid you'll get too carried away and I won't be able to remember it."

Chapter 112 Inducement

As Bei Yutang looked at the key points Chu Yinan had written down on his phone, inspiration flowed out like spring water after the ice melted in spring.

The environmental inspiration she sought from local customs and traditions was indeed no longer available, but Chu Yinan's ingenious ideas gave her another perspective to continue the story.

"Can I use the story you wrote as the framework for my writing?"

"It's possible, but the female lead has to be more charming. We don't want young girls; they're not mature enough... I mean, not deep enough in terms of thought." Chu Yinan wondered if this counted as helping her sister find all the inspiration she needed.

......

Just before heading home, Yan Liu sat on the floor checking her phone for messages, looking to see if there were any important messages she needed to handle when she got back from her two-day family trip.

However, in the cloud memo, she saw the text that Bei Yutang had uploaded to the cloud server today. What was written in it seemed to be the strange dream that Chu Yinan had mentioned.

The introduction to the story is largely the same, but some details are added in the later parts, although these details are also somewhat outrageous.

Long ago, the decline of the aristocracy forced him to transform his mansion into a hot spring resort. Despite his decline, powerful male nobles could still oppress merchants and commoners.

The villagers nearby knew one thing: the nobleman had forcibly married the most beautiful woman in Minagawa as his second wife, while his first wife had already died, leaving behind a young boy. His second wife came from a merchant family; her father, for the sake of his business, had given his daughter to the nobleman. However, the nobleman was a womanizer, and he also kept a blonde, blue-eyed maid from the Western Regions in white silk—his mistress.

Later, rumors spread through the nearby villages that a new, beautiful woman had arrived at the home of a nobleman who loved keeping foxes. This woman rarely left the hot springs; she was mysterious, always wearing a veil, and only appeared at night. The villagers began to speculate that she was a fox spirit, because the nobleman's foxes had become fewer.

The villagers were abuzz with gossip about the matter, but fearing the power of the male nobleman, they only discussed it in private, and even then, they were careful to keep an eye out for any servants of the nobleman's household nearby.

[Zhang San, a villager and a bit of a lecher, was very curious about what the new woman looked like. One day, he peeked through a paper window and caught a glimpse of the nobleman's new mistress changing clothes. Although he could only see her alluring silhouette illuminated by the lamplight, Zhang San was certain that this new mistress was just as beautiful as the nobleman's first wife. Considering that the vixen-like mistress possessed sorcery, the nobleman was probably completely bewitched by her.]

After the fox spirit arrived, the nobleman and his wife would quarrel from time to time. To call it quarreling might be an exaggeration; more often, the wife would mutter resentful complaints to herself.

After the vixen arrived, the noblewoman fell seriously ill and rarely went out. Zhang San occasionally saw her unsteadily going to the toilet. Meanwhile, the villagers, rising early to work in the fields, could hear the former beauty of Minagawa lamenting to herself, "How could that woman be so cruel?" "That woman is truly outrageous..."

During that time, some guests noticed blackish blood flowing in the hot spring room. Suspicious, they inquired about it, and the owner, a nobleman, explained that a fox had been killed by rats while asleep. He was heartbroken and planned to give his fox a proper burial in the back mountains. The guests then dismissed the matter.

Later, the faceless corpse was discovered, but by then, the male nobleman had already sold the hot spring resort. Someone saw him leave with the fox-woman and his servants; his wife was missing from his entourage. Meanwhile, the merchant Yuechi family, who took over the hot spring resort, discovered a dead body on the mountain behind the resort: a woman's corpse with her face gnawed apart by rats, a gruesome sight, her scalp completely torn away, not a single hair to be found.

This incident became an unsolved mystery, but the villagers speculated that the male nobleman had grown tired of his wife and left with his fox-spirit mistress, killing his disapproving wife in the process. The blood the traveler saw was clearly not from a fox killed by rats, but from the most beautiful woman in Minagawa; the fox's death was merely a cover-up.

The matter should have ended there, but many years later, a man who returned to the village from elsewhere mentioned it. He said he had seen the most beautiful woman in Minagawa while he was away. Time had passed, but her beauty remained. Only the nobleman was gone, and so was the vixen woman. All that remained by her side was the little boy left behind by the nobleman's ex-wife.

[Later, more details somehow came to light. It turned out the boy wasn't actually the son of the nobleman's first wife. His first wife was barren and infertile, so she adopted a baby boy with rosy lips and white teeth. Later, hearing that the general favored young boys, the nobleman planned to give the adopted son to the general as a plaything in exchange for higher status and power. However, this plan was temporarily shelved because he married the most beautiful woman in Minagawa, and this shelving lasted for a long time.]

Some say the nobleman is dead, along with his vixen mistress and his maid from the Western Regions. The most beautiful woman in Minagawa knows magic; from the moment she married into the nobleman's family, everything was a scheme, designed to justify taking the little boy away.

The stories in the memo were modified and edited using different colored brushstrokes, presumably with a simple polish by Bei Yutang.

The story concludes with Chu Yinan's explanation, in which he believes the murderer is the most beautiful woman in Minagawa, the second wife of the male nobleman, and even speculates on the method of the crime.

"I see. It feels like you've brought a folk tale back to reality in an instant. This little guy is really clever." Yan Liu nodded, praising him repeatedly.

She remembered the woman in the kimono she had seen outside the window in the middle of the night. She had originally told this story to Chu Yinan. Could it be that she wanted to get the answer from him?

"Let's just consider it a way of thanking her for taking care of Xiao Chu Nan late at night. I'll just give her the answers." Yan Liu took out paper and pen and copied Chu Yinan's answers onto the paper.

......

After lunch, this lunch was once again an exceptionally lavish affair.

"Thank you for your hospitality, sir. We haven't even ordered yet, and you've already brought such a sumptuous lunch!" Bei Yutang said, glancing at Chu Yinan, whose rascal brother was enjoying his meal immensely.

It was lemon and pork udon noodles. It's hard to imagine that Chu Yinan was able to get her favorite flavor from a "blind box" without ordering.

"Not at all, we haven't had anyone come here in a long time. I'm very grateful that you've graced us with your presence," the old man said with satisfaction.

"Oh, by the way, old man, is there a legend about the most beautiful woman in Minagawa here?" Bei Yutang asked. "I heard a similar story from my younger brother and I want to take it back and use it."

"There's no such legend. Use it if you want," the old man said, unconcerned.