A Jiu paused slightly.
No wonder the yield wasn't as much as the first planting, it turned out to be because of this reason.
"I don't care if the fruits grown have spiritual energy or not. As long as they can be exchanged for grain and I can eat my fill, that's enough."
"Whatever you say, whatever you say, fine." Madam Wang sat cross-legged on a stone, not even looking at the busy A Jiu.
When A Jiu finished her work and sat beside Madam Wang, she looked at her legs. "Grandma, how did you move your legs up there? Won't they break?"
"Go, go, why are you worrying about such nonsense?"
Madam Wang impatiently swatted away A Jiu's small paw that was touching her leg.
A Jiu hugged her knees and giggled.
Madam Wang glared at A Jiu. "Just look after your melons and fruits. Don't ask about old me's affairs."
Hearing this, A Jiu stubbornly retorted, "Grandma, when you were praying for rain that day, how did you bend your fingers like that? Let me see if your fingers are broken."
As she spoke, she reached out to grab Madam Wang's hand again.
"Tch!" Madam Wang clicked her tongue and snatched her hand back, looking disgusted. "If you want to learn, I might consider teaching you. Then you'll know if they break."
"I don't want to break my fingers and legs," A Jiu teased her serious grandmother with sparkling eyes.
"..." Madam Wang's face stretched as long as a straw sandal. She huffed and closed her eyes to meditate.
"Right, Grandma, you can pray for rain, what else can you do?" A Jiu chattered incessantly. Finally, guarding the melons and fruits in the middle of the night with a grandma who let her fuss, she didn't feel the night dragging on and being extremely boring at all.
"There are many things old me can do." Madam Wang liked hearing this. "Back then, I was a Golden Core True Master. I was skilled in drawing talismans, praying for celestial favor, geomancy, the eight trigrams, the miraculous gate array, and the five schools of mountain, medicine, destiny, physiognomy, and divination. You wouldn't understand even if I told you."
A Jiu was dumbfounded upon hearing this. She truly didn't understand, but she seemed to have heard about drawing talismans:
"Grandma, is drawing talismans like those 'ghost scribbles' the older generation talks about? Like worms crawling on the head, written in a way that ordinary people can't recognize, right?"
Madam Wang released her hands, a proud smile on her face. "Yes. When you grow up and find a young gentleman you fancy, as long as you can get his birthdate and time, Grandma can make him devotedly dote on you without any wavering. This kind of thing is called a 'Hehe Talisman' (harmony charm)."
"Huh? It can be like that?"
"Of course. Back in my day..." Madam Wang began to ramble on, becoming increasingly outlandish.
"Grandma, you should drink some spiritual spring water and shut up," A Jiu took out her water skin from her embrace and shoved it to her.
The conversation couldn't continue. It was getting more and more absurd.
Madam Wang looked at the water skin in her hand, feeling both angry and happy. Angry because her granddaughter didn't believe her and used spiritual spring water to shut her up.
"Believe it or not, I don't care."
Saying that, she still pulled out the stopper and tilted her head to drink it down.
"Grandma, it's not that I don't want to hear you brag, but you always say 'back then' and 'formerly'. That means you can't do it now, right? I think being a person is like this fruit tree. You have to root first before you can sprout. As a person, you have to be down-to-earth."
"You little girl, are you lecturing old me for not being down-to-earth?"
Madam Wang forcefully shoved the empty water skin back to her granddaughter, pointing at the soil not far away. "If you have nothing to do, don't bother me. Go check on your melons and fruits."
A Jiu looked, and they had grown. She went up to inspect them.
Suddenly, several dark figures flickered in the distance. A Jiu saw clearly that they were villagers from Heba Village. Although their clothes were tattered, they were very clean.
"They just settled in our village and already have seeds, and three people died. I think this isn't a coincidence."
"Is it possible that those three people were killed by that family? And they robbed the seeds from their bodies?"
As they spoke, those four or five people sneaked into a patch of soft, tilled land.
A Jiu could tell at a glance that it was Grandpa Niu's land, the land A Die had tilled during the day.
This piece of land had been abandoned for a long time, and only that patch of soil had been tilled and was quite soft. It was particularly clear at night.