Otherworldly Merchant

Chuyi shook his head and smiled. “I don’t think the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon will show up again. I guess it just randomly came to this place to take shelter. Since Jiulin used the Thousand Mirrors Formation to capture it, I’m afraid it was so scared that it won’t come again.” 

After Chuyi said that, I remembered the layer of ice on the roof. I told him that detail. 

He nodded. “It seems the Scaled Dragon was hurt. It used the ice to heal itself. Since it has removed the ice, I don’t think it will come back.” 

Yin Xinyue and I smiled as we felt relieved. However, Chuyi still frowned. “Although it’s gone, the situation hasn’t ended here.” 

“What?” Looking at his countenance, my heart sank one more time. 

Chuyi then explained that when a living human contacted the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon and started to grow scales, the scales would keep growing until that person died. Moreover, since the victim had to trim more and more scales, their skin would become very rough. Eventually, they would become real monsters. 

Perhaps Chuyi was afraid that Yin Xinyue couldn’t stand it. When he came to this part, he spoke much faster. Then, he changed the topic. “To solve the scale disease, the only solution is to use the tears of a water nymph.” 

“The tears of a water nymph?” Yin Xinyue had longed for this answer. 

I was also cheered up, but quickly felt lost because I knew that finding the tears of a water nymph was much harder than finding the Undead Grass. I wasn’t afraid of the difficulty. I was just worried that our parents couldn’t wait until we found the water nymph’s tears! 

Chuyi’s answer made Yin Xinyue perplexed. My face grimaced. 

Mermaid? Might as well ask for Ultraman’s tears at this point! 

But Chuyi did not seem to notice our strange countenance. He continued his explanation. 

According to the legend, when the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon jumped into the swamp and almost lost its life, a mermaid appeared. That mermaid wanted to save the ox, but she wasn’t strong enough. She stayed by the monster as she was worried about it. At the moment the monster was about to completely sink, the mermaid cried. 

The Scaled Dragon saw that. Its resentment and unwillingness were all swept away at that moment, leaving only gratitude and love for the mermaid. The Eight-hundred-mile Dragon Scale was lucky enough to escape the swamp. However, it would never forget the mermaid’s tears. 

It was a sad and romantic story, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to it. Instead, I asked with a frown, “Chuyi, have you ever seen a mermaid?” 

Legends about mermaids were plenty, but I had never seen one before. 

Chuyi shook his head. It was the first time he didn’t sound confident. “They should exist, but I have only heard of them in legends so far…” 

Then, he finished his cup of jasmine tea and looked at us. His voice was firm. “I’m sure I will solve this problem. Don’t worry.” 

I nodded. As it had come to this, we had to follow his arrangement. “Do you have any idea what to do now?” 

“As long as we find the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon, we can find the mermaid,” Chuyi said strongly. I had the same idea. The Scaled Dragon was also looking for the mermaid. And, it should be able to do so before us. 

Then, he turned to ask if my in-laws had eaten something unusual before they got sick, like strange beef or if they drank water from a well or river. 

I didn’t say anything, but I was also curious how my in-laws had bumped into the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon. It was as rare as a meteor hitting earth. How could it happen to them… 

Father had thought for quite a long time, but he still shook his head. At the same time, I noticed that my mother-in-law’s eyes were twinkling. It was as though she was thinking about something… 

When we all looked at her, she hesitated for a while before sending her husband a look. She stuttered, “Husband, could it be the wild vegetables we picked before?” 

“Wild vegetables? What about them?” My father looked bewildered, but I had a feeling that it was the root of the problem.

I asked, “What happened when you picked the wild vegetables?” 

“Oh, it happened at the beginning of this autumn. The riverbank at the East of the village grew a lot of fresh vegetables. Your mother and I saw them on our way home from the field. We thought they would be delicious, so we picked some of them to boil…” said my father. 

Chuyi and I exchanged looks. We understood immediately that the problem came from the wild vegetables. First of all, in autumn, Shandong would be yellow and dried. How could there be lushly green wild vegetables? 

Still, why was everyone else all right, and only our parents had a problem? Could it be that no other people had picked the wild vegetables? Or, were they the only ones that found that spot of green vegetables? 

“So that was the problem...” my father-in-law said when he saw our strange faces. “No wonder all the vegetables were gone the next day. Your mother and I even thought that someone had cut all of them in one night.” 

“Mom, Dad, how could you act without thinking? Don’t we have money? How could you eat things when you don’t even know what they are?!” Yin Xinyue burst out. After yelling for a short moment, her voice lowered as she cried. “I’ve been working hard to send money home every month. I just want you guys to have a better life. Why did you…” 

She covered her face and ran to our bedroom. I followed her to comfort her. Later, our father took me and Chuyi to the riverbank to see. 

As it was night, there was no one walking on the street except for us. This helped us calm down.

Father talked to us while walking. “The small river in our village is actually a branch of the Yellow River. Every year, there is a flooding season. But these past few years, the Yellow River has been drying up, and the river in our village doesn’t have much water. The people who have a clever mind will go there to claim some areas to grow vegetables.” 

Indeed, when we crossed the bridge, I shone my flashlight down and saw a vast area of green wheat. I also spotted a barren area the size of a basketball court, where I could see the brown soil. 

That area of land was right in the middle of the riverbank. There should be no reason for the villagers to leave it empty. That was why I concluded it was the spot where the lush wild vegetables had grown. I strode toward that spot. 

When we got there, Chuyi directly stabbed his eight-faceted Han sword into the ground. In the blink of an eye, the entire blade sank until we only saw the handle! 

I thought he would read a spell. However, he drew the sword out and sprinkled some ashes from his bag on the blade of the sword. The ashes sizzled like boiling water.  

After around one minute, the ashes slowly fell off the blade. I was surprised as I could smell a terrible stench coming from the sword. 

“I see.” Chuyi used a handkerchief to wipe the blade before putting it back in its sheath. He smiled, but his eyes didn’t. “The Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon is smart. It used the ice here to cover its Yin energy.” 

I now recognized that the soil underneath was really soft. It wasn’t frozen. It turned out the Scaled Dragon had absorbed the ice around. The beast was struggling, though. Although it didn’t like the cold, it had to use ice to cover itself. 

I sighed. “Can you locate that beast?” 

“Let me try.” Then, he took out a calabash and released Little Lin.