"And then there's Old Man Zhou, a lonely old widower. In his youth, he obeyed his parents and supported his elder brother's family without complaint, working so hard that his wife wore herself out and died young.
He was left with only a daughter, who not long ago was sold for two taels of silver by her grandparents and uncle to raise money for her cousin's bride price.
Old Man Zhou may be called old, but he's actually only forty years old. However, from doing heavy labor in his youth, he's ruined his health, and these past two years he's gradually been unable to do hard work anymore.
His elder brother, sister-in-law, and nephew felt he was a waste of food alive, so they burned him as a drought-demon too!
And then there's Qian Xiaohu, Zhang Xiaocao..."
Yue Fuguang listened as the system explained one story after another, and her mind went numb.
"System, I don't think this task of preserving the population is absolutely necessary!" It wasn't that she was desperately short on points, after all.
The thought that she had been working hard, rushing about, only to save people like this made her want to just throw in the towel!
Who cared anymore!
Upon hearing that Yue Fuguang wanted to quit, the system suddenly felt it had spoken a bit too much. It had simply blurted things out in a moment of impulsiveness—how could it have made its own host lose interest!
"Host, don't go that far, really, don't go that far! We can't ruin the whole pot of soup just because of a few rats, right?"
Yue Fuguang remained silent, so the system continued playing the role of the understanding confidant, "What we're doing now isn't just about saving those commoners and completing the population preservation task.
It's also about keeping the national strength of Dayan on the rise. Ultimately, it's all for our main mission!"
Hmph! Yue Fuguang turned her head away. Of course she understood these principles!
What weighed on her heart was the injustice of it all. The drought-demon case in Huacheng was just the tip of the iceberg. How many similar people and events were there throughout all of Dayan?
She'd never thought deeply about this before, but now that this window paper had been pierced, whenever she thought of those people living well off the blessings she had bestowed, her whole body felt uncomfortable.
"Host, if you're truly too angry to bear it, just punish them. We can't let these irrelevant people affect your mission.
Think about your jade-white bones and hundred-flower beauty..."
"Alright, alright, I know. Don't keep bringing that up!" When she first heard that, how old had her mentality been? And how old was she now? Didn't she have any pride left!
But the system had a point—if her heart was out of sorts, she might as well vent that anger through the fates of others!
"Your suggestion isn't bad, but I'll need you to put in some effort here..."
Yue Fuguang told the system her requirements.
The system: !!!
Yue Fuguang ignored the system's near-cracking expression. She flicked her fingertip lightly, and a single star of light gathered at her fingertips, slowly forming into a light clump the size of an egg. After she tapped it gently, the bright light clump whooshed out through the open window.
At this moment, it was just past the hour of You, and outside the window the moon was bright and the stars were sparse. Since it was still early, sleepless commoners gathered in small groups, swapping the latest gossip about this house and that.
The hot topic today was, of course, the divine lady who had descended from the heavens in a carriage pulled by a celestial steed.
Some were tirelessly describing to those who hadn't seen it how divine the celestial steed was, how beautiful the carriage was, but lamenting that the curtain blocked the view of the divine lady inside.
"Granny Li, do you think the divine lady knows about this drought-demon ruining people's lives in our region?"
The old woman called Granny Li paused mid-twist on the hemp rope she was braiding, and shook her head. "How would an old woman like me know what a divine lady knows?"
She sighed. "If you ask me, the 'drought-demons' they burned to death might not be the real thing.
Granny Li's daughter-in-law, who was sitting beside her helping sort the hemp, chimed in, "Mother's right. If those who were burned were truly drought-demon incarnations, why wait so many years to harm us now?"
She shook her head. "If it were true, after burning several people one after another, why hasn't a single drop of rain fallen?"
She looked up at the sky. "We still have to wait for the divine lady to come and bestow her life-saving sweet dew!"
Granny Li nodded. "The eldest son's wife is right. None of us in this family will listen to anyone else's claims. We only believe in the divine lady."
She glanced around and, seeing others still talking about the celestial steed, lowered her voice and said, "Sister Wu, from now on you'd best not talk about the drought-demon matter anymore."
"Why? Can't we even mention it?" Sister Wu, who had spoken first, looked at Granny Li in confusion. "Would the divine lady blame us for that?"
After all, it wasn't as if they were the ones who killed those people.
They weren't all fools. At first, when one or two were called drought-demons, people still believed it. But after it happened repeatedly, they started to have their doubts—could it be a mistake?
"If the divine lady wants to punish anyone, it's those who did the deed!"
No sooner had she finished speaking than Granny Li's eldest daughter-in-law suddenly shrieked, "Mother, look up in the sky!"
Her eyes wide with terror, she stared at the sky above them.
The once clear and moon-bright night sky was suddenly shrouded in thick, dark clouds. "Is it going to rain?"
Granny Li and Sister Wu, whose eyesight was poor due to age, muttered that the weather was changing and rain was coming.
Someone else shouted, "Is the divine lady about to bestow sweet dew?"
They had heard that a neighboring county had already received rain that day, and they had thought it wouldn't be their turn until tomorrow. They hadn't expected it to rain so soon!
"Mother, it's not going to rain. It's... there's a pair of eyes in the sky!"
The moment Granny Li's daughter-in-law finished speaking, more people spotted the pair of eyes hidden among the dark clouds—eyes that were neither joyful nor sorrowful, penetrating the heart of heaven and earth and all human affairs.
"Divine lady, it must be the divine lady!" Someone began to kowtow toward the eyes in the sky.
Then, suddenly, a cold wind blew, and a huge, muffled rumbling resounded through heaven and earth.
Some thought it was an earthquake, but the sound was deep and heavy, followed by a creaking noise, like someone opening a long-sealed door.
With this muffled rumble and creak, commoners who had been indoors came running out of their houses, some heading to the streets to find out what was happening.
Had Yue Fuguang been flying in the sky at that moment, she would have seen that, centered on Huacheng, people within a radius of two hundred li had all been stirred into commotion.
In the towns and villages where drought-demons had appeared, if there were nearby forests or mountains, boulders peeled away from the mountain faces in sheets, tumbling and crashing into the valleys below, causing muffled thunderclaps.
The earth beneath their feet was like a roused giant beast, its back heaving violently. The ridges of the fields shifted out of place in an instant. Rivers were forced to change their courses, water crashing backward onto the banks.
Fissures opened beneath the feet of the perpetrators, spreading wildly like cobwebs in every direction, each crack exhaling the dangerous breath of the deep abyss from beneath the earth.
Trembling, they knelt in the centers of those fissures.
The land beneath their knees was collapsing, yet they lacked even the courage to stand up—or rather, their spines had gone soft.
That softness wasn't lax muscles; it was their very marrow replaced by fear, turning each bone into reeds ready to snap at any moment.
Some tried to scream for help, others kowtowed to the unseen pair of eyes in the sky, begging for mercy.
But no matter what they tried to say, the sounds squeezed from their throats were crushed by the roar of the earth, leaving only broken, tuneless sobs.