Traveling Through Those Years Of Farming (Quick Transmigration) - Chapter 32

“You are so brave!”

Others might not understand, but Chunming knows that the innocent little girl in front of him must have seen something, which is why she takes a hammer to the toilet wall in the middle of the night.

Chunming wants to discipline her, but faced with the little girl’s cute look, he can only say something vague and meaningless after a long pause.

He doesn’t know how to properly teach her a lesson, and he fears that being too harsh will make her cry.

“Who made me see it? I couldn’t just ignore it,” Baobao says confidently. “Let’s not talk about that for now. Let’s take a look at your portrait. Just so you know, I can handle praise, but not criticism.”

Baobao takes off the clip from the drawing board, removes the top painting, and hands it to Chunming.

In the picture, a young man stands beneath a banyan tree, his eyes indescribably gentle. Chunming has already seen the rough draft of the portrait the day she left, and he knows Baobao is a talented artist. But the painting she hands him today carries something more than what he’s seen before.

A Q-version man, about the size of a walnut, stands on his shoulder, leaning sideways, as if whispering in his ear.

The man is chubby with a bun, clearly a smaller and slightly exaggerated version of Baobao herself.

It is more than just cute. Chunming is already deciding to frame the painting and hang it on the wall next to his desk.

“This?”

As Chunming thinks of a compliment, he happens to notice another portrait on the drawing board.

The old man in the portrait looks familiar.

“This man… where have I seen him before?”

Old Monk Jikong isn’t searching for his senior brother aimlessly. One of them is a talented artist and has painted several copies of Jixing’s portrait. Every senior brother and nephew away from home has one.

Chunming has seen this portrait on his master more than once, so he immediately recognizes the man’s identity.

Though the man in Baobao’s portrait appears much older than the one in the master’s version, the familiar facial features and the black mole on the side of his nose strongly suggest that it is most likely the same person.

“Come to think of it, this man is somehow connected to the female ghost in the toilet,” Baobao says, frowning as she briefly describes the strange bracelets she has seen on her roommate’s hand. “He seemed to want to turn the woman who died unjustly into a puppet ghost.”

Not everyone can become a vengeful ghost after death. Besides harboring extreme resentment and obsession in life, the soul’s aura also plays a crucial role. Otherwise, after the world war decades ago, the place would have been filled with vengeful spirits.

The female corpse sealed in the wall certainly has a strong aura of resentment. The water pipes, influenced by this aura, decay much faster than normal pipes. Occasionally, this resentment aura even forms an illusionary magnetic field. Before Baobao arrives at Provincial University, several girls are frightened when they go to the toilet at night, claiming they see the faucet bleeding. In reality, they are affected by the illusionary magnetic field.

The strange old man seems to want to use those bracelets to awaken the female ghost. He almost succeeds, but before the evil spirit can wake, Baobao digs the body out of the wall and sends it to the police station, where the strong yang energy neutralizes it.

The original magnetic field is destroyed, and the conditions for the creation of an evil ghost are gone.

Had they been even a step later, the evil spirit would have awakened. It would have been much worse than just a few girls being scared to death. The irrational puppet ghost would have devoured anything that could nourish its ghostly soul, and many students in the dormitory might have died.

“You mean, this person appeared at Provincial University?” Chunming’s expression suddenly darkens.

The brother who betrayed the temple, the one the master has been searching for so long, has appeared so close to him and Baobao. What’s worse, he has deliberately sold such an evil bracelet to Baobao’s roommate, clearly with malicious intent.

Chunming recalls what his master has said—his brother’s magical power is on par with his own. Having practiced evil magic for many years, his skills are constantly improving. He also employs many sinister methods that are hard to guard against. He and Baobao might not be able to handle him.

Chunming quickly briefs Baobao on the old man’s identity before quickly calling his master to inform him of the situation.

******

“What! Your senior brother wants to attack the Baobao!”

When Lady Hua hears that, she is so angry that she immediately prepares to head for the provincial capital.

Hua Xiaolian, on the other hand, is visibly excited. To him, Baobao is a walking store of spiritual energy. One lick makes him feel refreshed, and two licks make him feel like he can ascend to the heavens. But now, with Baobao not around, he can’t get any spiritual energy. His once plump and chubby body is starting to thin out.

The puppy hops around, eager to fly to the little master right away.

“Fellow Daoist Hua, let’s split into two groups. You head to Provincial University first. I need to contact several brothers. This time, we must capture him and bring him back to the temple to face punishment.”

The old monk can’t believe his senior brother would sink so low as to target two children. It is also his own fault for forgetting that his senior brother is no longer the same person he used to be.

“I’ll make amends to you both later,” he adds, his tone apologetic.

Though the main reason his senior brother targets them is because Lady Hua and the others have destroyed the talisman that he had made using his own life essence and blood to nourish the puppet ghost, the truth is that if their temple hadn’t failed to catch the traitor in time, none of this would have happened.

The old monk smiles bitterly. Now that things have come to this, all he can do is try to atone for his sins.

Confident in the abilities of Lady Hua and the others, he lets them go ahead. He needs to recruit more people to set up the formation. This time, he can’t let his senior brother escape again.

Hua Yingpo, however, is too lazy to listen to these polite words. She waves her hand, and she and Sheng Wukun take the money and scoop up the fat Hua Xiaolian, running off without looking back.

Baobao has no idea that Mother Hua and Father Sheng are already on their way to the provincial university. She takes the drawing board and walks toward the women’s dormitory, deep in thought.

“Auntie, where is the original dorm keeper?”

As she walks downstairs with a heavy heart, she suddenly notices that the dorm keeper, who should have been in the duty room, watching students come and go, is missing.

Instead, there is a new middle-aged woman in her thirties or forties, dressed in a blue dorm keeper uniform.

“Do you mean Aunt Xu? She’s ill, and from now on, I’ll be taking care of this dormitory.”

The new dorm keeper’s words make Baobao’s heart skip a beat.

“Is she sick? Is it serious?” Baobao asks hurriedly.

“It’s not that serious. The old lady is quite old, and her health isn’t great. She’s now staying in our school hospital.” The woman shakes her head.

The old lady is over seventy years old and doesn’t have any major issues. However, her body is slowly failing, and she is now living in the school hospital, where she receives care. The woman can’t quite understand the old lady’s situation—she has lived alone for many years, never finding a companion, and now she is dying, with no one by her side. What has she lived for?

The school has been kind enough to let her stay in the school hospital, where nurses take care of her, and meals are provided from the cafeteria. Otherwise, an elderly woman with no children or relatives might have died alone at home without anyone knowing.

Baobao, who has originally planned to return to the dormitory, immediately changes course and runs toward the school hospital.

Outside the school hospital, Baobao sees the man in military uniform again. He is standing under the teaching building opposite the school hospital, gazing at a window from a distance.

Baobao stops and watches him quietly.

She opens her mouth to ask why he hasn’t gone to visit the old lady in the ward.

But then she realizes the reason.

Humans and ghosts are different. The magnetic field of a ghost can affect the human body. If a person stays near a ghost for too long, even if the ghost has no intention of harming anyone, their body will gradually deteriorate.

He probably knows this, so he has always watched the dormitory grandmother from a distance.

This love is persistent, but restrained.

Baobao closes her mouth and walks straight to the school hospital. Sure enough, the dormitory grandmother is in the room the man in the military uniform has been watching.

When Baobao arrives, two girls, who live in the same dormitory building as her, are just leaving the ward. They have come to visit the dormitory grandmother upon hearing that she is ill.

At first, Xu Lin had agreed to the demolition on the condition that she would stay and become the dormitory manager. In the past three years, she has truly embraced the responsibilities of the role, ensuring that every girl who enters and leaves the dormitory feels the care and warmth of an elder.

“Baobao, you’re here.”

Seeing Baobao, the old lady smiles warmly, waving for her to sit beside her.

Baobao notices the painting she has once drawn for the old lady, now hanging above her bed. With a small movement, she can easily take the portrait down and hold it close to her chest, feeling its warmth.

“You’re so brave,” Xu Lin says, gently scolding her. “How could you smash the toilet wall because of a nightmare? If you hadn’t accidentally found a corpse, I’m sure the school would’ve punished you severely.”

Baobao holds the old lady’s hand, listening to her soft reprimand but feeling the love behind it.

“Grandma, it wasn’t a dream,” Baobao replies earnestly. “Since I was a child, I’ve been able to see things that others can’t. I really saw the person in the wall.”

Before coming in, Baobao has spoken with a doctor at the school hospital about the old lady’s condition. The doctor explains that her organs are beginning to fail, and she has refused to go to a larger hospital for treatment. The prognosis is grim—she has only a few months left to live.

Baobao, who has been uncertain until now, finally makes up her mind. She can’t let the old lady leave with regrets.

“Even this painting,” Baobao begins, gesturing to the portrait beside the old lady, “I didn’t paint him exactly as you described, but I’ve seen him a few times around our school.”

Xu Lin is momentarily stunned, her mind struggling to grasp what Baobao has said.

“What did you say?” she asks, confusion clouding her expression. “You said… you saw him?” The old lady’s voice trembles as she repeats the words, and Baobao can feel her grip tightening painfully on her hands.

“Yes,” Baobao confirms. “He was wearing an old-fashioned military uniform and looked about eighteen or nineteen, just like in the portrait.” She pauses, then adds, “Just now, when I was walking to the school hospital, I saw him standing outside, staring at this window.”

“Eighteen or nineteen years old… eighteen or nineteen years old…” The old lady lets go of Baobao’s hands and covers her face with both palms, her body shaking with emotion. “When he left, he had just turned seventeen… eighteen or nineteen… It turns out that while I was still hoping for a future with him, we never had one.”

Tears well up in the old lady’s eyes. She wipes them away and looks at Baobao with a plea in her voice.

“I want to see him. Can you let me see him?” Xu Lin’s voice breaks as she speaks, the weight of sixty-one years of longing in her words. “Just once, I want to see him. I’ve waited for him for so long.”

Baobao’s heart aches at the desperation in the old lady’s voice. She remembers how she has once helped Jiang Huiling see Lingling, and she hopes that she can bring this long-separated couple together, even if only for a brief moment.

“I can try,” Baobao says softly. She has to try, just as she has for Jiang Huiling and Lingling.

The old lady cries and laughs in turn, excited and overwhelmed. She begs Baobao to fetch a basin of water for her. She washes her face, then combs her hair with a dampened comb, carefully pulling out a jewelry box from the cabinet. With trembling hands, she takes out a pair of jade earrings and a gold bracelet, and gently puts them on.

She is so old now…

As she gazes at herself in the mirror, neatly dressed, the old lady feels a sudden surge of shyness. She isn’t the young girl she had once been, and she feels that, somehow, he hasn’t changed at all.

Now, standing together, they would appear like a grandmother and a grandson.

But no matter how she feels about her age, the old lady is determined. She wants to see him once more.

When Baobao reaches the stairs, she sees the young soldier still standing outside, waiting.

“Grandma wants to see you. I can help you,” Baobao calls out to him.

Passersby glance at her, assuming she is just practicing lines for a play, and look at her curiously.

The young soldier has already guessed that Baobao can see him. But he never imagines that she might have the ability to let his fiancée see him too.

He doesn’t know how he returns. At first, he is excited to stay close to his fiancée, watching her day and night, waiting for her to keep the promise of his return. He even wants to tell her to stop waiting, to find someone else who will treat her well and marry her. But he never expects that after all this time, they can meet in this way.

But as time passes, he notices that his fiancée, once healthy and full of life, begins to fall ill more frequently and grows visibly weaker. It dawns on him that perhaps he should keep his distance from her.

From that moment on, he only dares to watch her from afar, listening to her sobs through the wall, his heart aching with each passing day.

For nearly sixty years, he watches her transform from a young, beautiful girl into the kind and elderly woman she becomes. He witnesses her laugh, cry, and endure the hardships of life alone, all the while remaining steadfast in her love for him.

He wants so badly to tell her not to wait, that he can’t return.

“Thank you.”

He never imagined that she would finally be able to see him.

Baobao leads the young soldier into the ward. The old lady, sensing that her lover is right next to her, becomes a bit shy and excited.

Baobao holds the old lady’s hand, closes her eyes, and transfers part of her ability to her.

Gradually, the old lady’s vision clears, and tears begin to flow from her eyes.

Baobao quietly lets go of her hand, steps out, and gently closes the door behind her.

She sits down on one of the chairs in the corridor, unable to hear the conversation inside.

After returning home for the holiday, Baobao plans to write it all down in the books left by the old Taoist. It turns out that the obsession that keeps spirits bound to the world of the living isn’t just hatred—it can also be extreme love.

That love is pure and enduring. No wonder, when Baobao first sees the young man in the military uniform, she never thinks of him as a ghost.

About an hour and a half later, Baobao hears the old lady calling for her. When she goes inside, the young soldier is gone.

“Thank you… thank you,” the old lady says, her voice filled with gratitude.

Perhaps it is because the obsession of over sixty years has been lifted in a single day, but the old lady now looks so much younger. Her face is rosier, and there is a spark of life in her eyes, as if spring has returned to her.

She seems to have aged ten years in an instant.

“When he leaves that year,” the old lady says, her voice trembling with emotion, “he promises me he will come back to marry me when the ginkgo leaves in the yard turn yellow. I wait year after year, but he never returns. Many people tell me not to wait—my parents, too. They say he might be dead, or that he has found someone else. But I don’t believe it. So I leave my home and come to take care of his parents in his place. That’s when I became Xu Lin.”

It turns out that the old lady and the young soldier have been childhood sweethearts, growing up together in the same alley. Their families are close, and because they have always been so fond of each other, their parents arrange their marriage early, planning for her to marry him at sixteen.

But then the war comes, and everything changes. The young man, full of passion, attends military school and, when his country needs him most, joins the army without hesitation. When he leaves, he tells her to wait for three years. If he doesn’t return after that time, she should stop waiting.

But three years isn’t enough. For that promise, Xu Lin waits for years, again and again.

“People pity me,” Xu Lin says, her voice full of sorrow, “They think I waste my life. And, yes, I have regrets. But it’s not because I didn’t marry or have children. My regret is that when I was young, I was too impulsive. I disobeyed my parents, and they spent their lives worrying about me.”

She wipes away her tears, a faint smile playing on her lips. “I wait for him for sixty-one years. He accompanies me for fifty-nine. No woman has ever been happier than I am. My life… it’s worth it. It’s really worth it!”

By the time Baobao leaves, the old lady’s face shines with a bright smile, as if she were a young girl just starting to fall in love.

“Gu Yuan, do you hate me?” In the detention center, Jiang Ying stares at the young man across from her, tears streaming down her face. “I didn’t mean to do it. I just wanted her to leave you, to stop standing in the way of your future. She was so cruel to me, always scolding me… I get angry and end up killing her. We’ve been married for three years, so please, don’t hate me because of her.”

Even in this moment of crisis, Jiang Ying’s thoughts are on her husband. She knows that her father is being investigated because of her, and that the entire Jiang family is now shamed because of her crimes.

She will soon be tried for her heinous acts, and the likelihood of a long prison sentence or even the death penalty looms over her.

But the one thing that truly consumes her is whether her husband will hate her.

“How can I not hate you?”

The man across from her seems detached, his eyes filled with hatred. But upon closer inspection, it is clear that he is struggling, unable to fully suppress his feelings.

Jiang Ying has lived with him for three years and feels she understands every nuance of his expression. When she sees that flicker of reluctance in his eyes, she feels a surge of excitement. It is a sign that her passion hasn’t failed to reach his cold heart—he has been moved by her, after all.

Jiang Ying only harbors hatred for the female student who discovered the body. If it weren’t for her, no one would have known about the murder, and she could have lived the rest of her life happily with her husband.

He has just started to fall in love with her, and they don’t even have children yet. Jiang Ying is unwilling to accept it.

“I love you too much,” she says in a desperate voice. “Liu Zhaonan is better than me in every way except for her face! She has a family that holds her back. If you’d been with her from the start, you would’ve been dragged down for the rest of your life. I don’t regret killing her. At least I was your wife for three years after she died.”

Jiang Ying’s words are frantic, filled with madness. “Gu Yuan, hate me, but don’t forget me in this life!”

She truly loves this man. Deep down, she knows that Gu Yuan has chosen her after Liu Zhaonan’s disappearance largely because of her family background.

But it doesn’t matter—he is perfect in her eyes. Over the three years they are together, he has always been thoughtful and considerate, giving her the happiness of feeling cherished as a woman.

If the truth had never come out, they would have continued to live happily.

“Time’s up.”

A prison guard knocks the baton on the side, and two officers step forward to take Jiang Ying away.

Once she is gone, Gu Yuan stares blankly at the ceiling, his usual composed demeanor gone. This university professor, who is always so careful about his image, now seems completely broken. After a long moment, he stands up and staggers out of the room.

“No problem.”

In the next room, several police officers in charge of the case have been watching the entire conversation between the two. They study their expressions, making sure to catch every subtle emotion.

After Gu Yuan leaves, their suspicions about him are completely dispelled.

At first, even after Jiang Ying’s confession, they have doubts. Even if Jiang Ying is the murderer, it doesn’t necessarily mean she is the only one involved.

Gu Yuan has been a prime suspect. Everyone in the province knows that Liu Zhaonan has been his girlfriend. If Gu Yuan has broken up with her and stayed with Jiang Ying, it would have severely damaged his reputation.

The biggest beneficiary of Liu Zhaonan’s death is Gu Yuan. Not only does he get rid of a girlfriend who would have been a burden, but he is also no longer tied to her family and can openly pursue a relationship with the vice-president’s daughter.

Moreover, Jiang Ying loves him deeply, and the investigators believe she may have covered for him, hiding some of his involvement.

They have carefully looked into Gu Yuan’s alibi for the night Liu Zhaonan was murdered three years ago. The time of her death is clear, confirmed not only by Jiang Ying’s testimony but also by records from workers involved in the construction of the women’s dormitory at that time. One worker recalls noticing that the toilet wall has already been half built when he arrives that morning, though he assumes other workers have helped without asking further questions. The timeline matches Jiang Ying’s account.

It is the night the provincial university issues graduation certificates, and Gu Yuan has been at a dinner with his roommates. Seven out of eight are present, including Gu Yuan, and the other six can vouch for him. They have spent the night eating hot pot and drinking heavily, and Gu Yuan never leaves the restaurant on his own.

Today’s conversation between Gu Yuan and Jiang Ying has completely cleared his name.

The case is officially classified as a crime of passion.

Gu Yuan stumbles out of the detention center, his face a mask of sorrow, with tears barely held back.

He makes his way to the parking lot, climbs into the car that his wife, Jiang Ying, has brought as part of her dowry, and shuts the door. He leans his forehead against the steering wheel.

A soft sobbing can be heard…

“Wuwuwu… um… hahahaha… hahahaha…”

Gradually, the sobs transform into laughter.

Gu Yuan raises his head. Half of his face is reflected in the rearview mirror, his mouth curling into a clear smile.