After watching the excitement, Wufu hummed a tune as she descended the mountain, paying no mind to the talks of the Mountain Demon amongst the villagers behind her.
Madam Zhou had been waiting for her, and when she saw An Ran return safely, she breathed a sigh of relief but couldn't help her curiosity as she asked what had happened.
Wufu smiled faintly and simply narrated the events, then dropped her eyes and slowly sipped her porridge.
Everybody believed it was the work of the Mountain Demon, which was good. But even if they knew it was a person's doing, surely nobody would suspect them, mother and daughter, would they?
After all, they were but women, powerless to even truss a chicken!
Wufu glanced at her own slender hands and remembered the effort it took to drag that thing last night. Instantly, her wrists felt sore again; she needed to train the strength of her wrists more.
She had had only half a bowl of porridge, yet had not heard Madam Zhou utter a single word. Puzzled, Wufu looked up. Madam Zhou was holding her bowl with furrowed brows, lost in thought.
"What's wrong?" Wufu waved her hand in front of her.
Madam Zhou came back to her senses and spoke with a worried frown, "Wufu, if there really is a Mountain Demon causing trouble, what will the two of us do?"
Wufu paused and then said, "There's no such thing as a Mountain Demon, it's just that someone saw that scoundrel's misdeeds and decided to punish evil and promote good."
"Punish evil and promote good?"
"Yes!" Wufu added a spoonful of pickles to her porridge and said, "Aren't there some heroes of Green Forest? Haven't they appeared in the tavern in town? Seeing that person do evil and secretly doing good deeds, what's so strange about that?"
This explanation was indeed reasonable.
"But, in fact, in the past, there really was a Mountain Demon on Maofeng Mountain," said Madam Zhou.
"Have you seen it?"
Madam Zhou's face heated up as she shook her head and chided, "If I had seen it, could I be sitting here safe and sound? I'd have been eaten by the Mountain Demon long ago. It's just something that some elders mentioned, something that happened deep in the forest when I was a child." Thinking about her daughter's frequent trips up the mountain, she added, "So you, my girl, don't always go up the mountain, it's dangerous."
Wufu dismissed the concern with indifference, "That's even less credible. If the elders had seen it, why haven't they been caught and eaten?"
"There have been hunters who entered the mountain and never returned."
Wufu silently scoffed to herself, if that was the case, then they were either eaten by wild beasts or had accidents; it wasn't the doing of a Mountain Demon.
But the ancients were superstitious, and so was her mother. Wufu didn't want to forcefully change her mother's mind and said, "That Mountain Demon must have its good and its evil, just as people do. Scum like Ma Dan get taught a lesson. Good people and good girls like me, I imagine the Mountain Demon wouldn't blame us!"
Madam Zhou gave a rueful smile and pinched her daughter's face, her gaze becoming dreamy as she said, "You have such a way with words, much like your father..."
Wufu shuddered all over, not good, her mother was about to fall into melancholy again.
"Mother..."
"Wufu, my girl, you're all I have, you're my life. I can't have anything happening to you. Just be good and wait a little longer, your father will soon come to get us," Madam Zhou murmured as she caressed her face.
Wufu sighed, put down her bowl of porridge, and looked her in the eye as she spoke word by word, "What if he doesn't come?" Would you wait for a lifetime?
Madam Zhou's expression changed abruptly, her eyes quickly reddening, tears swirling in them, her slightly pale lips pressed tightly together.
Wufu looked at her mother's hands on the table, tightly clenched into fists and trembling slightly, and changed the subject with a smile, "Mother, let's go to town later."