Chapter 496
It was precisely because they understood so clearly that they felt both surprise and delight—though luckily, theirs wasn't the only household blessed this way, so they didn't have to worry about being singled out or robbed.
“Father, my bamboo tube suddenly filled up with water too!” The girl's mother only then noticed the weight of the large bamboo vessel in her hands.
Just moments ago, after her husband and children had drunk from it, there had clearly been only a little less than half left—and now it was full.
“Really?” The man took the tube, saw the clear water inside, and instinctively swallowed.
He said in a low voice to his wife, “Check the other bamboo containers in the house!”
Before his wife could rummage through the remaining tubes, their eldest son had already grinned and said to them, “Father, Mother, no need to check—every empty bamboo tube has been filled with water!”
The eleven- or twelve-year-old boy looked at his father. “Father, which deity do you think bestowed this life-saving water upon us?”
The little girl's voice, after drinking, was no longer so hoarse. “Brother, do you think it could be the Divine Maiden?”
In the girl's memory, only that deity excelled at controlling rain, and their family now worshipped Her the most faithfully.
Whether it was Her or not, the girl's parents couldn't say.
And the others soon discovered that every empty water container in their homes had been filled to the brim with clear water. Astonished and puzzled, they nevertheless felt a surge of hope for surviving the remaining three days.
“Wh-why doesn't my family have any water?” A middle-aged man's face turned ugly as he looked at the barely concealed joy on the faces of several neighboring families, feeling both stung and confused.
Everyone was on the mountain—how could they alone have been skipped? Did he open his bamboo tube the wrong way?
“I—mine doesn't have any either!” A young man hugged his empty bamboo tube, on the verge of tears.
Before his tears could fall, more voices rose one after another nearby: “Our family doesn't have water either!”
“Why do they have water and we don't?” Someone shouted angrily at the families who clearly did.
Those who had water formed the vast majority. They exchanged glances, silently drew together, and without a word, a unified front was established.
They were numerous enough not to fear the others, but they too were curious—just like the waterless families—why they had received it and the others hadn't.
“It's the Mountain God! The Mountain God must have shown His power!” A man clutching an empty bamboo tube fell to his knees with a thud and kowtowed repeatedly toward the mountain.
He kept muttering, “Mountain God, have mercy! I beg You, grant this humble one a tube of water! My father and mother are dying of thirst! I beg You to be compassionate and save their lives—I swear I'll build You a golden statue and offer incense in Your honor!”
After speaking, he thumped his head three more times in the direction of the mountain peak.
When he finished kowtowing, he held up his bamboo tube and stayed perfectly still. Seeing his display, the people around him fell silent. No one left; they all watched, waited, hoping to see the tube fill with water, to witness a miracle.
The surroundings grew so quiet that everyone seemed to hear each other's heartbeats.
All eyes were fixed on the young man's earth-yellow bamboo tube, especially those from the waterless families—their eyes were beginning to redden with desperation.
No one knew how long passed—maybe a few breaths, maybe a dozen, or even longer. The tube showed no sign of water. At last, the man could no longer contain himself and moved.
In frustration, he shook the tube. No splashing sound came. “Why not? Why isn't there any!”
In a rage, he smashed the tube onto the ground with a bang. “What exactly am I lacking? Why won't they give my family water!”
“Could it be… that our water wasn't granted by the Mountain God at all?” A clever onlooker couldn't help voicing his suspicion.
The young man's elder brother, reminded by that remark, seemed to have a realization. “Right! Brother, is it possible that… you just prayed to the wrong deity?”
“Ah, the wrong deity?” Murmurs spread through the crowd as everyone began discussing which gods their families usually worshipped.
“Our family now only believes in the Divine Maiden!”
“Ours too, we only believe in the Divine Maiden!”
“Same for us—three sticks of incense every day!”
“Hey, ours too!”
“Our family—”
As they compared notes, whether by coincidence or not, they discovered that every family with water was a follower of the Divine Maiden.
Those with quick minds couldn't help but call out loudly to the furious, waterless families: “Hey there, brother—which deity does your family worship on a daily basis?”
A slightly stout man froze, as if a thought had struck him, and said uncertainly, “I—my family runs a small restaurant. We worship the Kitchen God at home.”
The stout man's brother, who bore a three-part resemblance to him, also spoke up: “My brother and I both run small businesses—I run a general store, and our family worships the God of Wealth.”
Another young man stepped forward. “My father is a doctor. Our family worships the Medicine God.”
“Ours is—”
These people soon noticed something off: some households had ancestral shrines with statues, while others, apart from visiting temples and monasteries, didn't keep any idols at home.
But the biggest difference between them and the families who had water was this: whether they worshipped deities at home or not, not a single one of them believed in the Divine Maiden of the Great Yan Dynasty.
The difference between having water and not… the answer seemed almost obvious.
Those who guessed the truth trembled, their lips quivering. “This… I—we—”
“Waah! I refuse to accept this!”
Yue Fuguang, now far away, could still faintly hear the weeping below, and she felt little remorse—without a statue to serve as a connection, she had no way to send them water, and besides, she owed them no karmic debt.
A few minutes later, her flying carriage hovered over the city of Hundred Blossoms. Inside and outside the city walls, there wasn't a single flower—only withered branches, fallen leaves, and ash-gray battlements.
Because of the intense heat, the streets were nearly deserted; only a few shops still open had a sparse handful of idle laborers sitting beneath their eaves.
Most shops along the street had shuttered, but a handful stubbornly remained open.
Inside one general store, a couple in their thirties sat listlessly, staring outside. Their shop had almost no goods left to sell—when people couldn't even drink water, who would come to buy sundries?
But the man had been so used to running his shop that staying at home all day made him restless. “Husband, shouldn't we really go up to the mountain to shelter?” the woman asked her husband, who had started wiping down the counter yet again.
The man set down his rag and replied casually, “You actually believe what those people said?”
“They spoke so vividly—it sounded real to me.”
“Foolish woman's talk!” The man sneered. “If that little girl from Great Yan could control rain, why haven't we seen a single drop?”
The woman, seeing her husband's obstinance, wanted to say: She's the Divine Maiden of Great Yan—why would she bring rain to Nan Zhao?
But cowed by her husband's authority, she only said, “In any case, since the Divine Maiden can control rain, what she said might be true. Why don't we—”
“Enough. You don't need to worry about anything—just take care of the children. Leave everything else to me!”
The man cut her off roughly, half out of sulk, half as if to prove his own judgment. “We're not going anywhere. I'll see for myself whether it pours in three days!”