Chapter 223: Qiong Lake (3)
At the old woman’s mention of “spirit poison,” sounding almost like a religious mystic, Hwa-eun asked again,
“But spirit poison? What exactly is a spirit?”
In my past life, I’d encountered the word plenty in fantasy settings, but to Hwa-eun, it was clearly a foreign concept.
Then I heard Sister Seol’s voice explaining from behind.
It seemed she knew quite a bit about the Black-Clad Tribe, which was said to be abundant in Yunnan.
“Over here, they worship spirits and ancestors. They treat things like trees, the sun, the moon, and animals as spirits and venerate them. That old woman is probably saying these people were poisoned by one of the spirits they revere.”
“That old lady is what they call a sangmu—basically a shamaness of the Black-Clad Tribe.”
As I’d suspected, this all reeked of ancient belief systems—shamanism, animism, totemism, all rolled into one. The sangmu, or “mourning shaman,” of the Black-Clad Tribe was essentially a type of priestess.
Without saying a word, Hwa-eun gave a small nod, then calmly walked to the edge of the dock, expressionless. And then, without hesitation, she grabbed one of the corpses by the ankle and hauled it out of the water in one fluid motion.
One. Then another.
Maybe it was that "Tang Clan says so, so don't argue" kind of attitude?
No—thinking about it, she was clearly trying to let her actions speak louder than words.