Chuyi shook his head

 and smiled

. “I 

don’t think

 the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon 

will

 show up again. I guess it just randomly came to this place to 

take

 shelter. 

Since

 Jiulin used the Thousand Mirrors Formation to capture it, I’m afraid it was so scared 

that

 it 

won’t

 come again.” 

After Chuyi said that, I remembered the layer of ice on the roof. I told him that detail. 

He nodded

. 

“

It seems

 the Scaled Dragon was hurt. It used the ice to heal itself. 

Since

 it has removed the ice, I 

don’t think

 it 

will

 come back.” 

Yin Xinyue and I smiled as we felt relieved. However, Chuyi still frowned. “Although it’s gone, the situation hasn’t 

ended

 here.” 

“What?” Looking at his countenance, my heart sank one more time. 

Chuyi then explained that when a living human contacted the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon and started to grow scales, the scales would 

keep growing

 until that person died. Moreover, 

since

 the victim had to trim more and more s

cales

, their skin would become

 very

r

ough. Eventually, they would become real 

monsters

. 

Perhaps Chuyi was afraid that Yin Xinyue couldn’t stand it. When he came to this part, he 

spoke

 much faster. Then, he changed the topic. “To solve the scale disease, the only solution is to use the tears of 

a

 water nymph.” 

“

T

he tears of 

a 

water nymph?” Yin Xinyue 

had longed

 for this answer. 

I was also cheered up, but 

quickly 

felt lost

 b

ecause I knew 

that finding the tears of a water nymph

 was much harder than finding the Undead Grass

. 

I wasn’t afraid of the difficulty. I was just worried that our parents couldn’t wait until we 

found

 the water nymph’s tears! 

“Water nymph’s 

tears are

a

 mermaid’s 

tears

.” 

Chuyi’s answer made Yin Xinyue perplexed. My face

grimaced. 

Mermaid

?

 Might as well

 ask for

 Ultraman

’s tears at this point!

But 

Chuyi did not seem 

to notice our strange countenance. He continued his explanation. 

According to t

he legend

, 

when the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon jumped into the swamp and almost lost its life, a mermaid appeared. That mermaid wanted to 

save

 the ox, but she wasn’t strong enough. She stayed by the monster

 as she was worried about it

. At the moment the monster 

was about to

 completely sink, the mermaid cried. 

The Scaled Dragon saw that. Its resentment and unwillingness were all 

swept away

at

 th

at 

moment, leaving only gratitude and love for the mermaid. The Eight-hundred-mile Dragon Scale was lucky enough to escape the swamp. However, it would never forget the mermaid’s 

tears

. 

It was a sad and romantic story, but I 

wasn’t in the 

mood to 

listen to it

. Instead, I asked with a frown

, “Chuyi, have you ever seen a mermaid?” 

Legends about 

mermaids

 were 

plenty

, but I had never seen one before. 

Chuyi shook his head. It was the first time he didn’t sound confident. 

“They

 should 

exist, b

ut I have only heard of 

them

 in legends 

so far

…” 

Then, he finished his cup of jasmine tea

 and looked 

at u

s. His 

voice was firm. “I’m sure I will solve this problem. Don’t worry.” 

I nodded. As it had come to this, we had to follow his arrangement. “Do you have any idea what to do now?” 

“As long as we find the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon, we can find the mermaid

,

” Chuyi said strongly. I had the same idea. The Scaled Dragon was 

also looking

for

 the mermaid. 

And, it

 should be able to 

do so before 

us. 

Then, he turned to ask if my in-laws had eaten something unusual before they got sick, like strange beef or 

if they drank

 water from 

a

 well or river. 

I didn’t say anything, but I was also curious how my in-laws had bumped into the Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon. It was as rare as a meteor hitting earth. How could it happen to them… 

Father had thought for quite a long 

time

, but 

he still

 shook his head. At the same time, I noticed that my mother-in-law

’s

 eyes were twinkling. It was as though she was thinking about something… 

When 

we

 all looked at her, she hesitated for a while before sending her husband a look

. She 

stutter

ed,

 “Husband, could it be the wild vegetables we picked before?” 

“Wild vegetables? 

What about them

?” My father looked bewildered, but I had a feeling that it was the root of the problem.

I asked, 

“What happened when you picked the wild vegetables?” 

“Oh, it happened 

at

 the beginning of this autumn. The riverbank at the East of the village grew a lot of fresh vegetables. Your mother and I saw them

 on our way 

home from the field. We thought

 they

 would be delicious

, 

so we picked some of them to boil…” said my father. 

Chuyi and I exchanged looks. We understood immediately that the problem came from the wild vegetables. First of all, in autumn, Shandong would be yellow and dried. How could there be lushly green wild vegetables? 

Still

, why 

was everyone else

 all right

, and o

nly our parents 

had a

 problem

?

Could it be that no

 other people 

had picked

 the wild vegetables? Or

, were they the only ones that 

found that spot of green vegetables? 

“

So that was the problem...

” my 

father-in-law

 said when he saw our strange fac

es. “N

o wonder all the vegetables were gone the next day. Your mother and I even thought that someone had cut all of them 

in

 one night.” 

“Mom, 

Dad

, how could you act without thinking? Don’t we have money? How could you eat things when you don’t even know what they are?!” Yin Xinyue burst out. 

After y

elling for a short moment, her voice lowered as she cried. “I’ve been working hard to send money home 

every month

. I just want you guys to have a better life. Why did you…” 

She covered her face and ran to our bedroom. I followed her to comfort her. 

Later

, our father took me and Chuyi to the riverbank to see. 

As it was night, there was no one walking on the street except for us. 

This

 helped us calm down.

Father talked 

to

 us while walking. “The small river in our village is actually a branch of the Yellow River. Every year, there 

is

 a flooding season. But these

 past few

 years, the Yellow River 

has been

 drying up

,

 and the river in our village doesn’t have much water. 

The p

eople who 

have

 a clever mind 

will go

 there to claim some areas to grow vegetables.” 

Indeed, when we crossed the bridge, I shone my flashlight down and saw a vast 

area of 

green wheat. I also spotted a barren area the size of a basketball 

court, 

where I could see the brown soil. 

That area of land was right in the middle of the riverbank. There should be no reason 

for the 

villagers 

to leave

 it empty. That

 was

 why I concluded it was the spot 

where the

 lush wild vegetables 

had 

g

rown. 

I strode toward that spot. 

When we 

got

 there, Chuyi directly stabbed his eight-faceted Han sword into the ground. In 

the

 blink of an eye, the entire blade sank until we only saw the handle! 

I thought he would read 

a

 spell. However, he drew the sword out and sprinkled some ashes from his bag on the blade of the sword. The ashes

sizzled like boiling water.  

After around one minute, the ashes slowly fell off the blade. I was surprised 

as I could smell a terrible

stench coming 

from the sword. 

“

I see.

” Chuyi used a handkerchief to wipe the blade before putting it back 

in

 its sheath. He smiled, but his eyes didn’t. “The Eight-hundred-mile Scaled Dragon is smart. It use

d

 the ice here to cover its Yin energy.” 

I now 

recognized that the soil underneath was really soft. It wasn’t frozen. It turned out the Scaled Dragon had absorbed the ice around. The beast was 

struggling

, though. Although it didn’t like the 

cold

, it had to use ice to cover itself. 

I sighed

. 

“Can you locate that beast?” 

“Let me try.” Then, he took out a calabash and released Little Lin.