The red snow in the courtyard had been cleared away.

“They carry evil within them?”

“Not just evil, but filled with malice, so they had to be cut off.”

“I thought you would devour them?”

“Those I devour will have no afterlife.”

Ethan Clark was silent for a moment, hugging her knees and spacing out. No afterlife—was that really such a severe punishment?

After the Month of the God's Birth came the first month of the new year. Ordinary families these days didn’t pay much attention to the New Year, but it was different here. The Month of the God's Birth was oppressive, while the first month of the new year was lively from start to finish. The people in the old mansion were full of joy, even the food in the dining hall was much more plentiful, and there were many more members of the Qin clan in the house, all here to worship the clan god. This old mansion seemed to be their ancestral hall.

Some people could only kneel and worship outside the courtyard of the shrine, so when Ethan Clark went out to eat, she saw rows of incense burners outside the courtyard, each filled with thick incense sticks, smoke curling around the entire courtyard. Even the clan god couldn’t help but complain to her that the smoke was too choking—this wasn’t the first time he’d said so.

A few people were allowed into the courtyard to worship, mostly elderly folks whom the clan women called clan elders. One by one, these white-haired elders knelt in the shrine to offer incense to the clan god. The leader, who had a particularly dignified air, said, “We pray that the clan god will continue to protect the family in the coming year.”

Ethan Clark suspected they actually couldn’t see the clan god, or maybe the god was using some kind of illusion. In any case, while they were bowing to the altar, the clan god was actually standing behind them, watching. Ethan Clark tugged at his sleeve and stood beside him, hearing the god point at the leading elders and say, “When these children were born, I blessed them. Now, they are about to return to death.”

“Human time passes so quickly.”

After these elderly people left, offerings were brought in one after another, all from people of some status within the Qin clan, nearly filling the entire shrine.

“So many offerings, and all of them are food.”

“Yes, you can eat all of this.”

Ethan Clark no longer cared whether eating the offerings would be noticed by the clan women. After all, they had discovered countless oddities during this time but never found the cause, so they could only blame it on mice.

After rummaging for a while among the expensive pastries and natural dried fruits, she found a special offering: a beautifully packaged assortment of snacks.

The clan god pinched the crinkly package. “Is this tasty?”

Ethan Clark tore it open and tasted it, feeling she had never eaten such delicious snacks in her life. But if people were now offering snacks, why had no one ever offered the clan god a phone or a computer?

Because most of the shrine’s space was taken up by offerings, Ethan Clark had to sleep on the second level of the shrine, very close to the clan god. Half-asleep, she caught a whiff of a cold, snowy scent, with a faint fragrance lingering at the tip of her nose—a smell she had become very familiar with lately.

She opened her eyes to see a red camellia with green leaves by her cheek, its slightly closed petals still holding white snow, as if it had just been picked from the snowy ground.

Was this a gift from the clan god?

Chapter 9 08 Return

Ethan Clark had picked flowers by the roadside in the outer courtyard, but had never thought of picking from the large cluster of red camellias in the shrine’s courtyard. In her mind, those were the clan god’s favorites. The clan women, when cleaning the courtyard and offering incense, never touched those camellias, so of course Ethan Clark didn’t dare to either—she was actually quite timid.

But on this festival at the start of the new year, she received such a flower, and her heart couldn’t help but beat a little faster. Given that the clan god was a “god,” the appearance of this flower was so sudden, so moving and surprising.

She held up the flower and went to the clan god. “Did you give this to me?”

The clan god smiled at her and said, “Last night, the wind and snow were fierce, and this flower bloomed against the storm, looking very beautiful. Unfortunately, without branches and leaves to shield it, it was still broken off by the strong wind.”

Ethan Clark was drawn into that scene by his words. Last night, in the wind and snow, the clan god watched the flowers, saw one blown off, and picked it up to place before her.

The clan god was a god; he didn’t rest at night. Most of the time, he sat quietly on the altar, like a real statue. Had he spent countless days and nights like this, alone? How many years of flowers blooming and withering had he witnessed? Just thinking about it made it seem like a very lonely thing. But perhaps loneliness was just a human sentiment—maybe gods didn’t feel that way.

In any case, that afternoon when she went out to eat, Ethan Clark specially borrowed a little girl’s phone and sat in the corner of the dining hall playing games for the clan god to watch. Yes, playing for the clan god. He wasn’t interested in the romance, adventure, or management games that young people liked, but he was quite fond of the simplest kind—like Snake.

A tiny snake, starting out by eating little balls, growing fatter and longer the more it ate. However long Ethan Clark sat there playing, he could sit quietly by her side and watch. Ethan Clark felt he seemed to be watching with great interest, though she wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination.