yellow weasel

Chapter 5: Epilogue

The news spread through Blackwater Village faster than a wildfire in dry grass.

By dawn, the entire village had gathered at the mill. They stared in a mixture of shock, morbid awe, and grim, cathartic satisfaction at the creature tethered to the great stone wheel. It was a donkey, no doubt about it—scrawny, gray, and trembling. But its eyes... its eyes were unmistakably human. They were filled with a desperate, pleading intelligence that no ordinary animal possessed.

Li Fu, emboldened by the absence of his master and the sheer absurdity of the situation, had taken charge. He cracked a whip in the air, the sound echoing sharply off the frozen ground.

"Get moving, you beast!" Li Fu shouted, using the same cold, imperious tone Zhao Baipi used to use on his debtors. "Grind the grain! That's all you're good for now!"

The donkey—Zhao—flinched. It tried to speak, to beg, to explain. But all that emerged was a pathetic, raspy bray. It had no hands to gesture with, no words to form. It was trapped in a body that was strong yet subservient, a prisoner of its own making.

Reluctantly, driven by the sting of the whip and the primal instinct to survive, the donkey began to walk. Step by painful step, it circled the mill, turning the heavy stone wheel. Creak... groan... creak... The sound was the soundtrack of its new life.

The villagers watched in silence. Some wept, remembering how Zhao had ruined their families. Others laughed, a harsh, cathartic sound. A few children threw snowballs at the donkey, which it could do nothing but endure.

Days turned into weeks. The donkey worked from sunrise to sunset. It ate rough hay and drank icy water from a trough. It slept in a cold, dirty stable, surrounded by the smell of manure. It learned the true meaning of exhaustion and helplessness—the very feelings it had inflicted upon others for decades.

One afternoon, a group of traveling monks passed through the village. They saw the donkey at the mill and paused. One of the elder monks, a man with eyes like still pools of water, approached the fence.

"That is no ordinary beast," the monk said softly, addressing the gathered villagers. "Its aura is heavy with greed and regret. It carries the weight of a human soul."

Li Fu, now the de facto leader of the village, sneered. "That's Zhao Baipi. Or what's left of him. He got what he deserved."

The monk nodded slowly. "Indeed. The wheel of karma turns without fail. What goes around, comes around." He looked at the donkey and recited a short prayer, a blessing for the suffering soul trapped within. "May this penance cleanse his sins, and may he be reborn with compassion in his next life."

The donkey lowered its head, tears streaming from its large, brown eyes. It understood the monk's words. It remembered the face of Old Man Sun, the terror of his daughter Yingzi, and the countless others it had crushed. The guilt was a physical weight, heavier than the millstone.

Years passed. The donkey grew old. Its back became swayed from the constant labor. Its coat turned patchy. It never spoke again, but it never stopped working.

Eventually, the mill was replaced by a newer, more efficient one. The old donkey was sold to a farmer in a neighboring village. It lived out its final days pulling a cart, carrying firewood and vegetables, serving the very people it once despised.

When it finally died, it was buried in an unmarked grave at the edge of a field. No one mourned. No one erected a tombstone.

But the story lived on.

Mothers told it to their children to warn them against greed. "Be careful," they would say, "or the Yellow Immortal will come for you, and you'll end up like Zhao the Flayer, grinding grain for eternity."

And on quiet, snowy nights, if you listened closely near the ruins of the old mill, you could still hear the faint, rhythmic creaking of a stone wheel, and the sad, lonely bray of a donkey that never found peace.

The three beans, meanwhile, had turned to dust, scattered by the wind. But the lesson they taught remained: No amount of gold or years of life can save a man who has lost his humanity.