Chapter 678: Died in a Cesspit

Phoenix Golding’s body had been retrieved and washed clean. Her mouth and nose were full of maggots, which Linden’s mother had to pick out by hand. The corpse was frozen stiff, making it difficult to even dress her in burial clothes. They had to forcefully break her bones just to manage it before laying her out in the mortuary.

The mortuary was gloomy and eerie; even during the day, children refused to play near it. The father and son duo, Silas Golding and Linden Golding, arranged the funeral with grim faces, busying themselves with the preparations. Linden’s mother had already cried herself into a state of collapse. She sat beside Phoenix Golding’s corpse, her eyes fixed and unblinking.

"How could a perfectly healthy person just fall into a manure pit? Oh, Phoenix... What in the world happened to you...?" Linden’s mother wailed. She just couldn’t wrap her head around it. Her daughter had been so full of life just two days ago, so how could she have fallen into a manure pit and died?

"Maybe she zoned out for a second and accidentally leaned back," someone speculated.

The others agreed. "Wasn’t Phoenix in poor health recently? She probably got dizzy. *Sigh*!"

These women were all from the Golding Clan. When Phoenix Golding was alive, they had looked down on and ostracized her. But now that she was dead, all old grudges were water under the bridge. It was a shame, they mused. A perfectly healthy person falling into a manure pit... what a wretched way to die.

"Phoenix was in perfect health! She had already recovered. She wasn’t dizzy at all! I just saw her two days ago... Oh, my Phoenix... Please, send me a dream and tell me what really happened..."

Linden’s mother slapped her thighs as she howled in grief. To this moment, she still couldn’t believe it was real. But with her daughter’s cold corpse lying right beside her, she had no choice but to accept the truth.

The others stopped trying to console her. The pain of losing a daughter was beyond words. She would stop when she had no tears left to cry. They, however, still believed that Phoenix Golding had simply lost her footing and fallen. It wasn’t unheard of for someone in the village to fall into a manure pit; the others were just lucky enough to fall in during the day, get spotted, and be fished out.

’Honestly, what was Phoenix Golding thinking, running to the outhouse in the middle of the night? She should have just used the chamber pot at home. You could easily fall in by accident at night, even if you weren’t feeling dizzy!’

In the rural parts of Vessaria, the outhouse pits were perilously deep—at least three meters. Even a grown man could die if he fell in. The most dangerous aspect was the outhouses’ crude construction. The back was completely open over the pit, with only a wooden beam laid across planks for a seat. You had to sit on this beam to relieve yourself; it was the most primitive sort of commode imaginable.

But this type of outhouse was terrifying. As you sat on the beam, the fathomless manure pit gaped open right behind you. If your body swayed or you felt a moment of dizziness, you would almost certainly fall in. There was nothing at all to break your fall.

Therefore, the likelihood of Phoenix Golding falling into the pit due to a dizzy spell was considered extremely high. The villagers had no doubts about her cause of death, all agreeing that she must have lost her footing.

Only Linden’s mother kept insisting her daughter had been wronged, but no one listened to her. Even her husband and son, Silas and Linden Golding, thought she was overthinking things. In fact, the father-son duo even seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, as if they were finally free.

*(Author’s note: I almost fell into one of these outhouses as a child. Every time I had to use one, I was terrified, gripping the beam for dear life and silently cursing whoever designed it. Thankfully, every home has a private bathroom now, and these kinds of outhouses have disappeared.)*

Phoenix Golding’s funeral was a simple affair. After a one-day wake, the funeral procession carried her up the mountain for burial on the second day.

The Thorne family did not attend the funeral meal, nor did they join the procession. Tang Xiaonan had wanted to go to the mortuary for a look, but Phoebe Huxley forbade it, worried that she would be spiritually afflicted by the presence of death. As a result, Tang Xiaonan never saw Phoenix Golding, not even once, before she was buried.