In this chapter, we learn that the old woman is the one who is spreading the disease in the village. We learn that she usually keeps to her own house and doesn't interact with other villagers. She's not a bad person, we're told, because she once nursed injured animals back to health in the woods. We also learn that in the past she's been a good friend of Inke's. In fact, the narrator tells us, she once helped him care for injured animals when they were sick in the forest. He tells us that the gods of death and life will descend upon the people of the village, and that they will be reborn as human beings again. The narrator also tells us the story of the "holy blood" epidemic. The holy blood epidemic originated from a forbidden ritual in which a priest placed the eggs of butterflies into a silver cauldron filled with the body parts of a dead body. The priest then revived the dead body as an immortal. The najha believed that this was a sin against God, so they banned the holy blood ritual. This is why the epidemic was so bad. The people were infected by the blood, but since the disease was spread through blood, there was no reason for it to get bad.