Chapter 217 Jinjiang

Yan Shixun lowered his eyes and looked at the child who was looking up at him with pure and expectant eyes.

He was very sure that he did not know the young Nantian.

Judging from his age, when Nantian was this age, he should still be at his parents' house, confined to a small square room. He did not meet Li Chengyun at the market, travel around the country with him, and see the vast world.

If that’s the case, then why is young Nantian here?

Yan Shixun did not relax his vigilance at all. He bent down and showed a gentle attitude, asking Xiao Nantian: "Then do you remember why I am here?"

Yan Shixun has always been indifferent to others. Anyone who is not familiar with him will be discouraged by his handsome face that is sharp enough to cut others.

However, if he wanted to approach someone in a planned way, it would be easy given his understanding of strangers.

When he wants to get close to someone, no one would have the heart to reject such a handsome face.

Xiaonantian is no exception.

The child was obviously frightened by Yan Shixun's aggressiveness when he just woke up, but when he saw Yan Shixun's smiling face, he hesitated again.

Xiao Nantian stirred it with her soft fingers, and then whispered, "Because big brother is a guest invited by grandma."

Yan Shixun was surprised when he heard this.

He didn’t even recognize Nantian when he was a child, so how could he know Nantian’s grandmother?

But... there is only one situation that will make the originally impossible thing possible.

He is now in a dream.

Yan Shixun's eyes darkened, and he called out casually, "Ye Li."

No one responded to him.

The familiar figure did not appear beside him immediately.

But Yan Shixun remembered very clearly that Ye Li had once promised him that as long as he called his name, he would appear by his side.

Yan Shixun subconsciously believed what Ye Li said to him, and he didn't know since when he got used to seeing Ye Li's way of getting along with others whenever he turned around.

The current situation left Yan Shixun with only one guess after he ruled out the possibility that Ye Li had deceived him.

——Ye Li does not exist in this world, so there was no response to his call.

Yeli is the ghost god in charge of death and judgment. Yan Shixun once felt the unity of man and nature where Yeli and the Tao coexisted with the help of Yeli.

Therefore, he did not think that Ye Li did not appear here because Ye Li did not hear his voice.

Yan Shixun only used this to rule out all other possibilities and confirmed his final guess.

——This is not reality.

Without Yan Shixun realizing it himself, his soul had already realized it and chose to believe Ye Li, giving his trust and backing to the other party.

Even, use the other party as a benchmark to judge reality and falsehood.

In Xiao Nantian's curious eyes, Yan Shixun's expression was calm, as if the person who suddenly called out Ye Li's name just now was not himself.

"Since I am your grandmother's guest, then, where is your grandmother?"

Yan Shixun squatted down and asked Xiao Nantian with a chuckle.

Xiao Nantian blinked and pointed outside the room.

But when Yan Shixun stood up and wanted to walk out, Xiao Nantian suddenly grabbed Yan Shixun's trouser leg.

"Big brother, do you know where my little friend is?"

Xiao Nantian pouted and asked pitifully, "Grandma didn't allow me to go find them, but I haven't seen them or played with them for a long time."

Looking at little Nantian's tearful eyes, Yan Shixun suddenly remembered the ghost story that Nantian had told everyone when he was at Wild Wolf Peak.

At that time, Nantian said that someone in the village was hanged in the woods, so the old lady did not allow him to go out, but the naughty boy still sneaked out, and ended up meeting a ghost who wanted to take him away at the fork in the road in the village.

So...it was that time.

Because of Xiao Nantian’s words, Yan Shixun instantly realized where he was.

I am afraid that after I lost consciousness, because of Nantian’s grandma, I returned to Nan Village, which had not been destroyed decades ago.

After all, Nantian said that his hometown was around Nanming Mountain.

It is precisely because of this that Nantian knew the meaning of those fabrics and was even concerned about them by his master.

Yan Shixun slowly stood up and looked solemnly outside the room that Xiao Nantian had just pointed to.

In the courtyard, an old man had silver-white hair and every wrinkle on his face seemed to hide a story from the past.

And she was looking at him with her back hunched.

It seemed that she had been waiting there since before he woke up, wanting to say something to him.

Neither Grandma Nan nor Yan Shixun on the opposite side were wearing summer clothes, and they looked so out of place under such a sunny day.

Yan Shixun let go of Xiao Nantian and walked out with his long legs.

"Nantian said, I am your guest."

Yan Shixun chuckled and looked up and down at Grandma Nan without any extra warmth in his eyes: "You didn't tell Nan Tian that his friends are all dead."

"But maybe you can tell me."

Yan Shixun's smile gradually faded, and his handsome face became serious and cold, just like Grandma Nan's.

"Why did you send Nantian out of the village?"

"Grandma Nan, you knew something back then, but you hid it from Nantian. What was it? Why did Nancun disappear from sight after that and become a taboo in the mouths of Nantian's parents? And why did Nantian return in vain after searching for it several times?"

"I don't think you brought me here as a 'guest' just to meet Nan Tian when he was a child."

"You brought me here from my master's presence, shielding me from the other party's investigation. What do you want to tell me...?"

Yan Shixun's eyes were deep, and he stared at Grandma Nan without taking his gaze away from her for a moment.

When he called Ye Li, the other party did not show up. This was like a reverse anchor point, allowing Yan Shixun to confirm where he was.

And the Grandma Nan, who should have died long ago according to Nan Tian, and Nan Tian, whose age was obviously wrong, made Yan Shixun realize that his appearance here was probably not accidental.

It was Grandma Nan who did it on purpose.

What exactly does a dead person want to tell himself?

Yan Shixun already had some guesses in his mind.

This wasn't the first time he had encountered something like this.

The dead souls complained and asked me to judge justice. There were also souls whose obsessions were not fulfilled and wanted me to fulfill their last wish.

Whether it is money, family, or resentment, Yan Shixun has become accustomed to it after years of traveling around the country.

However, at this time, Grandma Nan still frightened Yan Shixun.

Grandma Nan didn't say anything. She just looked at Yan Shixun solemnly, then moved aside to make way outside the yard.

"Isn't it obvious when you see right from wrong? Why ask me?"

A smile appeared on Grandma Nan's wrinkled face, and her voice was hoarse, as if her vocal cords had not been used for decades.

"Even if I told you, are you someone who would trust others so easily?"

Yan Shixun stared at Grandma Nan for a long time, then he spread his long legs and stepped out of the threshold of the house.

The moment I walked past Grandma Nan and stepped out of the yard, everything seemed to have changed.

Originally in the house, everything was harmonious and peaceful, but in an instant the world changed, and a violent storm began.

Yan Shixun stood outside the courtyard gate, watching the heavy rain pouring down on the village road and village women running wildly on the muddy ground.

She was holding a tiny swaddling baby in her arms, but she had no pity for the baby at all. She let the heavy rain pour down on the swaddling baby, and the baby's cries became weaker and weaker.

The village woman knelt down at the fork in the road at the end of the village road with a "thump!" She held the swaddling clothes in her hands high and shouted, "Please God bless my eldest son and give birth to grandchildren!"

As she spoke, the village woman threw the swaddling clothes in her hand towards the Sansan fork in the road.

Yan Shixun subconsciously wanted to rush over to stop it, but was held back by the person next to him.

Grandma Nan appeared beside him at some point, looked up at him and said, "Young man, be patient."

A sarcastic and sad look appeared on her face: "Even if you want to save the child...it's too late. Too late."

Granny Nan didn't know whether she was talking to herself or to Yan Shixun, she just murmured: "In the beginning, who could have thought..."

Yan Shixun turned his gaze from Grandma Nan to the fork in the road.

Then he saw that the baby suddenly disappeared in the rain before it hit the ground.

The village woman cried with joy, but Yan Shixun's eyes widened in surprise and doubt.

"Thank you, God. Thank you, God."

The village woman bowed to the rain again and again: "Please bless my family to give birth to a grandson."

The village woman seemed to not see Yan Shixun. When she ran past Grandma Nan's house, she didn't notice the two people standing in front of the door at all.

After the village woman left, Yan Shixun saw a figure slowly emerging at the fork in the road.

The rain poured down avoiding the figure, who was holding a baby in his arms, with gentle eyes, but not deep enough to see.

"Your birth was a mistake."

The man looked at the baby in his arms with compassion and said softly, "But why do you have to endure such suffering? Being born into this world is hard, but God is unfair. He actually wants you to endure such treatment."

The man reached out his hand and gently tucked the baby's swaddling clothes.

But the next moment, his hand was on the baby's neck. Then, a slight "crack" sound was heard.

The baby hung limply in his arms.

"Starting with you...I will create a world without pain for all life."

The figure said softly: "From you on, there will be no more pain in everyone's life, only joy."

Yan Shixun looked at the other party in horror. He didn't expect that the other party would do such a thing.

But gradually, he suddenly realized something.

——That face looks like a younger version of my master’s master.

If the time point in Nantian's dream went back a few decades, then Master...

Yan Shixun's eyes were gloomy, and he turned to look at Grandma Nan beside him: "Grandma, is this what you asked me to see?"

"You want to tell me... that everything started with Master?"

Grandma Nan sighed, her stern expression softened, and her eyes showed sadness: "All sins originated from Nan Village."

"Nancun, which was supposed to be guarding the border, instead handed over its thousand-year heritage to others, allowing the so-called gods to take advantage of the situation and steal everything."

Granny Nan looked bleak: "I am powerless to stop it. But..."

"Under the Great Dao, how can the common people be saved?"

"As the witch of South Village, I... feel ashamed of the way of heaven."

Grandma Nan raised her head and sighed, with a look of grief and anger that Yan Shixun had never seen before.

In the rain, the young master stood at the intersection of three roads. Suddenly, he raised his eyes, holding the swaddling clothes, and looked towards where Yan Shixun was standing.

Yan Shixun understood the other person's mouth shape.

The master said: It's useless. The witch is dead, and there is no one who can hinder me anymore. It's just the struggle of an ant.

The world is about to collapse, and what can you do?

As Grandma Nan finished her words, the scene in front of Yan Shixun suddenly changed drastically.

When Yan Shixun opened his eyes again, Grandma Nan was no longer by his side.

He replaced the previous master's perspective and stood at the three-way intersection, watching the villagers coming and going to farm. Everything seemed so harmonious.

However, when night fell, a village woman came with a baby girl in her arms and dropped her at the intersection.

Once, twice...

Not only baby girls, but also young women with big bellies knelt down at the fork in the road crying and begging for sons.

She really couldn't bear to see her child being thrown out by her mother-in-law to fend for himself.

Yan Shixun couldn't move at all, like a statue, watching the baby being thrown at the fork in the road and then dying.

But the young child doesn’t even have a name, so there will be no ghost to take it away.

Only that familiar figure - the young master appeared at the fork in the road and gently led the wandering soul into the mountains.

In the end, even the pregnant woman died of dystocia, and her still warm body was thrown at the fork in the road.

——Her mother-in-law thought that it was a bad omen that she gave birth to six girls before giving birth to a boy. Only by letting her soul wander at the crossroads and not being able to reincarnate would there be no more daughters-in-law who could not give birth to a boy marrying their sons.

Yan Shixun stared at the corpse with its eyes open at his feet, his eyes were bloodshot but he was unable to break free.

A pair of hands wrapped in silver-white sleeves reached out and gently embraced the body of the young pregnant woman.

The master gently picked up the corpse, turned around and looked at Yan Shixun gently.

With a compassionate smile in his eyes, he asked Yan Shixun: "What do you think of this world?"

"That god said, there is no salvation in the world."

"But I'm different."

The master said, "I say, life is gentle and does not need pain."

"I want to eliminate all the pain from people's lives. Why should we endure such pain in just a hundred years?"

“Birth, aging, sickness and death, love and separation, if you can’t get what you want, why bother clinging to it.”

The master looked at the corpse in his arms, sighing softly, "Isn't it worth treating their lives with kindness?"

"I just... want there to be no more suffering in the world, and I want everyone to live happily until they die."

The heavy rain soaked Yan Shixun's clothes, and the rain flowed down his hair and onto his cheeks.

He remembered that at this point in time, the underworld had already collapsed and the King of Hell had died.

And the only god who exists who controls death...

Only Yeli is left.

All the fragments of thoughts came together and the doubts were solved.

Yan Shixun suddenly realized that the "Ghost Year" with many dead souls that year was not the King of Hell patrolling the world.

It is Yeli, walking among the people, judging sins.

The "King of Hell" and "God" mentioned by Nantian and Master, refer to...

It’s Yeli.