Chapter 220 Jinjiang
Yan Shixun saw the fear in his master's eyes just now, and when he heard Ye Li mention what happened twenty years ago, he realized that the source of the danger encountered by the program group in Changshou Village happened long time ago.
Hearing Yan Shixun's thoughts, Ye Li shook his head: "Not twenty years ago, but earlier."
"Shi Xun, have you heard about the Nanming Mountain incident? Decades ago, there were thousands of corpses on Nanming Mountain."
Ye Li lowered his eyes slightly. Even with Yan Shixun by his side, he still couldn't control his disgust when Nanming Mountain was mentioned.
Yan Shixun had never personally experienced what happened in Nanming Mountain back then.
Although he had heard from his colleagues that Nanming Mountain had a bad reputation, he did not fully understand it.
Yan Shixun was a little surprised to hear Ye Li talking about Nanming Mountain at this time.
Is it really... to the point where even the ghosts and gods who are indifferent to the human world have a deep memory of it?
Somehow, Yan Shixun suddenly felt that starting from Zhang Wubing's decision to cooperate with the authorities in the southern region, something irreversible began to move since they approached the outside of the mountain of Changshou Village.
First, there were the tourists in the B&B who wanted to settle down in the longevity village. Then there were the many strange things hidden beneath the happiness and stability in the longevity village, the rotting corpses in the river, the lost memories, and the chrysanthemum patterns carved everywhere.
At that time, Yan Shixun thought that the source of Changshou Village was upstream, but he did not expect that the Changshou Village upstream was far more dangerous than the downstream.
But when he explored deeper, he discovered the village chief behind Liu Ming and his master hidden under the village chief's skin.
The destruction of Nancun Village 20 years ago and the corpses scattered all over Nanming Mountain decades ago...
It's like a deep pit that keeps digging downwards. The deeper you dig, the more horrifying the truth becomes.
Deep in these mountains lies an abyss of sin.
At this time, Yan Shixun was clearly standing next to Ye Li, but he had the illusion that he was standing on the edge of a cliff. Behind him was a bottomless abyss.
Yan Shixun slowly turned sideways, following Ye Li's gaze, and looked towards Nancun.
Starting from the three-way intersection where they were standing, thick black fog rose from the foot of Yeli and quickly swept across the entire village.
The power of Ye Li replaced the master's and occupied the dream. Everything was like the surface of the water shattered by a huge rock thrown down, and ripples spread out in circles.
All the scenes were shattered and reorganized, and the sky and the earth changed color.
When Yan Shixun looked again, Nancun had changed its appearance.
The village houses were no longer the desolate and dilapidated ones that Yan Shixun had seen before. Although the low houses were simple, they were full of the breath of life.
Grain was drying in the yard, and the sounds of children playing and dogs barking could be heard. The summer breeze rustled through the leaves, bringing a hint of coolness from the mountains under the hot sky.
The villagers passing by walked through the three-way intersection, but they ignored Yan Shixun and Ye Li who passed by, as if they were transparent people outside the environment.
Yan Shixun also saw a few familiar faces.
He was stunned for a moment before realizing that those faces were somewhat similar to Nantian, but the ages did not match at all.
Ye Li's deep voice came from the side: "Several decades ago, after the summer solstice festival, Nancun began to become strange."
He raised his hand and pointed at a household in the village, and said calmly, "Someone proposed to the village to abolish the ancient and conservative sacrifices, but was rejected."
As soon as Ye Li finished speaking, Yan Shixun heard a "bang!"
The door of the house that Ye Li pointed at was suddenly pulled open from the inside and then slammed shut, causing the dogs in the yard to bark wildly.
An angry old woman came out of the yard, her brows tightly furrowed, and a vertical wrinkle between her brows made her look extremely stern and imposing. The drooping corners of her mouth revealed her anger unabashedly.
But a louder male roar came from the yard behind the old woman.
"You are forgetting your roots! You can't just throw away the rules passed down by our ancestors. If something happens to the village next year, will you be responsible? You don't have to be the witch of Nancun anymore. You don't care about the village. You are not qualified!"
The old woman was not threatened at all. She turned around suddenly, her eyes like lightning shot towards the people in the courtyard, and she sneered and gnashed her teeth: "Is the inheritance you are guarding so tightly a good thing? There are gods in the Nanming Mountain for dead sacrifices. Many people from outside the mountain who passed by the vicinity of Nancun have never returned... Ha, Nancun will be destroyed because of you!"
She raised her head and sneered, "I'm waiting to see the day when your family is destroyed."
The people in the courtyard were furious: "You!"
But the old woman didn't give him the chance to continue scolding her, she turned around and strode away.
In the distance, a young man and woman were waiting anxiously.
As soon as they saw the old woman, the couple rushed over to greet her: "Ama..."
Before he could finish his words, the old woman stretched out her hand and pushed him. She said in a serious tone, "Leave the village immediately and go outside the mountain, away from Nanming Mountain."
"Everyone is crazy. They believe in the wrong God."
The old woman gritted her teeth with hatred every time she spoke, as if she wanted to bite the villagers' ignorant persistence.
"They say that you can get everything you want and never suffer again. Do they really think that using other people's corpses to do this is a good thing worth passing on?"
There was a trace of sadness in the old woman's eyes: "Have they checked the coffin after the reburial of the deceased?"
The young man and woman were shocked when they heard this, and their eyes widened in fear and disbelief.
"Mom, are you saying that...the bodies are not in the coffins?"
The old woman nodded and said, "I dug up the grave at night after the sacrifice, but there was nothing inside the coffin."
When the old woman thought of the scene she saw in the middle of the night, she felt her whole body trembling, frightened and angry.
Under the dim mountain forest, densely packed graves stand silently. In front of the newly erected tombstones are placed yellow and white chrysanthemums, representing Nancun’s gratitude to the dead for donating their remains to complete the sacrifice.
She carried a hoe and dug up the soft soil that had just been filled in. After prying open the lid and seeing the empty coffin with only a slight stench of decay, she was stunned.
Originally, she was just suspicious about the strange things about the village chief and the old witch during the sacrifice, so she came to check in the middle of the night, feeling guilty about disturbing the dead.
But she never expected that the corpse that she saw being buried in the coffin during the summer solstice festival disappeared out of thin air.
In doubt and confusion, she dug up every grave and pried open every coffin.
Then she felt as if all the blood in her body had frozen.
——The corpses that were reburied after the four annual ceremonies have all disappeared.
She stood in a messy cemetery, surrounded by pried-open empty coffins. In the smell of damp and rotten soil, the hoe fell from her hand powerlessly.
She knew that all the sacrifices in Nancun's past... might backfire on Nancun itself.
The old woman wanted to explain her observations and opinions to the village chief and the old witch, and to persuade them to stop in time and not allow the strange and inexplicable ceremony to continue, fearing that Nancun had been worshipping the wrong god all along.
Although we don't know whether it is an evil god or a false god, we will definitely not get a good result.
However, the village chief not only did not take it seriously, but scolded her instead. The old witch drooped her eyebrows and said nothing, looking as old as a melted wax figure.
This made the old woman realize that they probably knew there was something wrong with the ceremony from the very beginning.
However, since the village can benefit from it, why not do it?
The villagers who accepted the health and safety brought by the sacrifice also accepted it well. It was just a dead body and it didn't endanger them, so why should they care?
Seeing the attitude of the villagers, the old woman felt disappointed.
She made up her mind to send the younger generation out of the village and leave herself alone in the village.
Then, without waiting for nightfall, she took her tools and went into the mountains again.
Her destination this time was the place deep in the mountains where witches of all generations had completed the final step of the ritual.
It is the source of the Nanming Mountain River and the source of everything.
Large patches of yellow and white chrysanthemums bloom on the river bank, and are blown into the river by the breeze, which is refreshing and beautiful.
However, she saw a scene that shocked her so much that she couldn't recover for a long time.
——At the spring at the source of the river, there were corpses one after another beneath the clear water.
Some of them were familiar faces to her, people who had died in Nancun over the years. Some were wearing clothes from outside the mountains, and some of them had asked her for directions to the mountains because they had lost their way while hiking.
There are so many of them that it is impossible to count them.
The corpse had its eyes tightly closed, its skin was swollen and blue from being soaked in the water, and it swayed slightly under the soft waves. It no longer looked like a normal human being.
The coolness spread all the way down from the top of her head. She stood by the river and felt like she was in an ice cellar in the hot summer.
She realized that Nancun...was an accomplice to the evil, had really worshipped the wrong god, and had also caused the deaths of those outsiders.
The peace of Nancun had always been built on countless corpses.
In grief and anger, the old woman pulled up the chrysanthemums on the river bank and threw them away as a way to vent her anger, then jumped into the river, trying to fish the corpses out from the bottom of the river.
No matter why they appeared here, or what the purpose of the person who put them here was...she just wanted to give them back their original peace and let the dead rest in peace.
When he heard the old woman chanting ancient incantations and saw the gestures she made as she carried the corpse in the river, Yan Shixun suddenly understood why he felt these faces were familiar.
This woman is Grandma Nan from decades ago.
But at this time, Nantian was not yet born, and even his parents were still young and had just been sent out of the village by Grandma Nan.
Just like later, Grandma Nan sent Nan Tian away.
Grandma Nan, who was unable to dissuade the villagers, could only desperately protect her family, and then do what she thought was right alone to prevent the crisis from involving innocent people.
However, Yan Shixun keenly noticed that there were golden threads growing on the corpses sinking to the bottom of the river, reflecting the faint golden light in the water waves under the sunlight.
It's like a mutated plant root.
At the same time, Grandma Nan was unaware of this and was still reaching out to pick up the corpse, accidentally touching the golden roots floating in the water.
Yan Shixun subconsciously took a step forward, raised his hand and opened his mouth to remind Grandma Nan to be careful.
However, Ye Li beside him stretched out his long arm and blocked it.
"Shi Xun, everything you see is what has already happened."
Ye Li lowered his eyes and said calmly: "Even if you want to save them... life and death cannot be violated."
Yan Shixun and Ye Li looked at each other for a long while. Then he slowly put down his arms in a daze and turned around to look at Grandma Nan again.
Just as he expected, after the golden threads that were deeply rooted in the corpse were disturbed and broken, the corpse, which should have been dead, actually opened its eyes, and its red and empty eyeballs stared at Grandma Nan.
The situation took a turn for the worse.
Grandma Nan soon discovered something unusual about the corpse and was so frightened that she wanted to float to the surface of the water and away from the corpse.
But it was too late.
The corpse at the bottom of the river gradually opened its red eyes, stretched out its rotten and swollen arms, grabbed Grandma Nan's feet, and tried to drag her deeper into the river.
There is a limit to how long a person can hold their breath underwater, even with the use of spells.
Granny Nan quickly ran out of oxygen in her lungs. She frowned in pain and tried to swim upstream, but she could only watch the scorching sun above the waves. The sky seemed so far away and all that was left before her eyes were the swollen, hideous faces of dead bodies.
But suddenly, Grandma Nan saw a person standing on the shore.
Yan Shixun also noticed that figure at the same time.
He was wearing a silver-white robe that stretched on the ground, his white hair was braided into several strands and neatly tied behind his back. Although he was old, one could still see the handsome features of his youth, and a gentle smile on his face.
It turned out to be my master.
Yan Shixun was shocked.
It turns out that from this time on, Master had already been involved in the tragedy of Nanming Mountain.
——No, all the tragedies in Nanming Mountain started with Master.
The master lowered his eyes and looked at Grandma Nan under the water with a smile. He was not worried that Grandma Nan would rescue all the corpses under the water and ruin his plan, nor was he prepared to rescue Grandma Nan.
It is just like when humans see a bug fall into water, they would watch with interest and enjoy watching the bug struggle.
Grandma Nan stared at the master's master intently. As a witch in Nan Village, she quickly recognized the other party's identity even though her consciousness was gradually becoming blurred due to lack of oxygen.
In every sacrifice held in Nancun over the years...the one being worshipped was actually the master.
The master looked at Grandma Nan's expression and sighed with pity: "Why bother to delve into it? Isn't it better to live in confusion? Even if I took away the sacrificial corpse, didn't Nancun still get the peace and happiness he wanted?"
However, Grandma Nan did not agree with what the master said.
She summoned all her strength as a witch and stirred the riverbed upside down. The corpses screamed and struggled in the whirlpool.
The master also looked at Grandma Nan in surprise. He didn't expect that she could do this.
Grandma Nan had only one last obsession in her heart - to seek help from the outside world and tell people outside Nanming Mountain that such a dangerous sin was hidden inside Nanming Mountain.
She knew she couldn't beat her master, but that didn't mean she would give up.
All the roots of the chrysanthemums were broken, and the corpses that were originally deeply rooted in the riverbed floated up and rushed rapidly downwards along the turbulent river water. The springs collapsed and gushed out wildly, and the surging river water carried countless corpses downstream.
The master wanted to stop it.
But even though his power was considered strong for Grandma Nan, he still could not defeat heaven and earth.
He took root in Nanming Mountain and absorbed the vitality of everyone. As a result, he was trapped in Nanming Mountain and could not leave.
This is the cause and effect given to him by heaven and earth.
Therefore, the master could only watch as the corpses rushed out of Nanming Mountain after Grandma Nan’s desperate fight.
The entire river was littered with corpses whose eyes were still open. Their deaths were horrific, their bodies had been swollen and their faces were unrecognizable, and in the hot weather, they floated on the river like balloons.
Some corpses were so skinny that they had no flesh and blood, and their charred skin stretched to reveal the appearance of bones. They sank quietly to the bottom of the river, and were carried out of the mountain by the mud and sand, and finally saw the light of day.
How could a corpse that had already died and was swollen from being soaked withstand the impact of the water flow?
The skin of many corpses was washed into pieces, and their flesh and blood floated on the river. Pale bones could be vaguely seen among the exploded corpses.
The place where the water flowed was filled with a foul odor, causing everyone who saw it to scream in fear.
The thousands of corpses with hideous deaths in the river became an unforgettable nightmare for many witnesses.
After leaving Nanming Mountain, those corpses that were originally extremely aggressive completely lost the power to revive and became just normal corpses.
They can finally close their eyes again and enter the peaceful sleep of death.
It was as if the heaven and earth were secretly helping and favoring Grandma Nan, allowing her wish to come true and clearing away the obstacles that the master had put in place for Grandma Nan.
The corpses were discovered by a Taoist priest from Haiyun Temple who happened to be passing by outside the mountain.
Soon, more ghost exorcists discovered the abnormality of Nanming Mountain.
There was a huge sensation in the entire circle, and various temples and Taoist temples came quickly, wanting to find out what was going on in Nanming Mountain.
The master was furious, but the only remedy he could offer was to keep those Taoists and monks outside Nanming Mountain, preventing them from entering the mountain to investigate. Even their memories were erased.
Many masters even wandered outside the mountain for months and could not remember the purpose of their coming to Nanming Mountain.
Some masters lost their memories and fell off the cliff into the rapids, dying in Nanming Mountain.
The tragic situation at Nanming Mountain and the fruitless exploration made the other exorcists even more fearful of this place.
The evil reputation of Nanming Mountain began to spread from then on.
Among those who lost their memories was Grandma Nan.
Grandma Nan, who was washed ashore by the river, was unconscious for a long time before she was taken back to the village by the villagers.
However, when Grandma Nan returned to the village, she had forgotten what she had done in the mountains.
She only vaguely remembered the sacrifice and the god, but she didn't know what happened specifically and who the god was... It was as if her brain didn't want her to remember the troubles, so it erased everything from the source of the troubles.
However, the village chief and the old witch of Nancun soon died suddenly, and their deaths were horrible.
Grandma Nan replaced the old witch and became the only witch in the village.
However, every time she presided over the ceremony and looked at the dead bodies used as sacrifices, she felt as if a scene of densely packed corpses vaguely emerged in her mind.
The young couple who were still in Nanming Mountain at the time and were unable to leave also forgot what Grandma Nan had told them.
After they left the village, they gave birth to a child and named him Nantian.
They just thought they were going to the city to work and earn money.
Because they were afraid that Grandma Nan would be lonely living alone in the village, they sent Nantian to live with Grandma Nan to keep her company.
It was not until twenty years ago that the greed of the people of South Village touched the master's heart, and he wanted to take over the entire world and make sure that there was no more pain in everyone's life.
But Grandma Nan was keenly aware of——
The Year of the Ghost has arrived.
Yan Shixun, who had been wandering outside Nancun and watching all this as a bystander, slowly opened his eyes when he saw the figure appearing in Nancun.
That tall and straight figure was so similar to the Yeli that Yan Shixun was familiar with.
Just by seeing the other person's figure, Yan Shixun concluded that this was Ye Li.
He looked up at Ye Li beside him in confusion, his face gradually became serious, and he asked Ye Li: "Why... twenty years ago, you appeared here?"
Ye Li chuckled and said without hiding anything: "You want to know the connection between me and that evil spirit."
“That’s what happened.”
Yan Shixun saw that Ye Li, who appeared in Nancun twenty years ago, was wearing blood-stained old-fashioned clothes and the bamboo hat on his head was pulled down very low, so that his stern face could not be seen.
However, this outfit stunned Yan Shixun.
Similar scenes emerged from memory.
He remembers...
The man I met at the market more than ten years ago was dressed similarly.
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