Free Web NovelThe layout inside the small Taoist temple was as simple as its exterior suggested. The main hall faced the main gate across a courtyard. Strangely, despite being a Taoist temple, there were no statues of deities worshipped in the main hall.
Horizontal lines were carved into the doorposts near the courtyard entrance of the main gate, seemingly recording the height of children. The higher the mark, the shallower it became, and the uppermost mark was already blurred and unclear.
This was likely the result of the elderly Taoists' strength waning with age, their carving strokes becoming less forceful over time, followed by centuries of weathering.
In the courtyard, beside a water vat with a large hole, lay a decayed small wooden horse. Looking at the crudely made wooden horse, Lu Yibei's mind conjured a scene of Qingji, with two pigtails sticking up and wearing a red bellyband, sitting on it and swaying precariously.
""It seemed quite cute, didn't it? If I punched the Ancestor like that, he would definitely cry for a long time, right? Thinking about it, I feel a bit eager to try!" Lu Yibei thought.
Several living quarters were located on either side of the courtyard. Three of them had already collapsed, and the remaining one was also on the verge of collapse in the wind, its beams and pillars making faint "creaking" sounds.
The area of the small Taoist temple was not large, and the areas with intact structures were even fewer. Lu Yibei spent only about fifteen minutes exploring the entire small Taoist temple.
This was after making a great effort to restrain the impulse to kick jars, smash wooden boxes, and pull out weeds, trying his best to maintain the original appearance of the small Taoist temple. After exploring, he finally found a locked large wooden box inside the one remaining intact wing room.
The reason he noticed this wooden box was that he detected a faint Spiritual Energy fluctuation within it."" frёeωebɳovel.com
"Treasure chest monster? Even if it's a treasure chest monster, it shouldn't be a big problem, right?
With this armor, hanging ten or eight treasure chest monsters on me wouldn't hurt."
Lu Yibei muttered a few words in his mind, then bent down and picked up the wooden box, moving it to the center of the courtyard. He examined it carefully under the moonlight.
Having endured centuries or even longer, the wooden box's original color was long indistinguishable. Its surface was covered with wormholes and traces of various fungi growth. The old-fashioned padlock was rusted, and with a slight pull, it broke with a "snap."
After unlocking it, Lu Yibei waited quietly for a moment. Seeing that nothing happened, he opened the lid.
As the lid opened with a "creak," a faint scent of camphor wood assailed him, subtly mixed with the smell of sand. Looking closely into the wooden box, Lu Yibei was slightly taken aback.
Unlike the severely decayed exterior of the wooden box, the interior was much better preserved, with smooth and flat inner walls.
A protective layer formed by solidified natural plant oil acted like a barrier, keeping the items stored inside from decaying much. It didn't look like they had been stored for over a hundred years at all.
On the top layer of the box were some children's clothes and toys.
Perhaps due to the abundant water systems and humid climate in the Zhenwu Mountain area, although the clothes and toys weren't severely decayed, they had grown quite a bit of mold, emitting a musty smell. They were unusable, which was a bit regretful.
Lu Yibei picked up a small cotton-padded jacket, held it up to look at it, and a complex expression flashed in his eyes when he saw the pair of uneven sleeves and the polygonal hem.
""Alright, although it's a bit ugly, it's truly difficult for four old men nearing sixty to do needlework."
"And these toys are so abstract they look like statues of evil gods. I finally know where the Ancestor's terrifying artistic 'bacteria' came from."
"I have to say, to be that rotten, you really have to start from childhood!"
Talking to himself, Lu Yibei took out the clothes and toys from Qingji's childhood one by one from the wooden box and placed them on the detached lid beside him. Finally, he saw the item at the bottom of the box.
It was a simple sheepskin drawstring bag with simple embroidered patterns. On one side of the bag, the characters "Long Shi" were embroidered, looking like a brocade pouch or money bag often seen in costume dramas.
Almost everything inside the wooden box belonged to Qingji's childhood, but only this sheepskin bag seemed to belong to the four Old men.
And the faint Spiritual Energy fluctuation that Lu Yibei's spiritual sense detected was emanating from this sheepskin bag.
He stared at the sheepskin bag, tilted his head, pondered for a moment, and reached out to pick it up.
The sheepskin bag felt thick and heavy in his hand. He didn't know what was inside."Squeak!"
He untied the drawstring and cord buckle of the sheepskin bag and glanced at the contents. A look of surprise flashed in Lu Yibei's eyes. Inside the sheepskin bag, there was actually half a bag of yellow sand.
"The texture of this yellow sand looks fine, like the fine sand from a desert or a beach?" Lu Yibei examined the yellow sand and muttered to himself.
"Hmm, perhaps the Ancestor's Masters brought it from their homeland?"
This kind of behavior is not only a remembrance of one's hometown, but from the perspective of Spiritual Energy, it also has some basis.
The soil of a piece of land, even just a handful of soil or a small stone, contains a small amount of earth vein energy. Although it's only a very tiny bit of earth vein energy, it has a function similar to an amulet.
Therefore, people in the past, when leaving their hometown, liked to pack a little soil from their hometown to carry with them, believing that doing so would bring them good luck from the deities of their native land.
However, the actual effect is not significant.
As the Huacheng Monster King, Lu Yibei felt that even if he sensed the call of a Hua City person far away in another place through the faint earth vein energy contained in the soil,
it would be impossible for him to help that person.
At most, he could say to that person, "Keep it up, hold on!"
Lu Yibei thought, and continued to rummage through the sheepskin bag for a while, quickly finding two items besides the yellow sand: a piece of silk and a token.
The off-white silk was thin and soft, the size of a handkerchief, and on it was written a line of scarlet small characters - "The exiled return to their homeland."
The handwriting was twisted and distorted, seemingly written with blood. Just looking at it, Lu Yibei felt a sense of discomfort, as if he was about to be affected by the strong negative emotions contained in the words.
A scene of a person with an unclear face, writing this text on the silk with blood-stained hands, flashed through his mind like a hallucination..."
Although returning to one's roots is an inherent concept for most Z-country people, this sentence looks strangely off, as if someone is going to be dragged back to their hometown and buried alive.
It seems that the Ancestor's Masters, who cultivated all kinds of paths, seem to be hiding some unknown secrets!
Lu Yibei thought, shifting his gaze from the uncomfortable piece of silk. He put it back into the sheepskin bag and reached out to pick up the completely black token.
The next moment, as his fingertips touched the token, his pupils trembled slightly, and his hand retracted quickly as if it had received an electric shock.
"What the heck is going on?"
His eyes peering through the gaps in his helmet, Lu Yibei looked at his right hand with surprise and uncertainty.
The sturdy and thick armor was still there, tightly wrapping his right hand, seemingly capable of handling a chainsaw with bare hands without any problem. But just now, when he touched the token, it felt as if the armor covering his hand had suddenly disappeared, and his fingertips felt like tiny grains of sand heated by the scorching sun.
Even Lingtai Pure Karma couldn't block it?
However, when I tried to pick it up just now, the tactile sensation was a bit strange, but the Spiritual Energy fluctuation didn't change significantly. It seems there's no danger.
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Should I try again?
Frowning, looking at the token, Lu Yibei hesitated for a long time, then mustered his courage and reached out again, grasping the token and taking it out of the sheepskin bag.
The moment he held the token, that strange sensation returned to his palm. For a moment, he even had the illusion that the token was about to turn into a handful of flowing sand that he couldn't hold.
And then...
Just as Lu Yibei felt that the token was about to slip through his fingers, everything returned to normal. It was as if the strange sensation just now was just a hallucination, and only the token in his palm was real.
The token was made entirely of some kind of black jade-like stone, emitting a faint Spiritual Energy fluctuation. Its shape was a bit strange, like a large fish with a dragon's head.
Lu Yibei, "..."
This shape - is it somewhat like the Chiwen from the legends of the Nine Sons of the Dragon? But isn't Chiwen usually carved on rooftops?
There's even a token-style one?
Lu Yibei thought, flipping the token over. On its flat underside, three gilded characters were engraved: "Zaojiang Ling." Besides the three gilded characters, there were densely engraved, incomprehensible small characters on the scales of the large fish.
"Is it some kind of special ancient script? Professor Ma should like this thing. I'll trouble him to take a look when I get back to Hua City."
Lu Yibei played with and examined the token for a moment, finding no other special features. He then put it and the piece of silk back into the sheepskin bag, and put the sheepskin bag into his Coat through the Servant's Mark, where it was neatly stored.
After putting away the sheepskin bag, Lu Yibei stood up, crossed his arms over his chest, and tilted his head to look at the remaining items from Qingji's childhood in the wooden box. After pondering for a moment, he picked up the monstrously hideous tiger-head ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) hat and turned to walk out of the small Taoist temple.
Those clothes and toys had more or less become moldy and decayed. From a certain perspective, they could already be considered domestic waste. The fact that they were preserved until now was probably thanks to this wooden box made of high-quality materials.
"..."
Taking everything away is a bit unnecessary. Just taking one item back as a souvenir will do.
Lu Yibei thought, chose a tiger-head hat, and put all the remaining clothes and toys back into the wooden box.
He felt that this monstrously hideous tiger-head hat, enough to scare children into crying, was quite good. In the future, if he had children, he could use it to torture... uh, share with other children...
—-—-
He put the wooden box back in its original place, casually cast a few simple Spells for water-proofing and insect-repelling, and then Lu Yibei left the small Taoist temple. Walking out along the stone path in front of the small Taoist temple, he said thanks to the Shui Shu Beast waiting at the end of the path, then prepared the materials and items needed for soul summoning and got ready to perform Directional Soul Summoning on Zhang Shuo.
Stopping at the end of the stone path, he looked around for a while, then stepped into the small basin, heading towards the open area farthest from the small Taoist temple.
He didn't dare to summon souls near the small Taoist temple. He was a little afraid that if something went wrong, he might accidentally summon the four Masters of his Ancestor from their graves.
At that time, the Ancestor might not mind experiencing the pain of losing loved ones again after more than a hundred years. Although more than a hundred years had passed, it was reasonable to assume that the lingering thoughts of those four had long since dissipated. But what if? He had to be prepared!
Arriving at the open area, Lu Yibei began to get busy.
He had originally planned to rush to find Zhang Huainan to retrieve the sword immediately after performing Directional Soul Summoning on Zhang Shuo, completely unexpected that he would come to the place where Qingji had lived, delaying him for over half an hour.
The current situation is like visiting an ex-girlfriend who had a car accident on the way to a date with his current girlfriend, only to encounter a former ex-girlfriend whom he thought was dead.
To avoid being discovered by his girlfriend, he could only speed things up a bit..."
After summoning Zhang Shuo's lingering thoughts later, instead of going through the process of confessing leniently and resisting strictly, I'll just give him an ultimate torture and forcefully extract what I want to know.
Anyway, I've already summoned his soul, why bother pretending to talk about humanitarianism?
Besides, I'm not human!
While thinking, he set up the incense table and offerings, placed the few items left by Zhang Shuo, composed himself, and came before the incense table. He spread out his Spiritual Energy fluctuation to envelop the entire incense table and began to chant.
"Youth is gone, the white sun shines brightly, the spring energy bursts forth, all things hurry. Darkness spreads, the soul cannot escape. Soul, come back! Not far away. Soul, come back! Not east, not west, not south, not north."
As the incantation was chanted, his voice and intention gradually condensed into invisible threads, extending in all directions and disappearing into the void. Soon, that familiar feeling of being watched by countless bizarre gazes quietly emerged around him.
And then...
Lu Yibei softly called out Zhang Shuo's name. "Zhang Shuo, soul, come back!"
After the first call, the extending threads of intention showed no reaction.
If he hadn't personally witnessed Zhang Shuo's sudden death, Lu Yibei would even suspect that the guy hadn't died at all, like Hu Chuan, but had changed his name and appearance and was hiding somewhere.
Could it be that people who have been completely invaded and corrupted by the Pink Fluffy Rabbit have even the last trace of lingering thought attached to the items they used swallowed up? Lu Yibei thought.
"Zhang Shuo, soul, come back!" "Zhang Shuo, soul, come back!"
Lu Yibei patiently called out twice more, but the threads of intention still showed no reaction..."
It seems that people who have been completely invaded and corrupted by the Pink Fluffy Rabbit really don't leave even a tiny bit of lingering thought, Lu Yibei thought.
Although he had expected this result, he was still a little disappointed.
The next moment, just as he was about to dispel the Spell and abandon the Directional Soul Summoning on Zhang Shuo, the threads of intention extending into the void suddenly vibrated violently.
The terrifying vibration, just the pulling of the threads of intention on his mind, caused his thoughts to become chaotic.
That feeling was even more terrifying than when he had accidentally triggered the hidden Power within the okin rod during a previous Directional Soul Summoning.
If triggering the Power within the okin rod before was like fishing in a small river and accidentally catching a large alligator, then this time, it was bizarrely catching a deep-sea giant monster!
In an instant, the hunter became the prey.
Damn it, what deadly thing have I summoned again?
A feeling of unease rose in Lu Yibei's heart. He quickly stopped the operation of his Spiritual Energy, intending to stop the Spell, but it was already too late.
Intense vibrations came again from the threads of intention that he hadn't had time to sever. In an instant, countless frantic thoughts surged into his mind, and Lu Yibei's consciousness briefly went blank.
In a trance, a black mist spread before his eyes, and he "saw" a dark and chaotic space.
A sun darker and deeper than the darkness leaped out, showering down endless, frantic blackness in all directions...
