Chapter 6: The Story of the Mountain Temple
F*ck ..... Zhang Yuanqing suddenly didn't want to stay in the main hall.
He had the trepidation of being in a desperate situation, calling for help.
This place was extremely dangerous, but he was unable to ask for help from the outside world, and the only person he could rely on was himself.
Hesitating again and again, he gritted his teeth and crossed his heart, leaning over and pulling out the skeleton wrapped in his work clothes.
Puffing and pulling ~
During the pulling process, the labor uniform was easily torn, after so many years, the clothes had long been rotten.
Dragging the body to the candlelight, he endured the discomfort and began to examine it.
Although the person was dead, the body could speak, and figuring out the cause of the other person's death could help him avoid many dangers.
"The sternum and ribs are broken a few times, and the right shoulder has a fine crack, but it's not serious ......."
The deceased had suffered heavy injuries in his lifetime, but the exact cause of death was too old to be seen.
Next, Zhang Yuanqing found a few pieces of yellowed and brittle paper, very old, from the pockets of the worker's predecessor.
There were small fly-head characters written on the paper in regular script.
Zhang Yuanqing was delighted in his heart, the paper was obviously found by the worker senior in the temple, which helped him understand the situation of this ancient temple.
With the help of the candlelight, he gently read the contents on the paper.
"Another senior brother went missing last night, this is already the third strange disappearance of a fellow disciple in the temple. The brothers and sisters say that the Three Roads Mountain is haunted, or there is a demonic spirit with a high level of skill that comes to the temple every night to catch people to eat, but many of the disciples in the temple have cultivation accompanied by their bodies, and the master is even a famous real person within a hundred miles of the area, so what kind of demonic spirit is ungrateful and dares to come here to forage for food.
"As for the ghosts and monsters, my Corpse Suppressing Talisman and Spirit Summoning Talisman are enough to solve them, neither of them need to bother Master. I have a bad premonition in my heart, I have to go and seek out Eldest Senior Brother to get it together .........."
"Today there is another person missing, this is the fifth person, master told us to hide it from the incense burners, otherwise it will affect the incense of the temple, he must know something. Eldest Brother and I plan to patrol at night ........."
"Three days passed, during which three more people disappeared, but Eldest Brother and I didn't find any clues, and the night was calm. The foreboding feeling of uncertainty in my heart deepened ........"
"Eldest Senior Brother was very strange today, he seemed to have discovered something and looked very angry, I questioned him but he didn't tell me. He's not in a good mood, I'd better inquire tomorrow."
"The person who disappeared today is ........ Eldest Brother, I have searched the entire Sandaoshan Mountain but I haven't found him, I, I can't stand it anymore, I'm going to go to the Master to ask for clarification, and the brothers and sisters in the temple support me because they are also very scared ......"
The handwriting of this passage was a bit scribbled, so it was evident that the owner of the note had a bit of a broken heart.
Zhang Yuanqing continued to read down:
"After a lot of questioning from me, Master finally agreed to tell me the truth, and my premonition was right, he really knew the reason for the strange disappearance of the senior brothers. However, Master said that it was crowded in the daytime, and that he would come to my room after the sun had set to tell me a heavenly secret, a secret that had to do with the rise and fall of thousands of years."
"After the evening meal, I waited in my room, waiting for the sun to set, and I had never looked forward to darkness so much one day since someone had disappeared during the night ........"
That's where the paper trail ends.
Nothing? This chapter break makes it a bit hard to bear ...... Zhang Yuanqing grimaced for a while.
He combed through the information in the paper, and during a certain period of time, the disciples of this Mountain God Temple disappeared strangely one after another.
The disciples were helpless and panic spread. And this was something that the temple's temple priest, their master, seemed to know the reason for.
The reason concerned a great secret that had risen and fallen for thousands of years.
"The reason for the Mountain God Temple's decline is unknown, so by exploring this source, won't we be able to complete the second main quest?" Zhang Yuanqing made a guess.
He put the brittle paper back into the corpse's labor suit, pushed the other back to the bottom of the table for an eyeful, and proceeded to think about what he was going to do next.
"So much for the main temple information, since we're exploring the ancient temple, we must get out, in which case we must face the dangers of the temple head on ......"
"In the Weird Tales of the She Spirit Tunnel, there was a worker who managed to survive, following his trajectory, we might be able to find out a way to survive."
After deep thought, Zhang Yuanqing walked to the entrance of the main hall and opened the two still well-preserved lattice doors.
"Squeak~"
The wooden door shafts made a toothsome sound.
He braced himself against the door frame and poked his head out to look left and right, the outside was silent, and other than being a bit desolate and gloomy, he did not see any danger.
After observing for a while, he stepped out of the threshold and walked along the goose-soft stone path to the left of the main hall towards the backyard of the Mountain God Temple.
The moonlight was like water, the deserted grass was undulating, and after Zhang Yuanqing had walked for a minute or two, a piece of building appeared in front of him.
It was several connected bungalows, forming an extremely large quadrangle, with black tiles and white walls, a zigzag ridge, and lattice windows and lattice doors under the eaves.
A lattice door gray, or open or down or closed, used to paste the window paper in the erosion of the years, tattered.
The moonlight was bright, like frost on the ground, and he took advantage of the moonlight to scan the pattern of the backyard of the Mountain God Temple.
In addition to the quadrangle in front of him, there was also an arched door on the east side, a bit like the back houses of big families in movies and TV dramas, all of which would have such an arched door used to connect different courtyards.
In that yard next door, there was a huge tree planted in the sky, with lush foliage and gnarled branches.
"Huh. ....."
He spotted several skeletons wrapped in labor suits in the grassy, undulating yard.
Carefully leaning over, he carefully examined them, each skeleton was severely damaged, and under the labor suit was a broken bone, but except for the one in the main hall, the shoulder bones of the skeletons here were well-preserved, with no cracks.
"All of these people suffered horrible heavy injuries before they died, and died horribly ......"
A gust of wind blew, the branches and leaves "rustled", and vaguely, Zhang Yuanqing heard a whisper like a sob mixed in with the "rustling" sound that the wind brought over:
"Help, help ......."
In this deserted and dead night, Zhang Yuanqing's back broke out in cold sweat.
He stood stiffly in place for a while, the wind stopped, and the sobbing whispers also stopped with the wind.
That courtyard next door seems to be a little dangerous ah, but the things inside didn t come over ....... He let out a silent breath and stepped through the courtyard full of barren grass, walking into the eaves of the house with the intention of exploring this courtyard.
This seemed to be the place where the temple disciples lived, with piles of worn out, dusty furniture, and a faint, decaying scent permeating the air.
Zhang Yuanqing explored the rooms one by one, finding nothing special until he pushed open the easternmost lattice door.
"Cluck~"
The door of the room that had been dusty for an unknown number of years was once again pushed open, dust rustling and falling, Zhang Yuanqing patted the dust that had fallen on his shoulders and swept his eyes warily over every corner of the room.
In this room that had been deserted for many years, by the window, there was a body lying crookedly against the wall.
From the attire and the tumbled down miner's hat, it could be deduced that it was another ex-member.
Crossing the threshold and entering the room, Zhang Yuanqing shivered, inexplicably feeling that the temperature around him seemed to drop a lot.
"It's a bit cold ......"
He cautiously leaned towards the corpse, unraveled his tattered shirt and observed the condition of the corpse's bones as usual, this time, he did not see any shattered bones, the skeleton was well preserved.
But when he cast his gaze to the corpse's shoulder bone, his pupils stared, on the corpse's shoulder bone, there were exaggerated cracks.
It was the same as the cracks on the shoulders of the corpse in the main hall, the difference was that the skeleton in front of him had suffered a much heavier injury.
"Is it a coincidence that only this one in the house and the one in the main hall have cracked shoulder bones?" He muttered to himself with some uneasiness.
Then, Zhang Yuanqing noticed that the corpse's pants pockets were bulging and swollen, seemingly hiding something.
Reaching out and digging, he pulled out a yellowed ancient book, a grayish bronze mirror, and a yellow paper talisman from the dead man's pants pocket.
On the yellow paper talisman, there were twisted lines drawn with vermilion sand, somewhat similar to runes, which together converged to form the traditional Chinese character "尸", which resembled the Chinese character for "corpse".
While scrutinizing the yellow paper talisman, a fluorescent blue message appeared before Zhang Yuanqing's eyes:
Name: Corpse Suppressor Talisman Type: Consumable Function: Corpse Suppressor Introduction: A talisman made by the powerful Nightwalker God, it is the nemesis of all corpse-type Yin objects. Attaching it to the forehead of a Yin creature will complete the seal.
Note: It can only be used once.
The fluorescent blue message was a bit like his attribute panel, and it was obvious that this was a hint from the "Spirit Realm".
It was the first time Zhang Yuanqing had seen such a prompt since he entered the weird ancient temple.
"It should be an important item." Zhang Yuanqing folded it up, put it into the pocket of his rushing jacket, and zipped it up.
After thinking about it, he reopened the zipper again.
It was because he remembered a stunt from a martial arts novel, where a certain swordsman who was highly skilled in swordsmanship liked to carry his sword wrapped in a strip of cloth on his back.
One day, a challenger challenged the swordsman while he was eating.
Then the swordsman was no more.
The cause of death was the inconvenience of unwrapping the cloth ......
Zhang Yuanqing then picked up the ancient book and the copper mirror, and no relevant information surfaced.
He first put the copper mirror aside and carefully turned over the booklet whose page feet were rolled up and yellowed and brittle.
Above it was written:
"It's been two and a half years since I worshipped at the Temple of the Nymphet of the Three Roads Mountain, and I've already learned to read and write, and Eldest Senior Brother said that when my master returns to the mountain after surpassing the souls of the dead, I can be formally initiated into the art of Swallowing the Moon and Nourishing the Souls. This is the introductory method to becoming a Nightwalker."
"With the Yan King's rebellion and the smoke of wolves, Master, as the strongest person in the lineage of Song Fu's Night Traveling God, had to go down to the mountain to overpass the dead, or else before the war is settled, the yin scourge will rise again, and the people will be even more insecure. ......"
Zhang Yuanqing felt some soreness in his shoulders and rubbed them, initially judging that this was an accompanying book, or diary.
The content of the diary was all about the 'author's' experience of practicing and living in the temple, and based on the handwriting, this diary and the paper on the corpses in the main temple were from the same source.
With words like "King Yan's Rebellion", the timeline was the history of the Battle of Yasukuni.
However, he wasn't sure if this temple really existed in history, because the contents of the accompanying writing contained such unspecified words as "cultivation," "night wandering god," "spitting technique," "talisman," and so on. "and other unspecified words.
Zhang Yuanqing moved his aching shoulders, swept the room vigilantly, listened to the movements outside the room, and after making sure that there was no abnormality, he continued to read the essay.
Soon, he flipped to the follow up of the main hall content, the first few pages were torn out and the follow up read:
"At sunset, when it was finally dark, I heard a knock on the door and opened it in haste, what stood outside the door was not my master, but my eldest senior brother who had disappeared last night."
"The Eldest Brother, who had been missing for a day and a night, had returned, but I had no joy, for ...... he was already dead and came back as a corpse. His chest was drenched in blood, and his heart was dug out by who knows who."
"Eldest Brother stared straight at me, and he said: don't trust Master ......."
These few paragraphs were written in a crooked manner, so one could imagine that the owner of the accompanying pen was in an exploding state of mind when he wrote this.
When Zhang Yuanqing turned the next page, he realized that there was no follow-up to the notes, and the owner of the diary never wrote the diary again.
"Hiss ........ What is the meaning of don't trust Master?"
Zhang Yuanqing was shocked by this reversal and chilled in his heart.
Was it the Temple Blessing that killed that Eldest Brother? He was also the culprit behind the disappearance of disciples one after another? Zhang Yuanqing rubbed his shoulders and put the booklet back into the pocket of the corpse, then, picking up the bronze mirror, he was about to leave.
But when, out of the corner of his eye, he unintentionally glanced at the copper mirror, his body abruptly stiffened.
The moonlight was like water, projected on the surface of the mirror, the copper mirror reflected his appearance, and on his back, lying on a person.
That person's face was pale, lips deep purple, with a pair of white pupils, his head resting sideways on Zhang Yuanqing's shoulder, the pair of white pupils, staring at him in deathly silence.
........
PS: This book has spiritual elements, but not the main spiritual, do not like spiritual readers can rest assured.
