Chapter 21: The Abandoned Chen Family Village

On the road, Aying sent Lixuan a short video on his phone featuring the suona melody played during the annual Wandering God Festival. He didn’t ask for an exact replication, just something that captured the feeling in the video.

Lixuan picked up the suona from the back seat and softly blew a few notes, trying to recall the sensation from his childhood.

They set off at noon. It took nearly three hours to reach this mountain area. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon, a time when the sun should have been bright.

But within the forest, the trees were towering and dense—denser even than the red cypress groves. The deeper they went, the darker it became.

Aying’s expression lost the earlier vigor he had when they departed; his words grew fewer and more subdued.

After a while, a muddy, rutted dirt road appeared ahead, followed by the entrance gate to a village. In front of the gate, branches and trunks of various thicknesses were piled haphazardly.

Someone had deliberately arranged this obstacle…

Lixuan noticed a gray sedan parked nearby. He made a shushing gesture, and Aying immediately pulled the SUV to the roadside. They quietly got out and crept closer.

The sedan was empty inside.

Although Aying hadn’t invoked any incantations, he wore his ritual robe and had the white crane child’s face paint on. Yet, just approaching the car, a faint, foul aura of evil lingered within. He felt the face paint heat up slightly, as if something was about to descend.

“Could it be that Li Ruonan you mentioned has arrived?” Aying guessed, recalling the backstory of the Chen family village and the affair with Li Ruonan.

Lixuan thought about Li Ruonan’s portrayal in the movie and said, “Very likely. And that woman’s probably gone mad. We need to be extra cautious…”

Aying returned to the SUV, took out a longbow, slung it over his shoulder, and strapped on a quiver holding three arrows inscribed with talismanic symbols.

He rummaged around a bit more, then hung a purplish-red gourd at his waist and pulled out a half-meter-long ruyi scepter striped in red, blue, and brown.

Lixuan held the suona, a celestial measuring rod hung at his waist, and the Fengdu sealing talisman tucked in his pocket.

Aying thought a moment, then took out a small wooden box given by his elder master and slipped it into Lixuan’s pocket.

“My master doesn’t do things without certainty. Since he gave me this, it must be useful! I’m his youngest disciple—there’s no way he’d send me here just to die,” he said proudly.

Lixuan examined the talisman seal on the wooden box and replied, “What’s inside? I’m afraid I don’t know how to use it.”

Aying smiled, pride shining in his eyes as he spoke of his master: “Don’t worry. My master has thought of everything. Even someone who knows nothing but can break the talisman seal on this box can use it. It’s our ultimate safeguard—unless you’re so foolish you can’t even break the paper talisman.”

“You should carry such a crucial item yourself,” Lixuan said.

Aying pointed to his ritual weapons and said, “This is my first time venturing out alone without my master’s direct supervision. You’re here to assist me—I trust you!”

There was something he left unsaid.

Lixuan had no cultivation marks, so the wooden box given by the master would definitely protect his life.

But if they were to fight that so-called Buddha Mother later, Aying worried Lixuan might be harmed, so he entrusted the box to him for protection.

Passing through the village gate, a chill ran through them. The sky above the village was clear of trees, yet in the mid-afternoon, no warm sunlight penetrated. Instead, an oppressive gloom hung as if rain was imminent.

Aying exhaled a slow breath; his face paint continued to glow faintly, signaling the village was shrouded in malevolent energy.

The celestial measuring rod on Lixuan’s waist also heated up, but the Fengdu sealing talisman in his pocket felt icy cold, like a block of ice—one hot, one cold—a sensation that unnerved him.

Chen family village had been abandoned for six years, overgrown with weeds and exuding a sense of decay.

Furniture lay scattered in disorder across the ground. In the village center was a stone enclosure containing a pile of charred remains.

Aying hurried ahead to take a closer look and was startled. “Damn, it’s a corpse burned to charcoal!”

Lixuan hurried over and saw the skeletal remains in the stone pit. The body appeared bound before death, as it held the same posture even after burning.

Wasn’t Chen Lidong, Li Ruonan’s ex-boyfriend, who went mad after entering the tunnels and was finally dragged out and burned by the villagers?

To think the body had remained intact all this time.

As they moved forward, they found many houses with doors and windows wide open, signs of a rushed evacuation.

Inside the houses, yards, and even on stairways lay numerous desiccated corpses, their skin decayed and reeking of foulness even from a distance.

Aying’s expression darkened. “The curse covers such a wide area—this evil god has been nurtured here for a long time.”

Lixuan pointed at fresh footprints on the ground. “Someone just passed by. We need to catch up quickly.”

According to the film, the underground tunnel sealing the Great Black Buddha Mother was located within the village’s forbidden zone. They only needed to go further back to find it.

The village was small.

After more than half an hour of walking, they sensed something was wrong—they had somehow circled back to the village center.

What sent chills down their spines was that the body of Chen Lidong, which had been lying horizontally in the stone pit, was now standing upright, stiff as a pillar.

Aying’s eye twitched. He pulled out a talisman paper from his waist pouch and rushed forward, whispering fiercely, “Ganlin Niang! I am commanded to slay the wicked—how dare you act so rashly?”

The talisman paper struck the corpse, sparks flying as it burned. The body rapidly disintegrated before their eyes until only scattered bones remained.

Crackling sounds followed.

The surrounding corpses slowly stood up.

Aying asked, “Do you know where the evil god is? I’m going to force a path. We’ll break through in one go!”

The white crane child persona, attuned to the evil aura, was eager to manifest. Though it could instantly destroy these corpses, it was like using a cannon to kill mosquitoes.

Moreover, invoking the white crane child spirit drained a great deal of energy and vitality.

Aying’s cultivation was insufficient to sustain the spirit for long, so he tried to delay its full manifestation.

He wielded the half-meter ruyi scepter, smashing it onto a corpse’s head while chanting an incantation. The corpse collapsed and turned to dust.

Lixuan struck at the corpses with the celestial measuring rod.

Aying threw a darker talisman paper into the air, forming a sword finger with his left hand. The paper ignited and turned to ash, and the murky surroundings seemed to shatter like glass, becoming clear.

A cold wind blew.

They found themselves at the rear of the village, facing a mound-shaped grave with a broken small door, draped with a half-torn new cloth.

The villagers’ corpses staggered out of the village one by one.

Lixuan couldn’t let Aying do everything. He drew the celestial measuring rod, slashed it on the ground, and chanted the celestial incantation, focusing his will on the desired effect.

The corpses approached but seemed confused, swaying as if lost, failing to notice the two of them.

Though the celestial incantation was somewhat universal, it consumed several times more energy than a specialized spell.

“We’re going in!” Lixuan said.

Without hesitation, Aying slipped through the small door in the grave mound.

Lixuan followed closely behind.