Chapter 58: The ghost won’t leave

How could their village be like this? Master seemed to know a lot about it. It turns out that Master has been pretending to be stupid… I let out a long sigh. I think that as long as Master has some understanding of things, everything will be much simpler. I just don’t understand why Master, knowing so much, would set up a tobacco bureau for this old man?

Compared to Master’s sometimes ‘cunning and crafty’ behavior, I feel like I’m just an honest kid.

But this time, Master didn’t leave me hanging. After a few steps toward the old man, he looked at the old man with a serious expression and continued: “Your village is doing such a dangerous thing. It is only natural for the great witch to summon various spirits or gods, or even to cultivate spirits. But your village dares to defy the world and summon the spirits of vicious beasts… This is poverty…”

Before the master could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by the old man. He withdrew his hand from the stone carving and wiped it on his body, leaving a trail of bloodstains. His hands were full of small holes, which made me feel pain. But he didn’t seem to care. He just said, “What kind of fierce beast? This is the twelve sacred beasts, devouring evil spirits, omnipotent… Besides, how much do you know about the situation? You need to comment on the affairs of our village… our village… our village! No, how do you know about our village?”

While they were talking, I noticed that a bright red bloodstain had been left on the stone carving, but it had strangely seeped into the stone carving and disappeared… I felt a chill in my heart. At this time, Silly Tiger suddenly fell back into a deep sleep, but I received a clearer thought—a smarty!

This thought… my face became strange. I was sure it didn’t come from the Taoist monk, but from Silly Tiger… When did it become so “smart”? Even the word “smart” expressed endless helplessness and bitterness, feeling endless emotion, as if there was nothing I could do about it.

The veins on my forehead were throbbing because I had always regarded Silly Tiger as my “younger brother,” and now he was “lecturing” me… I began to miss the old Silly Tiger, who was so dull that he couldn’t even express simple emotions.

Although I said that, I was truly moved because I felt that Silly Tiger seemed to have “woken up” and become as agile as the young fox… And in this state of sobriety, in the face of such a dangerous situation, although it was afraid, it chose to stand by my side without hesitation. What does this show?

However, Shatu was in a deep sleep and could not sense my thoughts. But the conversation between Master and the old man made me very curious. I actually knew what Master had not finished saying. I think he was trying to say that this was Qiongqi!

Qiongqi, a kind of demon recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, one of the four great beasts, but also a god… In addition, there are some vague records in some ancient books about Qiongqi, but the descriptions are not the same.

Regarding the records in ancient books, when I was the most curious as a teenager, I once asked my master and discussed whether these really existed… My master told me with a deep gaze: “In fact, our Chinese people have experienced many hardships, and there have been cultural gaps… Many very precious documents have not even been preserved by Taoism. I can only tell you that what is recorded in the ancient books is not necessarily true. What is not necessarily true includes the meaning of imagination and supplement, the meaning of personal thoughts, and the meaning of blurring through misinformation. Moreover, not only in China, but also in human beings, there has been a cultural gap, that is to say, there has been a process of rapid progress in human evolution, and modern human beings have appeared. What about the tens of thousands of years in between? It is only speculation… What do you think…

The master paused here and said in a vague tone that he himself was not sure: “Do you think that the great battle recorded in the Shanhaijing was really a battle between humans and demons at that time?”

This passage is not like the usual tone of the master, telling me something with a certain certainty, or guiding me to judge for myself, but is full of various speculations, uncertainties, and even elements of imagination. It is a passage that left a deep impression on me when I was a child.

Now, more and more things are happening in front of me, and a Qiongqi no longer makes me exclaim in shock.

What else is there to be shocked about? Kunlun, Penglai, the snake, and now Qiongqi… at most, it makes my nerves numb… Besides, Qiongqi doesn’t appear like a snake, it’s a physical entity, but it’s obviously a spirit… If it’s a spirit, it’s not surprising to look like anything. Even Qiangzi summoned a two-faced god before. I don’t think about their origins, I just see them as energy bodies, and my heart is calm.

But Master was not nervous when facing the old man’s questioning. He did not answer the old man’s question directly, but said, “If you say so, I think your village has gone astray. As you said, I don’t understand your village’s affairs, and I definitely don’t care. I’m worried about my nephew. I’m going to find him, and this time I’m going to take him with me.”

“Your nephew? Who is he?” Hearing my master say this, the old man didn’t get angry, but his confusion deepened. He was clearly waiting for an answer from my master, and perhaps he was really afraid that something like a dragon’s temple being washed away by a flood would happen.

“Sun Qiang.” My master’s answer was simple.

But the old man frowned and his face immediately turned dark, saying, “There is no such person on this mountain… You wouldn’t just make up a name to deceive me, would you? You can go. For the sake of a bag of tobacco, I won’t make things difficult for you. Otherwise, for your nonsense, as if you knew about the village, I should…

The old man’s words were very rude, and his face was instantly torn, but the meaning of his words was that he seemed to have no difficulty with us because of a bag of tobacco leaves.

How could my master and I just leave like this? Besides, he said that there was no Sun Qiang in the village, so why shouldn’t we be worried? I once said that Qiangzi was my younger brother, and from a certain point of view, it’s not wrong to say that Sun Qiang is my master’s nephew. He said this, so we had to go up the mountain to take a look.

At first, the old man’s words were about to completely tear his face and even reach the edge of a fight… But I didn’t expect that the old man’s words were interrupted by the noisy sounds coming from the town at the end of his speech.

The so-called noisy noise was just the sound of a car entering the town, plus the noise of people, which was nothing strange… But this was not the sound of a car, but rather the sound of a convoy.

As for the human voices, they were already there, but at this time, they were like a drop of water splashing into boiling oil, suddenly emitting a burst of sound, which was both harsh and chaotic.

This noise not only made the old man’s face ugly, but also attracted the attention of my master and me. After all, although this is the foot of a mountain, the terrain here stretches up, and we can clearly see the situation in the town from this position.

So when we turned around, we saw about a dozen cars driving into town. Except for the lead car, the rest were the kind of tented trucks that specially pull people, like the ones that send new recruits.

Such a small town, not even because of the relatively concentrated residence, it can be said that it is a large village, and the cars that came in were considered large vehicles, which suddenly made it crowded.

But the people on the bus were not soldiers, but all wearing black shirts and black pants, and all wearing masks, and they rushed into the town.

I couldn’t hear what the people in the town were saying, but the way they were all milling around and the way many of them were coming out of their houses, like they were facing a great enemy, made me instinctively feel that these people must be no strangers to the people in these cars.

I suddenly remembered what the old doorman had said, that this town was so popular that there were always outsiders coming to investigate. Could it be… I looked again, and my face changed. I was naturally unfamiliar with the people wearing masks, and I didn’t know the people in the modified tent off-road vehicle.

But I was so familiar with that car because I had seen a similar car before… a car that had been modified in the same way. And that was not long ago, when my master and I were hiding on the hillside, and the people in the car were Yang Sheng and the Holy King…

How many twists and turns will this road of escape have? Even if it is just a coincidence, it can still make me understand what it means to have a ghost that refuses to leave… I don’t think that the car was modified to the same shape, it was just a simple ‘fashion’ modification, and I can’t convince myself that there is no connection.

Master obviously also noticed this problem, and his face became grave. However, he muttered a strange sentence: “There is always the darkest hour before dawn, and when a great era of great turmoil is about to dawn, there are always many storms that usher in such an era.”

He spoke in a low voice, only I could hear it. Before I could say anything, I heard the old man curse with his teeth: “These damn robbers, how much trouble are they going to cause?”

From the old man’s words, I could clearly feel that, like my judgment, the people in this town had obviously had contact with the people in these cars before… He must have known something too? Why call these people robbers? If my judgment is correct, these people belong to Yang Sheng’s organization. Even if they have gone astray, they have nothing to do with robbers.

My master and I have fallen into an even worse situation…