Hu Family Old Woman

Drums, gongs, and suonas blared. Green banners and white paper streamed in a vast procession toward the ancestral shrine.

At that moment, Hu Ma couldn't help looking up. The sight that met his eyes left him momentarily stunned.

He had heard the ancestral shrine spoken of countless times, yet only now did he finally see the legendary foundation of the Ten Surnames.

This place lay north of the Imperial Capital City, its terrain facing away from the imperial palace, as if it formed a yin-yang arrangement. All around, pines and cypresses stood dense, and the land was level.

Even the stones here, whichever one you picked up, seemed rounded and smooth, rarely sharp or jagged. On the broad open ground ahead stood ten ancestral halls, gathered together.

All ten halls were built tall. In theory, they had only been constructed about twenty years ago, yet now they looked ancient and solid, dark and imposing, as if even sunlight could not reach them.

Only now did Hu Ma suddenly realize—

The faint, ever-present ghostly aura in the Imperial Capital City came from these ten ancestral halls?

For an instant, instinctive alarm stirred in him. Yet at the same time, amid that boundless gloom, he sensed a trace of warmth.

He suddenly understood where that warmth came from, and his heart softened.

He raised the white funeral banner and slowly approached. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at the surrounding halls. Each had its doors only half-shut, with a few spirit tablets faintly visible inside. Only one, adjoining the Hu Family's hall, had its doors firmly closed.

He knew that must be the Meng Family's hall.

An elderly, stooped figure was already waiting in front of the shrine. Without a word, the old person seemed to study Hu Ma carefully.