Goodbye Ancestral Hall

A white bird with gray markings was hanging upside down from the branch of a tall tree. Its wings were spread downwards due to gravity, revealing its blood-stained feathers.

The bird had a thin rope tied to one of its legs, and its eyes were lifeless. Despite its small size, it could instill a great sense of fear in people.

The bird carcass was on the tree in front of Yu Xing. Yu Xing stared at the thin rope for a couple of seconds, then turned to look in another direction.

Bird carcasses, bird carcasses, bird carcasses... and more bird carcasses.

Birds, all in the same state, hung upside down on the branches. Some were intact, some were rotting, and some had their bones exposed. They swayed silently in the cold wind, like bells on a Christmas tree.

Even the well-traveled Yu Xing couldn't help but get goosebumps at the scene, and his stomach churned for a moment.

It wasn't that he was afraid, but rather that the scene was too eerie, and the overwhelming, pervasive stench of decay caused his body to react involuntarily.

"Does this bird have any special significance?" Yu Xing's difficulty lay in the fact that he did not belong to this world and lacked understanding of its flora and fauna, making it impossible for him to immediately discern the purpose behind its various actions upon seeing it.

He had only seen the custom of hanging cat corpses in some villages and remote towns before. People there believed that cats were special. In some villages, cats were considered to be unlucky and could not be buried with people. In other places, cats were considered to be a symbol of gods and could not be buried casually.

Whatever the reason, those areas all chose to collect the dead cats' bodies, wrap them up, and place them on tree branches to rot.

Day after day, year after year, the number of cat corpses increased, and the forest became eerie even in broad daylight. Adults were afraid to go in, let alone ignorant children who accidentally wandered in.

Yu Xing had heard many such stories, about children who wandered into a forest of cat corpses and accidentally bumped into a tree trunk, causing a cat corpse to fall from the tree. The tattered cloth tore open, and the cat's half-rotten head rolled out. Such a sight would definitely be a lifelong trauma for that child.

The same thing happens here, except instead of cat carcasses, they hang bird carcasses.

Yu Xing recalled the hunched little giant, over 2.4 meters tall, whom he had just lost track of. This guy had been holding the same thin rope used for hanging bird carcasses, so he probably hung all the birds in the forest there.

So... rushing over with the rope, were they planning to kill him like a bird and then hang him from the tree?

Yu Xing imagined it for a moment, then showed a look of strong disapproval.

That rope is too thin. If it were tied around his legs, it would definitely be very uncomfortable. Couldn't that hunchbacked man have used a wider rope to grab him?

He continued walking forward, scoffing at the hunchback's perfunctory attitude. The branches of these trees were mostly bare, but the ground was covered with a thick layer of leaves that crunched underfoot.

This forest is quite large. Yu Xing observed that none of the animals from Heavy Yin Mountain fly over this forest. The flowers and plants are withered, and insects and snakes have disappeared. It's somewhat Valley of the Dead.

The only difference is that the Valley of the Dead is filled with dead people, and the forest with dead birds.

Thinking of this, Yu Xing paused in her steps.

If the dead can be resurrected, then are dead birds in the forest also used for resurrection?

Is the hunchback the only humanoid creature on the mountain? How long has he lived here to accumulate so many bird carcasses? What is his purpose in hanging the bird carcasses? Is it merely for appreciation, or is he performing some kind of ritual because he knows the function of the demon daoist tomb beneath Heavy Yin Mountain?

Or rather... what is the relationship between the hunchbacked man's and the demon daoist's tomb?

One question after another, Yu Xing felt that the answers wouldn't be available until she found the hunchback's home.

That's right. He figured that since he would lose track of the hunchback in the mountains, he might as well just raid his house. He figured the house couldn't be stolen unless the hunchback carried it away in the middle of the night.

Although the hunchbacked people were dressed simply, they were not dirty like people who were exposed to the elements in the mountains; on the contrary, they were quite clean. Yu Xing speculated that the hunchbacked people must have a fixed place to shelter them from the wind and rain.

Unbeknownst to her, Yu Xing had placed herself in the position of the greatest villain.

Another gust of wind blew in, and several bird carcasses fell down with a thud. Yu Xing dodged the dead bird on the branch next to his face with some disgust, not wanting the rotting, stinking little corpse to smear on his face.

Anyway, with the idea of stealing their home in mind, Yu Xing endured the nausea and wandered around the bird corpse forest, trying to find the hunchback's house. However, somewhat unexpectedly, this forest seemed to be just the hunchback's "workplace" rather than their home.

Yu Xing didn't find the hunchback's dwelling, but only a deep pit the size of a basketball court.

The smell in the deep pit was the most unbearable so far into the mountains, a mixture of all sorts of odors that were beyond human tolerance. Yu Xing climbed to the edge of the pit and looked down, almost being knocked off her feet by the stench that wafted towards her.

"... Damn, this is terrifying." Fear flashed in Yu Xing's eyes; he had finally found what was frightening about this simulation.

Damn, it smells awful!

Just smelling it made him dizzy. He had no doubt that if he had been a few seconds later, even someone with his constitution would have fainted on the spot.

This is a physical attack, an extremely powerful physical attack.

As for the mountain of bird carcasses piled up in the pit, they were nothing to Yu Xing; it was just a visual shock. Were the densely packed little corpses with white backgrounds and gray stripes or gray backgrounds and white stripes really that scary?

Not at all.

After witnessing the deep pit, he quickly left the forest. He knew that as long as the hunchbacked man retained a shred of sanity, he wouldn't live in the forest and endure the stench emanating from the corpse pit every day.

The hunchback's home should be behind the woods.

In addition, Yu Xing had already guessed that if hanging bird carcasses upside down had its own significance, then the bird carcasses thrown into the pit must have fallen off during the upside-down process and were "no longer useful" corpses.

He touched the goosebumps on his arm through his clothes, walked out of the bird corpse forest with a blank face, and saw a path worn into the ground.

There were no roads in the world originally, but as more people walked on them, they became roads.

Only one person walks back and forth on this road: the hunchback.

Yu Xing's eyes lit up, and he continued his raid on the base, heading along the path.

For convenience, he tied the Tang sword, scabbard and all, to his belt and placed it next to the painting tube. This way, he only needed to draw the sword from the scabbard without having to unfasten the painting tube's clasp.

Continuing forward, Yu Xing saw footprints beside the path. As the soil became wetter, the footprints deepened. He raised an eyebrow, wondering if there had once been an underground river beneath his feet.

Otherwise, why would the ground suddenly become wet?

Later on, the ground became so muddy that it was difficult to walk on, and Yu Xing walked on while constantly complaining.

His familiarity with this mountain forest temporarily disappeared in the Bird Corpse Forest, but it returned as soon as he left. Stepping on the wet mud, Yu Xing felt as if he had seen the surrounding trees before.

An idea gradually took shape in his mind. Yu Xing examined the menacing branches of the trees and walked through the forest along a gap that allowed a person to pass through.

The air ahead grew increasingly cold. Yu Xing walked seemingly casually, but in reality, she was on high alert.

He wandered through several strange turns and finally saw a small Black Shadow in the distance.

As he approached, the outline of the small Black Shadow gradually became clear, which was the source of Yu Xing's sense of familiarity!

A small ancestral hall stood there. It was an ancient-style building, just like the one he had seen in the woods outside the Coffin Village. It had vermilion wooden walls and dark brown mortise and tenon joints. It was about twenty square meters in size and had no door.

In fact, the ancestral hall is not black in general; it's just that the vermilion walls give it a deep and somber feel in the dark, and the overall tone is rather dark.

The reason why the term "black ancestral hall" was fixed in Yu Xing's mind was the huge black coffin that looked exactly the same inside the wide-open door of the ancestral hall.

In fact, the coffin is the only central element of the ancestral hall.

The ancestral hall in front of us is not exactly similar to the one in Coffin Village; it is practically identical.

Consequently, even the woods outside the ancestral hall are exactly the same as the woods in Coffin Village, with identical tree species, height, and density.

Yu Xing believed that Coffin Village and Heavy Yin Mountain were geographically opposite places, with completely different climates, temperature differences, and altitudes. It was impossible for such similar forests to grow in these two regions.

It could only be the coffin that was playing a role.

Only...

He approached the ancestral hall quietly, his footsteps light, gazing at the heavy, tightly closed coffin.

The coffin in Coffin Village contains the self-aware Zhou Yongsheng, but what about this coffin...?

Yu Xing walked over step by step, recalling his attitude towards the coffin in the Coffin Village, pondered for a moment, and then stretched out his finger.

"Knock knock knock."

He curled his fingers and tapped the coffin three times hard, then shouted, "What are you sleeping for? It's not time to rest yet! You're such a liar!"

What's inside the coffin:???

These words would probably make any man rise from his coffin. Yu Xing joked, and after hearing the noise from inside the coffin, he immediately hid behind a square table in the ancestral hall. Next to him were rows of large candlesticks, the candles on them covered in dust, having not been lit for who knows how many years.

The thing inside the coffin seemed very agitated; the action of opening the coffin lid made a loud noise, as if it were desperately trying to catch the guy outside the coffin who had said "he" had dropped his bird.

Yu Xing: I wasn't being suggestive, I was serious.

He suspected that the coffin was the hunchbacked man's "home".

So, isn't a bird carcass just a hunchback? The bird carcass fell down, so there's absolutely no problem with saying that!

He hid well and stuck out half his head to peek into the coffin.

Suddenly, the coffin lid was opened from the inside by a force, trembling slightly. As the lid slid down more than halfway, a deformed figure with extremely prominent shoulder blades sat up from inside the coffin.

As soon as this person came out, he looked around with his head, which seemed to be embedded in his shoulder. This time, the distance was very close, and there were no trees to block the view. Yu Xing used the moonlight outside the ancestral hall to see the silhouette of the hunchbacked man's profile.

It was a flat face with a slight protrusion on the bridge of the nose, a rounded chin, and a jawbone that looked like a sac holding something.

The hunchback's eyes bulged out like copper bells, resembling the deathly appearance of someone who had been strangled.

But he's not dead yet.

Yu Xing pulled her head back, thinking, "Perhaps he was strangled to death, but like Zhou Yongsheng, the presence of the black coffin preserved some of his living characteristics. And this ancestral hall is so close to the tomb, its power might be even greater, allowing the rickets man to move freely in the forest despite his deformity. I wonder how many years this guy has lived..."

"Who... is it?"

Suddenly, a hoarse voice rang out above Yu Xing's head.

Yu Xing froze, then shrank back into the square table. He knew that the hunchbacked man was standing right behind his table, and because of his height advantage and forward-leaning head, it looked like he was speaking above him.

But what surprised him wasn't that the hunchback's footsteps weren't as clear as in the forest, but rather that this guy could actually talk?

Having been alone in the mountains for so many years, and who knows how long since I've been dead, how come my language skills haven't deteriorated?

Are you suggesting I spend every day going up the mountain in front and chatting with the big white flowers in the vines?

"Who... is it?"

The voice above moved, as if it had walked to the entrance of the ancestral hall and said something to the outside.

Yu Xing turned her head and could see the hunchback's slender legs from the corner of the square table.

His table had no tablecloth, and he had only managed to hide because the ancestral hall was darker than outside due to the lack of moonlight.

The hunchbacked man had excellent eyesight, and Yu Xing wanted to test whether he had night vision or simply had better eyesight than a living person.

As it turns out, in the dark, you have to remain blind.

The hunchbacked man searched for a long time but couldn't find anyone. Frustrated, he stomped his feet on the spot and angrily threw the thin rope in his hand far away. Just as Yu Xing was watching the commotion, he eagerly ran out and picked up the rope, holding it in his arms like a treasure.

You might even detect a childlike quality in the behavior of a hunchback, but if that childlike quality comes from a terrifyingly tall and thin figure, then it's nothing but horrifying.

Yu Xing thought leisurely, "Why doesn't the hunchback go look for me in the woods? Doesn't he suspect I've wandered into the woods? What kind of behavior is this, raging impotently near the ancestral hall?"

The hunchback answered his question with a hoarse yawn.

The hunchback's yawn was like a thunderclap on a clear day; the dull sound could travel far, Yu Xing could feel his drowsiness as if it were his own.

So it's because I need to sleep... Is this a side effect of the coffin "coming back to life"? Do I have to spend most of the day lying in the coffin sleeping to maintain this state?

No wonder Carlos didn't mention the hunchbacked giant when he was communicating with the paper dolls.

Because the black coffin and the shrine were both located in relatively remote areas, not on the main road ahead, either Carlos's group didn't see the shrine, or they saw it but didn't dare to open the coffin.

Yu Xing watched as the hunchbacked man, his bulging, unclosed eyes still wide open, lay back down in the coffin, yawning as he closed the lid.

"Tsk, I thought he would chase me into the woods, so I could check the black coffin." The last time I saw the black coffin, the curse power on him was too much of a hindrance, preventing him from getting close to the coffin. Otherwise, the power on the coffin would have killed him many times over due to the rampage of the curse power.

This time it's better. The power of the curse is firmly suppressed. Although he can't sense the special powers everywhere and has lost a radar, he can still observe what he wants to see without being affected.

He temporarily put the matter of the black coffin aside, got up and wandered around the ancestral hall, focusing on the candles on the candlesticks.

These candles are heavily covered in ash. Unlike the candles in Coffin Village, which are frequently lit and illuminated every time someone makes a sacrifice, these candles are heavily ash-covered.

But the hunchbacked people here don't seem to need candles to survive.