"Shi Tianming..." Wu Ling repeated the name. "I've never heard of him. He was probably an obscure expert who never made it into the history books."
"An expert?" someone nearby scoffed, still seething with resentment.
Ning Zhe didn't seem to hold any grudge against Shi Tianming. He said calmly, "He was an expert indeed. The Serpent Lord couldn't last a single exchange against him, but he didn't have much of a solution for the mess the Serpent Lord left behind."
"In the end, he deceived us and sacrificed us alive!"
The people around them clamored, all cursing the Serpent Lord.
Before their anger had died down, Wu Ling continued asking, "What's the story with this place?"
"At first, there was nothing here. We chased the Serpent Lord here. Back then, this place was just a wilderness, with no one around. We deliberately drove him here so he'd have nowhere to run. So when we were sacrificed alive and ended up here, there was still nothing." Ning Zhe answered honestly. "It was just us and our corpses. Then, one year, farmland appeared here. Someone we didn't know came in. He said his name was Ergou, and that he was a farmer from Anjia Village nearby. He got into an argument with someone in the village, took a hoe to the head, and ended up here. I suspect his death changed this place."
Ning Zhe took a drag on his cigarette. "An Ergou was the first to come in, the first to bring change to this place. For years after that, nothing new happened. Later, there must have been a war going on outside. The second person to arrive was named Wang Xi. He was alive when he came in, and said he'd been fleeing with a group of people. He said