Long-standing History

"The villagers who had been keeping their doors shut all night have finally come out to check the almanac. Does that mean the Snake God isn't causing outbreaks anymore?" Feng Yushu asked curiously, listening to the noisy footsteps beneath the roof.

"Perhaps." Ning Zhe did not offer much of an evaluation.

Perhaps because today was a day where "sacrifices" were taboo, the villagers who arrived at the Ancestral Hall did not offer incense to the Snake God after checking the almanac, let alone offer up melons, vegetables, or rice on the Lotus Platform as they usually did.

But strangely, the massive crowd that had swarmed into the Ancestral Hall did not leave after checking the almanac, even though they made no offerings to the Snake God.

They simply stood quietly in place, motionless.

"What's going on?" Feng Yushu carefully took out her phone and glanced at the lock screen.

The time was now 05:51 in the morning; the sun had only just crawled above the horizon, and the surrounding environment was not particularly bright, remaining gloomy and overcast.

Ning Zhe's gaze swept across the surroundings. The streets and alleys crisscrossing around the Ancestral Hall, whether incoming or outgoing, were already packed with people. Shadows loomed on every road, and the dim sky hung over a crowd of gray, somber figures.

On both sides of the streets, behind every open Room Door, eerie figures with their faces covered in Yellow Paper stumbled out with slow, measured steps.

Their bodies were real yet blurred, and their strides were as uniform as those of calibrated machines.

He Shunsheng, He Youlin, He... The names written on the Yellow Paper covering their faces were all different; they were clearly distinct individuals, yet at the exact same second, they all planted the same foot onto the wet Stone Slab road.

Such a spectacular and eerie scene made Feng Yushu exceptionally nervous. Her hands subconsciously gripped the red cloth covering her legs so tightly that her face turned deathly pale.

But when she turned to look, Ning Zhe's expression remained as it always was.

His demeanor was terrifyingly calm, his hollow eyes as stagnant as a pool of dead water, as if he were a man bored to the extreme, sitting lazily on the grass and looking down from on high at a group of busy ants.

Watching Ning Zhe's indifferent expression, Feng Yushu's panicked heart gradually calmed down.

"N-Ning Zhe, what are they doing?" Feng Yushu asked in a tiny voice.

Ning Zhe shrugged: "I suspect it might be a sacrifice, or perhaps a wedding, or maybe a funeral."

"A sacrifice?" Feng Yushu was stunned: "But isn't today a day where sacrifices are taboo?"

"That's why I said I was guessing."

Ning Zhe said softly: "In a village like this, there aren't many occasions that bring the whole village together. Either everyone is having fun during the holidays, or it's a collective worship of the gods, or it's the red and white affairs of weddings and funerals."

And since they were gathered at the Ancestral Hall, the possibility of the villagers holding a collective sacrificial activity here was not small.

It was just that if it were a sacrifice, there was something suspicious about it.

"Why would these people risk violating a taboo to sacrifice to the Snake God today?" Such doubts began to linger in Ning Zhe's mind.

Just as he was wondering, two children holding hands suddenly appeared from a corner of the street and clumsily merged into the crowd.

Ning Zhe's sharp gaze remained firmly fixed on their figures. These two children, one boy and one girl, were just like the other villagers; their faces were each covered with a piece of withered Yellow Paper, with different names written upon them.

The boy's face read: He Jingyan.

The girl's face read: He Yiyi.

The arrival of these two seemed to trigger a switch. As the figures of He Jingyan and He Yiyi disappeared into the crowd, the villagers gathered inside and outside the Ancestral Hall, who had been silent until now, knelt down.

Rows of figures prostrated themselves in unison, like rice stalks bent by a typhoon. Their foreheads knocked heavily against the ground of the Ancestral Hall and into the muddy water of the wet streets, soaking the Yellow Paper inscribed with names in filth.

They knelt toward the interior of the Ancestral Hall. The lower halves of their faces, previously hidden by the Yellow Paper, were now exposed due to their kneeling posture. If one leaned down to observe closely, one could see mouths opening and closing one after another, and a faint, fragmented murmuring sound rose from the crowd:

[Liangshan Wangtu, neither broken nor moved.]

[Old person, new coffin, neither buried nor moved.]

[Flawless white jade, the full moon has its flaws.]

The murmurs, thick as mud and fine as rain, rose continuously, carrying a certain indescribable religious significance that made one feel hazy and disoriented.

The villagers recited the sacrificial words very softly, very softly—it was a self-talk that only the speakers themselves could hear, and some parts were even garbled.

Ning Zhe tried to focus his attention to distinguish the specific content of these sacrificial words, and the fragmented speech gradually became clearer in his ears:

[Quietly swaying, silent and untraceable...]

[Abundant like water, brilliant like the sun...]

[...Zhaozhao Xi, Blue Flower fiercely shaking the sky's light...]

[...Miaomiao Xi, Smoke and Clouds vastly hunting the dragon...]

Ning Zhe's brows slowly relaxed, and the feelings of doubt and vigilance that had been present began to calm down unknowingly.

These obscure yet clear words did not seem to be heard through the ears, but rather resonated directly in the mind. The strange syllables brought a bizarre, indescribable feeling.

Vast, grand, profound, boundless, tiny... Ning Zhe could think of too many words to describe the sensation echoing between his soul and his mind, yet none could fully summarize it.

It was as if once these obscure words were spoken by the mouths of the villagers, they were no longer mere sentences, but rather that a more transcendent existence was truly responding to their prayers.

The viscous time flowed slowly amidst the droning sacrificial words until it reached 06:30 in the morning.

Ning Zhe saw that the villagers, who had been kneeling and chanting, finally made a different move—the dozens of people kneeling at the main entrance of the Ancestral Hall stood up one after another, clearing an open space in front of the crowd.

Two sturdy young men walked out from inside the Ancestral Hall. Together, they lifted a wooden Long Table and placed it at the entrance of the hall in the cleared space. If not for their stiff, marionette-like movements, the scene would have possessed a solemnity unique to religious occasions.

"This is..." Feng Yushu subconsciously wrapped the red tablecloth tighter around herself. She realized that the table the villagers had brought out was the very same sacrificial table Ning Zhe had used to hide the corpse of Lin Zhiyuan.

The tablecloth was now wrapped around her, and the table itself had been brought out by the villagers; did this not mean that the corpse of Lin Zhiyuan had already been discovered by the villagers?

"Don't panic, just watch quietly." Ning Zhe held a finger up to Feng Yushu's lips, which were slightly parted in panic.

Beneath the roof, several villagers stepped forward and placed a total of three sheets of White Paper—two long and one short—onto the table at the entrance of the Ancestral Hall.

Subsequently, an elderly man with a bald head and grizzled hair approached the table, and others immediately served him with brush and ink.

The old man picked up the brush and wrote blood-red characters upon the ghastly pale White Paper:

Upper Couplet: [The Ba Snake and the pearls and jade on the altar bear witness to the ancestors]

Lower Couplet: [Before the Lotus Hall, the descendants together offer incense]

Horizontal Inscription: [A Source Far-reaching and Long-flowing]