Source Flows Long

"Had the villagers, who'd stayed shut indoors all night, finally come out to check the almanac? Does that mean the Snake God isn't acting up now?" Feng Yushu listened to the commotion below the roof and asked curiously.

"Maybe." Ning Zhe didn't comment further.

Perhaps because today was an inauspicious day for "making offerings," the villagers who came to the Ancestral Hall didn't light incense for the Snake God after checking the almanac, let alone offer vegetables, fruit, rice, or other food on the Lotus Platform as they usually did.

Strangely, though, after the throng of people had checked the almanac, they didn't leave, despite making no offerings to the Snake God.

They simply stood where they were, motionless.

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

It was 5:51 in the morning. The sun had only just risen above the horizon, and the surroundings were still dim beneath the overcast sky.

Ning Zhe swept his gaze over the area. The streets and alleys around the Ancestral Hall were packed with people, both in the direction they had come from and the way ahead. Shadowy figures filled every road, a sea of gray beneath the gloomy sky.

Behind every open doorway along the streets, eerie figures with yellow paper covering their faces stumbled out, their steps slow and unsteady.

Their bodies seemed at once solid and indistinct, their movements as synchronized as precisely calibrated machines.

He Shunsheng, He Youlin, He... The names written on the yellow paper covering their faces were all different. They were clearly different people, yet at the same second, they all planted the same foot on the rain-slick stone road.

The grand and eerie sight made Feng Yu Shu extremely nervous. Without thinking, she clenched the red cloth over her legs in both hands, her face turning deathly pale.

But when she turned to look at Ning Zhe, he seemed just as he always did.

His expression was so calm it was almost frightening. His empty eyes were as still as a pool of stagnant water. He looked like someone with nothing better to do, lazily sitting on the grass and gazing down from on high at a swarm of busy ants.

Seeing Ning Zhe's detached expression, Feng Yu Shu's panicked heart gradually settled.

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

Ning Zhe shrugged. "I'm guessing it might be a sacrifice, a wedding, or a funeral."

"A sacrifice?" Feng Yu Shu froze. "But isn't today an inauspicious day for sacrifices?"

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

"In a village like this," Ning Zhe said softly, "there aren't many occasions that would bring the whole village together. They might gather to celebrate a festival, worship the gods as a group, or attend a wedding or funeral."

And now they were gathered at the Ancestral Hall, so there was a good chance the villagers were holding a communal sacrifice there.

Still, if it was a sacrifice, something about it seemed off.

Why would these people risk violating the taboo to sacrifice to the Snake God today? The question began to linger in Ning Zhe's mind.

As he pondered, two children holding hands suddenly appeared around a corner and blundered into the crowd.

Ning Zhe's keen gaze followed them closely. One was a boy and the other a girl. Like the other villagers, each had a piece of withered yellow paper stuck to their face, bearing a different name.

The boy's paper read: He Jingyan.

The girl's paper read: He Yiyi.

Their arrival seemed to trigger something. As He Jingyan and He Yiyi disappeared into the crowd, the villagers gathered inside and outside the Ancestral Hall fell to their knees without a word.

Row upon row of figures dropped to the ground in unison, like rice stalks snapped by a typhoon. Their foreheads struck the floor of the Ancestral Hall and the muddy water on the street. The yellow papers bearing their names soaked up the grime.

They prostrated themselves toward the Ancestral Hall. Their faces, which the yellow paper had concealed until now, were partly exposed as they bowed. If one leaned down to look closely, one could see their mouths opening and closing in turn as soft murmurs rose from the crowd:

[Liangshan Wangtu, unbroken and unmoved.]

[Old souls, new coffins, not yet buried, not yet moved.]

[Flawless White Jade, a full moon with a flaw.]

The murmurs continued, sticky as mud and fine as rain, carrying an ineffable religious quality that made them sound hazy and distant.

The villagers recited the sacrificial verses in voices so faint that each speaker could scarcely hear themselves. Some of the words were barely intelligible.

Ning Zhe tried to focus and make out the verses. The scattered words gradually grew 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 brow gradually relaxed. The unease and wariness he'd felt began to fade without his noticing, replaced by calm.

The obscure yet clear words seemed not to reach him through his ears, but to ring directly in his mind. Their strange syllables gave him an indescribably peculiar feeling.

Vast, expansive, deep, boundless, insignificant... Ning Zhe could think of countless words to describe the sensations echoing through his heart and mind, but none could capture them completely.

It was as if, once the villagers recited these obscure words, they ceased to be mere phrases. It was as if some transcendent presence was truly responding to their prayers.

Time flowed sluggishly amid the repeated, blurred sacrificial verses. It was now 6:30 in the morning.

Ning Zhe saw that the villagers, who had been kneeling and chanting without pause, finally moved. Dozens of people kneeling at the entrance to the Ancestral Hall stood up, clearing a space before the others.

Two burly young men emerged from the Ancestral Hall. Together, they carried a long wooden table to the cleared spot by the entrance. If not for their stiff, puppet-like movements, the scene might even have seemed imbued with the solemn sanctity peculiar to religious ceremonies.

"This is..." Feng Yushu instinctively pulled the bright red tablecloth tighter around herself. She realized that the table the villagers had brought out was the very sacrificial table Ning Zhe had used to conceal Lin Zhiyuan's corpse.

The tablecloth was wrapped around her now, and the villagers had brought out the table itself. Didn't that mean they had already found Lin Zhiyuan's corpse?

"Don't panic. Just stay quiet and watch." Ning Zhe held a finger in front of Feng Yushu's lips, which had parted slightly in alarm.

Below the roof, several villagers stepped forward and placed three sheets of white paper—two long and one short—on the tabletop by the entrance to the Ancestral Hall.

Then an elderly, balding man with grizzled hair approached the table. Someone immediately brought him ink and a brush.

The old man picked up the brush and wrote in blood-red ink on the stark white paper:

Upper Couplet: [On the altar, the Ba Snake and pearls alike bear witness to our ancestors]

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

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