The Story of the Mountain God Temple

Damn. Zhang Yuanqing suddenly didn't want to stay in the main hall anymore.

He felt trapped in a desperate situation, terrified that no matter how loudly he cried for help, no one would answer.

This place was extremely dangerous, yet he couldn't ask anyone outside for help. He could only rely on himself.

After hesitating for a long while, he gritted his teeth, steeled himself, and bent down to pull out the skeleton wrapped in work clothes.

Rrrip—

The work clothes tore easily as he tugged at them. After all those years, the fabric had long since rotted.

He dragged the corpse into the candlelight and, fighting his discomfort, began to examine it.

Even after death, the body could tell a story. Figuring out how the man had died might help him avoid many dangers.

"Several ribs and the breastbone are broken. There are fine cracks in the right shoulder, but they're not too serious."

The deceased had suffered severe injuries while alive, but the precise cause of death was impossible to determine after so many years.

Next, Zhang Yuanqing found several yellowed, brittle sheets of paper in the worker's pockets. They were clearly very old.

Tiny characters had been written on them in regular script.

Zhang Yuanqing was delighted. The papers had clearly been found in the temple by the worker, and they might help him learn more about the place.

Using the candlelight, he focused and read their contents.

"Another junior brother disappeared last night. That makes him the third fellow disciple to vanish mysteriously from the temple. The brothers say that something supernatural is happening on Three Paths Mountain, or perhaps a powerful demon has come to the temple each night to capture and eat people. But the temple's disciples all have cultivation, and our master is a renowned master within a hundred li. What kind of demon would be foolish enough to come here looking for food?

"As for ghosts, my Zombie Suppressing Talisman and Spirit Summoning Talisman are more than enough to deal with them. I wouldn't even need to trouble Master. I have a bad feeling about this. I should go discuss it with Senior Brother."

"Another person disappeared today. That makes five. Master told us to keep it from the worshippers, or it would affect the temple's incense offerings. He must know something. Senior Brother and I plan to patrol tonight."

"Three days have passed. Three more people have disappeared during that time, but Senior Brother and I haven't found a thing. The nights have been perfectly calm. My foreboding has only grown stronger."

"Senior Brother was acting strangely today. He seemed to have discovered something and was furious. I asked him about it, but he wouldn't tell me. He's in a bad mood. I'll ask again tomorrow."

"Senior Brother disappeared today. I searched all of Three Paths Mountain but couldn't find him. I—I can't take it anymore. I'm going to demand an explanation from Master. The other brothers support me, because they're frightened too."

The handwriting grew rather messy here, suggesting that the writer was on the verge of a breakdown.

Zhang Yuanqing continued reading:

"After pressing Master for an explanation, he finally agreed to tell me the truth. My instincts were right—he knows why the junior brothers have been disappearing. But Master said there are too many people around during the day. He'll come to my room after sunset and tell me a tremendous secret, one tied to the rise and fall of dynasties over thousands of years."

"After dinner, I waited in my room for the sun to set. Ever since people started disappearing at night, I've never looked forward to nightfall so much."

That was where the account ended.

That's it? What a frustrating cliffhanger. Zhang Yuanqing grimaced.

He pieced together the information from the papers. At some point in the past, the disciples of this Mountain God Temple had begun to vanish one after another.

The disciples had been powerless to stop it, and fear had spread among them. The temple's Temple Keeper—who was also their master—seemed to know the reason.

And that reason concerned a great secret tied to thousands of years of rise and fall.

"The reason the Mountain God Temple fell into ruin is unknown. If I uncover it, could I complete the second main quest?" Zhang Yuanqing guessed.

He put the brittle papers back into the worker's clothes and shoved the corpse beneath the table, preferring not to look at it. Then he considered what to do next.

"There's only so much information in the main hall. If I'm going to explore the ancient temple, I have to go outside. That means facing the dangers inside."

"In the Sheling Tunnel ghost story, one worker managed to survive. If I follow in his footsteps, I might find a way to make it out alive."

After careful consideration, Zhang Yuanqing went to the main hall entrance and opened its two well-preserved lattice doors.

Creeeak—

The wooden hinges groaned with a grating sound.

He braced himself against the doorframe and cautiously peered outside, looking from side to side. The exterior was silent. Apart from being desolate and eerie, it showed no sign of danger.

After watching for a while, he stepped over the threshold and followed the pebble path to the left of the main hall toward the Mountain God Temple's rear courtyard.

Moonlight flowed like water over the swaying weeds. After a minute or two, Zhang Yuanqing came upon a cluster of buildings.

Several connected single-story buildings formed a large siheyuan, with black tiles, white walls, and a straight roofline. Lattice windows and doors lined the eaves.

The lattice doors were all coated with dust. Some stood open, some had fallen over, and others remained shut. The paper that had once covered the windows had been torn to shreds by the passage of time.

Under the bright moonlight, which lay like frost on the ground, he surveyed the layout of the Mountain God Temple's rear courtyard.

Besides the siheyuan in front of him, there was an arched gate to the east, like the kind often seen in period dramas, connecting the different courtyards of a wealthy family's estate.

A towering tree grew in the neighboring courtyard, its branches gnarled and its foliage thick.

"Huh?"

Among the weeds in the courtyard, he spotted several skeletons wrapped in work clothes.

He cautiously approached and examined them. Each skeleton was badly damaged, with the work clothes hiding a jumble of broken bones. But unlike the skeleton in the main hall, the shoulder bones of these corpses were intact, without a single crack.

"These people all suffered terrible injuries before they died. They must have died horribly."

A breeze stirred the leaves, making them rustle. Amid the sound, Zhang Yuanqing faintly heard a mournful whisper carried on the wind:

"Help me, help me..."

In the desolate, lifeless night, cold sweat broke out on Zhang Yuanqing's back.

He stood frozen in place. After a long while, the wind died down, and the sorrowful whispers faded with it.

The courtyard next door seemed dangerous, but whatever was inside hadn't come over. He silently let out a breath, then stepped through the weeds and under the eaves, intending to explore the siheyuan.

This seemed to be where the temple's disciples had lived. Old, dusty furniture lay piled up, and the air held a faint, musty smell.

Zhang Yuanqing searched the rooms one by one, finding nothing unusual until he pushed open the lattice door at the far eastern end.

Creak—

The door, sealed for who knew how many years, swung open again, sending dust drifting down. Zhang Yuanqing brushed the dust from his shoulder and warily scanned every corner of the room.

In the long-abandoned room, a corpse lay slumped against the wall beside the window.

The clothes and the miner's hat that had rolled away identified him as another worker from the outside.

Zhang Yuanqing stepped over the threshold and entered the room. A shiver ran through him as he inexplicably felt the temperature drop.

"It's a little cold."

He cautiously approached the corpse, opened its tattered clothes, and examined its bones as before. This time, he found no broken bones. The skeleton was intact.

But when he looked at its shoulder, his pupils contracted. A huge crack ran through the shoulder bone.

It was like the crack in the shoulder of the corpse in the main hall, only the injuries on this skeleton were worse.

"Only the corpse in this room and the one in the main hall have broken shoulder bones. Is that a coincidence?" he murmured uneasily.

Then Zhang Yuanqing noticed the corpse's trouser pocket bulging, as if it held something.

He reached in and pulled out a yellowed old booklet, a dusty bronze mirror, and a yellow paper talisman.

The talisman was marked with twisting patterns drawn in cinnabar. They looked something like runes, and together they formed a character resembling the traditional form of "corpse."

As he examined the talisman, a line of glowing blue text appeared before his eyes:

[Name: Zombie Suppressing Talisman]

[Type: Consumable]

[Function: Suppresses zombies]

[Description: A talisman made by a powerful Night Wanderer. It is the bane of all yin-type corpse entities. Stick it to an entity's forehead to seal it.]

[Note: It can only be used once.]

The glowing blue text looked a little like his status panel. Clearly, it was a prompt from the Spirit Realm.

Since entering the eerie ancient temple, this was the first time he'd seen a prompt like this.

"It must be an important item." Zhang Yuanqing folded it neatly and put it in his jacket pocket, then zipped it up.

He thought for a moment, then unzipped it again.

He'd remembered a gag from a martial arts novel. A highly skilled Swordsman liked to wrap his sword in cloth and carry it on his back.

One day, while the Swordsman was eating, a challenger confronted him.

And then the Swordsman was done for.

The reason: he couldn't unwrap the cloth in time.

Zhang Yuanqing picked up the old booklet and the bronze mirror. No information appeared.

He set the bronze mirror aside, then carefully opened the brittle booklet, its yellowed pages curling at the corners.

It read:

"I've been an apprentice at the Temple of the Lady of Three Paths Mountain for two and a half years. I've learned to read and write. Senior Brother said that once Master returns to the mountain after delivering souls to the afterlife, he can formally initiate me into the sect and teach me the Moon-Swallowing Soul-Nurturing Technique. This is the way to begin becoming a Night Wanderer."

"Prince of Yan has rebelled, and smoke from the fires of war rises everywhere. Master is the strongest Night Wanderer in Song Prefecture, so he has no choice but to descend the mountain and deliver the dead to the afterlife. Otherwise, if the war remains unsettled and yin calamities rise again, the common people will suffer even more."

Zhang Yuanqing felt an ache in his shoulder and rubbed it. He judged that the booklet was a collection of personal notes—in other words, a diary.

It chronicled the writer's cultivation and daily life at the temple. Judging by the handwriting, the diary and the papers from the skeleton in the main hall had come from the same person.

Based on references to the "Prince of Yan's rebellion" and the like, the timeline pointed to the period of the Jingnan Campaign.

But he wasn't sure if the temple had really existed in history, because the notes mentioned things like "cultivation," "Night Wanderers," "breathing techniques," and "talisman scripts."

Zhang Yuanqing rolled his aching shoulder, warily scanned the room, and listened for any sounds outside. Once he was sure nothing was wrong, he continued reading the notes.

Before long, he reached the continuation of the account from the main hall. The first few pages had been torn out, but the later entries read:

"Sunset. It's finally dark. I heard a knock at the door and hurried to open it. The person standing outside wasn't Master, but Senior Brother, who disappeared last night."

"Senior Brother, who had been missing for a day and a night, came back. But I felt no joy, because he was already dead. What came back was a corpse. His chest was drenched in blood, and someone had taken his heart."

"Senior Brother stared straight at me. He said, 'Don't trust Master.'"

The handwriting in these entries was crooked and uneven. It was easy to imagine the writer's state of mind as he wrote them.

When Zhang Yuanqing turned to the next page, he found nothing more. The diarist had never written another entry.

"Wait... what does 'Don't trust Master' mean?"

The twist sent a chill through Zhang Yuanqing.

Had the Temple Keeper killed Senior Brother? Was he also behind the disciples' successive disappearances? Zhang Yuanqing rubbed his shoulder, put the booklet back in the corpse's pocket, then picked up the bronze mirror and prepared to leave.

But when the mirror caught his eye, his body suddenly froze.

Moonlight streamed onto its surface. The bronze mirror reflected his face—and a person clinging to his back.

The figure's face was deathly pale, its lips a deep purple. It had white eyes and rested its head against Zhang Yuanqing's shoulder, staring at him with a dead, lifeless gaze.