Purple Aunt

"Heaven and Earth were dark and yellow; the universe vast and primordial. The sun and moon waxed and waned; the stars were arrayed..."

"Awoo, awoo, awoo, awoo..."

Yu Chen sat before the window, watching the two little turnip heads and two little white foxes pair off one-on-one. They looked rather adorable.

Drawing back his gaze, Yu Chen continued reading the information the White Fox had delivered into his hands, far more than he had expected. He sighed inwardly. Though the Hu Family, as one branch of household guardian immortals, lacks true powerhouses, their disciples and followers are spread across the land. If one spoke of the best-informed forces beneath Heaven and Earth, the Five Great Immortal Families would surely rank among the top five. If only lower-level intelligence were considered, they could climb another rank or two.

As he thought, Yu Chen kept flipping through the stories Hu Seventy-Six had collected, comparing them in his mind. This tale of someone growing duck feathers should be Cursing the Ducks. This story of a bride turning into a ghost on her wedding night should be The Woman of the Dou Family. Then this one is Mud Immortal...

As for the rest...

Yu Chen separated out the stories he had confirmed, then set aside a portion of tales so absurdly false they possessed a fresh and refined charm of their own. Staring at those that remained, he fell silent.

The Strange Tales series Yu Chen often mentioned was, in truth, the work of a group of gamers from his previous life.

At first, one gamer had used the world of a certain main dungeon as a temporal coordinate, linking together a series of corresponding dungeon worlds. Since this series of dungeons bore countless threads of connection to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the classic Eastern mythological anthology, it came to be called the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio series.

But as more and more people explored according to the timeline he had laid out, and as textual researchers kept digging deeper, people discovered that behind those stories lay countless branching threads entirely different from the original Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio tales. Some dungeon worlds once believed to belong to separate systems also turned out to have crossovers.

To distinguish them, later generations named this broader system, which covered a wider scope and involved more content, Strange Tales.

Some gamers had even written a book called Strange Tales based specifically on those plotlines. The names of stories with similar plots were exactly the same, leaving later researchers studying guides unable to tell Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio from Strange Tales.

That was precisely what troubled Yu Chen now. The few stories before him were not impossible to identify; rather, they occupied different positions on the timelines recorded in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio and Strange Tales.

By sheer coincidence, the Corpse-Born Child dungeon plot Yu Chen had experienced last time was a story unique to Strange Tales, with little connection to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. The Black Snake story he experienced afterward, however, did have some connection to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.

If I follow the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio timeline, then the two dungeons I have experienced are unrelated dungeons. But if I follow the Strange Tales timeline, then the two dungeons come one after the other. The first dungeon marks the beginning of the Strange Tales main storyline, while the second is a story from the previous generation of that main storyline.

Was time being reversed, or were these consecutive dungeons? Yu Chen's gaze darkened as he concealed his shock.

"Fellow Daoist Hu!"

The fox beside Yu Chen, three times the size of the two little white foxes, opened its eyes at his call. A faint thread of golden light glimmered within its somewhat cloudy pupils. Lowering its head, it obediently said, "What are your instructions?"

"I would like to ask you something."

"Ask away!"

"Was Mount Tai Hu the Great Immortal Aunt also called Hu the Great Maiden, Hu the Great Aunt, or Purple Aunt?"

At those words, all the white fur on Hu Seventy-Six's body bristled, as if it had heard something terrifying. After a long silence, it finally answered in a low voice, "Yes!"

The moment it spoke, Yu Chen reached a conclusion. Hu the Great Aunt was a very interesting dividing point between the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio and Strange Tales systems.

In the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio story, Hu the Great Aunt told of a fox demon causing mischief and coercing a kind family, demanding that their son divorce his wife and marry her instead. Left with no other choice, they invited a man named Li Chengyao, who uncovered the cause: three years earlier, a Purple Aunt divine effigy had been made, accumulated malignant qi, and fallen into the fox's hands, allowing it to wreak havoc.

Interestingly, the ending of the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio story also contained a line: Perhaps one might see dozens of bottles hanging upon the wall, each stopper stuffed with a fox. She said she released them in turn to go forth and cause trouble, thus winning betrothal gold, while those kept indoors became rare treasures.

That sentence made the entire story all the more baffling, leaving it impossible to tell who was good and who was evil.

This story was equally interesting in the related Strange Tales dungeons.

In the Strange Tales series, Hu the Great Aunt referred to Mount Tai Hu the Great Immortal Aunt. The reason she committed evil was that the family had made her divine effigy and prayed for spiritual efficacy, yet failed to keep it safe. Seeing her husband treasure a female effigy so carefully, the family's daughter-in-law became jealous and threw it into the latrine pit.

This enraged Mount Tai Hu the Great Immortal Aunt so greatly that her Three Corpses Gods leaped in fury. Had she not remembered that she was no longer a demon spirit and now bore responsibilities, what followed would not have been a display of divine inspiration, but her drawing her sword and killing the family's daughter-in-law.

In the end, the solution in the Strange Tales series was also very interesting. Under the guidance of an old Daoist priest, that household revered Mount Tai Hu the Great Immortal Aunt as the goddess in charge of latrines, calling her Lady Purple Aunt—the so-called Pit Maiden. They declared that sending the divine effigy into the latrine pit had not been an intentional desecration, but an invitation for the deity to return to her rightful place.

Even more interestingly, after that dungeon, in every Strange Tales series dungeon in the game world whose timeline came later, Lady Purple Aunt always referred to Mount Tai Hu the Great Immortal Aunt.

This granted Mount Tai Hu the Great Immortal Aunt an entirely new authority, but it also became one of the greatest black marks in her history.

Ordinary people simply dared not discuss the matter. Neither Jin Guang nor Yan Chixia had ever mentioned it. Since Hu Seventy-Six had now given an affirmative answer, Yu Chen could basically confirm that this dungeon followed the Strange Tales timeline.

Next, I only need to see what the third dungeon is like to determine the true situation.

If the third dungeon had nothing to do with the Strange Tales series, then his speculation was wrong, and all would be well. But if the third dungeon was also related to the Strange Tales series and lay between the timelines of the two dungeons, then Yu Chen would have to question the transmigration mechanism of his own cheat.

Taking a deep breath, the radiance of Yu Chen's divine soul blazed within his heart. The Glazed Treasure Land also circulated streams of crystalline light, suppressing the countless distracting thoughts churning within his sea of consciousness.

He turned toward the two little turnip heads and the little white foxes, summoned the Golden Light Ruyi, and lightly tapped Dong Can and the two little white foxes with it. From the precious pearl at the ruyi's tip descended a beam of golden light.

Bathed in the golden light, Dong Can, the eldest son of the Dong Family, and the two most outstanding children among Hu Seventy-Six's offspring all comprehended the Golden Light Mantra. A faint connection also formed among the three.