"This is the rule! If we don't follow the rule and let Old Eighth die in the village, perhaps the very next moment, he'll..." The elderly leader lowered his voice, then suddenly exclaimed, "He'll rise straight from the dead!"
"Old Guo, stop scaring the children," a burly middle-aged man said.
The old man softened his voice as well. "I'm not scaring them. When my time comes to die someday, I'll have to follow the rule too. Feed me to the Tuhuang."
"Don't be afraid. This is the rule, a rule followed for generations. We must obey it."
Seemingly noticing the children's fear, the old man added, "That Tuhuang in red has lived for two hundred years. It has always guarded the village and brought us peace."
Was that really guarding the village, or was it... raising the villagers as livestock?
Many of them grumbled inwardly. That monster regarded everyone as food, so of course it would protect its food supply.
"But what you don't know is that the Tuhuang is actually... actually an ancestor from long ago." The old man revealed another secret.
"When our ancestors first moved here, there was no Tuhuang guarding this place. They lived in terror every night, and children disappeared every few days."
"So we could only create a Tuhuang ourselves."
Tuhuang was a local term, meaning something like "local guardian" or "local deity."
People had limited energy, while monsters had unlimited energy.
Even patrols of strong men had moments of carelessness. If they encountered a "ghost," they were no match for it. However many men went, that many would die.
With uncanny beings watching hungrily, creating a powerful "Tuhuang" was the best means of survival the local inhabitants had discovered.
Because a Tuhuang feared neither "ghosts" nor other monsters!
"When someone dies, if the