Jinping Local Gazetteer

Zhou Yang did not immediately reveal his entire plan.

Success is achieved through secrecy, while failure is caused by leaks; therefore, plans should not be made in large numbers.

The two men were already on the verge of collapse, living under such high pressure in Guan Village. If Zhou Yang were to tell them his tightrope-walking plan, it would only add more psychological pressure to them.

It would be better if only Zhou Yang knew the details of the plan.

In any case, the task of igniting the fat and creating a new dawn can only be done by Zhou Yang himself.

Luan Xiaofeng and You Chuntian wisely refrained from asking further questions.

Both of them looked somewhat troubled as they saw the two bundles of paper money that Zhou Yang pushed over.

You Chuntian hesitated for a moment, then said to Zhou Yang, "My benefactor, if we take this money back with us, I'm afraid our parents and brothers will just take it away..."

Luan Xiaofeng glanced at You Chuntian, then hesitated, as if she wanted to say something.

Zhou Yang smiled upon hearing this, looked at You Chuntian, and said, "Guan Village is not like the outside world; danger lurks everywhere here."

Even if I can help you for a while, how can I help you with everything?

"The key still lies with yourself. If you are willing to take a step, you can overcome any obstacle, no matter how hard you have to endure or how recklessly you charge forward. But if you refuse to move, those obstacles will always be right in front of you. "These two bundles of paper money are crucial to whether you will survive the Revelation Ceremony in the future."

"You don't even dare to fight for this, you just meekly agree and never show your teeth... How long are you going to remain so weak?"

Upon hearing this, You Chuntian was momentarily stunned, then blushed.

Luan Xiaofeng was bolder than him, and finally, when You Chuntian was caught off guard, she immediately said, "My benefactor is right."

The master leads you through the door, but the practice is up to you!

"Our benefactor has already helped us so much. Even if we were to serve him like a beast of burden for nine lifetimes, we would still be unable to repay this kindness!"

"Now, how can we trouble our benefactor with such trivial matters?"

"Please rest assured, my benefactor, Lao You and I will handle these matters efficiently. Don't worry about us!"

After speaking, Luan Xiaofeng quickly turned to look at You Chuntian.

There was a proud look in his eyes, like that of a primary school student who had finally answered a question in front of his favorite teacher.

"Let's talk about something else." Zhou Yang changed the subject, looking at Luan Xiaofeng and said, "You've always thought that the first three trials of the Revelation Ceremony are easier because you can use tricks and deception to fool the Guan Village."

"But you're quite apprehensive about the subsequent Seedling Sprouting and Seedling Drenching. You feel these two stages are particularly difficult—but what makes them so difficult?"

Upon hearing this, Luan Xiaofeng replied, "My benefactor, do you know what those farmland fields around this Guan Village look like?"

"Although I have never walked to the edge of the village and seen those farmland with my own eyes, because of my family's academic background, I know some of the inside story of this Human-Skin Guan Village. I know that the farmland on the edge of the village is not like ordinary fields, which are divided into squares. Instead, it is divided into plots of land by circular furrows of varying depths!"

In front of each field, there is a stone tablet!

"If you had seen what the farmland of Guan Village looks like with your own eyes, you would surely think of --"

Before he could finish speaking, Zhou Yang interrupted him, "It's similar to the sacrificial circle used when worshipping ancestors, like a series of graves, is that right?"

"Yes, yes!" Luan Xiaofeng nodded immediately, "It's similar to what you described."

"Actually, it's not similar at all. Those farmland used to be rows of graves. The grave mounds were leveled, leaving round marks, and that's what they look like!"

"When we Seedling Sprouting, we are actually asking those dead ghosts who were buried underground in this Guan Village to take Root and Shoot in us!"

"Once you become Official Body, your Official Seal can be combined with the evil spirit corresponding to your Root and Shoot, and you will transform into a true official!"

"The evil spirits have taken root in us first; are we still ourselves?"

"In this case, at best, the person's mind is affected by the ghost, causing confusion in their perception of all things. At worst, they become a ghost with human-like intelligence!"

"After the Seedling Sprouting stage, the fat injected into our bodies is simply a prelude to the Root and Shoot of the evil spirits within us!"

"Those fats, taken from the ' Fat Well,' have been soaked in by countless evil spirits. Now, they are brushed onto our bodies, from the inside out, again and again, brushing away the last vestiges of our consciousness from within our skull and cranium into our flesh and blood, and from our flesh and blood into the very skin of our bodies—"

"Even with a few strands of Mindfulness, how can one withstand such erosion by brushing over and over again?!"

"However, now that you've said we have a way to get through the first three trials, we probably don't need to open our hearts to these ghosts."

"Then, when we reach the last two challenges, we will be able to face them in our complete human form."

"In this way, we should be able to weather these two hurdles and preserve our own consciousness, although our individual temperaments may undergo some changes..."

After hearing what Luan Xiaofeng said, Zhou Yang fully understood the dangers of the last two trials.

The last two stages of the Revelation Ceremony are completely transformed into vessels for evil spirits!

The so-called Official Body is actually just a vessel for containing ghosts!

"If one's consciousness is concentrated and Mindfulness is firm, can one prevent evil spirits from taking root within oneself?" Zhou Yang asked.

"Even the Mindfulness steadfast mindfulness cannot compare to the formation of Upright Heart." Upright Heart is like a reef in the sea, which remains unmoved no matter how the seawater washes over it.

"But Mindfulness is like a piece of driftwood in a river. Sometimes it floats upstream, sometimes it drifts downstream. It can never become a mainstay. With the constant washing away of impurities and the repeated attacks of evil spirits, no one can guarantee that Mindfulness will never regress." Luan Xiaofeng shook her head.

He glanced at Zhou Yang, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "My benefactor, you shouldn't worry too much about this."

"The fact that we were able to preserve ourselves and obtain Official Body is already a great victory. Some minor setbacks and changes in temperament as a result are actually not a loss compared to the benefits we have gained."

"There is no need to worry about coexisting with ghosts."

"--Even if you cultivate Upright Heart, won't you still need to use that Upright Heart to restrain the demons? Coexisting with demons is always unavoidable."

How can passively coexisting with ghosts be the same as actively capturing ghosts to do things for you?

Zhou Yang pondered for a moment, then asked, "Is there any way to keep Mindfulness from wavering for a long time, even when they are being washed away by Ghost Rhyme and shadows of evil spirits?"

"Never heard of it." Luan Xiaofeng shook her head.

At this moment You Chuntian said, "My benefactor, I have heard of a method."

"It is said to move people to patience and perseverance, and to gather all their thoughts and ideas into a single painting."

"This draws one deeper into the painting, allowing them to see themselves as one of the subjects—a towering mountain supporting the sky, a sage taming a tiger, or a divine blade cleaving through chaos... With prolonged contemplation in this way, the mind becomes part of the painting, and even under constant influence, this Mindfulness will not waver."

"This method seems to be called ' Visualization Method.'"

"Visualization Method..."

Zhou Yang kept You Chuntian's words in mind.

He didn't know where to find the visualization practice diagrams, but he decided to give it a try first.

For example, try visualizing something in your mind frequently, focusing your thoughts on that object, and see if it helps.

Zhou Yang stopped dwelling on the matter and asked Luan Xiaofeng one last question, "You seem to know quite a bit about this Human-Skin Guan Village, and even the interactions between the ' Cui He ' you're currently playing and the villagers of Guan Village in the past."

"It seems that the identities we, like you and me, currently play in this village were not randomly assigned to us by ghosts after we entered the village."

"In fact, this Guan Village already had people like Zhou Yang, Cui He, and Cui Zhu."

"This Guan Village, along with its villagers, may very well have once been a real village."

Do you know who "Guan Village Zhou Yang" has entanglements with in this village?

As soon as Zhou Yang finished speaking, Luan Xiaofeng nodded. Luan Xiaofeng said, "Guan Village was once a real village."

The details about this village, along with the surrounding areas, are recorded in a book called "Jinping Local Gazetteer".

Local chronicles typically record major disasters, strange tales, or memorable events that have occurred in a particular region.

"However, it is said that the book ' Jinping Local Gazetteer ' records all the trivial matters that have happened in the ' Jinping ' area, including which family has a feud with which family, which father-in-law commits incest, and even which family's widow is unruly... etc., all of which are recorded in the book in great detail."

This book is an evil book.

Legend has it that anyone who reads this book will dream of a bustling street that very night.

"If a person who dreams eats and drinks heartily on this street, and indulges in experiencing and buying all sorts of novelties, they will wake up the next day with a feeling of being 'watched'."

"This feeling grows stronger over time."

"It may take ten days or half a month, or even just one or two days or a few hours, for this feeling of being watched to come true."

"A person who dreams will see a figure slowly walking towards him in the distance. No matter how fast he walks, even if he rides his horse at full speed, he will eventually be caught up by this figure and killed."

"The book later disappeared, and I never read it."

"My great-grandfather once went to a village and helped a family there with the burial of their father—the man of that family. He was so badly decomposed on the day he died that he was almost unrecognizable. My great-grandfather was a coroner and had encountered many strangely shaped corpses, so he was quite skilled at handling such bodies. He helped put the body into the coffin, then had people build up the firewood so they could burn the body."

The corpse suddenly sat up from the pile of firewood and began chanting.

It first read from Volume 13 of the Jinping Local Gazetteer, "Chronicles of Square Well Village," then recounted several events that had occurred in Square Well Village, before falling silent.

"My great-grandfather remembered this matter so well that he passed down the stories he had heard about that happened in Square Well Village, so that our Luan Family would remember them generation after generation. Later, we also learned that this Square Well Village was actually the current Human-Skin Guan Village."

"In the stories of Square Well Village passed down in my family, there is the story of the ' Apricot Grove Cui Family '."

"As for the identity of my benefactor as ' Zhou Yang ' at the moment... In the few stories passed down in my family, it was only mentioned briefly that Zhou Yang of Guan Village was not actually a child of the Zhou Family."

"It seems that Zhou Yang from Guan Village was adopted from another nearby village."

"I was actually adopted by the Zhou Family from another village?" Zhou Yang's heart skipped a beat.

Immediately afterward, he thought of the "family" members. Under Zhou Laogou, there were two puppies, one black and one white. The "Shaozi" in "Huang Shaozi" was also something related to dogs.

He was the only sheep!

His own name had already revealed that he came from the Zhou Family, which was quite different from the others!

Unfortunately Luan Xiaofeng's information was incomplete, preventing Zhou Yang from uncovering more clues about the identity of "Guan Village Zhou Yang". Seeing that it was getting late, he quickly asked another question, "Guan Village is just one of the villages in Jinping. You just said that there are other villages nearby."

Do you know of any other villages nearby?

There's also a place called "Lady Village". In the things passed down from the older generation, there's a place called "Three Sacrificial Animals Alley". I don't know if that place is close to Guan Village, but I'm sure of Lady Village - my mother was carried back from Lady Village by my father.

"When people from Square Well Village get married, they always bring their wives back from Lady Village," Luan Xiaofeng replied without hesitation.

He remembered all these things passed down from his elders very clearly.

"That book, ' Jinping Local Gazetteer,' is actually a heretical book. How can we determine the authenticity of its contents?"

"I'm afraid that this alone is not enough to prove that Guan Village —or Square Well Village —was a real village in the past, right?" You Chuntian interjected at this moment, suddenly asking a few questions.

Zhou Yang was taken aback upon hearing the sound.

Yes!

The existence of Guan Village is corroborated by the heretical book, "Jinping Local Gazetteer".

But who can prove the authenticity of the contents of this heretical book, "Jinping Local Gazetteer"?!

Luan Xiaofeng was not surprised by You Chuntian's question. He immediately replied, "Ever since my family passed down these old stories of Square Well Village, my family members have been trying to find out about things related to it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known about things like the Revelation Ceremony in Human-Skin Guan Village."

"I can't guarantee anything about other things, but Square Well Village definitely existed."

"Some people have looked at the graves and tombstones of the deceased in Square Well Village, and more than one person has seen it."

"Well..." You Chuntian opened his mouth to utter a single word, but then seemed to realize that what he was about to say was inappropriate, so he swallowed the rest of the words back. However, looking at Zhou Yang, he seemed encouraged and still asked, "Did the person looking at the tombstone dig up the grave to take a look?"

"You're so bold, why don't you go dig it up yourself?" Luan Xiaofeng sneered.

Then he added, "Besides, those people only saw the grave mound clearly at the time—when they went to look for it again later, they couldn't find anything. Where would they dig up the grave then?"