ATEG Chapter 82.2

At the same time, in another room.

Li Chi had already seen what happened in that room. He shook his head. “Too reckless.”

With a wave of his sleeve, invisible divine power wrapped around Xu Tian and the other’s room. That power was light and formless like wind, causing no disturbance, only intercepting the wisp of incense smoke that had just begun to drift out, keeping it within the room without letting half a trace of its scent leak out.

In this kind of place, randomly making offerings without direction could attract who knows what. If unlucky, it might even attract swarms of yin spirits and supernatural beings. What’s more, after making the offering, he had promised a grand ceremony upon returning. If his offering couldn’t satisfy the supernatural beings drawn to it, he would very likely be haunted by them, with few good outcomes.

However, he could also tell from Xu Tian’s attitude the problems on the Liang Kingdom side.

Lu Kingdom people mostly worshipped the gods of the Divine Court, regularly making offerings. When trapped in the wilderness and encountering unusual people or events, though they felt wary in their hearts, they were more inclined to think and believe this was the gods’ guidance. Xu Tian’s reaction, however, was more fear and vigilance. He seemed not to have thought at all, nor believed that when encountering danger the gods would come to help. When trapped in danger with no other options, his choice was to use the incense he carried with him, in a manner close to appeasing and begging, to seek safety.

This was the most effective method from his years of accumulated experience.

The weak have nothing to rely on and don’t even believe pleading can gain compassion, so they can only scrape together everything useful from themselves to seek survival.

The night deepened, cold dew condensed.

Next door, the two exhausted people had already fallen asleep. In this room, the deity who happened to be passing through sat calmly waiting.

The village was silent—not to mention birds and beasts, even insect chirping was absent. Only the lamps in each household quietly shone.

One household’s lamp suddenly went out, and its door silently opened. Several villagers walked out from within. Their footsteps were light, sliding without sound. After everyone had walked out, the door silently closed behind them.

One by one, the lamps went out. One by one, villagers walked out of their rooms. Only the light of the moon and stars remained. Under the moonlight, the villagers’ expressionless faces were illuminated.

……

Xu Tian suddenly woke with a start.

He didn’t know why he had suddenly awakened. He didn’t even know when he had fallen asleep.

Tonight he had originally wanted to stay awake, but he was simply too tired. After being lost in the mountains for several hours and encountering bizarre things like the ghost-hitting-wall, he was exhausted in both body and mind.

After waking, Xu Tian only felt a strange quietness, like when he was young playing in the water and dove completely under the surface of the stream—that kind of damp, cool silence. Not until he noticed the steady, even breathing beside him did he gradually confirm he was truly awake. He turned his head to look—Xu Li was sleeping soundly.

The cold of night made him increasingly alert as he lay there, so he simply sat up.

Too quiet.

Aside from Xu Li’s breathing, there was not half a sound of anything else.

Xu Tian wrapped his clothes tighter around himself and walked to the window.

He didn’t know why, but in this silence he felt strangeness and unease, and this vague feeling compelled him, making him walk toward the window in both fear and restlessness, peering outside through a gap in the torn window paper.

It was very dark outside, but once his eyes slowly adjusted, he could see the earth illuminated by moonlight.

Xu Tian slowly adjusted to the dim light, slowly making out what was outside… outside……

His pupils suddenly constricted!

Villager after villager stood outside the house. They stood silently, motionless. The homeowner who had hosted them earlier also stood among them, looking at this house with the same expressionless face as the others.

Cold sweat broke out on Xu Tian’s forehead. His whole body was frozen and difficult to move. His blood flowed slower and slower, making his heartbeat heavier and more labored, as if it would soon stop. That deathly silence almost swallowed him.

Creak.

The sound of a door opening broke the strange deathly silence. This sound didn’t come from outside the house—it came from within.

Then came unhurried footsteps, walking from inside the house to outside. The steady footsteps set the heartbeat moving again, warming the frozen body. By the time Xu Tian felt he had regained sensation, the owner of those footsteps had finally entered his field of vision.

It was that… qin-carrying gentleman?

……

The qin-carrying deity calmly walked out of the room, as if what he faced was not a group of strangely silent living corpses, but a group of devout yet confused believers. Under the gaze of those lifeless eyes, he sat down peacefully and placed the qin on his knee.

The courtyard quieted again. The villagers stood still like strange statues, but a blue-black color gradually deepened on their faces, and their expressions grew increasingly savage.

Just as they were about to stir, a long wind suddenly blew past, sounding like a sigh.

The blue-black color on the villagers’ faces suddenly faded considerably, and struggle and suffering showed through their savage expressions.

The homeowner at the front suddenly moved. He stiffly and slowly turned and walked away. All the villagers were watching him. Their bodies didn’t move—only their necks turned to follow his movement. Their necks remained frozen at that angle until much later, when they turned back as the homeowner returned.

In the homeowner’s hands was a rough ceramic bowl with a chipped rim, filled with clean water. He walked before the deity and offered up this bowl of clean water.

This was just an ordinary bowl of clean water, nothing special or precious about it, but it also didn’t contain the yin-cold poison that had been soaked in the three bowls of water they were offered before. If he hadn’t removed the yin-cold with his own hands, Xu Li would have collapsed frozen and unable to move the instant he drank the water, until he slowly died.

Li Chi accepted the bowl and drank it down in one go.

This was just an ordinary bowl of clean water, but in a village so thoroughly soaked with yin-cold poison and permeated with corpse qi, to find such a bowl of clean water was already rare.

And he had accepted this offering of clean water.

Li Chi raised his hand, and the empty ceramic bowl flew flatly to land on a nearby stone. As the sound of the bowl landing on stone rang out, his fingers had already fallen again, pressing on the strings, plucking out the first note just in time.

Its sound was vast and distant, both loose and deep, as if rising from beneath the earth. The qin’s note resonated, almost making people vibrate together with the earth. The soles of their feet were shaken numb, the vibration traveling up to their heads, making their scalps tingle as well. A breath of air was shaken from the chest up the throat and out through the mouth. After this turbid breath dispersed, they couldn’t help but shiver involuntarily.

Resentment and ferocity all dispersed. Clarity was revealed anew. The faces of the living corpses were no longer savage, but transformed into grief and suffering.

But the bodies of living corpses had long been frozen and cold, with no tears to shed. Only muffled suffering in their throats and murky sorrow in their eyes remained.

The qin notes turned gentle and prolonged, low murmurs like speech, like comfort, like a lament. Joy, anger, sorrow, fear… when the seven emotions of a mortal body arise, when emotions stir the heart moves—within those frozen, long-preserved living corpse bodies, it seemed flowing blood was finally born again.

The villagers sat down cross-legged one after another, but that feeling of nearly coming alive again was ultimately only an illusion.

They had been dead for too long, so long that the resentment born of suffering and unwillingness had transformed everyone in the village who died unjustly into living corpses.

Frozen in suffering, frozen in long existence—and if the warm blood in these frozen bodies began to flow again, if the withered hearts began to beat again, that would be the moment of their decay. They were destined to endure long existence in this frozen torment.

Resentment, resentment! As this awareness became clear once more, when the resentment wrought by suffering was about to climb back onto those expressionless faces, the final qin note rose long and clear.

Its sound was broad, light, and gentle, like wind sweeping over each villager’s body, then scattering into heaven and earth. That wind seemed to comfort them—all past injustices, heaven and earth already knew, because the deity had seen. Thus, all resentment and unwillingness was smoothed away by this wind, scattered into heaven and earth.

The faces of the living corpses became calm and peaceful. In the final trailing note of the qin music, their bodies rapidly decayed, turning into handfuls of clean ash that scattered into the wind. Only cross-legged skeletons remained in the courtyard—not frightening, but rather appearing peaceful and liberated.

After the last trace of the trailing note had also dispersed, Li Chi rose with the qin in his arms, preparing to return inside. As he turned, his gaze deliberately or inadvertently swept across a torn spot in the window paper of one room.

Xu Tian was frozen there.

“Fourth Uncle?” Xu Li’s voice sounded from behind him.

Xu Tian was startled by him and jerked, turning to glare. “What?!”

Xu Li scratched his head with a foolish grin. “I’m awake.”

Xu Tian let out a breath and reached out his hand to him. “Help me up.”

Xu Li responded with an “ai” and reached out to help Xu Tian up. “Fourth Uncle, what’s wrong with your legs?”

“They’re numb from squatting!” Xu Tian grunted. He wasn’t frozen from fright—he just squatted too long.

“Fourth Uncle, what were you squatting there for?” Xu Li asked.

“Stop asking silly questions!” Xu Tian glared at him again. Enduring the tingling itch of blood flowing again, he slowly shuffled to sit on the edge of the kang. His deeply wrinkled face looked old and weary. “Ah Li…”

Xu Li responded with an “ai.”

But Xu Tian didn’t speak. He was conflicted. After a long while, he slowly said, “When tomorrow comes and day breaks, be respectful to that qin-carrying gentleman and go beg him.”

“Ai… ah?” Xu Li had originally agreed, but upon hearing “beg” became confused, looking at Xu Tian bewilderedly. He understood being respectful, but what should he beg for?

Seeing him like this, Xu Tian sighed. “Never mind, I’ll speak tomorrow. You just be respectful to that gentleman. When I tell you to kowtow, you kowtow. Be obedient. If we can cure your illness, your mother won’t cry anymore.”

Xu Li didn’t quite understand what Fourth Uncle wanted to do. He also didn’t quite understand what illness he had, but he understood the last part and nodded repeatedly in agreement.

Seeing his foolish happiness, Xu Tian said, “Sleep!”

Xu Li obediently lay back down, and within moments his breathing became long and slow. But Xu Tian couldn’t sleep at all.

He wasn’t stubborn or foolish—naturally he could understand what everything he had just witnessed meant.

This village had problems. Those villagers were all not living people! If not for that qin-carrying gentleman they had encountered earlier, he and Xu Li might have died here tonight.

They… might have encountered a real immortal!

This realization left Xu Tian somewhat dazed, somewhat joyful, yet because he didn’t dare believe it, unable to feel greater happiness.

A real immortal. He had only heard of them in stories from his childhood. They would listen to the wishes of all beings, and would also punish those with ill intentions. They would accept offerings from all beings but never forcefully demanded worship. They would protect their believers rather than threaten and intimidate…

Xu Tian had once yearned for and anticipated such immortals, but he had lived nearly fifty years and never seen one, so gradually, he had forgotten. People eventually come to know that stories are only ever stories.

But now, had they encountered the kind of immortal from those legends?

Xu Tian blinked hard, slowly and deeply exhaling.

He closed his eyes. There was still some time before daybreak. He could sleep a bit more.

A moment later, Xu Tian opened his eyes again.

As soon as he closed them, he thought of that group of white skeletal figures sitting cross-legged outside the house. Though they had already been dealt with by the immortal, who could fall asleep when there was a group of white bones with hollow eye sockets facing them outside the house?!