Chapter 217: A Mountain Suspended, A River Submerged (31)
Yan Shixun lowered his eyes, looking at the child gazing up at him with expectant and pure eyes.
He was certain that he did not know this young Nan Tian.
At his own age, when Nan Tian would have been this age, he should have still been at his parents’ house, confined to a small, square room. He hadn’t met Li Chengyun at the marketplace, nor traveled far and wide with him, experiencing the vast world.
So, why was a young Nan Tian here?
Yan Shixun did not lower his guard. He bent down slightly, adopting a gentle demeanor, and asked the little Nan Tian, “Do you remember why I’m here?”
Yan Shixun had always been cold towards others. Anyone unfamiliar with him would be discouraged by the sharpness of his handsome features, which were so striking they could wound someone.
However, when he wished to approach someone with a plan in mind, based on his understanding of strangers, it could be done effortlessly.
When he wanted to get close to someone, no one could refuse his striking face.
Little Nan Tian was no exception.
The child was clearly startled by the residual aggression Yan Shixun had not yet subdued after just waking up, but when he saw Yan Shixun’s smile, he hesitated.
The soft little fingers of Nan Tian fidgeted, and then he quietly said, “Because big brother, you are a guest invited by Grandma.”
Yan Shixun was surprised by this.
He didn’t even recognize the younger Nan Tian, so how could he know Nan Tian’s Grandma?
But… there was only one possibility that could make the impossible possible.
He was in a dream.
Yan Shixun’s eyes darkened. He casually called out, “Ye Li.”
No one responded.
The familiar figure that should have appeared by his side did not show up immediately.
But Yan Shixun clearly remembered that Ye Li had promised him that whenever he called his name, he would appear.
Yan Shixun subconsciously believed Ye Li’s words and had long since become accustomed to turning around and seeing Ye Li there.
The current situation, however, led Yan Shixun to rule out the possibility that Ye Li had deceived him, leaving only one explanation.
— Ye Li did not exist in this world, so he did not respond to his call.
Ye Li was a ghost deity who presided over death and judgment, and Yan Shixun had once felt the unity of heaven and humanity through Ye Li’s power.
Therefore, Yan Shixun did not believe that Ye Li had failed to hear his voice.
He had ruled out all other possibilities and confirmed his final guess.
— This was not reality.
Unbeknownst to Yan Shixun, even before he realized it, his soul had already trusted Ye Li, placing his trust in him, and had begun to gauge what was real and what was fake based on him.
In the curious gaze of little Nan Tian, Yan Shixun’s expression softened, as though the person who had just called Ye Li’s name was not himself.
“Since I’m your Grandma’s guest, where is she?”
Yan Shixun squatted down, smiling gently as he asked the little Nan Tian.
Little Nan Tian blinked and pointed toward the room outside.
But just as Yan Shixun straightened up and began to walk toward the door, little Nan Tian suddenly grabbed his pants leg.
“Big brother, do you know where my little friends are?”
Little Nan Tian pouted, looking pitiful as he asked, “Grandma doesn’t let me go look for them, but I haven’t seen them in a long time, and I haven’t played with them.”
Looking at little Nan Tian’s tearful eyes, Yan Shixun suddenly remembered the ghost stories Nan Tian had once told everyone at Wild Wolf Peak.
At that time, Nan Tian had said that someone had been hanged in the woods in the village, which was why Grandma didn’t let him go outside. However, the mischievous boy still snuck out and, at the village’s crossroads, saw a ghost who wanted to take him away.
So… was it back then?
Because of little Nan Tian’s words, Yan Shixun immediately realized where he was.
He probably had lost consciousness and, because of Nan Tian’s Grandma, had been brought back to Nan Village, which hadn’t been destroyed decades ago.
After all, Nan Tian had said that his hometown was near Nanming Mountain.
And that was exactly why Nan Tian knew the significance of those fabrics and even why the Taoist was concerned about him.
Yan Shixun slowly straightened up, his gaze heavy as he looked outside the room that little Nan Tian had just pointed to.
In the courtyard, an elderly woman with silver hair stood, her face etched with wrinkles, each line seeming to hide a story from the past.
She was hunched over, staring at him.
It seemed that she had been waiting there since before he had awoken, as if she wanted to say something to him.
Neither Grandma Nan nor Yan Shixun was wearing summer clothes, and under the blazing sun, they both appeared out of place.
Yan Shixun released little Nan Tian and took long strides outside.
“Nan Tian said, I am your guest.”
Yan Shixun said with a light laugh, his eyes scanning Grandma Nan without any warmth. “You didn’t tell Nan Tian that his little friends are all dead.”
“But perhaps you can tell me.”
Yan Shixun’s smile gradually faded, his handsome face, much like Grandma Nan’s, becoming serious and cold.
“Why did you send Nan Tian out of the village?”
“Grandma Nan, what is it that you hid from him back then, and why did Longevity Village disappear after that? Why has it become a taboo in Nan Tian’s parents’ mouths, and why has Nan Tian searched in vain time and time again?”
“I don’t believe you brought me here just to meet the young Nan Tian.”
“You brought me here in front of Ritual Master, covering up his investigation, but what is it you want to tell me…?”
Yan Shixun’s gaze remained fixed on Grandma Nan, not once leaving her.
Calling out to Ye Li, yet receiving no response, felt like a reversed anchor point, confirming to Yan Shixun where he was.
The elderly Grandma Nan, who should have been dead long ago, and the obviously wrong age of Nan Tian, made Yan Shixun realize that his presence here was likely no accident.
It was intentional, orchestrated by Grandma Nan.
What could a dead person want to tell him?
Yan Shixun already had some suspicions in his mind.
He wasn’t unfamiliar with such occurrences.
The grievances of the dead souls, the spirits who wanted him to deliver justice or fulfill their final wishes.
Whether it was wealth, family, or hatred, he had grown accustomed to such things in his many years of wandering.
However, at this moment, Grandma Nan still surprised Yan Shixun.
She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him silently and then stepped aside, clearing the path leading out of the courtyard.
“Right and wrong, aren’t they known as soon as you see them? Why ask me?”
A smile appeared on Grandma Nan’s wrinkled face, her voice hoarse, as though she hadn’t used her vocal cords for decades, making her words rasp and unpleasant to hear.
“Even if I tell you, would you really believe others?”
Yan Shixun stared at Grandma Nan for a long while. Then, he stepped forward, crossing the threshold of the house.
As soon as he stepped out into the courtyard, everything seemed to change in an instant.
The peaceful and harmonious environment inside the house was replaced by chaos and turmoil. The sky darkened, and a heavy rainstorm erupted.
Yan Shixun stood outside the courtyard gate, watching as the rain drenched the village road, while a village woman ran through the muddy ground.
In her arms, she cradled a small swaddled bundle, but there was no tenderness in her care. She let the rain soak the bundle, and the cries of the child grew fainter.
With a loud “thud,” the village woman kneeled at the three-way intersection at the end of the road, raising the swaddled bundle high, shouting, “May the gods bless my eldest son with grandson!”
With that, she threw the bundle toward the intersection.
Yan Shixun instinctively wanted to rush over to stop her, but someone grabbed his arm.
Grandma Nan had appeared beside him at some point, looking up at him, and said, “Young man, have some patience.”
A look of irony and sorrow crossed her face. “Even if you want to save that child… it’s too late, too late.”
Grandma Nan seemed to be speaking to herself or perhaps confiding in Yan Shixun, mumbling, “Who would have thought in the beginning…”
Yan Shixun’s gaze shifted from Grandma Nan to the three-way intersection.
And then he saw it. Before the swaddled bundle even hit the ground, it suddenly disappeared into the curtain of rain.
The village woman burst into tears of joy, and Yan Shixun widened his eyes in shock.
“Thank you, god. Thank you, god.”
The village woman bowed repeatedly toward the curtain of rain, her palms pressed together in prayer. “Please bless my family with a golden grandson.”
She ran past the front of Grandma Nan’s house without sparing a glance, as if she couldn’t even see Yan Shixun standing there. It was as though the two figures by the door were invisible to her.
After the woman had gone, Yan Shixun noticed a figure slowly appearing at the three-way crossroads.
The pouring rain seemed to part around this figure, falling heavily everywhere else. In his arms, the man cradled a swaddled infant. His expression was gentle, yet his eyes lacked warmth.
“Your birth was a mistake.”
He looked at the baby in his arms with pity, his voice soft. “But why should you have to suffer so much? Life is already hard enough, but the heavens are unfair—they’ve doomed you to endure such cruelty.”
He reached out and gently tucked the swaddle more securely around the baby.
Then, in the next moment, his hand moved to the baby’s neck.
A faint crack sounded.
The baby’s small body went limp in his arms.
“With you as the beginning… I will create a world without pain for all living beings.”
The figure spoke gently, “After you, no one will have to suffer again. There will only be joy in their lives.”
Yan Shixun stared at the man in horror, never imagining he would do such a thing.
But slowly, a realization began to dawn on him.
—That face… it looked just like a younger version of Ritual Master.
If, in this dream, Nan Tian’s timeline had regressed by several decades, then Ritual Master…
Yan Shixun’s gaze darkened. He turned toward Grandma Nan beside him. “Grandma, is this what you wanted me to see?”
“Are you trying to tell me… that everything began with Ritual Master?”
Grandma Nan let out a long sigh. Her once-stern expression softened, sorrow etching into her brows and eyes. “All sins began in the Nan Village.”
“The village, which was supposed to guard the border, ended up handing over its legacy of a thousand years. It left a void—one that false god took advantage of, stealing the balance of the world.”
Her eyes grew bleak. “I no longer have the strength to stop it. But…”
“Beneath the Way of Heaven, how can the common people ever be saved?”
“As the Shaman of the Nan Village… I have failed the Heavenly Dao.”
She tilted her head back and let out a long, grief-stricken sigh—an expression of pain and anger that Yan Shixun had never seen on her before.
Meanwhile, in the rain, the younger version of Ritual Master stood at the center of the crossroads. Suddenly, he looked up, his arms still holding the swaddled infant, and his eyes locked onto where Yan Shixun stood.
Yan Shixun read the shape of his lips.
Ritual Master was saying: It’s useless. The Shaman is dead. There is no one left to stop me. The rest of you are nothing more than ants struggling against fate.
Heaven and earth will collapse. And you… what can you possibly do?
As Grandma Nan’s words faded, the world before Yan Shixun seemed to turn upside down in an instant.
When he opened his eyes again, Grandma Nan was no longer at his side.
He had taken the place of Ritual Master, now standing at the crossroads. Villagers passed by, tending to their fields, everything appearing peaceful and harmonious.
But when night fell, a woman arrived with a swaddled child. She threw the baby girl down at the intersection.
Once. Twice…
Not just baby girls—there were also young pregnant women with swollen bellies, kneeling at the crossroads in tears, begging for sons.
She truly couldn’t bear to watch her own child be thrown out by her mother-in-law and left to fend for itself.
And yet, Yan Shixun couldn’t move at all—he stood there like a statue, frozen, as he watched the infant being tossed at the fork in the road… and die.
The tiny child didn’t even have a name. No soul envoys would come to guide its spirit away.
Only that familiar figure—the young version of Ritual Master—appeared at the crossroads, gently receiving the wandering, aimless soul and guiding it into the mountains.
Eventually, even the pregnant woman died during a difficult labor. Her body, still warm, was dumped at the three-way intersection as well.
—Her mother-in-law believed that after giving birth to six daughters before finally bearing a son, she was an omen of misfortune. Only by letting her soul roam aimlessly at the crossroads, unable to be reborn, could they ensure that no more daughter-bearing women would marry into the family.
Yan Shixun stared helplessly at the corpse beneath his feet, her eyes still open in death. His heart felt like it would shatter, but he remained trapped, unable to move.
Then, a pair of hands wrapped in silver-white sleeves reached over and gently lifted the body of the young woman.
Ritual Master cradled the corpse in his arms and turned back to look at Yan Shixun with a gentle expression.
With a sorrowful smile in his eyes, he asked Yan Shixun, “What do you think of a world like this?”
“The god said the human world is beyond saving.”
“But I disagree.”
Ritual Master said, “I believe life is meant to be tender, not filled with pain.”
“I want to remove all suffering from the lives of humankind. Since we only live for such a short span—just a hundred years—why should it be full of such hardship?”
“Birth, aging, illness, death… separation from loved ones… unfulfilled desires—why cling to them?”
Looking down at the lifeless body in his arms, Ritual Master let out a soft sigh. “Don’t you think their lives deserve to be treated with more kindness?”
“I simply… want a world without pain. I want everyone to live happily and peacefully, right up until the moment they die.”
The torrential rain soaked Yan Shixun’s clothes. Water streamed down his hair, tracing its way along his cheeks.
He remembered—at this point in time, the underworld had already collapsed, and the King of Hell was long dead.
And the only remaining deity in charge of death…
Was Ye Li.
All the scattered fragments of thought finally came together. Every confusion was suddenly resolved.
Yan Shixun suddenly realized: the so-called “Ghost Year,” when the number of dead souls surged—that hadn’t been the King of Hell wandering the human realm.
It had been Ye Li, walking the earth, judging sins.
The “King of Hell” and “God” that Nan Tian and Ritual Master had referred to…
Had always been Ye Li.
If you love what Ciacia is doing, then consider showing your support by supporting a cup of tea for her at Kofi. If you can’t wait for the next release chapter, subscribe to advanced chapters membership on her Kofi to get access to up to 10 chapters!
