Chapter 220: A Mountain Suspended, A River Submerged (34)
Yan Shixun had seen the fear in Ritual Master’s eyes just moments ago. When he heard Ye Li mention the incident from twenty years ago, it made him realize that the danger faced by the variety show crew in Longevity Village had its roots not in the present, but far in the past.
However, when Yan voiced his thoughts, Ye Li shook his head. “Not just twenty years ago—it goes even further back.”
“Shixun, have you ever heard of the Nanming Mountain Incident? Dozens of years ago, over a thousand corpses were found scattered across Nanming Mountain.”
Ye Li lowered his eyes slightly. Even with Yan Shixun beside him, the mere mention of Nanming Mountain made it difficult for him to suppress his revulsion.
Yan Shixun had never personally experienced what happened at Nanming Mountain back then.
Although he had heard fragments of its terrifying reputation from fellow exorcists, he had never gained a complete understanding.
Now, hearing Ye Li bring it up left Yan somewhat stunned.
Could it really be something so grave that even ghost deity—who were usually indifferent to human matters—remembered it vividly?
In that moment, Yan Shixun had an inexplicable feeling. Ever since Zhang Wubing decided to cooperate with the southern authorities, and from the moment they approached the outskirts of Longevity Village, some irreversible force had been set in motion.
First, there were the guests at the guesthouse who wanted to settle in Longevity Village. Then came the many strange things hidden beneath the surface of the village’s peaceful appearance—the rotting corpses in the river, the missing memories, and the recurring chrysanthemum patterns carved everywhere.
At the time, Yan Shixun had thought the origin of the village’s mystery lay upstream. He hadn’t expected that the upper reaches of Longevity Village would be far more dangerous than downstream.
As he ventured deeper, he discovered that behind Liu Ming stood the village chief—and beneath the village chief’s skin, hid Ritual Master.
The massacre of Nan Village twenty years ago, and the field of corpses on Nanming Mountain decades before that…
It was like digging into a bottomless pit—each layer bringing him closer to a truth more horrifying than the last.
A chasm of sin was buried deep within these mountains.
Even though Yan Shixun was standing right next to Ye Li at this moment, he felt as if he were at the edge of a cliff, with an abyss stretching out behind him.
He slowly turned to follow Ye Li’s gaze and looked toward Nan Village.
From where they stood at the fork in the road, a thick black fog began to rise from beneath Ye Li’s feet and quickly swept through the entire village.
Ye Li’s power had replaced that of Ritual Master and now dominated the dreamscape. Everything rippled and shattered like water struck by a massive stone.
The scenes around them broke apart and reassembled. The entire world shifted dramatically.
When Yan Shixun looked again, Nan Village had changed completely.
The houses were no longer the desolate and dilapidated ruins he had seen before. Though still modest and low, they now pulsed with signs of life.
Grains were laid out to dry in the courtyards, the laughter of children mingled with the barking of dogs, and the summer breeze rustled the leaves, bringing a hint of coolness from the deep mountains under the sweltering sky.
Villagers came and went, passing through the fork in the road—but they acted as if they couldn’t see Yan Shixun and Ye Li at all, as if the two of them were transparent, outsiders to this world.
Then, Yan Shixun spotted a few faces that seemed oddly familiar.
He froze for a moment before realizing those faces bore some resemblance to Nan Tian, though their ages clearly didn’t match.
Ye Li’s low voice sounded from beside him. “Decades ago, after the Summer Solstice Festival, strange things began happening in Nan Village.”
He lifted a hand and pointed toward a particular household in the village. “Someone suggested abolishing the old, outdated rituals—but the proposal was rejected.”
As soon as Ye Li finished speaking, a loud bang rang out.
The door of the household he had pointed to was suddenly yanked open from within and then slammed shut again, causing the dog in the courtyard to bark wildly in alarm.
An elderly woman stormed out of the courtyard in a fury. Her brows were tightly furrowed, with a vertical crease between them that made her look stern and intimidating. The corners of her mouth drooped in a fierce scowl that left no doubt about her rage.
But even louder than her anger was a man’s roar from inside the house behind her.
“You’re betraying your ancestors! The rules they passed down—how can you just throw them away like that? If something happens to the village next year, will you take responsibility? And don’t even think about being Nan Village’s shaman anymore! You don’t care about the village, you’re not qualified!”
The old woman was unfazed by his threats. She suddenly turned back, eyes sharp like lightning as she glared into the courtyard. Her voice was a cold sneer, gritted through clenched teeth. “And what, exactly, has your precious tradition ever brought us? Sacrificing the dead? Worshipping a god in Nanming Mountain? How many travelers passing near the village have vanished without a trace…? Hah. Nan Village will fall because of people like you.”
She lifted her chin and laughed coldly. “I’m looking forward to the day your whole family falls apart.”
Someone inside the courtyard roared in fury. “You—!”
But the old woman didn’t give him a chance to curse further. She turned and marched away with heavy, determined steps.
In the distance, a young man and woman were anxiously waiting.
The moment they saw the withered old woman, they rushed forward. “Mother…”
Before they could finish their sentence, the old woman shoved them back and said sternly, “You must leave the village immediately. Go beyond the mountain. Stay far away from Nanming Mountain.”
“Everyone has gone mad. They’ve been worshipping the wrong god from the start.”
With each sentence, the old woman gritted her teeth in anger, as though she wanted to tear apart the villagers’ ignorant persistence.
“They say it gives you everything you desire, that there will be no more suffering. But do they really believe that using the corpses of others for such things is a tradition worth preserving?”
A deep sorrow clouded her eyes. “Did any of them even bother to check the coffins after the sacrificial burials?”
The young couple froze in shock, their eyes wide with fear and disbelief.
“Mother, are you saying… those bodies—they’re no longer in the coffins?”
The old woman nodded. “I dug up the graves in the middle of the night—the ones that had been reburied after the ritual was completed. The coffins were empty.”
Just thinking about what she saw that night made her body tremble. She felt both horrified and furious.
In the dim forest beneath the mountains, countless graves stood in eerie silence. Fresh tombstones were lined with white and yellow chrysanthemums, a symbol of the village’s gratitude to the dead whose remains were offered for the rituals.
She had carried a hoe and dug through the still-soft earth that had just been refilled. When she pried open the coffin lid and saw the hollow space, with only a faint, putrid stench lingering inside, she was stunned.
Originally, she had only grown suspicious because of the strange behavior of the village chief and the old shaman during the ritual. Driven by guilt for disturbing the dead, she had come to verify things herself at midnight.
But she never imagined that the corpses she had seen with her own eyes sealed in the coffins during the summer solstice ritual would simply vanish into thin air.
Alarmed, she dug up one grave after another, prying open every coffin.
And then she felt as if the blood in her body had frozen.
—The corpses buried anew after each of the four annual rituals had all disappeared.
She stood amidst the wreckage of the graveyard, surrounded by open, empty coffins. The stench of damp, decayed earth filled her nostrils as the hoe slipped powerlessly from her hand.
She realized then that all the past sacrifices made by the Nan Village… would eventually come back to haunt them.
The old woman had tried to tell the village chief and the shaman what she had discovered, hoping to persuade them to stop this strange and twisted ritual. She feared the villagers had been worshipping the wrong deity all along.
She didn’t know if it was a false god or a malevolent one, but she was certain no good could come from it.
Yet the village chief brushed it off and even cursed her harshly. The shaman, meanwhile, simply drooped her eyes and stayed silent, aged and motionless like a melting wax figure.
That was when the old woman understood—they had probably known from the beginning that something was wrong with the rituals.
But since the village gained health and prosperity from them, why would they stop?
The villagers, who had all benefited from the rituals with peace and wellness, had accepted it just as easily. It was only corpses, after all. It didn’t affect them. So why should they care?
Seeing their attitude chilled the old woman to the bone.
She made up her mind to send the younger generation out of the village and stay behind alone.
And before nightfall, she picked up her tools and returned to the mountains.
This time, her destination was the remote place deep in the mountains where generations of shamans had completed the final step of the ritual.
It was the source of the Nanming mountain river—the origin of everything.
On the riverbanks, large patches of white and yellow chrysanthemums bloomed. When the breeze passed through, the petals drifted gently into the water. It was a breathtaking and peaceful sight.
But what she saw next was so horrifying that she stood frozen for a long time, unable to recover from the shock.
—At the springhead where the river originated, just beneath the clear surface of the water, there were corpses, one after another.
Some of them were familiar faces—villagers from the Nan Village who had passed away over the years. Others wore clothing from outside the mountains; a few had once asked her for directions after getting lost while hiking.
They were densely packed—far too many to count.
Their eyes were tightly shut, and their skin had bloated, pale and bluish from being soaked in water. They drifted gently with the current, no longer resembling normal humans.
A chill ran from the crown of her head all the way down her spine. Though it was the height of summer, standing by the riverside felt like being trapped in an ice cellar.
She realized then: the Nan Village had indeed pledged allegiance to the wrong deity—it had become an accomplice to evil. What’s more, it had even caused the deaths of those from beyond the mountains.
The peacefulness that had long characterized the Nan Village was actually built on a foundation of countless corpses.
Overwhelmed by grief and fury, the aging woman yanked up the chrysanthemums from the riverbank and flung them away. Then she leapt into the river, determined to retrieve the corpses from the riverbed.
No matter why they were there or what purpose lay behind placing them there… all she wanted was to return peace to the dead, to let them rest in proper graves.
Upon hearing the elderly woman chanting an ancient incantation, and seeing her gestures as she lifted the corpses from the water, Yan Shixun suddenly understood why those faces had felt so familiar.
This woman was none other than Grandma Nan from decades ago.
At that time, Nan Tian hadn’t even been born. Even his parents were still young and had just been sent away from the village by Grandma Nan.
Just as she would later do with Nan Tian.
Powerless to persuade the villagers, Grandma Nan had done everything she could to protect her own family. Then, all alone, she chose to do what she believed was right—refusing to let the danger spill over to the innocent.
But Yan Shixun had noticed something unusual—those corpses lying at the bottom of the river had golden threads growing from their bodies. Under the sunlight filtering through the water, they gave off a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer.
They resembled mutated plant roots.
At the same time, Grandma Nan remained unaware of this. She continued to reach out, trying to lift the corpses, inadvertently brushing against those drifting golden roots in the water.
Instinctively, Yan Shixun stepped forward, raising a hand and opening his mouth to warn her.
But beside him, Ye Li extended his long arm and blocked him.
“Shixun, everything you’re seeing has already happened.”
Ye Li said quietly, lowering his eyes. “Even if you wanted to save them… life and death cannot be reversed.”
Yan Shixun looked Ye Li in the eyes. After a moment, dazed, he slowly lowered his arm and turned back to look at Grandma Nan.
As expected, once the golden threads embedded deep within the corpses were disturbed and torn, those corpses—which should have long been dead—suddenly opened their eyes. Their blood-red, hollow gazes locked tightly onto Grandma Nan.
The situation took a rapid and terrifying turn.
Grandma Nan quickly noticed something was wrong. Shocked, she tried to swim toward the surface to escape the corpses.
But it was already too late.
One after another, the corpses at the riverbed opened their blood-red eyes. Their swollen, decaying arms reached out, grabbing onto Grandma Nan’s legs, attempting to drag her down deeper into the water.
Even with the help of talismans, a person could only hold their breath for so long.
Grandma Nan quickly ran out of oxygen. Her face twisted in pain as she tried to swim upward, but all she could see above was the dazzling sunlight shimmering on the surface—so distant now. All that remained in front of her were the swollen, grotesque faces of the dead.
But then, suddenly, Grandma Nan saw someone standing on the riverbank.
Yan Shixun noticed the figure at the same moment.
Draped in a long silver-white robe that trailed across the ground, his white hair braided into neat strands behind him—his face, though aged, still bore the handsome features of his youth, and carried a gentle smile.
It was Ritual Master.
Yan Shixun’s heart gave a jolt.
So it turned out Ritual Master had already been involved in the tragedy of Nanming Mountain from this point in time.
—No, the entire tragedy of Nanming Mountain had begun with Ritual Master.
Ritual Master lowered his eyes and looked calmly into the water at Grandma Nan. He neither worried that she might manage to rescue all the corpses and ruin his plan, nor did he intend to save her.
It was like a human watching an insect fall into water—watching its struggle with mild curiosity and amusement.
Grandma Nan stared fiercely at Ritual Master. As the shaman of the Nan Village, even through her oxygen-starved, fading consciousness, she quickly recognized who he was.
For many years, every time the people of Nan Village held a sacrificial ceremony… they had actually been worshipping Ritual Master.
Ritual Master looked at Grandma Nan with a sorrowful expression and sighed compassionately. “Why dig so deep? Isn’t it better to live in ignorance? Even if I took the corpses used for the rituals, didn’t Nan Village still gain the peace and happiness it desired?”
But Grandma Nan didn’t agree with him.
She gathered all the strength she had as the village shaman and stirred up the riverbed into utter chaos. The corpses thrashed and screamed within the whirlpool.
Ritual Master looked at Grandma Nan in shock. He hadn’t expected her to go this far.
In Grandma Nan’s heart, there remained one final obsession—to seek help from the outside world and tell those beyond Nanming Mountain about the dangerous sins hidden within it.
She knew she was no match for Ritual Master. But that didn’t mean she would give up.
The roots of the chrysanthemums were completely torn apart, and the corpses that had once been firmly anchored to the bottom of the river began to float. Carried by the surging waters, they were swept downstream at incredible speed. The spring’s eye collapsed, spewing water violently. The swelling river rushed forward, carrying countless corpses downstream.
Ritual Master tried to stop it.
Though his power was strong—even overwhelming for someone like Grandma Nan—it was still no match against the forces of heaven and earth.
He had rooted himself in Nanming Mountain, drawing the vitality of all living beings. And because of that, he was trapped there, unable to take even a single step beyond its borders.
That was the consequence ordained by heaven.
And so, Ritual Master could only watch helplessly as, under Grandma Nan’s desperate efforts, the corpses burst out of Nanming Mountain.
The entire river was filled with the bodies of the dead, who had died with open, anguished eyes. Their corpses were horribly swollen from long immersion in water, their faces unrecognizable. Under the heat of the sun, they looked like grotesque balloons floating on the river’s surface.
Some of the corpses were withered, fleshless, with charred skin tightly stretched over bones. They sank quietly to the riverbed, carried out of the mountain by the current and the mud, finally exposed to daylight.
These bloated, long-dead bodies could not withstand the rushing waters.
Many of them were torn apart, their skin shredded into fragments, flesh drifting on the river’s surface. Inside the burst corpses, pale bones could be vaguely seen.
Wherever the river flowed, the air filled with a nauseating stench, causing every witness to cry out in horror.
Thousands of hideously dead bodies floating along the river became an unforgettable nightmare for those who saw them.
And after leaving Nanming Mountain, those corpses that had once been highly aggressive completely lost the power to rise. They were nothing more than normal dead bodies.
Finally, they could close their eyes again and welcome the peace of death.
It was as if the very laws of heaven and earth were secretly helping, favoring Grandma Nan and allowing her wish to be fulfilled—sweeping away Ritual Master’s obstruction.
Those corpses were discovered by passing Taoists from the Haiyun Temple outside the mountain.
Soon after, more exorcists became aware of the strange occurrences in Nanming Mountain.
The entire spiritual community was shaken. Temples and Taoist sects quickly dispatched people to investigate Nanming Mountain.
Ritual Master was enraged, but the only remedy he had was to prevent these Taoists and monks from entering the mountain. He even erased their memories.
Many masters wandered outside Nanming Mountain for months, unable to remember why they had come in the first place.
Some, having lost their memories, misstepped and fell into mountain ravines or rapids, dying within Nanming Mountain.
The horrible conditions within the mountain and the fruitless investigations made other exorcists even more wary of the place.
And thus, the sinister reputation of Nanming Mountain began to spread.
Among those who lost their memories was Grandma Nan.
She had been washed ashore by the river, unconscious for a long time, before the villagers brought her back.
However, when she returned to the village, she had forgotten what she had done deep within the mountain.
She could only vaguely remember rituals and gods—but what exactly had happened, who the god was… it was as if her brain didn’t want her to recall the pain, so it erased the source of her torment altogether.
Not long after, the village chief and the old shaman both died suddenly in violent and gruesome ways.
Grandma Nan took the old shaman’s place and became the village’s only shaman.
But every time she presided over a ceremony and saw the corpse offered as a sacrifice, she felt as though scenes of countless corpses faintly surfaced in her mind.
At that time, there had been a young couple still within the bounds of Nanming Mountain who hadn’t made it out. They, too, forgot Grandma Nan’s warning.
After leaving the village, they had a child and named him Nan Tian.
They believed they had only gone to the city to work and earn money.
Worried that Grandma Nan might be lonely living alone in the village, they sent Nan Tian to live with her and keep her company.
Then, twenty years ago, the villagers’ greed provoked Ritual Master.
He began to have the idea of taking control of the entire mortal world, to rid all lives of suffering and pain.
But Grandma Nan keenly sensed something—
The Ghost Year had arrived.
And watching all of this unfold from the sidelines, always staying outside of Nan Village, was Yan Shixun.
At the moment he clearly saw that figure appear in Nan Village, his eyes slowly widened.
That tall, upright figure looked incredibly similar to someone Yan Shixun knew well—Ye Li.
Just from that figure alone, Yan Shixun was certain—it was Ye Li.
He looked up at the Ye Li beside him in confusion, his expression gradually becoming solemn, and asked, “Why… did you appear there, twenty years ago?”
Ye Li chuckled softly, making no attempt to hide anything. “You want to know what connection I have with that soul full of sin.”
“That, was what happened back then.”
Yan Shixun saw that Ye Li, who had appeared in Nan Village twenty years ago, was wearing bloodstained traditional clothing. His wide bamboo hat was pulled low over his head, hiding his stern face.
But that outfit made Yan Shixun freeze.
A similar scene floated up from his memory.
He remembered…
More than a decade ago, he had encountered a man dressed exactly like that at the marketplace.
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