Chapter 224: A Mountain Suspended, A River Submerged (38)
Yan Shixun had seen hanging coffins before.
Because of the vast territory and diverse local customs, people across various regions had developed different burial rites to bless the dead, each evolving its own funeral traditions.
One such tradition involved sealing the remains of the deceased in a coffin, then having strongmen and family members carry it up a mountain. The coffin would be placed on wooden poles already secured into a cliffside, suspending the coffin midair so it wouldn’t be scavenged by wild beasts and the soul could peacefully move on to the afterlife.
From afar, this burial method made it appear as if the coffins were floating in the air along the cliff, as though the souls of the departed had transcended the mundane world—an incredibly awe-inspiring sight.
This was known as the “hanging coffin.”
It symbolized the deepest wishes of the family for the deceased—that their remains would be preserved, and that they could be reborn peacefully in the next life.
However, the skill required for hanging coffin burials was highly technical. If not carried out by experts, both the coffin and the bearers could fall off the cliff. If the wooden beams weren’t secured properly, the coffin could easily slide off and fall.
As a result, very few people mastered this craft, and it gradually faded from practice over generations.
By now, such an ancient and rare tradition had nearly vanished.
The hanging coffins Yan Shixun had seen in the past were all remnants from a hundred years ago.
Most of those had utilized the terrain cleverly—there were footholds along the cliff wall, and the coffins had support underneath. That way, if the wooden beams failed, the coffin wouldn’t immediately plummet down the cliff.
Even in the more intact sites, a village or tribe would have left behind perhaps only a few hundred coffins. Over time, the wooden beams would rot, the coffins would fall, and only a small number would remain.
So, while the first sight of them was certainly eerie and awe-inspiring—especially considering the craftsmanship of the old artisans—there was a limit to the shock, simply because there weren’t that many.
But what Yan Shixun was seeing now was unlike anything he had encountered before.
—Here, on a vast, sheer cliff face, smooth and nearly vertical, thousands of coffins were neatly suspended.
Coffins with upturned ends were arranged in staggered rows along the rock wall. From a distance, it looked like an army formation—orderly, imposing, and overwhelming.
With one hand on the cliff beside him and his feet stepping across a hanging coffin, Yan Shixun stood still as mountain winds from the bottomless chasm howled upward. His coat flapped wildly in the wind, rustling with sharp snaps.
He stood frozen in place, utterly stunned.
A thousand coffins meant… the deaths of a thousand people.
His heart sank heavily, as though the weight of those thousand coffins was pressing down on his chest.
He had never imagined he would witness such a sight.
And neither had the viewers watching from behind their screens.
Just moments earlier, they had been holding their breath as Yan Shixun came face-to-face with a villager bearing a corpse-like face. Some of the more timid viewers had screamed at the sight of that pale, bluish face. Then, when Yan Shixun dodged in a highly unconventional way, their hearts had nearly leapt out of their chests. Some viewers with acrophobia even vomited from the terror of the moment.
Yet none of them had expected that something even more shocking was waiting just one second later.
The scene changed, and the camera panned to the cliff.
Thousands of hanging coffins were dimly lit by pale lanterns. In the faint glow and the cold, misty mountain air, they loomed in eerie silence—disturbing and breathtaking all at once.
The viewers, caught off guard by this sudden image, felt their scalps tingle as if about to explode.
[Holy crap! What the hell is this? Don’t tell me those are all coffins?!]
[I’m speechless—did they really hang coffins on a mountain? How did they even do that? I’ve never seen anything like this in my life!]
[Damn, I always thought graveyards were scary because the coffins were underground and hidden. But I never expected… coffins on full display to be even more terrifying!!]
[I was so freaking scared I shot straight up on the spot and slammed my head into the bed board above me. It hurt like hell—I couldn’t stop crying, ahhh!]
[Think you’ve got it bad? I was watching the livestream on a train, got so scared I reflexively leaned back and fell right off the top bunk…]
[Just a few minutes ago I was still debating whether it was childish for someone in their twenties to crawl into bed with their mom. Now? Mom!!! Waaaah, save your child, save me!]
[Quietly pulled the blanket over my head. Mhm, I felt a chill on my back—it must be because the blanket’s leaking air, definitely not because there’s a ghost behind me.]
[At first glance it really looked like a ghost town. I broke out in goosebumps all over. Hiss—!]
When Yan Shixun realized that what he was standing on was also a hanging coffin—and that it wasn’t aligned with the coffins across the mountain wall—he immediately lowered his gaze to look beneath his feet.
Then he saw that below him was a sight eerily similar to the opposite cliffside.
It was also filled with hanging coffins, stretching down into an endless abyss.
It felt as though the thousand-foot-deep chasm extended straight downward, with sheer cliffs silently facing each other on both sides, crisscrossed by coffins hanging everywhere.
There was no end in sight.
The corpses sealed in these hanging coffins had likely been lying in this silent, deserted place for who knew how long. Some of the coffins had been eroded by time, their colors faded; others still looked new, as if the fresh scent of lacquer still clung to them.
The oldest seemed to have been there for decades. The newest ones…
Suddenly, Yan Shixun realized something. He quickly lifted his eyes and looked upward.
The villagers holding lanterns had been carrying coffins on their shoulders.
From the looks of it, they had brought the coffins here to hang them on the mountainside.
So this… was the true face of the Winter Solstice Festival?
If that were true, then the ceremonies led by Ritual Master over the decades had always involved suspending corpses in hanging coffins—explaining the overwhelming number of them here.
Yan Shixun also remembered that he had woken up inside a coffin himself. And before he lost consciousness, he had seen countless coffins stacked in the small wooden building at the village chief’s home.
The doors to every room in the chief’s house had stood wide open—no sign of the people who’d been inside earlier.
He now suspected that those people had already become the bodies inside the coffins on the villagers’ shoulders.
If the village held four major ceremonies a year with numbers like today’s…
Then it meant that all those who had gone missing in Longevity Village, and even further back, those who died in Nan Village or in villages around Nanming Mountain…
Their bodies were all here.
All in the hanging coffins.
Yan Shixun swallowed hard, his throat tight and sore. He couldn’t get a single word out.
The dead in those coffins… Who were they once? Were they the ones who’d lit a lantern waiting for their loved ones to return home? The ones their friends looked forward to seeing again? The ones their lovers kissed goodbye before they left?
Those who disappeared in Longevity Village had family and friends who would send them heartfelt wishes during festivals, hoping they were well.
But people outside the mountain didn’t know—they were already cold corpses, hanging in the remote mountains, seen by no one, mourned by no one.
Even though this conclusion came after carefully piecing together all the clues—making it the closest thing to the truth—Yan Shixun still, for a brief moment, hoped he was wrong.
That it wasn’t… over a thousand lives that had perished in silence here.
“Shixun?”
Ye Li noticed Yan Shixun’s silence.
He sighed softly and wrapped an arm around Yan Shixun’s shoulder, gently patting his back to comfort him.
“The deaths of these people are already a fact. You can’t change what’s already happened. Life and death follow their own rules—only through that can the balance between yin and yang remain intact.”
Ye Li spoke softly, offering comfort. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I know.”
Yan Shixun blinked rapidly. His eyes, peering over Ye Li’s shoulder at the hanging coffins, were filled with grief.
Even though his rational mind told him the facts couldn’t be changed, as an exorcist—and more importantly, as a fellow human being—he still felt deep sorrow for the lives that had been lost.
And because of that sorrow, he felt even more furious toward the one responsible for it all.
Ritual Master…
Yan Shixun’s expression suddenly darkened.
Ritual Master had always claimed he wanted to free people from pain for good—but his so-called solution was to kill them.
What kind of twisted happiness was that supposed to be?
To achieve his goal, he had slaughtered so many lives—was there any greater sin?
At the same time, Yan Shixun realized something: despite committing such atrocities, Ritual Master remained unharmed, untouched by any divine punishment or vengeance from ghost deities. Even Ye Li had confirmed that Ritual Master had used some kind of special method. Just like in the dream, when Ritual Master tried to recruit him for his plan, he had said—
Ritual Master might have already traversed life and death thousands of times, reaching the deepest essence of mortality and brushing against the Dao itself.
That would explain why even now, the laws of heaven and earth hadn’t been able to touch him.
But if that were true, then this bizarre burial ritual likely had a deeper purpose.
Ritual Master might have drawn the power he needed from this process.
If the chrysanthemum symbolized his desire for “life,” and he drew vitality from the living—then how did he fulfill the “death” part?
With yang but no yin, there could be no balance, no true Taiji.
To understand and transcend life and death, Ritual Master had to travel through “death” just the same.
Could the answer be hidden inside these hanging coffins?
Yan Shixun furrowed his brows and looked up at the villagers carrying coffins along the mountain path.
When he had just broken out of the coffin and thrown off the lid, it hadn’t affected the villagers at all.
They moved like puppets, devoid of self-awareness, following commands without question. Even after the deafening sound that came from ahead, they didn’t flinch. They simply kept walking, neither panicking nor curious.
Even the two villagers who had been carrying Yan Shixun’s coffin—despite it no longer resting on their shoulders—continued forward mechanically, maintaining their original posture, as if they hadn’t realized the coffin was gone.
Yan Shixun pressed his lips into a thin line.
Most likely, these coffin-bearers were also already dead.
Although he didn’t yet understand why some villagers were placed inside coffins while others served as pallbearers, one thing had become clear to him—
There were no living people in Longevity Village.
Whether it was the hiking group, the patients, Liu Ming… they were all dead.
Even those unusually healthy and long-lived elders in the lower village were probably the same.
Along the narrow mountain path, one coffin after another was silently carried uphill, the pale white lanterns casting a final dim light for the dead’s departure.
Before this, Yan Shixun had never seen a newly added hanging coffin, nor had he ever witnessed the full funeral process of raising them.
He had never even imagined it.
But now, he was witnessing something completely beyond his understanding.
Even if hanging coffin burials were a real custom in the past, no one could have imagined that those carrying the coffins might already be dead themselves.
“Before I entered the dream, I saw Nan Tian being shoved into a coffin too.”
Yan Shixun’s face was grave. “Since I woke up in a coffin, Nan Tian must be in one too—somewhere among these coffins.”
“Even if we don’t know what Ritual Master plans to do with these hanging coffins, it’s best we get Nan Tian out first.”
The fact that Ritual Master had twice escaped from right under Ye Li’s nose made Yan Shixun extremely wary.
He still remembered what had happened on the highway outside Binhai City—how even with Ye Li summoning one hundred thousand underworld soldiers, the Yin officials had panicked and fled, only to be slaughtered in the end by those spectral swords.
He had no doubts about Ye Li’s power as a ghost deity, and that made him even more suspicious of Ritual Master.
What exactly was this “special method”?
How could it evade the laws of heaven and earth, and escape the pursuit of ghost deities?
In such a dangerous situation, Yan Shixun wasn’t about to risk Nan Tian’s life.
Ye Li nodded. “What do you plan to do? Need my help?”
“If you want, you can just wait here for a moment. I’ll go take care of everything and be back.”
Ye Li leaned forward naturally, moving closer to Yan Shixun with a light chuckle. “As long as you call my name… even heaven and earth will answer you.”
Yan Shixun didn’t flinch. He gave a fake smile. “Back off. You’re in the way.”
Ye Li gracefully stepped half a pace back, smiling the whole time.
On the narrow, limited space of the hanging coffin, even if Ye Li stepped back, the two of them were still very close to each other.
With their similarly sturdy, tall frames, even the slightest movement could cause their shoulders to brush against each other.
Yan Shixun furrowed his brow slightly, but upon seeing Ye Li’s innocent expression, as though he had no way of avoiding it either, he could only sigh inwardly. He relaxed his tense muscles as best as he could, trying to get accustomed to Ye Li’s proximity, and focused his attention on the countless corpses all around them.
He looked up, his gaze serious and thoughtful as he looked at the surroundings.
Although Yan Shixun knew that Ye Li’s suggestion was the best option—after all, they still had no idea which coffin Nan Tian was in, and the narrow mountain path less than a foot wide made it extremely difficult to deal with the villagers or find the coffin—
But he also knew that Ye Li was a ghost deity, and matters of the living… should be left to the living to solve.
He had not yet developed the habit of passing on the responsibility that had already been placed on his shoulders to someone else. Even though he was getting used to Ye Li being by his side, his established way of doing things was hard to change.
Ye Li could see what was on Yan Shixun’s mind and did not insist.
From his understanding of his beloved exorcist, he already knew that Yan Shixun wouldn’t accept his suggestion before he even said it.
However… this was still a good start, wasn’t it?
Yan Shixun raised his gaze and fixed his serious attention on the villagers, thinking about how to find Nan Tian and rescue him.
Ye Li, on the other hand, watched Yan Shixun, a smile in his narrow eyes.
Shixun would slowly get used to his presence, trust him, and even… be willing to rely on him.
While Yan Shixun was lost in thought about how to save Nan Tian, Nan Tian himself was desperately thinking about Yan Shixun, praying with a tearful voice that Yan Shixun would be fine and come to rescue him soon.
Nan Tian was not doing well inside the coffin.
The cold, the darkness, the terrifying feeling of not knowing what was happening—it was suffocating, closing in on him at every moment, creating a sense of helplessness.
He stared wide-eyed at the coffin lid above him, his hands instinctively gripping the fabric of his chest tightly, desperately trying to control his panic and despair.
Logically, Nan Tian knew that he had to stay calm, try to save himself, and delay as much time as possible while waiting for Yan Shixun to find him.
He bit down on his lip, careful not to make a sound, afraid that something even more terrifying outside the coffin would hear him and bring disaster.
He couldn’t only harm himself but also drag Yan Shixun down.
Nan Tian could only hold onto the fabric in his chest, feeling its warmth like a little hand warmer, forcing himself to stay calm and not give in to fear.
But in such an environment, alone, trying to stay composed was not as easy as it sounded.
The only sounds Nan Tian could hear were the wind and his own heartbeat. His eyes, blinded by the darkness, lost their function. The more he tried to calm himself and stay calm, the more his mind seemed to
work against him, filled with disturbing thoughts.
Even worse, as he listened to the pounding of his own heart, telling himself to keep surviving, suddenly, a thought flashed through his mind.
—Am I really still alive?
Could these heartbeats actually be real, or have I imagined them?
Just like staring at words for too long until they lose their meaning, Nan Tian suddenly felt that perhaps these heartbeats were just an illusion too.
Maybe, in reality, I’m already dead.
When this thought emerged in his mind, Nan Tian’s heart turned cold, but at the same time, he felt a strange sense of peace, as if everything had fallen into place.
Ah… so that’s it.
I’ve already died.
No wonder.
Nan Tian recalled a saying he had heard when he sought out a master to explain his nightmares.
When one sees a deceased person in a dream, it means the deceased has returned to visit the living, or it could be the spirits of ancestors coming back to guide the living to the afterlife, to prevent them from getting lost or crossing the river alone.
The more Nan Tian thought about it, the more sense it made. Yes, for so many years, Grandma Nan had never come back to visit him. What a coincidence that she appeared this time.
And she looked so angry, telling him to go back.
So, I must have died, right? That’s why Grandma Nan wanted me to return to the world of the living.
After figuring it all out, Nan Tian suddenly froze, feeling like a corpse in the cold coffin, breathing more lightly.
He stared blankly into the darkness ahead. The hand that had been gripping the fabric slowly relaxed, and the breath that had been holding him together seemed to loosen.
A single tear rolled down his cheek.
Alone, in the silence, he struggled to hold back a sob.
Before death, even the calmest, most rational person wouldn’t be untouched.
Moreover, Nan Tian had always been afraid of ghosts and wasn’t strong enough to face such things.
As his emotions fluctuated violently, in the darkness, someone smiled.
“Life, death, illness, pain of separation…”
The ancient voice, with its mysterious cadence, softly echoed in Nan Tian’s ear.
“If you despise death, why not seek a place without pain?”
The voice was deeply enchanting, making Nan Tian, who had been lost and desperate, feel as though he had suddenly found someone who understood him and could point the way.
He instinctively felt that the voice was trustworthy.
Nan Tian blinked slowly, turning his head to look to the side.
He clearly remembered being in the coffin—why was there a voice…
The next moment, Nan Tian’s eyes widened.
He saw that the coffin, which had been pitch black, had transformed into a vast field of yellow and white chrysanthemums.
Large clusters of chrysanthemums bloomed around him. Not far away, clear river water gurgled by, and sunlight filtered through the branches, casting light onto his eyelids.
Nan Tian’s eyelashes fluttered. He suddenly remembered that when he had just been pushed out of his nightmare by Grandma Nan, this was the kind of scene he had seen.
“Is this… the underworld?” Nan Tian, following the voice, asked the question instinctively, stunned.
So, I really am dead.
A wave of bitterness welled up in Nan Tian’s heart. He raised his hand to cover his glasses—he wasn’t sure whether he was trying to shield his eyes from the harsh sunlight or hide from the truth he had just accepted.
All the tension and alertness that Nan Tian had been holding onto collapsed entirely under the weight of this realization. His defenses crumbled.
At that moment, the old yet gentle voice cut in, effortlessly replacing Nan Tian’s confidence and wariness, becoming his new anchor.
The new…
“God.”
“No, you’re not in the underworld. No Yin officials have come to guide you.”
A silver-white robe brushed softly through a cluster of chrysanthemums, stirring a gentle ripple of petals.
“What you’re in now… is a place far more terrifying than the underworld. Your soul can no longer reincarnate. There is no next life for you. Instead, you’ll remain trapped in your dead body, bound to it for eternity—even as it rots into a heap of blood and flesh.”
“No one will ever know you died here. No one will mourn you or remember you.”
The voice let out a quiet sigh, full of sorrow and pity, as if it truly grieved for Nan Tian’s fate.
“How pitiful.”
That figure slowly approached, bathed in sunlight and breeze, exuding a gentle aura—like the gods people often imagined descending from the heavens.
Nan Tian was no exception.
His gaze lifted from the ground, dazedly following the figure until he saw the person standing before him.
The elderly man smiled warmly and elegantly. His face was kind, and his silver hair was braided and tied behind his head, flowing softly over his shoulders and trailing on the ground. He radiated an air of grace and serenity.
When Nan Tian got a clear look at the old man, he even softened his breath, afraid he might disturb an immortal being.
He had to admit—despite all the years he had spent, plagued by nightmares, running from one temple to another, seeking out famous masters, even after being soothed by the immense sense of security brought by Yan Shixun…
It was only now, as he looked at this old man, that a strong, sudden thought surged in his heart—This was what a true immortal looked like.
Ritual Master’s outward appearance was so deceptively kind that Nan Tian, upon seeing him, felt a natural sense of goodwill and immediately started to believe him.
Seeing Nan Tian’s expression, Ritual Master smiled in satisfaction—but then, for a brief moment, his face twisted with ferocity and distortion, even his breathing turned coarse and heavy.
However, before Nan Tian could notice anything wrong, Ritual Master quickly reined in his expression, as if nothing had happened at all.
But if someone had been standing behind Ritual Master at that moment, they would have been horrified to discover— Ritual Master… had nothing left but a human skin.
The noble, immortal-like image he presented before Nan Tian was just a shell, one he barely managed to hold together with all his remaining strength.
As for the rest—he had no power left to maintain it.
Behind him, under the human skin, there was nothing but an empty void—no flesh, no bones, not even a single wound or drop of blood. As if from the very beginning, none of those things had any business existing there.
The skin, which should have perfectly wrapped a human body, now resembled a torn and tattered rag, full of massive gaping holes, making it look grotesque and lifeless as it exposed the emptiness within.
Sensing the state he was in, Ritual Master clenched his teeth in fury, a flash of cruelty gleaming in his eyes.
That damned Evil Spirit Bone Transformation… Who would’ve thought, just a living human, could go this far—even managing to wound him?
If he hadn’t reacted in time, he would have already been reduced to scattered fragments, forever trapped in that nightmare.
However, the fact that a ghost deity could overcome numerous barriers to enter a dream and find him was astonishing.
The moment he thought of Ye Li, fear and hesitation appeared on Ritual Master’s face.
What had happened twenty years ago remained a shadow he could never shake off.
That feeling—trembling under the Great Dao, on the brink of death—had carved a deep reverence for Ye Li into his bones. It was so overwhelming that he had already lost the battle before it began and nearly fled.
Because of this, ever since he’d barely survived that encounter two decades ago, Ritual Master had been tirelessly contemplating ways to counter ghost deities. Even within Nanming Mountain, he had layered countless barriers and formations to avoid detection, allowing himself to exist hidden between life and death.
Just like everyone else whose memories had been erased.
No one remembered Ritual Master’s existence. Even if someone had spoken with him, they would forget the moment after.
Even in the upper stream Longevity Village, no one knew that the true puppeteer behind everything was Ritual Master.
The village chief was nothing more than a puppet Ritual Master used to hide himself.
He masked his presence through the village chief and watched everything through the chief’s eyes.
All this caution had one source: it was the memory of the guilty souls in the southern village that had exposed him to Ye Li twenty years ago.
No record of good or evil deeds in any soul could escape judgment by the ghost deity.
Ye Li had clearly seen that among the guilty souls in the southern village, the same figure kept appearing—Ritual Master.
Because of this, Ritual Master’s long-laid plans were completely exposed. Ye Li became aware of his plot and, in a fury, pointed his sword at him, turning Nanming Mountain upside down.
That terrifying and shocking scene haunted Ritual Master every moment. The fear of Ye Li and the awe of the Great Dao that it instilled were etched into the depths of his soul.
Thus, Ritual Master, now resurging, was even more cautious than he had been twenty years ago.
Even those officials from southern regions investigating the situation in Longevity Village, as well as the families and friends of numerous missing persons, never found anything unusual in Nanming Mountain.
No—it should be said that Ritual Master had erased the very possibility of anything being unusual at its root.
—Even if you saw something, so what?
You couldn’t remember it, couldn’t speak of it, and would forget it in the blink of an eye.
If no one knew of the abnormality, then everything was normal.
As a result, Ritual Master had lived peacefully in Nanming Mountain for twenty years, and his plan had once again reached its final step.
Yet everything was playing out again—just like before!
It was unforgivable!
Ritual Master thought of Yan Shixun, and was so furious that he trembled all over.
He had originally believed that this Evil Spirit Bone Transformation was sent by the heavens to surrender to him offering their assistance.
But now, it seemed that Yan Shixun had been guided by heaven itself into Nanming Mountain to deliberately sabotage him!
If that were the case, then the only thing to do now was to complete everything—faster. Much faster!
He had to finish his plan before heaven once again intervened and ruined everything.
Otherwise, another disaster would surely unfold.
Ritual Master made up his mind: he had to devour Nan Tian’s soul and restore the power that had been suppressed by Grandma Nan before Yan Shixun escaped the dream realm and found Nan Tian.
Only by doing so could he repair the soul and body that had been severely damaged by the ghost deity, regaining the strength to preside over the final and most crucial sacrifice.
While he was thinking this, his face remained gentle and compassionate. He slowly bent down, extending his hand toward Nan Tian, his voice laced with seductive persuasion.
“Do you want to escape from pain? To be free forever from the torment of birth, aging, illness, and death? To regain the happiness and peace life was meant to offer?”
Ritual Master smiled. “I can help you achieve all of that. Everything you fear will vanish from your life. You’ll bloom like a flower—forever radiant, never withering.”
“As long as…”
He lowered his eyes, his expression merciful.
Yet for some reason, from Nan Tian’s upward view, the old man before him seemed chillingly cold and terrifying.
It was as if, in the elder’s eyes, he wasn’t a living person at all—but merely an object.
Nan Tian’s subconscious trembled.
He had seen Yan Shixun standing bravely before everyone, shielding them—and that image had forever defined his view of exorcists.
Even though he knew Yan Shixun was already among the most powerful of them, and it was unfair to compare others against him as a standard—
He still couldn’t help it. Every exorcist he met, he compared to Yan Shixun.
Now, facing this old man, who looked like an immortal and had genuinely saved him from a coffin, Nan Tian still couldn’t ignore that fleeting coldness—which made him feel afraid.
Although Yan Shixun wasn’t what people might call good-tempered—he was irritable, cold, and at times so rational it felt inhuman—
He always protected life. He never gave up, not even on the slightest chance.
Yan Shixun could glare coldly at enemies, but he could also kneel to plant a gentle seed, to lift a wronged soul who had fallen into the abyss.
Nan Tian had never felt such fear from Yan Shixun.
That fear made the hand he had instinctively extended to the old man stop in midair.
Ritual Master noticed Nan Tian’s hesitation but quickly lost patience. He bent down and grabbed at Nan Tian with a strong hand.
The chrysanthemum field around them suddenly shattered into thousands of petals, swept upward by a violent wind and then raining down like snow, blotting out the sun and moon—
And ending the scene entirely.
…
After deciding to first search for Nan Tian, Yan Shixun had fixed his gaze firmly on the villagers walking along the mountain path.
Since the bodies hanging from the cliff were all from past sacrifices, and he and Nan Tian were both caught up in this winter ritual, Nan Tian was most likely one of the corpses inside the coffins carried on villagers’ shoulders.
The narrow path made it impossible to approach directly, so Yan Shixun could only use the hanging coffins as footholds, leaping across the cliff wall.
His tall figure moved with agility and lightness, like a large feline stepping silently on its padded paws. No matter how precarious the footing, he always landed gracefully without disturbing anything nearby.
Still, onlookers were scared out of their wits.
The viewers in front of their split screens didn’t dare breathe. The camera, swaying and suspended over the cliff, made their hearts clench. Even though they knew there was nothing they could do from the other side of the screen, they instinctively feared that even their breathing might disturb Yan Shixun and put him in danger.
Some timid ones were already too frightened to watch, afraid they’d see him fall off the cliff with their own eyes.
But Yan Shixun moved with ease, leaping across the coffins in perfect order—landing, flipping, jumping onto the path to check a coffin. If it wasn’t Nan Tian, he’d drop back onto another hanging coffin to avoid the villagers, then repeat the process.
Throughout all this, his stamina drained rapidly.
Still, he didn’t hesitate. In order to find Nan Tian without alerting Ritual Master or using Ye Li’s power, he spared no effort.
Yan Shixun remembered clearly the exact coffin Nan Tian had been stuffed into—the shape, size, the color and grain of the wood…
He was rebuilding the coffin from memory. That image was one of his key references now.
He also remembered that yellow chrysanthemums had bloomed from Nan Tian’s coffin—but looking out now, he couldn’t find any that matched that description.
This made him frown deeply.
His memory was no longer disturbed. It was fully intact and reliable. If that were the case, where had the chrysanthemums gone?
Or—did their blooming require some specific condition to be met?
Carrying that question, Yan Shixun searched for Nan Tian without pause.
But as he stepped onto the next hanging coffin, something unexpected happened.
Crack! A soft sound—then the lid of the coffin beneath him snapped.
A sudden sense of weightlessness followed.
After a brief moment of shock, Yan Shixun quickly realized that some of the hanging coffins had become weathered and rotten due to their age, and could now only barely maintain their shape.
At this moment, as he stepped onto the hanging coffin, the decayed wooden plank could no longer bear his weight and naturally broke apart.
He didn’t panic. Instead, he swiftly adjusted his falling posture and quickly regained his balance.
However, his landing spot shifted—from the outside of the coffin to the inside.
The shattered coffin lid fell into the coffin, striking the corpse within. In a blink, Yan Shixun sharply identified a suitable foothold and landed steadily.
But when he lowered his head to look inside the coffin, his eyes suddenly widened in shock.
Lying inside the coffin… was Liu Ming.
Although Yan Shixun had long known that Liu Ming was dead, he hadn’t expected to see that face again inside a hanging coffin.
Still, this Liu Ming was somewhat different from the one he had seen in Longevity Village.
The Liu Ming in the coffin was dressed in clothes from beyond the mountain, with both hands crossed neatly over his abdomen, holding a large bouquet of white and yellow chrysanthemums.
The chrysanthemum petals showed no sign of wilting. Even within the broken coffin, they quivered slightly in the mountain breeze, vibrant and striking.
Liu Ming’s complexion was rosy and full, with none of the pallor and stiffness typical of the dead. On the contrary, he looked as if he were merely asleep, dreaming a pleasant dream.
His tightly shut eyes seemed like they might open again at any moment, and there was even a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.
From the exposed parts of his skin not covered by clothing, even his flesh looked disturbingly lifelike—so fresh it sent chills down one’s spine.
Anyone who saw Liu Ming like this would never believe that he was dead.
Suddenly, Yan Shixun remembered that Liu Ming had once said, “After the festival, Longevity Village will be reborn.”
…What kind of rebirth?
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!
