Chapter 34: Ghost Mountain Villa 34 Part 2
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After a very obvious introduction, Yan Shixun looked at Xi Shuang again and explained, “Don’t be afraid. They are shouting because they like you. Modern people express their affection this way. If you’ve seen a modern concert – it’s similar to the theaters where you used to perform Cantonese opera, you’ll understand.”
Yan Shixun: “The fans in the audience below the stage would curse, shout loudly, screaming for help, but it’s just an expression of their love. Like what they just shouted, let me translate for you, it means they really like you.”
——Xi Shuang, who categorized anyone who attacked her in thoughts and actions as being part of the bandits, could not classify the frightened crew members as bandits.
An Nanyuan: …I’ve never heard of that.
Everyone: “???”
Like a ghost?
——Literal translation: Like a ghost.
Just when she was about to retreat back to the fourth floor, Xi Shuang suddenly looked very curious and surprised. She asked, “R-Really?”
“A hundred years later, it’s such a strange era. I could never have imagined it,” Xi Shuang said, her beautiful face showing a hint of envy. “But it’s really nice. You can freely express your love without worrying about other people’s judgment.”
“Do you really like it?” Yan Shixun asked. “You can have this freedom and love too, as long as you’re a little bolder and take one more step forward.”
Xi Shuang smiled bitterly and lowered her phoenix-like eyes. “Mr. Yan, you’re joking. Someone like me…”
Someone like me, stained with so much blood, doesn’t deserve to have a next life.
Just moments ago, during Xi Shuang’s rage, Yan Shixun had persuasively convinced her to seek revenge and spare herself.
Perhaps it was the scene that Yan Shixun had described that had touched her ghostly heart, or perhaps it was his earnest expression.
Against all odds, the furious vengeful spirit had been persuaded.
As Xi Shuang wavered intensely, she saw Yan Shixun forming the Five Thunder Seal with his fingers and directing lightning to strike the scattered flesh pieces of Zhou Shi, who had been trying to escape opportunistically.
No longer concerned about damaging the fragile memory world, Yan Shixun acted without constraints, following his own audacious but efficient style of action. The results were outstanding.
Xi Shuang watched in amazement as Zhou Shi was obliterated right in front of her. His soul was sent to the judgment place of the underworld, marked with the seal of thunder, likely eliminating any possibility of reincarnation.
In that moment, the hatred that had weighed on Xi Shuang’s heart for a century suddenly eased.
She couldn’t help but look at Yan Shixun with gratitude in her eyes. She, a vengeful spirit, had agreed to his request, promising to let go of her hatred, follow the underworld messenger from the underworld and accept the punishment of becoming a vengeful spirit, waiting for a chance at reincarnation hundreds of years later.
As Xi Shuang’s obsessions and hatred dissipated, the fourth floor that had protected her but also kept her trapped for a hundred years slowly collapsed and disintegrated. The mansion and the Ghost Mountain shook violently, resembling an earthquake.
The bandits, on the other hand, were recognized as accomplices with the demise of Zhou Shi’s soul and were subjected to severe punishment, vanishing into thin air.
The bloodstains on the crimson rose-patterned qipao gradually faded away.
Xi Shuang once again became the exquisite and stunning lady from a hundred years ago, adorned with pearl necklaces and golden hairpins, her wavy curls elegantly arranged at the back of her head, swaying as she walked.
For the first time in a hundred years, Xi Shuang summoned the courage to descend from the fourth floor and stand in the living room, anxiously awaiting the crew members who she had mistakenly regarded as bandits.
However, when faced with them, she became timid once again.
The courage she had just gathered was like morning dew in the sunlight, quickly dissipating.
“Someone like you, who even after experiencing hardships and death, still holds a kind-hearted soul, is the one who truly deserves another chance at life,”
Yan Shixun saw through Xi Shuang’s thoughts and completed her unfinished sentence.
His words were resolute.
Xi Shuang raised her head in astonishment.
……
Within the Ghost Mountain, rows and rows of locust trees towered overhead, blocking out all sunlight, rendering it as dark as night.
After the recent series of earthquake-like tremors, the entire mountain’s soil and rocks had fractured and tumbled, leaving chaos in their wake. Many withered locust trees had broken and fallen, completely blocking the narrow path leading down the mountain.
The old Taoist was nowhere to be found, and the remaining few Taoists had been searching in other parts of Gui Mountain before the unusual events occurred. Now, there was only one middle-aged Taoist left.
He held a peachwood sword in one hand and chanted incantations with the other, his fierce gaze fixed on his surroundings, protecting the rescue team members behind him.
The rescue team members had turned pale, holding themselves together with sheer determination to avoid any loss of composure. But each of them could hear the nervous breaths coming from one another.
The sounds were echoes of shattered worldviews.
Just yesterday, many of them were staunch atheists.
However, witnessing the scene where a young team member was forcibly dragged into the ground had greatly shocked many of them.
And now, as the layers of soil were unearthed, all the secrets of Ghost Mountain were exposed. The broken locust trees revealed the resentful spirits of the restless dead.
Every inch of soil covered by fallen leaves was tainted with dark crimson. Blood-red bodies, stripped of their human skin, lay buried within.
They seemed bewildered by suddenly being exposed to the sunlight and air, tentatively reaching their blood-red arms towards the vast sky. Their fingers stretched out as if they were in amazement but couldn’t believe they were grasping the flowing wind.
Then, they reacted with a surge of enormous shock and joy. Their blood-red bodies trembled, their limbs struggled, and they climbed desperately out of the earth, using all four limbs to push through the rocks and soil. Their damaged vocal cords emitted hoarse sounds as they ardently reached for the sky and the wind.
Even though they were burnt black and withered by the sunlight the moment they left the shade of the trees, they didn’t care.
The rescue team members, still dumbfounded by shock and fear, hadn’t fully regained their senses when they heard stirring sounds coming from the withered locust trees.
One by one, more and more wooden figures emerged from the locust trees. They took hesitant, unsteady steps like newborns, stumbling as they chased after the blood-red monsters. Their wooden heads, vaguely resembling human faces, emitted furious roars.
“Come back, come back… Be my sustenance, let me regain a human form.”
But the blood-red humanoid monsters paid no heed. Even as they were burned to ashes under the sunlight, they did not flinch.
Finally, they were free…
Father, mother, your unfilial child can finally descend the mountain and return home…
Bandits, the bandits killed me! Devoured my flesh and stole my identity, making me wander in pain for a hundred years without finding the way home. Now, I can finally see the world.
Leave, leave, leave this place!
The members of the rescue team protected by the middle-aged Taoist watched in horror as the humanoid creatures quickly turned to ashes in the sunlight. After the wind blew through, all that remained were the agonized yet joyous wails of these humanoid creatures, faintly echoing in the ears of the onlookers.
The members of the rescue team couldn’t see it, but the middle-aged Taoist with opened spiritual vision could. Soul after soul broke free from their corporeal forms, the blood-red fading away bit by bit. The grotesque monsters transformed into simple villagers, wearing clothes from decades ago. Yet, the world had changed drastically, and the familiar village and loved ones they once knew were no longer there.
Those souls felt the middle-aged Taoist’s gaze upon them. They smiled and looked back in a friendly manner, nodding at the Taoist, greeting him as strangers would when passing by on the road.
Then they all turned around, gesturing a farewell towards the direction of the villa on the mountain, and glanced contemptuously at the wooden humanoid figures that were chasing them. Satisfied, they closed their eyes and gradually dissipated into the air.
From the distant void, there seemed to be the sound of chains dragging on the ground and chilling cries.
The Yin officials are at work, living people, make way—!
……
The cautious expression on the middle-aged Taoist’s face slightly eased. He had not expected that those creatures beneath the layers of soil were the rumored villagers who had died in Ghost Mountain over the centuries. They had been trapped in Ghost Mountain, unable to leave until now.
It was not until something he did not understand happened in the villa on the mountain that the mountain loosened, allowing the souls to leave.
As for those wooden humanoid things, the Taoist immediately recognized them as parasites living on locust trees, attempting to find a host to pretend to be a living person. The locust trees had withered over a hundred years, and those beings, which had harmed countless lives to nourish themselves over the century, even taking on clear human forms and faces, lost their host. They could no longer conceal themselves from the eyes of the heavens and the earth, appearing in the sight of the ghosts and spirits.
Upon hearing the approaching voice of the Yin Officials, those entities immediately ceased their pursuit of hindering the departing souls and hastily fled in the opposite direction.
With the absence of the monsters, the soil revealed the face of the young rescue team member who had gone missing.
The middle-aged Taoist’s expression turned stern, and he didn’t have time to investigate further. He rushed over, taking three steps in two, to rescue the young team member trapped beneath heavy soil and rocks.
The other members of the rescue team also hurriedly ran over.
……
After losing contact with everyone, the old Taoist did his best to approach the direction of the mansion on the mountain.
His keen intuition and years of experience told him that the key to saving the others lay in the mansion rumored to have been plundered and occupied by bandits a century ago.
However, something similar to the livestream recording of the male actor who wanted to descend the mountain but was terrified into madness, which the old Taoist had seen before climbing up, occurred.
An invisible barrier blocked the path up the mountain for the old Taoist, preventing him from approaching the villa no matter what.
Therefore, when the entire mountain began to shake violently, the old Taoist’s senses were the most acute.
Despite his white hair, he remained alert and focused. He immediately turned his sharp gaze towards the mountain, stabilizing his stance in the midst of the tremors.
Once Ghost Mountain had settled down again, the old Taoist looked around and was astonished to see that the locust trees in the forest were withering rapidly, in large swathes.
“Gui Mountain is detaching itself from the mountain range…” the old Taoist exclaimed.
What on earth had happened to cause the mountain that had defeated countless Taoists and shamans over the years to once again turn towards the sun?
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