Chapter 143: Strange Occurrences 2

The deep mountains were rugged and steep, and it was rare to see anyone coming in from the outside. Consequently, all the dozens of people in the village went to take a look. The young man went too, but when he saw the person’s face, he was so terrified he nearly lost his soul.

That man actually looked exactly like the corpse he had encountered in the cave three days ago! Even the clothes he wore were the same!

The young man was scared out of his wits, but he did not dare point it out on the spot. After all, he had only caught a fleeting glimpse of the corpse back then. He feared his eyes had played tricks on him and that he might be misunderstanding the man. So, he shouldered his basket again, claiming he was going into the mountains to gather herbs, when in fact, he intended to enter that cave once more.

But when he found the cave hidden in the mountains again, the ground was covered in scattered leaves, and there was no sign of the corpse anywhere.

He immediately felt that the thing that had entered the village certainly was not human. It was likely an evil entity possessed by some mountain spirit. He fled down the mountain in a panic, taking a heavy tumble along the way, and headed straight for the village chief’s house to recount the entire sequence of events.

The village chief was greatly alarmed and headed into the mountains that night carrying torches. The young man led him to the cave and the leaves that had originally covered the corpse. There were still dried bloodstains on the leaves. It was common for wild beasts in the mountains to drag corpses back to their dens to eat, but no matter what kind of beast it was, it would leave tracks. The strange thing was that there were only bloodstains here, without any drag marks at all.

Now, the village chief believed his words completely.

After several of them returned, they sat in the stone house and unanimously agreed that it was an evil entity possessed by a mountain spirit and should be eradicated at the roots. Their village was hidden in the deepest part of the forest, and their ancestors had recorded many such occurrences over the years. So, they gritted their teeth and decided to kill the evil thing under the cover of darkness.

The next day, the village chief told the only hunter in the village about the matter. His blade was fast, and having lived by hunting for many years, he did not have much of a psychological burden, so letting him handle it was the best choice.

Several people spent the entire night in suspense. On the third morning, the hunter went to the village chief’s house alone and told them to deal with the body. When the young man entered the temporary stone house, he was prepared for the room to be filled with the stench of death. But when he stepped inside, he was surprised to find no smell of decay at all. Instead, the room was permeated with an extraordinary fragrance.

The corpse lay on the bed, having bled only a little. They covered it with a white cloth and quietly carried it out of the village on a wooden frame. When they reached a point where the path ahead was impassable, the men let go of the frame, dumped the body there, and fled.

Hearing the story up to this point, He Yu let out a yawn, but Lu A’yao kept his brow furrowed from beginning to end. I was also listening with a sense of confusion, feeling as though I could not quite grasp the main point. My fever had already broken, so I sat up and leaned against a cushion from the car seat.

He Yu started being glib again: “What’s the big deal? Maybe that young herb gatherer really did misidentify the body. Besides, it’s so dark at night, what kind of tracks could they find with just torches? I know this kind of recording style; it’s always a mix of truth and lies. Maybe that outsider wasn’t an outsider at all. Maybe a few people had a grudge and killed him by mistake, then lied and said he was a monster. I’ve seen this kind of thing plenty of times.”

Fourth Brother smiled slightly: “But we translated the content that follows, and we all believe that at least seventy percent of the information here is true.”

“Why?” He Yu asked.

“Because three days after they dumped the body, that ‘corpse’ walked back on its own.”

“What?!” I almost thought I had misheard. He Yu and I instinctively looked at each other, both a bit stunned by this development in the story. Even the lethargy that had filled my face a moment ago vanished instantly.

No one knew who had let slip the news of them killing the spirit, but the villagers slowly began to realize what had happened. They all felt that the outsider revealed a certain stiffness and strangeness in everything he did. The village chief and the hunter quickly became “heroic” figures in the village.

But just three days after they had dumped the body in the deep forest and thought everything was fine, another outsider arrived in the village, asking for a place to stay.

He looked exactly like the previous man, dressed the same way, with leaves still clinging to his hair, likely having come down from the mountains. However, his spirit was exceptionally good, and his eyes were bright and piercing. He used the same explanation, saying he was from the outside and wanted to stay in the village for a while, seemingly having completely forgotten the events of a few days prior.

The expressions on the villagers’ faces were filled with shock when they saw him. The moment the village chief and the hunter saw him, they nearly went into shock themselves. They could only think that this evil entity truly possessed some significant power. Still, they calmed down and told the people to let him stay for the time being.

The outsider was somewhat dull, and he was in a state of completely failing to remember the previous events. At night, the hunter slipped into the stone house again with his machete and killed the outsider a second time. Several men carried him together even deeper into the mountains to dump him. This time, they were more cautious and left him in an area where wild beasts frequently roamed, hoping the beasts would quickly drag the body away and eat it.

But to their utter despair, after another three days, that outsider actually returned once again, perfectly intact!

The hunter was miserable. This meant he would have to kill this person yet again. In less than nine days, he had killed the same person three times in a row.

This time, after they dumped the body, they did not feel any sense of relief at all. Instead, they became even more apprehensive because they knew that in another three days, this person might return again and quite kindly ask if he could stay in the village.

Sure enough, three days later, that man was standing at the village entrance again.

After going back and forth like this four times, the villagers completely broke down. This outsider was like a ghost that refused to leave, haunting the village relentlessly. So, this time they united against their common enemy and stopped hiding their intentions. They tied the man up directly, planning to burn him with fire.

Presumably, whether it was a possessed evil entity or a zombie from somewhere else, these things feared fire most of all. Only fire could completely destroy a physical body. Once a zombie lost its body, it was as good as gone, and it could no longer harm the world.

Regardless of how the outsider argued or struggled, the village chief, with a grim face, directed the village’s strongmen to tie the man up like a twisted knot. They prepared dry straw outside the village and were about to light the fire to burn him. At that moment, a sudden bolt of thunder appeared in the sky, and an immortal arrived on a cloud, stopping the hunter who was about to set the fire.

The immortal called himself Ji Yunshi and claimed to come from the Immortal Palace. He explained that the outsider hadn’t committed any heinous acts but had simply been bitten by a venomous snake while traveling through the mountains. Having passed by at the right moment, he gave the man a black elixir, intending to save his life, never expecting it to cause such a misunderstanding.

According to the end of the translated records, the immortal named Ji Yunshi took the outsider away. From then on, no such strange occurrences ever happened in the village again, and the outsider was never seen again.

As I listened, I began to notice some clues. First, the development of the second half of the story felt completely inconsistent with the first half. The first part read like a rural ghost story, while the second part felt like something out of Journey to the West. There was a severe sense of fragmentation in the narrative.

Second, if I guessed correctly, “Ji Yunshi” wasn’t actually a person’s name. Since the time of the Yellow Emperor, “Yunshi” had been an official title. So, what was the true identity of this “Ji Yunshi”?

Fourth Brother paused and said, “After our discussion, we suspect that the Ji Yunshi mentioned in these unofficial records was a person from the Ancient Ne Kingdom. Legend says they offered prayers and sacrifices to the Lotus Bodhisattva, and this kind of elixir was likely granted to them by the Lotus Bodhisattva.”

“An elixir? Can an elixir really make someone immortal no matter what happens?” He Yu asked.

Lu A’yao, who had been listening from the side, shook his head. “It’s not that they can’t die, but rather that they can return from the dead. The elixir Ji Yunshi obtained could bring someone back to life. Furthermore, Ji Yunshi wasn’t some immortal. He was a Feng Shui master.”

He spoke with such certainty that I was quite surprised. I thought to myself that he had been with us recently and hadn’t even met Fourth Brother, nor had he heard the translations of the documents from those experts. How could he conclude so accurately that Ji Yunshi was a Feng Shui master?

So I asked him, “What do you mean? Do you know this person?”

Lu A’yao nodded. “The Lu family ancestral hall has records of this man. He was a very complex person with many identities. Sometimes he was a Feng Shui master, and sometimes he was a Tomb Raider. He had deep knowledge of ingenious mechanical arts and also understood rituals and sacrifices.”