Chapter 1 Zhang Yuanqing Doesn't Want To Stay in the Main Hall Anymore

Crap… Zhang Yuanqing suddenly didn’t want to stay in the main hall anymore.

He had a kind of fear of being in a desperate situation, where calling to the heavens brought no response, and calling to the earth brought no help.

This place was extremely dangerous, but he couldn't ask for help from the outside world. He could only rely on himself.

After hesitating again and again, he gritted his teeth and bent down to pull out the skeleton wrapped in work clothes.

*Chila*～

During the pulling process, the work clothes were easily torn. After so many years, the clothes had long rotted.

Dragging the corpse into the candlelight, he endured his discomfort and began to examine it.

Although the person was dead, the body would speak. Figuring out the cause of death could help him avoid many dangers.

"Several ribs and the sternum are broken, and there are fine cracks in the right shoulder, but they are not serious..."

The deceased had suffered severe trauma before his death, but the specific cause of death could not be seen due to the age.

Then, Zhang Yuanqing found several yellowed and brittle pieces of paper from the pockets of his worker predecessor. They were quite old.

The paper was covered with small characters written in regular script.

Zhang Yuanqing was overjoyed. The paper was clearly found by the worker predecessor in the temple, which would help him understand the situation of this ancient temple.

With the help of candlelight, he concentrated on reading the contents of the paper.

"Another fellow apprentice disappeared last night. This is the third fellow apprentice who has mysteriously disappeared in the temple. The fellow apprentices say that the Three Dao Mountain is haunted, or that a powerful demon has come, who comes to the temple every night to catch people and eat them. But the many disciples in the temple have cultivation, and the master is a well-known True Man within a hundred miles. What kind of ignorant demon dares to come here to forage for food.

"As for ghosts and monsters, my corpse suppression talisman and spirit summoning talisman are enough to deal with them, without bothering the master. I have a bad feeling in my heart and need to find the eldest brother to discuss it..."

"Another person disappeared today. This is the fifth person. The master told us to hide it from the pilgrims, otherwise it would affect the temple's incense. He must know something. The eldest brother and I plan to patrol at night..."

"Three days have passed. During this period, three more people have disappeared, but the eldest brother and I have not found any clues. The night is calm. My ominous premonition is getting deeper..."

"The eldest brother is very strange today. He seems to have discovered something and seems very angry. I asked him, but he didn't tell me. He is in a bad mood. I'll ask him again tomorrow."

"The person who disappeared today is...the eldest brother. I searched the entire Three Dao Mountain and couldn't find him. I, I can't stand it anymore. I'm going to ask the master to find out. The fellow apprentices in the temple also support me because they are also very scared..."

The handwriting in this passage was a bit scribbled, indicating that the author of the notes was somewhat mentally broken.

Zhang Yuanqing continued to read:

"After some questioning, the master finally agreed to tell me the truth. My premonition was right. He really knew the reason for the mysterious disappearance of the fellow apprentices. But the master said that there are many people talking during the day. After sunset, he will come to my room to tell me a great secret. This secret is related to the rise and fall of thousands of years."

"After finishing dinner, I waited in the room, waiting for the sun to set. Since someone disappeared at night, I have never looked forward to the dark so much..."

The content of the paper ended here.

Gone? This cliffhanger is a bit uncomfortable... Zhang Yuanqing grimaced.

He sorted out the information in the paper. In a certain year, the disciples of this Mountain God Temple mysteriously disappeared one after another.

The disciples were helpless, and the emotion of panic spread. And the abbot of the temple, their master, seemed to know the reason.

This reason was related to a great secret about the rise and fall of thousands of years.

"The reason for the decline of the Mountain God Temple is unknown. If I explore the source, can I complete the second main mission?" Zhang Yuanqing speculated.

He put the brittle paper back into the corpse's work clothes and pushed him back under the table to keep him out of sight. Then, he thought about what he should do next.

"There's so much information in the main hall. Since I want to explore the ancient temple, I have to go out. In that case, I have to face the dangers in the temple..."

"In the She Ling Tunnel ghost story, a worker survived successfully. Following his path, I might be able to find a way to survive."

After careful consideration, Zhang Yuanqing walked to the door of the main hall and opened the two well-preserved lattice doors.

"Creak~"

The wooden door shaft made a teeth-aching sound.

He supported the door frame, poked his head out, and looked around. It was silent outside. Apart from being a little desolate and gloomy, he didn't see any danger.

After observing for a while, he stepped over the threshold and walked along the cobblestone path on the left side of the main hall toward the backyard of the Mountain God Temple.

The moonlight was like water, and the weeds undulated. Zhang Yuanqing walked for a minute or two, and a building appeared in front of him.

There were several connected bungalows, forming a courtyard with a large area, with black tiles and white walls, a straight roof ridge, and lattice windows and lattice doors under the eaves.

The lattice doors were dusty, some open, some fallen, and some closed tightly. The paper used to paste the windows was tattered under the erosion of time.

The moonlight was bright, like frost on the ground. He glanced at the layout of the backyard of the Mountain God Temple by the moonlight.

In addition to the courtyard in front of him, there was also an arched door on the east side, which was a bit like the back house of a large family in film and television dramas, which would have such an arched door to connect different courtyards.

A towering tree was planted in the courtyard next door, with luxuriant branches and tangled branches.

"Huh..."

He found several skeletons wrapped in work clothes in the weedy courtyard.

Carefully approaching and carefully examining them, the skeletons were severely damaged. Under the work clothes were sections of broken bones, but except for the one in the main hall, the shoulder bones of the skeletons here were well preserved without cracks.

"These people suffered terrible injuries before they died and died miserably..."

A gust of wind blew, and the branches rustled. Zhang Yuanqing vaguely heard the sound of weeping in the "rustling" sound brought by the wind:

"Help, help..."

In this desolate and silent night, Zhang Yuanqing's back was covered with cold sweat.

His body stood stiffly in place. After a while, the wind stopped, and the weeping whispers also stopped with the wind.

The courtyard next door seems a little dangerous, but the things inside didn't come over... He silently exhaled, stepped into the courtyard full of weeds, and planned to explore this courtyard.

This seemed to be the place where the disciples in the temple lived, piled with old and dusty furniture. The air was filled with a faint, decaying smell.

Zhang Yuanqing explored the rooms one by one, without any special discoveries, until he pushed open the lattice door on the far east side.

"Creak~"

The door that had been sealed for who knows how many years was pushed open again, and dust rustled down. Zhang Yuanqing patted the dust on his shoulders and scanned every corner of the room warily.

In this room that had been abandoned for many years, next to the window, a corpse was lying crookedly against the wall.

From the clothing and the rolling miner's hat, it could be inferred that it was another predecessor.

Stepping over the threshold and entering the room, Zhang Yuanqing shivered, feeling that the surrounding temperature seemed to have dropped a lot.

"It's a bit cold..."

He cautiously approached the corpse, untied the tattered clothes, and observed the corpse's bones as usual. This time, he didn't see any broken bones. The skeleton was well preserved.

But when he turned his gaze to the shoulder bones of the corpse, his pupils shrank. There were exaggerated cracks in the shoulder bones of this corpse.

This was the same as the cracks in the shoulders of the corpse in the main hall. The difference was that the corpse in front of him was more severely injured.

"Only the shoulder bones of this corpse in the room and the one in the main hall are broken. Is it a coincidence?" He muttered to himself uneasily.

Then, Zhang Yuanqing discovered that the corpse's trouser pockets were bulging, as if hiding something.

Reaching out and groping, he took out a yellowed ancient book, a dusty bronze mirror, and a yellow paper talisman from the deceased's pocket.

The yellow paper talisman was painted with twisted lines in cinnabar, a bit like runes. These lines collectively converged into a character resembling the traditional character for "corpse."

As he was examining the yellow paper talisman, a fluorescent blue message appeared in front of Zhang Yuanqing:

[Name: Corpse Suppression Talisman]

[Type: Consumable]

[Function: Suppress Corpses]

[Introduction: A talisman created by a powerful Night Wanderer, it is the nemesis of all corpse-like Yin objects. Sticking it on the forehead of a Yin object can complete the seal.]

[Note: It can only be used once.]

The fluorescent blue message was a bit like his attribute panel. Obviously, this was a hint given by the "Spirit Realm."

This was the first time Zhang Yuanqing had seen such a prompt since entering the strange ancient temple.

"It should be an important item." Zhang Yuanqing folded it up, put it in the pocket of his windbreaker, and zipped it up.

After thinking about it, he reopened the zipper.

Because he remembered a plot in a wuxia novel where a swordsman with superb swordsmanship liked to wrap his sword in cloth and carry it on his back.

One day, a challenger challenged the swordsman while he was eating.

Then the swordsman was gone.

The cause of death was that the cloth was inconvenient to untie...

Zhang Yuanqing then picked up the ancient book and the bronze mirror, but no relevant information appeared.

He put the bronze mirror aside first, and carefully flipped through the yellowed and fragile book with curled edges.

It said:

"It has been two and a half years since I joined the Niangniang Temple on Three Dao Mountain. I have learned to read and write. The eldest brother said that when the master returns from saving souls and returning to the mountain, he can officially introduce me into the sect and practice the Swallowing Moon Soul Nourishing Technique. This is the entry method to become a Night Wanderer."

"The Prince of Yan rebelled, and the smoke of war rose everywhere. The master, as the strongest person in the Song Prefecture Night Wanderer lineage, had to go down the mountain to save the dead. Otherwise, if the war is not settled and Yin disasters arise again, the people will be even more uneasy..."

Zhang Yuanqing felt some soreness in his shoulders, rubbed them, and preliminarily judged that this was a diary.

The content of the diary was all about the 'author's' experiences of practicing and living in the temple. According to the handwriting, this diary and the paper on the corpse in the main hall came from the same source.

Through words such as "Prince of Yan's Rebellion," the timeline was during the Jingnan Campaign.

But he was not sure if this temple really existed in history, because the contents of the diary were written with incomprehensible words such as "cultivation," "Night Wanderer," "breathing techniques," and "talismans."

Zhang Yuanqing moved his sore shoulders, glanced warily at the room, and listened to the movement outside. After confirming that there was nothing unusual, he continued to read the diary.

Soon, he turned to the continuation of the content in the main hall. The previous few pages were torn off. The subsequent content read:

"Sunset, it's finally dark. I heard a knock on the door, opened the door excitedly, but standing outside the door was not the master, but the eldest brother who disappeared last night."

"The eldest brother who disappeared for a day and a night is back, but I have no joy, because...he is already dead, what came back was a corpse. His chest was bloody, and his heart was taken away by someone unknown."

"The eldest brother stared straight at me and said: Don't trust the master..."

These paragraphs were written crookedly. It could be imagined that the author of the diary was mentally broken when writing this content.

When Zhang Yuanqing turned to the next page, he found that the diary had no continuation. The author of the diary never wrote a diary again.

"Hiss... What does don't trust the master mean?"

Zhang Yuanqing was chilled by this reversal.

Did the abbot kill the eldest brother? Was he also the culprit for the disappearance of the disciples one after another? Zhang Yuanqing rubbed his shoulders, put the book back into the corpse's pocket, then picked up the bronze mirror and was about to leave.

But when the corner of his eye inadvertently glanced at the bronze mirror, his body suddenly stiffened.

The moonlight was like water, projected on the mirror surface. The bronze mirror reflected his appearance, and on his back, there was a person lying on him.

The person's face was pale, his lips were dark purple, he had a pair of white pupils, his head was tilted and resting on Zhang Yuanqing's shoulder, and those white pupils were staring at him in deathly silence.

........

ps: This book has supernatural elements, but it is not mainly supernatural. Readers who don't like supernatural elements can rest assured.