My Years in the Folklore World

Chapter 384 Confusion
Jiang Xinghuo looked at the setting sun in the sky, hugged the willow wood gourd in his arms, and walked into the depths of the mountains.

at the same time,

The miasma that filled the mountains also gathered together. It seemed as if the miasma had its own life and could sense all living creatures that walked into the mountain.

Jiang Xinghuo felt a little dizzy after just one encounter, but fortunately the Thousand Poisons Invulnerability Effect took effect in time.

The forbidden power containing pure vitality traveled along the meridians in the body, and the miasma in the body disappeared without a trace.

"What a weird miasma."

After coming to his senses, Jiang Xinghuo shuddered. Not daring to be negligent at all, he immediately removed the stopper from the willow gourd and shook it slightly towards the smoky air.

next moment.

A powerful suction force emanated from the gourd, forming a wind vortex cyclone visible to the naked eye, which drew all the smoke and poisonous gas that filled the surrounding area into the gourd.

Jiang Xinghuo also took advantage of this opportunity to display his magical movement skills, transforming into a ray of golden light and quickly heading towards the Half-Ghost Village according to the route drawn on the map.

soon.

A village appeared before his eyes.

The setting sun in the sky enveloped the village.

An ancient bluestone arch bridge stands above the mountain stream. A few grey-haired elders are enjoying the cool under a large banyan tree beside the bridge, gently waving large cattail-leaf fans in their hands and chatting about some family matters.

In the rice fields not far away, you can vaguely see people working in the fields, creating a peaceful scene like a paradise.

Looking at the scene in front of him, Jiang Xinghuo frowned slightly, and a strong sense of tearing arose in his heart. He thought he had returned to his hometown in the countryside.

He didn't expect that in today's secular world, there would be such a peaceful and tranquil place, which was completely different from the chaotic world he knew.

There was an old man who even nodded at him with a smile, without any hostility on his face.

"What the hell..."

Jiang Xinghuo did not dare to be careless at all. After taking a deep breath, he slowly stepped onto the stone bridge and walked towards the village.

"Young man, are you from outside the mountain?"

An old man asked with a smile.

Jiang Xinghuo nodded calmly and responded with a smile:
"Yes, you have a good eye. I came here to have fun. I heard that there is a village in the mountains with simple folk customs and beautiful scenery. That's why I came here to disturb you and wanted to go into the village to take a look."

"Okay, okay, just look around. Let's go to the old man's house for dinner tonight. Let's show our hospitality. I live in the third house from the bottom at the east end of the village. You can just go over there in the evening."

These old people were also very easy to talk to. Especially when they heard Jiang Xinghuo say that he came here from outside because of his reputation, they all warmly invited him to their homes.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Jiang Xinghuo also opened the Tathagata in his right eye. His small pupil flashed with barely visible divine light as he looked at the old men sitting under the big banyan tree.

However, he didn't notice anything wrong.

These old people are not monsters or ghosts, nor are they evil spirits. They just look like ordinary human beings.

But this is also the most abnormal part.

After the failure of the war in the past, most of the humans in the secular world were exiled to Earth. Only a few strong ones remained in the secular world, trying to find a way to guide their people back home from exile.

If these old people were really ordinary people, how could they have lived peacefully for so many years?

I'm afraid they would have been wiped out long ago by those evil-minded monsters.

"Then I won't be polite. I'll go to your place for dinner tonight and listen to you talk about the past of this village."

While dealing with these seemingly ordinary old people, Jiang Xinghuo walked around the big banyan tree, talking nonsense that was meaningless.

"Uncle, this tree is old, right?"

Jiang Xinghuo gently stroked the rough bark of the banyan tree and discovered an ancient artifact that had long since merged with the trunk, touching it with his fingertips.

"You have lit up the shrine of the Half-Ghost Village."

Jiang Xinghuo's eyes lit up slightly. It seemed that this shrine had not been abandoned and still retained its original capabilities.

The old man also waved the big palm-leaf fan in his hand and said with emotion:

"This tree has indeed existed for many years. It is said that it has been growing here since my great-grandfather's generation. It is so old that it is almost extinct. It is also the treasure of our Huangquan Village."

"When the sun comes out tomorrow morning, I will bring you here to worship. I can't say that I can make you live a hundred years, but at least I can make you immune to all diseases and live a peaceful life."

The elderly people around also echoed what he said, and asked Jiang Xinghuo to come and worship the tree tomorrow morning.

But Jiang Xinghuo noticed that the old man just said that this big banyan tree was the treasure of their Huangquan Village.

Huangquan Village? Shouldn’t this be called Half-Ghost Village? The prefix of the shrine is also Half-Ghost Village, how could it become Huangquan Village?

What exactly is going on?

Jiang Xinghuo realized the key to the problem, but it was not easy to ask it directly, so after thinking about it for a while, he asked tentatively:

"Old men, I heard that besides Huangquan Village, there is also a weird Half-Ghost Village here. Have you heard of it?"

After Jiang Xinghuo finished speaking, he stared at the expressions of the old men, wanting to see how they would react after hearing this name.

But the old men looked at each other with confusion on their faces, as if they had never heard of this name before.

"Half-ghost village, never heard of it..."

“Is there such a village?”

"Where did you hear that, young man?"

"It seems that there is no such village here..."

Jiang Xinghuo's brows furrowed even more, knowing that there must be something behind this. Huangquan Village was undoubtedly a half-ghost village, as evidenced by the shrine he activated.

But why don’t these old people know this?

Jiang Xinghuo looked at the village not far away again. With the light of the setting sun in the sky, he could clearly see a stone tablet at the entrance of the village, on which were indeed engraved the three big characters "Huangquan Village".

Seeing the confused looks of the elderly, Jiang Xinghuo smiled and said vaguely: "I just asked casually, don't take it to heart, I came here specifically for our Huangquan Village."

"Yes, our Huangquan Village is much better than that damn half-ghost village. You can go in and take a look around first. We can talk in detail when we come to my place for dinner tonight."

Jiang Xinghuo walked into the village.

He found that the structure of the village was very simple. Although there was only one main road, there were many houses in the village, with more than two hundred households.

Moreover, the villagers were very friendly towards outsiders. When they saw him walk into the village, they greeted him with a smile, or at least nodded, without any sign of rejection.

"The folk customs are really simple..."

Jiang Xinghuo muttered a few words, walked around twice, but didn't find anything unusual.

"Uncle, do you know how to listen carefully?"

Jiang Xinghuo met a middle-aged man smoking a pipe on the roadside. He thought that instead of running around like a headless fly, he might as well ask the villagers for clarification.

"What?"

The uncle was also stunned for a moment, and knocked his pipe on the sole of his shoe, then poured a cup of tea and handed it to Jiang Xinghuo.

"Listen carefully!" Jiang Xinghuo took the tea and repeated it again, thinking to himself, you'd better not try to play Ma Dongmei's tricks. At your age, you should not be that deaf.

"Listen carefully?"

The uncle shook his head and said, "I have been in this village for so many years, but I have never heard of Di Ting. What is that?"

"That is……"

Jiang Xinghuo was just thinking about how to explain when he heard a childish voice behind him: "Dad, I found a treasure!"

Jiang Xinghuo looked back and saw a little girl with pigtails running towards him from the village entrance. She handed the thing in her hand to the middle-aged man as if she was offering a treasure.

"Old man, this is a treasure I found in the field. Can you see what it is?"

The little girl wiped the sweat off her forehead, speaking in Northeastern dialect with a Sichuan accent. Her two big eyes rolled around, and it was obvious that she was a troublesome person.

The middle-aged man sighed helplessly and picked the weeds off the little girl's head. It seemed that he had long been accustomed to his daughter's style.

"This is……"

The middle-aged man looked at what his daughter stuffed into his hands and thought it was an ordinary stone or the skeleton of a snake or insect.

But when he saw that thing, he was speechless and had no idea how to answer his daughter's question.

Instead, Jiang Xinghuo's eyes lit up, and he recognized the thing in the other person's hand, the fragment of the Ear of Listening! !
It was exactly the same as the Di Ting fragment he found in Peking, and the texture looked no different, as if it was carved from rock.

"Brother, you have seen the world outside the mountains. Do you know what this is?"

As he spoke, the middle-aged man handed the fragment of Di Ting in his hand to Jiang Xinghuo.

"Uncle, this is what I'm looking for..."

Jiang Xinghuo squatted down and looked at the little girl, and asked, "Little sister, can you tell me where you found this thing?"

"In the field over there."

The little girl pointed to the rice fields outside the village and said, "There are so many there. I just picked one up at random. Guoguo, do you know what this is?"

Jiang Xinghuo rubbed the little girl's head, returned the fragment of the Ear of Listening to the middle-aged man, and said:

"This is a good thing. It can ward off evil spirits. It will only do good to keep it with you. But it's best not to let outsiders see it."

"Good stuff? There are still a lot of them in the field. Old man, big pot, we have to hurry and get a few more, otherwise those idiots will snatch them all away."

Jiang Xinghuo felt a little amused listening to the Northeastern Sichuan dialect assembled by the little girl herself.

The middle-aged man has an accent from Northeast China, so the child’s mother must be a woman from Bashu.

A child raised by parents from these two places, I’m afraid her future husband will be in big trouble.

The little girl was not shy, so she grabbed Jiang Xinghuo and the middle-aged man's hands and walked out of the village.

The rice field was located in a basin not far from the village. The little girl rolled up her trouser legs and ran to the paddy field to explore. After a short while, she caught a toad.

Jiang Xinghuo also opened his treasure-hunting eyes and Tathagata's treasure. Divine light flickered in the pupils of his two eyes, and he soon found the whereabouts of the other fragments.

To his surprise, the fragments of the Listening Ear were evenly distributed throughout the rice field.

"Could this be the burial place of Di Ting?"

Jiang Xinghuo began to wonder in his heart, and used the Xinghe Water Control Technique. The fragments of Di Ting buried under the mud were soon swept into the air by the water.

After a rough count, there were no less than a hundred.

Jiang Xinghuo was surprised to see so many fragments of Di Ting. He couldn't help but wonder, could it be that this Huangquan Village was also a relic of an old civilization?

According to the old man in the ancestral hall, Di Ting is the most perfect biological instrument of the previous civilization, which can monitor and eavesdrop on all the information in the world.

Now, there are so many fragments of Di Ting in the rice fields. The only answer to explain this phenomenon is that Huangquan Village was once a relic of the old secular world.

What's more, Huangquan Village is the place where Di Ting fell, otherwise it is impossible to explain why there are so many fragments left.

Jiang Xinghuo collected the Listening Ears. As for the things found by the children, he did not touch them. The children dug them out themselves, and it would be too shameless for him to snatch them away.

It would be fine if it was a text option, but now that his consciousness has been projected into the secular world, he really can't bring himself to do it.

At this time, the setting sun in the sky had completely gone down the mountain, the sky gradually darkened, and every household in the village turned on their lights.

"Brother, where are you staying tonight? If you don't mind, you can stay at my house for the night."

The middle-aged man invited Jiang Xinghuo, and the little girl held Jiang Xinghuo's arm tightly, her eyes full of admiration.

Just now, Jiang Xinghuo's ability to control the water flow really made the little girl envious.

But Jiang Xinghuo declined the middle-aged man's kindness, saying that he was going to the old man's house and that he had already accepted the other party's invitation.

I never thought that as soon as I said this.

The middle-aged man's expression changed.

"Brother, are you saying that the old man from the third-to-last house at the east end of the village invited you to have dinner at his house tonight?"

"Yeah, what's wrong? Any problem?"

Looking at the expression on the middle-aged man's face, Jiang Xinghuo suddenly had a bad feeling.

Could it be that the old man has already...

next moment.

The middle-aged man's words confirmed his thoughts.

"The old man you're talking about died seven days ago. We all helped to send him off and buried him in the cemetery at the back of the mountain. How could he..."

The middle-aged man's voice trembled a little.

Hearing this, Jiang Xinghuo couldn't help but feel his scalp tingling. Although he had expected this, he still felt a chill down his spine when he heard this out of the blue.

"Brother, you should go to my place first. After dinner, find a few people to go over and see what's going on."

"Okay, sorry to bother you then."

Jiang Xinghuo sighed softly.

The little girl was quite carefree. She held Jiang Xinghuo and her old man's hands and skipped towards home.

Jiang Xinghuo had other ideas.

According to the plot development of those domestic horror movies, the old man might come to me after a while.

There are two possibilities after that.

One is that as the middle-aged man said, the old man had been dead for a long time, and what he saw was not a person but a ghost.

Another possibility is that the old man told him that the middle-aged man and his family were ghosts, and then asked him to follow him quickly.

That's how horror movies work anyway.

(End of this chapter)