My Years in the Folklore World

Chapter 848 The Past
"You are hiding in the dimensional space, but you can directly observe the real world. Through the gap under the dormitory door, you can clearly see two pairs of footprints outside the dormitory door, distorted and projected into the dormitory. The sound of the suona is getting more and more passionate and piercing, sometimes high-pitched, sometimes low-pitched, but always filled with sadness and desolation."

"What are you going to choose now?"

"Would you choose to open the door and let the people outside into the dormitory to see who they are?"

"Or should we just sit there and wait for further developments, to see whether they come in openly or leave after seeing that their efforts are in vain?"

The game gives two optional answers, one is to open the door and let them in, and the other is to just watch.

Jiang Xinghuo thought about it and felt that the results of the two options were not much different. Since people from outside had come, they would not leave so easily.

To put it another way, even if you don't choose to open the door, there is a high probability that the person outside will break in on his own.

The only difference is what will happen after they come in. Jiang Xinghuo has a hunch that if he lets these people in, the subsequent plot development may not be so simple, and it is likely to make the other party alert, so it is better to let it go and see what choice the other party will make.

In this way, the initiative is in your own hands, and even if something unexpected happens, you will have more room for maneuver.

"You didn't choose to go over and open the door, but instead hid in the dimensional space, quietly observing the subsequent developments outside."

"And the sound of the suona outside the dormitory lingered for a long time, and the two pairs of footprints outside the door did not disappear, as if they were waiting for something."

"At this moment, you suddenly heard a strange noise coming from the window outside the real world. You turned your head and were immediately startled. You saw two pale and distorted faces sticking to the window and looking into the house. They were also wearing mourning clothes, and seemed to want to know who was in the house."

"But they were completely unable to understand the secrets of dimensional magic. No matter how hard they looked inside the house, they could not find your presence or traces. Finally, they seemed to lose their patience and suddenly swung their mourning sticks and hit the glass hard."

"At the same time, there was a sound of banging on the door outside the dormitory. After just a short moment, the dilapidated window and door were broken open by the outsiders, and several pale figures walked into the room."

"After they came in, they headed straight for the bed. When they discovered that the talisman on the bed board was lit up, but there was no one in the room, a hint of human doubt appeared on their rigid, numb, yet distorted faces."

"What are you going to choose now?"

"Will you continue to hide in the dimensional space and observe what happens next? Or will you show up immediately and capture these mourning men?"

Jiang Xinghuo thought about it and decided to continue observing. When he found nothing else, he would capture these people and see if he could use the mountain man's enlightenment to restrain them and make them his own servants.

"You chose to continue observing."

"These mourners didn't find you in the house, so they searched every corner without giving up. Finally, they stood in each corner, waving their mourning sticks and performing some kind of magic that you couldn't quite understand, but they still found nothing."

"The mourners suddenly became furious. They seemed to sense your mockery and vented their anger by destroying the bed. Then they walked out of the dormitory. Do you want to follow them and see what's going on?"

This time, Jiang Xinghuo did not choose to refuse, but chose to follow them, at least to find out where these people came from and where they were going. They couldn't just appear here out of thin air, there must be a path for them to travel back and forth.

He suspected that this dormitory building was connected to the Yang Town in the ruins of the old secular world, and those missing teachers and students might have been dragged into the Yang Town.

"You chose to follow the mourners. You found that after they walked out of the dormitory, they did not go downstairs, but ran upstairs. This dormitory building has seven floors. When you followed them to the seventh floor, you saw a wooden door at the end of the corridor. It was the kind of wooden door commonly seen in the mountains and on earth. There were two worn and faded door god portraits on it. It was half-open at this time. There was a faint white light flashing behind the door. It was unclear what it was. These mourners were running towards that wooden door."

"Do you want to follow in?"

Jiang Xinghuo chose yes without hesitation. He was just about to see what was behind the wooden door.

"You chose to follow these mourners. As you watched them enter the door, you also released the effect of the dimensional spell and planned to follow them in. But the moment you stepped into the wooden door, two mourning sticks wrapped in death energy came at you like wind and thunder. Their purpose was not to kill or injure you, but to force you outside the door and prevent you from entering."

"What are you going to do next?"

"Will you retreat immediately and avoid the attack of these two sticks? Or will you choose to stand firm and rush directly into the door?"

As soon as Jiang Xinghuo saw the description in the text, he immediately activated the protective method of the Tianwang Bell, intending to withstand the attack of the funeral stick and enter the wooden door.

"You activated it, the Uranus Bell."

"A large bell formed by magic power enveloped your body, and two mourning sticks hit you, but it didn't cause any ripples at all. You didn't even feel the pain, and you had already rushed behind the wooden door."

"What appears before your eyes is exactly the scene you saw in the illusion when you entered the dormitory on the third floor. A desolate ancient town is located on a wilderness plain. A path covered with weeds extends from the entrance of the ancient town to behind this wooden door."

"When those mourning men saw you rushing in from the wooden door, they immediately rushed over waving their mourning sticks, singing songs you couldn't understand."

"The abilities of these mourning men are very strange. When the mourning stick hits you, it seems to have a direct effect on your soul. You feel dazed and your three souls and seven spirits seem to be leaving your body. Fortunately, your Ten Directions Glazed Glass Calming Spirit Technique can make your soul and spirit as solid as ice, unaffected by the influence and harm of external forces. Otherwise, even if your cultivation is higher than theirs, you will probably be controlled by them." "But now they can't pose a threat to you, and can only let you slaughter them at will. You use the body-fixing technique to fix them in place, and then use the hermit's enlightenment technique to try to turn them into your own slaves and dependents. But the moment you use the hermit's enlightenment technique, the snow-white mourning clothes of these mourning men suddenly become dirty, as if they have been buried in the deep soil for countless years. Their originally full bodies also become like mummies in an instant, leaving only skeletons falling to the ground."

"Your Mountain Man Enlightenment Technique triggered the curse left in their bodies, causing them to be unable to reveal the information they knew. At the same time, you found that the space around you began to shatter, just like broken glass, with a large number of dense cracks appearing. Before you could react, a terrifying and powerful suction force pulled you out of this space."

"When you regained your sight, you were already back in the dormitory building. The wooden door embedded in the wall at the end of the corridor gradually disappeared, leaving only a mottled wall."

"You walked over and touched the wall, and activated your talent of Fiery Eyes and Golden Pupils, confirming that this wall was just an ordinary wall, without any traces of formations or cave fragments. However, you found a little ash at the base of the wall, which was still warm from burning, and vaguely showed traces of cinnabar, which should be the paper ash produced after the talisman was burned."

"What are your options next?"

"Do you choose to continue exploring here? Or do you choose to go to the building management office on the first floor?"

Jiang Xinghuo thought that since he was already here, he might as well waste his time, so he simply controlled the game character and conducted a detailed investigation on this floor. As a result, he found a talisman mark in the dormitory, but this mark was on the wall, not on the bed.

Jiang Xinghuo used the same trick again and smeared the mark on the talisman with blood, intending to summon those people in mourning again, but in the end there was no response.

I don’t know whether the other party had noticed his conspiracy or the talisman paper was destroyed, but there was no reaction at all.

There was no other way, so Jiang Xinghuo had to control the character to go to the first floor, intending to start from the place where the dead dormitory manager lived to see if he could find some clues.

"Now that you have arrived at the building management office on the first floor of the dormitory building, do you want to break in immediately?"

Jiang Xinghuo chose yes without hesitation.

"You broke open the closed door and walked into the dusty building management office. The furnishings in the room were simple, with a single bed, a desk, a chair, and a bunch of keys hanging on the wall. There was nothing else."

"You checked carefully. There was nothing on the bed, and there was no secret compartment or anything like that. However, there was a small restriction on the drawer of the desk. It wasn't very sophisticated, but it had an effect. If you didn't have the key, the restriction would be activated immediately, burning the desk to ashes. Naturally, the things inside would also be destroyed."

"And the key to open this drawer is placed on the wall beside it. It is not hidden at all, just like it is just hanging there. Do you want to take the key and open the drawer to see what is inside?"

"You used the key to open the drawer of the wooden table and found a piece of human skin letter inside. It was covered with words written in blood. This ensured that the letter would not decay or be damaged over time."

"You read this letter and got a glimpse into the past, and learned what happened in this dormitory building."

"The deceased dormitory manager was originally a teacher at this medical school, but he lost an arm while saving people. Although he got a new arm, it is far less flexible than before and he can no longer continue teaching activities, so he volunteered to become a dormitory manager."

"But on the night of the Ghost Festival that year, the dorm manager encountered his doomed disaster. He suddenly heard the harsh sound of suona in the middle of the night."

"Just when it wanted to go out and take a look, it suddenly found that its body had become uncontrollable, like a puppet being manipulated by someone. Although its consciousness remained clear and it was still its own, it was unable to control its body at all."

"It saw itself walk over and open the door of the dormitory building, letting in countless strange people in mourning."

"Those weirdos roamed the entire dormitory building and took away all the students and teachers who lived here, but only left it here. When it regained its mobility, it found that the entire medical school was deserted, and it was the only one left here, wandering like a lonely ghost."

"The dormitory manager felt that he had killed the people in the dormitory building. In order to avenge those people, he began to investigate the matter alone. In the end, he found the talisman engraved inside the dormitory. He knew that it was a long-lost talisman that could summon unspeakable horrors."

"In order to find out the truth, the dormitory manager also activated this talisman, wanting to see who was causing the trouble."

"It did successfully attract those people in mourning, but it was never able to enter the world that belonged to them. All it knew was that it was a relic of the old world called 'Yang Town'."

"So, the dormitory manager took great pains to find the ticket for the hearse that was wandering in the secular world. He wanted to use this ticket to enter the town of disaster, even if it meant dying there."

"The dormitory manager wrote down the whole story on this human-skin letter and locked it in a drawer. It didn't know if it could come back again, so it wanted to record what happened. In this way, even if it couldn't come back, if someone came here, they could find the suicide note it left behind."

"Moreover, the dormitory manager deliberately made two preparations. He found that those people in mourning had no logical thinking ability and their behavior style was extremely rigid. They did not know how to adapt. Even if they knew there was a letter hidden in the drawer, they would violently destroy it, which would trigger the prohibition above and burn everything to ashes."

"Only those worldly beings who truly possess wisdom can enter here and find the key to open the drawer and the human-skin letter that records what happened."

"I have to say that the dormitory manager's move was a clever move, but in the end, man proposes, God disposes."

"Although it had calculated everything, it had not expected that it would suddenly die. It would not be able to step onto the hearse, let alone enter the relic of the old world, 'Yang Town'."

"And the ticket for the hearse has also fallen on your shoulders. It is entirely up to you to decide whether to enter the town of trouble to find the truth..."

(End of this chapter)