This place is fun

Chapter 190 The Ember Gathering

The information that appeared in his mind made Su Daoshan instantly understand the purpose of these dolls.

However, Su Daoshan looked at them from left to right and found them increasingly disgusting. These dolls were uglier than the last. They didn't seem meant for children to play with, but rather for warding off evil spirits or protecting the house. Some had blank faces, others had crooked mouths and noses, and some had one eye bigger than the other.

It reeks of being poorly made, no matter how you look at it.

As a seasoned anime fan from his previous life, Su Daoshan felt that if he chose these dolls as his substitutes, he would probably be struck by lightning on the spot.

Fortunately, these dolls are not the only option.

So Su Daoshan began to concentrate on his meditation. Soon, a panda appeared on the table, wearing a straw hat and a cloak, with a bamboo leaf in its mouth and a green bamboo stick stuck in its back.

"This is more mainstream. Other things like Hello Kitty, Transformers, Labubu, Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf might not be suitable for them."

Su Daoshan looked at the panda with satisfaction, then entered it with his soul and completed the binding with the doll.

The panda plush toy came to life.

Su Daoshan stretched his arms and moved his legs. He knew that from this moment on, as long as he entered this teahouse, this would be his symbol of identity within it.

No one here knows their identity in the real world, nor can anyone perceive their own Dao Seed through spiritual sense. All they know is this panda dressed as a knight-errant.

Su Daoshan jumped off the table, walked to the door of the teahouse hall, stretched out his chubby paws, pushed the door open, and went inside.

Before them lay a spacious and bright hall, roughly the size of two classrooms from their previous life. The floor was made of wood, and five enormous windows lined the outer wall, letting in sunlight and revealing a verdant hillside. The light and view were superb.

And that's all.

There were no tables or chairs. Only a few straw cushions and thick cloth mats were scattered haphazardly on the ground.

When Su Daoshan pushed open the door, the first thing he saw was a bat doll hanging below the oil lamp holder, its eyes closed and swaying precariously. It was made of leather of varying sizes, tattered and covered in stitches. Especially its half-open wings, which were riddled with holes.

On the same chandelier stands a wooden raven with blue eyes and a tuft of white feathers on its head.

When Su Daoshan entered, the crow was bowing its head, seemingly trying to persuade the bat. The bat faced the door, its rear end pointing towards the tea table, its tattered wings covering its ears, looking as if to say, "I won't listen, I won't listen."

Upon seeing Su Daoshan enter, more than a dozen pairs of eyes immediately turned towards him.

"Huh?" The crow dropped the bat, flapped its wings, flew to Su Daoshan, hopped around the cute doll, its eyes sparkling, and uttered a clear female voice, "So cute."

Suddenly, Su Daoshan felt as if the tea room had erupted into a mass riot of animals. With a clatter of tables and chairs, he was instantly surrounded by all sorts of dolls.

Besides the crows and bats, the fastest were a fur ferret and a cloth tiger. Next were a bamboo snake, a red paper-cut magpie, a straw goat, and an origami crane.

Further back on the periphery, there is a rag doll dog, a ceramic pig, a porcelain fish, and an iron turtle.

Although they were all dolls, once imbued with spirit, each one came to life. Su Daoshan could even clearly see the surprised and curious look in their eyes as they looked at him.

What kind of doll is this?

"Look at its dark circles under its eyes. And its chubby little hands."

"Give me a hug..." Amidst the chatter, a soft, seductive female voice rang out, and the bamboo snake instantly coiled around Su Daoshan's short legs, climbing upwards. However, she was immediately snatched away by a ferret.

"Stop acting like a jerk." The ferret tossed the bamboo snake aside, and seeing her struggle, simply pinned her down with its paws. Then it nodded to Su Daoshan and said, "Coming."

Although the voice was completely different from Song Xier's, Su Daoshan knew that this snow-white ferret with scarlet eyes was his senior sister.

"They've arrived." Su Daoshan smiled slightly at the ferret, then clasped his hands in a salute to the crowd.

"Are you the newcomer Sister Little Mink was talking about?" the white-haired crow's female voice asked curiously. "What kind of doll is this, a bear?"

“This is a panda…” As a deep, youthful male voice rang out, Tao Zhu stepped out from the group of dolls. “Records from the old era indicate that it appears in Chongyun Prefecture, Tianlu Prefecture, and the Min River basin on the mainland. It was captured and tamed by the Kang Kingdom in its early years and kept in the palace. It is gentle and affectionate by nature, but extremely fierce when it gets angry.”

Tao Zhu looked Su Daoshan up and down and said, "However, after the cataclysmic disaster and the rupture of spacetime, the entire Kangguo region was swept into the spacetime turbulence. Very few related books survived, and there are even fewer images of pandas. I didn't expect that there would still be someone who knows about this strange beast..."

As he spoke, he gave Su Daoshan a pig's trotter gesture and laughed, "This brother is clearly a man of great knowledge and experience..."

“Alright,” the ferret interrupted Tao Zhu, and said to Su Daoshan, “Let me introduce you…”

The ferret's paws started with the clay pig, pointing to each of the dolls in turn: "Clay pig... crow called White Hair... bat called Little Fortune... this snake called A Jiao... cloth tiger called Old Wang... porcelain fish called A Yu... magpie chirping... this is a goat... iron tortoise... white crane... puppy..."

Su Daoshan was speechless.

Song Xier gave a long, rambling introduction, but it was all nonsense. The people present either referred to the dolls directly or gave them nicknames, but the main principle was the same—the introduction was as good as no introduction at all.

After introducing everyone, Song Xier said to Su Daoshan, "We are all survivors of the Crown Prince case, so our organization is called the Ember Society."

When Song Xier finished speaking, although everyone around her seemed perfectly normal, Su Daoshan could clearly sense that the atmosphere in the room suddenly became quiet for a moment. It was as if a piece of wood had been thrown into water, sank sharply, and then floated back to its original position.

"The Embers..."

Su Daoshan silently pondered these three words.

Although the Su family's circumstances were vastly different from those of these families who had been destroyed, he could fully understand the complex emotions contained in those three words. At the same time, he also gained a new understanding of these "companions" whose real identities he did not know and whose avatars he had never seen in the spiritual realm.

Upon closer reflection, it's actually not important whether everyone knows each other or not. What matters is that everyone here has the same experiences, the same labels, the same goals, and perhaps even their circumstances are roughly similar.

The tragedy of families being torn apart and lives lost is enough to pull everyone's different lives onto the same track. Thus, people are brought together by fate, without needing to know each other well. As long as they work together in this teahouse to promote certain things, that is enough.

That's why everyone hides behind a doll's mask. They're just a bunch of embers huddled together for warmth.

Perhaps there are other embers. But those who can become extraordinary warriors and enter this teahouse are the largest, reddest, and most likely to ignite the flames of revenge among the embers.

Even a fool could tell that the existence of such an organization must be supported by some kind of force.

“Alright, now give yourself a name…” Song Xi’er said.

"Everyone can just call me Abao," Su Daoshan said, deciding to maintain his taciturn persona.

Song Xier turned to the crowd and said, "I introduced Abao. I can vouch for him. I think no one should have any doubts about his identity, right?"

Upon hearing this, everyone shook their heads. Clearly, they had no objections.

Su Daoshan observed this and thought to himself, "It seems my senior sister holds a high position and prestige within the Ember Society. Otherwise, such a secretive organization, even with everyone concealing their identities, wouldn't allow a complete stranger to join so easily."

"Everyone's here," the crow cawed, flapping its wings at the cloth tiger. "Old Wang, let's have a meeting. I have to get up early soon... Honestly, when will this hardship end..."

As the cloth tiger waved its paw, everyone found a futon or cloth cushion and sat down.

Su Daoshan looked around, found a futon next to Song Xier, and just as he sat down cross-legged, he noticed that the bamboo snake and the white crow had squeezed together next to him.

The bamboo snake clung tightly to him, while a white crow simply perched on his shoulder. Above him, a tattered bat hung upside down.

Everyone was staring at him.

There's no way around it; these anthropomorphic panda doll images created through anime and manga are simply a case of "dimensional reduction" compared to the dolls in this world.

See? See?

Su Daoshan kept his eyes focused on his nose and his nose focused on his heart, completely oblivious to everything.

"Today is a grand gathering," said Ciyu, a man in his thirties who was presiding over the event. "Let me first report on a few things that everyone is concerned about... First, Dong Xiujie is dead."

Su Daoshan looked around. He didn't know who Dong Xiujie was, but he noticed that when Ciyu talked about this, her tone was calm, and everyone present listened calmly without showing any surprise.

It seemed like I had heard some very ordinary news.

Porcelain Fish continued, "According to the information, three days ago, he was ordered by the Third Division of the Criminal Investigation Bureau to go on official business in the south. On the way, he was ambushed and hit by three punches and eight palms, which directly shattered his heart meridian and dantian. Even his head was half crushed. At the same time, he also had three serious knife wounds and two fatal sword wounds..."

Porcelain Fish looked around: "If I'm not mistaken, it was the work of many people working together. The martial arts realm of those who made the move is all above the fifth rank, and at least two of them are extraordinary."

Su Daoshan's heart skipped a beat.

He never expected that Dong Xiujie, whom the porcelain fish had mentioned, was actually a steward of the Criminal Investigation Bureau.

In the silence, the straw-woven goat coughed and said, "This scoundrel has a bloody reputation and is utterly wicked. When I found out about him last time, I just mentioned it casually in the meeting, thinking that we might not have the chance to run into him. But I never expected that he would actually be dead."

As he spoke, the straw-woven goat turned its head to look at the crow.

A crow suddenly flew up from Su Daoshan's shoulder and pecked open a knot in the rope on the roof. With a whoosh, an unfolded scroll fell to the ground.

Su Daoshan looked closely and saw that the scroll was densely covered with names. Many of them had been marked with a red cross.

As the cloth tiger's claw slashed across Dong Xiujie's name, it was also crossed out.

The fallen bat then rolled the scroll back up.

It was as if nothing had happened.

Su Daoshan swallowed hard. He had gained a basic understanding of the organization's daily operations and also had some awareness of their power.

Some were gathering information and tracking their movements, some were taking action, or they were using other forces to do so... They were hunting down people from the imperial court, and they were clearly very skilled at it, having done it countless times before.

As he pondered, a thought flashed through his mind, and Su Daoshan's heart stirred. Just then, as if knowing what he was thinking, Song Xi'er's voice rang in his ear: "In the Ember Society, everyone is scattered all over the country, each with their own profession and sect. And currently, apart from me, no one is in Xia Prefecture."

This is the whisper function in the teahouse, allowing you to whisper to a specific person.

Su Daoshan understood, and felt a pang of regret. They were both from the Criminal Investigation Bureau, and he had originally planned to use the power of the Ember Society to eliminate Sun Zheng…

But thinking about it, it makes sense. The entire Ember Society only has about a dozen people, so their influence is bound to be limited. Plus, everyone's operating in the shadows, which restricts their ability to cooperate. For a target like Dong Xiujie, they must have a set of procedures in place; they can't just act arbitrarily.

“Next, there’s news about the You Clan’s invasion,” Porcelain Fish said. “As everyone knows, two days ago, the You Clan captured eight cities overnight. More than 1.5 million people have fallen. There had been no news of these cities before, but now, scouts have already sent word…”

Everyone's ears pricked up.

This is the most significant event that has occurred recently. Not only in Xi Kingdom, but the entire continent is focused on the truth.

"So far, we haven't found a single survivor," Porcelain Fish's voice was somewhat low. "Corpses are everywhere. Large numbers of the dead have been turned into mad puppets by the Netherfire. A mad puppet tide has formed and is spreading in all directions... We don't yet know exactly how the Nether Clan conquered these cities, but the worst-case scenario has been confirmed..."

“Furthermore, there’s something even more important, perhaps related to the You Clan’s conquest of these eight cities,” Porcelain Fish said. “An adventure team escaped from the Lost Lands north of the Ai Li Mountains in Jingguo. Of the thirty-odd people, only three survived. Moreover, one went mad, and another is in a coma…”

"The remaining conscious one said that in the Lost Lands, a giant spatial rift was discovered, with green light constantly pouring in from the rift..." Porcelain Fish said, pausing for a moment before adding, "Or perhaps the Netherworld has descended."

The room was completely silent.

The Netherworld and the Netherworld are both places of descent, but the difference of just one word represents a world of difference.

(End of this chapter)