I'm a weird expert in Japan

Shiyu helplessly corrected, "Even if you don't want to admit it, the correct way to read it is 'kodama'. 'Mei' itself has the meaning of 'soul', so it can be read as 'dama (soul)'."

"Really..." Lian's Chinese is very poor.

He only started learning Japanese grammar after he officially returned to Japan at the age of twelve, and his spoken and written abilities are completely different.

As for Mu Mei, I just remembered these two words, and the pronunciation has long been unclear.

Lian was speechless once Shiyu corrected her.

"It seems that we have the same idea." Shiyu closed the notebook.

"Yeah..." Lian responded quietly.

Mumei, also known as Muling, literally means a tree with souls living in it, so Shiyu’s pronunciation is the correct one, or the original one.

The legend of this tree is popular in Hyōgo Prefecture in Kansai. Although similar rumors can be found all over Japan today, the content that best fits the original impression still only exists in Hyōgo Prefecture.

The so-called eight million gods, every blade of grass and every tree can be a god.

The connection between trees and souls is not inexplicable in Japan, where Shintoism flourishes.

There are many different opinions about the details of this weirdness, but the common point is -

The appearance of a wood spirit is no different from that of an ordinary tree, and ordinary people cannot distinguish it at all. If someone rashly knocks down or damages this tree, that person and the entire village will suffer a great disaster.

As if to exchange information, Shiyu narrated word by word the information she had learned about "Wood Spirit".

"Disaster..." Lian felt a little depressed. He rolled down the window and looked at the highway leaving Tokyo.

misfortune.

A very serious disaster.

It’s happening to the entire football department right now.

As for the cause, through the information collected by Ogiso Setsuna without knowing anything, he and Kasumigaoka Utaha captured the key information almost at the same time.

Attacking trees. Or using trees as a medium to vent your anger, beating and kicking them.

This behavior is not very rare, and can even be said to be very secretive. If there are no witnesses except the person involved, no trace will be left.

however--

"Not only is there no trace left, but the blind venting of emotions has brought disaster to the football club." Shi Yu lowered his eyes, "According to the folk legend, it may spread to the entire school."

"That would be really bad—" Lian had to think so.

Regardless of the fact that Mr. Hanekawa and Mr. Oshino would not be harmed individually, the strangeness that involves the entire school is bound to cause a huge commotion.

By then, I might not be able to continue to spend my last year of high school in Fengzhizaki peacefully.

"It's really unlucky to say the least." Shiyu sighed.

"As someone who was chosen by the crab spirit to be a trash can, don't feel sorry for others. It has already happened, and there is no point in dwelling on the cause." Lian said, "As long as there is such a situation, it will happen there, that's all."

Of course, geography and climate are also important, he added.

"But in fact, the concept of wood spirits originated from China. It is mentioned in a book called Shuowen that 'Mei, the spirit of old things'. 'Mei' actually refers to the spirit of all things; wood spirits are actually tree monsters." Shiyu said, "For the same tree spirits, the name 'wood spirits' (mokurei) is more appropriate."

"Then why did it become 'Wooden Spirit'?" Lian was a little curious about this evolution.

He is not very knowledgeable, he just has more knowledge than ordinary people, which does not mean he really knows everything.

"Do you even need to ask?" Shiyu smiled and looked at Lian. "The name 'spirit' was abandoned and replaced with 'charm'. Perhaps people at that time hoped, or believed, that wood charmers were monsters that could confuse people, rather than gods that needed to be worshipped."

"Names can constrain strange forms of existence." Lian was not surprised. "It is no exception for me. It's just that... the existence of Mu Mei now is more like the result of people's faith and wishes from generation to generation."

Chapter 97 Chapter 2 Emperor Wood Spirit ()

Along the way, after chatting about weird things for more than ten minutes, Shiyu lowered the car window a little, closed her eyes and rested in the breeze. Lian was not the kind of person who couldn't stand loneliness without someone to talk to.

So he didn't wake up Shiyu until the car arrived in Takasago City.

The forks in the highway were not very complicated, and with the help of GPS, Lian managed to reach her destination. However, after entering the city, she still needed Shiyu's help to observe the road conditions.

The city at night and the city during the day are two completely different things for someone with poor sense of direction, let alone the unfamiliar Takasago City.

While refueling her car at a gas station, Shiyu took great pains to inquire about local customs.

"If you are not good at communicating with strangers, don't do it. It's very uncomfortable, isn't it?" Lian felt a little bit reluctant when she saw Shiyu's look.

Shiyu said naturally, "Just because I don't like to communicate with people doesn't mean I don't have the ability to communicate. Just leave this kind of small matter to me."

"Are you stupid? There are so many homestays here. If you look for them one by one, you can go there next week." Lian leaned against the car window and shook her head at Shiyu.

"Then what do you say we should do?" Shiyu was a little dissatisfied. She did something she didn't like for him, but in the end she didn't even get a word of comfort.

"You've worked so hard for nothing." Lian made a face, "There's no need to go through so much trouble."

"Haha..." Shiyu didn't know whether she should be happy or not, and nodded hesitantly.

Lian pointed her finger at the night sky and said, "I can already feel where we are. We'll be there soon if we follow the wind. Get in the car."

Lian lowered the roof and switched to open-air sports car mode, so that he could feel the strange scent floating in the wind more directly.

It is not difficult to find Mu Mei by following the scent, but it is a little more remote than expected, almost on the other side of Takasago City, and one needs to drive across the entire city.

"What are you looking at?" Lian noticed that Shiyu enlarged a picture with her mobile phone.

On an old pine tree with lush branches and leaves, an old man and an old woman were sweeping up the fallen leaves with cleaning tools.

"This?" Shiyu held up her phone. "This is a scene from the famous Noh play Takasago, which tells the story of a wood spirit named Aioi pine."

As the name suggests, the story of "Takasago" takes place in ancient Takasago.

According to legend, an old pine tree in Takasago and an old pine tree in Sumiyoshi are a pair of pine trees that grew together, but since Takasago and Sumiyoshi are far apart, many people are puzzled by this. Once, when the chief priest of Aso Shrine in Higo Province, Tomonari, was traveling in Takasago, he saw an old couple sweeping up debris under the shade of a pine tree while enjoying the view, so he approached and asked about it.

The old man replied that it was the tacit understanding between the couple that enabled them to cross the geographical boundaries, and these two old men were the pine tree monsters of Takasago and Sumiyoshi.

After getting off the car outside the B&B at the destination, Lian and Shiyu walked to the backyard of the B&B, looking for the tree while listening to Shiyu telling the general content of the Noh play story.

"…Therefore, in today's traditional Japanese weddings, you can also see the custom of singing the ballad "Takasago", which means to congratulate the couple on their long and happy marriage." Shiyu said with a smile.

"It's a very romantic story, right?" Lian suddenly smiled.

"Oh, what a surprise. I thought you would say that this story is too old-fashioned or that the content is too predictable." Shiyu said in surprise, "After all, this story is compiled based on legends, so it's hard to say whether it's true or not."

"Are you looking down on me?" Lian raised an eyebrow. "Although we didn't grow up on the same land, our love has transcended geographical boundaries... It's not hard for me to understand. After all, I know that some people have even transcended the boundaries of race, age, and even life span."

“Is that so…” Shiyu panicked.

I thought Lian was hinting at me.

"What do you mean?" she asked tentatively.

"I'm talking about my father and mother." Lian stopped in front of a tree. "My mother is a vampire who has lived for hundreds of years, but my father is just a human who is less than 40 years old."

“…Is that so?” Shiyu felt frustrated.

She really thought too much, to the point of forgetting the cases that Lian could think of without thinking, and naturally she would have some insights into the story about the wood spirit in "Takasago".

"But Noh is just Noh, a romantic imagination given by people." Lian looked at the tree in front of him, "The wood spirit does not have a specific image, but we can feel that there is indeed a spirit living in it, protecting the land."

"Is this... the wood spirit that was injured by the soccer club?" Shiyu circled around the pine tree and observed it. "I can't see any scars at all."

Lian reached out her hand and touched the pine tree. "That's only from a human perspective. If you look at it from a tree's perspective, or from a weird perspective, it will be a completely different picture."

"Wait a minute, is it okay to just touch me like this?" Shiyu asked worriedly.

"I went to such great lengths to travel all the way from Kanto to Takasago in Kansai, just for this matter, right?"

Lian didn't care. In Shiyu's sight, his hand gradually lost the color of the skin and turned into the dark brown color of the bark.

To be more precise, Lian's hands merged with the bark, as if his entire body was connected to the tree.

"Lian..." Shiyu stepped back fearfully.

"Vampires can, to a certain extent, transform their bodies into something else, such as a tree—"

Lian said this and tore off his own hand as if breaking a tree, but no blood flowed out. The cross section was as neat as a log, and the hand that remained on the tree gradually turned into part of the bark.

The whole process happened in the blink of an eye. When Shiyu came to her senses, Lian's hand had returned to normal.

"What did you do..." Shiyu asked weakly, holding her hands.

"I just used my own hand as a price to compensate for the damage done to Mu Mei." Lian moved his right hand.

After donating a part of his body, the anger of the wood spirit was calmed, and then the curse suffered by the members of the football club would dissipate.

If Di hadn't been in trouble, Lian would never have wanted to run so far and break off a hand and then grow it back.

"I thought you would cut down this tree like you did before..." Shiyu teased faintly.

"The wood ghost itself is a harmless monster. If it hadn't been hit by someone, it wouldn't have spread a curse of this scale." Lian put his hands on his hips, "Besides, this ancient tree is the property of the B&B. How much do you think we should pay if we cut it down?"

"Indeed." Shiyu smiled knowingly, "So, shall we go back now?"

"I want to stay here. If you're in a hurry to go back, I can buy you a plane ticket." Lian spread her hands and looked towards the southeast of Takasago City. "This place is very close to Kyoto. I plan to go there tomorrow to take a look--"

"What are you going to do in Kyoto?" Shiyu thought Lian was going to sightsee.

She thought that during this season when all students were in school, the tourist attractions would be quite empty.

"Nothing, just taking a look."

Chapter 98: One Night in Takasa (1)

After dinner, Lian sat in the room to rest. From the open window, she could see the lake southeast of Takasago.

"please--"

Kasumigaoka Utaha placed a cup of tea in front of him.

"...I said, can you go back to your room now?" Lian's eyes twitched, "I picked the best room for you, you don't have to stay here, right?"

As a result, it was already very late when we finished dealing with things on Takasago's side, and after dinner, it was already past ten o'clock.

No matter how you look at it, it is not appropriate for Kasumigaoka Utaha to go back alone, so Lian booked two rooms in the B&B.

In order to shut Shiyu up as much as possible, he specially selected the best VIP room and the cheapest room, and gave the former to Kasumigaoka Shiyu so that she would stay in the room obediently overnight.

However, in reality it was of no use. Not only did they have to eat dinner together, but after the meal they did not go back to their room in an old-fashioned way. Instead, they started drinking tea as if they were guests living here, and did not forget to pour him a cup.

"What's the matter? This is the first time I travel with a boy to a place as far away as Kansai." Shiyu said softly, holding the teacup, "Although I know that I came here for something weird... I'm still very excited."

"Where are you excited?"

"It's not the weekend, but you're going out all of a sudden. You're destined to miss school the next day. Don't you feel a sense of rebellion?" Shiyu said excitedly, "Sneaking into this remote area is like eloping."

"...If you've eloped, you can't go further, like going overseas."

"In that case, Northern Europe or Alaska might be better. If possible, we can go to Greenland. I haven't seen the scenery of the northern frigid zone yet." Shiyu suggested seriously, as if she was really going to set off tomorrow. "By the way, how about going to Africa and driving an off-road jeep across the prairie?"

"I hope you won't be eaten as lunch by a lion along the way." Lian laughed, "With a delicate skin like yours, a lion probably won't even need to chew it."

Shiyu said disapprovingly, "What are you talking about? Don't we still have you?"

"The scene of you being eaten is too bloody. I can't bear to watch it, so I will leave the front line as soon as possible." Lian shrugged and said indifferently.

"How cold-blooded..." Shiyu pretended to be disappointed.

In fact, up to now, Lian has had more than one opportunity to ignore her and let Shiyu fend for herself, but he never did so once.

No matter what the reason was, at least Shiyu knew that Lian was telling a joke seriously at this moment.

"This joke has been played once." Lian reminded.

"But no matter how cold-blooded a man is, there will always be heat inside his rectum." Shiyu continued to speak the incredible lines seriously.

Lian immediately covered her butt with her hands, "Hey... can you be any more shameless?"

"Is this the first day you met me?"

"Tsk..." Lian raised her hand, "So you can go back now?"

"How am I going to get back to Tokyo so late?"

"I mean, let's go back to the room?" Lian glared at Shiyu. "You have a prime VIP room but you insist on staying here."

Shiyu sighed quietly, "Ah, I am a girl from an ordinary working-class family. I am used to living an ordinary life and I am not used to living too well."