Chapter 181： Village of the Living Dead

As everyone expected in advance, the road up the mountain is very difficult—

The first section is a plank road, built along the mountain wall, winding up the mountain, with the mountain wall on the left and the bottomless valley on the right.

On this side of the valley, there are handrails made of wood, which can prevent people from accidentally falling down the mountain while walking on the plank road.

It can be seen that the wood is of good quality and the structure is strong and stable.

However, after all, this place has been abandoned for more than 20 years. These wooden railings have long been softened and rotted by the wind and sun. No one has maintained them, and they can break with the slightest touch.

After walking along the plank road, there is a long stone step, going straight up.

The path was carved out of stone and was inherently slippery. No one had walked or cleaned it for so many years, and it was covered with moss.

There was also accumulation of dew and fallen leaves, making it almost impossible to find a place to stay.

Therefore, you need to be extra careful when walking on this road. If you don't pay attention, you will either fall off the plank road and fall to the bottom of the valley, or roll down the stone steps and fall half to death.

But this is nothing to Pei Anzhu.

She took every step very steadily, and even quietly solved the difficult positions to make it easier for other ordinary people to go up the mountain.

With Pei Anzhu's current level of cultivation, she can use cleaning spells, dust removal spells and other spells to create a clean path with a wave of her hand.

But she can't go too far.

In the eyes of Officer Du and others, she is just a master of metaphysics with high abilities. Even if she can exorcise evil spirits and catch ghosts, it is within the reasonable scope of the records.

But if people knew that she could soar through the clouds and turn the rain over, then she would truly be an anomaly.

Since there was no need to worry about safety issues, Pei Anzhu walked not slowly. She climbed up step by step. It took more than an hour to climb to the top of the mountain.

At this time, it was exactly eleven o'clock in the middle of the night.

There is an antique building on the top of the mountain. The signboard reads Ji'an Temple, which is the former name of Ruyi Mountain. The temple enshrines Buddhist beliefs such as Tathagata, Guanyin, and Eighteen Arhats.

But Ji'an Temple is already very dilapidated, with mottled walls and incomplete bricks. If it rains, you can feel the baptism of rain in the house.

The Buddha statues are even more withered, and we don’t know what happened here. Some of the Buddha statues have their heads cut off, some have their arms and legs cut off, and some have even been pushed down, as if they have experienced a catastrophe.

Pei Anzhu walked around the entire temple and found nothing wrong.

On the contrary, in the merit box in the corner, I found a lot of currency from twenty years ago. If you take this out, you can go to the bank and exchange it for a lot of money.

But Pei Anzhu is not a money-grubbing person. She didn't touch anything here. She just explored the surroundings based on the map given by Director Sun.

As she walked, she let go of her consciousness and observed everything on the mountain as if scanning.

There is absolutely no reason for the disappearance. There must be something on this mountain that ordinary people cannot detect.

Thinking of this, Pei Anzhu took out the Bagua Compass from his backpack.

This Bagua Compass was seized from the liar Wang Daxi when we were in Hanjiacun. It was the same batch as the soul-binding rope.

Since Master Zhao has recognized that the spirit-binding rope belongs to Shuyunguan, then the Bagua compass must be inseparable from it.

Most of Shu Yun Guan's magical weapons were brought from the world of cultivation by the founder, Shu Yun Zhenren, so they are driven by spiritual power.

The magic weapon is much more effective in the hands of Pei Anzhu than in the hands of the liar Wang Daxi.

Pei Anzhu injected spiritual power into the Bagua compass, and the compass' pointer began to rotate crazily until it became faster and faster, and finally pointed in a certain direction.

That was in the northwest of Ji'an Temple. Pei An, a master of bamboo arts, was brave and walked towards it.

After walking about three kilometers, the Bagua compass started to vibrate like crazy, and the pointer began to move around, as if the magnetic field failed and it was completely inoperable.

But what appeared in front of Pei Anzhu's eyes was a cliff. The bottom of the cliff was pitch black and nothing could be seen. Looking down, the rich black color was like a sinking abyss.

If you are an ordinary person, you will only feel that everything is unusual, either nostalgic for taking pictures, or turning his head to leave.

But for Pei Anzhu, she knew that she had found a place.

This cliff, just like the road in the back mountain of Shuyun Temple, is a clever deception, but in Pei Anzhu's eyes, this deception is as transparent as -

She saw it with little effort.

Behind this bottomless, chasm-like cliff was a completely different scene, and she decided to take a look.

But before going to check, she learned about the group of people at the foot of the mountain.

So she called Officer Du.

Police Officer Du stayed up late last night at the Zhou family's mountain manor. He went to bed very early tonight. When he was woken up by the phone, his thoughts were still a little slow.

But as soon as I saw the caller ID, I immediately became energetic:

“Master Pei, is something okay?”

"I found something on Ruyi Mountain and I plan to go take a look." Pei Anzhu said, "The plan we made before has been cancelled. You are not allowed to come up until I come out and notify you."

“Why?” Officer Du asked, “Is it dangerous?”

"It's very dangerous. Even if I can protect so many people, it will delay things. It's better for me to act alone." Pei Anzhu said.

“Is it related to the disappearance case?” Officer Du asked again.

“Eighty percent.”

"Okay, I will convey your message to everyone early tomorrow morning and wait for your news."

"Help me take good care of Shen Yueran. She is a girl and has never suffered much. I'm afraid she won't be used to it."

"no problem."

After hanging up the phone, Pei Anzhu walked toward the cliff with his bag on his back and a determined look. The next second, a severe feeling of weightlessness came. Pei Anzhu suppressed his subconscious instinct to fly in the air and allowed himself to fall freely.

At this moment, she was completely an ordinary girl. She lost her footing and fell off the cliff.

The fall took a long time, the surroundings were dark, there was no reference, and even human perception became blurred.

It seems like a moment, and it seems like a long time has passed.

Pei Anzhu’s feet stepped on solid ground, and another scene appeared in front of him—

It was a small and medium-sized village.

It looks very old, not like the new rural areas of today at all. It looks like a backcountry with no traffic a few decades ago. The houses have walls made of mud and mud, without even a brick.

At a glance, there seemed to be twenty or thirty households in the village. Each house had a lantern hanging at the door, with candles burning in the lantern, giving it a strange cyan color.

The stars are dotted and the shadows are like wisps in the cemetery.

At the entrance of the village, there is a relatively large stone tablet with three words engraved on it: Living Village.

At first glance, it is a name with a story.

Pei Anzhu curled his lips and entered the village with a calm pace.

With a creak, the door opened.

In the quiet night, the sound sounded particularly strange. Soon, the door of the house closest to Pei Anzhu opened, and an old woman in her sixties walked out.

The old lady was wearing old-fashioned floral clothes, old-fashioned cloth shoes, and a scarf on her head. She was holding a candlestick in her hand, and the candlelight was flickering in the night.

"Girl, why are you here in the middle of the night?" the old lady asked with a faint look.

If she were an ordinary young girl, she would be scared and sick right now.

But Pei Anzhu is not an ordinary person, she opened her mouth and made up:

"Grandma, I don't know how I got here. I am a student at the Academy of Fine Arts. Under the guidance of my teacher, I went up the mountain to collect scenery and paint. I couldn't sleep at night and wanted to go out for a walk. I didn't know why I ended up here. "

“What is this place? Why haven’t I seen this place during the day?”

The old lady grinned, her gaping teeth looking particularly terrifying in the candlelight, and she said:

“Did you see the stone monument outside? We are a living village here.”

"What a strange name. How come there is a village called this?" Pei Anzhu looked puzzled, "Is it possible that there are still villages of the dead in this world?"

The old woman suddenly giggled and said in a mysterious voice:

“Perhaps, there is one?”

Pei Anzhu shook the goosebumps on his body:

“Hey, don’t be scary, grandma, do you have a free room at home? I want to stay at your place for one night, and I will find my way back at dawn tomorrow. Don’t worry, money is not a problem.”

The smile on the old woman’s face widened: “Come in with me.”

Then, the old lady took Pei Anzhu to an empty room. This room had not been occupied for an unknown period of time. There was dust everywhere and the beams were covered with spider webs.

The old lady took out a quilt from the cabinet and threw it on the bed. The heavy object fell down, causing the dust on the bed to fly up a few inches.

Pei Anzhu:…

She really sacrificed a lot in order to solve this broken village.

“The mountains are poor and the place is broken, so you have to make do with it.” The old lady said, “Anyway, it’s just for this night.”

After saying this, the old lady lit an oil lamp in the room with the candlestick in her hand, then turned around and went out, closing the door for Pei Anzhu.

The door was closed, leaving only the oil lamp in the room burning with a faint light.

Pei Anzhu stood there quietly. She knew that the old woman had not gone far and was even standing at the door listening to the noise.

She smiled slightly, glanced at the candlestick, walked to the bed, shook off the quilt, and lay down.

The dirty environment made her feel uncomfortable all over. She could also use spells or talismans to let herself sleep peacefully, but in order not to alert the snake, she still did nothing.

The oil lamp burned little by little, and an indescribable smell gradually filled the air.

Outside the house, the old woman noticed that Pei Anzhu's breathing gradually stabilized, and it sounded like he was asleep, and then a strange smile appeared on her face.

She held the candlestick and walked away tremblingly, muttering:

“The last one…”

Pei Anzhu was not actually asleep. Even though she was lying down, she was still practicing. The exercises were running through her meridians, and the spiritual power was washing over her Dantian.

Although the aura of the outside world is not as rich as that on Fengjia Mountain, she never slacks off, accumulating little things into something, and her cultivation level can grow slowly.

While practicing, she released her spiritual consciousness and observed the situation in this "living village".

Time passed by one minute and one second, and it was dawn.

The oil lamp in the room had not been burned out yet. Logically speaking, Pei Anzhu should not wake up at this time, so she continued to lie still.

But this village started to get lively.

Twenty or thirty households in the entire village woke up from their sleep, opened their doors and came out one after another, gathering in the open space in front of the old grandmother's house.

The old lady seemed to be a very prestigious person in the village. She said to everyone:

“Last night, a young girl came to the village, a living person.”

As soon as the words fell, the faces of all the villagers suddenly showed ecstasy:

"After waiting for so many years, the wait is finally here. This is the last one. Our village...is saved!"