CH 35

They waited in the mist. A few moments later, the fog appeared after the staggering and hurried figure.

That person didn’t wear a Nuo mask, Kou Dong therefore recognized her at a glance – that cow spirit that was identified. Cow spirit was a middle-aged woman, now her leg seemed injured, she limped towards their direction, after seeing Kou Dong’s white robe, she stood still violently.

Her breathing hadn’t yet calmed down, she panted violently and looked at Kou Dong warily.

Kou Dong raised his hand at her, indicating that he didn’t mean to hurt her.

The woman looked at him for half a day, saw that he really didn’t come, then walked towards the end of the street. Although her legs were hurt, but at least she was alive.

In Kou Dong’s opinion, this was at least a good thing.

Ye Yanzhi asked him: “Go?”

If he didn’t go now, if the villagers found out that he was the culprit, it wouldn’t be so easy to leave.

Kou Dong said, “Let’s go.”

He walked quietly back along the path and heard the creaking sound of villagers opening the door on both sides, as if disturbed by the crying of children. Someone came out of his house with a stick. If Kou Dong was a few minutes later, he would be blocked by these villagers.

Kou Dong went into his room, and finally put down the big stone he was carrying in his heart. He listened to the chaotic sounds outside, the sound of footsteps and shouting, and said lightly: “Tonight should be very unsettled.”

Ye Yanzhi said, “That’s right. They are not entitled to a peaceful day either.”

Now that he thought about it, he still had no love for the vengeful villagers and fully understood what the evil gods had done.

He jumped down from Kou Dong’s shoulder and wondered, “Why did you ask about the sandalwood at Qin Tong’s place today?”

The youth, this person, wasn’t someone who would talk nonsense on key matters. But whenever he spoke out, he must have discovered something.

Kou Dong replied: “It’s to verify my guess.”

Ye Yanzhi: “What about the results of the verification?”

Kou Dong smiled softly and whispered, “Exactly as I imagined.”

“……”

“Now there’s only one problem left to sort out,” Kou Dong leaned his head heavily on the pillow. He stared up at the high ceiling and murmured, “Why in the world did he–why in the world did he want revenge?”

He vaguely felt that this was the single most important answer to completely resolve this copy.

The next day, no drums sounded in the village, and no one went to the funeral.

Kou Dong woke up to find his bedside mask of Zhong Kui again, as if he was still back to the first day.

He walked out the door and saw a Nuo mask squatting in the street, complaining in a low voice about something. Kou Dong heard the familiar voice, so he went up and patted the other person – the person being patted turned her head and had changed into the Nuo mask of Zao.

She looked Kou Dong up and down and said, “Are you Zhong Kui again?”

Kou Dong nodded.

“Zhong Kui is good,” said yesterday’s Erlang and today’s Zao enviously, “They say Zhong Kui can catch ghosts ……”

Kou Dong smiled faintly and avoided the topic, asking him instead, “What are you doing here?”

Zao Nuo Mask said, “Oh, I’m watching the villagers today. –they don’t seem to be normal.”

In fact, she said it euphemistically, the village was far more noisy than usual. There was some banging and clamoring in every house, and some people ran out the door, banging their heads against the wall with pain on their faces.

It was like stepping into a large mental hospital.

Kou Dong knew better than anyone else how this scene came to be, but still didn’t move, “What’s going on?”

She didn’t know, “Who knows, they woke up like this, maybe they did something wrong.”

Kou Dong asked, “Why do you think they did something wrong?”

She lifted her face to look at him, as if she was very incredulous.

“Please -” she pointed to a nearby villager who was sitting in a corner without saying a word, “Look at their figure, and look at the village chief’s legs, who could they have been harmed by?”

A coldness seeped into her voice.

“They are all to blame for turning out like this.”

At this point, her attitude coincided with Ye Yanzhi’s.

Kou Dong didn’t reply, but only gently inhaled again. Whirling, he also lifted his gaze up and calmly gazed at the villagers in this village who were in a hurry.

“Yes,” he narrowed his eyes and said, “but who can be resented?”

When they didn’t want to accept the truth, in addition to hypnotizing themselves, they also hypnotized others.

Those were all dreams ……

They were all false and didn’t exist.

They had said it to themselves so many times that they believed it from the heart. No matter how cheerful the neighbors laughed at the funeral, no matter how their years never moved again, no matter how the village headman’s legs weren’t normal dexterity, and the neighbor’s children didn’t grow up a centimeter again …… they were convinced that it was all just from an illusion.

Shanhai village was still living people, the people that committed blasphemy, were those foreigners.

This had been said a lot, but it didn’t become true.

And now, Kou Dong tore this layer of thin veil.

All that remained was the brutal truth, bloodily pressed against them.

Shanhai Village finally remembered the past that they tried to bury away. This sin was incomparably heavy and weighed them down.

…… They killed the god.

They killed the god…..

No NPCs came out to stop them again, which in turn made it easier for the Nuo masks to explore the village exploration. Kou Dong said goodbye to the Zao Nuo mask and went to the temple alone, and found that the two villagers responsible for guarding the entrance were also missing.

He simply pushed open the temple door.

The idol’s look wasn’t as compassionate as before. He stared at the door, as if he saw the struggles of the villagers, the corners of his lips actually showed a cold smile.

Ye Yanzhi wasn’t pleased with the evil god now. He quickly muttered, “You laugh so ugly.”

Kou Dong: “…”

His cub was so hostile recently.

He smoothly rubbed the little man’s face.

Ye Yanzhi’s hostility was only to the idol, he was warm to Kou Dong. He held the finger and rubbed his cheek against it.

Kou Dong confirmed the number of oil lamps one last time.

There were still one hundred and fifty-seven oil lamps, and now only the number of villagers was missing.

This number wasn’t easy to get, he couldn’t go door to door to knock on the door.

It wasn’t a census.

Kou Dong was relaxed and said smoothly, “Then call them all out.”

Ye Yanzhi: “…… how to shout?”

Kou Dong said so easily, but he was a little puzzled.

Before the words fell, he saw Kou Dong lift up the oil lamp.

Ye Yanzhi: “?”

Kou Dong narrowed his eyes and took a glance at these lamps that were burning brightly.

“A lot of oil.”

He said meaningfully.

Ye Yanzhi: “?”

Kou Dong took down a few incense sticks tributed in front of the idol and borrowed a bit of flame from the oil lamps in the process. The fire burned slightly on the incense, bright red throbbing.

Kou Dong also thought that the fire wasn’t strong enough, and said to the idol, “lend me something more.”

He pulled down several draperies hanging from his head and lit them all.

Ye Yanzhi looked at his skilled movements like flowing clouds and gradually felt that he could not breathe, “you…”

His operation made him a little flustered!

The flames gradually changed into fireballs. Kou Dong guarded the fire and calmly said, “If you want to do it, do it.”

Ye Yanzhi: “????”

“Cub,” Kou Dong said exuberantly, “Let’s burn this village to the ground!”

“……”

The villain was completely confused and couldn’t say a single word.

He originally thought that Kou Dong was joking.

But when Kou Dong really squatted in the corner and began to pour oil seriously, he realized that the youth was serious.

Long drapery soaked with oil, like a long carpet on the ground gurgled and spread.

Kou Dong lowered himself in front of this, slowly putting the fire in his hand closer.

With a light sound, the flame suddenly jumped up, following the ground all the way forward, into a long flowing orange-red river.

The fire was blazing, standing on Kou Dong’s shoulders, Ye Yanzhi’s expression was full of confusion.

He only accompanied Kou Dong in the second copy, and hadn’t seen Kou Dong’s operation of burning the ancient castle. Now that he’d had the pleasure of seeing it, he knew that Kou Dong was really skilled at playing with fire. While pouring oil, he also shouted for help, “Fire, fire!”

The villagers’ fear of fire was indelible, and when they were ghosts, they would be burned to ashes by the idol. Even now they had become human again, that fear had been buried deep in the heart, just hearing the word fire, made them frightened.

Even if they knew that they wouldn’t be burned to death at the moment, they still couldn’t wait to get away from the leaping flames.

The street was also on fire. Driven by the fire, they had to move towards the temple door. Kou Dong squatted here, like a pig breeder waiting for the piglets to return to the circle, he slowly counted the number of people who ran in panic , “one, two, three…”

“One hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty-one… one hundred and fifty-two.”

He said.

“A total of 152.”

Ye Yanzhi said, “That is to say, there are five ghosts in the team.”

Kou Dong corrected him: “Six.”

There was another ghost, because it was successfully identified, and the lights had already gone out.

Ye Yanzhi nodded, but left him out.

“Then we can answer the question,” he said, “when we first entered the game, there were six people and six ghosts. It’s rather balanced.”

As he said this, the system popped up a prompt box.

A: Yes. B: No.] [Please confirm if this answer is the final answer, answer correctly to leave the copy immediately.

[Please note that every choice will affect the player’s final ending. Please choose carefully.]

The villain said, “This should be the final answer, there are no other villagers.”

But despite the words, Ye Yanzhi’s brow was still knitted.

Kou Dong asked him, “What?”

“…… It’s too simple.” The villain hesitantly replied, “It always feels like there’s something wrong.”

He knew the system better than these players. The system’s obsession with Kou Dong could never be summed up lightly – in order to keep the youth around, the system would drill all the holes it could in the rules and raise all the difficulties it could raise.

But it was too smooth to arrive at the answer this way.

As long as they find the correspondence between the villagers and the ghosts, and then a pair with the number of oil lamps in the temple would do. –This couldn’t be considered difficult for Kou Dong.

When he finished this sentence, Kou Dong smiled slightly instead. He replied, “You’re right.”

After saying that, he chose no without hesitation.

The system box got stuck, there seemed to be some reluctance before it disappeared in front of them.

Ye Yanzhi still sitting on Kou Dong’s shoulder, finally spat out the thoughts in his mind, “I always feel that there was a Nuo mask that wasn’t quite right.”

“Who?”

The little man said soberly: “The one that always came to you.”

He still remembered the phrase “waist is really thin”, every time he thought it, he felt upset, “she doesn’t seem like a player.”

Instead, it was more like an NPC.

Kou Dong: “If it was an NPC, it would have been counted in the number of ghosts.”

There was no need to care whether a particular person was or wasn’t.

Ye Yanzhi still felt that something was wrong. He hesitantly said, “The main NPC of this copy hasn’t appeared by now.”

There was only a big, silly idol that hung around in front of them all day long, which obviously didn’t make sense.

And the IQ of the idol didn’t quite look like it could take up the main NPC of a copy ……

Kou Dong gazed at his cub with admiring eyes and sighed: “You are really smart.”

Ye Yanzhi was suddenly complimented and was actually a little uncomfortable.

As a result, father Kou’s next sentence immediately followed, “it was obviously inherited from me.”

Ye Yanzhi: “……”

God damn heredity.

“Look for it again.” Kou Dong said, “There must be something else not found.”

The villagers panicked and gathered in the temple this time, Kou Dong went through the village chief’s home. In a wooden box that was already full of dust, he found a heavy book with a merit book written on it.

When he opened it, it was a record of the villagers’ offerings to the first god.

“On a certain day of a certain month of a certain year, a certain person in the village, paid a tribute of a few pounds of incense oil.”

“On a certain day in a certain month in a certain year, a certain person in the village, paid tribute of a few bottles of wine and some incense money ……”

A thick book, all such records. god had sheltered the village of Shanhai for hundreds of years, the people of the village would also provide him for hundreds of years.

Kou Dong had been turning backwards, in the back of the page, he suddenly saw a record different from the others.

“A certain year, a certain month, a certain day, the neighboring village, no name, a bowl of white rice tribute.”

There was only a few words.

Kou Dong flipped back and forth to read this entry, and then scrolled down, but didn’t see any more records about this nameless person. Such a heavy book of merit, only this person wasn’t from Shanhai Village.

Kou Dong pondered for a moment, tore the page and stuffed it in his pocket.

He found a gap and went straight to ask Qin Tong. Qin Tong felt ashamed, so he said everything, seeing this record, he frowned and pondered for a long time, before clapping his hands, “Yes, someone else had been there!”

Kou Dong: “Who was it?”

“Not from Shanhai Village,” replied Qin Tong, “it was the Gu Family Village …… it seemed to be a beggar from their village.”

He spoke up and sighed faintly again.

“Gu’s village, now it’s gone.”

“Every village should have a god. But the god said that the god they had in their village wasn’t in their rightful place, and so in that earth quake, they died – not even a single person was left.”

Qin Tong repeatedly thought for a while, and then gestured with his hand.

“It was a child, not tall, probably to here …… His parents died early, he was left alone. There was no one in the village to take care of him, and every family said he must be a calamity and drove him out ……”

“I saw him just once in the village. At that time he was offering something before the gods and was caught by the village chief.”

Kou Dong asked, “Was it rice?”

“Yes, just ordinary rice,” replied Qin Tong, “this kind of rice, who does not have – it was nothing unusual. Where would god need this! The village chief asked him to take it back, but the boy ran quite fast as soon as he broke away from the hands. So, the rice was left there.”

He said, turning the thin page, he couldn’t help but wonder, “was the village chief confused? He even wrote this? –What kind of merit is this!”

Kou Dong frowned.

“Is that what you told him?”

“Naturally,” said Qin Tong, “what’s the use of having something that’s mediocre?”

They worshiped the gods, and of course it should be the best. The best wine, the best fruits and melons, the fattest pigs and sheep every year, the fullest and most abundant ears of wheat – compared to these, a small bowl of rice found from somewhere, even cold and hard, almost moldy, and he didn’t know how long it was stored in the hands of the boy.

Such things didn’t even deserve to appear in front of the throne of god.

Kou Dong’s voice was cold, “Whether it is precious or not is not for you to say, but for the giver.”

Qin Tong moved his lips and looked a little surprised, but Kou Dong no longer wanted to listen. He turned straight away and stepped soberly onto the road.

“Eight o’clock tonight, we’ll be there early, cub.”

Kou Dong said to Ye Yanzhi, who was on his shoulder.

The little man thought deeply, “If he wants to make a move, it can only be today.”

The NPCs were already anxious.

If he wanted to leave Kou Dong behind, there were only two chances left.

That was the last two identifications tonight.

If he could draw him and successfully identified Kou Dong as a person, then Kou Dong naturally lost.

But if he didn’t draw ……

Kou Dong wasn’t flustered. Now that he had Ye Yanzhi, his fortune value had been greatly improved, and he was no longer a person with the lucky value of E.

“It’s just that this kind of thing depends not only on luck,” Kou Dong concluded.

There was nothing they could do about the right time and place, but people….

Kou Dong narrowed his eyes, his heart crackled with a small calculation.

At eight o’clock in the evening, Kou Dong was the first to arrive in front of the shrine.

Daytime villagers had dispersed, he sat on the first chair waiting for the arrival of the crowd – at this time, only eight Nuo masks were left on the twelve chairs.

The laughing monk who betrayed the fish spirit that day wasn’t present.

The rest of these Nuo masks didn’t say a word, after a few days down, they had long been familiar with the process. Even the idol was also skilled, crackling and shaking the lottery tube, the magnitude was far greater than usual.

Almost immediately, a wooden stick fell out of it and fell to the ground.

The idol leaned down and picked up the wooden stick, showing it to the crowd.

Someone whispered, “It’s three -”

Before he could finish, there was suddenly an additional figure standing up in the line of sight. This had never been seen before, and the Nuo masks all turned their faces around and stared at Zhong Kui in the first seat, full of confusion.

What was this?

Zhong Kui stood up without saying a word, and immediately walked towards the third seat with big strides. He stretched out his hand and pushed the Nuo mask on the third seat to the ground. Then he sat down firmly.

Nuo masks: “……”

Statue: “……”

This can also?

The wooden hand of the idol trembled.

This was ……

This was too shameless!

The fourth place whispered: “Why did you change?”

“Why,” Kou Dong looked at him, “I can’t change the position? No one said anything.”

“……”

No one would say anything if you changed places before the results were drawn, but after the results were drawn, you changed places ……

This was clearly cheating!

The fourth Nuo mask looked up with trepidation at the idol, afraid that he’d lose his temper and directly burn the chair to ashes.

The idol would like to lose his temper, but this rule was indeed not written.

It never said that you couldn’t change places.

It held a belly full of anger that it couldn’t let out, it could only firmly stare at Kou Dong, frowning, trying to use such a gaze to make Kou Dong feel ashamed.

…… It was a pity that he was facing Kou Dong.

The youth in his gaze frankly stood up and walked up to the open space, not to mention ashamed, he was glad. He stood squarely in the middle, holding out his hand, hovering between all the Nuo masks, “I choose ……”

Almost all Nuo masks tensed.

Kou Dong’s fingers circled among the people, and stopped abruptly and pointed straight to one of the Nuo masks.

“I choose you.”

He said faintly, “Please come out.”

The Nuo mask was extremely surprised: “…… me?”

Not the next person, it was today’s Zao, yesterday’s Erlang.

“Yes, you.” Kou Dong still pointed at her, “You can come over.”

The Zao Nuo mask stood up as she was told and stood next to Kou Dong. She whispered, “Did you make a mistake? …… Why are you pointing at me?”

Kou Dong shook his head, but didn’t hesitate half-heartedly.

“There can be no mistake,” he said, “it’s you.”

“You’re crazy!” She lowered her voice, “What do you want to identify me as? -identify me as a human being? You want to get me killed? Or are you identifying me as a ghost and planning to get yourself killed?”

“—Wake up!”

No matter what she said, Kou Dong didn’t have the slightest intention to change his mind, and in the end, Zao could only stand in front of him, waiting to hear what he identified her as.

The crowd was also listening to this answer.

Was it a person?

Was it a ghost?

Was it right or wrong to let Zhong Kui take such a big risk?

Kou Dong calmly gazed at the person in front of him. He smelled that faint fragrance again between his nostrils, not from him, but from the person opposite.

That was the sandalwood incense that was only lit in the temple.

From the beggar who was disliked by the world and known as a calamity, to the evil god who slaughtered the whole village for the sake of the murdered god.

In fact, it wasn’t difficult to guess.

Who else but him would be uncontrollably drawn to his side?

“I want to identify you.”

Kou Dong said in one breath.

“You belong to neither man nor ghost.”

There was silence in the chair, and then a noisy murmur of voices came violently. In such a wave of sound, Kou Dong slightly raised his voice and stared straight at the Zao Nuo mask in front of him.

He didn’t know when, her body actually seemed taller, and her sweet female voice didn’t match at all. She stood in silence, her form resembling the statue next to her.

“You are a god.”

“-You are the newborn god of Shanhai Village.”

TN:

I see a cliff