Chapter 178

Chapter 178

The moment I saw my grandmother’s name, I could no longer tell whether the world had gone mad or I had.

I began moving through the mountains again, no longer deliberately avoiding the kneeling children.

Because I now knew that perhaps this entire mountain was encompassed by a Formation.

A child knelt at every node.

I checked them one by one. Sure enough, on the backs of their necks, I found the village chief’s name, my father’s name…

Nearly every villager I remembered well had a corresponding name on the back of a child’s neck.

How could this be?

A question suddenly occurred to me. Had everyone in Tafeng Village… truly come here through reincarnation?

No. Absolutely not.

There couldn’t possibly be so many coincidences in this world.

“Qilin Bestows Children”… did not bestow children at all. It was more like grafting.

They had grafted the lives of children offered up elsewhere during a Sacrifice onto Tafeng Village.

Why would they do this?

And who… were they?

Then what about me?

I reached up and touched the back of my neck. I was certain there were no words there.

Moreover, based on everything I had learned so far, I had been called Feng Linu in my previous life, but in this life, my name was Jiang Wantong.

The names did not match.

There was something else, too. My grandmother once said that my mother had prayed in Qilin Temple for years without ever receiving a dream from the Qilin Deity. From that, she had concluded that I was a child the Qilin Deity did not want.

Now, however, it seemed I had not been unwanted. My birth had simply been an accident from beginning to end.

It was my accidental arrival that set off the entire chain of events that followed.

Which raised another question. If I was an accident, why hadn’t they killed me as soon as I was born?

I struggled through six years of my grandmother’s abuse.

During those six years, anyone could have killed me as easily as crushing an ant.

So why had they allowed me to grow unchecked like a weed?

No. That wasn’t right.

They couldn’t kill me!

I remembered what I had once heard them say. When I was born, my grandfather threw me into a raging sea of flames, yet I survived completely unharmed.

Instead, my grandfather ended up hanging himself from that Wutong Tree.

So why hadn’t I died back then?

Had the Qilin Deity truly saved me, as the villagers claimed?

Or was there some other hidden truth?

I turned and gazed toward Qilin Temple in the distance. Apart from the temple, a towering Wutong Tree stood there.

To be precise, it was the Wutong Tree that had protected me.

And Fengwu had originally been summoned from within the Wutong Tree.

Aunt Tang Xun had said that she had known Fengwu for many years and that Fengwu had always been searching for her master.

Then had Fengwu ultimately remained inside the Wutong Tree because her master was there?

How had it taken me this long to grasp such an important clue?

Fengwu’s master was me.

I had once dreamed that I was pushed into a deep pit. Countless children’s hands reached out from within, clawing at me and dragging at my body without pause.

Something immensely heavy had been pressed onto my back, leaving me completely unable to struggle free.

Where… was that deep pit?

And what had been weighing me down?

A daring theory suddenly sprang into my mind.

But before I could organize my thoughts, a Yin Wind abruptly rose around me.

A heartbeat later, muffled thunder rumbled through the darkness, and bolts of lightning constantly snaked across it.

The world around me changed in an instant.

My vision abruptly went black. Then it felt as though I were standing in that deep pit once more. Countless children’s hands clawed at me and tugged frantically at my ankles, while ghastly wails and howls filled the air.
This was bad.

I reached into my pocket, pulled out every sheet of Talisman Paper I had prepared, and scattered them into the air.

The Talisman Paper spontaneously burst into flame, then turned to ash in an instant.

Ordinary Talisman Paper couldn’t withstand such dense yin energy.

I bit my finger and swiftly drew a Thunder Summoning Talisman on my palm. Just as I began forming the hand seals, streams of black energy suddenly surged in from all directions and circled endlessly around my bleeding finger.

Drops of blood welled from the wound, only to be devoured by the black energy one after another.

The wisps didn’t seem greedy. One drop each was enough.

After swallowing my blood, each wisp fell to the ground and instantly took the shape of a child. Their faint Souls flickered into view, then vanished again, as though something had sucked them away.

The scene gradually overlapped with the inexplicable images that had surfaced in my mind.

I clutched my head. It hurt!

It hurt so much!

The worse the pain became, the clearer those incomprehensible images grew. Waves of dizziness crashed over me, and it felt as though my entire Spirit Soul was about to tear free from my body.

“Mrrrow-!”

A shrill yet familiar yowl suddenly rang out, wrenching me back to my senses. Immediately afterward, I heard Liu Junyan’s voice.

“Xiao Jiu!”

I desperately wanted to answer him. I wanted to tell him I was inside the Formation.

But my mind cleared for only an instant before the black energy gnawed away at my consciousness, plunging it back into a haze.

An invisible force seemed to be calling me from the darkness, luring my soul ever deeper.

Thunder crashed overhead. Sheets of lightning came hurtling down as the whole world pitched and swayed. Then my body collapsed with a thud…

I had no idea how much time had passed before I stood up again.

But when I did, I saw my own body still lying on the ground in the mountains.

Every unnatural phenomenon between heaven and earth had disappeared.

The lightning was gone, and so was the curtain of darkness.

The Black Cat’s sharp claws tore through the darkness, and it was the first to charge over.

Then I saw Liu Junyan and Hui Moqiong, with Li Qingying following close behind.

I opened my mouth to call out to them and reached out to touch them. I wanted to tell them I was here.

I was right beside them, watching from only a short distance away.

But I couldn’t do it.

That invisible force pulled me down, dragging me deeper and deeper.

Just as I began to fall, the Black Cat seemed to sense something. It abruptly turned toward me, then cried out, “Meow!”

Boom!

My vision went black again.

This time, however, it brightened almost immediately.

Though “bright” was only relative to the darkness from before.

I had no idea where I was. An endless expanse of yellow sand stretched beneath my feet, with no end in sight.

The sky was a murky yellow. Everywhere I looked, there was nothing but sand and the distant silhouettes of mountains.

Farther away, I could just make out what appeared to be a river, with a bridge spanning it.

Shadowy figures crowded the bridge.

I lifted my foot, about to walk toward them.

Just then, a man’s voice suddenly came from behind me.

“Ah Li, is that you? Have you come back?”

I froze.

That voice… It was completely unfamiliar…

And yet, it felt as though I had heard it countless times before.

Puzzled, I turned around. Amid the endless yellow sand stood a tall figure. The light was too dim and the blowing sand stung my eyes, so I couldn’t make out his face.

Then I heard him speak again.

“Ah Li, my wife… Is it really you? Have you finally come back?”