Chapter 39: Welcoming the Year

The gates of Huaigu Village were thrown wide open, and with Liu Shan at the lead, almost the entire village waited at the entrance to welcome Wu Chang.

Wu Chang vaulted off his horse, and the moment his feet touched the ground, the palace lantern in his hand extinguished.

He inconspicuously placed the remaining lamp oil into his personal space and carried the lantern before Liu Shan.

"I have not failed the mission."

Liu Shan took the palace lantern and exclaimed in admiration, "Hero Wu is truly a divine man; a week's journey was completed in less than two days."

Liu Jinfu placed the palace lantern on the altar in the center of the valley. Nourished by the Year-Welcoming Array within the valley, the four-sided Year-Fire Lamp ignited with a crimson glow without the need for lamp oil.

As the Year-Fire ignited, the damp chill brought by the evil spirits in the valley immediately weakened.

Because of Wu Chang's early return, the original discussion regarding the Year-Welcoming Festival turned into a victory banquet.

At the banquet, everyone was curious about how Wu Chang could come and go so quickly, and whether he had encountered the lamp-bearer from Chen Village on the way.

Upon learning that Wu Chang had not met anyone from Chen Village but had instead traversed several major dangerous mountain ranges, the villagers gasped repeatedly, praising his high skill and bold heart.

Some of the more thoughtful ones turned to advise their own youngsters that dangerous stunts should never be imitated, and that good children must absolutely not learn from Wu Chang.

Walking mountain paths like that, ten lives wouldn't be enough to lose.

Since Wu Chang had traversed the mountain paths normally, it naturally sparked the next question from the crowd.

Liu Wei could not hold back and was the first to ask:

"Hero, did Chen Village encounter some difficulty? Why was the lamp returned so late?"

Wu Chang sighed and, with lingering fear, recounted what he had seen at Chen Village.

When they heard that monsters had united to attack the village, slaughtered everyone in Chen Village, and even laid out the dead to store as winter food, the faces of everyone present turned deathly pale.

Some of the timid ones were even frightened to tears by this description.

Although Chen Village had already turned into a bandit den, the two villages were, after all, old acquaintances; there was much interaction between the villagers, and some were even distant relatives.

The fact that Chen Village was just gone like that caused the originally festive atmosphere of Huaigu Village to instantly turn cold.

The villagers only dared to believe this fact after confirming it multiple times.

However, the villagers had no time to mourn for Chen Village, because the next ones to face the threat of the monsters would be themselves.

Once the meal was finished, the villagers didn't even bother to sleep, gathering the whole village to prepare for the Year-Welcoming Festival.

The sounds of labor rang out all night.

The next morning, when Wu Chang opened his eyes, a giant bonfire and a wooden altar had already been built in the center of the village.

He had just asked a villager guarding the door for a basin of hot water to wash up when Liu Shan rushed over, inviting him to take a tour of the village while explaining the Year-Welcoming Festival to him.

The Year-Welcoming Festival was the core that connected the many problems of the dungeon plane; only by clarifying the process of the Year-Welcoming Festival could he facilitate his next steps.

He had heard the term "Year-Welcoming Festival" mentioned countless times, but he did not actually understand how it was conducted.

He only knew that it shared many terms with the New Year in reality, but the steps were more cumbersome, and he did not know the details.

Seeing Liu Shan voluntarily offer the intelligence, how could he not accept it? Liu Wu had once said that once he saw the core of the Year-Welcoming Festival with his own eyes, he would know what the evil spirits were.

Originally, he had been worried about how to trick Liu Shan into letting him see the core of the Year-Welcoming Festival, but who knew that Liu Shan had no intention of hiding it at all.

The first stop of the tour of the Year-Welcoming Festival was the forbidden area of Huaigu Village, which was also the core of the festival.

The array for the Year-Welcoming Festival was set up in the Hollow Mountain at the deepest part of Huaigu Village.

The name "Hollow Mountain" originated from a natural cave inside the mountain that occupied nearly thirty percent of the mountain's mass, as if someone had hollowed out the mountain's heart when it was formed.

There was only one narrow mountain path that could barely fit three people walking side-by-side to enter and exit the cave, making it easy to defend and hard to attack, and difficult for monsters to enter.

It was simply the most suitable place to use as a forbidden area.

In the center of the Hollow Mountain cave sat a massive stone.

The stone was smooth and rounded, shaped like an elongated trapezoid with a full, rounded midsection. It had not been carved at all, yet it had a certain human-like quality. It looked like the Maitreya Buddha with a big belly, or perhaps a woman about to give birth.

"This is?" Wu Chang asked, puzzled.

Liu Shan said, "This is the Stone Buddha. When Huaigu Village was first established, while searching for a spring, someone discovered this Stone Buddha underground. When they moved the Stone Buddha, spring water gushed out from the pit, creating the small river that flows through the valley today."

"The Stone Buddha was born with a certain ability and is very efficacious. The sorcerer who originally set up the array used it as the cornerstone to suppress evil spirits and as the core to maintain the Year-Welcoming Festival array."

Wu Chang walked around the Stone Buddha twice, observing it very carefully.

It wasn't that he believed Liu Shan's story, but rather that this Stone Buddha was strange.

When he approached the Stone Buddha, the Poison of the Mortal in his personal space stirred.

This indicated that the erosion core produced after the dungeon was polluted was nearby.

But what caused the Poison of the Mortal to react was not the Stone Buddha in Liu Shan's words, but something from beneath the Stone Buddha.

He could not yet sense exactly how deep it was, but it would not be shallow.

He stomped on the ground beneath his feet and said, "The mountain feels hollow when stepped on; is there some other arrangement underground?"

"There is a bottomless cavern beneath the mountain, which was sealed when the Year-Welcoming Array was set up. Hero, rest assured, as long as the Year-Welcoming Festival array is not broken, there is no need to worry about the ground collapsing," Liu Shan said.

Wu Chang nodded impassively, but inwardly he thought it was tricky.

The side quest he had accepted required him to find the source of the monster aura in Huaigu Village.

The dungeon's erosion core was formed in the cavern; without needing to think, he knew the source of the monster aura in Huaigu Village must be inseparable from the cavern.

But entering the cavern would mean destroying the Year-Welcoming Festival array, which conflicted with the main quest.

As it stood, he could only think of a way to complete the main quest first, and then find a way to complete the side quest during the remaining time in the dungeon after the mission was finished.

Liu Shan did not know what Wu Chang was thinking and led him to a small cave next to the Stone Buddha.

As soon as he entered, Wu Chang was startled by the sight before him.

Inside the cave, a group of exotic beasts was actually being kept in captivity.

There were two large ones and five small ones, seven in total.

The large beasts were about 1.6 or 1.7 meters long, with slender bodies resembling tigers or leopards, yet they were covered in scales and looked exceptionally majestic.

The small beasts were only seventy or eighty centimeters long, still in their infancy, and very shy.

As soon as they saw someone approaching, the small beasts hurriedly hid behind the large ones, while the eyes of the large beasts revealed sorrow and anger.

Wu Chang had never seen wild beasts with such complex emotions and such human-like nature.

Seeing Wu Chang's surprised expression, Liu Shan was slightly smug and began to introduce them with pride.

"This beast is called the Mountain-Suppressing Beast. It is rumored to be of dragon lineage and only moves in the deepest parts of the hundred-mile Huai Mountains; it is very rare to see."

"It is a coincidence, but the child the village inadvertently took in was born with the ability to communicate with wild beasts. Liu Wei took that child into the mountains to capture this litter of Mountain-Suppressing Beasts."

It had to be said that the villagers of Huaigu Village really knew how to use the young mountain guardian.

But what Wu Chang couldn't understand was why the affluent Huaigu Village was so stingy with even a piece of cotton clothing or a hot meal for such a useful tool.

Even the toughest beast of burden would die if treated like this.

"Why capture these Mountain-Suppressing Beasts?"

Only when this was mentioned did they enter the main topic of why Liu Shan had brought Wu Chang to visit today.

"Hero Wu, the Year-Welcoming Festival is divided into four steps, and the first step—Welcoming the Year—requires the use of these Mountain-Suppressing Beasts."

(End of chapter)