Chapter 40: Year's End Festival

Liu Shan paused, then continued: "So-called Welcoming the Year is actually the stripping away and sealing of the power within the evil spirit."

"Welcoming the Year must begin preparing right after the previous Year's End Festival. Through a formation, the origin power is drawn from the evil spirit suppressed by Shi Ning and sealed within the body of a Mountain-Guarding Beast."

"Only a dragon breed born with divine strangeness can withstand such a vast quantity of evil spirit Qi without losing control."

Wu Chang glanced at the penned Mountain-Guarding Beast and asked: "Once the Mountain-Guarding Beast has absorbed enough evil spirit Qi, then what?"

"Then comes the second step: Suppressing the Year." Liu Shan said.

At the mention of Suppressing the Year, Wu Chang's brow stirred, and he unconsciously associated it with red envelopes.

But seeing Liu Shan's solemn tone when mentioning Suppressing the Year, the Suppressing the Year at the Year's End Festival seemed to have nothing to do with red envelopes.

"Suppressing the Year?"

Liu Shan said: "Suppressing the Year means selecting three young Mountain-Guarding Beasts that have absorbed the most evil spirit Qi, cutting open their bellies and digging out their hearts, then selecting three young villagers who are strong and full of vigorous blood Qi, and having them eat raw the hearts of the Mountain-Guarding Beasts saturated with evil spirit Qi."

"Using one's own blood Qi to suppress the evil spirit — that is Suppressing the Year."

Wu Chang: "…"

The Suppressing the Year of Huaigu Village was frankly far too hardcore.

With a Suppressing the Year like this, no wonder the Mountain-Guarding Beasts reacted that way upon seeing Liu Shan.

"After Suppressing the Year comes the third step: Guarding the Year. This step requires the use of the Four Directions Palace Lantern that Hero Wu has just retrieved."

"During Guarding the Year, the Year Fire within the palace lantern must be used to kindle a massive bonfire. The three Year Suppressors sit around the fire for a full day and night, using the Year Fire's aid to refine away the evil spirit."

"After that comes Year's End. The village will select fifteen villagers to dress as underworld constables, holding locust-tree branches to whip the Year Suppressors until the Year Suppressors cough up black ash and the evil spirit is completely dispersed."

After hearing the full ritual of the Year's End Festival, Wu Chang considered at which step the Year's End Festival might fail.

First, rule out Welcoming the Year and Suppressing the Year.

Although the Mountain-Guarding Beasts looked divinely extraordinary, they were still ordinary wild beasts in the end, not divine beasts.

Having been penned and raised to this point by the villagers of Huaigu Village, and having gone through multiple Year's End Festivals, they should be unable to resist.

In the Guarding the Year step, the Year Fire working together with the Year's End Grand Formation could protect the Year Guards around the Year Fire from death; enduring a full day and night was no problem either.

The step most likely to go wrong was the final Year's End.

"If during Year's End the Year Guards don't cough up black ash, and the evil spirit Qi isn't refined away — what then?"

Liu Shan was silent for a moment, then finally said: "Struggling against monsters, casualties may happen at any time. Those who volunteer to become Year Suppressors are the finest young men in the village. If the evil spirit Qi cannot be refined away…"

"They will be cast into the Year Fire, and the Year Fire will directly refine the evil spirit away."

Wu Chang took the opportunity to ask: "Is there anything I can help with?"

Liu Shan flattered: "We are only country folk, we don't understand those arcane arts and Daoist methods. Your overseeing the ritual is the best help there is."

Wu Chang sorted through the current intelligence. For main quest two, "Guard the village and complete the Year's End ritual," there were two lines of thought.

One was to achieve the goal — simply get rid of the evil spirit.

As long as he could lure out the evil spirit and use the Soul-Cleansing Command Banner to remove it, it would automatically count as completing Year's End.

But whether getting rid of the evil spirit and completing the Year's End ritual could be seen as equivalent — on this point he wasn't entirely sure.

The other method was to let all four steps — Welcoming the Year, Suppressing the Year, Guarding the Year, and Year's End — proceed perfectly.

This approach was more rigid in action, but the judgment for quest completion was more lenient.

If one parsed the quest wording closely, the main quest was to have him complete the Year's End ritual — it did not require him to actually kill the evil spirit.

He could complete the ritual in form, yet never truly threaten the evil spirit's body.

Still, as a dungeon on the verge of losing control, whether method one or method two — could everything really go according to plan? The whole of Huaigu Village shifted into high gear and, in just one day, had everything prepared for the Year's End Festival. That evening, the village prepared the three sacrificial animals. Liu Shan, accompanied by two elders, recited prayers and offered sacrifices to the ancestors.

After the sacrifice, three youths chosen as Year Suppressors stepped out from the crowd.

They were bare-chested, wearing only light shorts, with beast-skin headbands covering their foreheads.

The villagers formed three rings; inside each ring was like a simple fighting ring, with a Year Suppressor and a chosen juvenile Mountain-Guarding Beast inside, battling.

This step was not strictly necessary, but the villagers believed that hunters had an innate suppression over prey they had caught themselves — that this relationship of hunter and hunted helped refine the evil spirit more easily.

With agile movement and superb martial skill, the three quickly slew the three juvenile Mountain-Guarding Beasts in combat.

Liu Shan and the other two elders took the lead in butchering, and amid the villagers' cheers, they dismembered the three juvenile Mountain-Guarding Beasts.

After drinking wine dripped with the Mountain-Guarding Beasts' fresh blood, the three Year Suppressors' eyes faintly reddened, and steam rose from the surface of their skin.

Next they took the Mountain-Guarding Beasts' hearts and, like wild beasts, tore and gnawed at them, swallowing in a few bites the bowl-sized black hearts soaked with evil spirit Qi.

The Welcoming the Year and Suppressing the Year steps were thus concluded.

After swallowing the evil spirit Qi, the three Year Suppressors' faces changed sharply, black Qi swirling between their brows.

Seeing things go wrong, Liu Shan shouted: "Light the fire!"

Liu Wei, holding the Four Directions Year Fire Lantern, strode quickly to the pre-prepared giant bonfire. Without needing to control it, the Year Fire within the palace lantern snaked out and ignited the massive bonfire.

The three Year Suppressors sat cross-legged around the bonfire in a triangular formation.

Bathed beneath the Year Fire, the black Qi on the three men's faces eased somewhat, and their brows gradually relaxed.

Seeing everything fall into place, the whole village's villagers immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

Everyone except Liu Wei.

As the strongest supporter village-wide of holding the Year's End Festival early, and the one who personally held the palace lantern to light the bonfire, Liu Wei's expression at this moment was the most awkward.

What Liu Wu had left the village to do — as his elder brother, he could naturally guess.

But he hadn't expected that the moment Liu Wu left the village, Wu Chang would return with the Four Directions Year Fire Lantern right behind him, and the incident at Chen Family Village had further accelerated the Year's End Festival's progress to this extent.

At this rate, even if Liu Wu could return safely from Chen Family Village, he would probably miss the great day of the Year's End Festival.

As the most radical of the early-action faction all along, he no longer had time to switch sides and demand postponing the Year's End Festival.

All he could do now was pray that something went wrong with the ritual, that it be delayed two or three days, enough for Liu Wu to return.

The massive bonfire burned from sunrise to sunset; in the blink of an eye it was about to complete twelve full hours.

The Year's End Festival proceeded very smoothly; the mishap Liu Wei had been hoping for did not appear.

Fifteen broad-shouldered, thick-waisted villagers had already taken their positions, each gripping a three-meter-long branch of a locust tree, their faces smeared with black, white, and red paint, looking every bit like fearsome ghost constables.

Seeing that the time was nearly up, Liu Wei gave up hope entirely, no longer expecting any change to occur.

But just as the fifteen ghost constables raised their locust whips high, waiting only for Liu Shan's command to begin the flogging, the three New Year's Eve guardians, who had their eyes closed, opened their eyes early.

Their eyes had lost their clarity, covered by a layer of black, hazy mist.

Black qi overflowed from their eyes, covering their entire bodies, transforming into a suit of hard scales. Accompanied by the three men's wails, their limbs turned into sharp claws, and sharp fangs grew in their mouths.

Before the villagers could react to what had happened, the three beast-transformed New Year's guardians had already flashed to the ghost constables' side.

With a sweep of their claws, within just a few breaths, they had sliced the fifteen ghost constables into forty or fifty pieces.

Liu Wei, who had been praying on the side, widened his eyes and gave himself a hard slap across the face.

It hurt. It wasn't a dream.

His prayer had worked—something really had gone wrong! (End of this chapter)