Kong Xuyang's eyes looked as if they were about to split open. He clenched his hands so hard he nearly tore the Maoshan Daoist book in half. "Why is it this kind of setting?!"
Yang Zhi was frightened by his deranged behavior and retreated two steps before carefully handing the diary over. "…Brother Kong, do you want to take a look at the contents of this diary?"
Kong Xuyang shut his eyes and took two deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He received the diary and swiftly read it.
No matter the character setting, if the game sets it, there must be a way to clear it.
Right now, they were playing the roles of righteous practitioners from a hundred years ago who attacked Yinshan Village. These two practitioners were unexpectedly buried so grandly at the entrance of Yinshan Village, proving that the winners from a hundred years ago were them!
If the characters they were playing had won a hundred years ago, then a hundred years later, they could definitely win as well!
As for how they would win, these two diaries of the practitioners buried together must have a record.
The sheepskin diary was written in English. Because of its age, some of the phrasing and expressions differed from modern usage, and the translation came across as overly formal and literary. It was clearly English written by a Chinese person, but Kong Xuyang could still just barely understand it.
The diary records:
[Gengzi Year, the 25th day of the eleventh month. The court held deliberations with the esteemed officials, drafted the outline of the surrender decree, and formally ordered that Yinshan Village be granted to the foreigners.]
[Foreign soldiers, armed with firearms, entered the mountains in large numbers, searching everywhere for Yinshan Village, but could not find it. Only two roads remained, one at the village entrance and one at the rear. Yinshan Village had vanished from the land without a trace. No one could enter it, and, suspecting something strange, they opened fire. The cannon fire rebounded, injuring several men. Enraged, they claimed they were being toyed with and demanded that the court hand over the people of Yinshan Village by a set date, or else they would march into the capital in the next few days.]
[The court was in panic. Some said it might be Maoshan sorcery hiding the whereabouts of Yinshan Village. It was proposed to seek out capable and extraordinary individuals to assist in attacking the village.]
[The next day, the court found my junior apprentice brother and me and ordered us to assist the foreigners in attacking the village. We silently complied.]
[Three days later, my junior apprentice brother and I entered the mountains to investigate. Indeed, a Daoist master of profound skill had used Maoshan sorcery to conceal Yinshan Village, employing dark techniques to carry out righteous deeds, greatly increasing its power. My junior apprentice brother and I applied all our methods but could not break through the village's protective sorcery.]
[My junior apprentice brother and I truthfully reported to the court. The court forcibly ordered us to undo the spell. After researching the ancient texts for many days, we found a method.]
[The Dao abides by the natural laws of heaven; one can use the might of heaven to command these laws to suppress its current practice, disrupt its righteous path, and break its formations.]
[The court allowed it.]
[Gengzi Year, the 13th day of the twelfth month. With the Little New Year approaching, the court issued an order that no one in the entire nation was allowed to harm foreigners. Those who harmed foreigners would be considered as opposing the heavenly family. Violating the laws of the Dao was intolerable and would be severely punished.]
[The next day, the entire country carried out this decree. Heavy rain poured down, thunder struck the mountains, splitting the illusions. Yinshan Village's sorcery was broken. The whole village, with 513 people—old, young, women, and children—knelt in front of the village, crying blood and wailing, accusing heaven and earth of being heartless.]
[In front of the village stood a Daoist priest in yellow robes. He raised his hand, causing mist to fall, once again hiding Yinshan Village within a poisonous fog and insect-filled miasma. Within the mist were eighty-one formations, and when the foreigners forcefully entered, over a hundred were killed or wounded. My junior apprentice brother and I dared not enter.]
[Thus it continued until the fourth month. Many guarded the gate of Yinshan Village but could not enter. The foreigners grew increasingly impatient and pressured the court. The court, in a state of panic, issued a new decree.]
[No resistance was allowed against the foreigners' use of force. No refusal was permitted when missionaries sought to enter homes. No harsh words or stern looks were to be directed at foreign dignitaries. An agreement was made to pay compensation of 450 million taels of silver.]
[That day, the illusion over Yinshan Village was broken, the village gates opened, and the foreigners, carrying firearms, forced their way in.]
[Upon reaching the village gate, blood flowed like rivers within Yinshan Village, with fewer than one in a hundred surviving. The Daoist in yellow robes alone bore a century of accumulated sin and karma, endured heavenly thunder as high as ten thousand fathoms, refined hundreds of vengeful spirits, and led the corpses of the tragically slain to guard the village gate, without retreating a single step.]
[The foreigners were fearful and recoiled, not daring to enter.]
[Such a scene was heartbreaking. To force entry would go against the Daoist heart. We reported to the court that entry was impossible. The court issued an imperial edict with gold and silk, commanding the Daoist in yellow to surrender. If he refused, all nine generations of the Yinshan Village people would be implicated, and, should he still not surrender, death would be bestowed upon me, my junior apprentice brother, and all members of the Daoist sect.]
[…With the yellow imperial silk draped over him, the vengeful ghosts bowed to the ground, and all the people of Yinshan Village were completely sealed by the imperial edict.]
[My junior apprentice brother and I secretly altered the imperial edict, changing the date of the surrender to one hundred years later.]
[The foreigners raised their cannons and entered Yinshan Village. My junior apprentice brother and I secretly hid the surviving villagers in the underground ancestral tomb, delivering wine and food to sustain them.]
[The descendants, following our instructions, built a formation inside the tomb using water as its essence. This preserved the corpses inside the tomb from decay for a hundred years. The spirits of Yinshan Village's descendants, after death, would remain unrested for a hundred years, neither entering the underworld nor the heavens, avoiding the court's imperial edict of surrender and protecting them from being struck and scattered by heavenly thunder.]
[After one hundred years, all accumulated sins would be eliminated, Yinshan Village would be deserted, the descendants would all be dead, and the surrender edict would become void.]
[Yinshan Village would no longer be sinners of the world; they could enter the Six Realms of reincarnation, and everything would start anew…]
The more he read on, the brighter Kong Xuyang's eyes became. Suddenly, he sharply turned his head toward Yang Zhi, grabbing his arm. His voice was hoarse to the point of not sounding human as he said, "I know what that zombie's weakness is."
"It's the surrender edict! Quickly dig—this imperial edict is most definitely within these two foreign Daoists' graves!"
—————————————————
On the other side, Bai Liu, who saw Mu Sicheng throw out the almanacs, picked them up and folded them page by page as he stood at the village entrance. Beside him was the unmoving Daoist zombie; thus, no other zombies or evil spirits dared approach Bai Liu.
After Mu Sicheng's mental value dropped, he fought fiercely. But after being pinned down by Bai Liu, his hands and feet were tied with a whip. He collapsed at the village gate, leaning against the village archway. At first, he bared his teeth at Bai Liu, but Bai Liu didn't care at all.
After a while, Mu Sicheng stopped moving, his eyes staring directly ahead, his expression full of various strange emotions. It was as if he had seen something that shouldn't exist here.
Bai Liu held the almanacs in one hand while gripping the tied-up Mu Sicheng with the other. His right leg was pressed against Mu Sicheng's shoulder to keep him from misbehaving. His gaze was lowered to the almanacs, reading very rapidly, and he muttered to himself:
"So it's like this. The tomb's formation wasn't set up by the Daoists in the tomb, but by the righteous Daoists along with the ancestors of Yinshan Village. Gathering yin energy wasn't to refine corpses, but to mend the scattered soul of the Daoist zombie that was struck by heavenly thunder, so that a hundred years later, its soul wouldn't be scattered and would not be barred from the cycle of reincarnation."
"…The brides and the drowned elderly in the tomb are all those who resisted the foreign aggressors back then. They were desperate and had no other way, so they knelt and prayed to the Daoist to use his strongest evil technique and turn them into malicious spirits to protect Yinshan Village."
Bai Liu quietly read the words in the almanac: "We died tragically because we couldn't protect our great rivers and mountains, nor our family and relatives at home."
"But in death, we are still family spirits, not slaves of a fallen nation."
"According to dark sorcery, unmarried women can become 'Red Demons'—spirits who die on their wedding journey and become powerful, vengeful ghosts whose might is beyond words. Thus, fifty-one unmarried women in Yinshan Village quietly married, wore double-happiness bridal veils, rode in flower sedan chairs, and stabbed themselves with scissors on their wedding paths, transforming into Red Demons. They guarded the village from the left side…"
"The fifty-one women were named: Wang Yixi (daughter of Wang Wu), Jiang Pinglu (already betrothed)…"
"According to dark sorcery, aging old men and women who drown themselves in ponds can become vicious, vengeful ghosts with an indescribable, deadly aura. Thus, two hundred seventy-one elderly men and women in Yinshan Village prepared to die, dressed in white clothes and pants, jumped into the water, and strangled themselves—kicking their legs and refusing to come ashore—transforming into White Demons to guard the village on the right side…"
"The two hundred seventy-one elderly men and women were named: Zhang Yishan…"
"Both the Red and White Demons were complete. The Daoist opened the ancestral tomb and gave the corpses a proper burial, gathering yin energy. Enduring countless agonies, he cultivated himself alive into a form neither human nor ghost to guard the village's central position. The entire village bowed in submission, mourning their great loss, kneeling and worshiping him as a deity, and resolved to build a temple in his honor…"
"Within a few days, the village gates opened to welcome the enemy…"
When Bai Liu read this part, the Daoist zombie, who had remained motionless this whole time, suddenly opened its eyes.
The talismans on its body moved without wind, and the hem of its yellow Daoist robe fluttered with a night breeze that seemed to come from nowhere. Its right hand pressed two fingers together, pointing straight up. The peachwood sword on its back flew out on its own, crossed, and stabbed into the ground in front of the Yinshan Village gate, forming a barrier that blocked anyone from passing.
This Daoist in yellow robes spoke in a calm and steady tone, eyes fixed on the space beyond the village gate, and asked, "Who goes there?"
Outside the pitch-black village gate, the forest stirred, as if a large number of things were moving. From within the shadows came faint, intermittent sounds—sharp, hoarse laughter and weeping—blending into an indistinct cacophony. A spine-chilling yin energy crept along the ground, spreading all the way to Bai Liu's feet.
A person slowly emerged from the darkness, holding a candle. It was Kong Xuyang.
Half of his face was lit by the red glow of the candle, and a low, hoarse laugh kept slipping from his throat. His expression already held a hint of madness. His right hand, which held the candle, was loosely wrapped in bandages torn from clothing and was still bleeding. In his left hand, raised level with his side, he clutched a golden scroll wrapped in cloth. It looked very much like an imperial edict prop from a Qing dynasty drama.
Behind him were many zombies with talismans stuck to their foreheads. Even further back were shaking skeletons. These skeletons held firearms and cannons, wearing old-fashioned Western-style clothing, looking very much like foreigners.
Yang Zhi followed behind Kong Xuyang, his expression calm and at ease, completely free of the panic and confusion from earlier.
"Didn't expect this, did you?" Kong Xuyang laughed heartily, spreading his hands. "Bai Liu, look—what happens after the identity I'm playing receives the imperial edict?"
"Troops, war preparations—everything."
Kong Xuyang looked disdainfully at Bai Liu and the Daoist zombie in Yinshan Village, the malicious smile at the corner of his mouth growing uncontrollably wider. "A hundred years ago, you and that zombie next to you were defeated under me, only living by my act of charity."
"The current me isn't so charitable."
"If this imperial edict hadn't been deliberately altered a hundred years ago, you yin spirits' souls would have been scattered long ago!"
Kong Xuyang's expression grew cold. He raised his hand and, using a writing brush, slashed through the carefully added 'hundred-year' restricted period, sternly reading aloud the contents of the imperial edict: "The people of Yinshan Village are disloyal and unjust, inhumane and untrustworthy. They slander others, cultivate malicious ghosts, and have repeatedly defied imperial orders. Such actions are intolerable under the laws of heaven and earth; they deserve to be punished along with all nine generations, their souls scattered into nothingness!"
"Attack the village—kill all the demons and ghosts in this village who have harmed me!"