Village

After leaving the capital, Li Yuan flew eastward. About ten minutes into his journey, he noticed the feedback from his Divine Sense starting to blur.

The sensation was identical to what he had encountered with Ignatius, though on a much larger scale. The entire region ahead was shrouded in an indistinct barrier. When his Divine Sense probed forward, it felt like sinking into a quagmire; the further it extended, the more difficult it became. Eventually, it struck an invisible wall, forcing him to bypass it.

He did not attempt to force his way through the barrier. Instead, he slowed down and descended to the ground. Below him was a series of hills covered in sparse shrubbery, and a few hundred meters ahead lay the ridgeline of a low mountain.

Walking up the gentle slope and standing on the ridge, he looked out toward the horizon. The silhouette of a village appeared in the distance. Li Yuan adjusted his collar, swapped his cyan robe for the attire of a common traveler in coarse cloth, and began walking toward the settlement.

The village was small. Two or three dozen mud-brick houses lined each side of the road. Their walls were mottled and peeling, and many of the structures had begun to tilt. Likely due to a lack of maintenance, the overall appearance was quite dilapidated.

Just as Li Yuan was about to find someone to ask about the situation, a man carrying water buckets on a shoulder pole turned out from an alley. He looked to be in his forties, with dark skin and clothes covered in patches and holes.

Upon seeing Li Yuan, the man paused for a moment, then stepped aside to make way, offering a polite smile.

“Is this gentleman just passing through?”

“I am Li Yuan. I’m traveling through this area and was hoping to find a place to stay for the night.”

The man set down his shoulder pole. He didn’t seem to doubt Li Yuan’s words and pointed toward the eastern end of the village. “There’s an empty house over there. A hunter used to live in it, but it’s been vacant since he passed away. I’m heading over to the village head’s place anyway; I can have him give you the key.”

He acted with a natural familiarity, no different from an ordinary, hospitable farmer meeting a stranger. But what Li Yuan saw was something else entirely.

His eyes narrowed slightly as he scanned the man’s entire body with Spirit Vision.

The interior of the man’s body had been completely hollowed out. The being currently communicating with him was nothing more than an empty shell.

Muscles, fat, blood vessels, nerves... nothing remained. Beneath his skin was only a layer of dried fascia clinging to the bones. His chest and abdominal cavities were hollow, and his heart and other organs were nowhere to be found. The series of movements—from speaking to setting down the pole—did not rely on muscular contraction. Instead, a mass of black energy located in his chest cavity had replaced his flesh, pulling his bones into the corresponding postures.

He could still smile, talk, and carry water. He even nodded to neighbors as he passed their doors. But there was nothing left inside that shell.

Li Yuan withdrew his gaze and nodded.

“Much obliged.”

The village head was a thin, withered old man with white hair. He was squatting in his courtyard mending a tattered fishing net—one that had clearly been repaired countless times, as it was covered in a dense mess of patches.

After hearing the man’s explanation, the old man stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees, looking Li Yuan up and down.

“A traveler passing through? People don’t venture out as much these days.” He fished an old key from his waist and handed it over. “It’s the empty house at the east end. There’s only one key, so don’t lose it.”

“Thank you, old man.”

“No need for thanks. Just bring the key back when you leave tomorrow morning.”

Li Yuan took the key and went to the empty house.

The house was small, containing only a wooden board bed, a low table, a bamboo chair, and a dusty stove in the corner. He closed the door, sat on the edge of the bed, and silently spread his Divine Sense to cover the entire village.

Forty-three people. Men, women, young, and old. Every single one of them was hollow inside, consisting only of bones and a layer of parched skin.

They worked, talked, and ate as usual. Even though the food they put in their mouths would fall straight through their hollow chests the moment they swallowed, no one noticed.

There was no aura of death in the village, no resentment, not even a trace of the scent of blood. These people were not suffering, nor were they being tortured.

They... were simply trapped here, day after day, repeating the most familiar routines of their lives. They didn’t even know they were dead, still clinging to their memories and habits, re-enacting the past.

Li Yuan sat on the wooden bed for a long time, lost in thought.

This didn’t seem like the work of evil cultivators. Evil cultivators refined puppets to collect resentment or soul fragments to increase their cultivation. The more the souls suffered and the stronger the resentment, the more power could be converted.

But the people in this village felt no pain. In fact, they were entirely at peace. Maintaining this false tranquility required a massive amount of effort and spiritual energy, yet all it yielded was a group of empty shells from which not even a drop of resentment could be squeezed.

No sane evil cultivator would engage in such a losing business. Furthermore, even if they did, it would be impossible to make everyone act so lifelike. Every smile, every conversation, and every detail of life here was too complete—too complete to be a mere fabrication.

Hmm... it seemed more like someone—couldn't bear to let them pass away like this.

The thought lingered for a moment before he pushed it aside. He had too little information; idle speculation was pointless. Regardless of why the culprit was keeping these dead souls trapped in their shells to repeat their lives, it was ultimately not a good thing.

He stood up, pushed open the door, and walked to the open space in the center of the village.

The villagers were still busy with their own tasks, and no one noticed him. Li Yuan slowly raised his right hand, his fingers silently forming a hand seal. A pale gold Buddhist light overflowed from his fingertips, transforming into countless fine threads of light that drifted in all directions.

The scriptures were not uttered as Buddhist chanting but were instead integrated into his spiritual energy. A resonant, clear tone like the striking of gold and stone rippled out from his fingertips, spreading through the village in concentric circles, carrying a warm and irresistible power.

The man with the water buckets was pouring his second bucket into the vat when he noticed his fingers were slowly fading. He blinked, looked at his reflection in the water, and then at his disappearing hands. After a moment of confusion, he seemed to suddenly understand something. He set down the ladle and glanced toward the village—or perhaps, toward a distant place he hadn't thought of in a long time.

In the courtyard, the old village head put down his fishing net and slowly stood up, bracing his hands on his knees. He took one last look at the half-withered scholar tree in the yard, his lips moving slightly.

“The key... remember to return it.”

Then he smiled, and for the first time, a look of relief appeared on his wrinkled face. His figure dissolved into countless points of light under the shroud of the Buddhist light, drifting into the night air with a gentle breeze.

Li Yuan lowered his hand as the Buddhist light at his fingertips slowly dissipated. The village, now devoid of its inhabitants, fell into a deep silence, leaving only the soft sound of the night wind blowing over the eaves. He stood there for a while before turning back to the empty house.

Early the next morning, Li Yuan placed the key on the stone steps in front of the house and left the village, continuing eastward.

In the following days, he encountered several more identical villages. Each situation was the same as the first—everyone had died over a decade ago, or even earlier, leaving only thin grey threads to pull their bones through the motions of life.

This time he did not enter the villages. He simply released the Buddhist light from a distance, guiding those souls that had been trapped in their shells for years back to the heavens and earth. Along the way, he had already liberated over three hundred people. All of them were ordinary civilians; the oldest was in his nineties, and the youngest was still an infant in swaddling clothes.

He was well-acquainted with the methods of evil cultivators, but these actions were completely outside his understanding. The price paid and the potential gains were entirely mismatched, unless what the other party sought from the beginning was different from what he imagined.

But if that was the case, the nature of the entire matter would be completely different.

“I hope it hasn't reached the worst-case scenario yet...”