Among the Mountain Ghosts, Duan Wenxi was a legendary figure. Her photographs had long been in circulation, and since everyone on this Kunlun expedition was searching for her remains, they were very familiar with her appearance and recognized her immediately.

Jing Rusi was stunned. When Duan Wenxi disappeared, she had only been in her teens and had never even met this Madam Duan, let alone formed any emotional connection. Previously, while searching for the body, she had followed orders but privately thought it pointless, believing that after more than forty years, dust should return to dust and earth to earth. The natural order of heaven burying and earth entombing should suffice—why mobilize such efforts for something so unnecessary?

Now, seeing this scene, she realized how shallow her thinking had been: it was different. This was about the Mountain Ghost lineage, respecting ancestors, the same clan, the same tribe, the same roots, the same vines.

Her eyes grew warm, and she instinctively said: “Quick, we need to record this for Elder Sister to see…”

Xian Qionghua remained calm, reminding her, “Fourth Sister, mountain mirages can’t be recorded. They can only be seen with the naked eye.”

By now, the yak caravan had completely emerged from the ravine entrance. Meng Qianzi saw clearly that there were four yaks in total: two carrying cargo and two carrying riders. There was no guide, and no one was leading the yaks, which was normal, as yaks are high-mountain bovines, classified as “mountain beasts,” and with Duan Wenxi present, they could be controlled easily.

As for the cargo they carried…

Looking at what was visible, Meng Qianzi’s heart pounded heavily: on one yak’s back, wrapped in burlap, was unmistakably a box-shaped object.

That box—Yanluo had indeed brought it into the Kunlun Mountains!

She held her breath, unconsciously clenching the hand resting beside her leg: she no longer cared about ancient scenes; she only wanted to know what had happened to Madam Duan all those years ago. This Mirage Pearl was of poor quality, with unstable images. Who knew when this scene might disappear…

The caravan continued moving. Duan Wenxi raised a camera, taking pictures in all directions, appearing quite leisurely, while Yanluo in front unfurled a piece of leather parchment, looking around and then at the map, as if searching for the way.

Yanluo indeed had a route map, most likely found in one of the boxes from the Kuang family—the ones Black Third Master had considered worthless, containing scroll books. Meng Qianzi’s lips felt dry as she shouted: “Jiang Lian!”

From a distance came his reply: “Got it!”

Looking over, she saw Jiang Lian already sprinting toward the scene.

Jing Rusi was confused: “What… what is he doing?”

Meng Qianzi was so tense that her palms were sweating. She silently prayed the image would last longer and not disappear too quickly: “Jiang Lian can attach spirit eyes. If he can just get one look, we’ll know what’s on that leather parchment.”

Jing Rusi was somewhat surprised. Looking back at the scene, she murmured: “That’s a rare ability. This young man… not bad at all.”

Meng Qianzi said nothing, but inwardly felt pleased: Fourth Mother rarely praised anyone behind their back; it was unusual for her to speak well of someone.

Soon, Jiang Lian reached the scene. In the highlands, running at such speed could easily trigger altitude sickness. As soon as he stopped, his chest tightened, and his head throbbed. He pressed hard against his chest, taking deep breaths, then looked up.

The image before him was much worse than the one in Western Hunan. Yanluo would occasionally split vertically into two halves. What frustrated him more was that Yanluo was riding a yak and holding up a map, making him much taller than Jiang Lian, so glimpsing the map’s contents was very difficult.

Knowing time was limited, he didn’t hesitate. He chased after the yak’s rear, jumping and hopping, circling to the left, then to the right. Twice, in his urgency, he forgot he was looking at a mirage and reached out to grab the yak’s horns, trying to stop it, nearly tripping himself in the process.

Originally, with the Mirage Pearl’s vision and Duan Wenxi’s appearance, the situation had been quite tense, with everyone holding their breath. But suddenly, this comical scene unfolded, and to onlookers, it appeared both clumsy and amusing…

Meng Qianzi heard muffled laughter from around her and was quite displeased, muttering: “If you think you can do better, go ahead! Stop laughing!”

Jing Rusi had been about to laugh, but, hearing this, tried to restrain herself. She coughed lightly twice to dispel her amusement. Just as she was about to say something, the scene before them suddenly vanished. Looking closely, only the flat ground remained, with Jiang Lian standing alone on it.

The yaks, Yanluo, and Madam Duan—all gone.

She blurted out: “It’s over already?”

Meng Qianzi didn’t bother to answer, focusing intently on Jiang Lian.

On the open ground, Jiang Lian looked around, then gestured an “OK” sign toward Meng Qianzi’s location.

He had seen it. Meng Qianzi let out a long breath of relief.

The scene returned to reality, but Jiang Lian had an intuition that this mountain mirage might not be over yet.

With people all around, he didn’t want to stand brazenly in the center of the open space under spotlights, like a model subjected to the scrutiny of so many eyes.

He tightened his down jacket and walked to the side.

He had barely gone halfway when he suddenly had a strange premonition. At the same time, his scalp tingled slightly, and his face felt dry and tight, as if pulled by static electricity…

Sure enough, the next second, his vision blurred, and images appeared again. This time, they were overwhelming and dense. At first glance, it looked like a flock of black crows scattering in all directions.

Before Jiang Lian could look closely, cries of shock erupted from the mountain dwellers around. Tents were knocked askew, support frames tripped over. Some people were caught off guard and ran, tumbling down into the valley.

Others cried out in alarm: “What is this! What are these things?”

…

When Jiang Lian finally clearly saw the scene around him, despite knowing it was false, his heart pounded as all the blood in his body rushed to his head.

In front and behind him, throughout the entire valley, and even in the surrounding campsite, countless heads and dismembered limbs, and torsos were floating at various heights!

At the same time, Meng Qianzi felt her scalp crawl: she was sitting in her tent, and right by her feet, half a head was swaying. The half-face facing her was extremely ugly, with disproportionate features. It was still moving and, in an instant, brushed past her feet, “floating” to the other side.

Fortunately, she was very familiar with mountain mirages and quickly understood the cause: “There might be too many figures, and the scene is too complex. This mirage pearl is already of poor quality and can’t sustain it all, so we’re only seeing fragments.”

Xian Qionghua agreed with a sound, then leaned out and shouted sternly: “What’s all this noise about! Scared by something fake? Aren’t you ashamed!”

This shout was effective. The entire camp and valley fell instantly silent. After shouting, Xian Qionghua happened to glimpse half a leg stepping forward in a nearby depression. She felt a wave of discomfort.

Meng Qianzi also leaned out to look and said, “Over thousands of years, the terrain here would have changed somewhat. In ancient times, this area where we’re sitting was probably lower ground, but now it’s higher.”

She pointed to the half-head near her feet: “Originally, that should have been a person with a head and body. As the ground gradually rose, the body part sank underground, so we can only see the head.”

…

In the field, Jiang Lian also gradually calmed down, guessing these weren’t dismembered body parts.

Because those incomplete limbs were all “moving” normally—some turning their heads, some arms raising in gestures, some legs of varying lengths hurrying about. If he had a pen to complete these fragmented outlines, he could imagine that this was indeed a bustling scene of people coming and going.

Jiang Lian steadied himself, suppressing the waves of nausea in his chest, and carefully observed the scene around him. Gradually, he began to understand.

He was almost certain that this was the scene from Shen Gun’s dream—the one with large crowds counting boxes.

Because he saw incomplete, multiple bonfires, and more than one box. Some were placed on the ground, showing only an open corner, while others floated in mid-air, continuously moving forward—these were probably being carried by people who weren’t visible in the mirage.

He also saw dozens of heads, some half-visible, some showing only an eye connected to a forehead, others with the head attached to one shoulder.

What alarmed Jiang Lian was that among these heads, half were normal human heads, but the other half were completely terrifying and deformed!

In other words, the other half of the heads could be classified as belonging to the same category as the mantis-people—faces like cattle, pointed jaws like rats, heads with additional heads on top, and even necks with eerie tentacles growing from them…

They brushed past those “humans,” even worked side by side, all behaving naturally, as if long accustomed to and completely unconcerned about these enormous physical differences.

Jiang Lian’s mind was pulsating intensely. He felt he was about to grasp some thread of understanding, but kept losing it. Just then, he heard stumbling footsteps and looked up to see Shen Gun approaching with his oxygen bottle.

Shen Gun seemed very excited. Every few steps, he would take a breath from the oxygen bottle, but his goal was clear. Without looking left or right, not even bothering to avoid those insubstantial figures, he rudely crashed through the mirage images, heading directly in one direction.

Jiang Lian followed his gaze.

He understood who Shen Gun was heading toward.

It was the fake Shen Gun. This figure was relatively well-rendered—the head was complete, though only half the body was visible. He was working with a “monster” opposite him to lift a box, seemingly about to move it somewhere.

Jiang Lian watched as the distance between Shen Gun and this fake Shen Gun grew smaller.

Side by side, the differences became more apparent. Their faces were highly similar, but their hairstyles differed—the fake one had loose hair with some braided sections. Their clothing also differed; Kunlun had always been bitterly cold, and the fake Shen Gun wore animal hide clothing…

Just as the two were about to meet across the void, everything returned to nothingness.

All the images vanished, not even a fragment remained. Only the harsh beams from dozens of spotlights remained, making the vast center of the valley appear even more empty, except for Shen Gun, who stood there with a blank expression, not yet having regained his senses.

Jiang Lian walked toward Shen Gun, stopping a few steps in front of him, and asked: “In all those dreams you had about this place, why did you never mention that half of the people weren’t human in appearance?”

It took Shen Gun several seconds to react, feeling truly wronged: “How can you blame me, Little Lian Lian? Don’t you remember, I never saw the appearances or clothing of those people in my dreams?”

Jiang Lian remembered.

The first time Shen Gun mentioned this dream, he had said, “There were also human figures, but they weren’t clear. I just knew there were people, and quite many.”

The last time, dreaming in the giant alligator’s cave, he had said, “Those people were just shadowy figures, but I could tell they were holding different things in their hands.”

From beginning to end, Shen Gun had never been able to see clearly what those box-counting people looked like.

Jiang Lian smiled and said, “It was only just now that I understood some things.”

“Meiying’s hometown is Loudi. I’ve been there many times to investigate the Kuang family. In Loudi, there’s a statue of Chi You, and in that statue, Chi You has two horns on his head.”

In mythology, Chi You has different appearances. Sometimes he has a bull’s head with wings on his back; sometimes he has three heads and six arms with a bronze head and iron forehead. It’s also said he had eighty-one brothers who resembled him.”

“In Western Hunan, I stayed with Old Ga, a nuo mask craftsman who makes various shamanic nuo masks. He said humans cannot communicate directly with gods; they must wear nuo masks to appear as gods—you must have seen these masks. Although they have ears, eyes, mouths, and noses, the features are distorted and frightening.”

“I also recall that in legends, Nu Wa had a human head with a snake’s body, while Xingtian had no head, using his nipples as eyes and his navel as a mouth… Do you think ‘they’ might look like this?”

Shen Gun had understood Jiang Lian’s meaning halfway through but didn’t interrupt. Only now did he speak: “It’s possible.”

In the Water Ghost videos, those affected in 1996 were described as “deformed” or “turned into monsters,” suspected of being defective products of failed transformations.

On this journey, when they saw the mantis-people, they immediately called them “monsters” or, to avoid causing panic, euphemistically referred to them as “those things.”

But what they called deformities or monsters was entirely based on a “human-centric” aesthetic viewpoint. Perhaps from “their” perspective, they were the perfect ones, and humans were the strange, ugly, deformed type.

It’s like if the world’s aesthetic standard was “chicken-centric,” roosters and hens would look at humans with disgust: “Goodness, humans are so ugly, without cute pointed beaks, with smooth featherless bodies, and extra pairs of arms—what deformities!”

…

Jiang Lian’s heart raced: “So you’re saying the Water Ghosts who were affected in 1996 were successful in terms of their appearance?”

Shen Gun replied: “Not just successful—they perfectly reverted to the ancient physical forms, exactly matching ‘their’ expectations. On the contrary, those like Yi Sa who didn’t change appearance would be considered the most failed cases in ‘their’ eyes—developed into heretics, beyond salvation.”

Jiang Lian suddenly thought of something: “Zong Hang and Yanluo didn’t change either. They weren’t Water Ghosts but outsiders. Does this mean Water Ghosts truly have a special physiology? Are they the perfect transformation vessels, and only through the rebirth of Water Ghosts can they restore their ancient appearance?”

The Water Ghosts had once firmly believed the words of their Founder: How could their ancestors harm their descendants? Just follow the instructions, and all would be well.

Meng Qianzi had also once wondered: We’re all family. If our ancestral grandmother had something for us to do, she could just pass down the message directly. Why all the secrecy and half-truths, even fabricating lies to lead us in circles?

Now they understood why the Founder had targeted his descendants, leading them to the drifting cavern.

Because in their eyes, these weren’t descendants anymore—they were no longer on the same side, only suitable for exploitation, neither trustworthy nor reliable.

And this wasn’t targeting them; these generations had grown crooked and had strayed too far. Their only use was to be reclaimed, remodeled, and repurposed.