Jiang Lian had already gone to bed when Shen Gun, returning from the night market, dragged him up.

This feeling was quite unpleasant, with his head feeling heavy and eyelids drooping—they say morning grumpiness is hard to bear, but at least that comes after getting enough sleep. Not like him, whose bed hadn’t even warmed up.

Jiang Lian rubbed his brows, eyes, and cheeks, muttering: “A fortune teller, feudal superstition… how could you believe a fortune teller? He says your surname is Peng, so you’re a Peng? Of course, it’s your freedom to be surnamed Basin or Bowl…”

“But you can’t just hear that your ancestors were surnamed Peng and immediately try to connect yourself to Peng Zu.”

Who was Peng Zu? The legendary first longevity person of ancient China, said to have lived for eight hundred years. This age might contain some exaggeration, but there was no doubt about his extreme longevity.

Eight hundred years—who knows if it had anything to do with the self-reproduction that had been frequently mentioned in recent days.

Shen Gun corrected him: “Little Lian Lian, you can’t just hear ‘fortune teller’ and think of those smooth-talking, fraudulent shamans at the village entrance. Let me tell you, fortune tellers are of three kinds.”

He counted on his fingers: “First kind, pure frauds, charging five or ten yuan for a divination, talking nonsense, all based on guesswork.”

“Second kind, actually has some technical content, the reasoning type, relying on observation and skillful questioning techniques.”

“Third kind, like Master Ge Da, pure talent type, represented by Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng from the Tang Dynasty—these two were highly valued by Emperor Taizong. Do you think the Emperor would have been fooled by some street con man?”

This rebuttal was quite forceful, and Jiang Lian remained silent. He had heard of Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng, and had even read their masterpiece, “The Tui Bei Tu.”

It was said that one day, with nothing to do, these two men calculated the fate of the Tang Dynasty, got carried away, and couldn’t stop themselves, predicting more than two thousand years after the Tang. Later, fearing too much heavenly information would be leaked, Yuan Tiangang pushed Li Chunfeng’s back and said, “Let’s stop here.”

Hence, it was called “The Tui Bei Tu” (The Push Back Chart).

Jiang Lian asked: “This Ge Da… can he be compared to Yuan Tiangang and the others?”

Shen Gun sighed: “I’ve heard about these Ge brothers for many years, but never had the chance to meet them. It’s said they’re skilled in ‘divination and fortune telling,’ and their eyes are most formidable—not physical eyes, but the mind’s eye. Only when the physical eyes fail can the mind’s eye open, so these two brothers are both blind.”

“Ge Da is righteous and adheres to principles, while his brother Ge Er is treacherous and cunning, often doing immoral things for money. In a fit of anger, Ge Da drew a boundary with Ge Er at the Yangtze River—one would never enter the south of the river, and the other would never cross to the north, never to meet again in life or death.”

Jiang Lian had been listening with skepticism, but gradually began to pay attention.

Shen Gun said, “Regarding divination and fortune-telling, I specifically looked into it once. I saw an explanation in a forum that interpreted fortune-telling as utilizing dimensional differences.”

“Our world is three-dimensional, so everyone only knows the past, not the future, and feels that the future is too unpredictable. But this universe isn’t just that; the universe might be four or five-dimensional. In such dimensions, the future is visible.”

“Since it’s visible, a person’s entire life is clear at a glance, it’s a complete data chain, and all people’s lives combine to form a massive database—this database exists somewhere, perhaps in the depths of the universe, but it can be accessed if you can receive it. The human brain is that receiver, but only a very small percentage of people’s brains have the right frequency to connect to this database and browse it.”

Jiang Lian listened, his scalp tingling: “You mean Yuan Tiangang and the others’ calculations were their brains connecting to that multi-dimensional temporal database, continuously browsing forward?”

Shen Gun nodded: “But this browsing has limitations. First, you only see appearances, not reasons. For instance, if he sees a person at some point in the future wielding a knife to chop someone. But is this person committing a crime, acting righteously, or defending themselves? It’s hard to define from a glance…”

Jiang Lian made an affirming sound: this was understandable, just like some news nowadays, where what the eyes see is often just the surface, not the truth, yet too many people are quick to react emotionally to appearances.

“…unless you browse deeper and click on details, but such in-depth viewing is difficult, extremely draining on one’s energy, and not necessarily successful—though the knife-wielding scene is going to happen since he saw it.”

“Second, they’re constrained by their level of civilization. Even if they see certain things, they don’t know what they’re looking at.”

“A simple example, there’s a verse in the Tui Bei Tu that says ‘Fliers not birds, divers not fish, warfare not in soldiers, a game of creation.’ Some interpret this as describing modern warfare, what Yuan Tiangang saw were scenes of modern warfare: fighter jets flying in the sky, submarines diving underwater—but he was a man of the Tang Dynasty, he couldn’t understand these things, and could only describe honestly that things were flying in the sky that weren’t birds, things diving underwater that weren’t fish.”

“Now you understand why I take Master Ge Da’s words so seriously, right? He’s not talking nonsense, nor is he inferring; he actually ‘sees’ it. I’ve heard that in their profession, healers can’t heal themselves; they can help others see but can’t see their own or their loved ones’ futures, which is quite torturous. Also, peering too much into heaven’s secrets, most will suffer one of poverty, early death, or solitude. With Ge Da’s abilities, if he were to serve wealthy merchants or powerful officials, wouldn’t he be making gold by the bushel? But he dared not take such wealth.”

“I heard in earlier years he charged one hundred yuan for fortune-telling, never saying much, treating words like gold. Now it’s increased to three hundred, perhaps because the economy has developed and people’s living standards have improved, so he charges a bit more—but he definitely won’t save this money, just watch, it’s probably already been spent.”

He muttered again: “Many people seek him out, and he wanders constantly, also to avoid these troublesome matters. I recognized him, and fearing the news would spread, he’ll leave overnight. The old man is quite aged, must be… eighty by now, probably won’t meet him a second time.”

Jiang Lian remained silent, feeling somewhat regretful.

Why didn’t he go to the night market with Shen Gun tonight? He missed a great opportunity to meet a remarkable figure. If he had met him, he would have been willing to pay ten or a hundred times the three hundred yuan to ask Master Ge Da to help see: had Meiying’s box been found, would he and Meng Qianzi live together, would they have sons or daughters later, would the little ones be promising…

He suddenly realized something and questioned Shen Gun: “Such a rare opportunity, and you didn’t ask about the box, only asked about your surname?”

Shen Gun retorted irritably: “Didn’t I tell you already? He can’t see many details; forcing it would harm him. Besides, the fact that he would speak two sentences to you is already quite good. Some people throw money into his bowl, and he’ll pick it out and throw it back.”

Fine, Jiang Lian was already becoming a fan of Master Ge Da: “Since Master Ge Da said your ancestors were surnamed Peng, you probably are a Peng. But you’re… climbing up the pole too quickly, claiming your ancestor is Peng Zu. Does Peng Zu… even acknowledge you?”

Shen Gun rolled his eyes: “I’m not trying to ride his fame. To be honest, before getting involved in this whole affair, I was already quite interested in Peng Zu. I always felt he was the last… the last…”

He thought for a moment, then changed his phrasing: “I always felt he was the last deity of ancient times.”

Jiang Lian said, “Just because he lived long?”

Yes, Shen Gun initially had this understanding because Peng Zu had lived a long time.

All along, he had this feeling: those ancient deities, though their lifespans were very, very long, were not endless. Otherwise, Nü Wa, Fu Xi, Jingwei, and others would still be alive today, so they still had limited lifespans.

And Peng Zu might have been the last of these deities to pass away, living beyond ancient times, beyond the Xia and Shang dynasties, living among ordinary people, and thus becoming widely known.

Later, when involved in the Mountain Ghost affairs and learning about self-reproduction, looking back at Peng Zu became even more meaningful.

Shen Gun said: “Peng Zu didn’t just live long, but very long—in ancient China, many people lived over a hundred years, and the further back in ancient times, the longer people’s lifespans. It’s said that Yao lived for 145 years, and Shun lived for 110. If Peng Zu had only lived for 120 or 130 years, it wouldn’t have been remarkable at that time, he wouldn’t have been so famous, nor been respected by the Chinese as the first in longevity.”

Jiang Lian made an affirmative sound: “You suspect the eight hundred years of life is true, that he self-reproduced, and was also of the God Clan? Also, you emphasize he was the ‘last generation,’ ‘the last one,’ that has some specific meaning, right?”

Of course it did.

Shen Gun was a bit excited: “The God Clan was eliminated by natural selection, and this elimination was a process. The God Clan had old and young members; inevitably, some died first, some later. Considering their lifespans were all very long, this ‘before and after’ might have differed by several hundred years.”

Coming to the critical point, his heartbeat was heavy: “If you were the Yellow Emperor, and the box-burning went wrong, with a box of crucial items stolen, and you needed to find a way to retrieve and remedy it, who would you send?”

Jiang Lian said: “The most… clever and capable person?”

Shen Gun sighed: “Little Lian Lian, you’re quite bright, but why do you grow a thick skull at critical moments? No matter how clever and capable, what’s the use if they don’t live long?”

Jiang Lian immediately realized: “The youngest one?”

“Of course! The Yellow Emperor’s clan long resided in the Central Plains, but Chiyou’s clan went into exile, entering places like Xiangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan—places that were then absolute wilderness, completely unknown to the Yellow Emperor’s clan. Moreover, the box was broken into pieces, with one thing hidden here and another there. Could finding the box and the Phoenix Feathers be done quickly?”

“Also, the longer the time, the harder to find, because knowledgeable people died successively, and this secret was never revealed to posterity—this territory spanning from Guangxi to Xiangxi to Kunlun, trying to connect all these and figure out a clue, that’s an impossible task. Even if Peng Zu lived eight hundred years, give him another eight hundred, he still might not have accomplished it. And it’s the habit of Chinese people that what one generation fails to achieve is entrusted to the next.”

Jiang Lian vaguely grasped some clues: “You mean Peng Zu’s descendants were also involved? And this descendant… is you?”

Thinking carefully, it seemed somewhat reasonable, and there had been early signs: Shen Gun could identify the authenticity of the Mountain Gallbladder, and the Mountain Gallbladder recognized Shen Gun. As the exploration deepened, Shen Gun occasionally had dreams, and these dreams were crucially important, connecting seemingly unrelated fragments. Perhaps those weren’t dreams, but memories gradually awakening in Shen Gun.

Jiang Lian suddenly thought of something: “Then your ultimate goal in seeking this box is to burn it?”

In such moments, it was hard not to be selfish: Meiying’s life depended on this box, but Shen Gun wanted to burn it. If the box were burned, would Meiying still survive?

Shen Gun looked a bit lost: “I don’t know, I don’t have any particular thoughts. What I most want to do now is find those seven Beast Bones to lead out the evil bamboo slips in my friend’s body. Those seven Beast Bones, I want to burn…”

Jiang Lian interrupted him: “The materials of the items in the box are all special; simple destruction won’t work. Placing them in the box is a necessary procedure—ultimately, to burn the Beast Bones, you would have to do it through that box, right?”

Shen Gun had nothing to say, pausing before speaking: “If you’re worried this will affect Miss Kuang… I heard Miss Kuang met Master Ge Da last night, and Master Ge Da even gave her a message.”

Jiang Lian’s heart immediately tensed: “What was it?”

“Good fortune, with help from noble people, she can overcome obstacles and calamities.”

Jiang Lian was stunned for quite a while, hardly believing it. After a long moment, he stammered: “Master Ge Da’s words, they should be correct, right?”

If Master Gan could live a few more days and hear this personally, he would pass away with contentment.

…

Before returning to his room, Shen Gun hesitated, lingering for quite a while before finally asking Jiang Lian: “Tonight’s matter, could you… Not tell Miss Meng yet?”

Jiang Lian didn’t understand immediately: “Why?”

Shen Gun smiled bitterly: “If she knew… what do you think the Mountain Ghosts would do to someone who might potentially burn the Mountain Gallbladder?”

What would they do?

After Shen Gun left, Jiang Lian pondered this question for a long time.

He felt Meng Qianzi probably wouldn’t care much, after all, the Mountain Gallbladder, besides being able to counter the Water Crystal, seemed to have no use for the Mountain Ghosts.

But it was hard to say about Meng Qianzi’s seven mothers: the elderly tend to be conservative, preferring to keep things safely hidden rather than easily moving them, let alone burning them.

He suddenly became curious.

Did Peng Zu’s descendant, Shen Gun, have any extraordinary talents? From what he’d seen so far, he was quite ordinary, nearly losing his life to a crocodile when entering the Phoenix Eye—his desire to burn the box seemed even more difficult than Tang Seng fetching sutras from the West, right?

They set off early the next morning.

Tao Tian arranged two cars, a seven-seater large SUV for people, and another as a backup and for carrying various equipment.

She also brought different versions of “The Classic of Mountains and Seas” with annotations for Shen Gun, along with several books about Peng Zu, likely at his request from last night.

Shen Gun hadn’t slept well, with two huge dark circles under his eyes. Jiang Lian thought he was excited about finding his ancestral roots, but only learned while chatting with Meng Qianzi on the way that Shen Gun had talked to her for a long time after returning to his room last night.

It turned out that A Hui, whom Shen Gun often mentioned, was originally named A Mu Li, the successor to the Black Miao Gu King.

There was also a heartbreaking story here.

Years ago, when Duan Wenxi visited the Black Miao Gu King, she noticed her young assistant and A Mu Li had developed feelings for each other, and had subtly warned him: Miao women are skilled in gu, especially Black Miao women—better not to get involved if it can be avoided.

The assistant readily agreed, and Duan Wenxi thought the matter was settled.

But she underestimated the intensity of love between young men and women. The assistant didn’t take her warning to heart at all, thinking there was nothing to fear even if he was afflicted with gu: Miao women used gu to punish unfaithful men, and since he kept his word and was sincere, what was there to fear?

After the Black Miao visit ended, the assistant needed to return to Shanghai to continue his studies, and Duan Wenxi had other itineraries, so they parted ways in Kunming and lost contact. It wasn’t until several years later, by chance, that Duan Wenxi heard the assistant had died long ago, the cause being the gu outbreak.

With a slight calculation of dates, Duan Wenxi knew it was from the karmic relationship formed during the Black Miao visit. The assistant must have been intimate with the Miao woman, and then found someone else after returning to Shanghai—although it was the assistant’s moral failure to begin and then end the relationship, she deeply regretted bringing the innocent person into contact with the Black Miao, and never hired similar assistants again.

This was the first half of the story.

The second half was what Meng Qianzi heard from Shen Gun last night.

The assistant hadn’t been unfaithful at all. After completing his studies, as per their agreement, and even a bit earlier, he trekked over mountains and rivers back to the Black Miao village, wanting to surprise A Mu Li.

However, things had changed: by then, the Gu King had passed away, and A Mu Li had mysteriously disappeared during an outing several months earlier and never returned.

The assistant had no choice but to stay at A Mu Li’s old residence, determined to wait for her return. Unexpectedly, before A Mu Li returned, he met his death.

The gu poison of A Mu Li was no joke. Poor assistant, a lifetime of being gentle, refined, and cultured, never doing anything bad, yet ending up with intestines torn, stomach rotting, feces and urine flowing—a most undignified end. He crawled in agony for three days and nights in the village before dying, practically eaten alive by countless gu worms, his bones riddled with holes.

The villagers all sympathized with him, but were helpless, it was fate: if the Gu King were still alive, there might have been a way to try to resolve A Mu Li’s gu, but the Gu King had just died.

The assistant was buried outside the village, in a small grave that was covered with green grass in less than a year.

Another year passed, and on a misty, drizzling evening, a family living near the village entrance suddenly heard the heart-wrenching, shrill cry of a woman in the night. The male head of the household felt a chill down his spine and went out with a lantern to investigate.

At the assistant’s grave, he saw A Mu Li, who had been missing for a long time.

According to him, when A Mu Li went out, she was still a pretty young girl, but now she completely resembled a mature woman. Her hair was disheveled, she wore Han Chinese-style divination skirts, and she was filthy all over. The earthen grave had been forcibly dug open by her bare hands.

The Black Miao did not use coffins for burial, and since the assistant was an outsider, he had only been wrapped in a reed mat and buried. After so long, with the mountain climate being damp, the reed mat had long rotted into mud, mixed with bone fragments and soil.

The male householder saw A Mu Li weeping bitterly, grabbing handfuls of grave soil and swallowing them. Rain fell from the sky, and black mud streaks, diluted by rain, hung from the corners of her mouth, extremely terrifying.

The male householder was so frightened that he fell to the ground, his lantern rolling several yards away. The oil fire leaked out, setting the surrounding grass on fire. He hurriedly took off his clothes to beat out the flames and, with great effort, extinguished them. Then, remembering A Mu Li, he looked up, only to see her thin silhouette staggering away into the night.

The assistant’s mother was still in Shanghai, frail and sickly, with no one to care for her. A Mu Li went to Shanghai and became a dance hall girl for a time, providing for the old lady until her death.

Then, during troubled times with intense fighting, just as the Kuang family fled to safety, she also sought refuge in a small mountain village in Henan. Unlike them, she didn’t have much gold or silver, but she brought a coffin with her.

In that small mountain village, she chose a burial spot for herself and arranged to be nailed alive into the coffin, setting a blood gu with her life, cursing those who had harmed her to die miserably.

Decades later, Shen Gun, traveling through the area, encountered the gu worms. After a “great battle,” he sat on the gu worms with his buttocks and killed them, and also saw the coffin lid that had been overturned due to a geological disaster.

On the coffin lid were curses carved by A Mu Li before her death.

The Lu Bell lineage, extinct within three generations.

…

The car had already left the city, the road gradually widening, the silhouettes of distant mountains boldly sketched against the sparse sky.

Jiang Lian adjusted the volume of his earphones and clicked on another voice message sent by Meng Qianzi.

She said: “Do you know what happened to A Mu Li? It’s outrageous. She was walking perfectly fine on the road when she was knocked unconscious and kidnapped by a group of people, and that group was actually from the Sheng family, the Nine Bells Sheng family.”

“The Lu Bell of the Sheng family had broken its lineage during that period. The head of the family gave some money to his subordinates, asking them to buy a woman from a brothel or human traffickers, to blend blood and undergo metamorphosis, to continue the bloodline.”

“But those scum gambled away the money. With no money left and unable to face the family head, they became deranged and set their sights on passersby, planning to kidnap anyone. A Mu Li happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a Gu King’s successor, if it had been a face-to-face confrontation, how could those people have been her match?”

Jiang Lian couldn’t describe his feelings, but life is often like this: boats capsize in gutters, cars crash on flat ground, just like Old Lady Duan, once legendary, who could have known she would end up in Yanluo’s hands?

Meng Qianzi gnashed her teeth: “If I had known the Sheng family was like this, I would never have let the Mountain Ghosts arrange that ‘Unexplored Mountain Residence’ for them!”

Jiang Lian smiled. The car was too quiet; anything said could be heard by everyone, so he had been typing messages to Meng Qianzi: “We can’t say that, there are good people in the Sheng family too.”

Meng Qianzi coldly snorted on the other end, then said: “A Mu Li was captured to continue the lineage for the Lu Bell. I guess by then, she didn’t have gu anymore, couldn’t use her skills, could only pretend to be obedient, gave birth to a daughter for the Sheng family, and then escaped when the guards became lax.”

“But she was vengeful, ‘The Lu Bell lineage, extinct within three generations,’ that meant cursing her daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, showing how much she hated them. Also, Shen Gun told me that the friend he knows now is the third generation of the Lu Bell.”

Jiang Lian froze, quickly typing four words: “Can it be resolved?”

Meng Qianzi replied: “He said the gu worms died, so probably most of it is resolved, but Shen Gun doesn’t understand the Black Miao well either. Afterward, he specifically went to the Black Miao village, but the Gu King’s lineage had also been broken, and no one could explain it to him. He doesn’t dare guarantee, always worrying if there might still be aftereffects. Also, he thinks that in the Sheng family’s Nine Bells, the Lu Bell is supreme. If the Lu Bell is extinct, it’s basically like all nine bells are extinct. When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter. Once the most important lineage is gone, the others can…”

The voice chat ended there; there was no signal.

Jiang Lian raised his head, looking at the vast mountain peaks drawing closer in his sight.

“The Lu Bell lineage, extinct within three generations.”—Was it the people that would become extinct, or the bell?

The Nine Bells Sheng family, without their bells, would be just like ordinary people, ceasing to exist.

Deep down, Jiang Lian had a feeling.

The box-burning matter, perhaps… would happen.