Chapter 191 Human Porcelain
Chapter 191 Human Porcelain
"Bright and clear, the blue and white flowers shine brightly in the sky."
"Vaguely, the clouds and mist are like a swimming dragon..."
The young man murmured the lyrics of the sacrifice to the snake god in a low voice, walking along the light gray path between the charred rice fields. This was the road from the highway to Yanglao Village. The first half was straight, and the second half was winding. A simple land temple made of cement bricks was located at the junction of the straight and winding paths.
Ning Zhe half-knelt in front of the land temple. The small temple was empty. The land god who was sitting cross-legged inside when he came last time was gone.
The land god of Yanglao Village was called 'Taiwei Xiyi Xiansheng Zhenjun Weiwu Zhenliang Emperor' by Ji Taiyu's grandmother. There were not only such land temples on the way into the village, but there were also several in the village. However, the one Ning Zhe remembered most clearly was the one located under the old ginkgo tree in the north of the village.
"Oh, that ginkgo tree..." Ning Zhe stood up, patted the ash on his knees, and a flash of inspiration came to his mind.
To an outsider, Yanglao Village has two most striking features:
First, there are a large number of centenarians in the village who look haggard and sick but are still alive.
Secondly, there is an old ginkgo tree on the north side of the village that requires more than a dozen people to hug.
According to Ji Taiyu's grandmother before she died, this ginkgo tree was struck by lightning on the Dragon Boat Festival three years ago. At noon that day, the sky was cloudless and a loud thunder exploded out of nowhere, and a bolt from the blue fell squarely on the ginkgo tree.
The thunder ignited the fire, and from that day on, the heart of the ginkgo tree began to burn. The fire in the heart of the tree burned the entire trunk from the inside out, and it has been burning for three years, until today.
Recalling what happened back then, Ning Zhe felt as if he had found the source of the fire.
"This fire is very strange...even I am affected by the fire." Ning Zhe whispered to himself.
Ning Zhe still remembered that he had just rushed into the fire scene recklessly, opened the almanac, and even brought out the true form of the snake god to fight head-on with the evil spirit in the flames, thus putting himself in danger.
Without any reconnaissance, without any thinking, without any hesitation, he rushed straight into the flames like a reckless man.
This was not something he would do. This was not Ning Zhe's style. With Ning Zhe's character he would never do such a reckless and aggressive thing. He should have stopped the car when he saw the fire from afar on the highway.
Get off the car and observe from a distance, collect information from the moaning vipers in the sea of fire and the drivers and passengers caught in the fire on the highway, analyze the information, and then decide what to do next - move forward slowly, or go back to Lan Shiwen and ask the God of Plague to come.
Bold and careful, this is Ning Zhe's style of doing things, instead of rushing into the fire like a brainless reckless man.
"Fire can affect people's emotions, and it also affected my judgment... The moment I saw the flames, I lost most of my rationality and rushed forward recklessly like a moth to a flame." Ning Zhe recalled the previous situation and felt a chill in his heart.
If he had not been forced to believe that he was 'Ningzhe', the mental imprint that had resisted the assimilation of the flames to a certain extent, he would not even have had the chance to reveal his true form as the Snake God and struggle to death, and would have been forcibly assimilated by the virus-like flames into another person.
click-
It was the sound of something breaking.
The sound came from under his feet. Ning Zhe looked down and found that he had stepped on a piece of broken porcelain that came from nowhere.
The porcelain piece was smooth, with freckles dotted on the pure white, like a shy girl's face. Ning Zhe picked up the broken porcelain piece and saw a row of dark and dense eyelashes printed on it, and the slightly curved depression under the eyelashes looked like an... eye socket.
Yes, eye sockets. Ning Zhe took a deep breath, looked at the burned-out Yanglao Village at the end of the road, and placed the broken porcelain pieces with the eyelash print on the ground.
There were more porcelain pieces and some broken bones buried in the ashes on the roadside. Ning Zhe silently recited the lyrics of the sacrifice to the snake god, patiently picked up the porcelain pieces one by one, shook off the dust, and placed them on the ground one by one using the logic of a puzzle.
Soon, a white porcelain face with red lips, white teeth and a ferocious expression appeared in front of Ning Zhe.
Although it was pieced together from broken pieces of porcelain, this cracked face still looked lifelike, with vivid features. Even the angry expression looked like that of a hot-tempered old man with a red face and thick neck.
Ning Zhe recognized this face, in the purgatory of burning flames.
"At that time, all the snakes had their facial features melted by the flames. The fire burned all the faces into the same one. Even I was infected by the flames, and my personality and consciousness were on the verge of melting."
Melting, assimilation, this is the essence of fire.
The raging fire is only the external manifestation of this bizarre event; the memetic infection that spreads virally in the form of flames is its inner essence.
All creatures touched by the flames will have their personalities melted away, their appearances changed, and they will be assimilated from the inside out into the same person. In the end, they will become the one in front of me, being burned into strange pieces of red-lipped and white-toothed porcelain, shattered all over the floor.
"Fortunately, this fire cannot start at least today. Both burning and assimilation are taboos." Ning Zhe stood up and kicked the white porcelain face that he had put together with great difficulty.
Broken porcelain pieces like this can be seen everywhere in the wasteland where the flames have faded. Those identical faces may belong to the vipers groaning in the fire, or they may belong to the drivers and passengers stuck on the highway. Ning Zhe is too lazy to tell the difference.
Ning Zhe needs to go to Yanglao Village as soon as possible while there will be no more fire today.
Approaching the entrance of the village, under a half-burnt tree stump lay a stone talisman with the three characters "Yanglao Village" inscribed on it. The dark grey stone had been cracked by the high temperature, and the character "Lao" in Yanglao Village was split into two halves in the middle.
"..." Ning Zhe walked around the cracked stone talisman and saw a stretch of gray and white ruins.
Most of the houses in Yanglao Village are made of mud bricks and tiles. A fire destroyed the load-bearing wooden beams, leaving only broken tiles and remnant walls made of mud. The open-air coffins that were once seen everywhere in the village have also turned into red charcoal. Gray and white is the main theme here. The upward swirling heat brings up the warm embers and gently touches Ningzhe's face.
Ning Zhe turned over and climbed up a two-story reinforced concrete building. His eyes swept across the tiny flames and embers and fell on a conspicuous tree in the distance.
The fire on the ginkgo tree was still burning, and all the green leaves were burned to ashes. Only half of the thick hollow stump was left standing, emitting one or two hot sparks from time to time.
"That's the source of the fire." Ning Zhe frowned, hesitating whether he should approach it rashly.
When Ji Taixuan entered Yanglao Village by car, his mother left him several instructions in a letter, two of which were as follows:
[4. Before they find you, you must find something as soon as possible, something that can kill them. It is hidden in this village.]
[5. When your grandfather was still alive, the only clue he left behind was "deep down there". He hid that thing deep down in Yanglao Village, a place that cannot be reached by human power. But if you want to get there, you have to use any method or any force.]
"So what is the 'thing' that Ji Taixuan's grandfather left him, which is said to be able to kill the Ascended One?"
Although he was asking himself, Ning Zhe had a vague feeling that he had found the answer to this question.
(End of this chapter)