Chapter 79: The Story

"Hey, the sacrificial site is not ready yet. You are not allowed in here yet."

Hu Yang: "..."

He suddenly felt as though he had wandered into a game scenario.

In situations like this, there was usually a set of prerequisite tasks to complete before the path to a new area would unlock.

He took a few steps back and gazed from afar at the entrance leading into the ruins.

At that moment, he had two choices.

First, ignore everything and force his way in.

Second, learn more about the place before deciding what to do.

"..."

No, it was better to be peaceful. One should not leap straight into violence at every turn.

At the very least, he needed to understand the current state of the ruins first.

"Is it here?" Hu Yang asked.

"Mm." Gengar nodded.

Having confirmed it, Hu Yang prepared to head back down the mountain and return to the town, find somewhere to stay, and think things over.

But along the way, he kept feeling that the townspeople looked at him strangely, with something like caution in their eyes.

Night had fully fallen. After returning to the streets, Hu Yang bought a bowl of fish-ball noodles from a roadside stall lit by a single lamp.

The cook was an elderly woman with white hair and a face lined by wrinkles.

She glanced at Hu Yang and took a clean porcelain bowl from beside her, filling it with the cooked noodles and fish balls.

"Are you from the outside world?" she asked.

Hu Yang, who had been speaking with Gengar, froze for a moment before realizing what she meant by the outside world. He nodded. "Yes."

Just then, a child's head suddenly appeared from behind the stall.

It was a boy of seven or eight, and he had clearly overheard the conversation. He glared at Hu Yang and said fiercely, "We don't welcome outsiders here!"

The old woman frowned. "Renping, mind your manners!"

"Grandma!" The boy called Renping looked shocked.

"It's because of outsiders like them that the balance in the shrine was broken! If it weren't for them, Grandpa Sansheng wouldn't have died!"

As he spoke, he shot Hu Yang a glare. "Thief!"

"Renping!" The old woman was angry now, her voice rising.

Only then did the boy hang his head dejectedly and fall silent.

"Sorry," the old woman said, turning back with an apologetic expression. "Please forgive his rudeness."

If Hu Yang had been ten years old, he might have gotten so angry at such words that he would have stood up and argued until both their faces and necks were flushed red.

But his mental age was already thirty-one. In his previous life, while surfing the internet and trading insults with others, he had heard every kind of filthy language imaginable.

Being called a thief now only made him feel oddly intrigued.

Hu Yang did not take it too seriously and instead asked, "Why does he say outsiders are thieves?"

At that, the old woman sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if recalling something. After a long while, she said, "Because last year, we rescued an unconscious man from the seashore. After he woke, he stole something very important from us."

Hu Yang exchanged a glance with Gengar.

His hand brushed the orb in his backpack, and in his mind rose the face of the person who had sold it to him.

Could it be... what he was thinking?

The old woman said no more.

After finishing the noodles, Hu Yang casually brought up the town's festival.

"Oh, that..." the old woman explained. "It's a tradition that has been passed down in our town since ancient times, mainly to thank the Lord of the Aura for sealing away those terrifying spirits for us..."

"Legend says that long, long ago, our ancestors lived on this island, rising with the sun and resting at sunset."

"Then one day, for reasons no one knew, a group of Ghost-type creatures suddenly appeared on the island. They would disguise themselves as humans and deceive people."

"Many people lost their lives because of them, becoming white-haired old men and women overnight."

"Fortunately, later an exalted one with the power of the Aura came to the island. He helped us seal away all those harmful creatures."

"In gratitude, our ancestors built a shrine and a temple on the island to honor that exalted one."

Under the dim yellow light, the old woman's expression gradually grew solemn, as if she were warning them, or perhaps recounting a tale from the past.

"Ghost-type creatures are best at deceiving the human heart. Their words must never be believed lightly."

"Our ancestors believed them, and that is how they suffered such a great calamity..."

The broth was gone, but the story was not yet finished.

Hu Yang looked thoughtfully at the chopsticks in his hand.

In truth, he was sorting out the threads of this thousand-year-old tale in his mind.

The cast of characters was as follows:

The Ghost-type spirits that had suddenly appeared,
the people who lived on this island,
the wielder of Aura who had passed by,
and the thief he had seen in Orange City a thousand years later.

The rough order of events was this:

Ghost-type spirits suddenly appeared on the island and disrupted the peaceful lives of the islanders.

When the islanders were plunged into despair, the emissary of Aura passed by and used his own power to seal away the Ghost-type spirits.

To commemorate the emissary of Aura, the people built a temple on the island to imprison those Ghost-type spirits.

A thousand years later, the "thief" was caught in a shipwreck and drifted here. The islanders rescued him, but he secretly took away the sealing orb placed in the temple.

Afterward, Gengar awakened, the "thief" was frightened by nightmares, and then handed the orb over to Hu Yang.

To help Gengar, Hu Yang took a boat and came to this island from far across the seas.

While Hu Yang was thinking, Gengar, standing beside him, was also looking at him with a hesitant expression.

It had heard everything the old woman said, including the part about Ghost-type creatures being especially adept at seducing the human heart.

Gengar seemed to want to say something, but when it saw Hu Yang's earnest, almost grave expression, it did not know how to begin.

It was only after Hu Yang stood up and left the stall, returning to the street, that it murmured, "I have never hurt any humans."

Hu Yang froze.

Gengar looked at him with fear and hope. "I didn't do those things. Will you believe me?"

"Then will you deceive me?"

Gengar shook its head. "No!"

Hu Yang smiled. "Then I believe you too."

He had never doubted Gengar, because the mouth can lie, but the heart cannot.

You may deceive others, but you can never deceive yourself.

The story was not over yet.

Now that he understood what had happened on this island in the past, the next step was to enter the temple ruins and recover Gengar's body.

Hu Yang stood still for a moment, then suddenly felt that forcing his way in had been a little too crude.

As a modern person, he ought to resolve this in a more civilized and friendly manner.

Yes, that was decided. Once dawn broke tomorrow, he would go and speak with the town's leader and try to work something out.