As the Mountain God retreated step by step under Lin Xing's talisman, the village chief had already begun to quietly back away, preparing his escape.
At this moment, as Lin Xing's gaze shifted, the village chief was immediately so frightened that he turned and ran.
But how could he escape from Lin Xing's grasp? In the blink of an eye, the village chief had his kneecaps shattered by a wrench, and he collapsed on the ground, howling in pain.
"Mercy, hero, I beg for mercy!"
Looking at the village chief's terror-stricken face, ceaselessly begging for mercy, Lin Xing slowly said, "You wait, I'll have questions for you in a moment. Just answer me honestly."
The village chief immediately promised, "I will tell everything I know, leaving nothing out."
Lin Xing, however, paid him no more attention and went straight to the stone platform to untie the little girl and the other two children that the village chief had bought.
It was then that the voice of the cat toy echoed in his mind: "Lin Xing, look at the place where the Mountain God died, there seems to be something there."
After comforting the three children, Lin Xing walked towards the place the cat toy had mentioned and saw an ugly black wooden carving left at the spot where the Mountain God had perished.
The carving depicted a withered old man, curled up, his limbs long and gaunt, but with a mouth full of sharp teeth, looking exceedingly sinister.
"What is this?"
Lin Xing picked up the wooden carving and immediately felt a strong resentment assault him, followed by a series of visions that appeared before him.
…
There was a deep and ancient forest where an old man was brought in by his two sons.
Watching his sons' receding figures, the old man called out in despair, wishing with all his heart that the grandchildren he had cherished from their birth would take him back home.
But what met him were only the lonely and dark forests in front of him and the insatiable hunger.
The hunger burned in his belly like a fire, leaving him feeble-limbed, twisting his guts as if they were knotted together.
But just as his heart sank into the abyss of despair, he saw his grandchildren coming to take him away again, the village had food again, they had prepared a feast for him, and he devoured it greedily.
When he came to his senses, he had gnawed another old man's corpse to a bloody pulp.
He only hesitated a moment; under the excruciating stimulus of the relentless hunger, he quickly resumed his ravenous eating.
At first, he only consumed the bodies of other old people who had been sent there just like him.
Those rotten, stinking, swollen corpses turned into the finest delicacies in his mouth.
His limbs began to stretch and become even thinner, his skin started growing a strange layer of keratin, and his rotten teeth fell out, replaced by new sharp ones...
Eventually, one day, he had finished eating all the corpses of the old people.
After enduring two days of the agony of hunger, he killed his first person.
It was an old man who had not yet fully starved to death. Watching the numbness in the man's eyes, he felt like he was granting him release.
He carefully licked every bone clean, not even sparing the blood that had fallen onto the earth.
He felt the man seemed to live on in his heart, he knew it wasn't an illusion because he could clearly hear the man's wails within him.
Finally, after licking clean all the meat he could eat, the only flesh he could find left was the animals of the forest.
His body was exceptionally agile, his strength greater even than the sturdiest men in the village, and he could easily capture the animals of the woods.
But no matter how much he ate, no matter how much he hunted, he could never sate the ever-intensifying sensation of hunger in his heart.
And the animals he had devoured seemed as though they were still alive, constantly roaring inside him.
Before long, his body began sprouting the limbs of various animals, as if those he had eaten were howling, trying to burst out of his flesh.
Unable to bear the pain any longer, he finally arrived at Jiang Family Village one night.
However, after a few hunts, he was captured by a Daoist and put into a cage, although at that time he was only the size of an ordinary person.
But later the Daoist disappeared, never to be seen again.
Then a familiar villager appeared before him, bringing an immense sense of kindness, and even brought him food.
As he continued to eat, the following scenes became increasingly fuzzy and chaotic; the entire world seemed to gradually turn into chaos in his eyes.
...
A series of images flashed by instantaneously, and Lin Xing recalled the content he had seen, a hint of thoughtfulness flickering across his face.
"This should be the Mountain God's memories?"
"Who would have thought that the Mountain God was originally an old man who was abandoned in the forest by Jiang Family Village, who was initially only human-sized."
"But looking at the later images, he must have been captured by Daoist Bai Yun..."
At this thought, Lin Xing turned to the village chief, still lying on the ground, and asked, "According to the records on the green stone in the northeast direction, there should have been a Daoist Bai Yun who suppressed the Mountain God, right?"
"Why were you still able to command the Mountain God to do evil?"
A flash of astonishment crossed the village chief's face, seemingly surprised that Lin Xing even knew this.
While the village chief continued to think, Lin Xing said, "I saw with my own eyes that the Daoist Bai Yun had captured the Mountain God, and at that time the Mountain God was not as huge as today."
"What exactly happened afterwards, you had better tell the truth."
The village chief had already been severely intimidated when he saw Lin Xing's thunderous methods in suppressing the Mountain God, and couldn't muster the slightest will to resist.
Hearing Lin Xing's words, the village chief started to speak, "That happened during my grandfather's generation when a Daoist came to our village and captured the Mountain God."
"Next, the Daoist said that if we wanted to completely destroy the Mountain God, we had to first subdue the evil land where the Mountain God had emerged, and then we would be able to kill the Mountain God."
"Otherwise, with the resentment gathered in that evil land, unless the evil land was destroyed, the Mountain God would not die. Even if one was slain, another would eventually emerge. It would be better to keep him confined like this."
"Thus, the villagers begged him to perform the ritual, but when he opened his mouth, he demanded 300 taels of Silver."
"That was 300 taels of Silver; if the village gave him that amount of money, one wouldn't know how many would starve to death that year."
"Alas, everyone in the village, young and old, knelt down and begged him, imploring him to show mercy and kindness."
"But the Daoist had a heart of stone and wouldn't subtract even one cent."
"Out of desperation... the village chief agreed to the terms, and after much effort, scraped together 300 taels of Silver from the village."
"After receiving the Silver, the Daoist acted swiftly, and within a little over ten days, he placed an evil-suppressing stone on the evil land where the Mountain God was born, guaranteeing that no evil spirits would be born there in the future."
"Next, all that was left was to slaughter the Mountain God who had been confined."
"But that night—perhaps resenting the Daoist for taking so much Silver—the villagers first got the Daoist drunk, and then it's not known who led the charge, but while the Daoist was in his drunken stupor, they hacked him to death with chaotic knife blows."
"Although the Daoist had learned the way to suppress evil spirits, his body was ultimately just flesh and blood, and he was immediately chopped into mincemeat under the frenzied knives..."
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