Chapter 162: I Say I Am a Deity, Do You Believe It?
After Meng Raoze spoke, the Cute Human Pager Lady continued to say a bunch of meaningless nonsense, and then she took out a particularly intimidating sword from the thatched cottage and held it to his neck before handing over the speaking rights to the obedient old man.
Meng Raoze was a bit dazed from a pile of unfamiliar terms and thought for a while before cautiously speaking.
“This village originated a long, long time ago. Back then, a group of soldiers was ordered by the king to take a hundred child boys and girls into the mountains to find immortals…”
“Old man, are you telling a fable story? Get to the point!”
“Uh…” Meng Raoze glanced at the kn*fe on his neck and nodded, “After they found the immortals…”
Lu Yibei interrupted, “Gained a lot of amazing knowledge, right? I know that!”
“Uh, during the service to the immortals, they discovered that the immortals’ lives were already coming to an end, merely a brief stop here…”
“So they got greedy and imprisoned Him, right? Got it, next.”
“Th-They imprisoned the immortals within the mountains and rivers while also imprisoning themselves, and fell under the immortals’ curse…”
“Got it.”
After being interrupted several times, Meng Raoze’s gaze towards Lu Yibei grew strange, and he asked doubtfully, “Miss, how do you know so much?”
Knowing this much and still not dead? Meng Raoze silently added in his mind.
Lu Yibei rolled her eyes at him, “I said I am a deity, so I know this much. Do you believe it?”
“This…” Meng Raoze twitched his lips and smiled awkwardly, “Miss, you can’t make jokes like this, you really can’t!”
Although he didn’t know what other deities were like, as the former priest of this village, he was quite familiar with the deity here.
Deities are elusive, never seen fully, and cannot be observed by human eyes. Each encounter brings an overwhelming, suffocating pressure and a shudder from the depths of the soul that makes people want to kneel and worship.
And this girl…
Meng Raoze secretly glanced at Lu Yibei again.
This girl is so pretty; when she grows up, she will surely be even more beautiful than the legendary first generation of Hui Mother!
If it weren’t for the exceptionally sharp kn*fe in her hand, I wouldn’t feel any fear from her at all.
How could there be a deity like her? Meng Raoze thought.
Seeing that Meng Raoze was only saying fragmented, contradictory things that she already knew from Jumeng’s translations, Lu Yibei became a bit impatient.
She switched the kn*fe from her left hand to her right hand and said expressionlessly, “Forget it, let you speak at your own pace, who knows how long that would take! Next, let’s change the mode, I ask, you answer!”
“Yes, yes, yes, to speak freely.” Meng Raoze nodded.
Lu Yibei looked him up and down and said, “Let’s start with your previous job? How did you become a priest, and what did you mainly do after becoming a priest?”
“I…” Meng Raoze slightly parted his lips, pondered for a few seconds, and began to narrate.
…
Becoming the priest of the village has a very strict condition.
Only those villagers who are born without deformities and grow to the age of sixteen without mental issues are eligible to become candidates for the priesthood.
This condition seems simple, but for generations of people living here, suffering from the curse of deities and continuous inbreeding, it is almost a miracle.
Almost every newborn here has deformities and exhibits certain serpentine characteristics. Some women even give birth to nothing but a foul puddle of pus after ten months of pregnancy.
So, speaking of the normalcy of their mental state after reaching adulthood, just having a physically normal newborn is already extraordinarily rare.
…
As Meng Raoze spoke halfway, he suddenly added sorrowfully, “No, to be strict, there haven’t been any normal people in our villages for a long time…”
“What do you mean?” Lu Yibei tilted her head.
Meng Raoze did not explain but began to take off his clothes, about to reveal a bare chest right in front of her.
Seeing this, Lu Yibei was taken aback, “Hey! Hey! Old man, we were talking so nicely, why are you taking off your clothes?”
“Don’t think just because I’m a girl, I’ll be afraid of your tricks. I’m not scared of that old move at all! I’ve seen plenty!”
Hmm, that’s right, I’ve been to so many bathhouses; it’s bigger and whatnot has been seen before… Lu Yibei thought to herself, covering her eyes tightly.
d*mn it, why do I still feel a bit shy? This must be the side effect of Liangyue and Yun Meng’s urban legendary core!
“Girl, you see…”
“I won’t!”
“Look at it…”
“……”
Lu Yibei remained silent, curled her neck, and opened a gap between her fingers to peek at Meng Raoze. Her pupils then slightly contracted.
There, on Meng Raoze’s thin, bony, and aging body, dense, red bl**d vessels looked like a blanket of fungi, gently writhing with his breath, and a lantern-shaped light flickered in his chest cavity.
“What’s… going on with you?” Lu Yibei pointed at Meng Raoze’s body.
“This is the fate of normal people.”
As he spoke, Meng Raoze lowered his head, his body slightly trembling, appearing to accept his fate completely.
…
In this place, there is a very small probability that seemingly normal newborns will be born.
However, after their birth, they do not have the chance to spend their first night beside their mother before the door of their home is knocked on by Hui Mother.
Hui Mother would take them to the common shrine of several villages and place them in the cellar under the shrine.
That cellar is incredibly vast and connects to countless dark, damp caves, bizarre and dark beyond measure. It has narrow, twisted passageways that are cramped and steep, making it impossible to stand upright. Instead, one must crawl on the ground, wriggling like a snake.
Newborns are fragile, and staying in such a damp, cold, and dark cellar has a low survival rate; many infants d*e during this process, and the cellar is filled with tiny bones.
Should any infant manage to survive, after three days, the Hui Mothers would return them to their families.
However, after experiencing all that, their lifelong nightmare was just beginning.
…
After hearing Meng Raoze mention “Hui Mother” several times, Lu Yibei finally couldn’t help but interrupt. “What does that Hui Mother do?”
“That is…” Meng Raoze paused and said, “Hui Mother was originally the name for the brides offered to the immortals.”
“In fact, our ancestors once tried to gain the forgiveness of the Great Serpent God by sending brides for many years.”
“Later, those brides became Hui Mothers and lived in the village’s shrine.”
Lu Yibei, “……” Using beauty to entice mythological species for the urban legend?
Forget about whether it would work or not, didn’t you consider how the girls who are going to be sacrificed might feel?
If it were me, even without the mythological instigation, I would… wait, no! I wouldn’t become a bride! Lu Yibei thought.
While she was lost in thought, Meng Raoze slowly began to speak again.
…
Those newborns who survived the ordeal in the cellar and were fortunate enough to live would inexplicably have many pieces of knowledge in their minds that they had never been exposed to before.
These were a lot of mysterious ancient texts that told obscure knowledge and strange stories, many of which were rare works that had long since vanished from the outside world or ancient scriptures unheard of outside.
Once these pieces of knowledge began to appear in their minds, they would start having nightmares every night, continuously returning to the dark, damp, and narrow cellar, delving deeper into the darkness.
In the dark, there are many dirty and unclean living beings that cannot be seen, crowded together and endlessly crawling in that maze that seems spatially distorted.
As time passed and the nightmares repeated, they would gradually see those creatures in their dreams becoming clearer, revealing grotesque, desecrated faces covered in scales and hearing increasingly intense serpentine whispers that could drive a person mad.
…
“Wait, serpentine language? What’s that?” Lu Yibei frowned and interrupted, “Is it that which Harry Potter hears? Uh, sorry, you probably don’t know what Harry Potter is.”
“How about you tell me what it is?”
Upon hearing Lu Yibei’s words, Meng Raoze’s face changed. His murky eyes seemed to brighten suddenly with a fearful, almost irrational glint.
“You… you really want to hear? No, you wouldn’t want to! And I can’t say it in human language.”
“Then just say it in serpentine language?” Lu Yibei said irritably.
At this, Meng Raoze stared fixedly at Lu Yibei, his once dull eyes gradually deepening as if he were trying to see something beyond her body.
Suddenly, he opened his mouth wide, exposing a set of slightly sharp yellow teeth. In the glow of the bl**d-colored lantern in the room, Lu Yibei vaguely saw that his little tongue looked as if it had been cut, forked.
That little tongue, like a snake’s fork, quivered and writhed wildly, and a rustling sound, like the hiss of a poisonous snake, came from deep within his throat.
However.
That series of soft sounds entered Lu Yibei’s ears, and she miraculously understood…
“From a distant land, the serpent god perished here, cursing with an immortal soul: only the abnormal can possess a normal life, and the deformed can live normally.”
Unconsciously, Lu Yibei spoke out the meaning she understood from the serpentine language.
Meng Raoze looked at her, his expression gradually turning to terror. “You… why? How do you understand? This… how is this possible?”
“……” Lu Yibei pondered for a while, unable to figure out how to explain it to him, so she could only reluctantly and seriously throw out a piece of nonsense.
“This, didn’t I tell you? I’m a deity, you didn’t believe it!”
