Chapter 129. Liúshuǐ People (5) The Zhou Dynasty has been destroyed for thousands of years.

     The last time she opened a box was when Mo Shenpo was a child, with the help of the previous witch.

     Therefore, she looked at the 20 keys over and over again, and compared them with the keyholes on the box 10 times, fearing that she would open the wrong box and the deadly poison prepared by the ancestors would be ejected.

     Wang Xue interrupted her entanglement: “Grandma Mo, my sister Jing is a professional in mechanical engineering, and she is absolutely good at unlocking locks.”

     “?? Is there anything that she’s not unprofessional about?” Mo Shenpo didn’t want to be slapped in the face again, so she handed over the key directly. Now they told her that Ye Mo was a descendant of King Zhou of Shang, and she would believe it.

     At this time, Ye Mo had used her mental power to scan all 20 ebony boxes.

     The hidden compartments in each mechanism box are matched with different lock cores in different positions, but the principle is the same: the eight positions of ‘Rest’, ‘Life’, ‘Injury’, ‘Door’, ‘Scene’, ‘Death’, ‘Fear’, and ‘Open’. Except for one ‘Life’ gate, all others are dead ends

     It is not difficult to crack it by force, but the only way to crack it completely without damage is to imitate the key with mental power, or the key.

     In the eyes of Goddess Mo, after Ye Mo took the key, she went to the mechanism box, as if casually choosing a shrimp-tail silver key from the temporary bunch, inserted it into the round keyhole, and gently turned it.

     Click, the wooden box opened, so simple.

     Open the lid, there is a whole square stone seal in the middle of the box, and a large number of turtle oracle bones are scattered around, and a kind of pictographic characters are engraved on the stone seal and oracle bones.

     This is the Shui script, one of only two pictographic scripts in the world still in use today. It’s among the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage items, an ancient script that falls between the Jinwen (bronze inscriptions) and Jiaguwen (oracle bone inscriptions), and has been passed down from the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

     Mo Shenpo has studied some of the Shui characters, but seeing the expressions on Ye Mo and Wang Xue’s faces, she knows that they don’t need her help with the translation at all. Just where did these two young girls come from?

     Ye Mo asked Wang Xue: “Does it look familiar?”

     Wang Xue looked closely and her hands became sore reflexively because she had copied it more than a hundred times in the Spring and Autumn copy: “‘Gen is the mountain, mountain above mountain below is named Lian Shan, cloud vapor comes out from within the mountain.’ This is from the Lianshan Yi, a text of the I Ching. The Han Chinese lost it thousands of years ago, but it has been found among the Shui people.”

     The content on the stone print is “Lianshan Yi”, and the words on the turtle oracle bones are the reading notes of the ghost master.

     Ye Mo can see from the reading notes that the Shui people’s ghost master’s learning tends to study the balance of yin and yang and the preservation of spiritual energy, and only studies the rules of the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire and earth without going into depth.

     Wang Xue easily moved a set of rosewood tables and chairs from downstairs and asked Mo Shenpo to sit down. Judging from Sister Jing’s appearance, they watched for at least two hours.

     Mo Shenpo rubbed her eyes: “Can you bring up the shoe basket? My shoes are not finished yet.”

     Wang Xue: “…”

     Perhaps she can learn embroidery. It feels interesting to kill enemies with flying needles!

     …

     Continue opening the boxes.

     The contents of the second through eighth boxes are the daily life of the mountain village, including funerals, sacrifices, weddings, construction, travel, divination, festivals, and production, with many prohibitions.

     In order to protect the Yin land, each villager’s life basically has rules that must be strictly followed.

     They even created unique basic theories for this purpose, such as the Nine Stars, the Twenty-Eight Constellations, the Eight Trigrams and Nine Palaces, the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, the Sun, Moon, and Five Stars, Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, the Sixty Jiazi, the Four Seasons and Five Directions, and the Seven Yuan Calendar.

     Every profession, when studied to its extreme, should not be underestimated. By thoroughly researching the Shui people’s theories, Ye Mo can save 8% to 35% of spiritual energy resources in her work. Truly amazing.

     More research is needed

     In addition to tortoise shells and stone carvings, paper books appeared in the ninth to fifteenth boxes. The contents were all methods of warding off evil spirits and exorcising ghosts. The latest records were in the Ming Dynasty.

     After the Ming Dynasty, vengeful ghosts will no longer be able to harm humans, and may even lose their form as spiritual energy dissipates.

     Peach wood, copper coins, wood struck by lightning, chicken blood vine, cinnabar, purple sandalwood, and alcohol are all objects used to ward off evil. Records of exorcisms and related cases are inscribed on them, which can be very useful for the current mountain stronghold.

     In fact, these are useful not only for mountain strongholds but also for the current world of spiritual energy. If the national team had this information, they wouldn’t need to waste their points buying crystal cores or spirit stones in hospitals.

     In this world, there are inherently many items related to the underworld.

     As for double songs, single songs, root songs, tune songs, question songs, bronze drums, large skin drums, reed pipes, suonas, and erhus, this information can be given to Wang Xue, allowing her to truly enter the hall of national music.

     ……

     When the last wooden box was opened, the system voice sounded:

   【Congratulations to the survivor Wang Xue for finding the “Shui Scripture” and completing the side quest 1, physical attribute +1, free point attribute +2. 】

   【Congratulations to the survivor Ye Mo for assisting Wang Xue in finding the “Shui Scripture” and completing the side quest 1, physical attribute +1, free point attribute +1. 】

     Ye Mo and Wang Xue looked at each other.

     They should be in the right direction. The real copy is simpler than imagined. After comparing the numbers, it is found that the triggering tasker gets more free point attributes than the assisting tasker.

     Continue to study.

     The remaining boxes are all black ghost magic, not only with spells and operation methods for releasing ghosts, collecting ghosts, and rejecting ghosts, but also steps for making Yin land and living sacrifices, among which there are arrangements recorded in the golden nanmu Yinchen wood.

     Ye Mo knows the cruelty of the Shang Dynasty.

     80% of the existing oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang Dynasty are related to black magic. The character “祭” (ji – sacrifice) is frequently used, and these sacrifices were mostly live sacrifices, such as killing baby to secure a dwelling, using human heads to worship ancestors, offering blood sacrifices, and dismembering human bodies for sacrifice.

     All of the above had nothing to do with the alluring and captivating Daji; they were simply entertainment for the Shang Dynasty’s kings, dukes, and aristocrats

     The early days of the shui people ghost master were also quite dark. The core of this Yindi mountain village was not more than a hundred golden nanmu trees, but the living sacrifices at the beginning, covering the entire mountain.

     When the backlash appeared, the shui tribe ghost master thousands of years ago was doing living sacrifices, so in the early records, there were hundreds of kinds of living sacrifice black witchcraft scattered here and there, using evil to cure evil.

     According to the records, thousands of years ago, due to the pursuit of the descendants of the Shang Dynasty by the Zhou Dynasty, they did not dare to kill people in a big way, and those who fled to the Baiyue area were all very capable, so the living sacrifices for building the village were not slaughter, but the burial of their own people.

     As the spiritual energy dissipated, the backlash of witchcraft appeared less and less, and the effect of living sacrifice became less and less.

     The ghost masters of later generations no longer needed to use living sacrifices. All their witchcraft was about how to find treasures in the world to retain the Yin Qi, and more than a hundred golden nanmu trees appeared for this reason.

     But now the spiritual energy has revived, and the backlash of witchcraft has appeared again.

     Fortunately, it was discovered early. If Wang Xue did not live here, as the survivors broke through more and more copies, the ghost undead would increase their Yin Qi strength, and this place might change from a Yin land to a dead land.

     The Miao witchcraft in western Hunan may have branched out, but the inheritance of the Shui tribe ghost art is not certain. I have never heard of other Shui villages having thousand-year-old sunken wood.

     Ye Mo could not save the village with living sacrifices. She could only find a way to remove the rule of  ‘live sacrifice yin ground’ in this village, but the backlash from the live sacrifice will inevitably affect the people in the village.

     After hearing this information, Goddess Mo looked very calm: “Miao Gu is also black magic. The pain of enduring the poison of the gu year-round is the price for the gu masters. This is only fair.”

     Only by destroying the yin ground can their village truly be reborn. Future newborns will no longer have to bear the sins of their ancestors or be confined to this mountainous world, and can move towards a free future.

     “The Great Zhou has been destroyed for thousands of years.”

     The Shui people are actually trapped by themselves, and so are the Miao people. The Xia Dynasty was destroyed even longer ago. They can’t live such pathetic lives anymore. Their descendants should go see the world outside.

     Wang Xue: “…”

     Her surname is Wang (汪), not Wang (王)!^[1]汪 (Wāng) is a more common surname, while 王 (Wáng) is the “king” or “royal” surname.

…

     Although the goal has been set, the specific operations involve a full five boxes of text! It still needs to be done step by step, and it concerns the entire mountain. The lower half of the mountain, down to the foot, also has a “Happy Rafting” area, with many tourists from outside and local operators. Specific plans need to be carefully considered.

     It’s already lunchtime.

     The head of the Miao village personally invited Mo Shenpo and the two guests to dinner. Obviously, Mo Shenpo was not the only one who knew the truth. The head of the village and the elders in the village all knew about it.

     And Mo Shenpo’s attitude represented their attitude.

     Wang Xue let out a breath of depression and gave a thumbs up. This was an Oscar-winning Miao village, with all Oscar-winning actors and actresses.

     The place where they had dinner was not a stilt house of any family, but the only flower bridge in the village.

     This flower bridge was built at the same height as the stilt house where the witch lived. It’s made entirely of wood, spanning across two streams. The bridge top is covered with blue tiles to provide shelter from the wind and rain. The bridge has railings, long benches, a pagoda, a pavilion, and other features.

     Putting everything else aside, the view from the bridge is excellent, giving a feeling of being high above the mountains.

     From here, you can clearly see the scenes of diligent villagers working in the fields. There are both men and women, each carrying two buckets filled with water on a shoulder pole. They go up and down the steep and slippery steps, watering the fields. The sight is breathtaking and makes people feel nervous, fearing that they might fall, after all, one side is a deep cliff abyss.

     Now Wang Xue is no longer under surveillance. When she and Ye Mo arrived at Huaqiao, dozens of children in the village were having fun, and a familiar little girl invited Wang Xue to play with them.

     Obviously, Wang Xue has already blended in with them.

     The games of the children in the village are particularly simple: sandbags made of colorful cloth filled with sorghum grains, shuttlecocks made of chicken feathers from home, a wooden toy gun, a paper box… the joys of childhood are all classic.

     Wang Xue’s initial judgment that the mountain village was poor was based on three points: first, the terrain here is too remote, it takes two or three hours to go down the mountain; second, the villagers are particularly hardworking during the spring planting, and the fields are far from the water source;

     The third is the education in the village.

     Many children here need to walk for half a day to go to a mountain primary school or a mountain middle school. They basically only go to junior high school and then go back to the village to farm.

     For this reason, Wang Xue planned to sponsor several students with excellent grades to help them go out of the mountains to go to college and see the wonderful world outside, or to pay for a road to sell mountain products in the mountains. Later, the village chief declined in a very “simple” way.

     Result

     -It turns out that the village is much richer than her.

     “Hmph!” Wang Xue childishly turned her head to one side, not looking at those real little friends.

     She’s not going to play with kids who trick people!