บท 4: What’s Going On?
บรรณาธิการ: EndlessFantasy Translation
As much as he dreamed of exploring the wider world, Ye Yun had to make do with listening to the sounds of desolate beasts fighting every day for now.
This suddenly made Ye Yun a little sad - he was indeed in the Great Wasteland.
But Ye Yun quickly realized that he was able to tolerate the sounds of fighting desolate beasts daily ever since he had transmigrated into this world.
The ability of humans to adapt was pretty amazing.
He had surprisingly been able to calmly accept his new life as a blade of grass, despite his previous life as a human.
Moreover, Ye Yun was once someone who would not be able to live, let alone sleep, under such a noisy environment. But now, he could enter deep sleep while desolate beasts fought and crashed nearby.
It had to be said that the desolate beasts of the Great Wasteland usually behaved as if someone had made their blood boil. Some even looked like they had eaten a growth drug or stimulant.
Not only were they full of energy, but their bodies were as big and tough as cauldrons.
The Green Scaled Eagle was one of them, an extremely powerful beast with wings that spanned as vast as the sky and talons as sharp as knives.
Ye Yun dreamed of the day he would get the chance to capture one and tame it as a mount in the future.
When that time came, he would travel the sky and take in the scenery of the world from above.
Willingly accepting his new life in this new world did not mean that he would complacently stay in Stone Village unmovingly until his death.
Inspired by his imagination, Ye Yun decided to test his soul's ability to explore further away from his current spot.
The night had completely enveloped Stone Village as the villagers fell asleep one after another.
A village in the Great Wastelands would not be like any other village. The former consistently faced a lack of food.
Every day, the youths in the village had to go out and hunt prey to fill their stomachs. They would return physically and mentally exhausted from the day's fright.
Ye Yun gazed at every villager who had fallen asleep and could not help but sigh in his heart.
Even in the cultivation and power-oriented fantasy world, human emotions were ultimately the purest treasures in the world.
Ye Yun used his Divine Sense that allowed his soul to wander and scanned Stone Village before finally stopping at the altar. He sized up the towering ancient willow tree and frowned slightly.
The willow tree's rough bark still had cracks, marks that were almost black left from the lightning strikes. Only the willow tree's single drooping branch seemed to have some life in it.
But the branch looked out of place.
Ye Yun liked to read 'Perfect World' in his previous life. He especially admired the Willow Deity and never would have expected to have the opportunity to get up close to it.
If he was truly grateful, Ye Yun could simply stay by the Willow Deity's side as a blade of grass under its protection.
The cold night wind blew past Ye Yun and into a distant domain.
The single branch on the willow tree swayed slightly with the cold breeze.
Ye Yun leaned his body against the willow tree trunk and fell deep in thought.
Based on the current strength of his soul, he could only observe the entire Stone Village up close and the surroundings from afar.
While the villagers lived peacefully in their compounds, the desolate beasts lived in a forest shrouded in darkness and hidden killing intent.
Each lived within their territory, but with others present. Ye Yun, on the other hand, was always alone.
In fact, Ye Yun had been an orphan previously, living in an orphanage since he was young.
But he was unwilling to accept his fate. He worked hard to study and build his skills. After graduating from university, he was accepted by a state-owned enterprise.
It had not been easy for him to get a promotion and raise his salary, only to restart his life as a blade of grass in this world.
He really wanted to return to his life on Earth. That was his reality. Even if he did not have any relatives, he had friends who truly cared about him.
He had been excited right after he transmigrated at the beginning. But now, he was feeling melancholic.
In this world, he felt that everything was just an illusion - a world that was just a construct; there was no reality.
Fifteen days had passed in a blink of an eye since he awoke here. As Ye Yun stared at the sky shrouded by night, things seemed both familiar and unknown at the same time.
Ye Yun sighed helplessly.
Still, he knew that this was his fate now. So there was nowhere to go and nothing else to do except to move on and continue living. Since he was already here, he had to cultivate properly. Perhaps this world, this place, was where his life would truly begin.
The corners of Ye Yun's mouth twitched. He cleared away all the complicated thoughts in his mind and once again entered the state of cultivation.
As the light of dawn gradually appeared, the people in Stone Village gradually woke up from their slumber and prepared for a new day. The first to wake up was the young people who had to cultivate, and the women who were preparing the meals of the day. Things were already starting to get busy at the first stir.
The silence was broken and the village turned especially lively.
Once they had their meal, the youth were planning to hunt for prey.
Suddenly, the village chief gathered all the villagers and shared Shi Hao's thoughts from the previous night.
"How can this be? There's no way such a thing could exist. Everyone saw it for themselves. We have been offering sacrifices to the guardian spirit for many years, and we have never seen any sacrificial offerings being touched. But yesterday, the guardian spirit moved. It must have known that the Green Scaled Eagle eggs are extraordinary." Er Meng's father still firmly believed that there was only one guardian spirit.
"I also agree. It's unheard of for a village to have two guardian spirits. It's impossible." Huang Shoushan agreed with Er Meng's father.
One village, two guardian spirits. Who had heard of such a situation?
"I think the theory that the guardian spirit has been revived is more believable. If that's the case, we can carry out another sacrifice today and perhaps the guardian spirit will accept our sacrifice again." Huang Feijiao spoke his mind.
Rather than speculate, it was better to test things out and see it for themselves.
"If the guardian spirit doesn't react, it means that the guardian spirit's divine spirit has yet to awaken. But yesterday, everyone saw the guardian spirit touch the Green Scaled Eagle egg and awaken its ancestral inheritance, right?" Huang Linhu thought that Huang Feijiao's suggestion was useless.
The village chief decided to pull everyone's thoughts back together as he said, "Everyone is right. We can't come to a conclusion at this moment. How about we place two offerings today? One for the willow tree and one for the other guardian spirit we have yet to identify?"
"Village Chief is right. As expected of our leader, you are thoughtful. If one of the offerings shows signs of having been touched, then that will mean that the willow tree's divine spirit is gradually recovering. If both offerings show signs of having been touched, that means that we do have two guardian spirits here," said Huang Feijiao excitedly.
"And what if both offerings show no signs of having been touched?" asked Huang Linhu in confusion. He did not quite understand the meaning behind it.
"How can you be so stupid? If there were no signs, then yesterday's event simply means that there are no other guardian spirits besides the willow tree guardian spirit. Everything that happened yesterday was all because of the willow tree guardian spirit only, including the mysterious Qi flow that Shi Hao sensed.
"After all, the willow tree never used the offerings we provided." Huang Feijiao's hand touched Linhu's head as the former explained in more detail.
"If the willow tree's guardian spirit has been revived with an appetite, then both offerings would be touched by it. How will we figure out the second guardian spirit then?"
"If the willow tree's divine spirit has indeed been revived, then we can explain the entire situation to the willow tree before the sacrificial ceremony. The guardian spirit would also know what to do."
..
Ye Yun finally finished cultivating. Just as he opened his eyes, he saw a lively and important sacrificial ceremony being performed before him.
He was slightly stunned. What was going on? Could it be that today was a major festival?
As a person who had lived on Earth for more than twenty years, the era he lived in was usually quite prosperous and peaceful with no wars. Thus, he had not experienced such a graphic and intense event in person before. The only knowledge he had was gained from browsing history books of bloody sacrificial ceremonies like the one being performed before him by Stone Village's residents.
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