CH 6

The old man typed proficiently on his phone, and it was obvious from his speed that he was very good at playing games. Then the text was converted into a male voice with a slightly operatic accent.

“Thank you, I’ll give you some of the fruits I just picked.”

Uncle Mute grabbed two handfuls of wild fruits for the other two people, and after Feng Yi got out of the car, he stuffed several cherry-sized wild fruits into Feng Yi’s hands.

Feng Yi had never eaten this fruit before. When he saw the two people in the car eating happily, he took off his gloves, wiped the sweat from his hands and the small mud stains on the fruit’s skin, and tried it. It was sweet, moist, and flavorful.

The two people in the car very quickly drove away.

Uncle Mute took off his straw hat and fanned himself, before throwing it into the bamboo basket. He looked at Feng Yi again, and quickly typed on the phone, converting the words to voice, “Come with me.”

Feng Yi quickly followed.

“Uh… what’s your name?” Feng Yi asked. It didn’t seem very respectful to call him Uncle Mute directly.

“Just call me Uncle Mute!” the phone said.

Seeing that the other party really didn’t care, Feng Yi stopped worrying about the matter and observed the surrounding scenery and the smooth road.

“I see that the road on the mountain is well repaired, did you buy a scooter?”

Uncle Mute typed into the phone: “There’s food, drink and Internet, why would I need a scooter for?”

Feng Yi: “…Makes sense.”

After thinking about it, Feng Yi decided to get straight to the point. “Uncle Mute, you know the purpose of my coming, right?”

“Yes~ I do~ I’ve been waiting for a long time!”

“Why do you say that?” Feng Yi quickly followed up.

Uncle Mute didn’t want to speak anymore on the matter and turned on his phone to play music.

“Who is singing, warming the loneliness…” As he walked, he even started dancing to the rhythm.

Feng Yi: “…”

He had now confirmed it; the other party was a healthy and lively old man.

Not long after, Feng Yi saw the “ancestral home of the Feng family” that the old butler had mentioned. This was the first time Feng Yi had seen the legendary ancestral home, and it was somewhat similar to the old buildings in historical dramas. The area wasn’t very large, and every brick and tile was very old-fashioned, but not dilapidated. It was obvious that someone had taken special care of it. This Uncle Mute was really dedicated to his duty.

Uncle Mute entered the house, put down the bamboo basket, and gestured for Feng Yi to follow. As he walked in, he quickly typed on the phone and entered a long paragraph of text-to-speech. The commentary with a slightly operatic tone sounded in the quiet ancestral home.

“Did you see the sign with the word Feng written on it? That building over there is the place where the Feng family worshiped their ancestors, and there are some memorial tablets of the Feng family ancestors inside.”

Feng Yi pushed open the door and walked into the room. He looked around, but there was nothing special about it. The interior was clean, and the room was quite large. He also saw some tablets with the names of the Feng family ancestors written on them. Overall, it had a ceremonial feel to it. However, Feng Yi had never heard any of these names mentioned by the elders, or anyone else. Even those three generations ago, very few people still remembered them.

He took another look around the room.

How should he put it… There was nothing too unexpected, and from the layout inside, it could be seen that no outsiders had come here for a long time. In this era, no one really cared about these so-called ancestral homes, the places where ancestors were worshipped, but…

A mission worth fourteen million! And this was it?!!

It wasn’t that he didn’t have respect for the dead, but over the past few decades, people have gradually simplified the mourning process like in Feng Yi’s generation. If he hadn’t been given this task, he wouldn’t have any idea about ancestral halls. That was to say, he saw them in TV dramas, but he never thought they would have anything to do with him. As for tomb sweeping, they rarely cared about people three generations or above. It was hard to imagine that a fourteen million dollar was in this place?

But now that he was here, Feng Yi didn’t immediately look for the genealogy record. Looking around, there were no kneeling mats like those in the TV dramas, no incense, papers, and the like, so Feng Yi just stood in front of the tablets and bowed. After that, Feng Yi wanted to ask Uncle Mute if he had any clues on how to find the genealogy record. When he turned his head, he saw Uncle Mute waving at him, and the converted text-to-speech sounded from his phone.

“That will do~ It’s the thought that counts, come here!”

Feng Yi: ?

No, wait, what does “It’s the thought that counts” mean? Seeing that Uncle Mute had already left, Feng Yi quickly followed.

Uncle Mute took Feng Yi to another room, where there was a blue brick wall that was no different from the surrounding ones. Uncle Mute opened a secret compartment on the wall, revealing the fingerprint lock inside.

Feng Yi: !!!

Uncle Mute pressed his thumb on the fingerprint recognition interface, then took a step back, signaling for Feng Yi to do the same.

Bewildered, Feng Yi stepped forward and followed Uncle Mute’s previous movements. He raised his right thumb and pressed it on the interface. With a beep, a door opened from the seemingly complete wall.

Uncle Mute didn’t go in this time and gestured for Feng Yi to go in alone. Feng Yi mentally prepared himself. He felt that he had learned some incredible information.

Looking inside, there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary, but all the mystery made him even more nervous. But now that he had come this far, Feng Yi had no intention of retreating. He took a deep breath, lifted his feet, and walked into the room. The moment he entered, the door that had been removed from the wall closed again.

Feng Yi became even more nervous.

As the door on the wall closed, many lights lit up the seemingly small room. He couldn’t tell what the material was. It was bright enough, but not blinding. It was also because of these lights that Feng Yi could see the room clearly. This place was not as small as he thought.

There were no ancestral tablets here, nor were there any ritual items left behind. There were some paintings on the surrounding walls, some of which looked like snakes, and some of which had strange shapes. No matter what kind of pictures they were, they were all very old. After a quick scan, Feng Yi walked along the inner wall again, but he still could not find the genealogy record.

Genealogy record… Where could it be?

While muttering, his eyes fell on a circular area in the middle of the room. When he looked closer, it wasn’t an ordinary circle, but a snake biting its own tail to form a circle. And when Feng Yi stepped into that circle, the flower coin he was wearing around his neck automatically floated up.

The side of the coin with the snake pattern glowed blue, and at the same time, it emitted a high-frequency sound. Feng Yi could only vaguely hear it because the frequency of the sound, except for the short part at the beginning, gradually exceeded the range that his ears could hear.

At the same time, a column nearly one-meter-high rose from the ground not far from him.  The upper slab of the seemingly seamless stone pillar cracked open, revealing a square shape resembling a book.

Why resembling? Because the cover of this book looked really weird!

Snakeskin!

Feng Yi might not be able to distinguish other skins, but he would never mistake snakeskin! He had never seen this kind of pattern before, but it gave him a different feeling compared to Lu Yue’s wallet. It didn’t look like the kind of skin that was peeled off directly, but looked more like shed skin…

Snake slough!

Feng Yi even imagined, if there were such scales on a snake, how big would it be!

No, this should not be his focus right now!

He looked at the glowing blue zodiac flower coin that was still in a suspended state, then at the pillar that seemed to grow seamlessly out of ground, and finally focused on the book on the pillar. He didn’t know what material it was made of, but it was simple, yet it gave off an indescribable tingling sensation.

The pages of the book turned automatically, without wind and at a rapid pace.

Feng Yi couldn’t see exactly what was written inside, but he could see that each page had a few short words, some long and some short, with different fonts and different strokes. Was this the signature the old butler was talking about? This was the genealogy record?

“This genealogy record… is very different from the genealogy record as I understand it…”

No matter how dull he was, and no matter how much he didn’t pay attention to the latest technology, Feng Yi knew that what was displayed in front of him was beyond the reach of ordinary people!

At that moment, Feng Yi had the realization, “I’ve gotten myself into something deep!

He froze in place, and the hairs on his entire body stood on end. The unknown was the most terrifying thing. At the same time, he also realized that there was a path in front of him that he didn’t understand or had even thought about. Feng Yi had a feeling, no, more like an instinct.

Instinctively, he knew what he had to do. Like a chicken hatching an egg, a bird building a nest, a spider weaving a web, or a bee making honey, they knew without learning! It was something engraved in their genetic makeup!

If this “genealogy record” was akin to a door, the moment he signed his name was when he would truly go through the door into the unknown.

The pages of the “genealogy record” stopped turning, and blank pages spread out. Feng Yi stretched out a hand and wrote his name on the open page with his index finger. When the last stroke fell, it was as if a cloud of mist had suddenly dissipated. Through the mist, Feng Yi saw a vague shadow, like an entangled snake. His consciousness gradually slipped out of his control, as if flitting between ancient times and the future, on the edge of dream and reality.

One wall away.

Uncle Mute stood quietly by the door. A new message alert came from his phone. It could be a friend from online poker, or an acquaintance from the villages down the mountain. But for the moment, he didn’t pay any attention to the phone, completely ignoring the notification. After waiting for a while, Uncle Mute grinned silently. He stretched his waist, looked at the sky, and then took out his phone to send a message to several groups:

“The weather in the mountains will change tonight, with strong wind and rain. Go down the mountain early and don’t go to the top. Those who live on the mountainside should keep all outside valuables indoors. Put chickens and ducks in their cages earlier. At night, make sure doors and windows are closed and cars are in garages. Don’t come out unless you have something to do. Those at the foot of the mountain don’t have to worry, just collect your clothes earlier, the water vapor will be heavy.”

These groups were residents and employees who lived in or near the mountains. When they saw Uncle Mute’s message, they all popped up.

“Really? The weather forecast says it will be sunny lately.”

“The weather changes quickly in the mountains. Uncle Mute has lived on the mountain for a long time, just listen to him.”

“The newly purchased waterproof car mat smells, so I put it under the awning in the yard and plan to let it dry for a few days. Do I need to keep it in the house? I’m staying on the mountain tonight.”

“Keep it. Didn’t you see Uncle Mute say that the wind will be strong tonight? What if it blows away? Even if it doesn’t blow away, it’s not good to have muddy water and all kinds of leaves from the mountains blowing onto it.”

People in each group took the time to discuss it, and some looked at the sky outside.

“There’s not even a cloud, is it really going to rain?”

It wasn’t that they didn’t believe Uncle Mute’s words. People who had lived in Mount Xiaofeng for a long time or worked there for a few years knew that Uncle Mute was very accurate in predicting the weather. Every time there was a change, he would tell them in advance, and he was much more accurate than the weather on the phone.

This time, Uncle Mute’s words were too exaggerated, and many people doubted him. But as time went by, everyone noticed that the weather was changing.

“The sky got dark a little early today, don’t you think?”

“I woke up to find that the sunny day had turned cloudy.”

“The weather has indeed changed, and the moisture in the air is a bit heavy. The outdoor humidity gauge has already notified me several times.”

“The weather on the mountain changes without warning, listen to Uncle Mute and get moving!”

When it was dark, the people staying on the mountain were eating dinner and looking out the windows of the house. The visibility was less than five meters. Even turning on the lights in the yard, nothing could be seen.

“What deep fog!”

“Fog doesn’t necessarily mean rain, does it?”

“That depends on whether the conditions are right for rain to form. There is a type of fog called frontal fog.”

“Really? There’s that kind of fog in this season? Isn’t that abnormal?”

“Who cares if it’s normal or not, I’m going to take a video first!”

As the man said, he picked up his phone and opened the door, and began to record the situation outside.

“The snakes on the other side of the exclusion net are gone!”

The king ratsnakes, which were usually extremely arrogant at night, had gone into hiding somewhere, and the only sound was the rustling of leaves as the wind blew past.

The wind grew stronger. Drops of rain on his face were painful. The fog did not dissipate, and the water vapor did not all turn into raindrops. Excessively high air humidity caused obvious discomfort in breathing. The man couldn’t bear it and retreated into the house unwillingly.

Soon, the rain became heavier, carried by the strong wind, and hit the windows with a crackling sound. The phone signal went from full to one bar.

In a place out of their sight.

The thickening clouds in the sky pressed down from above! The sound of rolling thunder was like the trampling of giant beasts. The strong wind whipped up the fog, which flew wildly and fiercely in the mountains.