Chapter 42: Legends and Facts Often Deviate

Qi Wu, having finished his offering to the Mountain God, hurriedly joined the gathered crowd.

Drenched to the bone, everyone shivered as the cold wind swept over them.

"We will catch our death if this keeps up."

The old hunter walked to a corner, pulled out a bundle of firewood, and bared his large buck teeth with a smile: "We hunters occasionally seek shelter here from the rain, so we left firewood behind in advance, waiting for a day like today."

Qi Wu was overjoyed: "Then you have our utmost thanks."

The old hunter waved it off: "It is nothing. Living in the great mountains means you help me and I help you. Tomorrow when the rain stops, we will just gather some more firewood and put it back."

With deft hands and feet, the crowd piled the firewood onto the scorched earth of an old hearth. Qi Wu pulled out a fire talisman to ignite a wooden branch, thrust it into the dry kindling, and gently blew and fanned it until the wood slowly caught fire.

Watching the rising flames and feeling the creeping warmth, someone let out a long sigh of relief.

"Finally, I feel alive again."

"Brother Qi, do you want a yellow millet cake or a white rice cake?"

"How about one of each?"

One of the men distributed the dry rations, and upon receiving theirs, everyone placed the food by the fire to toast.

Once the aroma began to waft through the air, A-Yue brought out a jar of pickled vegetables, passing it around for everyone to spread onto their cakes. One bite yielded a mouth full of savory saltiness.

"A-Yue, your skill at making pickled vegetables is truly magnificent. If you ask me, you ought to open a pickle shop instead of trailing along with us merchants."

A-Yue merely smiled and said nothing.

Recalling the scene from earlier, Qi Wu asked: "Old Sun, why did you ask A-Yue just now if he had been pushed down by someone?"

This was the first time Qi Wu and his companions had ventured into these mountains. Seeking to cross the range to sell their goods in Qinghuai County on the other side, they had searched for a long time before finally securing this local, veteran hunter to guide them.

The old hunter's expression grew solemn: "Have any of you ever heard of a Chang ghost?"

The faces of Qi Wu and the others turned grave. Traveling far and wide, they naturally knew a thing or two about spirits and monsters, and one man shouted out: "You mean the Chang ghosts that serve as accomplices to tigers?"

The old hunter nodded, lowering his voice: "This mountain is called Pine Mountain. Roughly ten years ago, a hunter went into the woods to hunt and vanished, leaving behind only a single shoe. Back then, people said a tiger demon had come to the mountain and eaten him."

"At first, folks were unwilling to believe it, thinking they had lived here for generations, so how could a tiger demon suddenly appear?"

"But as time went on, someone claimed that while hunting, his hounds began to bark furiously in one direction. He looked over and froze in sheer terror."

"It was a striped fierce tiger, a full four meters long. With a single leap, the tiger pounced on the hounds. Seeing this, the man took to his heels and ran, and fortunately, the tiger did not pursue him!"

"People also realized that travelers were disappearing from time to time, so they reported the situation to Qinghuai County. When the officials learned of this, they told me to go to Yanjiang County instead, saying Pine Mountain was closer to Yanjiang County, and since you only sell your game to Yanjiang County, it should be their responsibility."

"When I went to Yanjiang County, those officials said Pine Mountain belonged to Qinghuai County and should be managed by them."

"After a few rounds of bickering, both sides dispatched two cultivators to search Pine Mountain for traces of the tiger demon. They searched for ten consecutive days without finding a single tiger hair. The two cultivators felt we had made fools of them and wasted their time. We explained that perhaps the tiger demon was intentionally hiding from them and dared not come out, but they refused to listen and left in a huff."

"We went back to the government offices, but they completely ignored us after that."

"Left with no choice, most people left Pine Mountain to seek a livelihood elsewhere, leaving only us few old timers who know nothing but hunting to remain here."

"Later on, we discovered that while hunting, we would encounter those missing travelers. These travelers moved like ghosts, suddenly vanishing from before your eyes, only to suddenly reappear and give you a shove."

"Sometimes when I lead people into the mountains, those travelers pretend to cross paths with us by chance, suggesting we are traveling the same way and asking if we can take them along. How could I dare agree? I immediately hurry my people away."

"The older generation said during their lifetimes that there is a thing in this world called a Chang ghost. When a tiger demon kills a person, that person transforms into a Chang ghost to find prey for the tiger, tricking people to a certain spot so the prey can become a new Chang ghost."

"However, dealing with Chang ghosts is simple enough. As long as you refuse their requests, a Chang ghost can do nothing to you."

Enlightenment dawned on Qi Wu. He had previously found it strange that in such a vast mountain forest, there should reasonably be many hunters, yet it had taken them half a day just to find a few households, and these families all lived huddled together.

It turned out they were driven by the tiger demon.

Seeing A-Yue hesitating, Qi Wu said: "A-Yue, if you have something to ask, just ask it."

A-Yue had originally felt too embarrassed to voice his question, but since the boss had put it that way, he decided not to hide it any longer.

"I only have one question. Do these Chang ghosts include female ghosts? Are they beautiful? Do they use seduction? Do they drain a man's yang energy? Is it possible for me to embark on a forbidden romance with one, evading the tiger demon's pursuit together, and roaming the world as vagabonds?"

With each question A-Yue posed, a metaphorical question mark popped up over everyone's head, the old hunter being no exception.

Seeing the crowd's reaction, A-Yue scratched his head sheepishly: "I just saw it written that way in storybooks, like 'A Chinese Ghost Story' or 'The Ghost Love Unleashed' and things like that."

Qi Wu fell silent for a moment, then patted A-Yue on the shoulder: "Read fewer books."

Then Qi Wu asked again: "Then Old Sun, why didn't you report this matter to the Five Great Immortal Sects? The Five Great Immortal Sects defend the righteous path; they certainly would not sit idly by."

"The Five Great Immortal Sects?" The old hunter looked utterly blank, never having heard of such a title.

"Namely the Wendao Sect, the Xuankong Temple, and the other five righteous and orthodox sects—they are also the five most powerful sects on the entire continent."

"I seem to have heard that name before," the old hunter said uncertainly, unsure where he had heard it. Perhaps it was in a teahouse at the foot of the mountain, perhaps from a traveler entering the mountains, perhaps when he was young, or perhaps after he grew old.

He could not remember clearly.

In truth, ordinary folk knew very little about cultivators, treating such tales merely as rare and entertaining novelties.

Furthermore, stories passed down by word of mouth were entirely too prone to distortion. By the time they reached the ears of the common people, they were often vastly different from the true events, rendering them unreliable.

For instance, Qi Wu had once heard that the reason the Wendao Sect was named the Wendao Sect was because the immortal path is vast and boundless, meaning 'to ask the way from heaven,' and that cultivating immortality is cultivating the heart, requiring one to constantly question what kind of path they pursue, whether it be the righteous path or the demonic path, so as not to lose their original intent.

Once, Qi Wu had encountered a disciple of the Wendao Sect, who seemed to be named Dai Bufan. When asked why the Wendao Sect was called the Wendao Sect, Dai Bufan's reply remained vividly etched in his memory to this day.

"Ah, you're asking about that? Then we must speak of our founding patriarch, the Xiantian Daoist. In order to find a land of auspicious feng shui, the patriarch spent a vast fortune to hire the Tiance Sect for location and calculation, finally locating an immortal land where the feng shui of all eight directions converged. They also said that for the sect to prosper long, it had to be established at a specific time and a specific location."

"As it turned out, the patriarch was terrible with directions. Clearly having made landmarks, he still lost his way. He had no choice but to ask an old farmer by the roadside for directions, and only then did he find the sect's location without missing the auspicious hour."

"To express his gratitude to the old farmer, the patriarch named the sect the Wendao Sect, the Sect of Asking the Way."