43Chapter 42 Legends Often Differ from Facts_i

Translator: 549690339

After offering his tribute to the mountain god, Qi Wu hastily gathers with others.

Completely drenched, everyone shivers in the cold wind.

“We’ll get sick if this keeps up.”

The old hunter goes to a corner, pulls out a handful of firewood, and grins with his big smile, “We hunters sometimes shelter from the rain here, so I left some firewood in advance for today.”

Qi Wu is overjoyed: “Thankyou so much.”

The old hunter didn’t mind: “It’s nothing, living in the mountains is about helping each other. When the rain stops tomorrow, we’ll just collect some more firewood to replace it.”

Everyone swiftly piles up the firewood on the burned imprint on the ground. Qi Wu takes out a fire talisman, lights a stick, puts the stick into the firewood, blows gently, and fans it. The firewood is slowly ignited.

All eyes focus on the gradually rising flames, feeling the warmth of the fire, someone breathed a sigh of relief.

“Finally, we survived.”

“Big Brother Qi, would you like a yellow rice cake or a white one?”

“One of each?”

One of them starts distributing the dry food. After everyone gets theirs, they

toast the food by the fire.

Once the food smells good, Ah Yue takes out a jar of pickles, letting everyone spread it on their bread, and bite into the salty and fragrant flavor.

“Air Yue’s pickle-making skills are quite good. 1 say, Ah Yue, you should open a pickle shop instead of following us merchants.”

Ah Yue just smiles, saying nothing.

Recalling the previous incident, Qi Wu asks, “Old Sun, why did you ask earlier if

All Yue was pushed down by someone?”

It is Qi Wu and his group’s first time going up the mountain. They want to cross the mountain range to sell goods on the other side of Qinghuai County. After a long search, they finally found a local old hunter to guide them.

The old hunter looks serious: “Have you heard of a ghoul?”

Qi Wu and the others look serious, they’ve traveled far and wide and naturally know something about ghouls. One of them even exclaims loudly: “Are you talking about the ghoul serving a tiger demon?”

The old hunter nods and says softly, “This mountain is called Song Mountain. About ten years ago, a hunter who came to hunt disappeared, leaving only a shoe. People then started saying, a tiger demon came to the mountain and ate that hunter.”

“At first, no one wanted to believe it. They thought they had been living here for generations, how could there possibly be a tiger demon?”

“But as time went by, someone said they saw a colorful tiger during hunting, and it was at least four meters long. The tiger pounced on the hunting dog with one leap. The hunter ran away at the sight of it. Fortunately, the tiger didn’t chase after him!”

“People discovered people were disappearing from time to time, so they reported the situation to the Qinghuai County government office. They said since Song Mountain is close to Yanjiang County, and since we only sell our game to Yanjiang County, they should be responsible.”

“When it got to Yanjiang County, the officials said that Song Mountain belongs to Qinghuai County, they should be responsible.”

“After a few rounds of this, each side sent two cultivators to search for the tiger demon on Song Mountain. After ten days of searching, they couldn’t even find a single tiger hair. The cultivators thought we were fooling them and wasted their time. We tried to explain that maybe the tiger demon was deliberately hiding from them, but the two cultivators didn’t listen and left.”

“We went to the government office again, but they ignored us.

“We had no way out, so most people left Song Mountain to find new means of livelihood. Only a few of us old folks stayed, we can’t do anything but hunting.” “Later on, we discovered that during the hunts, we would encounter those missing travelers. They would appear and disappear out of blue, sometimes pushing you.”

“Sometimes, when I would lead people into the mountain, those travelers would pretend to bump into us and ask to join. How could I agree? I hurriedly lead the group away.”

“The older generation used to say that there’s something called a ghoul in this world. When a tiger demon kills a person, the person becomes a ghoul, helping the tiger demon to find prey, and lure people into a trap to turn them into new ghouls.”

“But, dealing with ghouls isn’t difficult, as long as you refuse their requests, they won’t harm you.”

All of this suddenly made sense to Qi Wu. He had been wondering why such a large forest had so few hunters. Now he understood why it took him so long to find only a few clusters of hunters living together.

It’s all due to the tiger demon.

Seeing All Yue still looking apprehensive, Qi Wu asks: “All Yue, ask whatever you want to ask.”

Ah Yue felt like his question was embarrassing to ask but since the Boss said so, he dropped his reserve.

“I just have one question, do these ghouls have female ghosts? Are they pretty? Do they seduce men? Do they suck men’s Yang Qi? Could it be possible for me to have a forbidden love with her, hiding from the tiger demon, traveling around?”

With each question Ah Yue asks, a question mark appears over everyone’s head, including the old hunter.

Seeing everyone else’s reactions, Ah Yue scratches his head shyly: ”1 read storybooks where it’s written like this, beautiful female ghosts, unresolved affection between humans and ghosts, and the likes.”

Qi Wu remains silent for a while, then pats Ah Yue on the shoulder: “You should read fewer books.”

Then, Qi Wu asks: “Then why didn’t you report this matter to the Five Great immortal Sects? The Five Great Immortal Sects defend the Righteous Path, they would never stand by and do nothing.”

“The Five Great Immortal Sects?” The old hunter looks blank, never having heard of this term.

“That is, the Seek Dao Sect, the Suspension Temple, and other three Righteous Sects. They are the five most powerful sects in the whole continent.

“Seems like I’ve heard of it.” The old hunter says uncertainly, unsure of where he heard it, maybe in a teahouse at the foot of a mountain, or from some traveler, or when he was younger, or when he got older.

He can’t remember clearly.

In fact, ordinary people know very little about cultivators; they just listen out

of curiosity.

Moreover, stories passed down orally often get distorted, rendering them far from the truth, hence unreliable.

For example, Qi Wu had heard that the reason the Seek Dao Sect was named that was because the path of immortality is vast and unknown, so “dao” (path) was used to signify searching for one’s path. To cultivate is to cultivate the heart. One needs to constantly ask oneself about the type of path they seek, whether it is the Righteous Path or the Demon Path, and not to lose one’s original intention.

Once Qi Wu met a disciple from the Seek Dao Sect named Dai Bufan. He asked him why their sect was named thus. He still remembers Dai Bufan’s answer very clearly.

“Oh, you’re asking about this? Let me tell you about our founding ancestor, Dao’ist Xiantian of the Seek Dao Sect. He spent a huge amount of money to ask someone from the Heavenly Strategy Sect to calculate a prime location, ‘they found an immortality land that brought together the Feng-Shui from eight directions. They said that if the sect wanted to flourish, it needed to be established at a specific time and place.”

“But it turned out that our founding ancestor was directionally challenged. Even though he had all the signs, he still lost his way. He had to ask for directions from an old farmer, and only then did he locate the sect’s location in time.”

“In gratitude to the old farmer, the founding ancestor named the sect Seek Dao

Sect..”