Chapter 276: The Main Cave of the Malevolent Deity’s Offering Ground

The sky hadn’t fully brightened yet, but the layer of black mist in the mountains was already starting to sink into the gullies.

The wooden board pressing down on the cellar entrance was flipped open from the outside by someone, and the cold wind rushed in like a knife. The wind carried the damp scent of pine needles and a faint, elusive sweetness, like a jar of fermented, spoiled blood buried deep in the mountain’s belly.

Lu Yuan was the first to climb out. As soon as his foot touched the ground, he lifted his eyes and swept a glance around.

They were no longer inside some large courtyard. This wasn’t even the kind of place with houses connected to houses and courtyards adjoining courtyards.

Mountains surrounded them on all sides.

The mountains weren’t particularly tall, but they stretched out fiercely, layer upon layer. The distant tree shadows looked as if they’d been soaked in ink, lying heavily in the gloom. Nearby was a slope that had been trampled by people, covered in scattered rocks and wild grass that grew up to the knees. Several old pine trees leaned at crooked angles, their branches reaching out claw-like into the night, as if trying to drag someone in.

Wang Cheng’an climbed out afterward and couldn’t help but shiver. “Damn, this mountain range feels seriously sinister.”

“The night wind even carries a stench of death.”

Xu Erxiao crawled out right after him, hunching his shoulders as he stared at the mountain path ahead, hacked to pieces by the tree shadows. An inexplicable dread rose in his heart.

Lu Yuan didn’t turn around. He just lifted his hand and pointed at the darker patch of woods halfway up the mountain.

“Inward.”

“The last road skin that Iron Abacus left was broken off in that direction.”

“The main entrance of the Malevolent Deity’s offering ground is probably in there, eighty percent sure.”

Lin Zhaoxuan was the last one up, still carrying the half-length black wooden tablet and the soul-reflecting mirror wrapped in layers of torn cloth, to keep them from attracting anything along the way.

Song Qinghe followed behind, holding the oil lamp. The flame flickered violently in the mountain wind, but she steadied it firmly and didn’t let it go out.

Zhou Heng wiped his face, panting. “I get it now. We’ve never left the shadow of this mountain’s eye these past few days.”

“Iron Abacus’s cellar was just a small shell.”

“The real entrance was always hidden inside the mountain.”

Lu Yuan’s expression didn’t flicker when he heard this.

“The cellar is a shell, and the mountain is also a shell.”

“Shell within shell, and outside the shell, another shell.”

“It’s been fed for so many years—it couldn’t rely on just one feeding site.”

“These roads in the mountain, these hollows, these caves, these abandoned old shacks that no one lives in—they’re probably all connected to its tendons.”

As he spoke, he lifted his hand and rubbed the not-quite-dry black ash on his fingertip.

After the yellow paper effigy from last night was burned, the black ash still held a faint, thin scent of incense, like the lingering smell from burnt offering paper in front of an altar.

Lu Yuan closed his eyes and listened for a moment, then said, “Take this ridge line.”

“Don’t step on the path right in the middle.”

“The straighter the path, the more likely it’s been left as its eye.”

“Detour to the left, hug the roots of the pine forest.”

Wang Cheng’an and Xu Erxiao didn’t ask questions. Whatever Lu Yuan said, that was how they went.

The group pushed inward along the mountain’s terrain. Loose stones rolled underfoot, making a fine crunching sound.

The sky hadn’t fully brightened, and the forest was darker than outside. A thin layer of frost hung on the old pine branches. When the wind blew, frost flakes fell off, landing on their shoulders, ice-cold.

After walking not too far, Zhou Heng suddenly stopped.

“Hey!”

“Hm?” Lu Yuan turned back.

Zhou Heng pointed at a fallen tree trunk ahead and said in a low voice, “Is there something over there?”

Everyone looked over together.

Under that half-dead pine tree lay a tattered red cloth strip, horizontal on the ground. One end of the strip was tied to a tree root, and the other end dragged into a thicket. Hanging in the middle of the strip were two small, blackened copper bells.

The bells should have been shiny, but now they were dark as clods of dirt. When the mountain wind blew, the mouths of the bells swayed slightly, but not a single sound came out.

“This isn’t an ordinary sash.”

Lin Zhaoxuan frowned. “Looks like a guiding rope.”

Lu Yuan stepped forward two paces. He didn’t touch it right away, just stared at the red cloth strip. The strip was very old, its edges frayed, but there was an extremely faint, shallow oiliness on it, as if it had been touched and wrung by some hand over the years, polished until it gleamed.

“Someone passes through here often,” he said in a low voice. “Not the kind of passing a living person does.”

“This is a marker left for the things on the road.”

Wang Cheng’an’s back tightened even more when he heard this. “What does that mean?”

“It means we haven’t been in the mountains long, and we’re already stepping on a path someone else left.” Lu Yuan said flatly. “The evil entities in these mountains aren’t necessarily all living in caves.”

“Some of them follow these ropes, sashes, and markers, moving through the forest and over the slopes, specifically to block people.”

Xu Erxiao swallowed hard and couldn’t help glancing back. “I feel like we’ve walked into some kind of big net.”

“Pretty much,” Lu Yuan said. “They don’t support the Malevolent Deity with just one altar or one cave, but through the qi vents of the entire mountain.”

“Who walks which path, who enters which gully, who stops by which rock—it’s probably all recorded.”

“This red cloth is a marker.”

With that, he lifted his knife and flicked it, using the tip to gently push the two copper bells aside. When the bells flipped over, everyone saw that inside the bell shells were two already-blackened dried meat cubes, like remnants of some offering. The meat cubes still had fine white fuzz stuck to them, enough to turn anyone’s stomach.

Song Qinghe’s face turned slightly pale. She forced herself not to make a sound.

But Lu Yuan just glanced at them and said, “Don’t touch this thing.”

“Wipe your hands with cinnabar.”

“It’s not for people to hear; it’s for those things on the road to recognize the scent.”

Wang Cheng’an quickly complied, taking out cinnabar and rubbing it on his palm. The others also each wiped some on their own palms. The icy, fishy smell on their hands was barely suppressed.

Going further in, the forest grew denser.

Tree roots tangled and crossed, and the mountain path was almost unrecognizable under a layer of dead leaves and scattered rocks. In some places, thick patches of moss grew, making it extremely slippery to step on.

But strangely, even though the wind wasn’t weak in the forest, almost no bird sounds could be heard.

It was very quiet.

So quiet it was like a big pot pressed down over the mountain, even the chirping of insects stifled into silence.

As they walked, a broken cliff suddenly appeared ahead.

The cliff wasn’t high, but it dropped deep. Clouds of mist rolled out from the bottom in clumps, creeping darkly toward their feet.

At the edge of the cliff stood a slanted, toppled stone tablet. The tablet was half-cracked, and the characters originally carved on it had long been worn white by wind and rain. Only a faint remnant of the brushstroke for “forbidden” could be vaguely made out.

Wang Cheng’an cursed under his breath when he saw it. “There really is a forbidden-character tablet in this place?”

“I said it before—there’s not a clean spot in these mountains.”

Lu Yuan walked up to the tablet and reached out to touch its surface.

The stone was so cold it stung his hand.

But what concerned him more was the ring of extremely faint gray-white marks around the base of the tablet. The marks looked like salt, or bone dust, forming a half-circle around the tablet’s root.

“This isn’t an ordinary forbidden tablet,” Lu Yuan said. “This is a leg-stopping tablet.”

“Anyone who passes here has to stop in front of the tablet first.”

“If you can stop, it means you know the way.”

“If you can’t stop, you’ll probably be sent into the gully.”

Lu Yuan didn’t say more. He looked down over the cliff.

Below, faintly visible in the mist, was a pitifully narrow mountain path that coiled down along the cliff wall, twisting and turning, leading who knew where. Beside the path stood several withered trees with branches jutting out, and hanging from the branches were several faded cloth strips. The strips hung one by one, swaying lightly, as if someone had planted markers there.

“Down,” Lu Yuan said, spitting out just two words.

Zhou Heng’s face stiffened. “This… going down doesn’t look easy, does it?”

“Then it means we’re on the right track,” Lu Yuan said calmly. “The harder it is to walk, the more it looks like the right path.”

“The places it doesn’t want people to go are often the entrances.”

The group exchanged glances and could only follow along, groping their way down.

The cliff was steep, the path narrow, and the stones underfoot loose. Every step had to be extremely careful.

Song Qinghe couldn’t easily manage the lamp in her hand, so in the end, Lin Zhaoxuan had to light the way ahead for her. She herself tucked the black wooden tablet and the soul-reflecting mirror close to her body.

When they reached the middle section of the cliff, the fog suddenly grew heavy.

It wasn’t ordinary mountain fog. It was white mixed with gray, and inside it, a thread of faint, sweet, fishy scent was woven. As soon as the fog hit their faces, it felt like something was slowly scratching their skin, scratching until their hearts tightened.

Wang Cheng’an couldn’t help lifting his hand to fan it away. “Why is this fog so sticky?”

“Don’t fan it,” Lu Yuan said immediately. “This fog has road qi in it.”

“Fan it away, and it’ll just burrow into your eyes instead.”

Wang Cheng’an quickly put his hand down.

But it was already half a step too late.

From within the fog, an extremely faint “giggle” suddenly sounded.

Like someone laughing, or like teeth chattering.

Everyone stopped at once.

Lu Yuan raised his hand to signal for silence. He slowly turned his head to look at a protruding stone platform on the cliff wall.

Sitting on that stone platform was a person.

A woman.

She was dressed in an old blue cloth jacket, her hair combed neatly, knees together, hands resting on her lap, head lowered, motionless.

If her figure hadn’t been so clear in the fog, you’d almost mistake her for a rock.

Xu Erxiao’s throat tightened, almost blurting something out.

But Lu Yuan reached out first and pressed his shoulder. “Don’t speak.”

“She’s not human.”

Everyone felt a chill surge straight up from the soles of their feet.

The woman seemed to have heard something. She slowly lifted her head a little.

The lamp light flickered, illuminating half her face.

Her face was frighteningly pale, but her lips were an unnatural red. Her eyes were empty, like two wells that had been drained dry.

The most terrifying thing was that there was a ring of thin black lines around the corner of her mouth, like needle stitches, or like someone had used silk thread to cinch her flesh.

She looked at them, and the corner of her mouth curved upward bit by bit.

“You… came too.”

Her voice was soft, like old cotton batting blown in by the mountain wind, but chillingly cold.

Song Qinghe nearly dropped the lamp, biting her lip hard to keep from screaming.

Lu Yuan’s gaze darkened. The knife had already slid silently into his palm.

“Who are you?”

The woman tilted her head, as if she was stumped by the question. Then she gave a faint smile.

“Me… I guard the bridge.”

“Bridge?” Wang Cheng’an’s expression shifted. “What bridge?”

The woman raised her hand and pointed at the faintly visible mountain path in the fog below the cliff. She said slowly, “Cross the bridge, and you’ll reach the feeding mouth.”

“Don’t cross the bridge, and I won’t let you go down.”

As she spoke, her eyes slowly rolled to the left, glancing at the knife in Lu Yuan’s hand. “That knife of yours… has cut its face.”

Lu Yuan’s mind stirred, but his expression didn’t change. “You keep watch for it?”

The woman let out two “giggle” laughs, and the black lines on her face trembled. “I collect people for it.”

“Collect people?” Zhou Heng stepped back half a pace, almost slipping. “Collect what people?”

“People willing to offer themselves.”

The woman said slowly, “Those willing to offer can go up.”

“Those unwilling to offer have to stay.”

When she said this, several faint echoes of agreement came from the fog, as if someone was responding softly from all around.

The coldness in Lu Yuan’s eyes surged. “They’re all here.”

He had already figured it out.

This woman at the cliff wasn’t a single evil entity.

She was the “collection keeper” for this section of the road.

Once they crossed this bridge, the main cave below was probably not far off.

“Are you going to block us?” Lu Yuan asked.

The woman’s smile grew even softer. “I can’t stop you either.”

“I’m just telling you, the roads in these mountains have to be followed by the rules.”

“Rules?” Lu Yuan gave a cold laugh. “Whose rules?”

The woman slowly lifted her head. She looked at the fog below the cliff, then at the crowd. Finally, her gaze landed on the cloth-wrapped bundle of the soul-reflecting mirror. A very faint glimmer of greed flashed in her eyes.

“Its rules.”

“You’ve come to the offering ground. If you don’t offer your name first, the road won’t recognize you.”

“Name offering?” Wang Cheng’an couldn’t hold back his curse. “Bullshit!”

The smile on the woman’s face instantly froze. The corner of her eye twitched, and the black lines at her mouth split open with a “pop,” revealing flesh as white as paper underneath.

Seeing this, Lu Yuan felt even more certain.

This thing still looked like a human form, but it could still talk about “rules” and “name offerings.” It was clearly part of the Malevolent Deity’s feeding system.

All the evil entities in these mountains were strung together by name ledgers, feeding mouths, and road guides.

“What name do you want?” Lu Yuan asked.

The woman slowly extended a hand. The five fingers were slender, but her nails were black and shiny.

“Write one.”

“Write whose?”

“Write one from among you,” she said with a smile, her voice light as if coaxing a child. “Write one, and you can pass halfway.”

“Write two, and you can cross the whole bridge.”

“Don’t write any…” She paused, and the curve of her mouth suddenly stretched extremely wide. “Then I’ll collect the bodies.”

Zhou Heng felt like his scalp was about to explode. “What kind of twisted rule is this?”

But Lu Yuan understood.

“An offered name,” he said slowly. “It’s asking for an offered name.”

“All the evil entities along this road live on offered names, replaced names, borrowed names, and exchanged names.”

“Especially here at this mountain pass.”

“To enter the main cave, you have to hand over one person’s name.”

Song Qinghe’s face paled. She quickly lowered her head to avoid the woman’s gaze.

Xu Erxiao clenched his fist and cursed in a low voice. “I’m not writing. My name isn’t even valuable. Why should I give it to it?”

“Whether your name is valuable or not isn’t for you to decide,” Lu Yuan said.

After he spoke, he suddenly reached into his chest and took out the yellow paper ash left over from the cellar the night before. He rubbed it between his palms and actually managed to pinch out a trace of black ash that formed a character.

The black ash had already been burned crisp, but there were still a few strokes that hadn’t dispersed.

Lu Yuan spread the ash character on his palm and examined it in the fog and lamplight. He suddenly noticed that the fragmented strokes matched the brushwork on the back of the paper effigy’s name ledger from last night.

His gaze darkened slightly, and then he said, “Don’t move yet.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

The woman’s smile deepened when she heard this, as if she’d been waiting for just this.

Lu Yuan took half a step forward, standing in the middle of the cliff path. The wind slipped under his clothes, blowing the dust on his back to stir gently.

He looked at the woman and said, word by word, “You want a name? Fine.”

“But first, tell me what exactly is being fed in the main cave up ahead.”

The woman’s eyes slowly rolled. “If I tell you, will you dare to go?”

“I dare.”

“Then you should write the name even more.”

“Why?”

“Because to go see it, you need a return name.”

She smiled lightly, like the sound of paper rubbing together. “Someone without a return name who enters the main cave… won’t come out.”

When Lu Yuan heard this, a chill immediately ran through him.

Return name.

This was a term that hadn’t been clearly mentioned before.

But just hearing it, he knew the mountain’s feeding system was even more intricate than he’d thought.

Not only did you have to offer a name, but you also needed a return name.

In other words, whoever entered this mountain pass was essentially lending their name out first. After seeing the Malevolent Deity inside, they’d have to figure out a way to reclaim the name.

If they couldn’t reclaim it, they’d become a permanent entry on its ledger.

“Do you know Iron Abacus?” Lu Yuan suddenly asked.

The woman was stunned for half a breath, then nodded lightly.

“I know him.”

“He was the old gatekeeper.”

“He also gave his name.”

“Whose name did he give?”

The woman smiled but didn’t answer. She just lifted her hand and pointed into the fog below the cliff.

“The people you’re looking for are all down there.”

“The old gatekeeper, the old name-translator, the old paper effigy, the old mirror, the old road… they’re all there.”

Lu Yuan’s gaze was heavy. A turbulent tide of thoughts surged in his heart.

Iron Abacus wasn’t a solitary gatekeeper. He was a link in the old system.

In the mountain that fed the Malevolent Deity, every section of the road had a guardian, every entrance had an old name ledger.

The yellow paper effigy burned last night had only turned over part of the name ledger. The real account book was probably still deep in the main cave.

“I won’t waste words with you,” the woman suddenly said.

She slowly stood up.

Her form was very light, as if she had no bones, but when her feet touched the ground, there wasn’t a sound.

“To cross the bridge, first write a name.”

“Write it or not?”

Lu Yuan stared at her for a moment, then suddenly smiled.

“You want a name? I’ll give you a name.”

A flash of light appeared in the woman’s eyes.

But the next moment, Lu Yuan’s half-length black wooden tablet shot forward, the black spot facing outward, right at her face.

“But not our name.”

“Yours.”

The smile on the woman’s face instantly froze. “You dare?”

“You dare to collect lives, so what wouldn’t I dare?” Lu Yuan’s voice dropped low. “Lin Zhaoxuan, take out the mirror.”

“Zhou Heng, seal the cliff with salt-line!”

“Cheng’an, give me the cinnabar!”

“Erxiao, step back!”

As soon as they heard this, everyone sprang into action.

Lin Zhaoxuan pulled the soul-reflecting mirror out of its cloth bundle. The mirror surface flipped, a cold light flashed, aiming right at the woman’s feet.

Zhou Heng and Wang Cheng’an worked quickly, spreading salt along the edge of the cliff in a circle, instantly cutting off the woman’s retreat.

Xu Erxiao raised his hand and flung cinnabar in front of the woman. Dense red dots scattered like a rain of blood splashed across her face.

The woman’s expression finally changed.

The black line at her mouth snapped taut with a “crack,” and her entire mouth stretched even longer, reaching almost to her ears.

“You…”

Her voice suddenly turned sharp, like a piece of dry wood snapping.

Taking advantage of this opening, Lu Yuan sharply cut his palm with his knife. The blood smeared directly onto the black wooden tablet, and then he pressed it against the edge of the soul-reflecting mirror.

“Reflect!” he shouted in a low voice.

The mirror surface flashed. The woman’s image instantly twisted in the mirror.

Her originally delicate blue cloth jacket and neat hair bun, all seemed to dissolve like cloth soaked in water, slowly revealing what she really looked like underneath.

She wasn’t wearing anything resembling human skin at all.

It was simply layers of wet, black cloth wrapped around her. Beneath the cloth was a long, thin skeleton. Her chest was hollow, as if it had been gouged out from the inside.

The most terrifying thing was that behind her, a long, long gray shadow dragged on the ground.

At the far end of the gray shadow, it was faintly connected to the mountain path in the fog below the cliff. Like a thread, like a tail, like a tendon that ventilated everything on the road.

“So, you’re the thread,” Lu Yuan said, his gaze turning icy cold. “You’re not the bridge guardian; you’re the one who ties the knot for the bridge.”

The woman, caught by the mirror’s light, trembled violently, as if her skin had been peeled off. She shrieked, “Don’t shine!”

“Don’t shine on me!”

“I’m just a messenger!”

“Who sent the message?” Lu Yuan pressed.

The woman writhed wildly, struggling. But a quick, urgent sentence escaped her lips.

“The one in the main cave… it woke up half a breath!”

“Who told you to flip the road mouth? Who told you to burn the name skins!”

“It wants to change people!”

“Change whom?”

The woman suddenly twisted her head and looked at Lu Yuan. Her eyes were filled with a light of pure venom and terror mixed together.

“You!”

That last word was almost a scream.

Before the sound faded, her blue cloth jacket split open from the shoulders with a “whoosh.” Her entire body, like a skin being violently stretched, plummeted straight down into the fog below the cliff.

Lu Yuan didn’t even think. The knife flashed, and the black wooden tablet was hurled out after her.

“Nail her down!”

The black wooden tablet flew out, half its length, and slammed straight into the middle of that gray shadow.

The woman immediately let out a miserable scream. Her body twisted violently in midair, then exploded into a mass of wet, black cloth strips, flying in all directions.

As soon as those cloth strips hit the ground, they wriggled like live snakes, frantically burrowing toward the edges of the salt-line.

“Don’t let it scatter!” Lu Yuan commanded sharply.

Wang Cheng’an and Zhou Heng charged at the same time. They threw handfuls of cinnabar at the cloth strips, stomping on the black cloth that tried to squeeze through the cracks with the tops of their feet.

Xu Erxiao even grabbed a dead wooden branch and jabbed and prodded wildly at the black cloth, cursing repeatedly. “I’ll teach you to block! I’ll teach you to beg for names!”

Lin Zhaoxuan pressed the soul-reflecting mirror hard. Inside the mirror, the gray shadow was pinned by the black wooden tablet, slowly shrinking inward, like a broken thread that couldn’t break free no matter how it struggled.

Taking the opportunity, Lu Yuan bent down and picked up an object from the pile of exploded black cloth.

It was a small piece of wood, as thin as a fingernail.

Only one extremely shallow character was carved on it.

“Return.”

When Lu Yuan saw this character, his gaze sank to an extremely deep place.

“Return name,” he said in a low voice. “So that’s how it really works.”

Wang Cheng’an ran over panting, drenched in sweat. “Brother Lu, we scattered her. Does that mean we can cross now?”

“Cross?” Lu Yuan shook his head slowly. “We’ve only just reached the mountain gate.”

“This woman was just the knot on the bridge. Scattering her only tears off her skin.”

“That gray shadow behind her is the real line connecting to the main cave.”

“What do we do now?”

Lu Yuan raised his eyes and looked down at the winding mountain path below the cliff. A cold gleam like a knife shone in his eyes.

“Follow it.”

“Since it’s telling us to write names, return names, and offer names, we’ll take its thread and wrap it back around.”

“Its main cave is almost here.”

With that, he looked down at the piece of wood with the “return” character in his hand, then at the remnant line of the gray shadow pinned by the black wooden tablet. Suddenly he said, “Cheng’an, get that red cloth strip.”

“What?”

“The one on the tree from earlier.”

Wang Cheng’an quickly ran over and picked up the red cloth strip, handing it to Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan wound the red cloth strip around the piece of wood with the “return” character and tied it into an extremely tight knot. Then he sprinkled some cinnabar on the knot and smeared it with his fingertip.

“To enter the mountain pass, we have to return a name first.”

“It wants us to write, so we’ll write for it.”

“But who we write is up to us.”

Lin Zhaoxuan looked at the red cloth strip, seeming to understand. “You want to use its original road marker to send our names in reverse?”

“Right.” Lu Yuan nodded. “They left markers, lines, guides, and shells all along the way, just so the people entering the mountain would send their own names up, didn’t they?”

“So we’ll do the opposite and pry their openings open.”

With that, he tucked the red cloth strip into his chest, then gathered up the soul-reflecting mirror, the black wooden tablet, Iron Abacus’s road ash, the yellow paper ash, the cinnabar, and the salt-line, one by one, and straightened his belt.

The mountain wind grew colder, but the fog below the cliff slowly parted a crack.

Through that crack in the fog, a short section of bluestone steps faintly appeared.

The steps led downward, step by step, as if going toward some unfathomably deep mountain belly.

And at the end of those steps, dark and heavy, there seemed to stand a stone door half-buried in the mountain’s body.

There were patterns on the stone door.

The patterns looked like an eye.

And also like a face.

The moment Lu Yuan saw that stone door, his fingers tightened slightly.

“We’ve arrived.”

“The main cave of the Malevolent Deity’s offering ground is right behind that door.”