Chapter 354: True Book, True Feelings

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Zhang Lisheng watched Tao Lielin’s figure disappear into the mountain road and a thoughtful expression appeared on his face.

The Zhang Family’s ancestral house was built in a very shady place. The villagers of Guawo Village would never dare step into it unless it was absolutely necessary.

Usually, a huge part of the reason they did not dare step into it was because of the fame of the ‘Father’ that had been collected by the Zhang Family for thousands of years. However, a small part of it was because the house was too gloomy and ghastly. Let alone living in it, even stepping inside it would make one feel uncomfortable.

Yet, somebody had actually spent a great deal of money to bribe more than half of the village to try to rent such a mansion and renovate into the so-called ‘historical homestay’. If one pondered about it carefully, it was indeed a very absurd matter.

“This is very fishy. Looks like I must go pay a visit to that Heng Xiang’s Boss Guo in the county seat.” After contemplating for a while, Zhang Lisheng muttered and made up his mind.

When he snapped back to reality, he saw Uncle Ah Lie walking towards himself carrying a bamboo basket. From afar, he had already greeted Zhang Lisheng from the distance. “Mountain Worm, come! There are big fried chicken, fried egg with green onions and dough drop noodles. They are all delicious!”

“Oh Uncle Ah Lie, Auntie is really fast! She has actually finished cooking two main dishes and one noodle dish in such a short time?” Zhang Lisheng walked up to him and took over the bamboo basket as he said.

“Your Auntie is not that fast. We have already opened a small village-style restaurant so there are always food stocked up in the kitchen. We just needed to heat them up. Hurry up and enter the house to eat it. The noodle is newly cooked so you better eat it fast, or otherwise, it would become soggy soon.”

“You’ve opened a restaurant already?” Zhang Lisheng was stunned. After a moment of pondering, he asked, “How is the business? Would it be more flourishing if we expand the road leading to and away from the village?”

“The business is not bad! But it’s just that recently, the number of tourists have decreased a little so, sigh. It’s all because of the emergence of that foreign world that everyone has lost their mood now. Fortunately, the trend of the event has already passed and things have resumed to normal, with a slight increase of tourists as well. It doesn’t matter if the road is not fixed for now, the four-lane road is still quite sufficient at the moment. Why? Kid, why are you asking me this? Don’t tell me that you want to fix the road for our village too?” Tao Lielin asked jokingly.

“Not really. I’ve earned quite some money in the US and isn’t it a trend now for Chinese who are staying abroad to return to their hometowns and contribute a little? I’m merely asking,” Zhang Lisheng chuckled and replied.

“Just forget it. You just have to behave yourself dutifully and don’t raise too much commotion like what has happened today. That’s already enough to be considered as a repayment to your hometown!” Tao Lielin smiled wryly and shook his head. “Sigh, then again, thinking back about it, I can’t blame you for getting angry too, kid. This matter is too… too… ah forget it! With this lesson this time, nobody would dare to touch your Zhang Family’s house anymore. Let’s not talk nonsense anymore. Hurry up and go back to eat those food. I’ll send another meal to you at night!” Turning around, he left with both his hands clasped behind him.

Zhang Lisheng took the bamboo basket filled with food and walked back to his house’s yard before bolting the door. He went to the large wooden table where he used to worship the ancestors in the hall and chowed down on his food. Afterwards, he washed his hands and face with cold water in the yard, but did not return to the wing room. Instead, he walked into the main house.

Even though it was noon now, the room in the old house was still dark.

Through the dim light, one could faintly see that the most conspicuous thing in the room was the wooden bed that was carved with patterns. This bed belonged to Zhang Daowu last time.

A few years ago, it was exactly in the two wooden boxes at the head of the bed that Zhang Lisheng found several dozens of strange palm-sized insect statues. Later, he sealed these statues into his body because of the sound of thunder, which established the foundation of his rapid breakthrough in witchcraft cultivation.

“What exactly does that Boss Guo want exactly? The ancestral house of my Zhang Family, or the items inside the house?” Glancing at the main house that he had only been in for a few times, Zhang Lisheng muttered to himself. Then, he climbed up to the head of the bed and gently opened the wooden box that had once been filled with strange insect statues on the head of the bed.

All of a sudden, he felt a darkness clouding his eyes. Right away, a vast barren land full of grass and trees appeared in his mind.

The land was covered with wormwood that was three to four meters high. A group of giant warriors, who was naked except for a grass skirt that was covering their nether regions, stone knives and stone axes in their hands, were locked in a bloody battle.

In the jungle far from the battlefield, there were hundreds of giant poisonous insects and wild beasts that had ferocious-looking buck teeth, which were lurking in the dark, glaring at the flesh and blood of the two parties of giant warriors who were in the midst of battle.

There were also four giant human-shaped corpses entangled in black mist among the insects and beasts. They were carrying a huge stone bed, of which a skinny dark-skinned man was sitting cross-legged on it, with a faint smile vaguely appearing on his face. All of this was familiar to the young man, he had seen this scenery before when he opened the wooden box for the first time and saw the strange insect statues a few years back.

However, at that time, he was in no control at all but right now, as though he was watching a 3D fantasy movie, his consciousness was very clear.

After the image ended in his mind, Zhang Lisheng looked down at the empty wooden box and muttered, “So actually it’s not only the insect statues that are fishy, even this wooden box is strange as well…”

Then, he began to knock around the inside of the box.

After spending half a day doing so and not noticing anything special about the box, the young man whose effort was futile began to ponder and actually lifted the wooden box to the bed. He started to crumble the box apart bit by bit and in the end, such a reckless move actually allowed him to obtain something.

After he had crumbled the box lid and the three sides of the box into wood chips, when he was crushing the last piece of solid wood, an extremely thin piece of leather appeared in the hands of Zhang Lisheng.

Zhang Lisheng had once obtained the True Book of ancient witchcraft in South Africa before so the moment he touched this leather texture, a pleasant surprise immediately rose in his heart. He spread the leather open and after instilling his wizard gu into it, just as he expected, pictures and words began to appear on it.

Unfortunately, after Zhang Lisheng roughly glanced through this volume of True Book, the joy in his heart was reduced slightly right away. With a wry smile, he muttered under his breath, “To think that it’s actually another method to create a Corpse Puppet. There are so many spells in this world so why am I so unlucky instead?”

The transformation spell and the Living Corpse Refining Technique of the Witchcraft’s Gate of Death is the turning point for the wizard that would appear in every sixth stage. It was necessary for one to reach Rank-12 Wizard before one could refine a living corpse but there were some shortcuts in some True Books of Witchcraft that allowed a Rank-1-Wizard who cultivated the Witchcraft’s Gate of Death to refine a type of puppet using human corpses.

Of the True Book of Witchcraft that Zhang Lisheng obtained last time, two-thirds of the part that he understood was about the refining technique of living corpses. Now that he obtained another similar True Book, of course he would feel greatly discouraged.

However, when he continued to read on, his expression slowly became more joyful.

It turned out that even though the True Book of Witchcraft that he had newly obtained was about the refining method of Corpse Puppet too, there was a method of ‘sewing and cutting’ recorded in it. This method allowed different corpses to be sewn into one together for him to command, just like the Sewn Monster in a Western fantasy story that depicted a monster that had the power greater than an ordinary zombie. It could be said that he had obtained a great upgrade from the previous True Book.

However, after Zhang Lisheng continued to read it, a third change of expression took place on his face in just a short period of time. A series of expressions began to flash across his face and in the end, he actually gritted his teeth loudly. “Corpse Refining Soul Restoration Spell? Hahahahaha…. Oh Father, you’ve actually mastered this kind of Soul Restoration Spell? ‘A linear bloodline would result in 90% success’… 90%? And 90% is still not enough for you? No wonder you didn’t want to pass on the complete set of witchcraft cultivation method so that you can lower the counter charge power to its minimum… So I suppose the reason you begat me is for the sake of Soul Restoration right? Or otherwise, you wouldn’t have wanted me to memorize so many things in the first place. I wonder whether you’re Rank-3 Wizard, Rank-4 Wizard or Rank-5 Wizard actually? As life would have it, to think that you’d actually be crushed to death by a taxi… How funny! And you didn’t even forget to protect your life when you were still in the emergency room so that you could turn me into a corpse. You really could make do and improvise well but unfortunately, your work was messed up rashly by a kind doctor. Oh, you even mumbled a great spell that time. It was really a great spell you know…”

As the young man was speaking, his mumble became a low growl as his ferocious face looked as though he had really gone insane.

Fortunately, Zhang Lisheng’s witchcraft had already broken through to Rank-9 Wizard so he had undergone many heart temperings. After venting out for a while, he gradually calmed down again. After finished reading the True Book and keeping it away, he breathed a long sigh of relief and planned to cast a spell to compose himself. All of a sudden, he heard a series of knocking sounds reverberating from the courtyard.

The young man was taken by surprise. Only then did he realize that the main house was already dark. Knowing that it must be evening now and it must be Uncle Ah Lie who came to send dinner for him, even though the agitation in his heart could not be vented out, he could only tread on the cloth shoes and walked towards the courtyard. With a hoarse voice, he shouted, “Uncle Ah Lie, I’m coming,” as he opened the door briskly.

After the door was opened, the face appearing in of him was not Tao Lielin’s square face that was covered with wrinkles but instead, it was a beautiful young girl who was carrying a bamboo basket in both of her hands.

The young man froze right away. An image of a dark-skinned girl with huge eyes, tall nose and who had always been wearing a red-colored school uniform flashed in his mind. His mouth finally moved and said in a low voice, “S-Sister Tao…”

“Zhang Lisheng, why are you still the same? Still the same stupid clumsy look as you were last time. Now, you really don’t have that majestic aura that you have just now you know.”

“No, no! T-They took my ancestral house so I w-was only, only…”

“Why have you suddenly stuttered? I’ve heard Father mention your matter before so I don’t really blame you. But still, you shouldn’t have scared people with that majestic aura of yours you know. Why aren’t you taking the bamboo basket from me yet? My hands are almost broken already!”

“Oh! Oh!” Zhang Lisheng hurriedly took the bamboo basket and composed his emotions before saying, “I’m not stuttering. I just didn’t expect you to send my dinner over at night and so I got really stunned.”

“You didn’t expect me to send dinner over at night?” Tao Lulu’s face suddenly turned icy. “Did you think everyone is as cold as you and wouldn’t keep in touch anymore after leaving the country? You no longer sign in to your previous QQ, or your mailbox. It’s like you’ve vanished completely from the world!”

When Zhang Lisheng saw that the girl’s eyes suddenly brimmed with tears as she was speaking, he was dumbfounded for a while. Opening his mouth, he began to talk incoherently, “I…I… How would I know that you’d try to keep in touch with me? I-I thought nobody would want to contact me so I-I…”

“I, I, I your head! Can’t you speak in Mandarin now? Can’t you speak normally now?” Upon hearing the young man’s excuse, a gush of inexplicable anger rose in Tao Lulu’s heart, prompting her to interrupt him unreasonably.

“My Mandarin is not that good to begin with. I can speak fluently in 17 languages including English, French, Italian, Japanese, and Korean and I can even talk to the aborigines in the foreign world. But when it comes to Mandarin, perhaps I just can’t change my dialect well,” Zhang Lisheng replied with a wry smile.

The magical power of the Eternal Comprehension Spell allowed him to master the most authentic accent and words of a foreign language in a very short time but when it came to his motherland’s civilization that he was most proficient in, he could not change it at all. Even though the young man could not understand why, it somehow faintly gave him a better peace of mind.