55: Chapter 55 Huangxian Temple

Qin Ling sat inside the shrine niche, pondering what Zhou Ping had just said.

The magistrate agreed to change the deity, but would not allow Lord Qinling to be changed.

Not only that, the magistrate designated a temple, saying that the deity inside it was more responsive, and told Zhou Family Village to change its worship to that deity.

Even all the villages in the entire county had to change their worshipped deities to the one specified by the magistrate.

Wasn't this matter a bit too bizarre?

As the supreme authority of a county, why did the magistrate care so much about what deities the villages below worshipped?

Clearly, according to past experience, as long as what the villages worshipped wasn't an uncanonical sacrifice, the county government basically wouldn't interfere.

Qin Ling rubbed his chin, his brow furrowing even deeper.

He always felt that the magistrate's actions were truly a bit eerie.

After thinking about it, he felt that he still needed to go to Zhou Family Village to investigate the situation.

At the very least, he had to go and see the deity demanded by the magistrate.

Otherwise, the information he could obtain from what Zhou Ping said was far too little.

Qin Ling's second avatar directly swept past the shrine, executing the divine art Divine Travel Across the World and flying toward Zhou Family Village.

...

In the courtyard of the Zhou Family Village shrine, a circle of villagers had gathered.

The villagers did not enter the shrine to burn incense; instead, they were chattering about something in the courtyard.

Qin Ling's avatar landed on the courtyard wall, looking down from above.

The sun had already slanted to the west, and the light in the courtyard turned from golden-yellow to dark red.

"What kind of thing is this?"

A hoarse voice emerged from the crowd—it was a fellow who had gone out to sea together with Zhou Hu.

He pointed at the temple gates, his beard trembling with anger.

"The one our village is supposed to worship is Lord Qinling, the true deity who saved our lives! What is this? Why should this inexplicably arriving deity receive our incense offerings?"

The villagers nearby hurriedly pulled him back, lowering their voices as they said,

"Keep it down. The county ordered it to be worshipped, don't talk nonsense."

"The county ordered it to be worshipped?"

The man's voice grew even louder.

"What the hell does the county know! Have they ever seen Lord Qinling manifest his divinity? Have they ever seen those Cone Snails die beneath the golden light? Do they know that Lord Qinling can protect ships going out to sea?"

"They don't know a damn thing, they only know how to make us worship this piece of junk!"

The man pointed at the temple gates, his fingers trembling.

None of the villagers replied, but none of them refuted him either.

Standing in the courtyard, these villagers looked at the closed temple gates; the expressions on their faces were not of awe, but of confusion.

It was the stifled grievance of being forced to do something they didn't want to do.

A younger villager squatted on the steps, clutching an unlit stick of joss incense in his hand, turning it over and over to look at it.

"This incense, I can't bring myself to burn it."

He said in a muffled voice.

"When our village was in trouble, it was Lord Qinling who saved us."

"Those fish only existed because of Lord Qinling's protection, and now they want us to worship this thing—what kind of sense does that make?"

"When our village was in disaster, Lord Qinling saved us. Those fish, those provisions, were given by Lord Qinling. Now they want us to worship this—what kind of nonsense is this?"

"Exactly."

The person next to him chimed in,

"Big Brother Zhou Ping and Big Brother Zhou Hu went to Qin Family Village to confess their faults. I wonder if Lord Qinling will get angry..."

"It would only be right for him to get angry."

An elderly elder's voice suddenly lowered, so quiet it sounded like he was speaking to himself.

"We promised to invite Lord Qinling here, but now we're worshipping someone else."

"If Lord Qinling blames us, it's only what we deserve."

The courtyard fell silent, and none of the villagers spoke.

Standing on the courtyard wall, Qin Ling took all of this in.

He turned around and arrived in front of the temple doors. Without pushing them open, his figure flickered and he passed right through them.

The temple was very dark; the windows were nailed shut with wooden boards, leaving only a few lines of light leaking in through the cracks of the door, falling on the ground like several slender knife scars.

The altar table was old—it was still the tabletop that Zhou Ping had people make.

But the things on the altar table had changed.

That idol stood there, larger than he had imagined.

Half a person high, crudely carved into a human shape, wearing official robes of an unknown dynasty, wearing a crown on its head, holding a hu tablet in its hands, it sat upright in the center of the altar table.

At first glance, it was a person.

Taking another look, it wasn't right.

The face was wrong.

The facial features were human, but the proportions were wrong.

The eyes were too big, outrageously big, like two protruding beads, staring straight ahead blankly.

The nose was too flat, so flat that only two dark holes remained.

The mouth was too wide, the corners of the lips curling upwards to an impossible angle, as if it were constantly smiling, smiling so happily that it made one's whole body go cold.

That face wasn't carved badly; it was done on purpose.

Qin Ling glanced at the spirit tablet beneath the idol, which had several words carved on it—

"Yellow Immortal".

Qin Ling looked at that idol and frowned.

Then he moved, channeling divine power into his eyes as a golden light flashed deep within his pupils.

He raised his head to look at the idol once more.

This time, he saw something.

Inside the idol, something was moving.

As the golden light seeped in, that thing revealed its shape.

It was a weasel.

Very small, even smaller than his fist, curled up inside the chest cavity of the idol, its limbs tucked in, its tail wrapped around its body, and its head buried in its belly.

However, relying on his divine power-infused eyes, Qin Ling instantly perceived something.

This was not a dead weasel.

That was a mass of flesh and blood kneaded into the shape of a weasel and stuffed inside the idol.

This looked like it was caused by some secret technique.

Not only that, he also smelled the scent of incense from this flesh-and-blood little weasel.

A thought flashed abruptly through Qin Ling's mind.

Was it harvesting incense?

The villagers who were forced by the magistrate to come and burn incense—their incense wasn't burned to any deity, but was burned to this eerie flesh-and-blood weasel.

Qin Ling withdrew the golden light, stood in front of the altar table, and looked at the idol.

It was still smiling, the corners of its lips curled high, its eyes protruding greatly, staring blankly ahead. It looked quite hair-raising.

He turned around and walked toward the temple door.

"Have you seen enough?"

A voice came from behind him, lazy and icy.

The footsteps of Qin Ling's avatar paused, and he turned his head back.

Next to the altar table, at some unknown point, an extra person had appeared.

Plump and white, wearing the magistrate's official robes and a black gauze cap on its head, its face bore no expression whatsoever, save for those eyes.

They were not human eyes. Its pupils were vertical, golden, emitting a gloomy and cold light in the dim temple hall.

It walked out from the shadows with very light footsteps.

It walked up to the altar table, reached out, and stroked the face of the idol, as if petting a beloved object.

"Carved poorly."

It said, its voice making it impossible to tell whether it was satisfied or unsatisfied.

Qin Ling did not speak.

He stood there, watching this magistrate who had walked out from the shadows.

Relying on his divine power-infused eyes, he naturally saw at a glance that the magistrate before him was not human.

But rather a weasel spirit!

Qin Ling's current cultivation was stuck at the peak of the Third-Turn, so he could also easily perceive that the weasel before him had a higher cultivation level than his own.

In other words, the opponent was—

A Fourth-Turn monster!