I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 595 - 595 594. Profanity_1

Chapter 595: 594. Profanity_1 Chapter 595: 594. Profanity_1 The camera followed He Chong as he ascended the final steps, and he saw a few people already there.

Next came the time for Lu Ban to treat everyone to a meal.

The off-screen interview reverberated once again, complementing the sight of these people dining, bringing forth a feeling as if from another lifetime.

In the footage, these people were vividly conversing and moving about.

In memory, these people had aged and passed away.

A wave of nostalgia for the twilight years of heroes swept over the audience.

Lu Ban cleverly connected the past and present through both visual and auditory elements.

In the film, Lu Ban entered the Taoist Temple, and with a lift of the camera, the eerie Divine Idol was revealed.

Upon seeing the Divine Idol, Stephen instinctively felt a surge of revulsion.

He had his own religious beliefs; though not extremely zealous, he was still fundamentally a believer in God.

But the moment the Divine Idol appeared, Stephen felt a sense of sacrilege.

Yes, sacrilege.

Being a young man who had received a fair amount of education, Stephen thought if devout believers like his parents were to witness this scene, they’d probably erupt in fury within a minute.

No wonder Lu Ban had not opted to release the film abroad.

Stephen looked around, curious to see the reaction of the locals.

Contrary to his expectations, although they too felt a chill at the sight of the Divine Idol, they did not share Stephen’s sense of a desecrated faith.

Stephen thought the reason might be that most people in this country were atheists.

His local classmates, in everyday conversation about the divine, would most frequently utter phrases like “You’re insane!” As for anything like “God bless”, he never heard it even once.

Most did not believe in the existence of deities and were staunch materialists.

Once, Stephen asked a friend where they found solace for their spirit, as religion, while not material, can at least offer comfort in times of hardship.

His friend did not answer directly but opened a page from a book in Stephen’s hands, filled with the sayings and thoughts of ancient sages, for him to read.

“Therefore, when Heaven is about to place a great responsibility on a man, it always first frustrates his spirit and will, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body and skin, deprives his body of resources, and disrupts what he is doing, so that he’s temperamental and endures what nature could not otherwise. ”

At the time, Stephen could hardly understand this passage, but as his Chinese skills improved, he eventually grasped its contents, though he understood this nation even less.

That Divine Idol with tentacles, like an elephant in shape, was full of anomalies, and as evening came, the competition entered its second phase.

The camera followed Tang Que.

This mature woman in a cheongsam captivated Stephen and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Her commanding presence, like that of a warrior, sparked the imagination.

Tang Que arrived inside the Taoist Temple; she searched but found no trace of the Jade Pendant fragment.

Suddenly, a thick, squirming sound came from behind her.

To Stephen, it sounded as though some disgusting, twisted creature was licking the back of his neck.

Tang Que turned around for a look.

Something seemed to be scurrying in the underbrush.

The night was dark on the mountain, with only the moonlight offering a faint glow.

But in the shot, the scene was not pitch-dark, used to hide special effects flaws; instead, the shaking bushes were all too visible in the night.

The entire theater held its breath, spellbound, as Tang Que’s point of view slowly approached, and in the score, the deep melody of cellos layered upon each other, climbing to a crescendo.

Bit by bit, Stephen tried to lean back in his seat, sinking into it, trying to distance himself from the screen; he didn’t want Tang Que to go any closer, for there certainly, definitely, must be something dangerous lurking there.

However, the camera, indifferent to his will, relentlessly drew nearer to that clump of bushes.

Suddenly, a call came from behind Tang Que.

Tang Que turned around and saw that it was Seventh Master shouting.

She responded and turned back to gaze at the bush.

It was silent and still, not a sound to be heard.

Hesitating for a moment, Tang Que decided not to approach any closer. She glanced into the deep mountain, where the dense, eerie woods stood like phantoms, swallowing all light and awakening the most primal human fear of the dark.

Tang Que turned and walked towards the house.

The shot moved down to her retreating figure until it was obscured by some bushes.

Suddenly, the bushes shook, as if something was creeping away silently from within.

This unexpected movement made Stephen shiver.

It was the release of emotions, a sudden attack coming in a moment of respite after the previously suppressed atmosphere.

In terms Stephen understood, this was the most basic Jump Scare.

Basic, but effective.

Especially in such a situation where the background music and the tension built up steadily, making the audience think everything was over and let out a sigh of relief, only to be hit with this sudden attack.

Lu Ban obtained the most fragments. He knocked out Dai Yuanyang with a blow, took all the Jade Pendant fragments, and began to piece them together. The night was silent, and Lu Ban focused on assembling the fragments into the shape of an eyeball, a creepy shape that foreboded something not good.

It was not until then that Stephen began to wonder, what exactly was Mysterious Monarch?

The Divine Idol in this Taoist Temple was clearly not something that should exist in the human world, and the Jade Pendant left by Mysterious Monarch was so strange. Could one really gain the secret to eternal life and acquire supernatural powers by becoming Mysterious Monarch? Was that true?

Stephen doubted it.

He had watched “Peaceful Days in Spring”, and to Stephen, knowing why one was burned to death was already a blissfully happy ending for a character in a Lu Ban movie.

Was Mysterious Monarch possibly just another piece of kindling?

The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.

Attracting descendants of Nine Streams with the promise of the secret to eternal life and then burning the strongest among them for kindling—it seemed exactly like Lu Ban’s style.

He had certainly been a victim of Lu Ban’s before.

However, judging by the results of this competition, Lu Ban himself seemed to be ahead of the pack. As for the position of Mysterious Monarch, aside from him, the competitiveness of others didn’t seem up to par.

Wait, among those descendants of the Nine Streams, there was no inheritor representing Lu Ban’s faction, nor had Lu Ban himself appeared in the trailer for “Nine Streams”.

So, this time was Lu Ban to be burned?

Good news!

Suddenly, Stephen was looking forward to the subsequent plot.

He could already picture what it would be like when Lu Ban was burned.

Master Lu was a man of dignity in life; let’s throw in some more kindling before we leave.

Excited, he watched as night fell and everyone went to sleep.

The camera moved to Blindman Zhang’s location.

This septuagenarian sat in the hall, wearing sunglasses, as if he had sat down and fallen asleep, yet he seemed not to have slept at all.

The camera, from ground level, peeked at him through the gaps between tables and chairs, giving a very uneasy feeling.

As if something were watching him.

Then, the camera moved.

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