I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 600 - 600 599. Outing_1

Chapter 600: 599. Outing_1 Chapter 600: 599. Outing_1 The shovel was pulled out of the ground, and Tang Yu gazed at the sapling in front of her, only as tall as herself, feeling a surge of emotion.

“Grandma, you have to grow up well,” she said to the tree.

Jiangcheng Mountain was cool and quiet, as though the oppressive heat and humidity existed only in fanciful legends.

Nobody could imagine what lay beneath the mountain; to the people of Jiangcheng, it was a range that could be seen from the riverbanks since childhood but never visited.

Just to be clear, Tang Yu was not mentally ill.

Having buried her grandmother’s ashes and planted the sapling, Tang Yu had fulfilled the old lady’s last wish at long last.

She looked down the mountain, the Lingjiang River flowed tranquilly, and the Abandoned Capital Town in the distance was still bustling as ever.

It seemed as if nothing in the world had changed.

When Tang Yu returned from the woods, she could no longer remember where exactly that tree was.

Like the countless other trees in the mountain, it would grow robustly and add a touch of green to this place.

Back beside her parked car, Tang Yu suddenly noticed a narrow mountain path.

The path seemed as though it had always been there, unchanged through the ages.

But Tang Yu recalled that she had never seen a road like this before; it appeared as if it had just materialized out of nowhere.

As Tang Yu approached the entrance of the path, preparing to set foot onto it, a sudden, intense premonition made her decide against it.

Thinking it over, she took out her phone and called Lu Ban.

Thanks to the blessings of the Abandoned Capital Town, there was decent signal on Jiangcheng Mountain, and Lu Ban answered the call. Upon hearing Tang Yu’s experience, he immediately drove over.

Seeing the path, Lu Ban felt an oddly familiar sensation.

“This may be that very path,” he said.

Lu Ban was not sure if the ancient formation still existed; he asked Tang Yu to wait where she was while he climbed the steps.

A certain feeling washed over him, and Lu Ban turned around.

He saw Tang Yu where she stood.

It seemed the formation was gone.

Calling Tang Yu to his side, the two of them ascended the moss-covered steps together.

“Was it here that it happened?” Tencent asked.

The first time she met Lu Ban was also on a mountain path on Jiangcheng Mountain, though at the time she didn’t know what he was doing.

Now, Tang Yu tended to believe that Lu Ban might be an immortal who had acquired the powers of the Mysterious Monarch and lived on from that era to the present.

Otherwise, she couldn’t explain how he knew so much about the Nine Streams and could even recreate the scenes from that time.

It couldn’t possibly be that Lu Ban really traveled through time and returned to the past, right?

Such a paradox would be too great.

Tang Yu’s curiosity about Lu Ban’s past was thus limited.

She deeply understood the principle that the more one knows, the more unfortunate one becomes.

If she hadn’t learned the craft of corpse-stitching from her grandmother, she wouldn’t have become a coroner, nor would she have ended up boyfriendless.

That’s truly knowing more and being all the more unfortunate for it!

But Tang Yu wasn’t too troubled by it.

Someone had to do these things, and her interest in boyfriends was about the same as her interest in a body whose cause of death couldn’t be determined—she might as well be a coroner.

Following Lu Ban up the mountain, and passing by a thousand steps, Tang Yu took in the surrounding scenery; the woods were still just woods, though they felt even more serene and solemn. Walking this mountain path at night would surely require much more courage.

Not to mention the hint of pollution weaving through the mist, which always caused Tang Yu to feel that something in the underbrush was stirring, and that the distance between her and Lu Ban was growing more and more distant.

There were rumors that surveyors had once gotten lost in Jiangcheng Mountain. The investigation then concluded that they had suffered from bad weather changes and succumbed to the miasma and poisoning of the mountains. But now, Tang Yu felt that those surveyors probably encountered the pollution here; their untempered sanity had led to their tragic downfall.

“Don’t stop,” Lu Ban suddenly spoke up, pulling on Tang Yu’s hand.

Tang Yu then realized that she had been so absorbed in the surrounding scenery that she had unwittingly stopped in her tracks until Lu Ban’s reminder jolted her back to reality, and she noticed that a considerable distance had opened up between them.

If they were to be enveloped in mist, she might lose sight of Lu Ban’s figure and become lost in these mountains.

“We seem to need to deal with this path.”

Lu Ban’s muttering caught Tang Yu’s attention.

“Deal with it?”

She was starting to wonder about Lu Ban’s identity.

Although her sanity told Tang Yu that this man was not as simple as he appeared, that he was more than just a film director who liked shooting movies and that he might have some backstory that, once entangled with, would lead to a tragic end, she was still curious.

To humans, danger is like a bright insect, emitting a tempting luster.

“There are some bad things in this world that can cause harm if ignored. If I come across them, I tend to deal with them as needed,” Lu Ban answered casually.

“When I encountered you in the mountains last time, were you also ‘dealing’ with something?”

Tang Yu asked, not daring to let go of Lu Ban’s hand, worried about suddenly being on her own.

“Sort of,” Lu Ban replied.

He spotted a platform.

Approaching it, Lu Ban found it was filled with ruins.

“This is from the movie…”

Tang Yu couldn’t help but feel sentimental.

The buildings she saw were weathered by the years; the Daoist hall that once housed the Divine Idol of Fang Geng had long since collapsed, and the idol itself was nowhere to be found. The entire courtyard was desolate and dilapidated, without a trace of human presence.

That was normal, though. If a man in a dark suit with tanned skin suddenly showed up to invite everyone for a cup of tea, now that would truly be terrifying.

Lu Ban checked around and surmised that this place hadn’t changed since then.

He noticed some scattered bones, human remains, likely from the foreign soldiers who died back then.

Their corpses were either devoured by Fang Geng’s clan or picked clean by wild beasts afterward, leaving only faint traces of assimilation with nature.

There were also some weapons and ammunition. Lu Ban saw a path leading to the next level.

He exchanged a glance with Tang Yu and then climbed up.

Where the twisted temple once stood, there was no sign. Only broken stones and tiles remained, with unidentifiable plants covering them, consuming them and the bodies alike.

Further up was the cave of the Mysterious Monarch.

Lu Ban arrived at the platform.

But the cave was gone.

Only a bare rock wall remained, as if it had not been visited by anyone for a century.

Lu Ban relied on his memory to locate the tunnel dug by the foreigners, but that too yielded nothing.

The past seemed as if it had been devoured and buried by these mountains, vanished without trace.

Lu Ban surmised that after the watchful gaze of the dark-skinned man had faded from this place, everything was sealed away.

The seal of the Evil God would no longer be disturbed, and there was no need for the Mysterious Monarch to continue.

From then on, only the lush green Jiangcheng Mountain stood silently.

*

Sorry, I have to do a test every two days. I hope it settles down soon.