Chapter 260: Heading To The Mountains
Fang Mu neither had nor dared to tell anyone about the anomaly event that happened to him; seeking help from others would only drag them down, which would be of no benefit to himself or others.
He really wanted to say that man can conquer nature, but that was something only the protagonist in a novel could say; he was just an ordinary person with no strange power.
If the future could be changed, then he wouldn’t have lived to today; he should have died ten years ago on the day of the sports middle school entrance examination because he couldn’t find a compatible heart source.
Fang Mu’s heart was like a flame about to be exhausted; despair was the future he could see at a glance.
He cut off contact with the outside world and secluded himself at home alone for three days and three nights. Except for maintaining basic three meals a day and sleep, he remained silent at other times, spending more time in a daze than thinking, and even his thinking was just random thoughts.
After intermittent random thoughts, Fang Mu opened the travel app on his mobile phone, swallowed his saliva, and with a trembling thumb pressed to book a high-speed train ticket to Guinan.
“Trap or not, death it is.” Fang Mu muttered to himself like giving himself psychological suggestion, looking at the interface showing successful booking, “I just want to pursue one answer now, even if the answer is very despairing…”
On May 24, 2023, Fang Mu shouldered a travel backpack and went to another place alone, without telling anyone about his itinerary.
Fang Mu was originally reclusive in personality and didn’t care about socializing; he rarely contacted friends and family at ordinary times. His silent but steady personality was well-known and taken for granted. If he didn’t appear for one or two months in a row, they wouldn’t worry that he had encountered any trouble, only thinking he was probably staying at home. If there was an emergency, they could just call him or go to his home to find him.
On the high-speed train to Guinan, Fang Mu neither rested nor had time to look at the scenery; he only reviewed the contents of the diary, highlighting key points, while using his mobile phone to search for several names mentioned in the diary.
Toad God, a local clan totem deity, presiding over the powers of sleep, wealth, knowledge, and darkness. There are still crowds who believe in Him in the Guinan plateau and Northern plains regions of Shenzhou to this day. What’s more miraculous is that in other regions of the world with no historical records of cultural exchange, there are also believers of the Toad God, and the records of this deity are almost identical. Some scholars boldly speculate that perhaps in the very distant past, before the birth of human textual records, there really existed such creatures resembling toads in form. They once appeared in the line of sight of human ancestors and brought favors to human ancestors.
Nong Mountain, no records online. “Nong” is a local dialect in Guinan, but it’s also an inaccurate pronunciation; the accurate pronunciation is “non,” meaning “sleep” or “sleeping.”
……
Fang Mu tried his best to search for relevant information, but the harvest was limited. He secretly sighed; it seemed that to figure out other things, he still had to communicate and contact local people.
After the high-speed train arrived at a second-tier city in Guinan, Fang Mu got off, then went to the station to buy a bus ticket to the small town mentioned in the diary, with almost no stops along the way.
After arriving at the small town and getting off the bus, Fang Mu was greeted by a man with dark skin.
“You’re the tour guide Mo Guangning I booked on the travel app, right?” Fang Mu compared the other’s appearance with the guide’s document photo in his mobile phone order and vaguely recognized him.
“Yes, Boss Fang. Nice to meet you. Welcome to Qiandeng Town.” The man nodded, grinned, revealing two rows of neat white teeth.
The tour guide himself was much darker than his document photo; he looked no different from those farmers who often worked under the sun, showing that being a private tour guide was no easy job.
Mo Guangning drove the car that Fang Mu had rented locally, taking Fang Mu to the hotel they had booked. On the way, Mo Guangning kept introducing the local beautiful natural scenery and delicious food, while also observing his employer’s reaction.
When Mo Guangning discovered that Fang Mu was not interested in several tourist attractions he mentioned, with a reaction that could even be called perfunctory, he stopped recommending and instead asked, “Boss, do you already have some plans, or a place you want to go?”
He was the best local private tour guide, good at observing expressions. Generally, employers not interested in the sightseeing spots or local delicacies he suggested were either those who already had plans or not tourists at all.
If the employer was the former, there was no need to say more nonsense; bosses like that had strong opinions, so wherever he said he wanted to go, they’d go, and he just had to accompany. But if it was the latter, he often had to be more vigilant.
This was the border area of the Shenzhou Region; if not tourism, then it was “discussing business”…
“Do you know the place called Wenyatun?” Fang Mu looked at the scenery outside the window and asked softly.
Hearing this, Mo Guangning’s expression changed slightly, somewhat surprised, but he still nodded: “I know it; that’s my hometown.”
Hearing the tour guide’s words, Fang Mu immediately turned his head, his eyes gazing intently at the other: “Then do you know Nong Mountain?”
“Nong Mountain…” Mo Guangning murmured, frowning, with worry and unease hanging in his eyes, “Boss, you want to go to that place? There’s nothing fun there.”
Mo Guangning suddenly regretted taking this order; he hadn’t expected his employer to be neither here for tourism nor “discussing business,” but…
“I know, I’ve heard a little.” Fang Mu nodded. He sensed the tour guide’s taboo about this place, and his emotions seemed to become somewhat heavy too. He temporarily didn’t pursue further questions and maintained silence.
It wasn’t until dinnertime that Fang Mu continued to ask at the dining table: “Brother Mo, how much do you know about Nong Mountain?”
Mo Guangning, who seemed to have forgotten his worries and was happily eating, suddenly had a stiff expression, as if the delicious food had lost its flavor. But upholding professionalism, he still patiently replied: “Nong Mountain is a wild mountain in our area, related to the sacrificial culture of a deity we locally believe in. In the past, every Lunar April, we would enter the mountain and perform a ritual in the mountain to worship the deity. But since the altar in the mountain was destroyed, very few people have gone into that mountain again…”
As he spoke, his lips became a bit dry. He took a sip of tea, as if suppressing the fear rising back down into his stomach, and continued: “After all, that mountain, that mountain is a bit eerie.”
“How is it eerie?” Fang Mu was affected by the other’s trembling voice, his heart beating uneasily along with Mo Guangning’s quivering pupils.
“Many people… many people went into that mountain and never came out again.” After finishing his tea, Mo Guangning still felt parched. Afraid Fang Mu wouldn’t believe him, he gave an example from his own experience: “In the past, three naughty boys from my elementary school classmates in the same village didn’t listen to the village elders’ warnings and went into that mountain. As a result, two mysteriously disappeared, and the remaining one became vegetative, still lying in the hospital without waking up to this day.”
