Chapter 23: Li County Pear Blossom Lantern Festival (5)
“I’ve noticed you all really like making people guess.”
Liu Sheng’s expression was very calm.
“So, what’s your answer?”
“Yue Shan” asked, as if she hadn’t heard Liu Sheng’s complaint, then she froze.
A purple magic circle suddenly appeared above her head, then slowly descended, sweeping over her entire body.
Liu Sheng calmly held “The World,” waiting for the analysis results to display.
Because she really had no hands to hold the lanterns, Little Tentacle, which had grown much larger from absorbing a lot of Guai Qi, wrapped itself around all the lanterns.
“No high dimension analysis possible. Proceed with normal analysis?”
“Yes.”
After Liu Sheng’s modifications, “The World” would now prompt before high dimension analysis and offer options, to prevent her from unknowingly falling into it every time without a choice.
“The World,” with its significantly improved performance, displayed the results after just one scan.
Liu Sheng glanced at it, her expression somewhat fractured.
“Your true form is a Pear Blossom Tree?”
The screen read:
“Name: Pear Tree Wraith (Incomplete Form)”
“Analysis Completion: 100%”
“Effect Description: Make lanterns, guess, guess, guess, change, change, change”
“Influence Rank: D”
“Analysis Evaluation: Everything originated from a poor scholar named Zhang Hengyuan… He was really poor…”
“The World” was still as sharp-tongued as ever; if someone was poor, they were poor, why emphasize it?
The “Effect Description” seemed to be written according to the Pear Tree Wraith’s thinking. Liu Sheng roughly understood that this weird object liked to make lanterns, invite people to guess lantern riddles, and if they couldn’t guess or refused to guess, it would turn them into lanterns.
Moreover, Liu Sheng noticed that since the upgrade, the first line of “The World’s” analysis was no longer “Item Name,” but directly “Name,” possibly because it was no longer limited to analyzing items.
For example, the humanoid tree wraith in front of her.
“Yue Shan” hadn’t expected Liu Sheng to have such a cheating Divine Artifact that directly saw through her true form, and she let out a cold, piercing roar of unwillingness.
Then she disappeared, along with her small stall.
Only a palace lantern remained floating in mid-air.
Little Tentacle took the palace lantern. Liu Sheng examined it closely: it had a pear wood frame, thinly covered with a layer of tanned leather, on which exquisite paintings of court ladies were drawn. Upon closer inspection, the ladies’ eyebrows and eyes resembled Yue Shan’s.
The moon was hazy in the sky, the street was dark as ink, but the lanterns around Liu Sheng were still bright, illuminating the path ahead.
At the end of the street was a courtyard, with the characters “Zui Bai Garden” written in vigorous strokes on the plaque above the gate.
Liu Sheng had been in Li County for two years and had heard of this Zui Bai Garden; it was a famous haunted house.
It was said that hundreds of years ago, it was once the residence of a prominent local aristocratic family, but their descendants were unfilial, and the family gradually declined. Coupled with a lack of descendants, eventually, only an old madman was left in the entire family.
Later, it wasn’t until the stench of corpses permeated the entire street that people finally discovered the old madman had quietly died at some unknown time, and the inside was full of trash.
After the old madman died, the courtyard was completely abandoned, and no one dared to live in it. People only felt gusts of cold wind, and even looking in from the gate made them feel dizzy, and they could faintly hear an old man’s cackling, mad laughter.
Later, it was used to discipline disobedient children. When a child cried and fussed, parents would say, “If you cry again, I’ll throw you into Zui Bai Garden and let the old madman be your father,” and the child would immediately stop fussing.
…
Liu Sheng raised her hand and gently pushed open the courtyard gate. The door hinge let out a faint creak, like a painful moan.
A dense Guai Qi rushed out from inside the door, making Liu Sheng feel disoriented, and even her Soul Stabilizing Pendant couldn’t do much.
She bit the tip of her tongue; the pain and the taste of blood brought her back to her senses.
Bypassing the screen wall, the courtyard presented a scene of decay: abandoned wells, cracked floor tiles, fallen leaves everywhere, and spider webs covering everything.
The plaque in front of the carved hall door had half fallen off, covered in spider webs and dust, its characters blurred, but a “achievement” (gong, meaning merit or achievement) could vaguely be seen.
Inside the carved hall, the light was dim. Fortunately, Liu Sheng carried many lanterns, illuminating everything in sharp detail.
The furniture in the hall had been consumed by time; the wooden parts were rotten, the paint peeled off, and the air was filled with a musty smell.
The tables and wooden shelves were empty, but from the house’s decor, one could tell that the owner had once been well-off and from a scholarly family.
However, now everything had turned into the dust of time.
Passing through the dim carved hall, she arrived at the inner garden, which suddenly opened up.
The scene revealed here formed a stark contrast with the darkness outside.
Before her eyes was nothing but bright white, as countless pure white pear blossoms drifted and danced like snow.
The garden was centered around a pond, its surface covered with a thick layer of fallen blossoms. Three sides of the pond were surrounded by winding corridors, and strange rocks stood everywhere. A small pavilion stood atop a rockery, overlooking the pond. Beside the pavilion was a huge pear tree, its branches piled high with snow-white cloud-like blossoms, covering the sky and sun, the entire garden completely enveloped beneath the canopy of this pear tree.
However, the only flaw was that the trunk of this pear tree was excessively thick and vigorous, probably requiring ten people holding hands to encircle it. It occupied too much ground, and its branches had even grown into the surrounding connecting corridors.
And what was even more disgusting was that the tree bark was not like what was usually seen, but a reddish-brown translucent membrane, looking slimy and bearing some reddish mucus.
Beneath the “bark,” some black, red, and white things could vaguely be seen, and they occasionally pulsed.
Liu Sheng carefully walked around the pond towards the giant pear blossom tree.
Getting a little closer, she looked carefully: the black was hair, the red was flesh and blood, and the white was bones, all packed tightly inside the tree trunk.
These were all people!
They were probably the common people who had disappeared in the weirdness!
Looking further, Liu Sheng felt a wave of dizziness, and some chaotic, elusive hallucinations floated before her eyes.
She couldn’t look anymore; if she continued, she would go mad.
Liu Sheng forced herself to calm down.
This should be the source of everything, that pear blossom tree that had turned into a weird object.
The palace lantern in her hand seemed to sense its true form was right before it, shaking violently, as if wanting to return to its origin.
But “Mother” held it tightly, so it could only float forward longingly, unable to move.
Liu Sheng noticed that some people inside the tree trunk seemed to be silently mouthing groans, and some hands and feet were moving and struggling, causing the “bark” to indent and bulge, looking like it was constantly pulsing.
Some people were still alive.
Perhaps Wang Dongdong was also inside!
There should also be another of Wang Dongdong’s little friends, named something like Chun Xian.
Liu Sheng knew that with every moment of action each night, more people would turn into pear tree fertilizer.
But she still needed to confirm; acting rashly would only put herself at risk.
Then, she didn’t know how long she would have to wait for someone to come and rescue these people and herself.
So Liu Sheng took out “The World” again, standing far away. With a single command, a large purple magic circle, big enough to contain its enormous true form, rose above the pear tree and slowly descended.
“high dimension analysis possible. Proceed with high dimension analysis?”
Liu Sheng took out her Talismanic Incantation activator and first slapped three protective Talismanic Incantations on herself, at least ensuring her Physical Body would be safe for a period during the high dimension analysis.
Then she entered: Yes.