(1)
Passing through the path flanked by stone mountains on both sides, the view suddenly opened up.
It was the familiar long sloping uphill, but the houses didn’t look very familiar.
Except for a few houses, An Jing had no impression of most of them.
Yu Tongshen saw An Jing looking at a wooden cabin on the slope and enthusiastically introduced:
“That’s a house built last year, one of the few wooden cabins we have!”
“Is that so…” An Jing lifted her head and took a few more looks. The cabin indeed looked very new, but in her memory, it was one of the oldest houses.
Time is the most merciless. A brand-new house will grow old and decay over the years, no longer emitting that woody scent…
“Probably because it’s relatively new, so it hadn’t been torn down by the time you moved off the island?” Zhu Ying pursed her lips and chuckled lightly. “Instead, those old ones were rebuilt early on, right?”
“Right…” An Jing scratched her head. “Hey, wait, can you understand the dialect here?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“Could it be that we can understand it because we’re in a dream?” An Jing was a bit puzzled. The boy was still enthusiastically introducing, pointing at one house after another, saying which relative lived there, where a grumpy old man lived, and whose dog was always fierce…
“He’s speaking… Mandarin, right?” Zhu Ying blinked.
“How is that Mandarin?” An Jing looked bewildered.
“Maybe he’s actually speaking the dialect, but it gets automatically translated when it reaches my ears?” Zhu Ying gently grasped An Jing’s hand. “Perhaps it’s another use of Xiao Jing’s telepathy ability.”
“Is there? I’m not using any ability…”
“This is a dream. Many things are uncertain, right?”
“Uh…”
“Anhai Deity! This is my home!” Yu Tongshen’s excited voice interrupted An Jing’s thoughts. “It might be a bit old, but when I grow up, I’ll tear it down and build a new wooden cabin, two or three stories tall!”
An Jing looked at this familiar location and the unfamiliar adobe house, feeling dazed.
This was her old home. Although the house wasn’t familiar, she could still recognize the spot.
Now, she finally knew why the name Yu Tongshen sounded so familiar.
That’s right, this was her grandfather’s full name!
In front of the newly built shrine later, there was a stone stele with the names of everyone who had donated money engraved on it. And at the very top was her grandfather. When she was little, she had asked who that person with the especially large name was, and her father said it was her grandfather’s name…
An Jing watched the little boy run excitedly into the house and toss the fish into a seawater tank to keep temporarily, then couldn’t help leaning toward Zhu Ying:
“Xiao Ying, if I remember correctly, he’s my grandfather…”
“Grandfather?”
“Yeah…”
“This is your grandfather as a child? Did he really look like that?”
“How would I know? There aren’t any photos of my grandfather as a child.” An Jing scratched her head. “But from what my grandfather himself described, he probably looked like this—dark and skinny, with slightly long eyes…”
“What era’s dream have we come to? Can dreams cross time?”
“I don’t know if they can cross time… But in a dream, you probably aren’t bound by time. Like sometimes you dream of being a child again, back in your childhood.”
“Wait, Xiao Jing, dreams must have an owner, right?”
“Yeah, dreams are a person’s thoughts. Without a person, there’s no dream.”
“Then I think, could this be your grandfather’s dream?”
“Oh, right.”
“If we want to leave, we need to figure something out through your grandfather, right?”
“Xiao Ying, when did you become so smart?”
“I’ve always been smart! Unlike Xiao Jing, who didn’t even think of it at all. So dumb!”
Yu Tongshen, who had temporarily put the fish in the tank, ran out again:
“Anhai Deity! And the mortal representative’s grandmother…”
“Call us ‘big sister’!”
“Big sister!”
“Hmm, what’s up?”
An Jing glanced askance at Zhu Ying, who was making her own grandfather call her “big sister,” and felt a bit uneasy.
“The adults are all up on the mountain performing rituals. Do you want to go see? But they definitely wouldn’t expect that the Lord Deity has already come out of the shrine!”
“Lord Deity~” Zhu Ying suppressed a laugh and looked at An Jing. “Let’s go take a look, okay?”
“Uh…”
“Come on, maybe we’ll find something.” She winked playfully.
“I know, I know. Don’t cling to my arm… Ahem.”
“Oh right, you need to maintain the dignity of the Anhai Deity, right?”
“No, that’s not what I meant!”
(2)
The road to the shrine at the top of the mountain was much harder to traverse than the following path.
There were no spacious stone steps. All the way up, there were only mud steps dug along the slope. Probably because it had just rained, the path up was especially muddy, quickly covering the bare feet of An Jing and Zhu Ying with brown mud.
When they had woken up on the beach, they weren’t wearing shoes.
But that didn’t seem strange. After all, Yu Tongshen wasn’t wearing shoes either. On the island, the roads were all soft dirt paths, and even the small gravel roads were paved with smooth cobblestones, so they didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable.
Following the somewhat steep slope upward, from a distance, they could see a wisp of green smoke drifting in the air.
That was the incense offered to the deity.
The shrine was a wooden structure that looked very ancient. The colored frescoes on the walls and the roof beast on the eaves looked exquisite, but the overall scale was much smaller than the newly built shrine later.
A group of adults were kneeling in the empty space in front of the shrine, looking a bit crowded.
Yu Tongshen leaned by the door and peeked inside:
“Look, the adults are all inside worshipping the deity.”
Besides the adults kneeling to worship the deity, many children were standing against the wall on the sides. They had come to watch the excitement, but they didn’t expect this ritual to be so solemn.
They all stood in terrified silence, not daring to make a ruckus.
And they couldn’t go back even if they wanted to, because once here, they had to finish the ritual worship before they could go home.
“Xiao Jing, if you go in now, the expressions on their faces will be quite interesting, won’t they?”
“Why… I don’t want to cause a big commotion.”
“Try it, maybe this way we can wake up?” Zhu Ying whispered in her ear, her warm breath tickling it.
“Then… I’ll try?”
“Ahem—the Lord Deity has arrived!”
“Hey, hey, don’t shout so loud!” An Jing took a deep breath in embarrassment, then remembered how she acted when she was the mortal representative. She stepped with dignified, measured steps, crossed the threshold, and slowly walked inside.
However, the adults kneeling on the ground didn’t seem to notice her presence. They continued to devoutly follow the old man sitting at the front, reciting the prayer invocation—the content was basically just asking for the deity’s blessing, along with some flattery.
Unlike the completely unresponsive adults, the children seemed to notice something. First, a few children tugged at the clothes of their companions beside them. Then, one by one, the children’s eyes fell on An Jing. Many widened their eyes in disbelief.
An Jing walked up to the shrine hall on her own and looked inside.
Inside the hall was a fierce-looking deity statue with a ferocious expression. It also had beast-like parts, looking as if even the Dragon King would be devoured alive by it. And in front of this large deity statue, there was a much smaller one—it was about 1.5 meters tall, in the shape of a young girl, with a fair face and golden eyes.
The level of detail couldn’t compare to the later newly built statue, and the clothes were far less splendid, but this must be the humanoid form of the Anhai Deity.
Unlike the later statue, this one, though with slightly lowered eyes, was not so gentle. On the contrary, it seemed as if even more powerful strength was stored within that petite body, as if at the slightest misstep, it would furiously rain down divine punishment.
The children finally grew restless, and the whispers became louder.
“Golden eyes, did you see?”
“Yeah, they’re golden.”
“Who’s that following beside her?”
“Don’t talk.” A young woman standing with the children lowered her voice.
“Mom, didn’t you see someone walk over?”
“What someone walking over?”
“A big sister with golden eyes!”
“Yeah, I saw her too! About my age!”
“How is that possible?” A few young women were a bit nervous. “No one walked in just now.”
“I didn’t see anyone either.”
“No, think carefully, there was a gust of wind just now.”
“Is it the Anhai Deity?”
The old man sitting at the very front raised one eyelid, seeming somewhat dissatisfied with the noisy women and children.
But the children’s commotion grew louder, and the sky was visibly darkening.
“Silence!” The old man finally couldn’t bear it and shouted loudly. “Making noise inside the hall is a great disrespect to the deity!”
“Grandfather, my son just said he saw a young woman with golden eyes walk over.”
“What?”
“It’s true, we saw her too!” The children clamored in unison.
Now, even the adults kneeling and worshipping the Anhai Deity became astonished.
After all, it wasn’t just one child who saw it—every child here had seen it.
That meant they most likely hadn’t misseen.
“Only the children saw it? Why?”
“It must be because children’s hearts are the purest, so they can see.”
“Is it a ghost?”
“Idiot! How could it be a ghost! It must be the Anhai Deity descending to the mortal world!” The chief priest widened his eyes. “The other one must be the first generation mortal representative. The deity always keeps the most beloved child by its side!”
“Then, has it left now?”
Although the Anhai Deity was the faith of everyone on the island, many people couldn’t help feeling a bit scared when they learned the deity was actually right beside them.
“She’s standing right in front of the statue!”
“What does the deity really look like?” someone couldn’t help asking.
The children excitedly gestured to the adults.
“About the same height as the humanoid statue!”
“Yeah, yeah, she looks really cute!”
“Her skin is very white!”
Compared to the children’s excitement, the adults seemed more frightened.
The chief priest knelt directly toward the statue and shouted in the dialect: “We humbly welcome the Deity’s Procession!”
All the other adults, men and women alike, knelt down and shouted together:
“We humbly welcome—the Deity’s Procession!”