I Am Your Natural Enemy

Because in some places, there are taboos about burning Paper Money at crossroads.

The customs vary a lot. Wen Yan is at least an employee of the Funeral Home, so he’s looked into this before. Later he’s met so many Ghosts and talked with them about related things.

In the Northern Divine Land, from the mythical era onward, it’s been fight fight fight, all the way fighting for thousands of years. Only in the last hundred years or so have things mostly calmed down.

But customs get cultivated over such a long time; they’re not that easy to change.

People aren’t easy to change, and Ghosts aren’t easy to change either.

So when you burn Paper Money at a crossroads and draw a circle, that offering is specifically for your own ancestors. And according to habit, when you’re commemorating your own ancestors there, you’ll also burn some Paper Money outside the circle, for the lonely wandering souls.

The basic idea is to ask the Ghosts to help pass a message along, in case your own ancestors can’t find the way, so they can help point out the road.

Or, if someone died in a foreign land, you burn paper at the crossroads as a road sign, and then ask the Ghosts to pass on the message, so the person can find the way home.

This is the rule that both people and Ghosts have tacitly accepted after so long.

But development in the south started a bit later, and it wasn’t like the north, where it was fighting and more fighting, gathering and scattering, scattering and gathering again. Plus the folk customs are different, so burning paper at a crossroads might summon something else.

Over time, people just accepted that if there’s no real need, you don’t do that.

That’s the general picture; it’s just that local customs still have other differences.

Wen Yan checked, and at least locally, this really isn’t a custom.

He raised his head and looked around. There were quite a few cameras.

He issued a task to the Black Box, told it to look, and sure enough, there was intact surveillance here that had recorded the whole process.

In the middle of the night, a little after one, someone came here, picked up a piece of broken red brick from the roadside, drew a circle, then took a wad of Paper Money from his pocket and burned it inside the circle.

Wen Yan watched carefully and confirmed that he drew a circle and put himself inside it.

This guy was burning Paper Money for himself.

Then the Black Box continued to provide information; the man’s identity turned out to be just what he’d guessed—a worker from the Paper Money workshop.

Well then, no need to guess anymore. From that moment on, something was already wrong.

A normal person—who the hell would, in the middle of the night, run out to a crossroads, draw a circle and trap himself in it, burn Paper Money for himself, then even try to grab the burning Paper Money, maybe even burning his own hands?

Since at that point the guy was already abnormal, you could also say he was burning paper for that fire-man.

But the fact it’s at a crossroads makes it a bit troublesome.

Standing at the crossroads, Wen Yan looked in the other three directions—due east, due south, due north.

Theoretically, if something existed, it could come from any direction.

Likewise, if something wanted to leave, it could go from here in any direction.

The circle under his feet, the Paper Money burned here, and these traces were road signs.

Wen Yan looked and felt that King Guilong had gotten part of it right: this might really be some ancient relic that just woke up. But this old relic was still acting according to its old experience and had already picked out escape routes.

Thanks to the modern highway network, if that thing can run from a crossroads, it might be far more convenient than in ancient times, and even harder to trace its destination.

The reason Wen Yan could be this sure was because he’d walked the Nether Path more times than he could count.

Even the Nether Path now is a smooth, broad road.

Wen Yan recorded his speculation, attached it to this case, and left it for the Scorching Sun Department as reference.

”Did you find anything else?” Wen Yan continued to ask the Little Fire Seed.

The Little Fire Seed couldn’t guide him any further. It looked in all four directions at the crossroads, left, right, then finally waved its hand, indicating it was powerless.

Wen Yan didn’t press it. He turned and left; there was nothing more for him here.

Back home, Wen Yan checked his phone. There were no new updates, and he couldn’t sleep anyway, so he might as well cultivate.

As for the cultivation of the torso, ever since that last outburst, now all that’s left is the part that will naturally fall into place. He no longer needs to painstakingly Pioneer it bit by bit. The cultivation of the heart is complete, the liver part is also done, and next is opening up the kidneys and integrating them into the system.

After a night of cultivation, the next morning Wen Yan checked the updates again; the information had been refreshed.

All those controlled people had recovered. The several wondrous items brought in overnight had all been tested. Some worked on this person but not that one, but the Sage Diagram turned out to be surprisingly effective.

They just had people look at it once; after their six desires were forcibly suppressed, everyone woke up.

Under these conditions, questioning became much easier. Everyone was very calm.

Aggregating the accounts of dozens of people, they basically pieced together that thing’s ability.

Everyone, when they saw the ashes left after the Paper Money burned, felt like they were seeing thin pages of Gold. Just one look and they knew it was pure gold—or rather, it represented money.

In modern society, are there people who feel nothing about money at all? With such a large population, maybe there really are a few.

But most people are greedy for money; the only difference is the degree, and some people simply restrain themselves.

Once their desire for money was hooked, it was like sinking into a quagmire—they couldn’t pull themselves out and could only be dragged down, bit by bit.

Only that Paper Money is something the living can’t use, so those people started jumping into the river, hoping that after death they could go seize it.