Chapter 24

The following is a brief summary of what Xie Yuchen read on those pages.

There would be several signs to indicate that the ancient god had appeared. The first was that a large number of fish would die and you would start to smell the stench coming from the lake. But if you couldn’t smell the fishy odor, then that meant that the ancient god was hovering on the water’s surface, you just wouldn’t be able to see it.

This was because the fishy odor was that ancient god’s food. This ancient god fed on all kinds of fishy odors and transformed all of the smells into another kind of foul odor. This new odor was indescribable but those who smelled it would never forget it.

This was probably the smell permeating the air now.

The reason why this ancient god was called Xingchou was because there had to be a fishy odor in the area before it would appear. When the ancients found that the fishy odor in the air had disappeared, they would offer up sacrifices to the god and bow to it in worship. They would use the foul odor from the corpses of large fish or rotting human bodies in order to please the god.

In a sense, this was a way of showing gratitude because the disappearance of the foul odor was, to some extent, the last stage of the decaying process. The ancients believed that this ancient god was purifying the diseases from these corpses so that a plague wouldn’t occur.

But if this ancient god didn’t receive a good sacrifice, it would become angry and display its anger by producing an intense fishy odor out of thin air.

This fishy odor would immediately kill people.

Xie Yuchen frowned. If their opponent really did have such an ability, it would be really hard to deal with.

The second rule that the albino had mentioned was that anyone who died in the house had to be buried in the house. Was this because the bodies were regularly sacrificed in order to pacify the ancient god?

This ancient god was a Bon god from China, so if it really did exist, then it should have been in the Himalayas. Why was it in Japan?

Xie Yuchen believed that some regions contained a special power, which would create many evil phenomena. But most of the time, this power was just a power that wasn’t sentient. Some might say that the feng shui’s fierce nature was just a phenomenon, but if it was a special occurrence, then it might seem like a supreme being was at work.

This was mostly a coincidence, but such coincidences wouldn’t feel like coincidences to people, especially when humans couldn’t understand this kind of ferocity.

And what was even more interesting was that this ancient god wasn’t the main god that the sacrifices were offered to. This Xingchou god seemed to be the attendant god of Dunxian Namo, a great god in the Bon religion. Dunxian Namo was also known as the Dark Goddess.⁽¹⁾

As the attendant god of Dunxian Namo, the ancient Xingchou god would take the odors from the human world and give them to Dunxian Namo. This meant that the sacrifices to Xingchou were actually a means to summon Dunxian Namo, who would manifest in an enclosed space in a dark environment.

It was only by using other gods to commit blasphemy that the Dark Goddess would appear out of anger, thus achieving the desires of the person offering up the sacrifice.

What bothered Xie Yuchen the most was that the ancient pages indicated that the sacrifices were ineffective most of the time, and the power of the Bon gods seemed to have disappeared from the secular world for a long time. So, according to the ancient pages, these sacrifices were effective back in the old days, but there seemed to be a kind of power that had ultimately wiped out the most primitive Bon religion, which had been spreading around the world for thousands of years during the Stone Age.

Of course, these were all cult books so Xie Yuchen just treated them as a story rather than actual facts. He had his own understanding of things, but at present, it seemed as if something from the prevalent period of Bonism had reappeared.

He quickly took a few photos with his cell phone, backed up the files, and then took a photo of the room.

He turned around and saw that Black Glasses was sitting on the sofa, watching the fish like he was watching a movie.

“What did you find?”

He walked over and sat down as well. As the two of them stared straight ahead, Xie Yuchen saw the fish on the other side of the table. Then he noticed that at some point, a person had sat down at the head of the table and was watching them.

<Chapter 23><Table of Contents><Chapter 25>

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TN Notes:

(1) I believe NPSS is making these gods up because I wasn’t finding any reference to Dunxian Namo (顿显纳嫫) or a dark goddess anywhere in the Bon religion. Closest I was finding was Sipai Gyalmo: the principal protector deity of the Bon religion. She is both a meditational deity and a protector and has six main manifestations (white, yellow, red, black, blue and dark brown) along with twenty-eight retinue attendant figures. The “dark goddess” reference might be her black manifestation but I’m not really sold on it. Here’s some info on the Bon religion if you want a refresher.

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Between the Bon religion and feng shui mumbo jumbo, this story has become my own personal hell lol. NPSS did post another update today but I love leaving you on cliffhangers so I might do it tomorrow or the day after. Depends on whether I feel like doing it or “Angry Sea, Hidden Sands” tomorrow after work. We’ll see ヽ(*⌒▽⌒*)ﾉ