The next morning, the original plan was to climb the mountain and watch the sunrise. However, by the time the sun had risen high into the sky, none of the students had gotten out of bed. It seemed everyone had played too hard the previous day and was exhausted!

By the time everyone got up, the bus that had been arranged earlier was already bumping its way into the canyon.

“Oh! We can finally go home!”

“Hurry up and pack!”

“…”

Each student was eager to go home. After more than two days without hot meals, showers, or access to TV and computers, these young boys and girls who had been cut off from society for two days were finally heading back.

At 1:00 PM on October 3rd, our trip finally came to an end. After arriving at the school, a few class officers said, "See you after the holidays," and everyone went their separate ways to head home.

After this trip, my relationship with my cousin had greatly improved. When we returned home, and my third uncle saw us chatting and laughing, he was so happy that he hosted a welcome dinner for us.

My cousin took out the dragon-shaped sword I had given him and showed it to my third uncle. My third uncle's eyes narrowed into slits as he took the sword from my cousin, holding it up to a magnifying glass. He exclaimed, "I found a treasure!"

That evening, before bed, my third uncle called me and my cousin into his study and told us that we should visit our old home during the National Day holiday.

Yes, I thought to myself. It had been more than a month since I last went back home. So much had happened recently, and I remembered that every year during National Day, we would go back to the village to dig potatoes, pick apples, and carry hunting rifles to shoot wild rabbits and pheasants…

After starting my cultivation journey, there was one thought that kept haunting me, making me afraid to continue. I would have to watch as my family members leave one by one, and I would be left alone in this world, living in solitude. How lonely and miserable that would be!

I thought that once I started cultivation, nothing would be able to defeat me, but reality was so helpless. I had entered the path of cultivation thanks to the Xuanhuang Banner, but thinking about the chaotic and impure spiritual energy outside, how could I let my family cultivate?

Is everything truly fate? Cultivators defy the heavens and seize their destiny, but it seems that it’s not as simple as doing whatever we wish.

That night, I couldn't sleep!

The next day, my third uncle asked his driver to take me and my cousin back to our hometown, Jiushizhang. The distance from the provincial capital to Jiushizhang was about fifty kilometers, and half of that was winding mountain roads. As we got closer to Jiushizhang, a light rain began to fall. The familiar scent of soil and trees, so deeply ingrained in my bones, seemed to welcome us.

By the time we arrived at home, my parents had gone to visit a neighbor, and my cousin had gone to my eldest uncle’s house. I also left the house and wandered around the village.

On the small road east of the village, I saw an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. Without thinking, I called out, “Yang Ganzi, you little rascal! Where have you been? Long time no see!”

Yang Ganzi was the kid I grew up with, the same one whose nose I broke when we were little.

“Haha! The scholar is here! Kid, it’s been a while. How did you grow taller than me?” Yang Ganzi’s rough voice came from afar as soon as he heard my call.

Yang Ganzi’s surname was Yang, so the villagers of Jiushizhang always called him “Yang Ganzi.”

Jiushizhang had two very special families: one was the Zhang family, with hundreds of members, and the other was the Yang family, which had very few men. The Zhang family was special because they had been a family of Yin-Yang specialists for generations, while the Yang family was special because of Yang Ganzi’s grandmother.

The Zhang family used to have many professionals in Yin-Yang affairs. In the ten miles surrounding the area, there was no other family that specialized in this. The most skilled trade in our family was conducting rituals for the souls of the deceased.

Yang Ganzi’s grandmother was a renowned exorcist and fortune-teller, famous for her divine abilities in the area.

I had also heard that Yang Ganzi’s grandfather was once a great exorcist, but he tragically died after coughing up blood during a ritual.

I also heard that Yang Ganzi’s grandfather’s brother went mad during a divination ceremony when he called on the spirits.

Yang Ganzi’s father, when he was young, had slept on damp land while digging for gold, and as a result, at only around forty, he had to use a cane to walk. Yang Ganzi’s mother had passed away from tuberculosis when he was young.

As for Yang Ganzi, he had dropped out of school in third grade and started helping the villagers herd cattle and sheep. Now, I heard he had opened a slaughterhouse. Not bad at all!

People said this was the result of the Yang family leaking too many secrets of heaven, and that they had been punished by the heavens. As for whether this was true, only the heavens knew.

I walked up to Yang Ganzi, slapped him on the shoulder, and smiled. “You’re looking pretty strong now. Look at that body, you’re like a little bull! Haha.”

“Come on, stop talking nonsense. Let’s go to my place and have a drink.” Yang Ganzi grinned. When we were young, we used to sneak drinks from our families, so we were old drinking buddies.

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We laughed and walked toward the Yang family’s house at the edge of the village.

It had been many years since I visited the Yang family. Their house, once a small adobe structure, had now been replaced by two tiled houses. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the central altar used for ancestral worship in the courtyard.

A strange, pungent odor was wafting from the yard…

Seeing Grandma Yang standing next to the altar, burning something, I walked up to her and greeted her. “Grandma Yang, how are you? What are you doing?”

Grandma Yang lifted her wrinkled face, her eyes slightly unfocused. She paused for a moment before she finally recognized me. “Oh! You’re that young man from the Zhang family, right? You've grown so big! You have a good destiny, a round and full heaven’s crown, and the heavenly bridge leading to the sky. Tsk tsk, you’re truly a child with great fortune!”

I smiled. Grandma Yang was famous for her strange ways of speaking, and she still hadn’t changed a bit. Looking down, I saw she had drawn some strange lines on the ground, with a pile of twigs in the center. On top of the twigs was a piece of bone that had been charred black.

Yang Ganzi, standing beside me, looked at his grandmother with a gloomy expression. It seemed like he didn’t like her—or perhaps he didn’t like the way she always played mysterious games with the supernatural.

I asked, “Grandma Yang, what are you doing?”

Grandma Yang looked down at the fire and the nearly cracked bone, speaking softly to me. “Don’t speak yet, listen carefully.”

Hearing this, I immediately became interested. I ignored Yang Ganzi, who was pulling at my sleeve, and stared at the bone intently. What could she possibly be doing? What was so special about the sound of crackling firewood?

Suddenly, the bone cracked open with a few small fissures, and sparks flew from the fire.

Grandma Yang asked, “Did you hear anything?”

"Really that impressive?"

"Do you want to learn? If you do, Granny will teach you. You’re so clever, unlike my little lamb at home..." Granny Yang said with a sigh, as if feeling deeply the sorrow of her unique skills being without an heir.

As soon as she mentioned "little lamb," a young man carrying two bottles of barley wine entered the room. He glanced at his grandmother and said, with an impatient tone, "Granny, stop fooling people. You tell everyone that they’re smart and destined for greatness, but who could possibly learn that nonsense you call ‘spiritual tricks’?”

Ah! So that’s how it is! I felt a little disappointed.

Before Granny Yang could say anything, the young man grabbed my arm and led me out of the room, taking me to another part of the house to drink.

We talked about our childhoods and drank together.

He brought up the time I broke his nose, so I drank a bit more.

Then I had a sip, telling him about my studies, and he had a sip, talking about how he tended the sheep...

For more than three hours, until the sky began to darken, I had managed to get him thoroughly drunk. I carried him to the bed, bid Granny Yang farewell, and headed home.

By the time I got home, my parents had already heard I was back, and they had prepared an extra dinner for me. When my father smelled the alcohol on me, he just shot me a glare and didn’t scold me for drinking as a student.

At the dinner table, my mother asked me this and that, and I patiently answered each question.

"How’s school going?" my father asked, his first words.

"It’s okay," I replied evasively. "I’ve made some progress recently."

"Oh!" Hearing that I had improved, my father’s brow relaxed a bit, and his expression softened.

My mother noticed how much I had grown taller and slowly filled my bowl with more food. She added extra vegetables and kept saying every minute, "Eat more, you need to eat more when you're growing!"

When my mother said "eat more," I ate more. Heh.

That night, I chatted with my parents until midnight, and only then did we rest. Lying in my own bed, it felt so comforting!

The next morning, after breakfast, I had nothing to do, so I went out for a stroll. By some strange coincidence, I ended up back at the young man’s house.

He wasn’t home, but Granny Yang, seeing me, smiled broadly and started talking again about how her fortune-telling was so accurate, how she could predict the past and the future.

For the next few days, I found myself returning to Granny Yang’s house to listen to her ramble on.

For three straight days, Granny Yang taught me how to divine with bones, and gave me a handwritten manual on how to interpret bone fractures. On the second day, I understood her explanation of Taiyi Liu Ren (a method of divination), and she gave me a Liu Ren divination plate. On the last day, she taught me how to read faces and talked about all the many gods she had once summoned. I was left dizzy from all the information! But since I was leaving for school on the seventh of October, I finally asked the question that had been on my mind.

"Granny, with all these gods' altars in your house, who do you offer to every day? When you summon gods, who do you invite?"

"Hehe!" Granny Yang chuckled, and said, "Because it’s difficult to summon gods, I just offer to many of them. With so many gods, surely one of them must be on duty whenever I call."

Hmm! I felt dizzy from that strange explanation...

"Granny, you still haven’t told me how to summon the gods. Can you share the method with me?"

As soon as I asked, Granny Yang’s expression changed. After a long pause, she sighed, her face falling into a melancholy, absent expression as she murmured, "Forget it, I can’t tell you that. It’s dangerous and could kill someone!"

So serious? I’m intrigued; this sounds like a real challenge!

"It’s fine, Granny. Didn’t you say I have great luck? You don’t need to worry about me," I casually said, continuing to pester Granny Yang about the summoning method.

After a moment of contemplation, Granny Yang nodded and said, "Alright, follow me. I’ll show you once. Whether you can learn it or not is up to you."

Excited at the opportunity, I eagerly followed Granny Yang.

She took out a cloth from under the Eight Immortals table in the main hall and laid it out in front of the altar. It was about a yard long and wide, made of dark yellow material, and covered in intricate red lines and circles. It looked so mysterious that one glance almost made my mind spin.

"Watch carefully!" Granny Yang warned, then began muttering incantations under her breath. With each step she took, her feet followed the red circles, stepping precisely on each one. At over seventy years old, I marveled at how spry Granny Yang was as I silently observed her movements and gestures.

From the moment Granny Yang began the ritual, I expanded my spiritual senses. But as the ritual ended, I found nothing. Where were the gods? There didn’t seem to be any divine presence. Granny Yang didn’t appear possessed, either.

Seeing my disappointment, Granny Yang shot me a glare and said, "You think summoning a god is so easy? Didn’t you see that when people come to me for divine help, they always bring large feasts?"

Seems like summoning gods is indeed quite a difficult task.

I asked her, "Granny, what incantation were you chanting just now?"

"Anything you want to chant will do," Granny Yang replied.

Huh! I nearly choked on my own breath. What a strange incantation!

As Granny Yang was about to put the cloth away, I quickly said, "Granny, let me try."

She eyed me skeptically but said bluntly, "Try if you want. You really think it’s that easy?"

I stood on the strange cloth, focused my mind, and began to chant: aoei... gkh... I followed her steps and gestures as she had done earlier.

As I moved, I felt my inner energy surge, my spiritual consciousness began to gather, and I soared through the sky, breaking through the canopy and rising higher and higher with each step and gesture.

Suddenly, the spiritual energy I had propelled upward was torn apart by the chaotic forces in the sky. My head throbbed painfully, blood streamed from my seven orifices, and I felt immense danger. Just then, the mysterious yellow flag in my dantian emitted a white light, pulling my spiritual consciousness back.