Divine & Bizarre: Increasing Points to Invincibility-Chapter 739 - 211: Locust Great Immortal? The Temple on the Back Hill of the Village!_3
A group of people followed an imperial road in the Great Yan Dynasty, walking for an indeterminable amount of time until their legs felt numb.
Of course, it wasn’t Fan Wu whose legs were numb but rather Yun Jiuqing and two others, who felt as if their legs no longer belonged to them.
The imperial roads of the Great Yan Dynasty were difficult to traverse, especially since it seemed as if it had rained in this area before, leaving the ground extremely muddy and hard to walk on.
With every step forward, at least a pound of mud stuck to the soles of their shoes.
It was an exceptionally uncomfortable experience.
As the sky gradually darkened, reaching dusk, Yun Jiuqing, who had been on tiptoe looking into the distance, suddenly exclaimed, "Daoist Priest Fan, Daoist Priest Fan! It looks like there are some houses ahead! It seems to be a village!"
"A village?" Liu Feng shivered behind him. "It isn’t... some kind of village like the one we encountered before, is it?"
The first village he encountered after returning to the Great Yan Dynasty was a very strange one.
The women in that village had all been abducted by evil spirits.
That experience had left him with no small amount of psychological trauma.
Now, hearing the word ’village’ instinctively filled him with a sense of unease!
He was afraid such an incident might happen again.
"No matter whether it’s a bizarre village or not, we need to find a place to rest," said Yun Jiuqing.
"Uh... Seems reasonable," Liu Feng scratched his head, feeling like he was almost too exhausted to continue.
As night was about to fall, the group arrived at such a village, seeing a stone stele at the entrance.
Strangely, the stele was covered with deep marks, making it impossible to make out the inscriptions.
There was no way to know what kind of village this was.
What was certain, however, was that there definitely were people in the village, as the crops on both sides of the village path were intact and grew well.
Occasionally, they could even hear the sound of dogs barking.
Upon entering the village, Yun Jiuqing leading Old Blue Ox, approached a household and gently knocked on their door, calling out, "Excuse me, is anyone there?"
Creeeak—
The wooden door was pulled open from the inside, and what Yun Jiuqing saw was a woman who appeared to be at least in her forties or fifties.
The woman was also stunned upon seeing Yun Jiuqing.
"Who are you?" she asked with confusion.
Yun Jiuqing quickly explained, "We are passing through from Iron Mountain County and wondered if there’s anywhere here where we could shelter from the wind and the rain? We just want to rest in this village for one night and will leave as soon as daylight comes."
The woman hesitated, "If... it were just you alone, you could rest at my place, but there are several of you."
She thought for a moment, then said, "There is a temple on the back hill of our village housing a Great Immortal of Locusts. If you don’t mind, you can stay there for the night."
"The Great Immortal of Locusts?" Yun Jiuqing was taken aback. "What kind of immortal is that? A weasel?"
The woman clarified, "It’s ’locust,’ as in the insect."
Yun Jiuqing: "What???"
Great Immortal of Locusts?
Honestly, Yun Jiuqing had heard of situations where people worshiped demons and devils that had become spirits as immortals. But those were either foxes, weasels, or something like bears, wolves, rabbits, snakes... 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖
What kind of thing was a locust?
The woman explained, "You see, this region experienced a significant locust disaster over a decade ago. The crops were completely destroyed, resulting in countless disasters. People didn’t just die one by one; entire villages perished."
As she spoke, the woman sighed, a mournful expression on her face, "My second son, he starved to death during that locust plague."
She shook her head, veering away from the topic, and got right to the point, "Back then, we tried every method we could think of, but none were effective against the plague of locusts."
"In the end, an Immortal Master came to this place. He claimed he knew a solution to our suffering—each village was to build a temple for the Great Immortal of Locusts on the hill behind it."
"The entire village had to sincerely worship in the temple of the Great Immortal of Locusts. Everyone thought it was absurd then."
"But at those desperate times, it seemed we had no choice but to believe the Immortal Master, so we did as he instructed and built a temple for the Great Immortal of Locusts on the back hill."
"Already starved to the bones, we knelt for a long, long time in that temple of the Great Immortal of Locusts. We even fell asleep while kneeling there."
"When we woke up, we found several bags of grain in the temple!"
"And the rampant locust plague gradually vanished."
Having paused slightly, the woman continued with a tone of respect, "Realizing the true power of the Great Immortal of Locusts, we relied on those bags of grain to survive for a while before life returned to normal."
"Since then, every five days, we go worship at the temple of the Great Immortal of Locusts, praying for his blessing of favorable weather."
Yun Jiuqing listened to the woman’s narrative, somewhat baffled by what he heard.
