Xie Fan was awakened by the piercing chirping of cicadas.
Despite the sweltering summer heat, the wooden house hidden beneath the lush canopy of ancient trees was remarkably cool. Wisps of cool air blew in through the weathered window, making it even more comfortable than having the air conditioner on.
Provided that the "bzzzt, bzzzt" outside wasn't so damn loud!
After waking up, Xie Fan kept his eyes closed and instinctively complained to himself for several seconds before suddenly realizing something was wrong: Wait, how could he possibly hear cicadas in that residential complex of his with barely any greenery?
His first thought was that he was still half asleep. Yet the moment he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at a completely unfamiliar scene.
What the hell?
An extremely old window had been propped open just a crack, and the cicada chirping he'd heard just now was coming from directly across from it. Looking through the narrow gap, Xie Fan saw nothing but an incredibly dense locust tree, a full three stories tall!
At that moment, a strong gust sent its branches and leaves violently rustling and swaying, instantly blocking out all the light beyond the window and plunging the room into darkness.
Startled by the sudden change, Xie Fan quickly turned around and once again surveyed as much of the building as he could see.
It was an extremely old suspended wooden house, supported by several wooden posts and built alongside the locust tree opposite it.
The first floor was piled with miscellaneous items, while he was currently sitting on a bamboo bed at the side of the second floor.
The room was dim and devoid of light. Inside were only a simple wooden chair and table, with a cup of half-drunk water sitting on top.
Xie Fan stood up blankly, still feeling as though he were dreaming. But the rough wooden planks beneath his feet made it perfectly clear that he wasn't.
He really was inside an old-fashioned suspended wooden house.
So, seriously, had he transmigrated?
Ignoring the discomfort of walking across the uneven wooden floor, Xie Fan only wanted to find a mirror as quickly as possible and figure out what the hell was going on. Maybe this was some kind of prank.
However, in the next second, footsteps—one light, one heavy—came from downstairs through the doors and windows. Xie Fan, standing by the window, stiffened slightly and instinctively took a step backward.
Fortunately, the person who had reached the first floor didn't seem to notice his small movement and merely called out to him casually while passing the entrance of the wooden house.
"A-Xie, the tour group is arriving tomorrow. I heard they're all rich young masters, so tidy up your place a little. Don't let those young masters look down on you."
"Oh, and don't forget the meeting at the usual time later. The village chief still wants me to go around notifying everyone else."
The rough voice sounded carefree and unrestrained, but after the man finished speaking, there was no response from inside the wooden house for quite a while. A-Qi couldn't help finding that a little strange.
Then again, thinking about how A-Xie usually lurked gloomily among the crowd, withdrawn and unlikeable, he couldn't resist raising his head and looking through the dense shadows cast by the locust tree over the second floor before asking suspiciously once more.
"Hey, A-Xie, did you hear me?"
Xie Fan had already been startled by that first "A-Xie," and when he heard the familiar mention of a tour group, there was practically a boom inside his head, followed by an endless buzzing. The sheer amount of information nearly made his brain explode.
A-Xie, a tour group, an old wooden house... No matter how he looked at it, didn't this sound exactly like a novel he'd read before?
His thoughts were an utter mess. Xie Fan opened his mouth, and seeing that the man downstairs still hadn't left, he could only lower his voice and tentatively answer,
"Got it."
Because he wasn't familiar with the original body's speaking habits, the moment his slightly hoarse voice came out, Xie Fan held his breath in lingering fear, terrified that even the slightest discrepancy would expose him.
Fortunately, he'd guessed right!
This was exactly how the original A-Xie usually spoke.
Silence lingered in the air for a second. After hearing his response, A-Qi downstairs finally seemed satisfied. He withdrew his scrutinizing gaze from the second floor and limped away with his cane.
Xie Fan remained perfectly still as he slowly exhaled, feeling as though even his back had become soaked with sweat after a conversation lasting only a few short minutes.
He'd almost been discovered.
If hearing the name at first had only made him suspicious, then after being scrutinized by A-Qi through the locust tree just now, Xie Fan was completely certain.
This was the novel he'd read!
An ordinary villager would never have a look like that.
So this really was God Worship.
He had transmigrated into God Worship? That universally adored protagonist novel that had shot straight to the top of the rankings as soon as it was released, advertising past and present lives and a romantic adventure?
The moment Xie Fan remembered what actually happened in the book, he couldn't help shuddering. Because this wasn't some BL pastoral pure-love novel like it pretended to be on the surface. It was a fraudulent folk-horror story wearing the skin of an everyone-loves-the-protagonist novel! By the later chapters, the author was practically getting cursed out every single day.
The novel told the story of Shen Xun, a painter who had possessed unusually acute spiritual sensitivity since childhood. By chance, he heard that deep within the remote mountains of the south lay mysterious scenery rarely seen in modern society. At the summit of a mountain near an ancient village, there was even a mysterious spring called the Separation Spring, which was said to offer glimpses of one's past and present lives. Shen Xun therefore arranged to travel there with his friends to sketch, only for the villagers to identify him as the god's wife on the very first day he accidentally entered the village, beginning a series of bizarre events.
And the reason it was said to be wearing the skin of an everyone-loves-the-protagonist novel was that although the book really did belong to that genre, with several absurdly privileged rich male supporting characters who came to sketch with Shen Xun all falling for him, even he—the cannon-fodder native villager called "A-Xie"—had been attracted to Shen Xun the moment he saw him on the first day. That attraction enraged the unknown deity worshipped by the village, and A-Xie died a miserable death because of it.
But being an everyone-loves-the-protagonist novel didn't make it any less terrifying!
Other novels at least gave their protagonist groups plot armor that kept them from dying, but there was absolutely nothing like that in this book. Every member of the protagonist group who came here to sketch died in the most horrifying ways imaginable. By the end, even the protagonist shou himself was suspected to have died.
How the hell was this a place any normal person could survive in?
The thought that he was going to have to live in a place like this made Xie Fan's breathing quicken. He collapsed despairingly onto the bamboo bed, only to suddenly remember something even more important.
The meeting...
Right, there was still a meeting later!
That A-Qi had said something about a meeting at the usual time.
What the hell was "the usual time"?
Xie Fan racked his brain for a long time, trying to remember the contents of the novel, before finally recalling that the book did seem to mention several meetings, all held in the evening after nightfall.
It was only noon right now. There was still time.
After reassuring himself with that thought a couple of times, he had just turned his head when he suddenly saw a layer of mist gathering beneath the shade of the trees. The sky, which had only been obscured moments earlier, had somehow changed completely.
The daylight gradually dimmed as mist spread outward, enveloping the entire village until it looked as though night had completely fallen.
Xie Fan: ...
Was there something wrong with time in this village?
The moment that thought flashed through his mind, the utterly unprepared Xie Fan realized something.
He was screwed!
He hadn't even had time to figure out how he was supposed to pretend to be "A-Xie."
Just now, A-Qi hadn't recognized anything wrong because there had been an entire floor between them and the locust tree had obscured his view. But if Xie Fan actually went to the meeting, with the entire village gathered together... wouldn't somebody notice something was off?
Xie Fan's heart pounded wildly. He wasn't even sure whether he looked any different from the original "A-Xie."
This wooden house was far too crude. Forget something as modern as a cell phone—it didn't even have a mirror.
After searching for quite a while, Xie Fan could only turn his attention to the cup of water on the table. When he saw the faint reflection of long hair on the water's surface, his movements stopped.
Because he realized he couldn't clearly make out the face reflected there.
As someone with prosopagnosia, Xie Fan was far too familiar with this sensation.
So this really was his own body.
Although he had no idea why his hair had grown long, that familiar indistinctness, along with the tiny mole on the tip of his nose, was enough for Xie Fan to confirm that this was indeed himself.
Under normal circumstances, that might have been good news, but now...
Xie Fan gritted his teeth and recalled the description of "A-Xie" from the novel: a thin young man with long hair, a gloomy gaze, and a dull, grayish air about him.
With no better option, Xie Fan could only make the best of a bad situation. He raised his hands and haphazardly fussed with his reflection in the water, casually tying his hair up while deliberately leaving enough of it hanging down to obscure most of his face. After confirming that it would be difficult for anyone to clearly make out his features at first glance, he finally took a deep breath and walked outside.
Perhaps because he'd wasted too much time on the second floor, scattered points of light had already appeared outside. The villagers emerged from their houses one after another carrying candles, silently making their way toward the threshing ground outside the village chief's house.
When Xie Fan reached the bottom of the wooden house, he glanced around and only then realized that he wasn't carrying a candle.
He had barely hesitated when a child from the neighboring house came skipping toward him.
"Brother A-Xie, did you run out of candles?"
"You can share mine."
The girl, dressed in an ordinary dark-blue cloth shirt, grinned as she shifted her candle toward the space between them.
Xie Fan couldn't remember anything about her. He merely turned his head and glanced at her, and after noticing that the little girl showed no sign of surprise upon seeing him, he pretended that everything was perfectly normal and followed her.
"Thanks."
Although he desperately wanted to ask why the little girl had assumed he'd run out of candles, he was afraid such a direct question would cause unnecessary trouble, so Xie Fan could only swallow his doubts.
The two followed the dirt road all the way to the fork in the main road on the western side, where more and more people were gathering.
"Xiao Yao, come here."
The little girl's mother walked over and pulled her away. The two adults opposite him were carrying farming tools on their shoulders and looked as though they had only just returned from the fields.
Xie Fan noticed that before leaving, the little girl deliberately waved at him. She looked no different from an ordinary neighbor's child, making him instinctively relax a little.
Maybe this place wasn't actually as terrifying as he'd imagined?
But the very next second, as the crowd slowly parted, the scene before him shattered that hopeful thought.
Once all the villagers had arrived, the village chief finally came out.
Creak, creak.
At the sound of the wheelchair, Xie Fan finally remembered: years ago, the chief of Xican Village had broken his legs during a ritual sacrifice and could no longer walk, so he now had to be pushed around in a wooden wheelchair.
Because of the angle, Xie Fan almost instinctively followed the direction of everyone else's gaze. His eyes landed on the man's trouser legs, and then, beneath one trouser leg that had ridden up slightly shorter than the other, he caught sight of a trace of...
Black patterns.
In an instant, the world spun around him and an intense wave of nausea surged up.
Xie Fan gritted his teeth and immediately lowered his head, refusing to let anyone notice anything unusual as he hid himself behind the crowd.
The village chief swept his gaze across the gathered villagers. "Everyone's here. Looks like none of you have forgotten what I said."
"This is the first time outsiders have ever come to Xican Village. Everyone must take this seriously. Nothing can be allowed to go wrong, and we cannot let them disturb the mountain."
The moment he finished speaking, the crowd erupted into noise. In the next second, someone shouted,
"If we can't let them disturb the mountain, then why are we allowing a bunch of outsiders into it?"
After so many years of isolation from the outside world, some of the villagers instinctively rejected outsiders and had no desire whatsoever to let the tour group enter.
The village chief said nothing. Only after A-Qi, standing behind his wheelchair, tapped his cane against the ground did the chief cough and slowly speak.
"It is the deity's will."
In an instant, the villager who had spoken shut his mouth and no longer dared say another word.
Dead silence fell over the surroundings, as though some taboo had been touched. Even the people who had been standing beside that villager instinctively moved a little farther away from him.
An inexplicable sense of grotesque wrongness washed over Xie Fan. His vision blurred, and he felt as though the entire world before him had begun to distort.
He stared at the villager named Sun Zhou, whose facial features he couldn't make out, and saw him drenched in sweat.
Then, in his daze, Xie Fan had the strange feeling that a gaze had also...
Fallen upon him.