The old man typed skillfully on his phone; one could tell by his speed that he was a pro at this.

Then, he converted the text into a preset male voice with a slight hint of an operatic tone.

“Thanks. Just picked these fruits, here’s some for you.”

Mute Uncle grabbed two handfuls of mountain fruits for the two men in the car. After Feng Yi got out, he also stuffed a few cherry-sized fruits into Feng Yi’s hand.

Feng Yi hadn’t eaten these before. Seeing the two in the car enjoying them happily, he took off his gloves, wiped the sweat from his hands and the small specks of mud from the fruit skins, and gave one a try.

Sweet, juicy, and tasted quite good.

The two men soon drove away.

Mute Uncle took off his straw hat, fanned himself with it, then tossed it into the bamboo basket. He looked Feng Yi up and down, typed quickly on his phone, and converted it to speech: “Follow me.”

Feng Yi hurriedly followed.

“Uh… how should I address you?” Feng Yi asked. Directly calling him “Mute Uncle” seemed disrespectful.

“Just call me Mute Uncle!” the phone voice replied.

Seeing that the other party genuinely didn’t mind, Feng Yi didn’t dwell on it. He looked at the surrounding scenery and the smooth road surface.

“I see the road up the mountain is paved quite well. You didn’t buy a car to get around?”

Mute Uncle typed on his phone: “I have food, drink, and internet. What do I need a little car for?”

Feng Yi: “…Makes sense.”

Thinking for a moment, Feng Yi decided to be direct.

“Mute Uncle, do you know the purpose of my visit?”

“I knoooow~ I’ve been waiting for a long time!”

“What do you mean by that?” Feng Yi pressed.

Mute Uncle didn’t intend to explain further. He turned on his phone’s external speaker and played music.

“Who is singing, warming the loneliness…”

As he walked forward, he even skipped along to the beat, thump thump.

Feng Yi: “…”

Confirmed. He’s a sprightly and lively old man.

Before long, Feng Yi saw the “Feng Ancestral Home” that the old butler had mentioned.

This was Feng Yi’s first time seeing the legendary ancestral home. It looked a bit like the old architecture seen in period dramas.

The footprint wasn’t very large, and every brick and tile held an ancient charm without being dilapidated; clearly, someone had been maintaining it meticulously. This Mute Uncle was indeed dedicated to his duties.

Mute Uncle walked into the house, put down the bamboo basket, and made a gesture for Feng Yi to follow him inside.

As he walked in, his fingers tapped rapidly on his phone, inputting a long string of text to convert into speech.

The commentary, carrying that slight operatic lilt, rang out in the quiet ancestral hall.

“See that plaque with the character ‘Feng’? That room over there is where the Feng family offers sacrifices to their ancestors. It holds the spirit tablets of some Feng family ancestors.”

Feng Yi pushed open the door and walked into that room. He scanned the area; there wasn’t anything particularly special.

It was clean inside, and the space was fairly large.

He also saw some spirit tablets with the names of Feng family ancestors written on them. The whole setup did have a sense of ritual. It was just that Feng Yi had never heard his elders mention these names, nor had he heard of them from anyone else. Go back three generations, and few people remembered them.

He examined the room carefully again.

How should he put it? There was nothing too unexpected. From the arrangement inside, it was obvious that no outsiders had been here for a long time. The so-called ancestral home, the place for ancestor worship in this day and age, indeed, few people cared about these things anymore. But…

A hundred million yuan mission!

Just this?!!

It wasn’t out of disrespect for the deceased, but in recent decades, people had gradually simplified the process of sweeping graves and offering sacrifices. For a generation that grew up like Feng Yi, if he hadn’t received this mission, he wouldn’t even have had the concept of an ancestral hall. He had only seen such things in TV dramas and would never have associated them with himself. Even during Qingming Festival tomb-sweeping, he rarely paid attention to anyone beyond three generations back.

It was hard to imagine that the hundred-million-yuan mission was in this place.

But since he was already here, Feng Yi didn’t go looking for the family register immediately. He looked around; there were no kneeling cushions like in the TV dramas, nor was there incense or paper money. So, Feng Yi simply stood in front of the spirit tablets and bowed.

Afterward, just as Feng Yi was about to look for the family register or ask Mute Uncle for clues, he turned his head to see Mute Uncle waving at him, a voice message converting from his smartphone:

“Alright~ A token gesture is enough. Come here quickly!”

Feng Yi: ???

Excuse me, what do you mean “a token gesture is enough”?

Seeing Mute Uncle had already walked out, Feng Yi quickly followed.

Mute Uncle led Feng Yi to another room. Inside, there was a gray brick wall that looked no different from its surroundings.

Mute Uncle slid open a hidden compartment on the wall, revealing a fingerprint lock inside.

Feng Yi: !!!

Mute Uncle pressed his thumb on the fingerprint recognition interface, then stepped back and gestured for Feng Yi to press it as well.

Feng Yi, looking bewildered, stepped forward and mimicked Mute Uncle’s posture, raising his right thumb and pressing it on the sensor.

With a beep, a door slid open in the middle of the seemingly solid wall.

Mute Uncle didn’t go in this time. He made a gesture, signaling for Feng Yi to enter alone.

Feng Yi mentally prepared himself. He felt like he had just learned some incredible information.

Looking inside, it didn’t seem particularly special, but the mysterious setup made him increasingly nervous.

However, having come this far, Feng Yi had no intention of retreating.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the room.

The moment he walked in, the sliding door in the wall closed again.

Feng Yi grew even more nervous.

As the wall door closed, many lights lit up in the seemingly small room. He couldn’t tell what material they were made of; they weren’t glaring, but they provided sufficient illumination.

Because the lights came on, Feng Yi could see the interior clearly. It wasn’t as small as he had assumed.

Only, there were no ancestor tablets here, nor any sacrificial items. There were some paintings on the surrounding walls; some looked like snakes, others were strange shapes. Regardless of the subject, all were drawn in a very ancient style.

After sweeping his gaze around, Feng Yi walked along the walls once, but still didn’t find the so-called family register.

Family Register…

Where is the Family Register?

Muttering to himself, his gaze fell on a circular area in the center of the room.

Walking closer, he saw it wasn’t an ordinary circle, but a snake biting its own tail to form a ring, an Ouroboros.

When Feng Yi stepped into this circle, the charm coin he wore around his neck automatically floated up.

The side of the coin with the snake pattern emitted a blue light, and simultaneously, a high-frequency sound spread from it.

Feng Yi heard it indistinctly because, apart from the initial short burst, the frequency of the subsequent sound gradually exceeded the range of human hearing.

At the same time, not far from him, a pillar nearly a meter high rose from the ground. The top slab of the seemingly seamless stone pillar unfolded, lifting up a square object that approximated a book.

Why “approximated”? Because the cover of this book looked too bizarre!

Snake skin!

He might not be able to judge other skins, but he would absolutely never mistake snake skin!

He had never seen this pattern before, but unlike the feeling Lu Yue’s wallet gave him, this didn’t look like skin that had been stripped off directly. It looked more like… naturally shed skin.

A snake shed!

Feng Yi even imagined it: if such scale patterns existed on a snake’s body, how big must that snake be!

Wait, that shouldn’t be my focus right now!

He looked at the Zodiac Charm Coin, still emitting blue light and hovering in the air, then at the pillar that seemed to have grown seamlessly out of the ground, and finally, his gaze focused on the book atop the pillar.

He didn’t know what material it was made of. It was ancient and carried an indescribable aura that made his scalp tingle.

The pages turned rapidly without any wind.

Feng Yi couldn’t see clearly what was written inside, only that each page had a few short characters, some long, some short, in different fonts and different brush styles.

Was this the signature the old butler mentioned?

Was this the Family Register?

“This Family Register… is very different from… what I understood a Family Register to be.”

No matter how dull he was, or how little attention he paid to cutting-edge technology, Feng Yi knew that what was displayed before him was not something ordinary people could encounter!

At this very moment, Feng Yi had the realization: I’ve gotten myself into something huge!

Feng Yi stood frozen, the hairs on his body standing on end.

It was the unknown that was terrifying.

At the same time, he realized that laid out before him was a path he had never imagined, nor ever understood.

He had a feeling, no, it was more like an instinct.

Instinct knew what to do.

Like a hen brooding eggs, a bird building a nest, a spider weaving a web, a bee making honey.

Ability without learning!

It was a memory carved into his genes!

If this “Family Register” were compared to a door, the moment he signed his name would be the moment he truly pushed open this door to the unknown.

The “Family Register” stopped turning pages, and a blank page lay open.

Feng Yi reached out and used his index finger to write his name on the open page.

As the last stroke fell.

It was as if a cloud of mist suddenly dispersed.

Through the mist, Feng Yi saw a blurry shadow, like a coiled snake.

His consciousness gradually detached from his own control, as if running back and forth on the edge between the ancient past and the future, between dream and reality.

****

Outside the wall.

Mute Uncle stood quietly at the door. A notification for a new message came from his phone, it could be an online card buddy, or a familiar face from the villages ten miles down the mountain, but at this moment, he didn’t spare a shred of attention for the phone, completely ignoring the alert.

After waiting a while longer, Mute Uncle grinned in a silent laugh, stretched his back, looked at the sky, and only then took out his phone to send a message to several group chats:

“The weather in the mountains will change tonight. Strong winds and rain. Get down the mountain early, don’t go to the summit. Those living halfway up, bring your outdoor valuables inside, drive the chickens and ducks into their coops early, close the doors and windows tight tonight, park cars in the garage, and don’t come out if you don’t have to. Those at the foot of the mountain don’t need to worry, just bring your laundry in early; the dampness will be heavy.”

These groups consisted of residents living in the mountains or near the foot of the mountain, as well as staff members.

Seeing Mute Uncle’s message, everyone popped up.

“For real? The weather forecast says it’ll be sunny recently.”

“Weather in the mountains changes fast. Mute Uncle is an old-timer on the mountain; listening to him is never wrong.”

“My new waterproof car cover smells a bit, I put it under the rain shed in the yard to air out for a few days. Do I need to bring it inside? I’m staying halfway up the mountain tonight.”

“Bring it in. Didn’t you see Mute Uncle said strong winds tonight? What if it blows away? Even if it doesn’t blow away, it’s not good to have all the debris and mud from the mountain blown onto it.”

People in various groups chatted when they had a moment, and some looked at the sky outside.

“There’s not even a cloud. Will there really be rain?”

It wasn’t that they didn’t trust Mute Uncle. People who had lived in the Little Phoenix Mountain area for a long time or worked there for a few years knew that Mute Uncle was exceptionally accurate at predicting the weather. Every time there was a change, he would tell them in advance, far more accurately than the weather forecast on their phones.

But this time Mute Uncle’s prediction was too extreme, so many were skeptical.

However, as time passed, everyone realized the sky didn’t look right.

“Is it getting dark too early today?”

“Woke up from a nap and found the sunny sky turned cloudy.”

“The weather really changed. The moisture is a bit heavy. My outdoor hygrometer popped up several notifications.”

“Weather on the mountain is unpredictable. Listen to Mute Uncle and get moving!”

By the time it was dark, the people remaining halfway up the mountain ate dinner and looked out the window from inside their houses. Visibility was already less than five meters.

Turning on the yard lights, they could see nothing.

“What heavy fog!”

“Fog doesn’t necessarily mean rain, right?”

“Depends on whether the conditions for rain are met. There’s a kind of fog called frontal fog.”

“Is that so? Fog like this in this season? That’s not normal, is it?”

“Who cares if it’s normal, I’m taking a video first!”

Speaking, the person picked up their phone, opened the door, and started filming the situation outside.

“The snakes by the isolation net are all gone!”

The King Rat Snakes, usually extremely arrogant even at night, were nowhere to be found. All around, there was only the rustling sound of leaves as the wind blew through them.

The wind gradually picked up.

Raindrops smashed into their faces, stinging their skin.

The fog didn’t disperse, and not all the moisture turned into raindrops.

The humidity in the air was so high that breathing became noticeably uncomfortable.

Unable to withstand it, the person retreated unwillingly back into the house.

Soon, the rain intensified. Driven by the fierce wind, it smashed against the windows with a crackling sound.

The phone signal dropped from full bars to one bar.

In a place they couldn’t see.

Layers of clouds in the sky, constantly thickening, pressed down from above!

Rolling thunder sounded like a giant beast stomping overhead.

The wild wind swept up the water mist, rampaging through the mountains with extraordinary ferocity.

NOTES

“Who is singing, warming the loneliness…”: These are lyrics from the song “Most dazzling Folk Style” (最炫民族风) by Phoenix Legend, a very popular song in China often associated with square dancing and energetic older people.

“Token gesture”: Mute Uncle uses the phrase “意思意思” (yìsi yìsi), which means to do something just for show or as a formality.

Ouroboros: The snake biting its tail is a universal symbol of infinity and cycles, fitting for a lineage/inheritance theme.