This actor is full of tricks.

After saying this, the old man stared intently at Lin Jue, seemingly trying to see a look of shock on Lin Jue's face, but Lin Jue remained very calm, without the slightest change in expression.

"Wait, you already knew, didn't you?"

The old man clearly hadn't expected Lin Jue to be so calm.

Lin Jue twitched the corner of his mouth: "It's not hard to guess. I suspected it was you when you mentioned that matter."

"You little rascal, you're really clever; nothing can be hidden from you," the old man sighed, his eyes gradually unfocusing as he drifted into memories.

“I am actually from the inland. When I was young, I saved up some money in my hometown and came to Jiangdong, a coastal city, to start a business. I just happened to catch up with the time when tariffs were reduced and import and export trade was booming. At that time, I made my first pot of gold by selling small commodities imported into Jiangdong to the inland.”

"With this pot of gold, I started my business. Maybe it was good luck, or maybe it was just the right time to catch the wave of the times. My business grew bigger and bigger. At that time, when most people were still riding bicycles, I became one of the first people in Jiangdong Province to drive a car."

"And it was around that time that my daughter was born. As a new father, I wanted to give her the best of everything. Although I raised her to be a bit spoiled and rebellious, fortunately she has been very healthy in all aspects and has hardly been sick since she was little."

As he spoke, a happy smile appeared on the old man's face. The feeling of becoming a father for the first time should be unforgettable for every man.

“When my daughter was in middle school, she picked up some bad habits and started messing around with a group of rich kids, staying out all night. So I started controlling her allowance and strictly monitoring her studies and life. I also used some connections to transfer her to a top-tier middle school.”

"Perhaps because of my strict requirements, my daughter seems to be improving. She no longer goes out and fools around, and she has started to study hard. But I don't know when it started, she stopped talking to me."

“At the time, my focus was entirely on her studies, and I didn’t notice that my daughter was becoming more and more indifferent and silent. She no longer clung to me like she did when she was little, and when she came home, she would hide in her room after dinner.”

"This situation continued throughout her high school years. After the college entrance examination results were released, she applied to an inland university thousands of kilometers away. Since then, she has never returned home except for winter and summer vacations."

The old man looked distressed; he must have realized that his daughter resented him for being too strict with her.

Educating children is a difficult task in itself. Letting children grow up freely may lead them astray, while strict discipline may suffocate them. Every child's family is different, and their growth environment is also different. All people and things will affect the formation of a child's personality. If you are not careful, things may go wrong.

Lin Jue had never been a father himself, so he wasn't qualified to offer his opinion on this matter. He simply patted the old man on the shoulder in silence.

"Later, later," the old man's voice choked, his eyes filled with tears, "I heard that she was dating a young man from school who rode a motorcycle. The day after I heard the news, I rushed to her school, ready to have a good talk with her."

"But as soon as I got off the plane, I received terrible news from the school. She said that she and her boyfriend were riding their bikes on the elevated road when they fell off. A large truck behind them couldn't avoid them and dragged them both under the truck."

"When I arrived, all I saw was my daughter's mangled body..." Two streams of blood flowed from the old man's eyes, his voice trembling violently. Even though many years had passed and he himself had become a ghost, he was filled with remorse and pain whenever he thought about it.

There was no blame or reproach in his tone towards the boy. It wasn't that he had let go, but rather that the pain of losing his daughter had outweighed all other emotions.

"I'm sorry," Lin Jue said softly. He only wanted to ask about the Wushi Temple, but he inadvertently reopened the old man's wound.

The old man smiled bitterly and remained silent for a long time before wiping the blood off his face and saying, "After my daughter's accident, I donated all my assets to charity and became a Taoist priest at Wushi Temple on Cuiping Mountain. I wanted to chant sutras and pray for my daughter day and night to accumulate good karma for her."

While composing himself, the old man brought the conversation back on track: "Actually, Wushi Temple was originally a sacred place of worship for both Sanjiang and Jiuyuan. Because it was a place where Buddhism and Taoism were integrated, believers from both religions would go there to worship Buddha and the Heavenly Venerable. But after the fog descended, many strange things happened in the temple."

"First, a highly accomplished monk who had recently passed away suddenly revived in the middle of the night and began to preach Buddhist teachings on the altar where he often stayed during his lifetime."

"Then blood tears suddenly flowed from the Buddha statue, chewing sounds came from the golden body of the Bodhisattva, and the head of the Heavenly Venerable's image suddenly disappeared."

"On one night, more than a dozen disciples knelt to their deaths in front of the Buddha statue, their blood staining the entire hall red."

These things sound very strange. Logically speaking, Buddhism and Taoism should be the nemesis of the supernatural, but so many strange things have happened in this place where strange events should not happen at all.

"Didn't you report it to the Investigation Department at that time?" Lin Jue asked.

"Kid, back then the fog had just descended, and the whole society was in chaos. There was no such thing as an Inspection Bureau. The Inspection Bureau only appeared in its embryonic form more than half a month after the fog descended." The old man looked at Lin Jue with some suspicion: "That's not right, kid. Judging from your age, you must have gone through the early stages of the fog. Why don't you know such common sense?"

"Because I lost part of my memory, that's why I've always been interested in that mental hospital. You know, I was a patient who came out of that hospital." The old man had been with Lin Jue the longest and knew Lin Jue's identity, so Lin Jue didn't hide anything from him. Anyway, the old man would find out sooner or later.

"Oh, right, right, right." The old man realized: "After one strange event after another, the disciples in the temple either fled or died, and in the end, there were less than ten left who still stayed in the temple."

“I originally wanted to escape, but one morning, a fog descended, and I saw the abbot walk out of the temple alone. He looked dazed, as if he was being controlled by something and walked into the fog.”

"He didn't return to the temple until evening. I felt that something had changed about him, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it."

"And he also brought back a black skull, which he said was the remains of a god." (End of Chapter)