Since all these rules and superstitions are outdated, what's wrong with me indulging in some me

The little girl named Xiaolian was still standing there, holding her bowl, watching them go. Her sweet smile appeared somewhat blurry and eerie in the dim alley.

"Wait, this little girl's attitude towards us is so different! Didn't she even say goodbye when she left?"

Cheng Caijun turned around and muttered something to Lu Changsheng.

"And that meat...it doesn't feel quite right!"

"It doesn't look like animal meat," Lu Changsheng said in a low voice.

"Remember the rules. Every act of 'goodwill' in this village may come with a price you can't see."

"Don't accept anything, and don't take anything."

At the end of the alley to the south, a steep, muddy path, worn smooth by footsteps, leads uphill, its sides overgrown with waist-high weeds.

"The thing above is..."

Cheng Caijun looked up and saw the winding path disappear behind a dense, low pine and cypress forest.

"Let's go up and take a look." Lu Changsheng took the lead and stepped onto the path.

After climbing for about fifteen minutes, the view suddenly opened up before them.

A relatively flat hillside appeared before us.

This is the burial mound in Sunset Village.

There were more graves than expected, densely packed, arranged along the slope of the hillside. But at first glance, there was a strong sense of disharmony.

All the tombs, regardless of size, exuded an air of age and decay, with the inscriptions on the stone tablets almost completely blurred by wind and rain.

But when Lu Changsheng looked around, he discovered something very alarming—not a single grave was new.

The entire village seemed to have stopped normal death and burial a very, very long time ago.

"Brother Lu, this..." Cheng Caijun also noticed the abnormality, his voice a little dry, "So many graves, why do they all look like they're from hundreds of years ago? Don't the villagers bury their dead here?"

A village that has survived to this day is inevitably accompanied by birth, aging, illness, and death. Where are people buried when they die?

The cemetery before us is like a dead specimen frozen in time, recording the village's distant past, yet completely severed from the "present".

What are those "villagers" who now live in the village?

"We can't make a hasty conclusion. We need to look at them one by one and check when they passed away."

Lu Changsheng cautiously refrained from making any decision.

"it is good."

Cheng Caijun nodded, and the two of them went their separate ways to look at the words on the tombstones one by one.

Lu Changsheng walked to the nearest tomb, squatted down, and carefully examined the inscription on the tombstone, which was almost blended into the moss.

The handwriting is in ancient seal script, and it is already incomplete. Only the words "...氏...之墓" can be barely pieced together, and the birth and death dates are completely illegible.

After searching through several rows, Lu Changsheng was exhausted and his back ached, but they were all pretty much the same.

He sighed and walked toward another grave. The tombstone on this grave was made of better stone, and although it was also mottled, the outlines of the larger characters in the center were still discernible.

"Imperial decree...Luoshan...Guardian of the Mountain...Chen..."

Falling mountain? Mountain guardian?

Lu Changsheng's heart stirred.

He quickened his pace and walked toward several similarly styled graves nearby. Sure enough, he identified several more graves inscribed with the words "Guardian of the Mountain," and all of them bore the surname Chen.

Lu Changsheng's spirits lifted.

"Brother Lu, look! This grave was erected eighty years ago, making it one of the oldest!"

Cheng Caijun stood at a distance and waved for Lu Changsheng to come over.

The two met up, and Cheng Caijun pointed to an inconspicuous grave in front of him.

This tomb is smaller than the surrounding ones, and the tombstone is simpler, but the inscription on it is miraculously relatively clear!

The inscription is written vertically, with "Tomb of Chen Shouzhou" on the right and his birth and death dates on the left.

Lu Changsheng immediately squatted down, gently brushed away the loose soil and moss with his fingers, and began to decipher each character.

He died in 2897.

He read it aloud in a low voice.

Lu Changsheng turned around and strode towards another tomb next to him, which was of slightly higher standard and also belonged to the Chen family.

The inscription on this tombstone was more worn, but he still managed to make out the key information by looking closely:

Chen Shouzhen died in 2817.

Chen Shouzhen died in 2817, exactly eighty years after 2897.

His heart skipped a beat, and a chill ran down his spine. Unconvinced, he found an even older Chen family tomb, brushed away the thick moss, and almost pressed his eyes against it to look.

"Chen Shouwang...died in 2737."

Another eighty years have passed!

Lu Changsheng took a deep breath, steadied his trembling fingers, and continued searching for the Chen family tomb with Cheng Caijun.

He passed away in 2657.

2577 years.

2407 years.

A startling pattern has clearly emerged:

In this cemetery, the Chen family's time intervals all revolve around the astonishing cycle of "eighty years"!

Only one person is buried per generation, and it seems to strictly follow a strange rhythm of an eighty-year cycle!

"This...how is this possible?" Cheng Caijun's voice trembled, his face as pale as paper. "Eighty years...only one person buried per generation? What about the others? What about the rest of this family? Where did they all go?"

Lu Changsheng shook his head. What can be confirmed at present is that there is only one descendant of the Chen family in this generation, the village chief "Chen Shan".

He stood up and walked to the edge of the graveyard. From there, the terrain was higher, offering a panoramic view of most of the village below. The gray-black rooftops rose in layers, like a silent herd of beasts crouching in the valley.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a blurry white shadow, which flashed by so quickly it was almost an illusion.

"Who?"

He let out a low shout, almost instinctively, and the talisman in his right hand flew out with a "whoosh" and shot straight towards the shadowy corner!

The talisman moved with incredible speed, disappearing into the shadows in an instant.

however--

"Brother Lu?" Cheng Caijun was startled by his sudden action, nervously gripping the dagger he had redeemed from the system shop at his waist. He followed his gaze but saw nothing. "What's wrong?"

Lu Changsheng frowned, his gaze fixed on that corner.

The talisman flew over, but it disappeared without a trace, like a stone sinking into the sea.

"There's something there." Alarm bells rang in Lu Changsheng's mind. "I'll go check it out."

Lu Changsheng walked to the spot where the white ghostly figure had just appeared, his gaze deep and somber.

There--

There was nothing there, not even the talisman that Lu Changsheng had casually made.

Lu Changsheng frowned; this was not a good sign.

Even if it hadn't hit, there should have been a talisman, but now it's empty, there's nothing there.

Seeing Lu Changsheng's pale face, Cheng Caijun asked in a low voice:

"Are they villagers from nearby?"

"It shouldn't be."

Lu Changsheng shook his head. Ordinary villagers couldn't possibly be that fast, and it was impossible for him to have been completely unaware.

The sun gradually rose, but the sky remained hazy, as if even the strongest sunlight could not penetrate the darkness of the village.

"Let's go back and meet up with them first."

When the two returned to the courtyard, the gate was open and there were already people inside.