I, disguised as a white dragon, was supported by the state.

The village chief looked like he'd seen a ghost in broad daylight, and after a long while, he finally said, "How...how did you see him?"

Lei Yao recounted his chance encounter with the old ghost, and also mentioned some details of their conversation.

"He said his wife and children had all left, leaving him all alone... He mentioned the Dragon King Temple the most."

Lei Yao recounted what the old ghost had said about how the area was spared from floods when the Dragon King Temple existed, but became frequently flooded after it was demolished.

The village chief was initially terrified, but as Lei Yao spoke more and more, his expression gradually calmed down.

"Could it be the old temple keeper sending me a message in a dream?" he murmured.

"The old temple keeper?" Lei Yao asked in surprise.

The village chief nodded: "Based on your description, he should be the old temple keeper of the Dragon King Temple. He passed away decades ago."

"He became a temple keeper before I was even born, living alone in the Dragon King Temple on the mountain. Later, he took in a mother and child who were fleeing from disaster. The child called him Dad. I even played with him when I was little, but they both passed away from illness later..."

“When the Dragon King Temple was there, our area was indeed not affected by floods. At that time, the temple was very popular with worshippers. During the movement, the villagers protected it, and the troublemakers did not affect the mountain.”

"Later, there were several years of drought, and people went to pray for rain. They knelt from the foot of the mountain to the top, but the Dragon King did not react at all. So some people said that this was a lie, and under their encouragement, everyone demolished the Dragon King Temple."

The village chief's eyes held a look of reminiscence: "I was very young when I heard the adults come back and say that the scourge had been demolished. I was just as happy as everyone else, but I didn't expect it to rain so heavily the next day."

"The heavy rain lasted for three days. The Yellow River breached its banks, and the village was flooded for the first time. Cattle, sheep, and pigs floated on the water, and several people died."

"The old temple keeper went mad at that time, saying it was a punishment from the Dragon King. The villagers were afraid, so they took him down the mountain and arranged a house for him to live in. But this was too strange, and everyone was starving, so the Dragon King Temple project was put on hold."

"Not long after he moved into the house, a shepherd at the edge of the village said he saw him jump into the Yellow River. No one talked about it anymore, and no one mentioned rebuilding the Dragon King Temple again."

“In the ten years that followed, we experienced many floods, and many people moved away. Then, more than twenty years ago, the floods stopped for some reason,” the village chief said. “Some people say that the Dragon King left, and those floods stopped, but who can say for sure?”

Lei Yao's heart skipped a beat, and he asked, "You said there were no more floods more than twenty years ago, which year exactly?"

"Around 1996 or 1997," the village chief said.

Lei Yao took out his notebook and wrote it down.

After pressing for details but failing to obtain any other useful information, he decided to go up the mountain to take a look.

After such a big incident, the village chief couldn't sit still any longer. He volunteered to stay with them and even kindly lent them some tools like shovels.

Along the way, he kept rambling on and on, sometimes saying that the drought back then was no fault of the Dragon King and that the demolition of the temple was wrong, and sometimes lamenting that even if the temple were rebuilt, he didn't know how many people would believe in it and that the incense would not be prosperous.

He didn't doubt that Lei Yao was lying.

After all, the old temple keeper had been dead for forty or fifty years. How could he describe his appearance in such detail if he hadn't seen him?

Moreover, their village doesn't have much money, so if the other party wanted to use the temple construction as an excuse to call on everyone to donate money, hardly anyone would respond.

Even if the Dragon King is real, how many people can get rich these days by having good weather and abundant harvests?

If you don't buy an apartment in the city, you won't be able to get a wife!

The village chief was filled with trepidation and deep worry.

For a moment, his mind wandered, wondering if the loss of property and the deaths of people with terminal illnesses in the village over the years were all punishments from the Dragon King.

Unlike him, Lei Yao and the others were quite looking forward to it.

Even though Wang Jianqiang was initially frightened, after figuring out the key points, he felt more excited than fearful.

They're working for the White Dragon!

That was a true dragon that could summon wind and rain!

Even if there is another dragon here, can it be more powerful than the white dragon?

……

Chapter 126 Incense Offerings Lead to Divinity

The hill was only about two hundred meters high, and the group reached the top in no time.

The mountaintop area is not large; apart from a few locust trees, the majority of the vegetation consists of sprawling thorns.

As soon as Lei Yao arrived, he saw their destination: the ruins of the Dragon King Temple.

There's really nothing on this bare mountaintop.

The former temple is now just a few ruins, and the blue bricks have been severely corroded by the long exposure to wind and sun.

Just as the group approached, a rustling sound suddenly came from the ruins.

The village chief was startled.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a pheasant squawking as it flew out of the hole. He patted his chest and cursed, "These pheasants dare to occupy the Dragon King's residence!"

Lei Yao glanced at him, thinking to himself that the matter was still far from being settled, yet this guy was already certain of the existence of the Dragon King.

Speaking of which, the temple was demolished and they couldn't resist it, so how could it be a real dragon!

This thing is worlds apart from the White Dragon.

Beside the ruins was a charred wooden stake, with branches as thick as an arm sprouting from its base.

Lei Yao took a shovel, casually chopped down a few tree branches blocking his way, and walked to the ruins.

The village chief had already made plans, saying, "If we're going to rebuild the Dragon King Temple, we need to fix the roads first. The current roads..."

As he was talking, he suddenly saw Lei Yao roll up his sleeves and start digging in the ruins.

Seeing Lei Yao's actions, the others also set to work, intending to clean up the area.

Seeing that no one was listening to him, the village chief awkwardly touched his nose.

Seeing how quickly the men moved, their shovels flying everywhere, he was almost too busy to help. The village chief coughed lightly, helped pick up the branches from the ground, and asked, "What are you planning to do next?"

He still felt that the origins of these people were suspicious.

Having lived in the village for so many years, and with my mother being a renowned shaman, they had never seen the ghost of the old temple keeper. Why were they able to encounter him so soon after arriving?

Are they some kind of secret department in a country that specializes in handling these kinds of things?

Looking at the shovels in the hands of the men, which were almost blurry with shrewdness, the village chief became more and more convinced of this.

He had worked in the fields his whole life, but he had never seen anyone use a shovel to this extent.

With this much strength, we won't even need oxen to plow the fields!

While he was lost in his thoughts, the area around the ruins had already been cleared.

Seeing Lei Yao and his men still digging, he asked curiously, "What are you planning to do?"

“Look at the Dragon King statue,” Lei Yao said.

If there was anything special about that Dragon King Temple, he guessed it was probably related to the statues.

The village chief had said earlier that when the villagers' prayers for rain failed, they threw the object into the pond in front of the temple and buried it.

He tried to dig it out to take a look.

Before long, a small pit several meters deep was dug in front of the temple.

Instead of finding the Dragon King statue, a stone tablet was unearthed, inscribed with "Record of Donation for the Repair of the Dragon King Temple," dated the ninth year of the Tongzhi reign.

Upon seeing the names of the people on it and the text that followed, Lei Yao realized that it was a monument to merit.

Faced with those densely packed names, he could already recall how prosperous the Dragon King Temple used to be.

Under the village chief's shocked gaze, he grabbed the merit tablet with his right hand and threw it aside as if it were a piece of apple.

If the stone tablet hadn't hit the ground with a loud thud, kicking up a cloud of dust, the village chief would have almost thought it was made of a sponge.

He was about to say a few words of praise when he suddenly heard someone shout, "The Dragon King statue has been found!"

He turned his head and saw a dark-skinned, thin young man whose shovel had struck a huge rock.

The boulder is covered in vibrant colors.

Even though it was just a glimpse of its head, he recognized it as a statue of the Dragon King.

The village chief wanted to kneel, but when he noticed that the people showed no respect on their faces and were instead shoveling away at lightning speed, sending sparks flying as they hit the statue, he forced his knees to stand firm. He simply clasped his hands together and silently prayed for the Dragon King to forgive his rudeness.

A moment later, most of the Dragon King statue was revealed.

Perhaps because the people were too rough, the dragon statue was covered with scratches and covered with a lot of mud.

Lei Yao reached out and gently wiped away the dirt on the surface, revealing his entire face.

Staring intently at the statue in front of him, his brows furrowed slightly, as if something in those red-painted eyes was watching him.

This statue is definitely not normal.

He placed his right hand on the statue's head, trying to sense it, but he couldn't detect a single fluctuation of dragon energy.

This left Lei Yao somewhat disappointed.

He hesitated for a moment and did not pull the statue out of the ground.

"Is this it?" he asked the village chief.

“That’s right,” the village chief said.

He wanted to say more, but seeing the lack of respect in their expressions, he swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue.

"Is it the same as you remember?" Lei Yao asked again.

"Pretty much, isn't that what the Dragon King looks like?" the village chief said.

Lei Yao then asked the others if the Dragon King statue before them differed from the other deities they remembered.

Everyone chimed in with their own opinions, but the general meaning was roughly the same.

Isn't that what a stone statue is all about?

After confirming that no one else felt the same way as him, Lei Yao became increasingly convinced that his encounter with that old ghost was no accident.

"Perhaps Mr. Bai knows the reason," he secretly guessed.

But before he could discover the dragon's aura, it was inconvenient for him to directly ask the white dragon about this matter.

"Team Leader Lei, have you made any discoveries?" someone asked.

Lei Yao glanced at the village chief, who was listening intently to the side, and shook his head.

One of his subordinates looked into the distance and suddenly said, "Isn't that the site we visited yesterday?"

Lei Yao followed his gaze, but before he could speak, the village chief proudly puffed out his chest and said with pride, "That's a site from several thousand years ago, it's said to be called Longshan... Hmm, could this be related to the Dragon King?"

"Longshan is a place name. The earliest discovered site from this period has nothing to do with dragons," Lei Yao explained.

His gaze swept over the ruins, and looking around, he saw the Yellow River surging in another direction.

Lei Yao thought and thought, but still couldn't come up with anything very useful.

He rubbed his head and walked in another direction, intending to chat with his old classmate.

Having spent time together on the mountain, he became quite familiar with his old classmates, and his nervousness lessened considerably.

Although he still felt uneasy when they met in person, as if ants were crawling all over his body, he was much more relaxed and at ease when they were on the other end of the phone.

Lu Mengdi hadn't quite understood his old classmate's thoughts before, but now he was even more confused.

She wasn't disgusted; in fact, she was secretly pleased, thinking that she must have saved the world in her past life to have encountered such a fool.

In her opinion, Lei Yao was far more dazzling and outstanding than she was.

To maintain a good relationship, she was careful and jokingly said that she could be his advisor and help him with any decisions he was unsure about.

But she didn't expect that Lei Yao would actually consult her about such an important matter.

After listening to Lei Yao recount the events in detail, Lu Mengdi's mind raced, and she confirmed, "After the Dragon King Temple was demolished, there were floods for ten years, and then it stopped?"

"Yes," Lei Yao said.

"Was that site also discovered around that time?" Lu Mengdi asked again.

"Are these two related?" Lei Yao asked.

“There’s no way such a coincidence could happen in the world,” Lu Mengdi said. “You could ask the people in the research lab to help you look at the local county annals and find out the specifics.”

"And those unearthed artifacts, you should go and see them in person, especially those that have been said to contain rune-like writing..."

She analyzed, "Since that thing came to you and not someone else, it is most likely related to your identity as a Dragon Guard. I guess it is because your spirit is much stronger than that of ordinary people... But the message it conveys is that it wants to use your hand to rebuild the Dragon King Temple, which means that the temple must be related to it. Think about whether Mr. Bai has mentioned anything similar."

“Besides, you feel that the statue is unusual, but you can’t tell. Why don’t you break it open and take a look?” she said.