"Uh..."
Zhang Xuan opened his eyes.
Everything before his eyes was hazy; in the blur, he saw a pitch-black roof, unclear what material it was made of.
Waves of dizziness assailed him; he wanted to prop himself up, but his head felt as heavy as if crushed by a giant stone.
With difficulty, he slightly turned his body, using his right elbow to support himself on the bedboard; a faint light appeared before his eyes, filtering through the grayish-white window paper, allowing him to see the situation inside the room.
Before him was a table whose color he couldn't discern, on the table was an oil lamp, next to it was a large ceramic bowl, in the bowl seemed to be two chopsticks inserted vertically, and in front of the large bowl there seemed to be something resembling a divine statue, about five or six inches tall; everything seemed to carry a hint of the Evil Ghost.
"Hiss... Ah..."
Zhang Xuan thought about propping himself up to sit, using his right elbow to push hard and turn over, but before his left arm could support itself on the bedboard, a tearing pain suddenly struck his head; the intense pain instantly drained all the strength from his body, his vision went black, and he fainted again.
He didn't know how long had passed, but Zhang Xuan opened his eyes again; this time, the scenery before him was much clearer, without the haziness from before; forcing his body, he used both arms to sit up from the bed.
His head no longer hurt, but his whole body felt weak; Zhang Xuan stared blankly at everything in the room.
"Hiss... I transmigrated?"
Just now, it was a huge surge of memories that came crashing in, and Zhang Xuan couldn't bear it for a moment, so he fainted.
Now awake, as he sorted through the memories in his mind, he took a sharp breath of cold air.
"What kind of world did I transmigrate into?"
The original owner was also called Zhang Xuan, he was an adopted son, his birth parents unknown.
This was a world where Evil Ghosts ran rampant, the overall level of social productivity was very low, roughly comparable to the level during our ancient Sui and Tang dynasties.
The original owner was adopted by his foster father when he was very young, so he had no memory of his birth parents.
He heard his foster father say that he was found outside the town, only a few months old at the time, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and carrying a jade pendant; on the jade pendant was written his birth date and time, and also a big character "Xuan".
His foster father's surname was Zhang, so he named him Zhang Xuan.
Zhang Xuan didn't expect the original owner was also called Zhang Xuan.
Zhang Xuan forced his body to get up, his stomach rumbling;
He stood up, pulled out a chair and sat at the table, reached out and pulled the large porcelain bowl towards him, pulled out the chopsticks that were inserted vertically in the bowl, and then brought the bowl to his mouth to eat.
"Pfft... Cough... Cough..."
He spat out a mouthful of rice, "What kind of rice is this?" Zhang Xuan was completely dumbfounded, staring blankly at the remaining grain-like stuff in the bowl, which still had a lot of husks, and was cold, hard, and coarse.
"How do you eat this?" A memory surged out, and only then did Zhang Xuan understand, gaining a clearer understanding of the level of productivity in this world.
Zhang Xuan was born in the 80s; ever since he could remember, he had eaten polished rice and fine flour, where had he ever eaten such poorly threshed grain?
He wanted not to eat it, but his stomach was rumbling, and his body felt weak in waves;
He considered boiling it again in the pot, but upon consideration, it was difficult for him to even get up without eating now, and he didn't know what happened yesterday that made this body so weak.
Forcing himself to endure the various discomforts in his mouth and throat, he shoveled the entire large bowl of rice into his stomach; with something in his stomach, his body gradually gained a little strength.
After sitting for a while longer, Zhang Xuan carefully recalled the memories from last night, hoping to find out what exactly happened to the original owner last night.
In his memory, he could only recall that after dinner last night, the original owner filled another bowl of coarse rice, placed it in front of the divine statue on the table, inserted the chopsticks vertically into the rice, and then bowed respectfully three times to the divine statue;
Then he blew out the oil lamp next to it and lay on the bed using the moonlight...
He seemed to hear the "whoosh... whoosh..." of the wind outside the window in the middle of the night, as well as "pat pat...", then, vaguely, a cold aura struck, and after that, he couldn't remember anything.
When he opened his eyes again, it was already Zhang Xuan, who had transmigrated from the 21st century.
"Ah..." He could never go back, Zhang Xuan sighed deeply and quickly accepted reality.
Anyway, in the 21st century, he was already an orphan; his parents had died in a car accident when he was very young, and he was raised personally by his Grandpa and Grandma, who also passed away successively after he became an adult; so, speaking of it, Zhang Xuan truly had nothing to be concerned about in the 21st century.
"Divine statue... divine statue..."
As his gaze wandered, Zhang Xuan's eyes scanned the divine statue on the table again, and a fine crack instantly caught his eye.
This was a wooden divine statue, carved from peach wood.
"This..." Zhang Xuan held the divine statue in his hand, staring carefully at a crack on the statue's head that ran from front to back across the entire head, and there was also a bit of charring at the crack.
A chill rushed straight to his crown, with a "boom...", a large amount of memories surged into his mind again.
It turned out that in this world, ghosts and Evil Ghosts ran rampant, ordinary people were all in danger, living almost every day on the edge of life and death; it could be said that no one knew if they could live until tomorrow.
The daytime was still alright, but the night was the time when souls were taken, and no one could guarantee their absolute safety.
As for when the Evil Ghosts appeared, it was unknown; during the long process of coexistence with the Evil Ghosts, people had also explored several methods to resist the Evil Ghosts, and there were three relatively effective ones.
The first method was studying; if one passed the exams through studying to become a Scholar, or even higher levels like Juren or Jinshi, because they had the Imperial Court's fortune bestowed upon them, Evil Ghosts would find it difficult to get close and harm them, and they could also protect their families;
If one could enter officialdom and become an official, their fortune would be even greater, and the protective effect would be better.
The second method was practicing martial arts; by practicing martial arts, one could strengthen their vital energy; Martial Artists themselves had steaming vital energy, not only making it difficult for Evil Ghosts to invade, but they could even harm Evil Ghosts; therefore, in larger towns, there would generally be teams of Martial Artists patrolling at night to expel and kill Evil Ghosts.
The third method was worshipping ancestor spirits, meaning the spirits of ancestors; by worshipping ancestors, one could obtain their protection to some extent and safeguard the residence;
For the vast majority of the populace, this method was mostly used;
However, this method also had considerable limitations, such as who could become an ancestor spirit; it was very difficult, and not everyone could become an ancestor spirit; usually, one needed to have at least the status of a Scholar, and even then, success was not guaranteed to be 100%; of course, the higher one's status, the greater the probability of success.
However, the original owner did not know the specific method for becoming an ancestor spirit; after all, the original owner was just a commoner at the very bottom, and his knowledge was truly limited.
Ordinary commoners' families obviously could not give birth to ancestor spirits, but there was a way; those families that had given birth to ancestor spirits would generally open their ancestral halls regularly to maintain or even enhance the abilities of their own ancestor spirits, allowing ordinary commoners to worship, and a sculpted divine statue would be placed in the ancestral hall and left there for ten days or more to gain protective ability; at this time, ordinary commoners would come again to retrieve the divine statue they had placed, take it home, and they could obtain protection, but this protection was limited in time, generally a minimum of one month, and a maximum of no more than half a year.
Zhang Xuan looked at the crack on the head of the divine statue in his hand; a chill went straight from the top of his head down to his heels, and he suddenly understood; it seemed an Evil Ghost had visited last night;
This divine statue did not withstand the Evil Ghost's invasion, which caused the original owner's death, and he just happened to transmigrate over.
Holding the divine statue, Zhang Xuan stood up, pushed open the door, and walked into the courtyard; it was noon at this time, the sunlight shone on his body, warm and cozy, and the fear in his heart was instantly dispelled a lot.
He placed the cracked divine statue aside; after being exposed to the sun for one shichen (two hours), this divine statue could be burned; generally, ineffective divine statues needed to be disposed of by burning.
Next, Zhang Xuan saw that on a stone strip table in the center of the courtyard, more than twenty divine statues were densely arranged; among them, most were made of clay, and only a few were carved from peach wood.
Zhang Xuan knew that this was the spirit sculpting shop opened by the original owner's foster father, which made divine statue sculptures, generally divided into three levels; the lowest level was clay sculptures;
The second level was wooden sculptures, generally made of peach wood and jujube wood;
The highest level was fired ceramic sculptures, which had the best effect, and the protective effect could last for a maximum of six months;
As for whether there were even higher levels, Zhang Xuan didn't know; after all, where the original owner was located was just an almost lowest-level town, the entire town only had over three hundred households, totaling no more than a thousand people.
Zhang Xuan pulled over the chair he usually sat on in the courtyard, sat down, picked up a piece of wood from the side, and then picked up a carving knife.
The moment the carving knife was in his hand, a familiar feeling struck; just as Zhang Xuan was about to start carving...
"Brother... I'm here!"
A clear child's voice came.
...