The vehicle passed the checkpoint and stopped in front of Mount Jie.
Chen Chuan said to Zhan Jiyue, "Lao Zhan, an anomaly might stir up in the mountains later. Don't worry about it; I'll handle it. If I need your help, I'll send a signal."
Zhan Jiyue acknowledged.
He knew this kind of anomaly wasn't an aggressive, offensive type; it merely held a powerful attraction for ordinary people. It posed no real threat to martial artists like Chen Chuan and himself. Even if Chen Chuan called on him, it would likely only be for auxiliary support.
Chen Chuan got out of the car and walked up the mountain alone.
The driver sat in the cab, watching Chen Chuan's silhouette recede until it vanished into the shade of the woods, feeling somewhat uneasy. Earlier, he hadn't gone inside the Hai Family Restaurant, but he had heard the sounds coming from within. He couldn't shake the feeling that the world was growing absurd and bizarre, to the point where he could barely recognize it anymore.
He subconsciously reached for a cigarette, but then paused.
Zhan Jiyue glanced at him. "It's fine. Go ahead and smoke."
The driver held back anyway. He was a professional and wouldn't do something his superior might dislike. Pulling his hand back, he suddenly sighed.
Zhan Jiyue asked, "What is it?"
The driver said, "Sir, I just feel regretful. We probably won't ever get to eat the food from Hai Family Restaurant again. Their spicy soup and braised chicken were truly authentic."
Zhan Jiyue said, "Actually, you got to eat it for two extra years."
The driver let out an "ah," thought for a moment, and turned around to say, "Sir, I saw the news. Executing those people was truly satisfying. I heard that if it weren't for Commissioner Chen, this case wouldn't have been settled?"
Zhan Jiyue said in a deep voice, "That's true. If not for Commissioner Chen, even if this case were eventually exposed, it probably would have taken a very long time."
The driver said indignantly, "Then someone in the Ministry must have been shielding them! Otherwise, there's no way it wouldn't have been discovered for two whole years. Those people should be arrested too."
Zhan Jiyue looked outside and said, "Rest assured, it will all be dealt with."
After heading up the mountain, Chen Chuan walked straight toward the Fish King Temple at the summit. The date the temple was first built was close to the time of the earliest recorded anomalous incidents, so barring any unforeseen circumstances, it was bound to be closely connected to the anomaly.
Moreover, for it to repeatedly cause trouble over at least seven or eight hundred years, it was definitely not simple. Perhaps it relied on something as an anchor. But this was not a bad thing; if he could find and remove this anchor, he could resolve the matter.
This time, he didn't deliberately quicken his pace, walking up the mountain at a normal stride.
When he reached the mountainside, sensing something, he looked up and saw a long-haired woman standing in the woods at a bend in the mountain path. Her hair completely covered her face, and she wore a flowing white dress.
He paid her no mind, walking upward under her gaze. After rounding the bend and continuing up, he soon came to a pavilion. This time, he saw the woman again. Still ignoring her, he kept walking along the mountain trail.
About ten minutes later, he arrived before the Fish King Temple. The long-haired woman stood on the steps before the temple entrance, holding a camera in her hands, which she offered toward him.
"I don't take photos, thank you."
Chen Chuan said sincerely, then stepped straight through her. When they collided, it felt as though he were passing through a wisp of insubstantial smoke, and the woman's figure dispersed along with it.
Because he had voiced a refusal, from this moment on, she would never appear before him again.
This was the simplest way to deal with this sort of anomaly. But it was unworkable for others, as it required a resolute attitude and sufficiently high spirit power. In other words, anomalies were sometimes bullies that cowered before the strong.
Ordinary people couldn't manage it at all, and even martial artists might fall victim if they let their guard down.
However, it was said that a martial artist had disappeared here, which likely wasn't due solely to the anomaly just now; that level of intensity wasn't enough to achieve such a thing.
Stepping across the threshold, he entered the Fish King Temple. At the same time, his spirit power blanketed the area as he concentrated his senses.
The anomaly in Hai Village had only been drawn in later; the true root was still here.
Yet precisely because the source in Hai Village had been removed, causing it to dissipate on its own, it had disturbed the anomaly here, making it very likely that some of the deeply buried things within would be exposed.
As his spirit power enveloped the Fish King Temple, he soon discovered the issue with this place.
Urban legends were officially classified as anomalous substances, distinct from ordinary spirit power and fields, though in a broader sense, they could still be categorized within the grand field.
Now, he sensed an aura intertwined within the fish skeleton enshrined high in the temple. This fish skeleton radiated a certain "malice" outward, identical to what he had sensed from that long-haired woman earlier.
It seemed the root lay above. Ridding it would be simple enough: setting up a targeted wearing-down ritual, or using powerful spirit power or a field to grind it away.
Yet even as he thought of the solution, he remained where he was without rushing to act. Because he felt that things didn't seem so simple.
For the Fish King Temple was far too conspicuous.
Across successive dynasties, he didn't believe no one had come here to resolve the anomaly, nor could he be the only one to discover an issue here. Yet the anomaly still remained, never having been eradicated at its root.
Looking back now, the Fish King Temple was so conspicuous that it seemed deliberately placed to wait for someone to target it.
The proper method for dealing with anomalies required pinpointing the crux of the problem. If the crux was misidentified, things would only grow more complicated, sometimes even exacerbating the anomaly.
Could it be somewhere else?
His spirit instantly expanded, in a flash blanketing all of Mount Jie before rippling further outward to envelop Mount Chengze and Mount Xiaochi as well.
"Is that how it is..."
Chen Chuan's eyes flickered. When all three mountains were reflected in his spirit simultaneously, he soon discerned a pattern.
In the mountains to the left and right, there were two barely perceptible anomaly points—one of which was what had triggered the Hai Village anomaly.
However...
He looked toward the fish skeleton overhead. Those two places were still problematic, yet the true core genuinely lay within the fish skeleton; it was simply concealed with extreme stealth.
If someone tasked with resolving the anomaly realized right away that the Fish King Temple might not be the main focus, once they discovered the anomaly points in the other two locations, they would very likely assume they had found the true crux and move to act against those two spots.
Yet this was actually a trap. If one abandoned the Fish King Temple and turned to those two sites instead, the flawed steps and target would not only fail to purge the anomaly, but end up feeding its existence.
The person who arranged this anomaly was truly sinister; this trap was aimed squarely at experts, who would tumble right in if they let their guard down for a second.
And even if you bypassed this pitfall, another dilemma lay in wait behind it.
The true crux clung to the fish vertebrae. There were a hundred vertebrae in total, and in his perception, they seemed to shift at every passing moment, making it impossible to deduce the underlying rule right away.
If calculated incorrectly, it could also cause the anomaly to deepen.
This was unquestionably left behind deliberately by whoever set up the anomaly.
He watched for a moment. The pattern seemed linked to celestial movements and a unique ritual sequence; an outsider seeking to unravel it in a short span would require immense computational power.
Unwilling to bother calculating it himself, he contacted Hongfu directly.
Supported by his spirit power, Hongfu summarized and deduced the algorithm in under a second, pinpointing the exact location of the crux.
At this precise juncture in time, the source of the anomaly was concentrated on the ninety-fourth vertebra.
Furthermore, she had deduced that no matter how the anomaly point jumped, it never exceeded ninety-five vertebrae.
Chen Chuan fell into contemplation. Seen this way, the person who arranged this was very likely someone from the imperial court.
This guess was quite reasonable. Anyone capable of comfortably marshaling forces near Zhongjing to arrange such things was bound to be tied to the imperial household, perhaps intending it at the time as a shield for Zhongjing.
As for why the anomaly hadn't been removed later, either the person who set it up had passed away, or they weren't aligned with those who established the subsequent dynasty, and were thus unwilling to undo it.
He walked beneath the fish skeleton and looked up. Just as he was about to target that vertebra, he paused once more.
The sequence of steps in resolving an anomaly was critical. Given the schemer's deviousness, was what he was about to do truly the correct move?
He stared overhead. Over the past several hundred years, no one had resolved this thing. He didn't believe that among all his predecessors, not a single one had reached the point where he stood now.
However, going any deeper exceeded his scope of understanding regarding anomalies. In this specific field alone, the creator's mastery was far above his own.
Yet that didn't matter. No matter what kind of anomaly it was—especially one so clearly man-made—it inevitably required a specific field and spirit power to sustain its transformations.
Now that he had confirmed the critical point was on the fish vertebrae, so long as he managed to strip away the anomalous energy blanketing it, he would cut off any possibility of it activating.
At that thought, his gaze sharpened. A boundless surge of spirit power rushed upward, slowly peeling the energy away from the fish skeleton.
The person who originally set this up probably never dreamed in their wildest nightmares that someone in later generations would crack the anomaly this way.
For the anomalous energy was monstrously vast, especially once fused with this entire mountain range. To forcefully peel it from the fish skeleton not only required the might to level three mountains in a single breath, but also the stamina to sustain that intensity over time. Such an immense difficulty was something even a Dongxuan View martial artist could not bear.
Yet Chen Chuan, as it happened, was capable of doing just that.
Once the anomalous aura was separated, Chen Chuan reached out and plucked that segment of vertebra down.
In that instant, as though the surrounding anomalous aura had lost its source, the previously gathered field rapidly dissipated outward. Within mere breaths, not a trace of it could be seen.
The Fish King Temple shook slightly, and dust sifted down from the roof.
Seeing this, Chen Chuan sensed the surroundings for a moment longer and knew the anomaly was cleared. Turning the fish vertebra in his hand, he slipped it into his pocket and turned to walk outside.
Hmm?
Reaching the temple entrance, he suddenly stopped and glanced back, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Chapter 1377