"Replaced..."

Hearing this, Ye Qiutang was first stunned, then her body began to tremble uncontrollably. She didn't know why, but she felt a fear, an unprecedented fear, as if she had inadvertently glimpsed a heavenly secret.

She also felt the strangeness that Song Tianyang mentioned, but she was not as perceptive as him, and she hadn't gone as far as saying they had been "replaced."

Now that the floodgates were open, Song Tianyang had nothing to worry about. He pondered for a moment and continued, "Miss, I want to ask you a question. Do you remember how we got to this temple?"

"We... we walked a long way, saw a group of monks holding torches, and then..."

"What about before that?" Song Tianyang interrupted suddenly. "What were we doing before that?"

These words seemed to hit Ye Qiutang's sore spot directly. She opened her mouth wide, trying to speak, but couldn't utter a single word after thinking for a long time.

"Hoo—" Seeing this, Song Tianyang sighed deeply. "It seems that the Miss is the same as us, only remembering these things."

"We... we got lost in the mountains and mistakenly entered the most dangerous yan zhang forest in Lingnan. We were all poisoned and fell unconscious. Fortunately... fortunately, a gust of wind dispersed the poisonous miasma at the last moment, and we managed to save our lives." For some reason, Ye Qiutang blurted out these words, as if they were deeply rooted in her memory.

"Is that really so?" Song Tianyang's voice was soft, but firm.

Hearing this, Ye Qiutang's head began to ache. She clutched her head, feeling something wriggling inside. The pain made it impossible for her to think straight. "What do you mean? What... what exactly are you trying to say?"

"It doesn't make sense!" Song Tianyang also seemed to be enduring great pain. He clenched the Huoquan (Calamity Spring coin) tightly in his hand. The not-so-sharp edge of the ancient coin cut through his palm, and blood slowly seeped out along his fingers.

Song Tianyang's eyes were wide with anger, bloodshot. "I don't need to tell you how powerful the poisonous miasma of Lingnan is. Once encountered, almost all people and animals who enter it die. In the sixth year of Mingzong, a group of secret sect lamas from Xituolin unfortunately encountered the poisonous miasma. Of a team of a hundred people, only one survived."

"The only surviving high monk went mad. He told everyone that there were monsters in the poisonous miasma. He died less than two years later."

"I once saw the body of this high monk. The body did not rot or decay after death, and his face was lifelike. There were even signs of rejuvenation, and his joints could be turned like a living person. Those foolish believers even shouted something about the Buddha's golden body and the reincarnation of a spiritual child. Nonsense! That was clearly... clearly evil energy entering his body. If it wasn't dealt with, the high monk's body would have risen!

"Fortunately, there were also experts in the secret sect who were in charge. They secretly held a sealing ceremony after dismissing all the believers, and barely sealed it after sacrificing six secret sect lamas as human sacrifices. The high monk's body could not be kept, and it had to be crushed to ashes."

"Miss, we were trapped in the poisonous miasma for a long time. In that kind of place, even those high monks and lamas of the secret sect were wiped out, let alone us?"

"None of us died. We all came out unscathed, including the slow-moving old woman and the young child. Is that possible?"

Song Tianyang's words were like a nail constantly being driven into Ye Qiutang's head, and also like opening a window in her memory. In her memory, they got lost and encountered the poisonous miasma. As they were dying, a gust of wind dispersed the poisonous miasma, and then... then they woke up. After that, they encountered Jiang Cheng and Wang Fugui, who had fallen off a cliff and were unconscious, and finally arrived at this strange Jiechi Temple...

Now, looking at all of this together, it was more than unreasonable. Even strange tales wouldn't be written like this. They woke up from the poisonous miasma after a sleep. This couldn't be explained by good luck.

"You... just say what you want to say!" Enduring the throbbing pain in her head, Ye Qiutang, with a twisted face, was sure that she had grasped a key point.

Song Tianyang's expression also became more and more twisted, and veins popped out on his forehead. "Although I don't know what happened, we must have encountered something terrible in the poisonous miasma. We... we were replaced by those things, or rather, some of us were completely replaced!"

"They are no longer the people we knew, and maybe... maybe they are not even human!"

"Not only them, but we... we may not be either!"

"I suspect we are still in that forest, that poisonous miasma!"

Song Tianyang's words became more and more bizarre and chaotic, but strangely, Ye Qiutang could understand some of them in her confusion.

Song Tianyang's expression became more and more ferocious, and even blood flowed from his nostrils. He suddenly grabbed the Huoquan (Calamity Spring coin) soaked in blood and used the not-so-sharp edge to slash fiercely at the center of his brow. The taut skin split open, and blood dripped down along the center of his brow.

Taking advantage of his last moment of clarity, Song Tianyang gasped for breath. "Miss, last night... last night, when I returned, I secretly cast a divination. The strangeness and complexity of the divination is something I've never seen in my life. The direction we are in, the origin of everything, and the final direction cannot be interpreted through divination. The temple we are in seems to not exist at all!"

"Worried that the stars in the night had disturbed and messed up the divination chart I drew, I performed a bi feng men (closed door) divination for everyone around me, including the Miss."

"What was the divination like?" Ye Qiutang asked urgently, now needing to hold on to something to barely stand steady.

A hint of despair crept onto Song Tianyang's face, a deathly pale green, and his voice trembled. "Dead, we... we are all dead!"

"There is no sign of life, and the situation is boundless. From the perspective of the fate chart, we are now neither human nor ghost, and I cannot interpret the true meaning of the fate chart, but... but we are definitely not alive!"

This sentence, "not alive," was like the last straw that broke Ye Qiutang's back. The old man in front of her was a well-known master of art and spells in the dynasty. If he was helpless, then today might really be...

"No sign of life, the situation is boundless..." Ye Qiutang forced herself to calm down. "Mister! No sign of life doesn't mean there is no life. Maybe... maybe we just haven't found a way out yet!"

These words, almost just for comforting herself, worked. Song Tianyang, his face covered in blood, stared with blood-red eyes. "I performed another divination for Jiang Cheng and Wang Fugui. Their divination is completely different from ours."

"They are living people, at least for now, especially that Wang Fugui. His divination is surprisingly good, turning bad luck into good, and turning misfortune into good fortune!"