Chapter 323 - The Ancestral Temple
Lin Mu couldn't handle it anymore and the embarrassment was threatening to drown him, if not his mother's voice that would nag him at the back of his head that would kill him as well. Unable to hold on anymore and unable to speak, Lin Mu ended up using blink to get away from the woman that was dragging him into the Alluring Wisteria pavilion.
The entire thing had happened in such a short amount of time that the woman had not seen anything happen and to her, it was as if Lin Mu had disappeared into thin air… which he kind of did.
~Phew~
Lin Mu took a breath of relief as he looked back at the Alluring Wisteria pavilion.
"Hooh! Almost got trapped…" Lin Mu muttered.
"Hahaha! Seems like you still have time to grow up." Xukong laughed again.
Lin Mu ignored senior Xukong's teasing and just focused on walking. Eventually, he reached the place that he so wanted to go to, The ancestral temple.
The ancestral temple was located in a wide open square and there were a lot of people that came here to pray to their ancestors. The entry to the inside of the temple was not allowed to most of the people and all they could do was pray from the outside.
The temple would only be opened to the commoners on the day of the annual temple festival. Currently, only a few influential people could enter the temple and pray there. Lin Mu didn't have to wait in the crow for long before he was able to get close to the temple.
"Hmm, some of the runes carved on this temple are indeed from the Dao script," Xukong spoke.
Lin Mu looked and read all the characters that he could and realized that some of them were from the Dao script, while the rest were just common runes. There were ancestral couplets written in the form of runes on the temple.
But when Lin Mu tried to read the Dao script characters, he realized that he could barely understand their meaning. He had not learned these ones yet and thus could not understand the entire meaning of them.
"Senior, what do the characters mean?" Lin Mu questioned, feeling curious.
"Hmm, they are the characters pertaining to reincarnation, worship, family, virtue and… fate." Xukong answered.
Lin Mu could hear the strangeness in senior Xukong's voice and wondered if there was a problem.
"Senior, is there… something wrong with the temple?" Lin Mu asked.
"Hmm, it's hard to tell but it does not seem to be as old as it's looking," Xukong replied.
"Not as old as it looks? Do you mean is newer than it looks?" Lin Mu asked.
"No, rather the opposite. Even if its materials look like they were made around a few hundred years ago, the aura that is felt from the characters is different. It's far more older…" Xukong answered.
Lin Mu looked at the temple and probed it with his spirit sense. At first, it breached the wall rather easily and entered the internal hall. There Lin Mu saw all the ancestral tablets that had been erected and the hundreds of incense sticks that were burning.
Then he saw an old monk that was kneeling at the corner of the temple. He observed him and found him to be a commoner with no cultivation. Yet, Lin Mu could feel something strange from the temple now. Lin Mu wanted to look further, but his spirit sense had reached its limit.
If Lin Mu wanted to see more, he would have to get closer, which was not possible currently. Lin Mu looked ahead and saw the guards that were standing at the border of the temple, not letting anyone get close. Unlike the other guards, these guards were all cultivators and one of them was even a late stage qi refining realm cultivator.
"Do you know about the history of the ancestral temple?" Xukong suddenly questioned.
Lin Mu tilted his head and thought for a bit before remembering what he had heard before about the temple.
"From what I heard from my father, the temple was made about a hundred years ago along with the city itself. It was actually one of the first buildings to be erected and has stayed the same since then, even if more buildings have been added to the town." Lin Mu answered.
"Hmm, even if the building was made a hundred years ago, the materials it was made from look older than that and the aura that it exudes is even older than that… perhaps over a thousand years," Xukong replied.
"Should we perhaps take a look inside senior?" Lin Mu asked.
"No… at least not now. Perhaps if we get an opportunity in the future or when we have no choice but to do it." Xukong replied.
"If you say so, Senior." Lin Mu muttered.
He then got to the tiled floor and kneeled down kowtowing to pray to his ancestors. Lin Mu prayed to his descended parents and grandparents, before standing up. There were tens of people doing the same, and some of them even seemed to be crying while others seem to be begging.
"You didn't tell me about your grandparents," Xukong said with interest, seeing Lin Mu pray to them.
"I didn't? Oh yes, but I don't really have much to tell either. I don't remember much about them as they passed away a long time ago. I think only my grandmother was alive back when I was born and my grandfather had died a long time ago.
My father was around my age when my grandfather died as well." Lin Mu spoke.
"I see…" Xukong said with a calm tone.
Xukong thought over his words and suddenly realized something.
'Could Lin Mu really have a bloodline, perhaps? I couldn't detect any in him, but perhaps it's too diluted or beyond my understanding?'
"Lin Mu these grandparents you talked about, they are your paternal grandparents, right? What about your mother's parents?" Xukong questioned.
"I… I… don't know?" Lin Mu uttered.