This is a future without a protagonist.
***
On the fourth morning after Ding Xianglan's death, the village chief, as per custom, brought breakfast to Ding Yun. It was then that he discovered she had died with a purplish-blue face.
A scream immediately followed, drawing the attention of other villagers who rushed over upon hearing the noise.
Everyone was greatly surprised by the sudden death of Ding Xianglan's granddaughter and found it highly suspicious.
"Something's not right, village chief, not right at all. We should report it to the authorities. It makes sense for Granny Ding, the shaman, to pass away suddenly at her age, but her granddaughter, she's so young. We never heard she was ill, so how could she just drop dead like this? There must be something fishy going on."
"Didn't they say there's a forensic doctor now?"
"You think this might have something to do with Granny Ding's superstitious mumbo jumbo? She probably offended some of her peers and was murdered!"
"Forget it, let's just report it.
Oh, does anyone have Yu Man's number? Quickly call her and tell her to come back. She doesn't live ten thousand miles away. Her mother has been dead for three days, what is she waiting for?"
"Yeah, this girl is too unfilial."
"If she had come back earlier, even if something happened to her daughter last night, she could have discovered it and rushed her to the hospital, right? How could she die so young, in the prime of her youth?"
After a brief discussion, the villagers decided to report the case to the police and contact Yu Man immediately to ask her to return. But what no one expected was that the police report went remarkably smoothly, and they quickly dispatched people to investigate.
Communication with Yu Man, however, was not smooth at all.
Upon receiving the call and learning of her daughter's death, Yu Man not only showed no signs of grief or sorrow but, to everyone's horror, claimed she was too busy to deal with these matters and asked the village to handle the arrangements.
She explicitly stated she wanted nothing of the house, land, or inheritance.
Most outrageously, she even implored the villagers not to mention her during the funeral, to act as if she never existed, and absolutely not to engrave her name on the tombstone. A married daughter is like spilled water, and she no longer wished to have any ties with her maternal family.
She chose to protect herself,
but this infuriated many villagers.
It even led to an increase in the sentiment that favored sons over daughters, with people thinking that if Granny Ding had had a son, she wouldn't have suffered such a fate, with no one to perform the final rites.
Regardless, since they couldn't force Yu Man to return, and after the Public Security Bureau found no issues, the funeral for Ding Xianglan and her granddaughter was ultimately handled by the village.
And just as Yu Man had wished,
her name was not inscribed on the tombstone.
Meanwhile, Li Anna, having utilized a feng shui formation to seize the fortune of her entire clan, became like a blessed koi, her career soaring. Before long, she officially entered the ranks of top celebrities. Correspondingly, the lives of the villagers of Xiaoli Village became increasingly tragic.
From the day she officially became a top celebrity,
the villagers of Xiaoli Village began to experience misfortune.
Initially, it was just minor bad luck, like stumbling and tripping, general inconveniences. But as time went on, many people's misfortune escalated to the point of occasional car accidents, falls, broken legs, or severed limbs. And it wasn't just those living in Xiaoli Village who suffered; those with a bloodline connection to the ancestors buried in Xiaoli Village's ancestral graveyard also experienced misfortune to varying degrees.
The difference was that ordinary commoners were more unlucky. Those working as civil servants or in government agencies experienced slightly less severe misfortune.
If this continuous streak of bad luck persisted, the villagers of Xiaoli Village would likely become aware of the situation. So, Li Anna, being quite cunning, would promptly spend some money to help them with certain matters or find an excuse to distribute some cash to each household whenever their bad luck persisted for a while, thereby temporarily suppressing their misfortune.
Don't mistake her actions for kindness; she was merely suppressing the bad luck, not eliminating it. The misfortune would only grow stronger and more potent due to the suppression, and when it finally erupted, what would have been a non-fatal misfortune might even lead to a gruesome death.
Moreover, her temporary suppression of bad luck
was primarily to prevent the feng shui formation from being exposed.
In this manner, within five years, nearly a century's worth of good fortune for the Xiaoli Village inhabitants was essentially drained. Yet, Li Anna reveled in her current life and had no intention of destroying the feng shui formation and retiring as originally planned.
Most importantly, during these five years, she had learned numerous methods of setting up feng shui formations from Bai Yueguang. Therefore, when Bai Yueguang was unwilling to continue helping her
and set up even more malevolent feng shui formations to seize fortunes, she murdered Bai Yueguang and began to act on her own. However, before doing so, to erase any traces of Xiaoli Village, she took advantage of a rare hundred-year flood and altered the original feng shui formation, shifting it from retaining a mere 0.5 percent to fully siphoning Xiaoli Village's fortune.
As a result, during that rare flood, Xiaoli Village was struck by a catastrophic mudslide, obliterating the entire village. The villagers who had already left Xiaoli Village also died in various accidents due to the loss of their fortunes. Xiaoli Village essentially faced clan extermination.
However, she was unaware that Bai Yueguang had left a contingency plan.
Not long after the destruction of Xiaoli Village,
Bai Yueguang's junior disciple, armed with evidence left by his senior brother, filed a report with the Special Incidents Management Department.
After considerable effort, the Special Incidents Management Department managed to bring Li Anna to justice. However, the lives lost could not be brought back. Similarly, those she had harmed or killed through various malevolent feng shui formations to seize their fortunes could also not be resurrected.
In the decades that followed, similar incidents occurred incessantly.
Various unorthodox and sinister practices circulated widely online, impossible to eradicate. Coupled with the moral decay of society and the proliferation of evil intentions, the dark underbelly of the world and various anomalies grew at an alarming rate. Even as spiritual energy continued to dissipate, as long as it persisted, these phenomena could feed on human malevolence,阴气 (yin energy), bad luck, resentment, malevolent energy, and the essence of souls and blood to grow and thrive.
They gradually grew to a point where they could no longer be deliberately concealed.
Furthermore, righteous cultivation became increasingly difficult, and the environment made it easier to fall into demonic ways. Consequently, within a mere century, the world entered an era of rampant anomalies.
This era persisted for another hundred years, resulting in countless human casualties. Some powerful anomalies even began to farm humans, consuming their vital energy and souls to compensate for the dwindling spiritual energy.
Fortunately, when the two-hundred-year cycle reached its end and the last spiritual vein completely dissipated, all anomalies in heaven and earth lost their foundation for existence. All unscientific presences
instantly vanished without a trace.
The anomalies retreated, and metaphysics disappeared.
The world and humanity fully returned to the embrace of science.
However, in that year, the surviving human population was less than half of its peak. It was as if humanity had endured a century-long apocalypse, and everything needed to be rebuilt.
For thousands, even tens of thousands of years to come, it would likely be a world of science, until the next spiritual energy resurgence. At that time, it would be both an opportunity and a challenge, as well as a crisis akin to an apocalypse, and it remained to be seen how many would survive.
Indeed, the hundred years at the beginning of the spiritual energy resurgence and the final hundred years of the age of dharma decline were both cataclysmic events!