Chapter 172: Mural

This was why the Mountain Peak Hotel had such plentiful and cheap meals. Those things were not valuable here. It only took a little labor for people to pick or catch them.

Faced with this paradise-like life, the students couldn’t help but express their amazement. Some even felt a bit envious. Only Lü Yang kept a cold expression, staying highly alert and very jumpy. He was like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bowstring. Here, the more beautiful the scenery seemed in his eyes, the more strange and unsettling he found it. Things others envied were surely traps and temptations to him. He felt that nothing he saw was quite normal.

After passing the planting and livestock area, they entered a completely wild landscape. There was a blue sky with white clouds, clear lakes with strange rocks, and from time to time, flocks of birds flew overhead singing cheerfully. The mountains were beautiful, the waters were lovely, the grass was lush, and the flowers were fragrant. It was a place that made people want to linger and forget to leave.

If Lü Yang hadn’t heard about Mountain Peak Village from Zhou Ling and Han Cheng, which gave him many negative associations, he might have immersed himself in the beauty just like everyone else around him. But now he couldn’t. Even though there was laughter and joy all around him, he still couldn’t bring himself to join in.

…

Come to think of it, the person who initially developed the Mountain Peak Village scenic area had good vision. But later infrastructure was never properly built up. Maybe there were some unknown reasons, so it never truly became a bustling, fully operational place. This was really a big shame.

But maybe it was precisely because of this that the original scenery here remained so well-preserved. If Millstone Mountain really had smooth roads and good transportation, and large numbers of people came here, all the beauty would disappear. It would be replaced by heaps of garbage and foul water.

Because the scenery along the way was so beautiful, the students kept taking photos of each other for keepsakes. They walked and stopped frequently. Originally, the mountain path to Mountain Peak Village wasn’t very long, but after more than an hour of trekking, the two small groups finally reached the destination of their field trip: the site of Mountain Peak Village.

From a distance, the entire Mountain Peak Village was nestled in a lush green expanse. But not a single person was visible, nor was there any sign of smoke or human activity. Inside and outside the village, besides the stone-paved paths and the small trails made by people walking, there were overgrown wild weeds everywhere. They were almost as tall as a person. Encircled by these wild weeds were many very old buildings in the Qing dynasty style.

These wild weeds gave the students an opportunity to play hide-and-seek. The two Counselors and three tour guides had to constantly shout at the students, telling them not to run off and get separated.

Mountain Peak Village had a stone wall around its perimeter. After passing through the wall, they reached the actual site. The houses at the site had clearly been abandoned for many years. Due to neglect over time, most of them had collapsed. Some looked intact from the outside, but the dust on the windows and door frames, and the almost completely rusted locks on the doors, showed that no one had lived here for a very long time. That’s why it was called a site.

Regarding the origins of Mountain Peak Village, there were some records in the Central Arts Institute library collection. Roughly, it was about a very wealthy family in the late Qing dynasty. To escape war, they built this large estate here in advance and moved here with all their clan members, making this place like a paradise.

This origin story was never verified, and its source was unknown. It seemed to vaguely come from some mountain residents of Millstone Mountain. So its truth couldn’t be confirmed. But it seemed nobody cared too much about it anyway.

When modern people discovered this paradise site, only the houses and buildings remained. Not a single living person was seen. Not only were there no living people, but not a single corpse was found anywhere in the whole village. Although there was a Cemetery on the high hill behind Mountain Peak Village, all the Coffin Pits were empty. It was unknown if grave robbers had been there, but in any case, there was not a single body.

The valuable items in Mountain Peak Village had long been taken away by mountain residents who accidentally came here before. Everything that could be carried away was removed. But because it was very difficult to get things down the mountain from Mountain Peak Village, bulky items like tables, chairs, stools, and Earthen Pots were all left behind.

The local government once considered preserving this entire village as a cultural heritage site. But after inspections and evaluations by relevant experts, they decided the buildings weren’t old enough. Also, the maintenance cost was too high. The economic benefits after applying for heritage status weren’t significant. So in the end, the cultural heritage matter was dropped. Instead, they invited public bids to transform the area around Mountain Peak Village and build it into a natural scenic spot.

At the beginning of the scenic area construction, the investment was quite substantial. They widened the mountain roads, set up solar and wind power, built water diversion projects, and even constructed mobile communication base stations. Of course, there was also the Mountain Peak Hotel complex, which could accommodate over three hundred people.

After the first phase was completed, the scenic area advertised heavily to the public. They even offered free accommodation and meal vouchers. It was very lively for a while. But afterwards, tourists didn’t flock here as imagined. The scenic area’s income couldn’t cover the maintenance costs. Many employees were laid off. They had no choice but to hire some mountain residents to live here and perform daily maintenance. As a result, this place eventually became one of China’s countless abandoned developed scenic spots.

As for why this place never became popular, the people involved in building the scenic area back then were always puzzled. But the fact of the investment failure was just that. There was no time to ponder the exact reasons. The later planned construction projects for the scenic area had to be suspended entirely.

In recent years, if not for the Central Arts Institute students coming here in dozens of batches each year for cultural and historical site inspections, this place would likely be permanently abandoned.

Although Yi Ya and her classmates were here for the first time, the scenery of Mountain Peak Village was not unfamiliar to them. Because previous students had already painted every beautiful spot that could be depicted in Mountain Peak Village onto canvases. Excellent selections from these paintings could be viewed in the School’s painting gallery. Only this time, they could come here personally and see everything with their own eyes.

The beauty depicted in the paintings was far less than one-tenth of seeing it in person. This kind of all-around, immersive feeling couldn’t be fully and accurately captured, no matter how exquisite the painting was.

“Remember the field trip rules I announced earlier! Do not leave the group and run around! Do not move any facilities inside the houses! We must try to keep Mountain Peak Village’s original appearance! Because it’s not just us coming here to study the historical site. There will be students from next year, and the year after, who will come too…” The male Counselor held a loudspeaker and loudly repeated the field trip rules to the students.

Even though there were many people around, it was lively, and it was broad daylight with the sun shining directly overhead, Lü Yang didn’t know why, but looking at Mountain Peak Village in front of him felt like looking at a demon’s den. A demon’s den that could swallow up everyone’s lives. This made his sense of foreboding grow stronger and stronger. It even made his back feel cold, and his whole body trembled uncontrollably.

At one moment, Lü Yang even felt like the sunlight suddenly turned cold. And the laughter and noise from the students around him seemed to become very distant.

This scene made him think of the Mysterious Domain. And the arrival of the Mysterious Domain was always without any warning.

“Yinyin, are you okay? Why do you look so pale?” Yi Ya walked over and asked ‘Lin Yin’ with concern, also snapping Lü Yang out of his thoughts.

“I’m fine,” Lü Yang shook his head and forced a smile at Yi Ya.

“My Mobile Phone still has no signal. What are the people at the mobile company even doing?” Yi Ya held her Mobile Phone, looking very frustrated.

“Missing him?” Using Lin Yin’s mouth, Lü Yang teased Yi Ya.

Yi Ya gave Lin Yin a glare but did not reply to Lü Yang.

“Everyone, follow your pre-assigned groups! Each group will be led by one of the three tour guides to enter Mountain Peak Village for inspection! Today is for group inspection. Tomorrow we start individual free sketching! I emphasize one last time! You must gather at the village entrance by 5 PM!” The male Counselor continued using his loudspeaker to announce the field trip rules and schedule to the students.

“Let’s go, it’s time to inspect the village,” Yi Ya took ‘Lin Yin’s’ hand and walked towards their ten-person team.

Seen from above, Mountain Peak Village was an oval-shaped cluster of buildings. It covered quite a large area, with a diameter of at least a thousand meters or so. The outer perimeter was a stone wall about four meters high, built quite solidly, with not many collapsed sections, which made Mountain Peak Village look more like a small, enclosed town.

The houses right in the center of the small town were relatively tall. They even used materials like glazed tiles that only urban nobles used at that time. It was unknown where these were transported from. These large houses were probably where the important people of the clan lived. The further out towards the edges, the shorter the houses became, and the materials used to build them were much poorer. There were also some areas that clearly looked like places for keeping livestock.

Being so far away from the central towns of that time, yet able to build such a large mountain top complex, Mountain Peak Village indeed had many mysteries. But for some reason, these were deliberately ignored, and the place still slept here.

The students divided into three teams, each with about ten people led by one tour guide. Although their inspection routes were different, all three teams would walk through the entire Mountain Peak Village. Although Mountain Peak Village wasn’t very big, the village had everything: an Ancestral Hall, a small square, a market, a blacksmith shop, a carpenter shop, etc. It seemed the people who originally built this village put a lot of thought into it and brought a large population here. According to Lü Yang’s initial estimate, with so many residential buildings, it could accommodate at least several hundred or even over a thousand people to live here.

Even though the village’s people were gone, from the arrangement of many things, you could still see clear traces of their past life here.

“This is the Ancestral Hall of Mountain Peak Village. The bronze incense burners used for worship were all stolen. Many spirit tablets were damaged. Only this Mural is preserved most completely,” Guo Xiaohong, the youngest of the three tour guides, explained to the ten-person team that included Lin Yin and Yi Ya.

“Why do the people in the Mural have smooth faces, with no eyes, noses, or mouths?” a student asked tour guide Guo Xiaohong.