Chen Shi struggled to walk in the swamp, surrounded by many people just like him. These people were half-subrged in the swamp and had to exert all their strength to pull out their legs, taking a long ti just to take a step.
Not far away, a man was walking when his leg fell into the swamp. He reached out to retrieve it, groped around for a long ti, and finally found his leg.
After fixing his leg, he continued forward.
Chen Shi and the others in the swamp did not know their destination, but everyone moved forward aimlessly, as if a voice were calling them, guiding their direction.
In a nearby pool of water, there were faint blue flas that were hard to notice unless looked at closely.
Chen Shi saw a woman touched by this blue fire, which burned wherever it touched like a wick, and the woman served as the lamp oil, burning and shrinking at the sa ti.
The woman did not cry out in pain; her body grew smaller and smaller until she was completely consud.
"Perhaps it’s a kind of fla that can ignite the soul," Chen Shi thought to himself.
In places where this blue fla burned, there often grew a white flower resembling a lotus, but devoid of any color other than white and fragranceless.
Chen Shi looked around somberly, "I’m dead."
Granny Sha was too powerful, with just one touch, he had died.
Against such a powerful being, all resistance was futile.
This was the second ti he had died, in his mory.
However, according to Granny Sha, this was supposedly his eleventh death.
Before this, he had died ten tis.
Each of those ten tis, his grandfather, Granny Sha, and Black Pot had co to rescue him from the underworld.
"Grandfather is dead. Granny Sha is fighting with others. No one knows I’m dead," he said, his expression dimming.
Chen Shi involuntarily followed the barely-there call, struggling to lift his legs, taking steps forward with difficulty.
He couldn’t resist the call, and could only cautiously avoid the faint blue flas to prevent being reduced to ashes.
He recognized soone and his eyes lit up, he hastily called out, "Wu Daozheng, Master Wu!"
Among the ghostly army, a person with a burly figure, Wu Daozheng from Tianlao Society, was also walking through the swamp.
Seeing soone familiar, Chen Shi was overwheld with excitent and tried hard to move closer to Wu Daozheng. However, Wu Daozheng appeared expressionless, his face covered in blood, and seed to have no recollection of him.
"How did you die too?"
Chen Shi was familiar and reached out to touch Wu Daozheng’s head, discovering that his skull was dented. He laughed and said, "Do you have a head injury? Were you slapped to death? You’re tall; I couldn’t have hit you unless you were kneeling. Don’t you recognize ? I’m Chen Shi, the Scholar instructor of Red Mountain Hall, the one who took down your Tianlao Society’s Caiseng Hall... You’re really high and mighty!"
Chen Shi beca angry as the ghost did not pay him any attention.
Wu Daozheng looked as if he had been struck dumb, continuing to walk forward in a daze.
Most of the ghosts were like him, not as lively as Chen Shi.
Suddenly, a strange noise ca from above, as if soone was chanting a spell, then the sky cracked open, revealing round holes.
Chen Shi looked up and saw small boats hanging down from those holes.
The boats were only about six or seven feet long and a foot wide, suspended by ropes that slowly lowered them down.
Then, from those round holes, heads popped out, boys and girls, who after looking around and finding no danger, slowly slid down the ropes, careful to make no sound, and landed quietly in the boats.
The boats were just big enough for one person and had paddles, which they carefully moved through the swamp, avoiding ghosts like Chen Shi, navigating close to the blue flas.
While struggling to move forward, Chen Shi watched as so children accidentally touched the blue flas and imdiately had their souls ignited, turning to ash in a short while, leaving nothing in the boats but skeletons.
So skilfully avoided the flas and paddled towards the white lotuses, cautiously picking them with great delight before turning around and paddling back the way they ca.
"They are people from the mortal world!"
Chen Shi realized, these young n and won were alive from the mortal world, able to resist the underworld’s yin energy because the boys had not yet lost their masculine essence, and the girls their feminine essence.
So cultivators who practiced soul refining skills would send these young n and won into the underworld to search for treasures.
Originally, Granny Sha had sent her son, Tianyu, into the underworld to find the Three-Life Stone, resulting in his never returning.
"It must be so major family or famous sect, sending people into the underworld to stealthily pick white lotuses!"
Chen Shi saw a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl rowing nearby and quickly shouted loudly, "Miss, save !"
His throat burned as he spoke, producing a hoarse voice like a ghost, incomprehensible to the living.
"Save ."
He reached out his hand toward the girl.
She was likely a poor family child, dressed in rough and tattered clothes, with two twisted buns tied with white ribbons on her head, a red dot painted between her brows at the Heavenly Eye spot.
She wore a paper Spirit Talisman at her waist. Although she couldn’t understand the ghost’s language, seeing Chen Shi reaching out as if asking for help, she understood what he ant.
Her boat stopped below a rope, and she reached out trying to grab Chen Shi and pull him from the mire onto the boat, but they were still two or three steps apart.
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