"Almost everything that needed to be asked had been covered, and they had also obtained the route map to last night’s Land Temple. Before leaving, Yang Xiao left a small amount of scattered silver pieces and warned Ji Gen, "What you’ve said aligns with the information we’ve got at Earl Mansion. For today, I’ll spare you, but we will look for you in a few days. If I find out you’ve taken your anger out on your wife and kids, heh..."
Feeling the icy gaze of Yang Xiao, Ji Gen, who had already received the silver, shook his head repeatedly, "I wouldn’t dare, I wouldn’t dare!"
"Go back and earn an honest living. Selling your wife is no skill." Fang Zhou rolled up the booklet and tapped Ji Gen on the head quite skillfully.
"Little sister." Chang Chuchu squatted down with a smile and caressed the little girl’s head, "Keep the Silver Coin your sister gave you. If you want to buy candied haws, buy them yourself. If there’s left over, you can give it to your mother; your father won’t want it, right?"
With that, Chang Chuchu looked up and stared at Ji Gen, who felt a chill in his heart and hastily nodded, "Right, right... Sweet child, keep it to spend. Daddy doesn’t want it. Daddy will even take you and your mother to eat baked sesa buns and buy new clothes."
"Really?" The little girl, who had never been treated this way, opened her eyes wide in disbelief.
"Of course, it’s true. Now, now, let’s go!" Ji Gen signaled his daughter with urgent looks to shut her mouth.
Seeing this, Yang Xiao couldn’t help but chuckle inside. Ji Gen appeared bold but was full of crafty thoughts. He was worried that these people would tie him up and take him back, so he clung to his daughter and wife as lifelines. Ji Gen probably saw that these people had a good impression of his daughter.
Despite her young age, the little girl had learned the ways of the world early due to life’s hardships. She wrapped her arms around the squatting Chang Chuchu, stood on tiptoes, and kissed her on the face, "Pretty sister, I’m going to go back with Papa. I will miss you."
"Sister will miss you too." The little girl had cheered up Chang Chuchu, who then took out another small piece of silver and gave it to the girl, generously saying, "Go buy so new clothes for you and your mom to wear. Don’t worry about your father; he doesn’t like it."
The little girl then turned to look at Jiang Qingluan as if she wanted to repeat her act, but she was dissuaded by the repellent aura Jiang Qingluan naturally exuded.
By now, everyone had learned from the little girl that the poem she sang was sothing she had picked up from a beggar child she played with. However, it was impossible to trace who had sung it first. In the end, the source was those wanted demons.
The group walked along the alley and out, while Ji Gen also fulfilled his promise, taking his wife and child ho. After so whispers in the woman’s ear, she beca so moved that she knelt down, kowtowing and bowing to Yang Xiao and the others.
Fang Zhou quickly stepped forward to help her up, "Don’t be like this, go back ho. Your daughter is going to buy you new clothes."
In front of her husband, the woman dared not speak so words out loud; she could only turn back every few steps to look at Fang Zhou with tear-filled eyes, as if expecting sothing.
Chang Chuchu couldn’t resist teasing, "Oh wow, Fang Zhou, not a bad job hooking a married woman’s secret admiration."
"If I were you, I’d take the silver and redeem her. Then you’d scoop up a bargain wife, and there’s already a daughter too," observed Chang Chuchu, who couldn’t resist making a fuss.
"Don’t make fun of . She doesn’t like , she likes the silver on , more like. She just wants a place to shield herself from the wind and rain," Fang Zhou shook his head, seeing clearly, "I might have a good deal of silver on , but I can’t waste it on matters like this."
"All right, we’ve got the route. Let’s go out and find a cloth store to buy so old clothes; these clothes are too conspicuous." Having made the decision, Yang Xiao decided they would buy the clothes and so food to eat on the way, then imdiately set out for the dilapidated temple of last night in search of clues.
That dilapidated temple was sohow linked to Earl Mansion. According to Ji Gen, every ti the Ancestor of Earl Mansion celebrated a birthday, a Land Temple had to be rebuilt, and coincidentally, the timing matched the task opening ti of Fushou Manor in the real world eerily well.
One was the incredibly strange Nightmare World, the other was the reality Yang Xiao knew well—the Land Temple was the intersection of these two worlds.
Soon, the four of them, dressed in new clothes, appeared on the street. They bought a number of food items on a whim, like roasted, crispy sugar cookies, and sliced soy sauce beef. To fend off the cold, Yang Xiao specifically bought a flask of wine. It wasn’t too strong and even carried a sowhat muddy taste after a small sip.
Additionally, they prepared incense candles and paper money, packing everything together. After all, they were going to a temple; it was better to be safe than sorry.
Following the map’s directions, the group walked toward the outskirts of the manor. Before long, they found the archway they had passed the night before, with an ancient stone plaque hanging on it, inscribed with the three large characters for Fushou Manor.
Chang Chuchu couldn’t help but sigh. When they had entered the manor last night, there were 11 of them. In just one night, they had lost two teammates, both died mysteriously, and the last one, Tang Zerun, even his body couldn’t be found.
Fang Zhou, walking and pondering, had the strange poem echoing in his mind in the child’s voice, repeatedly singing. Of the five oddities of Bo Mansion, he was most interested in the third oddity: that Kun Punishnt and thieves were epidemic, because Ji Gen had ntioned that those rewarded with a hefty sum were of this variety.
"Watch the path, don’t get distracted," Yang Xiao reminded him, seeing that he was lost in thought.
"Yang, what does ’Kun Punishnt’ and ’thief’ an?" Fang Zhou asked him, curious.
"In ancient tis, there was a punishnt called the Kun Punishnt, one of the five ancient punishnts; it involved shaving off all or part of a person’s hair. People of that ti considered it a great sha. Later it ca to be used to derogatorily refer to monks and monastics, also called ’bald slaves.’ There is a verse that says: ’The bald slave makes noise in the marketplace, ignorant of the Buddha’s way on earth.’"
"As for these ’thieves,’ they are Taoists. Because the shape of a Taoist’s hair bun resembles a cow’s nose, they were also called ’Old Taoist Niu Bizi.’ Neither term is a complint," Yang Xiao explained as he walked.
"So the people of Earl Mansion are hostile towards monks and Taoists," concluded Fang Zhou thoughtfully.
Not long after they left the manor, they encountered a fog that ca swiftly, as if blown by a gust of wind. The road ahead beca indistinct in the mist, and what was even more eerie was the shadowy shapes within the fog, unclear if they were trees or the figures of people swaying.
"This feels almost the sa as last night," Chang Chuchu said, hiding behind Yang Xiao’s Fang Zhou, occasionally peeking out at the depths of the fog. Last night, it was also amidst this white fog that they had found that dilapidated temple.
If there was any difference, it was that the fog was slightly thinner by day, but that was only slight. Venturing further in was a different story.
"Sothing’s not right, with such heavy fog, we should have seen it from the manor, especially since today is such good weather," Jiang Qingluan said, on alert.
"Should we retreat?" Fang Zhou suggested quietly.
"Not yet, keep going," Yang Xiao decided. Retreating now was taboo. Since they had encountered last night’s fog, in a different light, it also ant that they were not far from that dilapidated temple. They were on the right path.
However, what happened next was beyond everyone’s expectations. As they walked, they suddenly ca across a forest. The trees here seed eternally sun-starved and malnourished, nearly bare of leaves, growing in odd shapes: crooked trees, beheaded trees, and even so that seed to have been struck by lightning, charred all over. Moreover, there were no large trees in the forest, only twisted and dry small trees, the thickest only as wide as a human thigh.
The forest was silent as death, and Yang Xiao’s gaze was irresistibly drawn to the depths of the forest. There, amidst the drifting fog, the distant trees appeared to change, cold and rigid, filled with an indescribable sense of dead silence, as if they were people standing there, refusing to close their eyes in death.
The problem beca serious because there were no trees near the dilapidated temple, just a barren river beach. If there was a forest here, they had definitely gone in the wrong direction.
"Could it be... Ji Gen deceived us?" Fang Zhou recalled Ji Gen’s face and didn’t think it likely; he didn’t have the nerve for that.
Though they couldn’t recognize the path they had walked the night before, they all agreed that they were on the correct general direction.
"Withdraw. We return the way we ca, following our footprints," Yang Xiao said, glancing at the foggy forest before them, without the slightest curiosity to explore. Sothing was off about this place, and it reminded him of what Ji Gen had ntioned, a rumor about people disappearing in these parts.
At this mont the fog grew even denser, visibility was reduced to a few ters. They retraced their steps along their footprints, but after a while, they felt sothing was off. They didn’t seem to have walked this path before, and yet the footprints were clear, leading deep into the fog.
They pushed on for several more ters until abruptly, everyone halted. It was then that the unease that had lingered in their hearts for so long finally took shape before them. Another forest appeared, almost identical to the one they had encountered earlier, and footprints leading straight into it.
This was impossible; they hadn’t seen any trees on their way here. The only explanation was that they had encountered a ghost phenonon.
It was the Ghost Hitting the Wall; Yang Xiao was certain that even if they changed direction now, they would be blocked by mysteriously appearing forests.
"What do we do now?" Fang Zhou, facing this situation for the first ti, was noticeably panicked, with cold sweat appearing on his forehead.
In the real world, Yang Xiao would have turned with a smile, telling his comrades not to panic, then taken out a Ghost Lantern and taught the ghosts a lesson. But this was the Nightmare World, where he could only use the most primitive thod. Fortunately, they still carried lots of incense candles and paper money.
He piled the paper money, then took out three sticks of incense and lit them. Clasping the three incense sticks devoutly with both hands, Yang Xiao prayed in the direction of the forest, mumbling words to himself. They were nothing more than polite phrases ant to appease the Lost Souls and Wild Ghosts, telling them not to bother them since they brought incense candles and paper money and promising that if they were allowed to leave safely, they would buy more paper money to worship them lavishly.
After the polite words, Yang Xiao knelt on the ground, placing the three sticks of incense side by side in the soil and attempted to light the paper money. But a bizarre thing happened; the dry paper money wouldn’t catch fire. At the sa ti, a whirlwind arose from nowhere in the forest, scattering the paper money haphazardly. Before the astonished eyes of Fang Zhou, the two sticks of incense on the sides suddenly snapped and fell to the ground.
This scene also stunned Yang Xiao, Jiang Qingluan, and the others. Chang Chuchu turned pale. People fear hearing an ominous three out of four; for incense, having two shorter and one longer is unlucky. This clearly ant that the other side was showing them no respect, intending to keep all four of them there.
"We can’t wait any longer. If we’re surrounded, we’re as good as dead," Jiang Qingluan stood forward, relit an incense stick, and raised it in one hand, turning to look at Yang Xiao’s Fang Zhou. "Who among you is a virgin?"
Seeing Yang Xiao hesitate, Jiang Qingluan imdiately narrowed her eyes at Fang Zhou and asked urgently, "I asked you a question, are you a virgin?"
"I... guess so," Fang Zhou answered reluctantly.
"Take the incense, your left hand, like I am doing." Jiang Qingluan stretched Fang Zhou’s left hand, flattened his palm, and placed the incense between his ring and middle finger, "Hold tight, and rember, no matter what happens, don’t let go!"
After speaking, she pulled open the bag on her back, folded it a few tis to make a blindfold, and covered Fang Zhou’s eyes, saying, "Don’t ask anything, don’t think about anything. Keep walking until I say stop, understood?"
"But there’s sothing ahead..."
Fang Zhou had questions, but Jiang Qingluan didn’t give him a chance to speak, sternly saying, "Don’t ask, asking too much ans certain death."
"Understood," Fang Zhou dared not move.
"We form a human bridge, to break through the Ghost Gate. The virgin leads the way, King Yan follows at the gate," Yang Xiao instantly understood Jiang Qingluan’s plan. "We have the virgin, but who will play the role of King Yan? None of us has the Life Chart of the Evil Star to hold it down."
"You are a rare solitary star, a Living Yama," Jiang Qingluan said, gazing at him earnestly.
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