53 Chapter 53
Zong Jiu felt very bad.
He seemed to be soaked in ice water filled with ice cubes. His unconscious body was even more like an ice cellar. His lips turned purple due to the cold. His coarse linen clothes seemed to have frozen into ice chips, which froze tightly on his body and penetrated into his bones.
It was so cold that it was obvious that something had happened.
He was definitely the lucky goose that was chosen and had his soul out of his body!
Zong Jiu had a premonition as early as when Yin Po said that.
After all, among so many trainees present, he was the only one holding the inner ghost card. Not to mention that his inner ghost identity was that of a fledgling corpse driver, so he was naturally connected to the mysterious things like walking the underworld. If you must say, walking the underworld and driving corpses are originally the same kind of people, both dealing with things related to the underworld, so it is normal for him to be favored now.
Zong Jiu opened his eyes with a sad mood.
However, unexpectedly, what he saw was not a dark temple or a floating temple in the sky or under a dome.
He was still standing on the ground.
It was just that the color of the ground was a gray that was almost dead, and the surroundings were filled with layers of floating fog, which made it difficult to see clearly at a glance.
Originally, Zong Jiu was a little confused, but when he saw his milky white body, he suddenly realized.
Could it be that he was taken to the underworld?
After thinking about this problem, Zong Jiu felt that the dead earth, the dark sky like the eternal night, the unclear fog and the heavy Yin Qi were all understandable.
Going to the underworld is a very dangerous thing.
Zhuge An said that he would not interfere with the plot of this copy, but in fact he could not help but burst out his hidden chatterbox attribute occasionally, and took the opportunity to popularize Zong Jiu while waiting for time this afternoon.
People who go to the underworld usually set a time point, or other ways, to remind themselves that they are people in the world of the living.
Because after going to the underworld, if you can't find the way back when walking in the underworld, or forget the spell when surrounded by the underworld, then the underworld person will stay in the underworld forever and can never return to the world of the living.
Without the soul, the body in the world of the living will naturally turn into a corpse.
The threshold for walking in the underworld is higher than that of the corpse driver. The underworld person will show the talent of soul leaving the body since childhood. Only those with this talent can learn to walk in the underworld, so the underworld person is often passed down from generation to generation and is extremely dangerous. It is very likely that you will get a one-way ticket to the underworld during work.
After modern times, this profession is basically extinct, just like the corpse driver. Only in horror copies can you see these mysterious professions.
After thinking it through, Zong Jiu decided to go around first. It would be better to find the underworld woman, otherwise he, a living person, was caught in the underworld and it would definitely not be good to stay there for a long time.
He walked forward slowly.
As soon as he took a step, Zong Jiu found himself floating.
Zong Jiu: "..."
He finally managed to control his tendency to slide forward, and suddenly felt a gust of cold wind around him.
After taking the first step, the vast fog disappeared. Instead, there were mountains in the distance, cities decorated with red lanterns, towers and black chains rising from the ground, and a blood moon in the night sky.
There were also tens of millions of pale and distorted faces, looking at the white-haired young man with malicious eyes, full of greed.
Living souls in the underworld are like fresh meat thrown into a group of sharks, and ghosts can follow the smell to get up.
Looking at the countless ghost hands reaching out to him, Zong Jiu's eyes were stern, and he was about to open the system backpack to take out various anti-supernatural props, but found that... he couldn't take them out.
[Trainees are in a special scene and cannot use physical props]
The white-haired young man was shocked.
He reacted quickly, turned around and started running wildly, while trying the props he could use.
First of all, the tarot cards could not be used.
Secondly, the previously exchanged supernatural props were no longer usable.
The strange black secret box was even more straightforward, and at most, it could only take out some ghost money.
Zong Jiu cursed inwardly, looking at the gloomy faces that surrounded him, and when he was about to retreat, his fingers suddenly touched something in his pocket inadvertently.
He was stunned for a moment, and quickly realized that it was the prop of the corpse driver.
The inner ghost props obtained in the copy could not be put into the system backpack in the copy, so Zong Jiu had been putting the soul-catching bell and talisman paper in his pocket. Unexpectedly, after turning into a spirit, these two things were also brought down together.
"Ring, ring, ring, ring--"
The soul-catching bell is useless to humans, and humans can't hear it, but it is a noisy magic sound in the ears of ghosts, piercing through the ears, and it is unbearable.
The ghosts restrained their expressions one by one, dancing in the air, and dared not approach the white-haired young man again.
Zong Jiu breathed a sigh of relief, and walked forward slowly while shaking the Soul-Catching Bell.
The only problem was that the Soul-Catching Bell could only be used for a maximum of ten minutes, and the cooling time was half an hour.
He estimated the distance in his mind and planned to rush into the ghost town in the distance first.
Unexpectedly, at this moment, a withered hand suddenly gently rested on his left shoulder.
Zong Jiu's pupils shrank suddenly, and he turned back suddenly.
The Yin Po, wearing a heavy black robe, was standing behind him holding a lantern.
A scarlet candle was hanging in the lantern, with red fire on top, burning slowly. Zong Jiu remembered that she said in the temple that if she hadn't returned by the time the candle burned out, she would never be able to return.
Her voice was sharp, even hoarse and unpleasant than the voices of the ghosts.
"Child, how come you are here?"
Zong Jiu showed a blank look, "I don't know, I appeared here after reciting the spell."
"Forget it, since you are here, then follow me."
In this dark land filled with yin energy, Yin Po also obviously didn't want to say more, and motioned Zong Jiu to follow her directly.
A lantern for walking into the underworld was dimly lit, pushing away the surrounding black clouds and white arms, and opening a path of light in the ghost group.
Only with light can we see how many ghosts there are in the underworld.
In the Great Wilderness, there were countless ghosts who died of starvation, and there were tens of thousands of people who died on the roadside. Even the ghost messengers in the underworld were not enough. If an ordinary person died, he could only wander in the world of the living for a month before being led to the lower world. Even so, there were still countless lonely ghosts queuing up to register, and the underworld could not count them all even if it worked overtime.
Zong Jiu followed behind Yin Po, and his doubts became deeper and deeper.
He felt that this matter was really a strange coincidence.
It was agreed that the soul would leave the body. If no one did anything, how could it inexplicably follow the ghost to the underworld?
It was so coincidental that he cast his suspicion on the very hunched back in front of him.
At the beginning, everyone defined Yin Po as a helper NPC. After all, in a copy, it is impossible to be surrounded by wolves and not have a single helper.
Since she gave them hints, told them a lot of information, and even provided the temple as a safe haven for the trainees, it was enough to prove Yin Po's identity. Since what she did could not be faked, the trainees naturally let down their guard.
Since he took the inner ghost card, it was possible that he would be hostile to these helpful characters.
Zong Jiu suspected that Yin Po was the perfect corpse he was looking for.
Originally, he wanted to take advantage of the underworld, after Yin Po's soul left her body, to try if she was his mission target, otherwise he would not have chosen a position closest to Yin Po.
Zong Jiu pondered for a long time, and decided to stay put for now.
He was in the underworld now, and he had to rely on the walking underworld lantern, and he had no choice.
It would not be too late to verify this conjecture after the things in the underworld were done.
With this in mind, he and Yin Po walked through the underworld occupied by hundreds of ghosts and walked towards the ghost town in the distance.
As they walked, Zong Jiu pretended to ask casually, "Grandma, where are we going?"
After he asked, he didn't get a response for a long time.
Just when Zong Jiu was about to ask for the second time, the eerie voice finally spoke.
"To find the soul of that old woman."
Zong Jiu, "Where to find it?"
"Just follow me, why are you asking so many questions?"
So Zong Jiu stopped asking obediently.
He followed behind the old woman, walked through the coldness of the underworld wasteland, walked through the rolling Forgotten River, and then walked to the ghost city.
All the way, countless ghosts were looking at them.
No matter how hungry they were, the lamp of walking to the underworld had a breath that frightened them, and they dared not get close to it.
The queue in front of the ghost city was endless.
They openly welcomed the unfriendly eyes of the ghosts and directly cut in line to the front.
Under the black basalt wall, ghost messengers holding red lanterns were registering one by one at the door.
Zong Jiu looked inside and found that the roads in the city were neat and tidy, and the lanterns hanging on both sides were bright red.
The houses on both sides of the road were lined up one after another, and there were even carriages pulled by little ghosts on the road. At a glance, it was full of ghosts.
The underworld, as the place where people belong after death in traditional Chinese culture, is actually not as scary as people imagine.
The human world has its own rules, and the underworld naturally has its own rules. Now it happens to be a period of great suffering in the human world. People themselves are not full, so how can they have the opportunity to have children, so the chance of reincarnation has also decreased sharply.
The ghost messenger did not raise his head, and his hands that turned into bones flexibly wrote on the rice paper, "Line up one by one, those who cut in line will get whips."
When he dipped his ink to write, he felt that the breath was a bit like a living soul, so he looked up.
"So you're here to look for someone."
The ghost waved his hand and asked the ghost boy beside him to take over his job first, then he said, "Have you brought...?"
The Yin Po turned sideways, revealing the white-haired young man behind her.
"Not bad."
After seeing Zong Jiu, the ghost showed a satisfied look, stroked his long beard and said, "Follow me."
He led the two into the government office closest to the city gate.
After entering the government office, Yin Po was welcomed to the front hall, and the ghost took Zong Jiu to the back hall alone.
Zong Jiu was not a fool. After a series of changes, he guessed that Yin Po had the intention of destroying the bridge after crossing the river, so he quietly clenched the soul-catching bell in his sleeve.
Who would have thought that after the ghost took him to the back hall, he looked at him with pity and said directly, "Ask."
Zong Jiu didn't know what was going on, so he followed the original plan and asked about the old woman in Tongbai Village three years ago.
The ghost didn't expect that he would ask this question. He said in surprise, "That person has long been in the immortal class. How could she be in our small underworld?"