CH 96

“It seems to be me.”

Yin Ren shrank to Zhong Chengshuo’s side. His voice was so soft that it was almost inaudible. His breath sprayed on Zhong Chengshuo’s ear, giving him an itchy and warm feeling.

Li Nian walked to Fu Xingchuan, who was busy with his things, and whispered something. The green willow branches that locked the two of them gained a bit more strength and became tighter.

Zhong Chengshuo looked at the weird murals covering the walls, then turned to look at Yin Ren, then turned back to the murals. He really couldn’t match the figure in the murals that looks like the Ghost King to Yin Ren—the Yin Ren he saw most often only had two modes: “lying on the sofa” and “lying on the sofa”.

…But he had indeed seen a similar scene.

In the Archive, when Yin Ren went out of control, Zhong Chengshuo saw a “person” covered with red seals.

The three-meter-high, blood-red thing staggered in front of many evil things. The evil things behind it, no matter how big or small, all bowed their heads and walked in a regular manner, like loyal soldiers. But the thing moved very casually. A pair of pale barefoot feet stepped into the mud, lining the skin with its dark brown stains, almost turning it black.

It walked in the long-destroyed past, and there were soft sounds of fragmentary collisions on its body.

Embroidery, shackles, wooden talismans, and pieces of jade, together with the bell on the thing’s feet, intertwined into an ominous symphony. The red cloth and yellow talisman on its body were similar to Yin Ren’s “Evil Spirit” form.

What was hidden under those layers of seals?

If that was Yin Ren from thousands of years ago…

The red figure gradually shrank and blurred, completely overlapping with the person on the mural. Yin Ren, who was standing next to him, had a smile in his eyes. Behind him was layer after layer of hallucinatory research buildings.

Zhong Chengshuo held his breath for a while. Instead of speaking directly, he held Yin Ren’s hand and wrote quickly on his palm.

[Why do you say “it seems”?]

Yin Ren also took advantage of the situation and changed to written communication: [I haven’t been here before, so I can’t be sure. Sunken Society was very annoying before. When they came to me, I would hide if I could and beat them up if I couldn’t.]

Zhong Chengshuo was speechless. He conservatively estimated that the Yin Ren “before” was likely to have existed around the Gong Dynasty.

[But at that time, I was mixed with messy evil things, but it’s only me who’s covered in red.] Yin Ren’s strokes became heavier than before, as if there was confidence in his movements.

Zhong Chengshuo’s fingertips paused on Yin Ren’s skin. Yin Ren admitted too readily, so he was unable to ask.

What was he going to ask?

Why did Sunken Society focus on you?

Why were you involved with evil things?

…Why does it sound like when you refer to those groups of “evil things”, you seem detached from them as if they have nothing to do with you?

But Zhong Chengshuo also understood that no matter what the issue was, it certainly couldn’t be made clear with just a few words, let alone a detailed discussion right here and now. Yin Ren probably also knew this. They were always patient, so they could wait.

Zhong Chengshuo manicured and rounded nails pressed on the palm of Yin Ren’s hand, forming a little depression on the warm skin.

He knew in his heart the “correct” way to deal with it, but he always felt that he should ask something—anything at all…

“Does this red color have any special meaning?”

A few steps away, a voice suddenly sounded. Yin Ren’s hand instantly froze. For a moment, Lord Ghost King thought his “whispers” with Zhong Chengshuo had been discovered.

The person who asked the question was Qi Xin.

It could be considered that she was quite brave considering she was an ordinary person who was swept up in this nightmarish place and was “still able to take care of herself”. Qi Xin could be described as a fierce warrior among fierce warriors. With a pale face, she still managed to squeeze out some spare energy to ask questions.

She observed the murals calmly, without the curiosity that Zhong Chengshuo had. She just looked at them and asked her question casually with a flat tone, as if she were asking, “Why do you put bean paste in this dish?”

Qi Xin stretched out her hand. Her fingertips stopped a few centimeters away from touching the redness. Her pair of plain shoes stepped on a corpse’s feet, and next to the deformed monster’s feet there was an artificial leather surface that gave off a dim light.

Even Professor Li glanced at her quite unexpectedly.

“You guys are talking about your own things. I just want to try and help,” she continued. “And this minister is also wearing red clothes. Isn’t this a symbol?”

Before her words fell, Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo turned their heads to look at Fu Xingchuan.

“It’s festive,” Fu Xingchuan said. “And don’t people say that ghosts like to wear red? In case I die, I can become the fiercest ghost in Haigu.”

Li Nian couldn’t stand it. They could hear his teeth grinding in his voice. “Look at our situation. Be serious.”

“…How to put this… This custom was started in the Gong Dynasty.” Fu Xingchuan coughed twice and put away his joking expression. “The research department at that time found that evil things may not be able to remember human faces, but they were particularly sensitive to ‘red’ and ‘weird attire’. I’m not helping my opponents remember me.”

Qi Xin slowly turned her head. “If I understand correctly, as long as you stick to this outfit, once we encounter danger, you’ll be treated as the first target?”

“It’s a bit pretentious if I say that myself.” Fu Xingchuan scratched his head. “Anyway, it’s hard to say whether this person in the mural is a cultivator wearing red or a naturally red-clothed evil spirit.”

“Doesn’t your department specialize in dealing with these things?” Qi Xin turned her head again.

Fu Xingchuan was about to laugh when Professor Li interrupted, “The world was in chaos in the last years of the Gong Dynasty. At that time, many research information was lost in the flames of war, so our records have gaps.”

During a century of troubled times, papers and texts disappeared. Only the murals deep underground slept quietly, and only specious legends had been passed down for thousands of years.

‘That’s it,’ Yin Ren thought.

Huajisi was extremely concerned about the preservation of their archives, but he didn’t see any relevant records of the late Gong Dynasty in Shian’s library.

Mortals were always so fragile and short-lived.

Even though they were deep underground, the eternal light of Sunken Society was still on. Compared to that, the amount of people in Huajisi that sacrificed their lives left behind only an <Encyclopedia of Metaphysics>, which was now known as <The Book of Exorcism>, was such an understatement.

An encyclopedia existed, yet why weren’t the most important truths recorded?

Yin Ren lowered his head and looked at the muddy ground. In the darkness, a gauze-like mist quietly diffused out of the stone crevices.

…Light mist?

Yin Ren grasped Zhong Chengshuo’s wrist and rushed straight to Fu Xingchuan. The latter was taken aback, and the ponytail behind his head almost exploded. Minister Fu instantly assumed a defensive posture when he heard his subordinate yell—

“There’s a ghost!” Lord Ghost King shouted hoarsely.

Fu Xingchuan: “……”

Whether Yin Ren was a mole for someone else or not, he truly wanted to beat this kid up.

The moment he realized that the mist had filled the air, he used a levitating technique to lift everyone up.

Surrounded by the fire dragons, everyone rushed out of one of the large windows and flew straight towards the buildings above. The buildings and their gaps were filled with milky white mist, and they rose and fell like the tide, as if they were a living thing that was breathing.

The mist was cold, with a biting malice that rejected everything.

It spread out of the crevices of the stones, flowing out of the mouths and noses of the strange corpses. It gnawed at their toes, trying to crawl up their feet and legs, with a touch that was close to a cold leech.

Fu Xingchuan stabbed more than a dozen golden needles into the floor, and at the end of the golden needles, flames erupted. The surrounding fire dragons suddenly became five to six times thicker, causing the mist to instantly dissipate.

Everyone swayed through the doors and windows like pinholes, passing exaggerated corpses. Each room they passed had a round crimson altar in the middle, and the style of the murals would change, yet only the dazzling red was vaguely the same.

Oddly, they were sprinting upwards, but the rooms were endless, as if they were constantly copied and pasted.

As the room looked newer, the withered corpses became more human-like, and the red figures on the murals were getting denser. The spacious research hall was like a dismemberment scene, with every corner splattered with dense “bloodstains” of human figures.

The fire dragons were still moving forward.

“Fuck, is it human? A giant ghost wall can be so fast?” Fu Xingchuan, who was leading, cursed.

This was inherently difficult for people to move, not to mention the strangeness in the mist. Even if it was just a simple mist, it still greatly enhanced the difficulty of them finding a way out.

Seeing the mist coming from all directions from the west, Fu Xingchuan made a quick decision and stopped in one of the most structurally complete research halls.

“This is a good place to defend. Lao Li, arrange defensive measures. I’ll try to find a breakpoint.”

The tried and tested Minister Fu didn’t seem anxious, but it was false to say he wasn’t worried.

If the mist and maze were really manipulated by humans, that person’s strength was certainly above him, but as for the evil things… 1,000-year-old evil things wouldn’t play these kinds of tricks and prefer a direct confrontation.

For example—

“Minister, there’s a big eyeball over there,” Zhong Chengshuo pointed out. “I can see there is a physical evil thing there.”

However, Yin Ren didn’t turn his head. He turned his back to the direction Zhong Chengshuo was pointing and looked at the crimson dots under the everlasting lamps.

They were standing in a research hall two hundred years ago. The hall was circular, with a large door opening on one side.

On the other side of the doorway, there was a huge, strange eye. That eye was like a child’s inferior toy, with a myriad of colors encircling it. If it weren’t for the round pupils of the five people flying around, causing it to zoom in and out, no one would be able to judge that it was an “eyeball” from a glance.

It squeezed hard into the hallway. Its edges deformed softly, and it made a wet and piercing squeak, like some kind of inflatable toy.

Fu Xingchuan glanced at it.

He almost had to show some kind of respect for Unit 9. After working with this unlucky group for so long, he witnessed all kinds of strange things. No wonder no one could escape here alive. Even if there was no mist, this wasn’t something that could be dealt with by just fighting it.

Phenomenon A-A682, Yellow Millet.

One of the extremely dangerous and extremely rare physical evil things that feeds on the corpses of other evil things. Yellow Millet can turn its body into a liquid or gaseous state. Although it doesn’t eat humans, it has no feelings towards them either, making it difficult to deal with.

…Rumors had it that the Great Celestial Master, Zhong Yi, who sealed the six Evil Spirits, rode on Yellow Millet.