Chapter 175
Chapter 175
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 175
Chapter Title: Dare Not Speak Loudly, Lest We Alarm the Ones Above
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Chen Shi trudged arduously through the marshland. All around him were many others like himself, half their bodies sunk into the mire. They had to exert every ounce of strength to pull their legs free, managing only half a step in ages.
Not far off, a man was walking when his leg suddenly dropped into the marsh. He reached down to fish for it, groping around for a long while before finally retrieving his leg.
He reattached it and pressed on.
Chen Shi and the others in the marsh had no idea where this journey led, yet everyone pressed forward in a daze, as if some voice was calling to them, guiding their path.
Pale blue flames flickered in the nearby pools of water, so faint they were hard to spot without close inspection.
Chen Shi watched as a woman got touched by one of those blue flames. The spot ignited like a wick, her body serving as the oil. She burned steadily, shrinking smaller and smaller.
The woman didn't cry out in pain. Her body dwindled until it had burned clean away.
"Could be a flame that ignites the soul," Chen Shi thought to himself.
Wherever those blue flames appeared, a white flower often grew—like a lotus, but pure white with no other hues, and no fragrance either.
Chen Shi surveyed his surroundings, his heart sinking. "I'm dead."
The Old Beggar's power was too overwhelming. One poke of his finger, and he'd died.
Against a being of that caliber, any resistance was futile.
This was his second death that he could remember.
But according to Granny Sha, it was actually his eleventh.
He'd died ten times before this.
In those prior instances, Grandpa, Granny Sha, and Blackie Pot had pulled him back from the underworld.
"Grandpa's dead. Granny Sha's fighting for her life against the others. No one knows I've died."
His face fell.
Helpless against the faint call, Chen Shi followed it onward, laboriously lifting his legs one step at a time.
He couldn't resist the summons, so he could only cautiously steer clear of the pale blue flames to avoid being reduced to ash.
He spotted a familiar face and his eyes lit up. "Hall Master Wu Daozheng of the Martial Virtue Hall!"
Amid the ghostly horde was a burly figure—the hall master of the Heavenly Granny Society's Martial Virtue Hall, also trudging through the marsh.
Overjoyed at seeing someone he knew, Chen Shi struggled toward Wu Daozheng.
But Wu Daozheng's expression was wooden, his head and face caked in blood. He showed no sign of recognizing Chen Shi.
"You died too?"
Chen Shi greeted him warmly, reaching up to pat Wu Daozheng's head. He found the man's skull caved in from a blow and chuckled. "Got a wound on your head? Someone smashed you to death? You're tall—if I tried to hit you, I'd never reach. Did they get you while you were kneeling? Don't you recognize me? I'm Chen Shi! Chen Shi, the Scholar Instructor of Red Mountain Hall. I wiped out your Heavenly Granny Society's Child-Harvesting outpost. You're one arrogant ghost!"
Chen Shi grew irked. This ghost was ignoring him.
Wu Daozheng seemed addled by the blow, shambling forward in a stupor.
Most ghosts were like him. None were as lively as Chen Shi.
Suddenly, an odd sound echoed from the sky, like someone chanting an incantation. The heavens split open, revealing round portals one after another.
Chen Shi looked up to see small boats dangling from those portals on ropes.
The boats were only six or seven feet long and a little over a foot wide, slowly lowered on the lines.
Heads poked out from the round openings—boys and girls. They peered around, saw no danger, and slid silently down the ropes without a sound, landing lightly in the boats.
Each boat fit just one person and came equipped with oars. They paddled cautiously through the marsh, dodging ghosts like Chen Shi, steering toward clusters of blue flames.
As Chen Shi struggled onward, he watched. Some children brushed the pale blue flames by accident, igniting their souls. In moments, they burned away, leaving only bleached bones in the boat.
Others navigated past the flames to the white lotuses, carefully plucking them with ecstatic glee before turning back the way they'd come, rowing furiously.
"They're from the living world!"
Chen Shi realized. These boys and girls were living humans from the yang realm. Boys with intact primordial yang and girls with unbroken primordial yin could resist the underworld's yin energy.
Cultivators who practiced soul arts often sent such youths into the underworld to hunt treasures.
Back then, Granny Sha had sent her son Xiang Tianyu into the underworld for the Three Lives Stone, and he'd never returned.
"Probably some wealthy clan or prestigious sect sending people to pilfer white lotuses!"
Chen Shi saw a girl of twelve or thirteen rowing past nearby and shouted at once, "Miss, save me!"
His throat burned fiercely. When he opened his mouth to speak,
a rasping voice emerged from his gullet—like a ghost's tongue that no living ear could comprehend.
"Save me."
He stretched a hand toward the girl.
She seemed from a poor family, her clothes ragged and coarse. Her hair was tied in twin buns with a white silk ribbon, a red dot painted on her forehead at the third eye's spot.
A paper spirit talisman hung at her waist. Though she couldn't understand ghost speech, she saw Chen Shi reaching out in plea and grasped his intent.
Her boat paused beneath a rope. She extended a hand, trying to pull him from the muck onto her vessel. But they were still two or three steps apart.
The other boys and girls in their boats waved frantically at her, signaling not to save the ghost, to flee while undiscovered.
The twin-bunned girl hesitated, gripping the rope with one hand while reaching out with the other for Chen Shi to grab.
At that moment, a rumble shook the sky.
Her face changed. She tossed the white lotus to Chen Shi, seized the rope, and yanked hard. Hands in the round portal above hauled the rope at once, lifting her and the boat upward.
"Eat it!"
The twin-bunned girl whispered urgently. "I'll come back next time and save you!"
Chen Shi caught the lotus. The girl and her boat vanished into the portal as it sealed shut.
The other portals saw ropes yanked taut too, pulling the boys and girls skyward.
Suddenly, one child lost his grip. With a splash, he and his boat plummeted into the marsh, creating a loud thud.
The ghosts in the marsh halted as one, frozen still.
The ropes hauling the children jerked upward in a frenzy, as if something horrific was about to happen!
Chen Shi looked up to see a pair of enormous eyes materialize in the sky, like rifts tearing the firmament. The eyes snapped open, pupils rolling wildly in search of the noise.
Then the sky canopy lowered, revealing a colossal face—a青-faced, fanged demon with pointed ears, looming so close from afar it seemed pressed to the marsh.
The giant demon reached down, pinched the fallen child, and popped him into its mouth, savoring the rare treat.
After devouring the child, the giant demon extended a finger, counting the white lotuses in the marsh one by one.
Seeing this, Chen Shi hurriedly stuffed the twin-bunned girl's lotus into his mouth, chewing and swallowing it whole. His heart pounded wildly.
The giant demon counted for a moment, then noticed many missing. It unleashed an enraged
shriek that nearly scattered the souls of the marsh ghosts. Some shattered outright, collapsing into the mire and sinking away.
Chen Shi steadied his soul. He saw the shattered ghosts dissolve into puddles soon after falling, igniting with pale blue flames.
Where many ghosts died, pools formed amid the blue flames, and white lotus tips gradually emerged.
Chen Shi paused in realization. "The ghosts in this marsh turn to water upon death, nourishing the lotuses! This is a demon's farm, a field for growing white lotuses!"
This place differed vastly from ancient tales of the underworld!
Every ghost in the marsh would become fertilizer for the white lotuses.
The giant demon gradually ascended, merging with the sky and vanishing its form, eyes closing.
After a moment, snores rumbled from the heavens. Chen Shi waited, only to see a slit crack open in the sky. The demon peeked slyly through it, eye rolling to surveil its watery field, lest more lotuses be stolen.
Another moment passed, and the eye slowly shut.
Snores rose in the sky once more,
fading gradually softer. The demon had truly fallen asleep.
Chen Shi composed himself and spotted a small boat nearby. He waded toward it.
Suddenly, his body felt much lighter. He easily lifted his legs from the marsh!
It was the white lotus's effect!
He realized he'd eaten it, strengthening his soul!
The faint otherworldly call's pull on him had weakened considerably.
White lotuses were treasures!
Chen Shi clambered aboard and eyed the other lotuses in the marsh. He rowed forward, heading for them.
As a ghost now, he no longer feared the underworld's yin energy.
Chen Shi plucked a lotus and swallowed it whole. Sure enough, his soul grew stronger.
He rowed on, harvesting and eating lotuses along the way. His soul strengthened rapidly. In short order, after dozens, his body felt light as air. Stepping on the marsh, he even floated atop the water.
He could even muster mana now, summoning a gust of阴风 with a wave!
Chen Shi kept harvesting. After over a hundred lotuses, his soul solidified, almost feeling corporeal.
A strange power circulated within him—soul force, mending his soul's damage and nourishing his spirit.
"If I keep this up, I'll soon eat my way to ghost king! Huh, what's this...?"
Soul force flowed through him after eating another lotus, surging to his limbs—but something blocked it at his brow.
Bracing against the boat's sides, Chen Shi leaned down to peer at his reflection in the water.
There, at his brow, three inches deep into his brain, dense talismanic scripts formed a heavenly palace structure, myriad deities seated within, suppressing something!
As Chen Shi examined it closely, he glimpsed his reflection's background sky: an eyelid suddenly snapped open behind it!
"The demon's awake?!"
Chen Shi went rigid with terror, not daring to twitch.
The eyelid peeled wider, snores still rumbling from the sky—but growing louder by the second.
The pupil beneath stared unblinking, as if pinning the lotus thief.
Chen Shi's hands clenched the gunwales white-knuckled, legs tensing.
Abruptly, the demon's face plunged downward with a roar. "Lotus thief!"
Without thinking, Chen Shi shot forward on a howl of阴风, feet skimming the ground. Each stride covered six or seven zhang, thundering miles in an instant.
The giant demon crashed from the sky, towering thousands of feet amid the marsh. Demonic flames wreathed its feet, steel fork gripped in hand, ghostfire wreathing its head in swirling orbs.
One step, and it caught Chen Shi. It thrust its fork down, bellowing,
"Steal my lotuses? Become manure!"
Just as it would impale Chen Shi, a rumbling boom echoed. Far off, the giant demon spotted a black-smoke-and-fire-shrouded mountain charging at it—then it slammed into him, sending him tumbling back!
The demon righted itself, thrusting its fork at the behemoth—then blanched at its appearance. Leaping skyward, it vanished into hiding.
The charging beast was Blackie Pot. After driving off the giant demon, it crouched low, tail wagging furiously, scattering nearby ghosts by the dozen. It grinned expectantly, tilting its head for Chen Shi to climb aboard.
Chen Shi mounted its back. "Blackie Pot, did Granny Sha send you to find me?"
Blackie Pot nodded and bounded across the marsh like lightning, toward a blaze in the distance.
Chen Shi glanced back at the lotus-filled marsh. "Good spot. Gotta remember it for next time."
He recalled the twin-bunned girl who'd tossed him the lotus. "That favor needs repaying."
"Weird, though. Why risk death to steal white lotuses from the underworld? Even a cultivator like me could die anytime. For them?"
He could tell the lotus thieves had no real cultivation. One slip, and they'd perish in the underworld. Even surviving multiple trips, yin energy would erode their bodies, dooming them soon enough.
Worth such peril?
He puzzled.
"And those talismans in my soul—why so like the ones sealing Fifth Uncle? Grandpa's doing? What's he sealed in my head?"
Chen Shi wondered. Grandpa had never mentioned it!
"Little kids row their boats, stealing soul-return lotuses home.
Dare not speak loudly, lest alarm the ones above."
On Phoenix Ridge of Henggong Mountain lay the Taiping Sect's headquarters. Several girls huddled together, the twin-bunned one among them.
"You finally snag a soul-return lotus and give it to a little ghost?"
A hefty Taiping Sect woman kicked the twin-bunned girl sprawling, then lashed her viciously with a whip. "Want to save a ghost? Save yourself first! You lot—no lotuses? No supper tonight. Starve, the lot of ya!"
The twin-bunned girl curled in the corner. Another girl sidled up, pulling a steamed bun from her bosom. "Little Clove, saved this for you. Eat up, fill your belly a bit."
Little Clove shook her head. "You eat it. I'm not hungry."
Her stomach growled fiercely. She thought, "Next trip to the underworld... he'll still be there, right? Then I can save him."
End of chapter.