., Update the latest chapters as soon as possible!
"I'm just meeting to die here."
Qu Dingchun replied like this.
Every year, Cave City distributes many thousands of gold gifts, but not everyone who receives a gift can receive a birthday gift worth thousands of gold.
Although the ghost king is vicious, just like the self-proclaimed "Dharma King of Mighty Virtue in the Ten Directions", he is an evil god who is being sacrificed, not a vicious ghost who acts purely with cruelty.
He has rules.
"What rules?"
"Give me all your family assets."
"Is this enough?"
"If there is not enough, take your life to make up for it."
Qu Dingchun lit his chest.
"My own life or the lives of everyone around me." When things came to a close, he seemed to be much more open-minded than that day. "No matter how stupid you are, you know how to choose."
So there was a banquet in front of us - one unlucky guy made an appointment with several other unlucky guys who had the same problem, had a good meal and drank, and died in time before dusk came.
Qu Dingchun wanted to introduce Li Changan, but Li Changan waved his hand to stop him.
"If you are imprisoned into the cave city after your death, you will probably become a ghost. There will be no place to burn incense. What's the use of knowing names and taboos for a poor Taoist?"
The dining room became increasingly bleak.
Bang!
But the scribe who had been immersed in drinking wine suddenly stood up, threw the wine bottle on the ground, pointed his halberd at Li Changan and cursed angrily:
"You little guy! Are you here to see grandpa's joke?!"
"What's so funny about a dying person?" Li Chang'an shook his head, pulled up a chair and sat down, "I'm here to borrow something."
The scribe sneered: "I have given my life and property to others, what else can I borrow?"
"The poor Taoist wants to go down to the cave city, but the way is difficult to find, and he wants to be guided. Today I am bothering you, not for anything else, but for your hands..."
Li Changan said calmly to the various faces on the table.
"Thousands of gold stickers."
…………
dusk.
When the last evening bell falls.
The open ditches and culverts of Qiantang breathed out thick yellow fog, so the sky suddenly became dark and the city suddenly became quiet. There were living people, dead people, poultry, livestock or other things, regardless of whether they were rich or poor.
Young and old, all held their breaths, extinguished the lights, huddled in their own shacks or tile houses, and waited for dawn with trembling fear.
Only in the deserted streets, the wind blew the paper ashes and sobbed, and the lingering incense and cold candles were still swaying and sparking.
Er.
Bursts of advocacy suddenly appeared in the dead silence.
If you listen carefully, it sounds like the song "Peach Peach Presentation" is a song meant to celebrate birthdays.
The music gradually became clearer, and the blurry outline of a line of carriages and horses was faintly visible in the fog.
At the front of the carriages and horses, someone held a lantern to guide the way, accompanied by festive cheers and funny dance steps.
Getting closer.
Only then can you see clearly, where is the lantern and where is the dancing?
The "man" who led the way was as skinny as a stick, but a pustule larger than his head swelled out on the top of his head. His scalp was as thin as rice paper, and the pus was faintly swaying inside, exuding a turbid light.
The long and thin neck was overwhelmed by the load, and the head hung on the chest.
Then the huge head staggered forward, leading it to this and that position, as if dancing.
Behind it, there are several drummers. In addition to the suona, sheng, and pipe in their hands, each of them has shackles on their necks. The shackles are connected with crossbars, and the crossbars are connected to a cart.
The cart is richly decorated, luxurious and heavy, and the heavy burden is placed on the shoulders of the propagandists. Suffering squeezes out of the chest and pours into the instruments, making the "Peach Presenting" in the fog even more high-pitched and festive.
"Singing" and "dancing", the team rolled over the paper ashes and incense candles all over the city, and stopped in front of a restaurant.
The guiding ghost held up its huge and misshapen head, and a strange smile appeared on its face, as if it was about to speak.
Suddenly there was a sound of drumming in the fog.
It’s still the song “Presenting Flat Peach”.
Then, another team of identical carriages and horses drove up to the building.
Then, the sound of trumpeting and the sound of wheels turning continued, the third team, the fourth team, the fifth team...
Not long after.
Eight teams of carriages and horses crowded the street.
At the same time.
More carriages and horses appeared in the vast yellow mist.
Or visiting a wealthy family, and greeting the ashen-faced passengers amidst the suppressed cries of young, old, women and children behind the wall.
Or stop at a wine shop where no one is watching, but the aroma of wine and meat is overflowing, and bring out a fresh corpse.
Or in front of a certain temple, the way is blocked by the gloomy-looking protectors.
…………
Fan Liang sat stiffly in the car.
The skin would turn red at one moment, and turn pale at another.
Just like in the bottom of his heart, excitement, expectation, anxiety, and fear were all intertwined, just like cold water overturning a frying pan, causing his heart to explode.
He was not an ordinary "guest" who was forcibly invited, and he did not receive a "gift of gold". He took the initiative to have the Ghost King's Banquet on his own initiative.
In order to get the "thousand gold post" from others, he also spent a lot of money and thought. Fortunately, Cave City only recognized the post but not the person, so his efforts were not in vain.
As for.
There were rumors among the people that he was suffering from mental illness.
The wizard hired with a lot of money laughed at himself as the best gambler in the world.
The wife invited monks and Taoists to exorcise the evil spirits to no avail, so she secretly colluded with her parents' family to seize the inheritance.
The colleagues who gave themselves "gifts of gold" kowtowed on the first day, and on the second day they were gearing up to grab business after they were finished.
He knows all this, clearly!
But he also knew that if the inside information he learned was true, his birthday gift would definitely please the Ghost King, thereby obtaining an unprecedented big business and becoming the leader of the entire industry.
What if the news is false? Oh, what’s wrong with people dying for money?
Thoughts change.
"Guest, we are here."
A sweet call sounded from outside the car.
He trembled, hugged the gift box tightly in his arms, suppressed his fear and got out of the car.
…
It was foggy outside the car.
It's hard to tell where you are.
All he could see ahead was a ditch entrance as big as a doorway. It was dark and deep, like the open esophagus of some kind of monster, blowing out cold and slightly putrid wind.
Fan Liang shook his head again unconsciously.
After freshening up.
He was astonished to find that the carriages and horses that had been encouraged when they arrived had disappeared without a trace, leaving only a guide ghost standing in front of the cave entrance with a strange smile on his face.
Next to him was a rather tall man, wearing shabby clothes, with only a pair of straw sandals under his feet, and carrying a wooden box - perhaps containing a treasure worth thousands of gold - casually held in his arms.
strangeness?
When we came, weren't there many carriages and horses traveling with us? Why was there only one guest besides myself?
No time to think too much.
The guide ghost was already urging him to enter the cave entrance.
Or.
Falling into the cave city.
…
Moss grows in the culvert, making it slippery underfoot.
Fan Liang soon discovered that his boots with several layers of leather soles were not as effective as straw sandals.
I stumbled accidentally and almost slipped.
"guest."
The deformed smiling face of the guide ghost is in front of my eyes.
Fan Liang's breathing suddenly stopped.
A sweet voice whispered in her ear: "Do you need my help?"
Fan Liang shook his head vigorously.
Ambition is one thing, fear is another.
Fortunately, the journey is not long.
The road ahead was suddenly blocked by stagnant water. The water submerged half of the sewer, turning the culvert into an underground river.
There is even a wooden boat tied to the "riverside".
Fan Liang was not surprised.
Although it is not the peak time for tide watching on August 18th, as August approaches, the sea tide gradually builds up, and the tide will flow back into the city along the ditches and rivers. Every year, there are always low-lying areas in Zhufang City that are submerged by sea water.
Therefore, it is reasonable for underground rivers to appear underground. However, if the underground ditch becomes a waterway, wouldn’t the Cave City become the country of Ze? Then did the ghost king and his envoys all become water ghosts?
Complex emotions will inevitably lead to random thoughts.
When Fan Liang put away his distracting thoughts, he found that he had boarded the boat and sailed towards the depths of the "underground river".
The surroundings suddenly became quiet.
This kind of quietness is not the quietness of walking in the ditch before.
At that time, there were still slight noises, the wind hissed in the ears, the mosquitoes buzzed in the face, and the mice squeaked in the dark. But now, except for the slight sound of the boat paddling across the water, and my own heartbeat and breathing
, there is nothing else.
The uncomfortable turbid light emitted by the guide ghost could only barely illuminate the dark water beside the boat, and the tunnel dome squeezed down above the head. There were black holes in front and behind, and nothing could be seen.
The world collapsed into a small piece on the ship.
Fan Liang couldn't help but tense up his body, not daring to make any noise, so as not to become an outlier in this small, quiet world. He even lowered his breathing and lowered it, so much so that he almost felt dizzy due to lack of oxygen.
A little light emerged from the darkness ahead, and the world suddenly expanded.
He finally dared to take a deep breath.
You can see more and more light sources ahead.
They were dots of light green fluorescence, sometimes wandering under the water, sometimes jumping out of the water and flying on the bow of the ship. They were not afraid of people, and some fell on the edge of the ship and shed a faint light.
Fan Liang subconsciously stepped back.
Ambition and greed drove him to throw himself into the underworld, but his instinct of fear made him wary of everything underground.
It wasn't until more fluorescent lights fell on the boat without hurting him, and the man traveling with him even caught one and put it in his hand to look at it, that he got bold enough to lean over and take a closer look.
Wrapped in the light spots, it turned out to be ladybugs, like fireflies, with dots of light on their tails.
He opened his palms, and a ladybug flew into his hands, quiet, sparkling and cute.
Fan Liang breathed a long sigh of relief and laughed.
In any case, this little thing somewhat relieved the anxiety and fear accumulated during this journey.
As the boat went deeper, the fluorescent bugs became more and more dense.
They gathered in groups and hovered on the water. The fluorescent light reflected on the water surface, and the water surface reflected the fluorescent light. The two sides intertwined with each other and extended into the depths of the ground, as if a tributary of the star river in the sky had strayed into this underground corridor.
The boat passed by.
The "Milky Way" then jumped up, dancing on the tunnel dome to form a starry sky, splitting into two, and falling into the water like a shower of stars from both sides of the boat.
Fan Liang was dazed for a moment and couldn't help but lean out of the edge of the boat and lean over to look into the water.
The fluorescent light converges, making the water flow as clear as nothing, so shallow that it seems like the "river bottom" is pulled right in front of you.
There are shallow aquatic plants growing on the bottom of the water, woven into mottled green carpets, and underneath the mottled...
Fan Liang's smile instantly settled on his face, his body froze, and his pupils dilated rapidly.
Mottled.
It was a corpse - probably a woman, whose skin was half dry and half rotten, huddled among the algae, with a skeleton nestled in her arms and several ribs pillowed under her head.
The guide ghost stabbed the bamboo pennant in his hand into the bottom of the water, stirring up sand and corpses.
The boat carried Fan Liang forward, and one skeleton after another slid past his eyes, men's, women's, adults', small people's, complete, incomplete, only bones left, wrapped in carrion...
Layers upon layers of corpses paved under the water.
That bug?
A human head with still-skinned flesh lay on its back in the sand, its hair floating gently in the water waves, like swaying slender water plants.
Suddenly.
The pus-white eyes rolled slightly, and then, a ladybug emerged from the corner of the eye, dragging light green fluorescence, jumping out of the water and landing on the edge of the eye socket on Fan Liang's face.
"ah!"
He suddenly let out a shrill scream, fell onto the boat, and desperately swatted at the insects on his body.
But the harder he struggled, the more insects fell down.
His barks became more and more pitiful, like a dog whose spine had been broken.
Finally, the guide ghost spoke.
When it turned around, it still had the weird smile on its face and the same sweet voice.
"Guests, don't worry, the bug doesn't eat living people. It landed on you, but it's just waiting for you to die and rot so that it can lay its eggs."
The screams stopped abruptly.
Fan Liang calmed down instantly.
But it's not because of the guide ghost's "comfort", but...
The gift box is missing!
He was so frightened just now that he didn't care about it for a moment, but he didn't know where the gift box was thrown.
In the blink of an eye, he searched every place in the small boat, but he couldn't find it!
Where? Where?!
Cold sweat flowed down his pale face, and his brain was hit by a huge dizziness. He bit his lip hard and let the pain awaken some sense.
His eyes couldn't help but fall into the water.
He gritted his teeth and decided to jump down and search all the bones under the water.
The gift box was handed to me.
"Get it," said the man traveling with him, "I almost fell into the water just now."
Without thinking, he snatched it away, quickly opened it, and pressed the box firmly into his arms. Then he gasped violently. Even though ladybugs crawled all over his face, there was no reaction at all.
So long.
I finally regained my composure and hesitated whether I should say thank you.
Raising his head, he fell into a daze again.
But I saw that the dome and sides of the waterway in front were carved with dense reliefs. On the reliefs were people of all ages, men, women, and children, each with several strange dogs around them. They were either being chased or bitten.
The craftsmanship is exquisite, and the characters are all vivid, especially the expressions on the faces of men and women, which may be fear, pain, or regret. They are not only lifelike, they are simply enlarged and copied faces of living people who have suffered the tragic things on the sculptures.
In front of my eyes.
The fluorescent light was slightly sparse, but the light green light turned pale green, making the reliefs on the wall even more gloomy and terrifying.
The voice of the guide ghost sounded faintly:
“However, if there is anyone who neglects, deceives, insults, insinuates the Dharma King and his envoys, or fails to fulfill the Dharma’s decree or breaks his promise beyond the time limit, the ghosts and gods of the Soul Catcher Department should be sent to capture their souls and throw them down into the cave city, where they will be bitten by dogs day and night.
His limbs were severed and his skin and flesh were completely rotten, even if it lasts a hundred years, he will not be forgiven."
"The one who takes charge of the soul-catching division according to the decree of the King of Dharma is my Lord..."
At some point, the guide ghost stopped holding the boat and allowed the boat to slowly drift forward.
It sits cross-legged on the bow of the boat, and its voice is no longer sweet.
He raised his hand and pointed to the center of the relief - a ghost and god with a slender figure and a pale face, sitting on a tall war horse.