Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Five minutes later.
“What are you doing here?” Lonemoon tried his hardest to suppress the urge to beat her up as he scanned her from head to toe. She was completely uninjured. Si Yu had only called him ten minutes ago, yet Shen Ying’s body had traveled tens of thousands of miles.
“Oh. Someone pulled me here.” Shen Ying tilted her head.
“Who is he?”
She paused and glanced at Yun Heng beside him. She gnawed on the fruit that Chef just passed to her and said, “Perhaps… the Rich Ghost?”
“Rich… Song Ren?” Lonemoon exclaimed. Was he not called Mischievous Ghost? “What did he bring you here for?” Song Ren was a ghost with grievous energy. Chef had said before that grievous energy has great impact on remnant souls. The last time the remnant souls attacked the city, his grievous energy exploded.
“I don’t know.” Shen Ying shook her head.
“What about the others?”
“I don’t know.” Shen Ying continued shaking her head.
“Holy shit, you don’t know anything and you came here obediently?” Where are your brains? Have you eaten them all up?
Shen Ying shook her hand out and answered after awhile, “Isn’t he molding now? It’ll be horrible for me not to bother about him.” Did I not just lose him for a second?
“…”
Molding? What did she mean?
Lonemoon looked confused. Yi Qing, on the other hand, thought of something and asked, “Master is saying… Song Ren’s grievous energy is acting up again?”
“Hmm.”
Chef frowned. He thought about the grievous energy that suddenly grabbed Yun Heng and disappeared. Master was saying that she came here because of the grievous energy. Given the distance, Yi Qing was guessing that Song Ren’s outburst of grievous energy this time was much bigger than the last.
But why was it that Song Ren’s grievous energy did not do that before? How did it carry someone through tens of thousands of miles?
Unless.. it was because of this place!
Yi Qing looked around at the Yin Qi that was still filling the surroundings. Then, he faced the person beside him. “Yun Heng, what kind of place is this northern region? Why is that even though the remnant souls have entered Samsara, the Yin Qi remains?”
Yun Heng stared blankly back at him. Honestly, he replied, “Well… I don’t understand the exact reason as well. It’s said that this place has been like that since the ancient times. The story is that this place has always been extremely cold, so it attracted many evil spirits. As time went by, so much Yin Qi accumulated that nobody could get rid of it anymore. The northern region did not use to be this big. It only got bigger because more and more Yin Qi accumulated here over time, and the number of evil spirits increased as well.”
“That’s right…” He suddenly recalled something else and continued, “It is also said that the evil spirits over here used to consume human beings. A few hundred years ago, deviant ghosts that consumed people appeared. All our Mystic cultivator ancestors gathered them over here.”
He sighed as a pained expression crossed his face. “Ever since that day, more and more deviant ghosts appeared. The entire northern region grew in size until it became this big.”
“Why are you suddenly asking about this?” Lonemoon could not help but ask. “What are you thinking?”
Yi Qing frowned and explained what was in his head. “If those deviant ghosts could affect Song Ren, then the grievous energy in his body-”
“Could be related to this northern region!” Lonemoon finally understood. He turned to Yun Heng. “Where was the place to which evil spirits first became attracted?”
“It’s the north-most region!” Yun Heng pointed in front of them.
Lonemoon and Yi Qing exchanged a meaningful look and nodded curtly. “Let’s go and take a look!” They were going to do it, whether to find out the truth or just to look for that Mischievous Ghost.
The direction that Yun Heng pointed out was where the Yin Qi seemed the thickest. Yi Qing brought Shen Ying and Lonemoon pulled onto Yun Heng. Four of them mounted swords and headed straight in. The closer they got, the darker their surroundings became. The Yin Qi was frighteningly thick. They could faintly see several remnant souls fly past them.
This was the mortal world, yet they felt like they were in the Underworld. In fact, the Yin Qi here was even thicker than Yin Qi in the Underworld.
Lonemoon’s heart fell. Why was there such a place in the mortal world? What was going on?
Before he could figure things out, he felt the load on his sword lighten.
“Aiya!” He did not know whether it was because he was not used to it – Yun Heng, who had been standing on the sword, suddenly let out a loud cry and fell off headfirst. Before Lonemoon could react, Yun Heng reached the ground. Thankfully, Lonemoon had not been flying that high.
Lonemoon pursed his lips. How could he fall down from the sword? This was one embarrassing Soul Formation cultivator. He must have been one of a kind!
“Hey, are you alright?”
“I’m… alright!” Yun Heng rubbed his face and got to his feet. He looked confused.
“If you weren’t balanced, you should have told me first. I would have set up an array!”
“Exalted Master, that’s not true,” Yun Heng shook his head. “Someone… pushed me.”
“What?” Lonemoon paused. Lonemoon was just about to reach out to help Yun Heng back up on the sword when something seemed to move beneath his feet. “Be careful!”
The next moment, he shot a burst of spirit Qi which trapped the person on the floor and pulled him up.
There were a series of swooshes as thorns appeared on the ground where Yun Heng had been standing. Each one of them emanated chilling Yin Qi that was capable of getting rid of any kind of spirit Qi.
Yun Heng jumped, frightened. His entire body stiffened. If Exalted Master Lonemoon had been a second slower, he would have been pierced by a thousand thorns by now.
“There are no arrays here.” Yi Qing activated his divine perception to scan the surroundings and shook his head. “There are also no strange auras.”
Lonemoon frowned. Was this really purely coincidental? Did Yun Heng happen to stumble upon these thorns by chance?
He decided to put this aside. Later on, however, as they flew deeper in, Yun Heng seemed become possessed by an ill-fortune ghost. Everywhere he went, something bad happened.
He dropped into mud here, then walked into stone walls there. First, he got burned by deviant fire that fell from the sky, then even remnant souls who were just floating by and which had no intention of doing any harm would suddenly turn around and scare him, so that his legs felt like jelly.
If Lonemoon had not been watching over him, Yun Heng would have slipped and died a couple of times.
The more important thing was, these unfortunate events seemed to only be happening to him. The other three were unaffected. Not even a single hair on their heads was missing.
After Yun Heng nearly fell off the sword for the 101st time, Lonemoon conjured a seal to catch him in mid-air. These things were coming instinctively to Lonemoon now. He started to pull Yun Heng up.
Beside him, Chef’s expression suddenly changed. “Father Niu!” Suddenly, a burst of sword Qi brushed past them. There was a ring and a crash. Something was rebounded by the sword Qi.
Lonemoon took a closer look and saw that there were many black bodies around him. They were all charging toward the group, looking mildly explosive.
Grievous energy again!
The Yin Qi was too thick, so he had not realized the grievous energy earlier. His heart jumped, and he quickly set up an array to protect the entire group of people. Compared to the earlier attacks which were only directed at Yun Heng, these bodies of grievous energy were unbiased.
More and more bodies of grievous energy appeared. Faintly, they could hear chilling ghostly cries.
“Quick, look down!” Yun Heng, who was yanked over by Lonemoon, exclaimed as he pointed downward. His face was drained of all color.
They all looked down. The pitch-black wasteland was now filled with countless illusory figures. Each of them looked terribly frightening.
“Remnant souls!” Yi Qing shouted.
