Chapter 123: Fengdu Guest (Thirteen)
The sound coming from the soles of his feet had a long tail and was sharp and piercing, so sharp that Lu Ren felt his head buzzing in protest.
At that moment, he felt a black screen in front of his eyes and completely lost the ability to think.
It was Chongtong who was quick to pull back Lu Ren in front of him, and then punched the ground quickly. This finally stopped the sound.
Although the sound stopped abruptly, Lu Ren's ears were still ringing with sharp tinnitus. For a few minutes, he could not hear what the people around him were saying. He felt something flowing slowly under his nose. He reached out and touched it belatedly, and realized that it was actually a nosebleed.
"Are you okay?" After a long while, the tinnitus finally subsided, and Lu Ren heard the question from Chongtong again.
Lu Ren, who finally recovered, shook his head after confirming that there were no other major problems with his body, indicating that he was fine.
Then he looked at the place where Chongtong had just punched, and found a flattened blue-gray face deep in the pit. It could be vaguely seen that it was the face of a child, whose nose was completely broken in the impact just now, and whose cheeks were also sunken. This face seemed to have fainted because of Chongtong's attack, with eyes rolled up and motionless.
At this time, Lao Li walked quickly forward, bent down to observe the face on the ground, and then let out a long sigh of relief.
"Luckily, it's just a young ghost face. If it was an adult ghost face, your head would probably explode on the spot."
After hearing this, Lu Ren felt his body stiffen. He didn't expect that this city of wrongful death was full of traps that could easily make him go there without returning.
"Ghost face?"
After hearing what Lu Ren said, Lao Li was a little surprised: "You don't even know what a ghost mask is?"
For the people in the City of the Dead, ghost faces are very common. They are like mushrooms growing in the damp corners of the house that have not been cleaned for a long time during continuous rainy weather.
Since the city of the dead is full of ghosts who died suddenly and have a lot of resentment, and this piece of land is located deep in the underworld, the city made into a vertical shaft effectively isolates the leakage of resentment, successfully keeping these resentments all year round and lingering in the city of the dead. So over time, things called "ghost faces" began to grow in the resentful city of the dead. They are more like plants, but with human faces. Generally, they will whisper and repeat one or two catchphrases of the dead souls before they died. Because the resentment absorbed is relatively mixed, these catchphrases are not fixed, and are not coherent. There is no logic at all, and there is no practical meaning.
Lu Ren, who came to the City of the Dead for the first time, of course had no way of knowing the existence of these local specialties of the City of the Dead, so he shook his head honestly.
Old Li explained, "Although the ghost mask won't attack actively, it will scream violently once it's touched. Last time, I saw a new ghost being shaken to death by its scream, and it could never be reincarnated. So you still have to be a little careful when walking. But you're lucky, this ghost mask seems to have just condensed not long ago, so it's not that powerful."
The power is not that strong? Lu Ren looked at the blood on his hands and realized that if he was not careful next time, what he would get on his hands might be his own brains.
Looking at the ghost faces like landmines on the ground, Lu Ren felt a headache. After all, the lighting of this city of the dead was purely white paper lanterns, and the blue flames were not bright enough. These ghost faces were too similar to the colors of the floor tiles and buildings, which made Lu Ren feel a little tricky.
At this time, Lao Li seemed to have thought of something, and he walked around to the city gate. Lu Ren then discovered that there was a small house next to the city gate that looked like a security booth. After Lao Li went in, there were sounds of "ding-ling-dang-dang" and heavy objects falling from the small house - Lao Li seemed to be looking for something.
After a while, Lao Li came out holding a thin paper lantern, but the black word "甸" (Demon) was not written on the white lantern. A blue candle was burning inside the lantern, dimly illuminating Lao Li's face, making him look eerie and scary.
Old Li respectfully handed the lantern in his hand to Lu Ren and said, "It can be seen that this is the first time for Little Lord Ming to come to the City of Wrongful Death. The terrain here is complicated and there are many wrongfully dead ghosts. It would be safer to bring a soul-guiding lantern with you."
Lu Ren did not refuse Lao Li's kindness. He took the paper lantern handed to him by Lao Li and stroked it carefully. It was a very ordinary lantern. The handle was made of ordinary green bamboo, the frame was also woven bamboo, and there was nothing special about the white paper used to cover the lantern.
"Soul-guiding lamp?"
Lao Li said, "That's right. The fire in this lantern comes from the volcanic hell. The ghosts in the underworld are most afraid of falling into that place, so they will automatically avoid it when they see it. If you hold this lantern, the ghosts on the ground and in the wall will feel afraid and will naturally go back into the wall on their own initiative."
After hearing what Lao Li said, Lu Ren quickly thanked him.
Chongtong, who had already walked a few steps forward, saw that the two had finished the handover, and asked in a low voice: "Is it done?"
Chongtong came to help, and Lu Ren didn't want to keep him waiting too long, so he responded, "Okay, okay, I'll be right there." He took two quick steps forward with the lantern in hand, trying to catch up with Chongtong in front of him.
Mr. Zhang, who was lagging behind, said to Lao Li: "This 'Little Lord of Hell' seems to be weird in every way."
Indeed, there have always been only ten Hades in the underworld, and this newly appeared "little Hades" is obviously not one of them. Under what circumstances would the underworld have an extra Hades besides the Ten Courts of Justice? Moreover, why would this little Hades return from the Blood Basin of Suffering with the Lord of Mount Tai?
Since taking office, the new Lord of Mount Tai has only been wandering between the Sea of Blood and the church, keeping to himself and never interacting with other Lords of the Underworld. Why is he now acting together with this little Lord of the Underworld whom he has never met?
And this little Lord of Hell didn't even recognize the ghost mask and the soul-guiding lamp. It seemed that he knew nothing about the underworld. This was really too suspicious.
Old Li felt that Mr. Zhang’s suspicion was not unreasonable, but——
"But the aura on his body is undoubtedly the Ghost King Seal of the Sixth Palace Hades."
Mr. Zhang has not figured this out yet, so he suggested: "Just wait and see."
Old Li nodded.
After saying that, the two of them walked towards Lu Ren, who had obviously gone in the wrong direction under the guidance of Chongtong, who didn't know the way, and reminded him loudly: " You two , the elevator is in this direction."
Lu Ren quickly turned around and walked in the direction pointed by Lao Li and Zhang. As he walked, he couldn't help but ask Chong Tong beside him: "Don't you know the way?"
Chongtong, who had led me the wrong way, was not embarrassed at all. He said expressionlessly, "I have not been to the City of the Dead in the past fifty years."
The implication is that the elevator was built recently, how would I know.
Lu Ren: “…”
So why are you leading the way?
With the paper lanterns and Lao Li's guidance, the journey became smoother, and they got into the sightseeing elevator smoothly. The elevator was transparent, and they could see the scenery outside very well. As the elevator gradually rose, Lu Ren gradually got closer to the stairs above his head.
He didn't notice it because he was far away at first, but when he got closer, Lu Ren discovered that there were densely packed hands on the stairs, like dead grass attached to the outer surface of the stairs, with five fingers spread out and motionless.
After seeing these hands, Lao Li seemed to have a headache: "How come these hand grasses are growing so lush again? I only asked Ah Fu to weed them once ten years ago."
Mr. Zhang nodded. "It may be that the population has grown rapidly recently due to the development of technology. There are more ghosts in the City of the Dead than before, so the resentment is heavier than before."
Old Li thought what Mr. Zhang said made sense and nodded. "We need to put weeding on the agenda. Otherwise, every year they will secretly catch several lost dead ghosts and bury them in the stairs to become nutrients."
Mr. Zhang responded indifferently: "Yeah."
Although the way the two chatted was more like casual talk between ordinary colleagues, Lu Ren, who was listening to them, was terrified.
Isn't it a bit too frivolous to just say "hmm" to such a scary thing? And isn't it a bit too scary that the so-called hand-grass can eat ghosts? It can no longer be described as "weeding" in a simple sense, right?
Although he felt mixed emotions, Lu Ren was just a passer-by after all, so he couldn't say much. He stood stiffly in front of the glass of the sightseeing elevator with his back to Lao Li and Mr. Zhang, looking at the human hand grass on the outer surface of the stairs not far away with a horrified expression. He felt a little scared, and his eyes began to wander unconsciously in the elevator.
It was at this moment that Lu Rencai finally noticed that the elevator did not press the button for the top floor, but instead pressed the button for the twenty-first floor.
Lu Ren, who had thought they would go all the way up to the exit of the City of the Dead, was stunned when he saw this.
Lu Ren asked in confusion: "Aren't we going directly to the exit?"
Old Li said, "It should be so, but the passage between the City of the Dead and Fengdu is only opened during the Zhongyuan Festival every year. The rest of the time it is locked, so we still need to go to my residence to get the key to open the city gate."
Each floor of the City of Wrongful Death is like a ring of trees in the City of Wrongful Death. The first batch of Wrongful Death ghosts who entered the City of Wrongful Death built their own residences on the bottom floor of the City of Wrongful Death, and then new ghosts poured in every year and continued to build on the upper floors. Although the old ghosts have passed away, the new ghosts will also occupy the residences of the old ghosts below, but in fact there are quite a few old ghosts who are unwilling to reincarnate. They often hide in their own nests all year round and rarely go out. There is basically no one like Lao Li who likes to wander around and provide help to the new ghosts.
Generally speaking, the lower levels of the City of the Dead are inhabited by various unjustly dead ghosts who died early.
Old Li died early enough, so his residence was on the 21st floor.
In response, Old Li said mysteriously: "You'd better be quiet when you walk. The person living downstairs from me is Emperor Yang of Sui. He doesn't like noise upstairs. If you disturb him, he will knock on the ceiling with a wooden stick."
"Hasn't he been reincarnated yet?"
Mr. Zhang sneered, "Of course not. He moved his underground palace into the City of the Dead. There are so many gold, silver and jewels, and countless maids and servants buried with him. He has to carry the fetus and start all over again. His quality of life is worse than it is now. He is not that stupid."
Lu Ren thought about it, indeed, he had lived this long, but he was still penniless, a social animal, not as rich as a dead person. Thinking of this, he couldn't help but burst into tears.
Just as Lu Ren was daydreaming, the elevator slowly slowed down - it reached the 21st floor.
