Those bloated ghosts, who had risen again after being drowned by Shen Liang, were pinned in place within the River of the Underworld, unable to move a single inch.
Inside their turbid eyes, the deathly white film peeled away layer by layer, revealing the hollow pupils beneath. They then quietly sank to the bottom of the water, disappearing into the dark gloom.
The phantom of the River of the Underworld swallowed the entire white flood. The water level began to recede, the waves slowly calmed, and the surface gradually returned to a quiet stillness.
Taotie couldn't help but gasp. Even though this was the second time he had seen the Young Palace Master display such a divine ability, he still instinctively felt a strange, inexplicable awe toward that black river.
Although he didn't know why, he couldn't help but marvel—as expected of the Young Palace Master!
“Young Palace Master, are those ghosts... completely dead?”
“Not quite dead.”
Chen Zhou's gaze fell upon the water beneath his feet. The ghosts that had sunk into the River of the Underworld had not dissipated. Instead, they suspended in the dark currents, eyes closed and bodies curled, completely motionless like a group of sleeping infants.
“They are just temporarily at peace.”
Plague Rat limped forward from behind. The contaminated white portion on his tail had mostly faded, but a small section was still bald, making his face turn green with rage.
“My Lord, this place is incredibly bizarre. Even when the white water was right in front of me, I still couldn't sense whether it was real or fake.”
As he spoke, he turned his gaze to the side.
Shen Liang stood by the riverbank and suddenly knelt down with a thud, giving Plague Rat a fright.
“Young Palace Master.”
“This subordinate lost his composure and acted recklessly, leaving the group without the Young Palace Master's permission. If not for the Young Palace Master's timely rescue, this subordinate would have likely caused a major disaster again.”
He did not try to defend himself.
Thinking back to the violent emotion that had surged from the depths of his heart just now, he still felt a lingering dread.
That feeling was all too familiar.
It was exactly the same as the chaotic years after his death when he had first turned into a ghost. His mind had been filled with nothing but tearing, drowning, and destroying, his rationality stripped away layer by layer until only the most primitive slaughter intent remained.
In such a strange place, if he had truly lost control, he had no idea what he would have become.
“This subordinate is willing to accept punishment.”
Shen Liang prostrated himself on the ground.
Taotie stood nearby. Seeing Shen Liang kneel, he was taken aback at first, and then he grew anxious.
He knew the rules of the Xuandu Ghost Mansion all too well.
Acting without permission and causing trouble for the master was a grave offense in the Great Emperor's Palace.
At best, one would be tied to a soul-suppressing pillar and whipped a hundred times; at worst, one would be sealed in the eighteenth level of hell for a hundred years. That place was pitch-black and was the closest thing to Wujian Hell—even malevolent ghosts like them couldn't withstand it.
Furthermore, this had happened right in front of Chen Zhou. For Shen Liang to cause such a scene in front of the Young Palace Master, if Lord Xuandu found out...
Taotie didn't dare to think further.
He threw his hammer to the ground, and his massive body also knelt down.
“Young Palace Master!”
Taotie's voice was urgent and muffled. “Skinny just lost his mind for a moment!”
“He was a native of Southern Tang when he was alive, so returning to his homeland naturally made him emotional. He has lost control before, and his mind is unstable. He was probably just beguiled by the illusions here. He really didn't do it on purpose!”
“Please don't punish him too severely! If you must punish someone, punish me! It was my fault for not keeping an eye on him!”
He shuffled forward on his knees, his plump body squeezing next to Shen Liang as he stared eagerly at Chen Zhou.
Shen Liang was nearly knocked over by the squeeze. He turned his head and glared at him. “Fatty, get up. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Bullshit! How does it have nothing to do with me? I was right next to you when you ran off. If I had pinned you down earlier, you wouldn't have—”
“Shut up!”
“...Oh.”
Chen Zhou didn't particularly care. He had made another discovery.
“Get up.”
Shen Liang and Taotie froze at the same time.
“Young Palace Master...?”
“You did well.”
Shen Liang was stunned, his face completely blank.
Chen Zhou said thoughtfully, “If you hadn't charged into this alley by chance, we wouldn't have discovered that this fragmented space actually has another space nested inside it.”
“The fragment of the palace earlier was empty, containing no valuable clues. It was purely an illusory shell.”
“But this place is different. Although there are illusions here, there are physical objects hidden beneath them.”
“Reality within illusion. This indicates that the structure of this fragmented space is far more complex than the one we encountered before.”
He stood up and patted the dust off his hands.
“The core of the Myriad Ghost Array is very likely hidden inside a nested fragment like this, where reality is hidden within illusion.”
“If you hadn't rushed in just now, we might have missed such an important clue and wasted a lot of time in those empty shell fragments outside.”
Plague Rat clicked his tongue.
“Oh? This fellow actually made a contribution?”
He squatted down and poked Shen Liang's arm with the tip of his tail.
“Come, tell us, how on earth did you find out that touching the paper money would let you jump spaces?”
“Lord Rat saw it clearly from outside just now. Before you touched that pile of ash, you were standing there like a wooden post. Why did you suddenly run like crazy the moment you touched it?”
Shen Liang instinctively pulled his arm back at the poke. After a moment of hesitation, he honestly confessed.
“This subordinate... didn't actually discover anything.”
“This subordinate only caught a scent.”
“It was the same scent that was on Shen Shui Yuan back at the ruins.”
Shen Liang lowered his eyelids.
“The moment that scent entered my nose, I felt like something was wrong with me.”
“My limbs felt bloated, a fire flared up in my chest, and I couldn't help but chase after the scent.”
“Then I saw that pile of paper money. As if possessed, I reached out and touched it. Suddenly, the sound of rain around me vanished, and when I opened my eyes again, I was by the river.”
As he spoke, he recounted the scene he had witnessed by the river in full detail.
Squire Zhou crouching on the ground to collect his corpse, wrapping him in a straw mat, burning paper money, and that sentence drowned out by the wind and rain.
“...He seemed to say, 'With the red rain and flood calamity, human lives must be used to fill the gap.' The wind was too loud after that, so I couldn't hear clearly.”
When Shen Liang finished, even he felt that this matter carried an indescribable bizarreness.
Chen Zhou had been listening quietly. At this moment, he lowered his eyelids in contemplation for a brief moment before suddenly asking a question.
“Before Squire Zhou pushed you into the river, what did he say to you?”
Shen Liang was startled and tried hard to remember.
“...At the time, he said, 'If they don't die, I will die.'”
Shen Liang repeated the words, and then he frowned.
“This subordinate didn't understand back then, thinking he meant his business was failing and he was forced to take drastic measures.”
“But looking back now...”
He recalled Squire Zhou's face right before he pushed him into the river.
That face had still been smiling, but there had been a deep, dark shadow under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept well in a long time. He had lost a lot of weight, and his cheekbones were protruding.
He unconsciously clenched his fists.
He had known Squire Zhou for ten years. Although that final scene had shattered all trust, those ten years of memories were still real.
Squire Zhou was not a cruel person. He didn't even dare to watch a chicken being slaughtered in the kitchen.
“To make him do such a thing... this subordinate feels that it didn't seem like something he wanted to do himself.”
Chen Zhou nodded. “Then who do you think threatened him?”
Shen Liang couldn't answer.
In his past life, he was merely an accountant for a rice shop in Linhe Town, living a quiet and law-abiding life. His greatest achievement had been keeping the ledgers neat, and he had never interacted with anyone powerful enough to threaten a local wealthy squire.
Chen Zhou didn't expect him to answer either. He asked another question, “Besides the flood, was there any other major event in Southern Tang during the year before you died?”
Shen Liang thought back carefully.
But those memories were already blurry.
During the years he had spent as a water ghost bringing disaster to the world after his death, his mind had been chaotic and his memories distorted. Many details had long since shattered.
He could only barely recall fragments—floods, famine, plagues, and people dying everywhere.
“This subordinate... can't remember clearly.”
Shen Liang lowered his head in shame.
“Those days were too chaotic, and my memories are incomplete.”
Chen Zhou thought for a moment and changed the question.
“Did your water ghost form manifest immediately after your death, or did it take some time?”
Shen Liang did have some memory of this and replied immediately, “My memory is quite blurry, but... it felt like not long after I died, I realized I could control water.”
“At the time, my resentment was too strong, and my mind was unclear. Whenever I saw anyone near the water, I wanted to drag them down.”
“Then have you ever wondered if turning into a water ghost so quickly after your death was truly just because of your strong resentment?”
Shen Liang was stunned.
He had never thought about this question before.
Turning into a water ghost, terrorizing the area, accumulating bad karma, and then being chosen by Xuandu to enter the ghost mansion for cultivation—all of these had always seemed natural to him.
With resentment piercing the heavens and dying a wrongful death, wasn't it only natural to turn into a malevolent ghost?
But now that Chen Zhou had asked, he faintly realized—was his transformation process a bit too fast?
When ordinary wronged souls died, they usually had to drift for a long time, slowly turning into malevolent ghosts only after their resentment accumulated to a certain level.
Yet he seemed to have skipped that step entirely in a very short time after his death, even gaining water control abilities that far surpassed ordinary water ghosts.
He had always attributed this to his talent in the ghost path; otherwise, he wouldn't have been selected by Xuandu from among so many evil ghosts.
“Does the Young Palace Master mean...” Shen Liang's voice carried a hint of hesitation, “there was something fishy about this subordinate turning into a water ghost back then?”
“I'm not sure,” Chen Zhou said frankly.
“But since you mentioned that the scent of paper money causes you to lose control, and we've now discovered that the one who burned paper money for you back then was Squire Zhou, there is definitely a connection here.”
“We just can't see the full picture yet.”
He raised his head and looked at the gray sky.
The numerous fragments still hovered overhead, layered and disorderly.
Strangely, the auspicious cloud above his head, which had been unable to find its direction before, actually stabilized a bit at this moment.
Chen Zhou's heart stirred.
Jiu'er's fortune was indeed still present.
Although the rules of the Myriad Ghost Array suppressed most of their senses, the fortune of the Auspicious Noble destiny had not completely failed; it was merely distorted.
Shen Liang had managed to stumble into a nested space within the fragmented space, and Chen Zhou had found a clue so quickly among the countless fragments. Perhaps the fortune of the Auspicious Noble was beginning to exert its influence.
In that case, Chen Zhou decided to follow the guidance of fortune.
He looked down at Shen Liang. “Which fragment do you think we should go to next?”
Shen Liang was dazed. “S-such an important matter... is for this subordinate to decide?”
“It's fine. I was just choosing randomly anyway.”
Chen Zhou smiled. “Just trust your first instinct.”
Shen Liang hesitantly raised his head, looking at the fragments floating in the gray sky.
His perception was heavily suppressed, making it impossible to see what scenes were inside those fragments.
But at this moment, the bloated figures he had seen in the rainy night earlier involuntarily surfaced in his mind.
Aunt Sun's face.
The woman he had dragged into the water. If nothing went wrong, her bones, along with those of many others he had drowned, were still buried at the bottom of this river.
Shen Liang's throat bobbed, and as if possessed, he said, “This subordinate... wants to go down and take a look.”
He pointed at the turbid, yellowish-brown river water beneath his feet.
“This river should be the place where this subordinate died back then.”
“The people this subordinate drowned... their bones should still be down there.”
Chen Zhou raised an eyebrow.
“Into the river?”
He looked down at the flowing water. Without asking why, he immediately expanded his Ghost Domain. With the River of the Underworld leading the way, the dark water seeped out from beneath his feet once more, enveloping everyone within the Ghost Domain.
“Let's go.”
The water's surface split open, and wrapped in Chen Zhou's Ghost Domain, everyone sank together.
The river was extremely turbid, with silt and decaying plant debris mixed together, making visibility incredibly low.
However, the flow of the River of the Underworld carved out a clear space around Chen Zhou, keeping the filthy elements at bay.
Everyone continued to sink until their feet touched the soft silt.
Chen Zhou looked around and could see quite a few white bones scattered in the riverbed's silt.
Some had been washed apart by the currents, their limbs scattered in all directions.
Others still maintained a complete posture, curled up in a ball as if they had been swept into a corner by the water before they died and never rose again.
Standing among those white bones, Shen Liang's face grew paler and paler.
With just a glance, every scattered bone seemed to remind him of the scene back then—how he had dragged that person into the water, and what kind of desperate, painful expression had been on their face as they died.
Beside one of the skeletons, he saw a child's cloth shoe, tiny and rotted to the point where only half of it remained.
Shen Liang's breathing began to quicken again.
He turned his gaze away, forcing himself not to look, but those white bones seemed to be everywhere. A finger bone was buried in the silt beneath his feet, and a rib bone was wedged in the crevice of the nearby rocks.
Then, his gaze suddenly froze.
In a depression where silt had accumulated on the riverbed, a corner of fabric was exposed.
The fabric had been soaked by water until its original color was unrecognizable, turning pitch-black, but there was a dark patch on the cuff. Although mostly rotted, Shen Liang would never forget that shape for the rest of his life.
It was Aunt Sun's shirt.
He instinctively reached out to touch it. The moment his fingertips brushed against the patch, the surrounding river water suddenly vanished.
The turbid silt disappeared, and the scene before him completely transformed in an instant.
The light was dim, with low wooden beams overhead and a rough rammed-earth floor beneath his feet.
The air carried the scent of stale rice, mixed with dampness and mold.
Rate on N.U.
