Chapter 43 Mahakala controls life and death

News spreads quickly among monsters. After all, everyone has a keen nose and ears. The smells all over the mountain are their circle of friends, and the whispers brought by the breeze are real-time broadcasts.

In addition, while Lu Yao was investigating the lame Taoist priest, he hurriedly drew this picture of "Jing Zhen Eating Ghosts" and asked informants to distribute it to various villages outside the city, just to give a big surprise to Sect Master Xue who had just built the sect.

The reputation of Duotian Sect Master for exorcising demons and ghosts spread quickly.

After listening to the whole story, Li Zhou said calmly, "I'm sorry to have troubled you by bringing this picture with me."

"Not difficult, not difficult." The yellow-skinned man happily rolled up the blueprint and stuffed it back into his armpit. "But it was a bit troublesome to steal it from those vixens..."

Realizing that it had let the cat out of the bag, it suddenly fell silent, its eyeballs rolled around, and it smiled charmingly with its eyes narrowed into slits: "You don't know, your decree made us honest monsters very happy, otherwise there would always be people who suspected that we had bad intentions. Why is it so difficult to make a living in this world..."

Li Zhou interrupted and said, "Don't make any noise. Tell me what happened in Longgou Village."

Humph, she wants to personally change Xue Jingzhen's reputation. We in the Duotian Sect, from top to bottom, are all immortals who eat wind and drink dew. The talk of eating ghosts and monsters is simply alarmist!

Having made up his mind to show off his magical skills, Li Zhou turned his horse around and followed it to Longgou Village while listening to the yellow-skinned beast's story.

Li Zhou was confused and confused after listening to Huangpizi's long-winded narration for a long time before he could figure out the whole story.

Because they lived at the border between Da Zhou and Quanyi, the villagers were often harassed by Quanyi. Their food, chickens, dogs, and clothes were often looted by Quanyi soldiers disguised as bandits.

Therefore, when the news of the marriage came out, the villagers of Longgou Village were the happiest.

The Dog-barbarians seemed to have been warned by their leader, and they politely drove a group of cattle and sheep to apologize to the villagers.

The villagers looked at each other and saw that the dog barbarians had truly repented, put aside their past prejudices, and were ready to get along well with their neighbors.

The Quanyi people built a road specifically for the princess's marriage. Seeing that they worked day and night, sweating profusely and were really hard-working, the villagers of Longgou Village would go and deliver meals to them from time to time.

They were also well-mannered. After eating the villagers' food, they often came to the village to help, such as plowing the fields, grinding the mill, and carrying water. They could do everything.

After a few visits, the relationship between the two sides became better and better. The Dog-barbarian people brought in a statue of a god with a tall and slender figure. His towering bun was beautifully decorated with hundreds of braids hanging down. He wore a bull-head crown, had three heads and eight arms, and held swords, halberds, drums, ropes and other magical instruments in his hands.

The dog barbarians said that this was Mahakala, the god of darkness, who possessed boundless magical powers, suppressed evil spirits, controlled life and death, and was omnipotent. Their changes were due to the teachings of Mahakala.

The villagers murmured in their hearts, isn't the Lord of the Underworld the most respected person in the Underworld? Where did this Mahakala come from, and how can he control life and death?

Maybe the Dog-barbarian people have little culture, or the translation is wrong.

Just like the Taoists call the Lord of the Mansion the Northern Great Emperor, while the monks and nuns call Him the Mian Ran Ghost King.

The villagers who were more receptive placed the statue in the shrine next to the Wong Tai Sin Temple, and burned incense to Mahakala while they worshipped Wong Tai Sin.

Wong Tai Sin is very powerful, and the villagers all know that he is a good deity. They put Mahakala next to him, firstly so that they can worship him together if he is useful, and secondly to ask Wong Tai Sin to help watch over this deity.

If it is an evil creature, I will have to ask the immortal to help.

"How could Xiao Yao have such ability? It's also my fault. I protected them too well. I didn't know that there are always people who are better than you and there are always better things..."

"What did Mahakala do?" Li Zhou interrupted the yellow fox hastily, letting it start sighing, which was about to go on and on.

The yellow fox wiped the corners of his eyes with his claws and continued talking.

It was half a month ago that I discovered something was wrong.

The mountain lord of Xili Mountain wants to hold a full-moon banquet for his granddaughter. All the monsters within a hundred miles are rushing to the mountain. When there are too many monsters, it is easy for people to get into trouble.

Huangpizi quickly restrained the villagers and asked them to reduce unnecessary travel. If they needed to buy things, they should buy everything in one trip and stay at home until after the full moon banquet.

But it heard that in a village all 128 households were wiped out.

Although Longgou Village is remote and its land is barren, it has grown to more than 200 households under its protection. It also hopes that the population will continue to grow and the incense in its temple will become more and more prosperous.

The villagers have always been obedient. After the immortal gave the order, they all paid attention. Anyway, no one came to rob them now, and their lives were stable at home, so there was no need for them to run away.

Huangpizi thought that he could spend the full moon banquet smoothly in this way.

Who would have thought that since Shanjun started sending out invitations, people have been disappearing one after another, a man who didn't come back from chopping wood, a child who was never found after playing hide-and-seek, a woman who was washing clothes at the doorstep...

At this point, Huangpizi thought it was a monster, so he patrolled the village carefully for a few days, and vowed in anger to catch the monster.

Don't be too much of a demon. Longgou Village is under its protection. Can't you smell its scent? How dare you catch its people?

After patrolling for several days and finding nothing, the yellow fox frowned and realized that something was wrong.

Its gaze turned from monsters to ghosts. It searched the wells, willow tree roots, roof beams, toilets and other places where ghosts often appeared, but it didn't see a single ghost.

All the ghosts in Longgou Village have disappeared.

The yellow-skinned man was shocked and broke out in a cold sweat in an instant. In this situation, either the underworld suddenly checked the accounts and tortured all the wandering ghosts, or... there might be people practicing evil magic to collect ghosts, control ghosts, or even eat ghosts.

The yellow fox is the guardian deity of Longgou Village. He has taken care of everyone from top to bottom. Even if the Ox-Headed and Horse-Faced Ghosts, Black and White Impermanence come, they will give it some face and will not take all the ghosts away without saying a word.

After all, if it hadn't caused trouble from time to time and the yellow fox hadn't reappeared to drive it away, its position as the Wong Tai Sin wouldn't have been so stable.

"Little Demon definitely didn't hurt any villagers." Looking at Li Zhou's expression, Huang Pizi was afraid that the new decree issued by the leader of Duotian Sect would target him, so he hurriedly explained, "Those lonely ghosts never enjoyed happiness in their lives, and they would have turned into fierce ghosts after death. Little Demon reached an agreement with them that as long as they didn't harm people, he would share some of the incense with them. Therefore, over the years, the villagers of Longgou Village have been frightened at most, but have never suffered any substantial harm..."

Li Zhou nodded and said, "After you found out that all the ghosts were gone, what did you find out?"

The yellow-skinned man sighed for a long time before finally getting to the point.

In fact, not all ghosts disappeared. There is still a lost soul left, which is not much different from a ghost.

She called herself Yuan Jirui, the youngest daughter of Sima of Sizhou. She had been frightened since she was young, and one of her three souls left her body and floated all the way to Longgou Village.

Huangpizi once thought of escorting her back to the city. Sima of Sizhou is a fifth-rank official. If he can get in touch with the court and get an imperial decree, Huang Daxian will be a real land god, with a status higher than that of the city god.

But Yuan Jirui was a smart little boy. He said he would not arrive until a certain time. He stayed in the Blood Dragon Valley in the village which had long dried up, looking into the distance in the direction of Sizhou City, and refused to go back.

Huangpizi thought she was having a quarrel with her family, and thought that if a child suffered a little, she would realize that it was better to be at home, so he ignored her.

She wouldn't do anything bad anyway.

Now that I think about it, it’s a good thing that Yuan Jirui stayed, otherwise if it weren’t for Old Huang alone, we really wouldn’t have been able to find the source of this disaster.

Three days ago, Huangpizi sat in the temple, wondering where the missing villagers and wild ghosts had gone. He had searched inside and outside, when suddenly, he heard a rhythmic whistle coming from the Xuelong Valley.

It made an agreement with Yuan Jirui that if it found any clues, it would call it with the whistle of this rhythm. As a wandering soul, Yuan Jirui could hide himself more easily and thus see the unknown secrets.

I didn’t expect Yuan Jirui to have made a real discovery!

It quickly got up and prepared to go to Xuelonggou. Before it stepped out of the Wong Tai Sin Temple, it saw clusters of lotus-like yellow and white flowers growing in front of the shrine next to the temple, emitting a faint fragrance.

These beautiful flowers grow from rotten bodies, swaying in the night breeze and spreading their seeds.

Huangpizi looked at the corpses in astonishment. They were men, women, young and old, all villagers of Longgou Village.

You are an outsider, and you dare to hurt my believers in my territory?

The yellow fox couldn't bear it anymore and rushed out with his teeth bared.

But the next moment, something terrible happened.

Around the three-headed, eight-armed statue, groups of black clouds appeared, and dog-barbarian people with human-skin drums hanging from their waists walked out of the black clouds.

A closer look revealed that the bodies of these dog-barbarians were illusory, and if one did not have some cultivation, one would not be able to see them.

This is not a human being, it's clearly a ghost.

Feeling something was wrong, the yellow fox retreated back into the temple and cautiously looked out through the window.

These dog-barbarian people, whose bodies were unknown, lined up on both sides of the statue, carrying out iron mortars filled with blood and flesh, iron saws burning with blazing fire, and copper cookers burning with boiling oil...

The various torture instruments made the yellow-skinned man shudder with fear.

Next, the dog-barbarians began to shout the names of the missing villagers and the vanished wild ghosts in strange voices.

Every time they shouted, a ghost was pulled forward and confessed his crimes.

The statue just sat there without making any sound, but the dog-barbarians grabbed the ghost and said things like, "For your sins, you should go to the hot hell..." They threw the ghost into a copper pot, boiled it with hot oil, threw it into an iron mortar and pounded it into meat paste, or tortured it repeatedly with saws, steel forks, iron hooks, hammers and other torture instruments.

After a night, the yellow-skinned man thought that his life was over and he was really hooked into the underworld, where he saw the tragic conditions of everyone after death.

However, when the sky was about to brighten, the swaying yellow and white flowers, the drifting black clouds, the expressionless dog-barbarians, the numerous torture instruments, and the ghosts disappeared without a trace in an instant.

The yellow fox stood there for a long while, thinking for a moment that he was dreaming. When he was struggling between leaving and staying, the eyes of the statue rolled and looked straight at him.

It turns out that people already knew it was nearby!