32 Carrying the coffin and burying it in the rain

Before Hua Lang could react, the figure crashed into her arms.

"Yan Rong?"

Hua Lang lowered his head. The candle on the table was still burning, revealing a familiar and fragile face. The person had his eyes tightly closed, but his long eyelashes were trembling constantly. His lips were bitten white, and his whole face was terrifyingly pale.

——It was Yan Rong. He was clinging tightly to Hua Lang, preventing her from moving an inch.

"What’s wrong with you?"

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Hua Lang realized how stupid the question he asked was. This was obviously an attack of the cold poison.

Without caring about the tangled clothes, Hua Lang hurriedly half-helped Yan Rong up. After scanning the empty and dilapidated house, he finally dragged him to his bed. He almost half-knelt on the bed before carrying Yan Rong's trembling body onto the bed.

The bed board was a few years old, and under the weight of two people, it immediately protested with an unpleasant creaking sound.

Yan Rong seemed startled by the noise. He opened his mouth and uttered two weak words after a long pause, "Master?"

The hands that were tightly clutching Hua Lang's clothes loosened and instead grabbed the shriveled bedding beneath him, his knuckles turning bluish-white.

But after only a moment of clarity, he became drowsy again, mumbling, "Master, it's so cold..."

Hua Lang's wrinkled clothes were finally freed, and Meiqiu slowly poked her head out from her collar.

Hua Lang pushed the coal ball back with one hand, helped Yan Rong up and leaned her against the headboard, and shouted to Yan Rong, "Yan Rong, wake up."

Yan Rong half opened her eyes, her thick eyelashes weakly drawn on her lower eyelid, but she seemed to have regained some consciousness.

Hua Lang quickly rescued the quilt from his hands, then took his hand, took out a spirit storage stone, and said to Yan Rong:

"Don't be afraid. Follow my movements and draw out the spiritual energy from the Spirit Stone. It can suppress the poison in your body. After entering the Luoyin Secret Realm, if you encounter this situation again, you will be like today..."

When Yan Rong followed her guidance and touched the spirit storage stone with his fingertips, half an incense stick of time passed and bits of spiritual energy finally overflowed.

Hua Lang let go of her hand with relief and was about to get up, but Yan Rong seemed to have lost her support. Her body tilted and she fell limply towards Hua Lang, her face resting directly on her shoulder.

Yan Rong seemed to be unaware of all this, and her expression gradually calmed down in this posture.

Seeing that he had the spirit stone in his palm and his body was subconsciously absorbing spiritual energy, Hua Lang didn't dare to move for a moment and had to let him lean on his shoulder.

Hua Lang first quietly admired Yan Rong's face. After all, this was a look rarely seen in the daytime. This face, which was so gorgeous that it almost had the power to attack, was now weakened, like a withered flower, showing a decadent and weak charm.

Just as he was staring at Yan Rong in a daze, the sound of the wind outside the door suddenly became faster. Hua Lang immediately looked away guiltily and looked outside the door in an attempt to hide his mistake.

The wooden door that had been forgotten to be closed was wide open, and the dark night that filled the vision gave people a sense of unease, as if there was a monster in an invisible place, watching the people in the house, and the open door was like an invitation.

When Hua Lang was considering using spiritual energy to close the door, a white shadow rushed past the door, so fast that it almost left a white afterimage!

In just a few movements, the white shadow jumped onto the courtyard wall, and three long, stretched tails could be vaguely seen. Before I could take a closer look, it disappeared into the night in the blink of an eye like a gust of wind.

All this happened so fast. If the white shadow had not been so bright in the rainy night, and the glaring contrast between black and white had not been burned into Hua Lang's eyes, she would probably have thought it was just an illusion.

That is, a fox?

Although she hadn't slept all night, her mind was exceptionally clear.

Pure white, multi-tailed... Could this be Xie Hanjing?!

Hua Lang was frightened by her own guess, but the more she thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. After all, there were only two foxes here, one in her arms, and who else could the other one be but Xie Hanjing?

An hour ago, Xie Hanjing had clearly promised her that he would not interfere in the affairs of Luoshuizhuang. Late at night, he transformed back into a celestial fox and sneaked into the village, obviously to investigate the strange phenomena in the village.

Hua Lang was extremely anxious and wanted to get up and catch up with Xie Hanjing, but as soon as she moved, Yan Rong frowned and seemed to be in great pain.

Hua Lang no longer cared about teaching him how to use the spirit storage stone. She quickly circulated her spiritual energy to suppress the cold poison for Yan Rong. After Yan Rong fell into a deep sleep, she laid him flat on the bed and hurried out of the house.

Through the rain, Hua Lang walked for a distance in the direction where Xie Hanjing finally jumped off the courtyard wall, but the earthen houses in the village were in disarray and the paths were crisscrossed like a maze, and she soon lost her way.

There are only about twenty households in Luoshui Village. Hua Lang originally wanted to walk out of the maze in a straight line, but after walking for a long time, she still didn't reach the end of the village.

I don’t know how much time passed, but slowly, the rain became much lighter, and the continuous rain seemed to be hitting a barrier, making it difficult to hear clearly.

It seems like she has been down this road before?

Hua Lang frowned. She didn't know how many times she had wandered around the village, but until now, she hadn't found any trace of Xie Hanjing.

"Is this... cinnabar?"

Hua Lang stopped and squinted her eyes to identify the blood on the ground. Then she leaned over and touched the red marks on the mud with her fingers.

She smelled it first, then rubbed it between her fingertips. This thing must be cinnabar without a doubt.

The cinnabar was only lightly attached to the mud and looked very fresh. Hua Lang looked up and saw the cinnabar dripping, drawing a blood line that stretched into the distance.

Without much hesitation, Hua Lang immediately walked forward along the winding cinnabar road. After turning around in the village for a while, the path suddenly opened up.

She actually walked out of the village. The road outside the village was much easier to find. After all, she and Wang Shuiyi had walked these roads in and out many times in the past few days to set up the formation.

Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, thunder exploded in the distance under the light rain, instantly illuminating the flat and wide field.

At the same time, a group of human-shaped creatures covered in black were also reflected on the flat ground!

This scene was extremely terrifying and weird. There were about eight humanoid creatures in this group. They were carrying something square that looked like a coffin and walking stiffly in the rain!

The lightning flashed by for only a moment, and darkness returned in the distance, but Hua Lang's heart could not calm down for a long time.

The intense heartbeat almost drowned out the thunderstorm. Hua Lang's brain struggled for a moment, but curiosity about the truth finally overwhelmed his fear.

She swallowed and tiptoed towards the group of strange creatures carrying the coffin.

When he got closer, Hua Lang noticed that the wooden coffin was covered with red cinnabar symbols, as if it was suppressing some evil spirit.

The cinnabar writing was washed away and blurred, and the dripping cinnabar water flowed along the edge of the coffin like blood.

The traces of cinnabar seen along the way should have dripped from this coffin.

It seems that this coffin came from the village.

However, after a few moments of distraction, Hua Lang was suddenly shocked to find that the group of black creatures had disappeared from this vast plain without anyone noticing?!

How is that possible?

Hua Lang tried to calm down. She looked down at the blood-red liquid spreading across the ground, trying to identify the direction where the coffin had last disappeared.

The scarlet cinnabar lines were a bit messy, so Hua Lang could only half squat down and look more carefully.

“Crack—”

With the sound of wood squeezing, two pitch-black legs stopped before her eyes.

"What is the Immortal looking for?"

The sound was muddied by the sound of rain, and it exuded an inexplicable evil spirit.

Hua Lang was squatting in front of the cinnabar mark. When she raised her head, she saw Yu Song's face, which looked particularly pale and swollen after being washed and soaked all night!

“It’s you!!”

Hua Lang suddenly stood up, took a deep breath, and cautiously kept two steps away from them.

She looked behind Yu Song and found that the other seven creatures were indeed not evil creatures, but humans.

These eight people were wearing black clothes that looked like raincoats, but the "raincoats" had no hoods, and the material looked like the most ordinary coarse cloth without any water-proof function. The rain poured down on their heads without any hindrance, and the soaked black clothes stuck tightly to their limbs, but these eight people still seemed to be unconscious and quietly carried the wooden boards carrying the coffin.

"I came out to check the formation, what are you doing?"

Hua Lang looked meaningfully at the huge coffins on the shoulders of several people.

Yu Song said in an inexplicable tone, "Ah, we are at a funeral."

Hua Lang got goosebumps from his strange tone. She frowned, feeling a little uncomfortable. "A funeral so late at night? Besides, isn't it raining now?"

Rain hitting the coffin is clearly an ominous sign. Why would someone choose to bury someone when it rains?

Yu Song disagreed, and even smiled, saying, "Immortal, rain burial is a custom in our village. Only those who have made great contributions to the village can have the opportunity to be buried in the rain. Everyone in this village hopes to have the opportunity to be buried in the rain after death..."

Hua Lang's scalp tingled when he heard this. "Where are you going to bury him? Can I go with you?"

Yu Song looked at Hua Lang and said, "This rain burial cannot be seen by outsiders. If you have nothing else to do, please return to the village. While the rain is still going on, we should continue the funeral."

Hua Lang met Yu Song's eyes. There were strands of hair stained by raindrops on his eyeballs, but he didn't seem to feel uncomfortable and didn't even blink.

Hua Lang turned her head to look, and saw that the others were also staring at her.

After looking at them one by one, Hua Lang lowered his eyes and said slowly, "I'm sorry for disturbing you. Please go away."

Yu Song turned his head with satisfaction, and the group changed direction very stiffly. While they were turning around, Hua Lang tried to mark them with spiritual energy, but her spiritual energy seemed to have encountered a barrier and could not get close to them at all.

Seeing that they were about to disappear, Hua Lang frowned and became anxious, but soon she thought of something.

Hua Lang whispered to his collar, "Meiqiu, follow them."

"Look where they're going with the coffin."