The truth of the city of sin, twelve ancient murals
Qin Ruqing entered the fourth trial with a full of anger, but she was inexplicably stopped when she saw the familiar environment of the deserted city.
She wanted to overturn the arena, but there seemed to be no arena in the deserted city where she was currently thrown - at least she didn't know where the arena was at the moment.
She wanted to save the residents of the city of sin, but once she entered the trial, her spiritual energy was sealed, and her body was sealed, she would be an ordinary mortal!
She had no ability to save the city of sin. She didn't even know how her own reincarnation of judgment would end.
Qin Ruqing sat down on the ground with a slump.
There were also hungry ghosts wandering in her direction. Qin Ruqing felt tired, but had to stand up to fight the hungry ghosts.
After shaking off the evil creatures, Qin Ruqing was panting and wondering in her heart: Where did all these hungry ghosts come from?
Did you just appear out of thin air? Even if it was an illusion, you still have to follow some basic rules, right? Could it be that you really killed monsters out of thin air?
Moreover, there was something that she had always ignored: everyone said that there was a beast arena, but she had not seen any beasts so far, only a group of things that were neither human nor ghost. Even if you don't have beasts, where is the arena? She didn't even see the arena!
Qin Ruqing climbed up a dilapidated building and stood on a high place to look at the deserted city. No name is groundless. Since the so-called trial is held in this ancient abandoned city, the arena mentioned in the name may be found in this abandoned city.
Then, the next question becomes, where is the arena in the abandoned city? And how to find it.
Qin Ruqing's eyes fell on the dry skin bags walking below. Perhaps, the clue lies in these hungry ghosts.
For the first time, she put aside her prejudiced eyes and began to examine these hungry ghosts carefully. She found that their walking was not without regularity.
Unless they smelled the breath of living people, the heads of these hungry ghosts seemed to be facing the same direction.
Of course, there are exceptions. But Qin Ruqing has seen too many weird people, and she can actually be counted as one, so she thinks it is not strange to see weird people among the hungry ghosts. She can ignore them when observing and not add them to the observation samples.
But there are still too few samples.
Qin Ruqing decided to move in the direction where these hungry ghosts were walking spontaneously, maybe she could find something new.
If she encounters humans being chased and entangled by hungry ghosts on the road, Qin Ruqing will save them if she can.
It's not that she is so kind. It's just that Qin Ruqing can empathize with the tragic fate of the residents of Sin City. If these people want to die, she will even take the initiative to send them to a quick death. But she clearly saw the desire to survive in these people's eyes.
They want to live. So Qin Ruqing saved them.
Seeing the expressions of those she rescued showing relief, even though their bodies and minds were so tense, and even though this reincarnation situation was so hopeless, they still showed a trace of relief in the few moments after being rescued.
They looked at Qin Ruqing with gratitude, and there was no pain in their eyes.
Qin Ruqing didn't understand.
If she completely lost control of her life and fate, and even had to be trapped in this unreasonable judgment and torture like the residents of Sin City forever, she would first resist with all her strength. If the resistance was futile, she would choose to take the initiative to end her life, even if the price was no reincarnation and no afterlife.
Qin Ruqing was surprised by the stubborn and primitive survival instinct of these Sin City residents.
Respect death, fear death, and live for death.
It seemed that she had some enlightenment. Qin Ruqing found that she was really a bit of a meat eater before.
Even though she had experienced the realm of life and death countless times, mastered the endless cycle of life and death, and possessed the ability to turn the tide in desperate situations, her understanding of life and death was still very shallow.
Her attitude in any dangerous situation and difficult situation was that she was not afraid of death, and sometimes she would even take the initiative to take risks for the sake of perhaps greater benefits.
Why did this happen? Did she really think that her practice was good enough to put life and death aside?
Qin Ruqing faced this problem for the first time, and after reflection, she found that there were two reasons.
First, she was reborn through time travel.
Or rather, she thought she was reborn through time travel.
In fact, strictly speaking, according to the theory of the immortal cultivation world, she might really be Qin Ruqing, but she inexplicably possessed the memory before reincarnation. This makes a lot of sense in the immortal cultivation world.
But because of this memory, Qin Ruqing thought she had traveled through time - she died and came back to life, with an extra life.
She had the mentality that living one more life was a blessing.
Therefore, Qin Ruqing obviously found that her actions were more bold and reckless than in her previous life. In her previous life, she was already a person who did whatever she wanted and did her own thing, and this life was even worse.
- Anyway, I have died once, so what am I afraid of?
The second reason, Qin Ruqing had to admit, was because of the Tao body.
The Qinglian Tao body gave her the attribute of an indestructible cockroach, which helped her to turn the tide time and time again when she was on the verge of death. After
so many times, Qin Ruqing developed a subconsciousness that she could hardly detect - she felt that she could not die at all.
Even if she was in a life-or-death situation, she dared to think and act without fear.
Is she really that brave?
The biggest reason is that she felt from the bottom of her heart that the Tao body could help her in this level of life and death. Even if she was on the verge of death, the Tao body could slow her down.
This indirect fearless mentality did help Qin Ruqing avoid many dangers, but it also contributed to a hidden danger:
in the moments of brushing shoulders with death again and again, Qin Ruqing has gradually lost her fear of death.
Her gradually expanding self-confidence is like a sickle from the underworld, and one day, it will be swung down on her head.
At the moment when she saw this mentality, Qin Ruqing's mind flashed through the countless scenes of her life and death.
She was actually facing real death.
But she knew nothing about this.
The deserted city was swirling with sandstorms. It was daytime and the temperature was hot, but Qin Ruqing broke out in a cold sweat.
At this moment, she finally empathized with the helplessness and fear of the residents of Sin City. Her spiritual energy was sealed, her body was sealed, and all her life-saving trump cards were sealed. She was just a mortal.
She only had one chance to live.
The feeling of fear was so clear that Qin Ruqing felt disgusted. She clenched her fists and then unclenched them several times, then suddenly patted her chest like a sand sculpture:
"Mom, I'm really scared! The child is so helpless when the Dao body is sealed! My sense of security!"
She quickly changed her tone, "But it's not my problem to regard the Dao body as a source of security. The Dao body and I are one. It's sealed now, which only means that I don't have enough control over the Dao body."
"Let me think about where the flaw is... In the past, my understanding of the Tao and the characteristic of endless reproduction was still narrow. I thought that endless reproduction was simply a continuation. Continuing life, continuing the operation of tangible or intangible things, so as to achieve an endless state. However, I forgot that as long as I have not reached the state of ascending to immortality, I will never be able to live forever. Endless reproduction will always be just an idealized state. How can I lose my fear of death because of this!"
"So, to sum up, I can't just see the advantages of endless life, I also have to see its disadvantages - real endless life is just like immortality, it is difficult to achieve, and conversely, it is precisely because it is difficult to achieve that we have to pursue it - if I could really live forever, would I still be like this now, being chased half to death by hungry ghosts?" Qin Ruqing snorted self-deprecatingly. "
Similarly, we must not only see life, but also death. Everything has two sides, behind the light is darkness, and life and death are one."
Qin Ruqing tapped her palm with one hand, and said in a rising tone: "So that's it, I understand it!"
Miracle Qingqing said that she really understood it.
A strange wave surged around her body, and she suddenly closed her eyes, ignored the surrounding environment, and sat down cross-legged. Strangely, this wave seemed to have raised a barrier of isolation for her, causing those wandering hungry ghosts to ignore Qin Ruqing's existence.
Apart from the other things Qin Ruqing realized, she suddenly realized that her Tao body might not be "sealed".
The Tao body and she are originally one, two inseparable parts. To say that the Tao body is sealed is as ridiculous as if something has sealed her heart and brain, but she is still alive and kicking.
Therefore, rather than saying that her Tao body is sealed, it is better to say that something has guided her consciousness, making her mistakenly believe that her Tao body is sealed. And it is true that the operation of spiritual power in this space is greatly restricted.
After understanding this, Qin Ruqing deliberately sensed the Tao body, and indeed found some clues.
"It's not sealed, but some of my abilities seem to be restricted. Something is blurring my perception of the Dao body, which is equivalent to my original control of the Dao body of 99%, but now it has become 1%."
After trying to switch between various abilities, Qin Ruqing basically figured out the general situation.
"The current state is that I can release spiritual consciousness to sense the surroundings in a small range, and the spiritual energy is stagnant and flowing. The recovery ability of the Dao body is basically equivalent to nothing, and the strength is about 10% left." "
Not bad. Just as I was trying to sense it for a while, I found that the familiar feeling gradually came back, which shows that the restriction of this deserted city on the Dao body is not fixed. I can regain the control of the Dao body through active training in the future, but it takes time."
Qin Ruqing stood up again. This time, her perspective on this ancient city was different. With the power in her body, even if her strength has not been fully restored, she has the confidence to fight in the deserted city.
"We still have to find a real fighting arena." Qin Ruqing did not forget her next goal.
Releasing her limited spiritual awareness to sense the direction of the hungry ghosts' movement, Qin Ruqing's eyes were clear, and she tiptoed towards that direction.
The closer she got to a certain direction, the higher the density of hungry ghosts Qin Ruqing found. She encountered two waves of hungry ghosts of not small scale on the way. If her strength had not been slightly restored now, she might have been gnawed to bones.
A strong dragon cannot defeat a local snake. Before her strength was restored, Qin Ruqing did not dare to confront those hungry ghosts. Now she also knows that her life is important.
After one day of searching, Qin Ruqing found an abandoned ancient temple. Hungry ghosts were heading towards the temple, all with pious expressions, as if they were on pilgrimage. God knows how Qin Ruqing could see the "pious" expressions on the faces of these wrinkled things. Qin Ruqing
wanted to explore the situation inside the ancient temple, but she didn't expect the hungry ghosts inside to discover her presence. They all turned their eyes away, and tens of thousands of white ghosts looked at Qin Ruqing's direction with sharp eyes.
... Qin Ruqing's hair stood upside down like a tidal wave. He held his breath and took a step back. Just as he was about to run away, his vision went dark.
The fourth trial was over.
This time, Qin Ruqing returned to the courtyard of the B&B, and her mood was not as relaxed as the previous times. When Qin Ruqing came back, the old woman's daughter happened to be in the break between trials. She took over the old woman's job and prepared spiritual food and hot water for Qin Ruqing.
Qin Ruqing forced a smile and said thank you to her. The girl was stunned. This smile was a rare sight in Sin City.
How could Sin City be so lively?
Seeing the girl stunned, Qin Ruqing patted the back of the girl's hand with his hand, and said vaguely while eating the spiritual food: "Don't worry, I have found some clues in this trial.
Wait for the next time..." Qin Ruqing didn't say what the next time was.
She would not say anything that she was not sure of.
The girl nodded again in a daze. It seemed that she could really feel a special power in this relaxed, joking comfort.
Qin Ruqing confidently welcomed her fifth trial. If possible, she wanted her judgment to end at this number.
If not... then just pretend she didn't say anything.
After entering the deserted city, Qin Ruqing didn't waste any time and went straight to the ancient temple. This time, she hoped to get inside the ancient temple and explore the situation inside.
Hiding in a dilapidated building, Qin Ruqing's consciousness wandered around the ancient temple. This was the maximum distance her consciousness could reach.
"There is something in this ancient temple. It seems to be very meaningful to those hungry ghosts. The hungry ghosts wander around the ancient temple, as if they are worshipping or guarding it."
"There are too many of them. If we rush in rashly, we will definitely be eaten by the hungry ghosts! Let's stabilize our situation first and try to recover more strength before taking action."
Considering that each trial takes about three or four days, Qin Ruqing only took one day to sense and restore her body, and used the rest of the time to explore the ancient temple.
The red-clothed miracle Qingqing stood on the broken wall. A ball of golden flame appeared in her hand. She suddenly pinched out the golden flame, looked in the direction of the ancient temple, and whispered: "Finally, the fire was summoned, but my old strength was wasted."
"We can act now."
"The ancient temple, or you can call it, the beast arena."
The red-clothed Qingqing jumped down and quickly disappeared from the spot with her clothes flying.
When Qin Ruqing moved, the group of hungry ghosts wandering around the beast fighting arena were also alarmed. They looked up and found that an uninvited guest had broken into the hall, and they let out low roars. They also quickly gathered in the direction of Qin Ruqing, as if they wanted to stop her.
However, the individual strength of these ordinary hungry ghosts was not very strong. Qin Ruqing could handle them before her strength recovered. Now that her strength has recovered by more than half, they can't stop her anymore.
It didn't take much effort to get into the hall. Looking around, the most eye-catching things inside were the murals on the wall. Qin Ruqing wanted to take a closer look, but the hungry ghosts were making a mess, and in a panic, she could only see the shadows of people and monsters on the murals.
Because the hungry ghosts blocked her approach, Qin Ruqing could only look around somewhere else first. She found that the inside of this dilapidated temple was empty. The only special place was the murals painted on the walls of the main hall.
Qin Ruqing went back again, this time wanting to take a closer look at what was painted on the murals. The hungry ghosts with bared teeth pounced up. Qin Ruqing was silent for a moment and threw an explosive golden lotus into the group of hungry ghosts.
The golden lotus exploded, and the huge shock wave directly cleared all the hungry ghosts around Qin Ruqing. The power was so great that Qin Ruqing herself was shocked.
She stared at her hands, "My strength has recovered to this extent?" She carefully sensed it and found that the thing blocking her was still there, "No, how come the power of the golden flame is higher than I thought... Wait!"
Her golden flame only has extra damage to evil spirits or some souls. Now looking at the hungry ghosts, could it be that their essence is not a living creature, but evil spirits?
Looking at the hungry ghosts again, Qin Ruqing nodded: "Yes, they look ugly and don't look like any decent creatures. It's normal for them to be evil spirits." Clearing the
surrounding chaos, Qin Ruqing was finally able to separate her mind and carefully look at these murals, and then found that the scenes depicted on the murals seemed to be pictures of wars.
Pictures of wars between humans and monsters.
The humans on the murals were wearing ancient robes, and they seemed to have the power to move mountains and fill the sea. The monsters were in different shapes, some were completely black, their eyes were as bright as the sun and the moon, and their mouths were wide open enough to cover the entire sky.
The monsters wreaked havoc on the human world, causing floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis. The powerful monks of the human race at that time took action to suppress the monsters.
After looking around, Qin Ruqing understood that these murals were all about the victory and grandeur of the human monks. She thought there was nothing wrong with this. If they used murals to record wars, they couldn't record defeats.
Qin Ruqing nodded as she moved closer, wanting to touch it. Her original intention was to get a closer look at the detailed depictions of these monsters and human beings. These murals clearly recorded events from ancient times, or even more ancient times. These things are precious historical data for the present world.
But just as her hand touched the mural, Qin Ruqing's heart suddenly moved slightly, and she had a magical feeling.
Why does it feel like there is a seal on the mural... Not an ordinary seal, but like the seal inside the entire Hungry Ghost Dao Ancient City, which can isolate her from the perception of the Tao body.
Qin Ruqing has mastered some experience while recovering her strength during this period of time, and has also made some guesses and understandings about this ancient city.
She entered the arena from the City of Sin, and was thrown into the special space of the Ancient City. There is a kind of rule in the space, which has certain restrictions on the strength of the cultivators.
This rule is a bit like, as long as you don’t know me, I can completely change your cognition - so Qin Ruqing felt that her body was sealed at the beginning. This is a kind of cognitive confusion.
When Qin Ruqing began to notice, the degree of restriction of the rules on her would be reduced, and Qin Ruqing would gradually regain her strength.
Now the seal of this mural is also a bit similar to this rule. Use a virtual and fabricated illusion to separate the real.
"Let me see what good stuff is hidden under this mural." Qin Ruqing put her hand on the mural, closed her eyes, and began to use her method of recovering her strength to break the seals of these rules.
Not long after, the mural began to shake like water waves, and then the concealing illusion was broken, and the mural changed its appearance.
When Qin Ruqing saw the picture on the mural clearly, her eyes froze.
If the mural before it was unsealed described the grand justice of the human race's victory over the monsters, the mural after it was unsealed depicted the tragedy of the human world after the war. In
the picture, humans suppressed the monsters, but it did not end the chaos in the human world. On the contrary, the corpses of monsters were everywhere, and they did not look much better than humans. The blood of the monsters dyed the earth red, and the residents of the town did not live there in peace, because after the monsters died, they gathered a lot of resentment and began to erode the minds of the people.
This mural describes the gathering of monster resentment, and a large number of dark red clouds gathered above the town. The human spirit is suppressed and described as crazy.
Qin Ruqing frowned, this was completely different from what she thought at first. She began to look at other murals, and after sensing the same fluctuations, they began to unseal them one by one.
The murals revealed their true colors, and Qin Ruqing looked at them one by one.
It can be said that the murals before unsealing depicted the positive side of war, and the murals after unsealing depicted the negative side of war.
The war itself is the persecution of humans and monsters.
Qin Ruqing saw that the resentment of the monsters gathered in the human world had condensed to a point that had to be dealt with, so a great human stepped forward, killed the Beast King, dug out the crystal core, recorded the formation, and sealed the resentment.
But resentment itself is a kind of hatred, and hatred needs an object to be projected. Otherwise, it will not last long if it is simply sealed by formation. After thinking about it, the great human created a special space with his own hands.
The space is isolated from the world and has its own logic of operation. There is the resentment of the monsters' hatred and sinners in the space.
The great human selected the poor and vicious people who betrayed the human race in the world and threw them into the city as the object of the monsters' resentment and hatred.
An eternal judgment mechanism was derived in the city, forming a cycle. This eternal cycle is like a circle, achieving a relative stillness, and finally completely sealing these grievances.
Later, someone asked the great human being what the future generations would call this city?
The great man pondered and named the city himself, Sin City!
So, the name of Sin City was fixed from then on. After
Qin Ruqing finished reading these murals, her heart seemed to be pinched by a big hand, making it difficult to breathe and speak.
It turned out that this was the truth of Sin City!
The grief of war was like a huge rock pressing on her chest. Qin Ruqing felt suppressed. When she learned the truth, an extremely sad and resisted emotion arose in her heart.
This emotion should be projected on an object. Qin Ruqing wanted to pick out one party in this matter to blame in order to ease her emotions. But after thinking for a long time, she couldn't find any breakthrough.
She couldn't evaluate this matter.
She wanted to say that the residents of Sin City in this world were innocent, but she also knew that the powerful humans of that era had no choice but to create Sin City.
The resentment of the monsters needed to be dealt with, otherwise millions of people would suffer. Therefore, the powerful selected the traitors and the cruel and extremely evil people of the time and used them as the targets of resentment.
Maybe they are guilty. But should the descendants of those people accept the cycle and curse of resentment from generation to generation?
This may be another trolley problem.
Qin Ruqing pondered to no avail, and began to turn her attention to the last mural. There are twelve murals in total, but only nine depict the Sin City incident, and the other three have nothing to do with the Sin City incident.
Qin Ruqing turned her gaze to the first of the three paintings.
It still seemed like a war scene, but the war was at a higher level, a bit like the world's top combat power was fighting.
The human and demon armies were facing each other, the demon beasts were in full force, the human race had a solemn look on their faces, and in the mural, the demon beast army was also on top, and it was obvious that the demon beasts had the upper hand in the battle.
The human race gathered a hundred monks, and in front of them was a vast and huge formation star map. The human monks stood in the formation map, with a resolute look, with a determination to die.
Qin Ruqing looked at the mural and clenched her fists. Based on the painting, she could roughly tell that these hundred human beings seemed to want to make a sacrifice...
What era of war was this? The situation was so critical that the human race had to use the method of great sacrifice to end the war.
Qin Ruqing's eyes moved to the second picture.
This picture seemed to record a meeting. Half of the people at the long table were human and half were monsters. It was obviously a negotiation between humans and monsters.
This picture was the most clear at a glance, but the information that could be obtained was also limited, because there was no inscription on the picture to tell Qin Ruqing what was discussed in the meeting.
Qin Ruqing's eyes came to the last picture.
This was the strangest of the three pictures. It did not depict any grand scenes. It seemed that there were only three light balls. The light balls roughly outlined the shape of a person, which looked like a person, but not a person.
Obviously, this painting was an abstract one.
Three light balls that looked like people, two of which were slightly smaller, were separated on the left and right. The light ball on the left looked gentle and bright, while the one on the right looked turbulent and bloody.
The one held high by the two balls of light on the left and right is located in the center of the picture.
It is grand, inclusive, and high above, like a god looking down on the world.
Qin Ruqing's eyes were somehow attracted by the ball of light in the middle. She took a step closer to take a closer look.
Unexpectedly, the mural suddenly shook, and the ball of light in the middle shone brightly.
Qin Ruqing felt a pain in her eyes, a buzzing in her spirit platform, and something wet slid down the corner of her eyes. She
subconsciously took her hand to pick it up, and turned her hand over. Surprisingly,
it was full of bright red.