As if suddenly realizing something, Yuan Qi quickly turned to look at the oil lamp beside him. Only then did he realize that although Qiu Zhang had clearly returned to the summoning order, and the yin energy in the room should have dissipated, the lamp was still burning with a green yin flame, instead of turning back to its normal warm yellow.
Feng Rong stood up and pushed open the window, and a strong, chilling aura rushed in, instantly making the whole room several degrees colder.
"Yin energy!" You You blurted out. Moreover, this yin energy was too strong. Looking out the window, everything was gray and gloomy, and it kept pouring into the room.
"Go out and take a look!" Yuan Qi reminded him.
Without hesitation, You You and Feng Rong turned and opened the door. They found the entire inn filled with a chilling aura. They immediately cast several isolation spells and walked out onto the main street.
However, the scene on the street was even more terrifying. The eerie energy was almost omnipresent, occupying every inch of the street. No! Not just the street, but the entire city was completely shrouded in this eerie energy. It was as if a black cloth had been draped over the entire town in an instant.
"What's going on?" Youyou's eyes widened. There wasn't any just now. "Where did all this yin energy come from?"
"The yin energy is so thick that it would take at least several thousand ghosts to create this!" Feng Rong also found it somewhat unbelievable.
"Don't you guys think..." Yuan Qi looked around and said, "It's too quiet all around?"
The two were taken aback. Upon closer inspection, they realized... the entire city was eerily silent. Although curfew had been imposed, the silence was so profound that even the chirping of insects and the croaking of frogs were barely audible. It was indeed too quiet.
"The people in the inn!" You You exclaimed in surprise. She turned around and rushed back into the inn. She randomly picked the nearest room, knocked twice but received no response, so she pushed the door open forcefully.
He had just rushed in when he suddenly stopped, stunned by what he saw.
Inside, a man lay on the bed. He looked somewhat familiar; upon closer inspection, it was the waiter who had nearly fallen during the day. However, he now lacked his daytime energy and lay there oblivious. Even more strangely, his body was semi-transparent; he wasn't lying directly on the bed, but rather floating about two inches above it.
This isn't a human, it's clearly a soul!
"This is..." Feng Rong and Yuan Qi were also startled. Feng Rong stepped forward to examine it and found that the soul was unconscious and seemed to have no consciousness at all. "Is this a separation of souls? But where is its body?"
“It shouldn’t be a departed soul!” Yuan Qi also took a closer look and said, “There’s a yin aura emanating from him, so he should be a ghost that’s already dead, not a living soul.”
"Dead?" Youyou exclaimed in surprise. "But I clearly saw him during the day!"
“I don’t know the reason for that,” Yuan Qi continued. “Under normal circumstances, it takes seven days for the ghost of a dead person to gather yin energy…”
"Yin energy?!" Feng Rong suddenly realized something, her eyes widening sharply. "Could it be that the yin energy in the city..."
His face darkened, and he immediately turned around and walked out, starting to kick down the doors one by one!
You You and Yuan Qi were stunned for a moment, then reacted and their faces darkened. An unbelievable guess immediately surfaced in their minds, and they quickly followed.
The next moment, their guess was confirmed!
Throughout the inn, everyone had transformed into ghosts, floating on their beds. And that wasn't all; as the three men left the inn and continued running towards each household, they discovered that, apart from the three of them, everyone in the entire city had become mindless ghosts overnight.
Youyou and his friends were stunned!
"How could this be?" You You could hardly believe her eyes. "We didn't find any cultivators or anything like that in the city all day. Who could turn the entire city into ghosts overnight?"
“Perhaps it’s not a change!” Yuan Qi frowned deeply, glancing around the city. “Maybe all these people in the city…were originally ghosts!”
"They were ghosts to begin with, but it's clearly daytime..." Wait! You You was startled, suddenly remembering something, "Ghost City? Fengcheng! This is Fengdu Ghost City!"
The two were stunned for a moment, but then they realized what was happening.
Is Fengdu Ghost City such a place where people are human during the day but turn into ghosts at night?
"Qiu Zhang said that the soul beasts sensed something was amiss in the city, which is why they suddenly disappeared. It's probably because they discovered this!" You You continued. Soul beasts are from the underworld, and their senses of ghosts are the strongest. It's quite normal for them to notice that the souls of those people were not right during the day.
"Even so, where have all the soul beasts gone?" Feng Rong asked. "It's rumored that Fengdu is connected to the underworld, so it's normal to have more ghosts there, right?"
"Impossible!" You You shook his head directly. "The Underworld cannot be connected to other realms, otherwise why can't even the gods enter the Underworld?" If there really were a connection, why would there be any need for Underworld Messengers or Soul Beasts to guide souls across? They could just float there on their own.
"Where could that soul beast be?" Feng Rong asked.
"..." Youyou couldn't figure it out either. If it disappeared to investigate this ghost town, why couldn't it be found anywhere in the city?
Yuan Qi, who was standing nearby, seemed to have an idea and suggested, "Instead of guessing where it went, why don't we think about how it got there?"
How do I get there?
The two were stunned for a moment, their eyes widening as they instantly came to their senses.
"Inn!"
The three of them immediately turned around and flew back to the inn they had just left.
I almost forgot, Qiu Zhang once said that he only discovered his soul beast was missing after waking up from a nap. Logically speaking, Qiu Zhang, having cultivated to this level, shouldn't need to sleep at all, let alone sleep so soundly that he didn't even notice his companion's disappearance.
Then the only possibility is that Qiu Zhang is also a spirit, affected by this ghost city, and like the other ghosts in the city, he becomes unconscious at night. And the reason he is like this is that bed.
Looking back now, they realized that they had just checked all the people in the city who had become ghosts and found that without exception, all the ghosts were floating on the beds, and none of them were in any other place.
In other words, there's definitely something wrong with this bed! The disappearance of the soul beast is very likely related to this.
The three returned to their room at the inn and stood before the bed. Feng Rong immediately made a hand gesture, lifting the covers to reveal the bed frame underneath. There was indeed a considerable amount of yin energy lingering there, even denser than in the city, but strangely, there were no fluctuations of any magical energy.
Yu You, standing nearby, felt a sudden, inexplicable weight lift from her chest. The strange feeling that had inexplicably appeared at the city gate earlier resurfaced, this time even more real and intense, as if…
"I sense that there's something connected under this bed?"
Feng Rong: "..."
Yuan Qi: "..."
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