Without hesitation, Hou Wenjie bypassed the large cauldron and headed towards the distant mountain.
As he drew closer, he inexplicably sensed an ancient and weathered aura emanating from the mountain.
This feeling was strange and mysterious, as if the mountain had solidified a certain perception in Hou Wenjie.
Finally, he reached the foot of the mountain. Looking up, he saw no gray mist swirling around the mountain, nor were there any plants, trees, birds, or beasts.
In the distance, one can see magnificent palaces on the mountainside, but most of them are decaying, seemingly due to the long history they have endured.
Hou Wenjie continued forward, reaching the mountainside, where he finally faced the ancient buildings, many of which looked as if they would collapse at any moment.
He finally understood why these palaces had collapsed: a huge crack had appeared in the ground between them.
Hou Wenjie stepped onto the edge of the crevice and looked into its depths. He immediately felt a deathly stillness envelop him, and an invisible force seemed to be pulling him toward the abyss.
With a thought, a huge, illusory python head floated above Hou Wenjie's head and then swooped down, devouring all the eerie aura around him.
Then, the giant python hovered above Hou Wenjie's head again.
Hou Wenjie then looked into the crevice and saw a thick, black light flowing like water in the deepest part of it!
How bizarre! More bizarre things! It turns out this mountain also suppresses so many strange things!
Hou Wenjie continued walking up the mountain along the crack.
Gradually, the surrounding buildings disappeared, and the cracks vanished. At the end of the cracks, there was a stone staircase leading to the top of the mountain.
It's less a stone staircase and more a path through a mountain of corpses.
Because this upward stone staircase is littered with severed limbs, headless corpses, and heads that cannot rest in peace!
They were still in the same state as when they died; some were dressed in ancient clothes, while others looked more recent.
The blood was still flowing on the stone slab, and time seemed to have stood still here.
Hou Wenjie thought to himself that a fierce battle had once taken place here, and he continued to carefully ascend the steps.
The corpses on the stone slab did not suddenly come back to life. In Hou Wenjie's clairvoyance, they were just ordinary corpses, with no strange or hidden presence.
As he approached the summit, he saw a palace.
The palace stood to his side, neither tall nor grand, but it gave him a sense of the vicissitudes of time, as if it had traveled through time from ancient times.
This was not his illusion; it was a natural realization that arose in his mind the instant he saw the palace.
The second time Hou Wenjie had this kind of "cognition," he had a bit of an understanding. This was probably the Heavenly Eye's interpretation of the origin of things.
When he reached the top of the mountain, he saw even more corpses. Unlike the various clothes on the stone steps, most of the corpses here seemed to be soldiers.
They were clad in gleaming iron armor, yet they could not escape the fate of being torn to pieces.
After passing a mangled body, Hou Wenjie suddenly noticed a wooden plaque lying on the ground. He picked it up and found inscriptions on it. He carefully examined them and confirmed that it read:
"King Ming, the Yin Soldier Under the Command of the Five Kings of Hell!"
Ghost soldiers! Ghost soldiers from the underworld! What kind of fierce battle took place here? Even ghost soldiers from the underworld perished here.
Hou Wenjie carefully bypassed the soldiers' bodies and picked up two more wooden identity tags. The tags indicated that they were all underworld soldiers under the command of Yama, the King of Hell.
Hou Wenjie looked at the side wall of the palace, which was almost stained red with the blood of the ghost soldiers, and found that it was pitted and uneven, as if someone had hit it hard with something.
The huge scratches, crisscrossing each other, make the palace look even more mottled.
After passing the side wall of the palace, Hou Wenjie finally saw the front of the palace.
To the naked eye, a plaque hangs above the palace gate, bearing the three large characters "Luomen Temple".
However, under the Heavenly Eye, there was clearly a white jade plaque above the palace gate, which read, "[Purple Mystery Cave Illuminates the Heavens]".
Hou Wenjie pondered deeply, and a memory gradually became clearer in his mind.
That was a memory of the Thirty-Six Grotto-Heavens of Taoism.
Zixuan Cave Illuminates the Sky, and is one of the Thirty-Six Grotto-Heavens.
Hou Wenjie never imagined that the small Luomen Village not only harbored the ancient artifact Jingzhou Ding, but also this legendary blessed land.
However, another memory popped into Hou Wenjie's mind: Yu the Great cast the Nine Tripods at the foot of Jing Mountain, and the legendary Purple Mystery Cave that illuminates the sky was also located in ancient Jingzhou. Everything seemed not so difficult to understand.
At that moment, the palace gates were open, and Hou Wenjie saw the old man in the photo in the documents about the Luomen Village incident.
Without hesitation, Hou Wenjie stepped forward and entered the palace.
Then, he saw everyone in the photo: the four old men who had disappeared from Luomen Village, Ye Feng and his companions, A-Kun and A-Lei.
When Hou Wenjie entered the palace, everyone's eyes turned to him.
In Hou Wenjie's Heavenly Eye, a black light, like a thin black thread, extended from the spiritual platforms of these people. The thread extended outward and finally entered the head of the statue on the altar.
These people are already dead! Even if they still have the memories of the living, the heartbeat of the living.
But their primordial spirits have been annihilated, and they are now dominated by a strange power.
Hou Wenjie sighed; the rescue plan had failed before it even began.
He looked at Ye Feng, who was not far from him, and he had a very good impression of Ye Feng.
Ye Feng was the one who made him understand what the Feng Guiren group was all about, and he educated him on a lot of strange knowledge and the country's way of dealing with strange phenomena.
This gave him the idea of joining the Bureau of Strange Events.
He had come all this way prepared for the worst, but when the moment came and he saw that soulless shell, he couldn't help but feel a pang of sorrow.
As he felt a slight pang of sorrow, he saw Ye Feng across from him speak:
"I never expected that a living person could enter this place before midnight, the time of creation. You're quite good, very good indeed!"
Hou Wenjie's gaze passed over Ye Feng and landed on the head of the statue.
Then he saw a strange woman sitting cross-legged beneath the stone statue's face, which looked exactly like his aunt's.
The woman was dressed in a light blue gauze dress, with long, narrow eyes and a dignified appearance, but it was not the face of her aunt, Tu Cuiyun.
"Who are you?" Hou Wenjie stared directly at the eerie presence within the statue.
Ye Feng spoke again: "I am a god!"
After seeing the eerie true form, Hou Wenjie realized he was losing patience. He shook his head, his voice turning cold:
"You are not a god, you are a monster! I have a question for you: where is the physical body of my aunt Tu Cuiyun?"
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