Are you a human or a ghost?
No, it wasn't the blue light that had failed. If it had, all the ghosts would have swarmed over her and drowned her... Jiang Jingyuan stopped, keeping a distance that would allow the blue light to illuminate the outline of the person in front of her.
The woman in front was wearing dirty, gray clothes. She was leaning casually against the wall and sitting on the ground. She stood motionless in the darkness like a sculpture. Two slightly yellowed eyes on her wrinkled face looked forward without any sadness or joy.
Is it a human... or a ghost?
Jiang Jingyuan looked at the person in front of her in surprise and doubt. She didn't sense any obvious strange inhumanity from this person. It was as if a real living person was sitting in front of her.
But how could a living person appear in the dark depths of this ice cellar?
And there is no light at all, just immersed in darkness.
Wouldn’t the ghost attack this person?
For a moment, countless thoughts flashed through Jiang Jingyuan's mind, but without exception, they told her that this person was very dangerous and she should stay away from him.
"you……"
A hoarse, dull sound was heard, like the friction of dry wood, and in the darkness it seemed as if some ancient evil being was calling out at the top of its lungs.
This elderly-looking woman seemed to have not spoken for a long time. She opened and closed her mouth extremely slowly, almost pausing each word as she spoke:
"You, are a human...you are a ghost."
“……?”
ah?
Jiang Jingyuan subconsciously complained in his heart, "It's you who looks more suspicious, right? I didn't even ask you if you were a human or a ghost, why are you turning the tables?"
She was careful not to speak, but just stared at the strange old woman.
"Hahaha."
The old woman opened her mouth, as if she wanted to let out a hearty laugh, but what actually came out was a stiff and strange tone, like a child babbling, with clear pronunciation but lacking emotion.
The wrinkles on her face were squeezed together by the pulling of her muscles. Her cloudy eyes looked carefully at the girl in the blue light. She nodded up and down very slowly, and a hoarse voice came out of her mouth:
"Look, come on, you, are a human."
Jiang Jingyuan's pupils shrank instantly when he heard what she said. He quickly stepped back to distance himself from her. Cold sweat broke out on his back. He held a lantern in one hand and a sword in the other, alert to his surroundings.
For a long time, the imagined attack did not come, and no group of crawling strange women emerged from the darkness around. Everything was quiet.
"Ha ha."
The old woman laughed again.
Every time she laughed, her mouth opened to the maximum, each time the wrinkles on both cheeks were stretched to the maximum, and each time a whole row of yellow, crooked teeth were exposed.
This strange sight can make everyone who sees it forget the boundaries between beauty and ugliness, and the concepts of normality and ugliness. They will only be immersed in a cold fear as if they are being pricked by dense needles.
At this moment, the old woman's hoarse voice, like the friction of dead wood, pulled people back from the wrong path. She said:
"No, be nervous. I'm just like you."
Jiang Jingyuan suddenly came back to his senses, a sense of fear welling up in his heart, and at the same time he became more alert to the old woman in front of him who was completely hidden in the darkness.
The strange punctuation didn't affect her understanding of the old woman's meaning. Jiang Jingyuan remained silent, thinking, "Same? Same as a human? Let's not talk about whether you're human or not. Even if you are, so what? Just because you're a human, will I be less nervous and trust you?"
She has not forgotten the many people and things she has met since she left the palace.
"No, it's important, Zhang." The old woman's voice repeated again.
The old woman's blurry figure remained motionless in the darkness, sitting there with a dull expression. She spoke very slowly, "I am also trapped here."
Stuck here?
Jiang Jingyuan's eyes moved slightly, and he asked tentatively: "Why do you say that?"
Jiang Jingyuan's heart was beating fast. In this strange ice cellar and thick darkness, she subconsciously wanted to avoid asking direct questions like "Why are we trapped?", "How can we leave?", "What is the method to leave?" But since she had to ask the reason, she had to stop thinking about whether the old woman's answer would cause any unexpected changes, and could only control herself to use more vague words.
"Ha, ha." The old woman laughed again and said, "Because there is no door out here."
Jiang Jingyuan frowned slightly, but her expression remained calm. She wasn't stupid enough to ask if there were any spatial cracks. The old woman's words meant that there weren't any "doors" connecting to the outside world, otherwise she wouldn't be trapped.
"How long have you been here?" Jiang Jingyuan asked again.
The girl's deliberately suppressed voice inevitably spread in the darkness. The thick darkness seemed to come alive and gathered towards her, pressing her so hard that her breathing stopped slightly.
Jiang Jingyuan held his breath and waited for the old woman's answer.
But unfortunately, and somewhat fortunately, the old woman could not give an exact time: "It should be a long time."
Her voice was a little vague, and her words were unconsciously more coherent, as if she was lost in distant memories: "I remember when I came here, I looked like I was only in my twenties..."
The old woman recalled, and in a daze, she slowly raised her two old, wrinkled hands, and tremblingly touched her face, her lips moving: "But, I have wrinkles now..."
She looked to be in her twenties, and now… Jiang Jingyuan silently moved closer, the blue light vaguely illuminating the old woman’s face.
Yellow and lifeless eyes, a face covered with terrible wrinkles, a flabby neck and arms, and withered white hair mixed with gray and black...all of these showed that this man looked to be over sixty years old.
Forty years, and this is not counting the conclusion drawn from the effects of cultivation.
As we all know, the age and appearance of practitioners are often inconsistent. You may see an ordinary teenage girl on the street, but in fact she is already a grandmother.
Jiang Jingyuan was so shocked that she couldn't speak for a long time, and her mind was blank - being trapped alone in the dark for forty years was a rather terrifying concept for her.
Are you really not going crazy?!
The old woman placed her hands lightly on her cheeks and said in a trance, "I remember adding oil four times."
What? !
Jiang Jingyuan's heart skipped a beat. Without giving it any thought, he asked, "Did you add oil to the lantern? What kind of oil did you use?"
She forgot to lower her voice, and it echoed in the darkness.
The old woman was pulled back from her memories, but did not answer her question immediately. Her drooping eyelids covered half of her eyes, and her two yellow eyeballs turned and stared at the girl in front of her for a long time, without moving, neither sad nor happy, and absent-minded.
Seeing that the other party had not responded for a long time, Jiang Jingyuan felt as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water on him, and his whole body was cold.
Just when Jiang Jingyuan felt something was wrong and was about to retreat, the old woman spoke in a calm, hoarse voice:
"mouse."
Jiang Jingyuan paused in his steps.
The old woman continued, "There are ghosts that look like women. They have tails when they are young, but when they grow up, their tails rot and they eat them. There's another type that looks like both a human and a mouse, and they always have a mouse tail."
Jiang Jingyuan understood that the blood of this "rat" could keep the flame in the lantern burning for a long time.
She was about to ask again when the old woman spoke again: "It's very important, 'rat', so you can dig a hole and leave."
"How do you know?"
Jiang Jingyuan blurted out the question almost as soon as she finished speaking.
The old woman sat there with her features and limbs motionless, only her mouth opening and closing: "Look at me, the ice wall behind me."
Jiang Jingyuan was stunned and looked at the old woman several times. Finally, he gritted his teeth and walked forward, holding up the lantern to illuminate the ice wall behind the old woman.
The ice wall, which was reflected by the blue light and had a light blue color, gave off a hint of coldness. Jiang Jingyuan discovered the difference between this ice wall and the ones he had seen elsewhere almost as soon as he approached it. It was too conspicuous and too dense. There were twisted holes of varying sizes scattered on this ice wall, like passages leading to nowhere.
But this passage was too narrow and small. Jiang Jingyuan estimated that she would need to lie down to squeeze into the largest passage.
"This was dug by rats." The old woman didn't turn around, not even the slightest movement, only her lips moving. "I found it when I got here. I caught the rats and let them dig holes, trying to open a 'door,' but the rats I caught either escaped through other holes or never came out after entering the passage."
"'Rats' are hard to catch, there are few of them, and you need to light a lamp."
Jiang Jingyuan listened, lost in thought. According to the old woman, breaking through this wall might lead to somewhere—a way out, perhaps to life, or a passage into hell.
As her thoughts raced, she couldn't help but jokingly say in her heart, "This person is quite interesting. He doesn't need the blue light of the lantern himself, but he insists on lighting lanterns for others..."
Um?
Jiang Jingyuan's thoughts suddenly stopped, his heart trembled, and for a moment he felt his scalp tingling.
Unaffected by blue light, and unaffected by ghosts in the dark...
Is this a human or a ghost?
Jiang Jingyuan didn't know if it was an illusion, but he suddenly felt as if he was being stared at by an eye full of malice, as if his every move would be followed by the movement of that invisible eyeball.
Jiang Jingyuan stood facing the ice wall, without turning back, and asked calmly, "Where is that person? How did they get in here? Have you seen anyone else?"
She did not directly point out the old woman's problem, nor did she ask her in a roundabout way how she got into the ice cellar.
In her opinion, the time has not come to ask these questions yet.
Regardless of whether what the old woman said was true or not, as long as she said it, it revealed information.
She has to ask everything she wants to know!
"I've seen you. You suddenly appeared and then died in the innermost ice cellar." The old woman spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. "You are the first of twenty-one to come here to see me."
After saying that, the old woman laughed “Ha, ha, ha” again.
Jiang Jingyuan ignored her and continued calmly, "Only twenty people have come here in all these years. Humans are not food for ghosts, so what is the relationship between humans and ghosts?"
"It's not food. People and ghosts have nothing to do with each other," said the old woman.
Jiang Jingyuan was puzzled and couldn't help but frown in his heart, but his face remained expressionless. He just thought to himself: "What does this mean? Humans and ghosts have nothing to do with each other, so why would that person appear here? This doesn't seem like a coincidence."
But the old woman didn't want to explain. She just said, "I don't know how they got in. I can only guess how they got out."
"She seems to speak a lot more fluently." Jiang Jingyuan listened, and this thought flashed through his mind.
A quiet blue light emanated from the lantern in her left hand, illuminating the ice wall. The reflection fell on the face of the girl in white, and her eyes, as dark as the abyss, were faintly visible under the white veil.
Jiang Jingyuan had no other questions.
Jiang Jingyuan faced the ice wall without turning around, and asked in a flat tone, "You lit the lamp, but why didn't you go into the blue light range or bring the lantern over?"
"Don't tell me you're being kind and want to give this person a temporary refuge. That's fake nonsense."
"You are not afraid of blue light, darkness, or attacks from ghosts. Why is that?"
Jiang Jingyuan took a deep breath silently and asked calmly:
"Are you a human or a ghost?"
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