Chapter 138 All you trapped here, get out here, you're all no match for me! ...
After much difficulty, they politely declined Qiu Feiyan's prior promise of fifteen catties of dried small fish. Amidst the reluctance of all the villagers, the four of them finally left this paradise.
Yun Tianjiao finally returned to human form. Standing on the Vajra Pestle, he looked back at Ji'an Township and subconsciously touched his chest.
Zhiwei immediately noticed her movement and asked, "What's wrong, Your Highness?"
"I don't know why, but I always feel a warm feeling in my chest, like there's a ball of heat inside." Yun Tianjiao found it strange. Since becoming a ghost, she had never felt any real warmth in her body.
Shen Qiongzhi teased, "Was Sister Tianjiao moved?"
Zhiwei seemed to have thought of something, a look of surprise flashed across her face, and she walked over and took Yun Tianjiao's hand.
Yun Tianjiao looked up at Zhiwei, puzzled.
Zhu Jing looked over with bright eyes and said, "Sister, you probably have divine essence."
Yun Tianjiao exclaimed in surprise, "Divine Essence?"
Zhu Jing nodded, “Yes, nowadays people erect statues for you, and devoutly worship and kneel in veneration; this is the foundation for becoming a god.”
Shen Qiongzhi listened intently, "So this is how you become a god!"
Zhu Jing corrected: "Of course, not everyone can generate divine essence so easily. My elder sister was originally a celestial being, so that's why it worked so quickly."
For example, Zhu Jing, back then, was a powerful cultivator who walked the mortal world for many years, leaving his footprints all over the world and doing all sorts of good deeds. That's why he was worshipped by many people and after his death, he cultivated his own divine essence.
Zhiwei held Yun Tianjiao's hand and injected a wisp of spiritual energy into her body. After concentrating and sensing for a moment, she withdrew the spiritual energy and said, "It has only formed a rudimentary divine essence. If you can attract more worshippers and accumulate incense offerings over time, Your Highness may be able to reshape your divine body and truly return to your divine position."
Shen Qiongzhi and Zhu Jing were both delighted, but Yun Tianjiao no longer had any obsession with becoming a god. "It's just a black cat. It's already the best it can do to have a small number of believers in Ji'an Township. How many more pilgrims can it attract? Right now, it's more important to go to Xuanxiao Gate as soon as possible and find out what happened back then."
Seeing that she had no intention of discussing the matter further, the three did not continue the topic. In fact, Yun Tianjiao also had her own selfish motives. Zhiwei had given her her Ghost Core to save her, and she felt that things were good enough as they were, so why bother cultivating any more divine essence?
Gods are no more noble than demons and ghosts, and she didn't want him to give her everything so that he could be replaced.
...
The place where Xuanxiao Sect once stood was a paradise on earth, with beautiful mountains and clear waters. However, now, even from a distance, one can sense the heavy, foul, and resentful aura emanating from the mountains.
Further on, the desolate mountains stretched for miles, a bleak landscape where not a single vibrant plant could be seen. All the countless creatures had long since turned to dust, buried in the scorched and cracked earth.
Of the four, all except Shen Qiongzhi had lived here before. Even though Yun Tianjiao had lost that memory, he still had a deep impression of this place because it had been included in Zhu Jing's memory.
"How...how did this place become like this?"
Yun Tianjiao's current impression of the Xuanxiao Sect is still based on Zhu Jing's memory. Such a contrast is truly shocking.
Zhu Jing gazed at the desolate mountains, his expression forlorn. "Back then, I wanted to kill Elder Xiyuan to avenge my father, mother, and sister, but I was betrayed by Qingyuan. After becoming a ghost, I lived in a daze for a while. When I finally cultivated my divine essence and ascended to godhood, I returned to this place, only to find that Elder Xiyuan had been beheaded and his body was rotting. By the way, after you entered my memories, were you able to see clearly who killed Xiyuan? Was it Qingyuan?"
"Huh? These are your own memories, don't you know that?" Shen Qiongzhi asked.
Zhu Jing shook his head. "I can recreate scenes from my memories, but many details exist deep within my memory that I am not aware of. This time, I asked my sister and the others to enter my memories so that they could help me find some details that I have forgotten or ignored and answer my questions."
In fact, this kind of memory reproduction spell is very advanced. If it weren't for Zhu Jing's special physique, being the reincarnation of a fragment of the Heavenly Pillar, even with her cultivation level, she wouldn't be able to reproduce a memory with such a long time span and such realistic scene details.
During these days in Ji'an Township, Zhu Jing was weak and slept far more than she was awake. The villagers were very hospitable, and they rarely had time to be alone with her. So they only took the time to give her a general account of what happened after Zhu Jing fell into a coma, and did not have time to discuss some specific issues in detail.
Regarding their suspicion that Zhu Jing's memories might have been altered, Zhu Jing, like them, couldn't be certain.
“It was indeed Qingyuan who killed Elder Xiyuan. Zhu Jing, why do you have such doubts? Weren't only you and Qingyuan present at the time? Since it wasn't you, then besides Qingyuan, there couldn't have been anyone else, right?” Yun Tianjiao keenly noticed the problem and, seeing the strange expression on Zhu Jing's face, asked, “Have you discovered something amiss?”
Sure enough, Zhu Jing nodded: "When I returned to Xuanxiao Sect, besides seeing Elder Xiyuan's body, I also discovered that everyone in the sect was dead, and... their deaths were strange."
Zhiwei asked, "How is it strange?"
Zhu Jing frowned slightly, as if recalling some scenes that made her extremely uncomfortable.
"Their bodies were all perfectly intact, with no wounds or signs of poisoning. I don't know if this description is accurate, but it's as if... they were drained of their life force and died."
"You don't think Qingyuan did these things?" Shen Qiongzhi asked.
Zhu Jing shook his head. "Based on my understanding of him, he probably didn't have such audacity back then. He killed me because he coveted Xi Yuan's immortal herb. You could tell he was afraid at that time. Since his goal was the immortal herb, killing Xi Yuan had already achieved his goal. What reason would he have to kill all the disciples of Xuanxiao Sect? When we went to find Elder Xi Yuan, no one saw us, so it definitely wasn't to silence us."
Yun Tianjiao agreed, saying, "If what you said is true, and the disciples of Xuanxiao Sect were all drained of their life force and died, then the perpetrator must have possessed extremely powerful demonic arts. With Qingyuan's cultivation level at the time, he shouldn't have had such abilities."
Shen Qiongzhi guessed, "Could it be the Divine Venerable Gongxin? Didn't you say that when Sect Leader Yu Lanshan ascended to immortality, his cultivation was drained by Xiyuan and he died? In Zhu Jing's memory, Xiyuan always worshipped the Divine Venerable Gongxin, so he must have learned the method of absorbing others from Gongxin, right?"
"Zhu Jing, do you really not remember which deity Xi Yuan worships?" Yun Tianjiao asked.
Zhu Jing looked very remorseful. "I'm sorry, elder sister. I only caught a fleeting glimpse of the celestial being behind Elder Xiyuan on the day Xiyuan killed Father and Mother. I didn't even see the face clearly."
Shen Qiongzhi immediately said, "This is not your fault, why are you apologizing!"
Yun Tianjiao smiled helplessly, "Yes, Zhu Jing, there's no need to blame yourself. At that time, it was a chaotic time of war, and you were escorted away by the Ghost-Slaying Blade. How could you have the energy to distinguish right from wrong?"
Zhiwei said, "The more vague the memory, the easier it is to be tampered with. In this light, the celestial being behind Elder Xiyuan may not necessarily be the Divine Venerable Gongxin."
As they were talking, the Vajra Pestle had already carried them to the front of the Xuanxiao Sect's mountain gate.
Yun Tianjiao put away the Vajra Pestle, and as soon as the four of them landed, they could feel a deep resentment emanating from beneath their feet.
“There seem to be quite a few vengeful spirits and ghosts here,” Zhu Jing said.
“According to you, so many people died, and they all died unjustly after their life force was drained. They must have all turned into vengeful ghosts. How could they not be resentful!” Shen Qiongzhi strolled around with her hands behind her back, as if examining something. Suddenly, she turned back and made a face at Zhu Jing. “But can any resentment be as strong as the resentment on my body?”
She suddenly stepped into the mountain gate, stomped her feet hard, and the ground trembled twice because of her arrogant stomping.
"Get out here, all of you! What are you hiding like that?!"
As Shen Qiongzhi shouted, two wisps of black mist rose from the ground on either side of the mountain gate, and soon condensed into two pale ghost spirits dressed in disciple robes. Yun Tianjiao even found them very familiar.
These appear to be the Xuanxiao Sect disciples who were responsible for guarding the mountain gate back then.
The two ghosts, already subdued by the heavy resentment emanating from Shen Qiongzhi, were startled when they realized there were three more people standing beside this old lady—
Good heavens! One possesses the divine essence of a deity, another has formidable ghostly power and seems to be a ghost king-level figure, and yet another, though not highly cultivated, continuously emits spiritual energy from his body, like a pillar reaching to the heavens!
The four of them stood there in a row, each one more frightening than the last!
The two weak and easily bullied ghosts were so frightened that they immediately knelt down, kowtowing repeatedly to the ground, crying with snot and tears streaming down their faces: "Four grandfathers, spare our lives! We are just innocent ghosts who died unjustly, we have never harmed anyone. We have elderly parents and young children to support, please spare our lives..."
"Who's the grandpa? I'm clearly a young girl in the prime of my life!" Shen Qiongzhi stomped her feet twice in dissatisfaction.
This was a classic case of flattery backfiring; the two ghosts were so frightened that they shut their mouths and continued to kowtow while crying.
Yun Tianjiao cleared his throat and adopted the imposing manner of a ghost king: "You have been dead for many years, why don't you go to the Netherworld to report?"
Faced with Yun Tianjiao, the two ghosts finally quieted down completely.
One of them replied in a low voice, "It's not that we don't want to leave, but... we're stuck here."
Zhiwei frowned. "Who trapped you?"
The other ghost shook its head. "I don't know. We died inexplicably, and after we died, we found that we couldn't leave this place, so we can only stay here and guard it."
The first ghost added, "Not only are we guarding this place, but anyone who comes in from outside won't be able to get out either."
"Not only humans, but even demons and gods can't get out."
As the two men's conversation became increasingly esoteric, the four men's curiosity was piqued.
"In all these years, has nothing ever left this place?" Yun Tianjiao asked.
The ghost spirit said, "Yes, when we died, some mortals from nearby villages sneaked in, trying to steal the treasures in the gate. Without exception, they all died here. After they died, the ghost spirit couldn't get out either."
"Later, people from all around said that our Xuanxiao Sect had become an ominous place, and they moved away one after another. Over time, this area became a desolate mountain, and few people came here anymore."
"Has no one come here in recent years?" Zhiwei asked.
The two ghosts exchanged a glance and said, "No, it's not that. About a month ago, someone came."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
