Chapter 65: The Old Royal Family
Northwest of Zhongzhou, Ningcheng County.
The sky was gradually getting darker in the evening, and vendors doing business along the long street were poking the stoves under their sheds, trying to make them burn more vigorously.
Then a woman was seen coming along the street and stopped in front of the stall.
The woman was extremely beautiful, wearing a long skirt that rolled down her skirt like snow. Her eyes were as soft and deep as autumn water, and her skin was as white as snow. However, her face was cold and she looked a bit arrogant, as if to say that no strangers were allowed to approach her.
She would come here every evening to buy a sweet potato. She seemed to like it, but she would always complain that it was not as delicious as the one he roasted.
At first, the vendors were angry but dared not say anything, but as they heard it more and more times, they couldn't help but complain a few times.
"Girls always say that my food is not as good as others', why do you still buy it?"
"Because he's not here."
The woman peeled the sweet potato and squinted her eyes and said, "You know, I've only met him once."
After hearing this, the peddler pursed his lips and thought to himself, how would I know that? But I do know that if the "he" the girl is referring to is a man, he is probably in love.
After buying the sweet potatoes, the woman walked along the long street and headed towards an abandoned courtyard.
The disciples of Lingjian Mountain were once attacked in Qingzhou. After careful tracking and investigation, the clues were led to the Qiling ruins.
But there is one thing that many people overlook.
That was Chen Qinghe’s original identity.
The Chen Immortal Clan has a rule for accepting disciples, which is different from that of other immortal sects. That is, disciples who join the sect need to change their surnames and identify themselves with the clan.
The reason for this rule is that they don't want too many prosperous families around.
According to the information she found, Chen Qinghe's surname was not Chen before he changed it, but Zheng.
During the period of war among various countries, Zheng was actually a very ancient royal surname.
After Da Xia gained the help of the Immortal Sect, it conquered the Central Plains and the State of Zheng surrendered. It changed from a royal family to a huge aristocratic family, but it did not decline, because the children in their family had excellent talent for cultivation.
Especially the last generation of Zheng family ancestor, who was the senior brother of Chen Ruhai, the current head of the Chen family. A hundred years ago, some people called them the two prides of the Zheng family.
However, because he had no blessing from the Taoist tradition, the Zheng family ancestor had no hope of becoming an immortal, and he passed away after his lifespan was exhausted.
Since his death, the Zheng family's good fortune that had lasted since the chaotic era seemed to have been lost. Now that the family has few descendants, they even sold the ancestral home and moved the whole family elsewhere.
If it were just that Chen Qinghe's original surname was Zheng, it wouldn't be worth it for the young master of Lingjian Mountain to come in person.
But there is one thing that is even more strange, and that is Hongshan Mine.
Hongshan Mine is located in Zhongzhou and was originally controlled by the Zheng family. It is said that later the miners accidentally opened a mine tunnel leading to the depths of Qiling.
When the Zheng family learned about this, almost all of them left the family. It seemed that their family had lost its luck since then, and their descendants continued to die out.
First, the Zheng family’s Hongshan Mine was dug through, leading to Qiling.
Then, Zheng Qinghe, a member of the family, turned into a creature that was neither human nor ghost, and kept traveling back and forth between the Qiling Mountains to escort the convoy.
If someone said there was no connection, Yan Shu wouldn't believe it at all.
The long street soon came to the end, and the young master had already eaten half of the sweet potato in his hand.
At this moment, she was standing in front of the gate of an abandoned courtyard. When she looked up, even the plaque was gone.
Only the words engraved on the stone pier in front of the door indicate that this was once the ancestral home of the Zheng family.
This house is huge and was once extremely prosperous, but now the gate is closed and the copper lock is rusted.
Bang! A wisp of sword energy flowed out, and the gate of Zheng's ancestral home collapsed.
As Yan Shuyi stepped inside, he felt a chill coming over him and a strange smell floating around him.
The first entrance of the house was covered with knee-high weeds. Apart from that, there were only broken bricks and tiles and a main hall that was almost half collapsed.
The young master looked around for a long time, then left the front yard and went deep into Zheng's house.
If someone wants to hide something, they certainly won't hide it on their face. This is something even a three-year-old child knows.
Yan Shuyi walked across the weeds and spread out his tender palms.
As the fairy light surged, a stone mirror floated in the air. The fairy light in the mirror shone down, revealing every detail, and shot into the inner hall of the last house.
Yan Shuyi drew his sword and walked into the house. Seeing the fairy light constantly flickering, he thought carefully for a moment, then chopped the stone wall at the back with his sword.
With a loud bang, the wall was cut off in half, but what was exposed was not the dusk behind the house, but another wall.
This wall is hollow and looks like a single wall, but in fact it hides a passage with a stone staircase leading down.
“…”
Yan Shuyi stood there in silence for a long time without moving.
She is afraid of the dark.
This has nothing to do with one's level of strength, it's purely a psychological factor.
But after pondering for a moment, she still walked down this long secret passage, walked up the long stone steps, and finally reached the depths.
There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!
In front of us is an extremely large underground palace, which is not much smaller than the Zheng family residence on the top.
But unlike the top of the mountain which is full of pavilions and towers, the underground palace is filled with stone prisons sealed by iron bars.
"Zheng Jinghui, Zheng Yu, Zheng Chen, Zheng Hongwen..."
Yan Shuyi's eyes swept across the nameplate of the stone prison, and finally stopped, his brows deeply furrowed.
Judging from the nameplates, those imprisoned here are all descendants of the Zheng family.
But what the young master saw in the stone prison was... not a human.
They were dried corpses as dry as charcoal, having lost their vitality for a long time. They were locked in solitary cells and had long been covered with dust.
Yan Shuyi continued to walk deeper into the stone prison, and suddenly stopped when he reached the deepest part.
Through the iron bars, she saw an evil creature with a murderous aura curled up in a corner. The walls were covered with deep scratches, which seemed to be caused by it.
Seeing a stranger entering, the evil creature suddenly went crazy, pounced forward, and scratched fiercely with its pair of dry claws, as if it wanted to tear everything in front of it into pieces.
But in stark contrast to his violent behavior, a weak voice came out of his mouth.
“Save me…”
"My ancestors deceived me, please save me."
When Yan Shuyi saw this scene, he instantly felt a chill in his heart.
Why did the Zheng family have so few descendants? Is it really as the outside world says that it was because their luck had disappeared and they couldn't have children, so that such a large old royal family would fall into such poverty that they even abandoned their ancestral home?
In fact, when she looked at the cells in front of her, the answer was already ready to emerge in her mind.
But even though she was mentally prepared, when she saw the evil creature actually speak human language, a strong feeling of discomfort still enveloped her heart.
But then, Yan Shuyi noticed another mummy in the shadow behind the evil creature.
It was a real mummy, not the result of a dead evil being that had lost its evil spirit.
The mummy she could see had long beautiful hair and was a woman, still wearing a robe from Spirit Sword Mountain, and it was obvious that she had been sucked dry.
Yan Shuyi turned around and walked out of the dungeon, his heart already cold.
As she came to the ground, the Qiling Mountain in the distance was once again shining with fairy light.
Compared with the last time when the disciples of the Immortal Sect entered the mountain, the immortal light this time was more turbulent, and colorful clouds filled the sky in all directions, like golden scales constantly spreading over the mountains.
Those geniuses of the immortal sect who had earlier followed the disciples into the mountains on flying swords away from the evil spirit could no longer contain their excitement, and huge swords kept falling into them.
(End of this chapter)