Get and leave
He hasn't sunk yet.
Up and down, up and down, up and down, he has experienced too many such situations around him. Today he sank again.
He is still floating, he will not give up, he will not sink.
He didn't have a very long memory. He only remembered that he walked across the bridge, and then the group of ghosts who were supposed to be behind him ignored the order and squeezed one after another to cross the bridge, pushing him off the bridge through a hole that was nearly as wide as a person's waist, and he fell into the river.
No one came to save him. He only heard someone on the bridge talking, saying that another unlucky person had fallen down today and lost the qualification for reincarnation.
Is the qualification for reincarnation important? The surrounding silt poured into his ears, and all the places on his body that came into contact with the outside world felt blocked. He couldn't think about any further questions.
He didn't dare to turn over, because the guy next to him who fell down with him had already demonstrated the opposite: if he turned over, he would easily sink into the water and never float up again.
He once heard the whine of hunting dogs on the river bank. They stared at their prey with bloodshot eyes on the shore, dragged up a few bones from the shallows of the river, and ate them up with their bloody mouths.
He also saw a ghost on the bridge in the middle of the night. When it saw a white light appear, it shouted, "Now I can be reincarnated!" and rushed in excitedly.
The sun set and rose countless times, but he still maintained the same posture as when he fell, floating flat in the river with his eyes open, looking at the bridge and the sky.
Just when he thought that the days to come would always be like this, and he would always be a part of the river, embedded in it.
The sharp tip of the sickle was only an inch away from his nose.
The man stood in the river, looking down at him. Not a single part of his body was intact; everything was falling apart. He held the sickle and asked him, "Do you want to be the 99th Black Impermanence? You have to do it even if you don't want to. It has chosen you. It is this sickle, so you hold it."
The moment he took the soul-haunting sickle, the man shattered and disappeared in the wind, and he stood up from the silted river.
The ninety-eighth generation of Black Wuchang fell, and the ninety-ninth generation of Black Wuchang rose.
He was the ninety-ninth Black Impermanence. Previous Black Impermanence had died repeatedly. The Soul-Catching Scythe was so evil that it had killed all who wielded it. He survived the backlash, likely due to his baptism in the mud of the River of Forgetfulness. His body would often sustain internal injuries after wielding the scythe, but this was the least of the effects.
He has lost the qualification to reincarnate and can only stay in the underworld for hundreds of thousands of years, serving the underworld as a ghost messenger.
The story of Hei Wuchang is over.
He felt a delicate hand tremblingly brushing under his eyes, "What's wrong with you?"
"I thought you were crying, that's why..."
Hei Wuchang blinked, and his eyelashes brushed against Tian Baozhu's fingers. She felt a little itchy. Huh?
"Ah, my hands can move!"
Did you just realize...
What she wanted to do was to comfort him first. It was not a pleasant experience to recall and talk about his past, but there was someone who soothed his wounds, and a gentle smile appeared on the corner of his mouth unconsciously.
※※※
When her hands could move again, Tian Baozhu immediately took out the spirit-calling bell and rang it, hypnotizing herself: "Your body has recovered. You are very strong now. Your whole body is very flexible. Move."
Is it effective? Hei Wuchang looked at her, half believing and half doubting. Half a minute later, he really saw Tian Baozhu stand up quickly from her lying position as if nothing had happened, and even did a tap dance with her feet.
"Are you really okay?" Hei Wuchang couldn't believe that the ringing sound could also hypnotize himself.
"It's okay now. Look, my feet were still flexible enough to dance just now. I feel incredibly strong now!"
After moving her feet, she also wanted to move her hands. Tian Baozhu moved her originally stiff palms, but found that the insect-shaped gold coin in her hand bounced.
"?" She wiped it.
The gold coins flew up again.
Wait, you're still running? You're the one who caused us to fall. Where else are you thinking of going?!
Tian Baozhu and Hei Wuchang chased it, but unexpectedly it flew to a place and did not fly away, but kept crashing down.
"The Emperor of Heaven said that the worm-shaped gold coins can be used to discover golden nanmu trees. Could it be underneath this?"
They stood on the ground where the gold coin hit, doubting it and checking it out. Unexpectedly, it was as if they were standing on an elevator going down, and it pushed them down.
Aa ...
With a strong sense of weightlessness, Tian Baozhu felt as if she was on a transparent elevator, breaking through the surface and falling into a void space. She could see that it was pitch black all around, with only a thin beam of light in the distance.
The spatial dimensions here are completely chaotic. They are not clearly divided into east, south, west and north as shown in the map of the underworld city.
Looking back at where they stood, it was now shaped like a funnel, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The eyes saw it as if from a wide-angle perspective, their upper bodies stretched out like pixels for several meters, while their lower bodies seemed compressed. The body didn't feel any different, but the eyes saw something completely different from the body, a stark disjunction.
Just where was this place? They were teleported down, finally landing on solid ground. The worm-shaped gold coin continued to fly, leading the way, and indeed, it flew towards the conspicuous pillar of light.
The beam of light seemed far away, but Tian Baozhu felt like they had only run a few steps before they arrived. The insect-shaped gold coin flew very high in the sky, so high that Tian Baozhu had to look up to see it. Then, illuminated by the beam of light, she discovered something like a tree trunk, spinning in a ring, high in the sky.
"Little girl, why are you here?" A familiar voice came from the other side of the light column. The voice was very old, but when you looked at the owner of the voice, you found that he was a young man who looked to be less than 30 years old.
"Old Bai Wuchang?! Why are you here?" Tian Baozhu exclaimed in surprise, but she saw that Old Bai Wuchang still had his usual smile on his face and didn't seem surprised by their arrival.
Then she saw that there was another person behind Old Bai Wuchang, or to be more precise, a giant. She was two stories tall and lying peacefully. If it weren't for her flying black hair and the steady rise and fall of her breathing, Tian Baozhu would have thought it was a pure white statue.
The surrounding environment was empty and black, only her body was bright. The beam of light was emitted by her, and the fragments scattered from her body floated into the air like snow.
"Who is she...?" Even Hei Wuchang, who is usually quiet, couldn't help but ask curiously at this moment.
"She is Nuwa, the mother of the earth who sustains all living things." He turned to look at Nuwa, "She still has 999,990,000 years to go before she disappears."
"Then who are you...?" Tian Baozhu asked after swallowing her saliva. Who on earth could be staying here without changing his expression?
"I'm Old Bai Wuchang, little girl." He turned back and smiled again, "You didn't come here just to reminisce with me, did you?"
"Oh, yes. We're looking for golden nanmu seedlings." Tian Baozhu seemed to have just woken up from a dream. They still had business to attend to. She pointed to the insect-shaped gold coin flying high in the sky and said, "This insect led us here."
"This bug isn't the one I gave you, is it?"
"This was given to me by the Emperor of Heaven. I used the one you gave me to buy my clothes." Tian Baozhu looked at her finger a little embarrassedly.
"I gave it to you, so it's yours. You can use it however you want."
Tian Baozhu's curiosity about this space surpassed everything else. Why did the gold coins lead them here? She asked, "Old Bai Wuchang, what exactly is this place? I haven't seen its mark on the city map of the underworld."
"This place doesn't belong to the underworld; it's the intersection of heaven, the human world, and the underworld.
The three realms combined are like a ball. It's still, and you see a clear distinction between up and down. But what happens when it moves? Up can become down, and down can become up. You can't really say which is truly up; they can all be mixed together. At the beginning of heaven and earth, there was chaos, with no distinction between one thing and another.
"Just like we usually live in the center, which is fixed, but now we are at the edge. It is a ring that can rotate around the center? So there is no way to say whether the position it is rotating to now is in the underworld, the heaven, or the human world?"
Tian Baozhu tried to sort it out, but the amount of information that Old Bai Wuchang said was so huge that it overturned their understanding.
"You understand it well."
"That tree up there..." Tian Baozhu pointed at the tree trunk that was still spinning like a ring and asked, "Is this tree that's spinning a golden nanmu?"
"Golden Phoebe? I've forgotten if it's called that. It's indeed an ancient sacred tree that has existed in the world since the creation of the world."
This ancient tree was still rotating. Tian Baozhu suddenly understood why they couldn't find the golden nanmu seedling when they went to look for it again. It was because it had moved to another place as it rotated. No wonder the seedling was hard to find, because the place where it appeared was not fixed at all.
Tian Baozhu told Lao Bai Wuchang that the worm-shaped gold coin was given to them by the Emperor of Heaven to find golden nanmu trees. They risked their lives to find the seedlings and later found this place. They needed the seedlings of this sacred tree to cultivate and grow them as materials for the bridge panels to repair the Naihe Bridge.
"Wouldn't it be faster if we just take the wood back directly?" Hei Wuchang and Tian Baozhu discussed.
"Wood can only be repaired for a period of time. If it rots later, the tree will have to be cut down again. It is better to plant seedlings and allow them to grow sustainably." This is the conclusion drawn by Tian Baozhu.
Old Bai Wuchang smiled and said, "Young man, I'm afraid you can't take a shortcut. The trunk of the ancient sacred tree is as hard as diamond, and no sharp blade can cut it. But the little girl's idea can be realized. Wait here, and I'll pick a seedling for you."
Old Bai Wuchang pointed his finger easily, and a seedling fell from the sky gently and accurately into Tian Baozhu's arms. The insect-shaped gold coins also flew down. Tian Baozhu hurriedly put them all away.
The golden nanmu seedlings have been obtained, and Old Bai Wuchang opens his portal and sends them away.
As they entered the door, he gave his final instructions:
"The Emperor of Heaven's style remains the same as before. He likes to only tell half of what he says. The ancient sacred tree cannot be nurtured by relying solely on the water of the underworld. It also needs water from the heavens. You will have to make the trouble of going to him."
They had gone to so much trouble to find the golden nanmu seedlings before, but in comparison, they were easily available in the hands of Old Bai Wuchang.
Who are you? Tian Baozhu wondered in her heart. Before they disappeared through the door, Tian Baozhu turned around and glanced at Old Bai Wuchang.
I am Old Bai Wuchang, the one who gave birth to the mountains and seas. That old voice answered her in her heart.
※※※
The door directly teleported them back to the red spider lily field.
At that time, Meng Po was still trying to open her "door". Seeing Tian Baozhu and the others appear out of thin air, she was frightened but also surprised. She hugged her excitedly for a long time before she remembered to ask them how they came back.
"We met the retired White Impermanence, who kindly used his magic to send us back." Tian Baozhu briefly explained the process. Then she saw that not only Meng Po and the little dog were there by the flower field, but also the accountant.
"Have you been here all day trying to figure this out? I'm sorry to have worried you."
"Sisters, what are you talking about? Is being trapped in an unknown area making you feel like the days are passing by so slowly? We've only been apart for less than an hour."
Tian Baozhu and Hei Wuchang looked at each other. Only an hour had passed?
Is it not just space that is distorted there, but time as well?
Or is this also one of the abilities of Old Bai Wuchang (Pangu)?
※※※
The accountant was the first to say that he smelled a strange fragrance.
Tian Baozhu pulled the golden nanmu sapling from its hidden space and held it in her hand. Though only a young seedling, it glowed a stunning golden yellow. The fragrance was even stronger than before, so rich that even the staff and nearby ghosts couldn't help but draw near, inhaling deeply and becoming intoxicated.
"Tsk tsk tsk—" the accountant made a surprised sound.
Tian Baozhu didn't understand his reaction. Could it be that the ancient sacred tree wasn't the golden nanmu? She looked at Hei Wuchang, who was also confused, and asked, "Did we find the wrong one?"
"You found it right! I was so excited because I couldn't believe it! I once thought it was extinct, but I didn't expect to see it again today. You are so lucky, little girl, you found it! This is indeed the original log of the thousand-year-old Naihe Bridge, the seedling of the golden nanmu tree!"
Hei Wuchang cautiously asked again, "Master, please confirm again, is this really a golden nanmu seedling?"
"Of course! I'm not that senile. I actually witnessed the process of the Heavenly Emperor bestowing the reward. I remember it clearly. The pattern on that ancient book is the one I drew back then. How could it be fake?"
Hei Wuchang and Tian Baozhu high-fived. Hei Wuchang's hands were strong, and Tian Baozhu felt that his strength was also passed on to herself.
"Without further delay, let's go plant this golden nanmu seedling." Tian Baozhu placed the golden nanmu seedling back into the hidden space and began to consider how to plant it. The first thing to consider was where to plant it. Given the ecological environment on the surface of the underworld, where would it be most suitable?
The seedlings have been found, but cultivating them is another challenge.
Meng Po joined the discussion and said, how about choosing the original unknown area?
Hei Wuchang's opinion is that the magnetic field there is not suitable for long-term farming.
Tian Baozhu said that she had also considered that the native environment there was better, but it would require a portal to transport her there. If she didn't grasp the situation well, she would easily get into danger. If she couldn't go to see it in time, she was afraid that if she planted it, the precious seedlings would be ruined.
Phoebe nanmu seedlings must be planted within seven days, otherwise they will wither; if the leaves are separated from the original tree for more than three days, they will automatically disappear.
Old Bai Wuchang had said this to her when he handed the sapling to her, so she chose to be cautious.
While the three were discussing, the accountant who had just returned to Yama's Palace came back. He stood in front of Hei Wuchang and said to him alone, "The Lord Yama asked you to go to Yama's Palace."
"Why is Lord Yama only called Black Impermanence? We are all acting together. If there is an arrangement, I will go too, so we don't have to run around."
The accountant looked at her apologetically and said that the King of Hell only wanted Hei Wuchang to go alone. He did not call Tian Baozhu.
"oh……"
Tian Baozhu watched Hei Wuchang leave alone, wondering if there was any other task that needed to be discussed separately.
※※※
When Hei Wuchang came back, Meng Po was still talking to Tian Baozhu. They analyzed the pros and cons and thought that if they had to choose a place in the underworld to plant golden nanmu trees, the side of Wangchuan River might be the most suitable place.
He hesitated for a moment, but still interrupted their conversation and said to Tian Baozhu, "The King of Hell wants you to go to the King of Hell alone."
"Senior, what did Lord Yama say to you just now? Why do we have to speak separately?"
"..." Hei Wuchang looked at Tian Baozhu with an extremely complicated look. There was reluctance in his eyes, and also... loneliness? Just when Tian Baozhu thought he was going to say something else, he walked to the side and started shoveling the soil to dig a hole for planting flowers.
What's going on? Why is it so mysterious? Tian Baozhu wanted to leave, and Meng Po followed her. When they reached the Yama Palace, they separated, and Tian Baozhu went in alone.
She saw Lord Yama holding the account book, who had been looking at her with great kindness since she entered the hall, and she was very confused.
What was wrong with them? She didn't understand why they were looking at her meaningfully.
Before she could greet the King of Hell, he smiled and said to her:
"Congratulations, Tian Baozhu, you can be reincarnated early."
“????”
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