Hei Wuchang, do you want to murder me?
Tian Baozhu lay back down on the bed. She had taken a shower and should have gone to sleep, but perhaps because she went to bed much earlier than usual in the human world, she was still not sleepy at all.
The more she worried about it, the harder it was to fall asleep. She thought she could just close her eyes and let herself fall asleep naturally.
With her eyes closed, her other senses became more sensitive. She heard many sounds floating in the room, like human screams and wails.
The mosquitoes in this room are so noisy.
But there was only a buzzing sound in my ears, and I didn't feel any stings or itching on my body.
Besides, she had been bombarded with information that day, and all she wanted was a good sleep.
Go to sleep, you still have to go see Meng Po tomorrow.
Tian Baozhu felt something crawling on her face. It definitely wasn't a mosquito!
She opened her eyes and saw an eyeball hanging from the ceiling.
"Hah!" she yelled, picked up a pillow and slapped it like a cockroach, causing her eyeballs to swing violently back and forth like the pendulum of a wall clock.
Then, with a "whoosh", the muscle tissue connected to its back pulled it back to the ceiling.
"Who are you? Why are you in my room?" Tian Baozhu held the pillow tightly, hoping that if it fell again, she would slap it back immediately.
She had seen many employees in the underworld that looked like monsters, but she had never seen one with only one eyeball hanging from the ceiling of her room.
"Little sister~" The eyeball has no other organs, but it can be heard talking. It turns out that the sound is produced by the muscle tissue behind it wriggling. "Don't be afraid, I am a very kind person."
It's just an eyeball, and there's no stretching of the skin or muscles involved in the smile. How can anyone tell whether you are kind or not just by talking to yourself?
"Why did you come in when people were sleeping? How long have you been looking here with your eyes open?"
Seeing that Tian Baozhu was still staring at him warily, the muscles of his eyeballs rubbed together and made a "crackling" "laughter", as if this could make Tian Baozhu let down her guard.
"Don't be afraid, little sister. I just happened to pass by here. I kept my eyes closed the whole time before you hit me. I'm a very gentleman. Compared to those people in the underworld, you and I are the closest. I was once a human being in the human world. We are the same kind, fellow countrymen~"
"You came from the human world? How did you get trapped in this building?"
"I was wrongfully imprisoned and sentenced to death. I appealed to the King of Hell in Hades' Hall, but instead of redressing my grievances, he subjected me to hellish hellfire and ash. Be wary of everyone in the underworld, or you'll be deceived and left with nothing!"
If Tian Baozhu hadn't met so many Underworld employees and Lord Yama at the Underworld Staff Conference, she might have been frightened by its eloquent "speech". She retorted, "I've met Lord Yama, and he's not like you say he is. He's a good leader."
"Hahaha, you're kidding! Have you ever seen the King of Hell angry? He won't tolerate his authority being challenged." Seeing Tian Baozhu wavering, it continued, "Everyone in the underworld is evil! Especially that man Bai Wuchang, he's incredibly bad. He can detect even the smallest movement of my movements in the building. As soon as I approached this room, he threw marbles at me, using me as a target!"
Tian Baozhu didn't know which of its words were true and which were false. She had only been in the underworld for one day at most, and there were many places in the underworld that she had not fully understood. But this eyeball had intruded without permission while she was sleeping with her eyes closed, so it was not a good person.
"I don't know how they tricked you into living in this room. Now I'm lucky. Without that male White Impermanence, I finally have a fragile and lovely little sister like you. But you have to be careful with that Black Impermanence next door. The Black and White Impermanence don't get along. Be careful he might take his anger out on you."
Tian Baozhu was uncomfortable with the greasy tone of the eyeball. She didn't want to listen to it "talking" anymore. She warned it in a serious tone:
"I'm going to sleep, please leave!"
"Don't say that, little sister~ It's boring and lonely in the underworld at night without anyone to chat with. I will come to play with you often~"
"Don't come! You're not welcome!"
Tian Baozhu threw the pillow hard towards the ceiling, and when the pillow fell vertically, it was gone.
Tian Baozhu stayed on for a while longer, making sure the man wouldn't show up again, then fell back on the bed and slept. She was so exhausted she didn't even care about her sleeping posture.
[Black and White Impermanence are not related]
In her dream, these words kept playing in her ears like a looping radio, until a male voice, neither cold nor indifferent, called her:
"Get up."
※※※
As Tian Baozhu had promised before, she could be woken up when someone called her to.
Tian Baozhu ruffled her sleep-ruffled hair, dressed, and opened the door. Hei Wuchang was already waiting for her outside, dressed neatly in his work uniform. Looking out the window of the building behind him, the sky was still pitch black.
"What time is it now?"
"Four seasons."
"Isn't four o'clock early in the morning? Meng Po is working so early?" Hei Wuchang didn't reply. Tian Baozhu thought to herself, it was probably just like queuing up to visit a famous tourist attraction. People line up all night, and she just needs to get up a little earlier.
Have you ever seen the underworld at four o'clock in the morning? Shrouded in fog, everything is hazy and visibility is only about twenty meters.
After coming out of the staff dormitory, Tian Baozhu walked through the ghost market shops. If it weren't for the coordinates of Hei Wuchang in front, she felt that if she walked alone, she would end up in some unknown fork in the road.
After leaving the Ghost Market, they arrived at the Naihe Bridge over the Wangchuan River. Yesterday, Tian Baozhu had been so engrossed in shopping at the Ghost Market that she had simply crossed the Naihe Bridge. Now, stepping onto it again, she saw its decay and dilapidated state. The bridge bore too many signs of repairs, with nails densely packed throughout the wooden planks. Cracks of varying sizes lay scattered throughout, some as wide as a person's waist. To avoid falling, she had to walk around it.
Through the large crack in the bridge plank, she saw something floating and tumbling to the side in the river below.
"Something is moving under the bridge." She told Hei Wuchang in a straightforward manner. After being in the underworld for a long time, she could take everything she saw calmly.
"..." Hei Wuchang didn't respond, but he also looked at the bottom of the bridge for a long time. So long that Tian Baozhu thought he was just going to stay there until Meng Po came. Then Hei Wuchang spoke to her:
"Let's go. Come up a little closer and walk side by side with me."
"Oh." This was the first time Tian Baozhu saw Hei Wuchang suggest that two people walk side by side. She felt that this was even more novel than what she had just seen under the bridge.
They walked side by side silently, passed the Palace of Yama, and then came to a long, winding and dusty road - the Yellow Springs Road.
Tian Baozhu wondered if he was going to conduct an on-site inspection and think about how to develop the land for farming and fulfill the first task assigned by the King of Hell to plant flowers and plants on the Yellow Springs Road?
That’s great. She felt touched that “my partner is working hard with me.”
They finally reached the end of the Yellow Springs Road together, where the road disappeared out of thin air. To describe it using the terminology of the game Tian Baozhu had played, it was an "air wall."
Just as she was thinking, "How can a ghost from the human world pass through here?", a pale figure suddenly emerged from the flat wall, and then, as if cast out of a mold, the whole person (ghost) walked to the stone mountain and sat down with an expressionless face.
The King of Hell's Palace is only open during the day, and ghosts from the underworld need to wait at night.
Tian Baozhu followed Hei Wuchang and walked all the way back to the Naihe Bridge from the Yellow Springs Road.
Hei Wuchang stopped and let Tian Baozhu run from one end of the bridge to the other alone.
What is this for?
Is this a ritual to summon Meng Po? Hei Wu Chang didn't answer her, but she was anxious to see Meng Po, so she had no choice but to follow his instructions.
"Then I'll run away."
"Go ahead, it'll be fine."
Compared to usual, the tone he used to reply to her was unnaturally gentle.
When a man is about to die, his words are good.
Tian Baozhu suddenly got goosebumps all over her body.
Ah, bah, bah, no one is going to die! Don't think about it!
※※※
The fog was so thick that the bridge could no longer be seen.
Tian Baozhu felt like she was running in the fog. The place she was running was much wider than the bridge she had imagined, and it seemed endless in all directions.
She saw a white light appear in front of the fog.
She didn't know whether she was running towards the white light or the white light was running towards her. The strong white light almost swallowed her.
She saw her arm gradually disappearing. This light can absorb people?!
“Jump in!”
[The Black and White Impermanence have a disagreement]
The words that suddenly flashed through Tian Baozhu's mind made her eyelids jump and she came back to her senses.
The fog in front of me dissipated.
She heard Hei Wuchang calling out to her from the bridgehead. Tian Baozhu reacted quickly, pulling back her arm, stopping in her tracks and looking back at Hei Wuchang. At that moment, the white light that was about to suck her in instantly vanished.
If she had listened to Hei Wuchang's call and jumped in, wouldn't she have been sucked away by the white light and disappeared?
"Black Impermanence!! Do you want to murder me?!"
Tian Baozhu angrily called out his full name, completely disinclined to address him as "senior" anymore! Which senior would want to kill someone just because they didn't agree with him?
I don’t care if you are fragile or have poor physical strength. I wanted to swing my fist at the tip of his nose, but he just looked at her and didn’t try to dodge.
"You won't defend yourself?"
"You get angry first, then I'll talk."
Sure enough, I should beat him up first, right? Tian Baozhu slapped Hei Wuchang hard in the face. Hei Wuchang was pushed back a few steps on the spot, his face red and swollen. After hitting the railing of the bridge, he started coughing violently.
Tian Baozhu still found it difficult to relieve the anger in her heart. If she hadn't seen him washing the blood in the bathroom yesterday, she would have been even more ruthless than she was now.
"Go ahead." Tian Baozhu put her hands on her hips, her fists not completely loosened yet, waiting for the reason that Hei Wuchang would give next.
"You just missed a good opportunity. It's 4:44, the time for reincarnation when the Ghost Gate officially opens."
"Wait a minute, I don't understand. Don't ghosts have to wait in line to be reincarnated? Why do you make it sound like I can leave now without permission?"
"Under the full operation of the underworld staff, we can guarantee a 100% connection to the reincarnation in the human world. Those require approval procedures. The opening of the ghost gate just now was a shortcut. There is no guarantee, it all depends on luck."
"So what's the success rate?"
"Fifty percent."
"Isn't that just half and half?!" Either live or disappear.
"Even if it's only half a chance, you still have to fight for it desperately and struggle to grab a glimmer of hope, right?"
Tian Baozhu had never seen Hei Wuchang so excited before. He told her to fight for it, to struggle, and that there was also a "pain" that she didn't understand and didn't know where it came from, but -
My colleague and friend, what she wants is a 100% safe and reliable method of reincarnation.
"Having missed today, I can only wait again. The next time will be the first day of the new year..." Hei Wuchang murmured softly.
"Hei Wuchang, didn't Old Bai Wuchang also say that back then? I can just wait a year and be reincarnated in a year. Why take all these risks? Besides, the farming work that Lord Yama has assigned to me has just begun. I don't like to be unfinished, nor do I like to give up halfway. Senior, don't you want to see the underworld bloom? Don't you want the golden nanmu trees to grow into heavenly timber and repair the Naihe Bridge?"
"Of course I did."
Tian Baozhu knew that she had hit the snake's weakest point. The Naihe Bridge was a very special existence to Hei Wuchang, although she didn't know why.
She whimpered again, "Are you still going to kick me out?"
Hei Wuchang was silent for a long time, and finally he sighed, "You really don't want to leave right away? You still want to stay in the underworld?"
"A year, that's not a long time. There are so many people ahead of me waiting in line to be reincarnated, I'll just wait patiently. Senior, the farming business in the underworld needs me, and I will work hard to shine during my time on the job!"
"Okay then...I won't mention it again."
After receiving this assurance from Hei Wuchang, Tian Baozhu pretended to wipe away her tears and asked him, "Senior, when we meet Meng Po, can you say something nice to her and ask her to give us more seeds to plant?"
"Probably not."
"Ah? Why?"
"I have never seen Meng Po's true appearance. I am not familiar with her."
Huh? It seems like not only are Black and White Impermanence at odds, but Black Impermanence and Meng Po are also at odds?
Aren’t the senior employees of you in the underworld too unfamiliar with each other?
Tian Baozhu held her forehead, her head starting to hurt because of the upcoming seed-seeking...
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
