RPAGF Chapter 300 Lanqiuze 3
Chapter 300 Lanqiuze 3
"You guys even dug up an underground river!"
Originally, Cheng Jiu was following Liu Da Niang around and around. Liu Da Niang's route was quite orderly and followed a certain pattern. Just when Cheng Jiu thought they were going to wander around in the secret passage, a dark river suddenly appeared in front of them.
Looking further ahead, there were no more secret passages; the secret passages we had experienced before seemed like a dream.
The person who designed this secret passage must have had exceptional skill in array formations. The ingenious illusion array, combined with the short-distance teleportation array, connects all the households in Lanqiuze that have cellars.
Some of the passages appear to have been opened recently, suggesting that the people who designed the formations made new arrangements based on the existing structures in Lanqiuze.
I never expected there would be such a talented person in this remote place!
Along the way, Cheng Jiu also met other people, all of whom were older women. They seemed to belong to the same faction and all obeyed the orders of their so-called "big sister." Clearly, they trusted this big sister very much.
To put it bluntly, after encountering so many people, Cheng Jiu suspected that the old lady Liu she met at the beginning was trying to fool her. With that kind of power, how could the old lady Liu have been forced to her death by that girl in yellow?
It's possible that Huang Si, as Aunt Liu described, was indeed powerful, but Aunt Liu herself shouldn't have fallen to such a state. It's more like, more like, that it was all an act for her!
Cheng Jiu wondered to himself, "Could it be that they were discovered as soon as they arrived at Lanqiuze?"
Cheng Jiu believed that his strength was not low and his concealment skills were quite strong.
Cheng Jiu shook her head. Forget it. No matter what demons or monsters lie ahead, with her strength, what is there to be afraid of?
As a place with abundant water, Lanqiuze has extremely clear underground rivers. Cheng Jiu could even vaguely see a few small fish. How could there be life in such a clear place?
Once they reached the underground river, Aunt Liu stopped worrying about Cheng Jiu and kept walking forward, not caring whether Cheng Jiu was keeping up.
The sense of incongruity is even stronger now, what's going on!
Finally, Aunt Liu stopped in an underwater cave. The most conspicuous thing was that above the cave, more than twenty bubbles were hanging in the air, touching each other.
In the middle of the water bubble were more than twenty unconscious disciples. Judging from their waist tags and clothing, these disciples were clearly the Guiyuan Sect members who had gone missing but were still alive!
Cheng Jiu silently drew his Heavenly Wood Sword, his gaze fixed on the woman before him with a chilling intensity.
Looking at his unconscious senior brothers and sisters above, he thought he would first draw his sword to save them, and then deal with the woman in front of him.
"Stop! If you keep doing this, they'll die!"
A clear, childlike voice rang out, and Cheng Jiu paused slightly as he was about to make a move, his gaze fixed on the cold pool beneath the bubbles!
A young girl, who looked to be around sixteen years old and had a pretty face, emerged from the cold pool.
The only striking feature was that the girl's entire body was made of water.
"A water ghost?" Cheng Jiu's gaze swept over the girl from head to toe, his expression blatant and uninhibited!
The girl became nervous under Cheng Jiu's gaze. Sensing the terrifying aura emanating from the person in front of her, she quickly cried out, "No! Don't do that! I'm a good ghost!"
As soon as she finished speaking, Aunt Liu in front of Cheng Jiu suddenly collapsed to the ground, making her words even less convincing!
"Did you control her and lure me here?" Cheng Jiu asked warily.
“I lured you here, but I had absolutely no bad intentions! She is not my puppet; she willingly surrendered her soul to me! She is not dead!”
The water ghost quickly explained, "They are all my followers, followers, you understand!"
Cheng Jiu carefully examined the water ghost in front of him, and his initial intention to attack vanished in an instant.
The reason was simply because the water ghost in front of them was surrounded by shining merit.
This is quite amazing. The reason why water ghosts are created is not complicated. They are generally drowned in rivers and are unwilling to be reincarnated. By chance, they become vengeful ghosts.
These vengeful ghosts are irrational; they lurk in the water, dragging people down to pay with their lives, and are considered a type of malevolent spirit.
However, the Xuan Tian Continent has a ghost realm, and ghosts like these are usually dealt with by ghost messengers. It is difficult for such ghosts to gather into a watery vengeful spirit.
The water ghost before me is different because she has a very clear will of her own, and I can communicate with her. She also has merits, which have long transcended the category of water ghosts. No wonder she was able to evade the investigation of the ghost realm.
This place has such strange things, and this water ghost is quite rare.
Having merit also means that this water ghost is unlikely to be a bad person. Everyone in the cultivation world knows how hard it is to earn merit!
Cheng Jiu was also willing to listen to the water ghost's explanation.
Seeing that Cheng Jiu no longer intended to attack, the water ghost felt relieved.
Right under Cheng Jiu's nose, the water ghost swept Liu Da Niang into the water. Given her identity, she didn't look like a good person at all.
Seeing Cheng Jiu's questioning look, the water ghost explained, "She's too tired and needs to rest!"
Cheng Jiu thought for a moment, then shaved a piece of stone from the water cave to use as a stool, looking at it like a water ghost: "You lured me here, is there something you want?"
The water ghost was willing to talk to her in a nice and gentle manner, a hint of joy and relief flashing in his eyes.
He explained his purpose for coming.
This water ghost was named Yan Yang. She was originally from Lanqiuze. Her father was a butcher and her mother was a herb gatherer who cultivated spiritual herbs. She was the youngest daughter in the family. Her family was harmonious and her parents doted on her.
While washing clothes, he was playing around with his companions.
Unexpectedly, her friend had malicious intentions towards her and pushed her into the river. Just then, the Qiu River's water level rose sharply, and she was swept to the bottom of the river before she could get ashore.
The two beauties, born at the tender age of sixteen, tragically passed away, betrayed by their best friend. How could Yan Yang accept this? He was also worried about his parents, who were already grieving the loss of their daughter. His intense resentment was compounded by the fact that Qiuhe was at the peak of its spiritual energy at that time.
The vengeful spirits gathered, and Yan Yang transformed into a vengeful ghost.
Before she could even take revenge, her parents avenged her first.
It was also Yan Yang's bad luck that when her friend was about to die, someone happened to witness it but was unable to save her in time and told her parents about it.
The person in charge of Lanqiuze at the time was a responsible and good person. Her friend was innocently murdered for money and was sentenced to death.
Yan Yang's parents brought the final results to the Qiu River to offer sacrifices.
The revenge has been taken, but Yan Yang has become a vengeful ghost, trapped in the river, unable to reincarnate. He must wait for the ghost messengers to come and deal with him before he can go to the ghost realm.
It was the sacrifices made by his parents that soothed Yan Yang's soul. As a water ghost, Yan Yang did not cause trouble in the Qiu River. This was because his parents had regained their sanity through sacrifices made year after year.
At that time, Yan Yang, as a vengeful ghost, was very weak and trapped in Qiuhe, making it difficult for him to respond to his parents. However, the grudges from his previous life had been resolved, and Yan Yang had no intention of seeking revenge.
Because of her parents and relatives, Yan Yang really likes Lanqiuze, which is her birthplace and hometown.
From that day on, Yan Yang did what she could to help the villagers living along the Qiu River, regulate floods, drive away fish, protect the people on both sides, and rescue those who fell into the water, while waiting for the ghost messengers to come and deal with her and take her to the ghost realm.
Year after year, the ghost messengers were slow to arrive. Instead, she gradually accumulated a lot of merit. In her parents' later years, Yan Yang was able to serve them at their bedside thanks to this merit.
After his parents died, Yan Yang focused even more on helping the people living on both sides of the Qiu River, and gradually became the guardian spirit of this generation.
A temple was even specially built for her by the Qiu River, and she was called Yan Niang!
With the offerings of the people, Yan Yang gained even more control over Qiuhe, and Qiuhe prospered because of her!
As a guardian deity, Yan Yang witnessed the rise and fall of generations of people in Lanqiuze.
The turning point came after the beast tide that swept across the entire cultivation world.
To resist the beast tide, Yan Yang expended a great deal of energy and fell into a deep sleep.
During her coma, the original administrator of Lanqiuze died without cause, and was replaced by Huang Si, the brother-in-law of the city lord of Changming City.
The water monster of Qiuhe also came at that time.
At first, the people of Lanqiuze were terrified of the water monster in the Qiuhe River. It was these people who reported the incident, and the people sent by the city lord of Changming City did come to investigate.
But Huang Si was completely fooled. Instead of checking on the water demon, he turned back home and deliberately exaggerated the truth.
The city lord of Changming City had a conscience and continued to report the matter of the water demon, which finally reached the Guiyuan Sect.
Since the mission was announced, several groups of disciples from the Guiyuan Sect have come to exorcise the demon.
It was during this period that Lanqiuze was completely controlled by Huang Si. He first promoted that as long as a pair of young men were given to the water demon every month, they would receive the water demon's blessing and obtain a large number of spirit stones.
And he did just that, feeding a pair of orphans from the city to the water monster. That night, a large number of water spirit stones were placed in front of every household in Lanqiuze.
"Isn't this money for buying life?" Cheng Jiu frowned slightly.
"It's money to buy life!" Yan Yang's tone was ethereal, yet filled with heartache, as if he had never imagined that the people in the place he was protecting could be so inhuman.
“It wasn’t their own children who died. There are many orphans in Lanqiuze. Even if the water demon grows stronger, with the Guiyuan Sect backing them up, these people eventually acquiesced. Even if some people disagreed, it affected the interests of most people, and Huang Si and his allies suppressed it!”
Yan Yang's tone was laced with sarcasm: "For a whole month, every night, these residents were able to find spirit stones in front of their doors, and even though they noticed that there were fewer and fewer orphans in the city, they still turned a blind eye!"
"..." Cheng Jiu felt a chill. This was the money those children had saved to save their lives. Wouldn't he feel guilty taking it?
Suddenly recalling the harmonious scene I first encountered, I felt a chill run down my spine. This place was no less than hell! Beneath the glitz and glamour lay only depravity!
"It was also in that month that my temple was demolished, and I was no longer the guardian of this Qiu River, nor was I the Yan Niang who was worshipped by people."
The river god has changed; it's been replaced by that man-eating beast. They clearly knew who was best for them, yet they chose the man-eating monster over those spirit stones!
At this point, Yan Yang felt an endless sense of sorrow. She had been guarding this place for thousands of years, over a thousand years!
But in the end, some spirit stones were exchanged without warning!
She was particularly grateful that she hadn't revealed her true identity while helping these residents; otherwise, given her status, she might not have been able to roam freely. Yan Yang was well aware of her rarity.
As Yan Yang spoke, a mocking smile appeared on his lips: "After all the orphans in the city who they thought could be abandoned perished, Huang Si finally reached out to these people in the city who they considered irrelevant."
First, it was the weakest at the bottom. Even if there were people who resisted, they were powerless to resist under Huang Si's power.
Most people in the city chose to remain silent, and even the few far-sighted individuals couldn't make any big moves in this atmosphere of silence.
This cannibalistic game unfolded step by step, eventually reaching out to those residents who thought they were living well, those who never expected it to happen to them.
These residents had the means to resist, so Huang Si used manipulative tactics, employing anything that could ruin a family, including gambling, prostitution, and fraud.
"It's Aunt Liu's house!" Cheng Jiu realized.
"Yes, their family is one of the few far-sighted families in the city. Uncle Liu was very opposed to it from the beginning, but they didn't have the strength and couldn't leave Lanqiuze."
Huang Si may seem like a good-for-nothing and incompetent, but he has a very powerful method. The water monster will periodically release some eggs, and these eggs are very strange. They can arouse the darkest desires in people's hearts and drastically change their temperament.
The more resolute and upright a person is, the greater the contrast; they become completely different people from their usual selves. Uncle Liu is a prime example. Before the parasitic fish eggs appeared, he was the kind of person who wouldn't even raise his voice at Aunt Liu.
"Did Aunt Liu also take the parasitic fish eggs?" Cheng Jiu realized, after all, Aunt Liu's behavior was very strange.
"Hmm!" Yan Yang looked at Cheng Jiu with admiration: "She is my believer! Even during the time when my temple was demolished, she still chose to make offerings to me!"
These fish eggs are very strange; even I had difficulty removing them and could only expend considerable effort to seal them. Perhaps due to a clash with the eggs, Granny Liu's mind is quite unstable; she is sometimes affected and sometimes returns to normal!
"I think I met Aunt Liu first, right?" Cheng Jiu asked earnestly, as this was very important to her!
"Yes! My influence played a part, but it was definitely her!"
"What's the deal with that woman in yellow? How could she force Granny Liu to her death? And what about the Soul Stone?!"
Cheng Jiu looked at the water ghost in the pool with a serious expression. The Soul Stone was no joke!
"The girl in yellow? Cao Xiaofang?"
"That should be the name!" Yan Yang said somewhat awkwardly, "Cao Xiaofang's mother had her eye on Uncle Liu before!"
"So, after being affected by the fish eggs, Uncle Liu wanted his wife to die, so he went to his house to break in," Cheng Jiu concluded.
"I overheard that Cao Xiaofang called Uncle Liu 'Dad'!"
"He cheated on her?" Cheng Jiu realized. Even if this was the effect of the fish eggs, would Aunt Liu and the others be able to accept it when they came to their senses later? How embarrassing!
"We didn't go to bed!" Yan Yang said, still a little embarrassed, since Cheng Jiu looked very young and not even that age yet.
Cheng Jiu nodded understandingly: "Alright, let's talk about Soul Stones!"
Seeing Cheng Jiu's very serious expression, Yan Yang knew that if this could not be explained clearly, the trust they had built up would probably collapse completely, and Cheng Jiu would definitely take action against her.
Unorthodox cultivation is one of the taboos on the mainland!