From afar, Xu Ying and Yuan Qi caught the savory scent of meat, making their already rumbling stomachs all the harder to bear.
Many bizarre-looking people were drinking and dining inside the tavern. Xu Ying glanced out of the corner of his eye, his heart sinking with a chill.
In his peripheral vision, what he saw were not humans, but white skeletons sitting there feasting and carousing, while the dishes on the tables were human hearts, human brains, and the like.
Under the bizarre stares of the tavern's patrons, Xu Ying and Yuan Qi walked onward. One skeleton in the tavern asked, "Where are they heading?"
An old ghost replied, "Wangxiang Platform."
"They cannot go any further forward. Once you pass Wangxiang Platform and look upon your hometown, you can never return to the Yang realm."
The old ghost murmured, "They should stay here like us. Let us devour their flesh and blood so they become lonely wandering ghosts like us, instead of going in there to throw their lives away..."
The mist ahead gradually thickened. Through the cyan mist, white walls and blue-gray tiles entered Xu Ying's sight. It was a long street, quite wide, flanked on both sides by aged storefronts.
Looking at the street, Xu Ying felt a faint sense of familiarity, yet he was certain he had never been here before.
Just then, the clear, rhythmic chant of reading reached his ears. Xu Ying looked toward the sound, which drifted out from a private village school. Standing beside the school's window, Xu Ying peered inside to see more than twenty children, bobbing their heads as they chanted their texts.
The schoolmaster was a young man, seemingly in his twenties, not yet thirty.
Staring at his face, Xu Ying found him familiar, yet could not recall ever seeing him.
Moments later, the class was dismissed. The children poured out of the schoolhouse with an exuberant clamor.
The schoolmaster's wife stepped out. Clad in a white dress, she was a quiet, gentle woman who fondly stroked the heads of several children.
Puzzlement welled in Xu Ying's heart. This woman gave him that same familiar feeling, yet he had no memory of when he had ever met her.
Noticing Xu Ying, the woman asked with a smile, "Young man, who are you looking for?"
Xu Ying shook his head. "I'm just passing through. Excuse me, do you know how to get out of here?"
The woman raised her hand and pointed the way. Xu Ying voiced his thanks and walked in the direction she indicated.
The woman watched him go, then called out to a mischievous child, "Ah Ying, don't run off too far, it's almost time for lunch!"
"Got it, Mother!" The mischievous child ran past Xu Ying, bumping into his leg.
Xu Ying froze, standing stiffly on the spot.
He whipped around, only to see the schoolhouse and the street dissolve like dust and smoke.
He looked ahead at the child. The boy stopped and turned back—he looked identical to Xu Ying as a young child.
A smile appeared on the boy's face, and his form, too, dispersed like dust and smoke.
In that single instant, tears streamed down Xu Ying's face.
"Ah Ying, what's wrong?" Yuan Qi, the snake demon, asked in confusion when he saw him stop.
"I saw my parents."
Xu Ying stood rooted to the ground. After a long while, he choked out, "But... I couldn't recognize them. I couldn't recognize them at all..."
Setting down the bronze bell, he squatted on the ground, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed softly: "I can't remember what they looked like. I can't remember their names. I just saw them, but I couldn't recognize them..."
Yuan Qi nestled close beside him, patted the youth's shoulder, and whispered, "Ah Ying, we need to keep moving."
Xu Ying silently rose to his feet and walked in the direction the woman had pointed.
The path ahead was long and treacherous, a rugged track.
Beside it ran a smooth, broad road, but Xu Ying did not take the highway; instead, he set foot upon this difficult path.
"Halt!" The band of deities soon caught up near the tavern. Suddenly, a man in gray spoke in a deep voice: "Ahead lies Wangxiang. We are going around it!"
Though the gray-clad man appeared young, he stood toweringly tall, some thirteen to fourteen feet in height, with dragon horns growing from his forehead and sharp talons on his fingers, bearing little resemblance to a human.
One deity asked, "Senior Shilongzi, what happens if one enters Wangxiang?"
This gray-clad man was a stone dragon from the Ningyuan Temple of Confucius, and a divine being in his own right.
The Ningyuan Temple of Confucius was vast in scale and rich in incense, dedicated to the Supreme Sage and Foremost Teacher. Before and behind the temple's main hall stood four bronze pillars, around which coiled four stone dragons carved from the hardest stone.
Due to the temple's flourishing incense offerings, these four stone dragons had gradually developed divine abilities!
For four hundred years, the four dragons had absorbed incense offerings, each attaining extraordinary achievements and refining a golden body. The gray-clad man was named Shilongzi, one of those four stone dragons.
Shilongzi's eyes flickered as he said, "Wangxiang lies outside the jurisdiction of the Nether Court and is shrouded in mystery. It is said that upon entering, one will look upon one's hometown. Suspended between the Netherworld and the Yang realm, a single misstep means you will never return, reduced to a lonely wandering ghost!"
At this moment, a voice sounded with a chuckle: "I have heard that some dying men hide away in Wangxiang, placing themselves between the two realms of Yin and Yang—neither living nor dead, never aging and never perishing. Barging into the territory of such beings is extraordinarily perilous. To cling to life, there is nothing they won't do!"
Shilongzi looked toward the sound to see Magistrate Zhou Yang striding swiftly over at the head of a retinue of officials.
The two exchanged glances before looking away.
Shilongzi said, "With Xu Ying having entered Wangxiang, he can forget about coming out alive. Magistrate Zhou, you may return and report your mission accomplished."
Zhou Yang said impassively, "He broke the laws of the realm. Alive, I want him in person; dead, I want his corpse!"
Their eyes locked once more. Wisps of smoke swirled behind Shilongzi's head as the scent of incense deepened, and golden light began to shimmer across his body—clear signs that his golden body was activating!
Zhou Yang smiled faintly, perfectly composed, and said softly, "Compared to my Zhou clan's Vajra Indestructible Body, the Nether Court's golden body still falls a bit short. Coincidentally, I have cultivated the Vajra Indestructible Body!"
Shilongzi sneered, "Which is superior between the golden body and the Vajra Indestructible Body remains unsettled. What's more, Magistrate Zhou, you are quite young. Just which tier of the Vajra Indestructible Body could you possibly have mastered?"
Zhou Yang smiled. "The second tier!"
Shilongzi's pupils slowly contracted as he felt the pressure.
If Zhou Yang had only reached the first tier of the indestructible body, Shilongzi could have won with ease. But at the second tier, who would emerge victorious was anyone's guess!
If the two clashed, it was highly likely to result in mutual destruction or both of them perishing together!
Zhou Yang had no desire to tear away all pretenses of civility either, so he proposed, "Since Xu Ying has entered Wangxiang Platform and whether he lives or dies is unknown, why should we fight to the death? Shilongzi, let us circumvent Wangxiang Platform and wait for him on the road ahead."
Shilongzi nodded. "Into whose hands Xu Ying falls will come down to luck!" With that, he led his followers away.
Zhou Yang watched him depart, his eyes flickering as he turned to gaze at the mist-shrouded Wangxiang Platform. He murmured, "Wangxiang Platform... reputedly a place where one can exist between life and death. I hear that many terrifyingly formidable figures lurk here, hiding away in Wangxiang Platform when their lifespans near their end. But once you go inside, you can never walk back out..."
Behind him, an official whispered, "My Lord, are the legends of Wangxiang Platform true?"
Zhou Yang's expression darkened and cleared unpredictably as he chose another path to bypass Wangxiang Platform. "I once thought it was false too," he said, "until I heard a tale."
He paused, then continued, "This tale circulated within my clan. It says that an ancestor of our Zhou clan once faced a mortal catastrophe. Back then, that old ancestor intended to enter Wangxiang Platform and place himself in a state of neither life nor death to escape his doom. Later, possessing heavenly intellect and extraordinary natural gifts, his venerable self ultimately overcame that mortal catastrophe and extended his lifespan, never needing to hide away in Wangxiang Platform after all. Only then did I realize the legends of Wangxiang Platform were true all along."
The officials exchanged glances and looked toward the mist-covered expanse. One murmured, "Can the criminal Xu Ying truly walk back out after entering there?"
Zhou Yang shook his head. "His lifespan is not yet exhausted, so perhaps he has a chance of making it out. But on the other hand..."
His expression turned grim. "...his body might be seized by those beings whose lifespans ran out, those creatures neither human nor ghost, returning their souls to life in a borrowed corpse!"
The officials could not help shivering.
Inside Wangxiang Platform, the layers of mist grew ever denser, and the path beneath Xu Ying's feet grew increasingly tortuous and rugged. Below lay a bottomless abyss, while jagged rocks hung overhead like a thicket of knives and halberds. A single misstep would send one plunging down to be dashed to pieces!
Beyond the cliff came a single-log bridge spanning the gap between two fortress-like peaks. It was a single round log, requiring immense caution to cross; if the log rolled even slightly, one would plummet into the bottomless abyss!
Xu Ying took off his shoes, adjusted his breath, and stepped barefoot onto the log, using his full focus to sense every shift in weight and force beneath his soles as he advanced inch by inch.
Behind him, Yuan Qi the snake demon coiled around the thick log, squirming forward little by little.
Gazing down through the churning clouds, they saw a river of green water flowing through the depths of the chasm. Green bubbles gurgled and welled up from the water, while bloated, rotting corpses floated upon the surface.
As each bubble expanded, it swelled into the likeness of a human head, blowing up larger and larger until it floated up from the river's surface.
"Where does the young lad hail from?" The face upon one bubble belonged to a young woman, inquiring of Xu Ying with seductive grace.
Xu Ying did not answer.
Yuan Qi blew a puff of breath at the bubble. The young woman's face warped grotesquely, shrieking, "I'm dying! I'm dying! Aaaah—"
Pop! The bubble burst, splattering Yuan Qi's entire face with green river water.
Shivering from head to tail, Yuan Qi followed Xu Ying across the single-log bridge to the opposite bank.
Following the mountain path forward, they saw someone standing motionless by the roadside, possessing three legs.
Only upon drawing close did they realize it was not three legs at all, but a person impaled upon a wooden stake.
A chill crawled over Xu Ying's and Yuan Qi's scalps. As they tried to slip quietly past, the figure proved not yet dead, crying out with a tremor: "Save me..."
Yuan Qi couldn't bear the sight and asked, "How can we save you?"
"Give me two years of your lifespan!" the person cried.
Yuan Qi said to Xu Ying, "Giving him two years of lifespan will save him. We still have plenty of years to live, so why not save a life?"
No sooner had he spoken than the trees flanking the road abruptly turned around—each one a three-legged monstrosity with a wooden trunk beneath them, looking as though they had three legs. In unison, they wailed, "Give me two years of lifespan! Save my life!"
Yuan Qi jumped in fright. Only now did he see that they were not impaled upon stakes; their bodies were rooted into the earth, having grown fused with the trees.
Yuan Qi hurriedly scrambled after Xu Ying, not uttering another word about saving anyone.
Their hearts in their throats, the pair pressed forward. They saw another figure sitting by the roadside with their head tilted toward the sky, a robust flowering plant sprouting from their mouth. Others stood like scarecrows in the soil, sprouting branches in humanoid shapes, with beating hearts clearly visible behind rib cages of wooden boughs.
And many more like them.
These people used bizarre Nuo arts to prolong their lives, often transforming their bodies into plants, frozen in grotesque postures.
After walking for a long time, they finally came upon a house. Standing before it was a normal human being—a burly man with a curly beard, sizing up Xu Ying and Yuan Qi with a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
Mustering his courage, Xu Ying stepped forward to ask for directions. The bearded man exclaimed in surprise, "You came from the Yang realm? Who guided you here? This is the only path of life through Wangxiang. Without the guidance of an expert, you could never have reached this place!"
Xu Ying hesitated for a moment, then explained how he had arrived in Wangxiang and seen his parents. "If not for my parents pointing the way, we certainly could not have reached here."
The bearded man grew even more astonished. "Wangxiang, Wangxiang—gazing toward home! What one looks upon here is naturally one's own hometown! Young man, what you saw was an event from your childhood. Seven or eight years ago, your parents foresaw your future self and pointed out a path of survival for you! Those two were true masters—extraordinary, truly extraordinary!"
Xu Ying was thoroughly stunned. In his memories, his parents had perished in Xujiaping and were ordinary folk. How could they be called great masters?
He tried to recall the faces of the parents he had seen on Wangxiang Platform, but his memory suddenly blurred in a trance. The faces of his father and mother grew faint and indistinct. Standing within his memories, their faces were like two blank sheets of paper, completely devoid of features.
The bearded man said, "I can send you out of Wangxiang, but an enemy of mine is on his way and will arrive shortly. In life, I arranged a duel with him, and not long ago he came to Wangxiang as well. Today is the appointed day. Rest a while in my house; once I kill him, I shall send you on your way."
Xu Ying and Yuan Qi were utterly astounded.
Arranging a duel in life to fight it out in death—this curly-bearded man truly possessed a unique kind of heroic spirit.
Xu Ying and Yuan Qi entered the house, only to see the bearded man take out a sword casket over half a person's height. Placing it upright before him, he rested one hand atop it, standing proud and unyielding.
Moments later, darkness descended like a tempest. Howling winds and a torrential downpour suddenly swept through this Netherworld amid flashing lightning and rumbling thunder, plunging the sky into gloom.
Vaguely, a towering divine figure could be seen standing amidst the dark clouds, bellowing, "Yuan Tiangang! You severed my dragon neck at Mount Panlong and ruined my cultivation! Today, I shall slay you to avenge my grievance and wash away my hatred!"
Chapter 18