"The monster can only come in if the mirror is broken. According to the corresponding position of the mirror, the door and window..." Pei Jing jumped down from the eaves and his eyes fell on the ground: "So the monster came out from underground."
Pei Jing's eyes darkened, and he drew his sword and stabbed it into the ground. The wooden board creaked, and when he drew the sword again, the dirt that the tip of the sword touched was all red.
He whispered, "Finally I found you."
He used the Lingyun Sword to cut a square hole in the wooden board.
Below was a layer of scarlet rotten soil, entangled with a lot of black hair. But when the soil was dug up, there was nothing.
Pei Jing closed his eyes and used his spiritual sense to explore the surroundings. There were only some evil spirits huddled in the corner and shivering.
The clue was interrupted and the monster was no longer in this room.
He opened his eyes again and sat down at the table, his mind heavy with thoughts about what happened in the Yunlan Mountains.
"Blood Ganoderma, ghost baby, the disappeared bride, and the old man's dead child."
He took the basket out of the mustard seed again, took out the bloody head and put it on the table.
The toad spirit didn't lie. The baby's head must have really popped out of the soil on a rainy day, and the skull and teeth were covered with mud.
Pei Jing thought of the group of ghost babies holding hands that he saw that night.
When they open their mouths and howl, they have no tongue.
Thinking of this, Pei Jing used a wooden stick to knock open the baby's teeth. There was a lot of dirt inside, which was turbid yellow and smelly, and many ants lived there. But after a closer look, he found that a piece of the tongue had been picked up.
He looked solemn.
"It seems that we need to clarify the matter of Yunlan Mountain Range first."
The next morning, the old man came to see him. After confirming that he was safe, he asked tentatively with some trepidation, "Did you find anything?"
Pei Jing shook his head and said, "No, the ghost who killed your grandson should no longer be here."
The old man looked a little sad when he heard this, and said, "After so many years, he must have passed away long ago."
Pei Jing looked around and asked, "Have you always lived here alone? Why can't I see your second son?"
The old man was dejected. "After the second son's two marriages fell through, no one in Yunlan City was willing to marry here. Those who couldn't find a wife in the village blamed him and gossiped about him behind his back. He couldn't stay any longer, so he went out to do business. He comes back once every few months. Counting the days, he should be back soon."
Pei Jing thought: No wonder, although the old man looks simple on the surface, some of his tea sets are simply not affordable for ordinary villagers.
It seems that the second brother is doing quite well in business outside.
The old man was carrying firewood into the city on an ox cart, hoping to take them with him.
Pei Jing pushed Xu Jing up and stayed behind: "Just send him back, he is just holding us back here, I want to go for a walk in the mountains."
Xu Jing struggled: "No! I also want to collect Ganoderma to complete the mission, let me follow you!"
Pei Jing said: "Why are you following me? You are too weak. I can't protect you. Go back and follow your senior brother. It will be safer with everyone."
Xu Jing wanted to say something, but Pei Jing stuffed a mouthful of candy into his mouth, blocking his mouth.
"Don't delay!"
Pei Jing turned around after he finished speaking.
"Hello!"
Xu Jing swallowed the candy, stretched out his hand, looked at Pei Jing's back, was stunned for a moment, and took back his words.
The young man was dressed in light brown clothes, holding a sword and lowering his head. He was walking on a remote road in a mountain village, with the sun rising. His thin back seemed to carry the world, and he had a broad-minded and elegant demeanor.
Pei Jing walked deeper into the forest. The fog was still thick, but it did not affect his vision.
He returned to the swamp according to his memory.
The toad spirit was squatting on a lotus leaf, washing Ganoderma lucidum with a jade, crying as it washed. It felt that it was so unlucky. It had rarely mustered up the courage to eat people, but ended up provoking a plague god. It was threatened at such a young age and had to run around doing things.
It's totally inhumane.
Halfway through the wash, it cried hungry, so it stuffed the Ganoderma into its mouth and started eating. It washed for an entire afternoon, but the Ganoderma became less and less.
Pei Jing walked over and saw him washing and eating one at a time. He raised his eyebrows and asked directly: "According to the way you wash, what are you going to give me in ten days?"
The toad spirit was halfway through eating when it froze and looked up blankly. Seeing Pei Jing, it subconsciously jumped into the swamp. However, it was still rational and suppressed its fear, swallowed half of the Ganoderma lucidum, and said, "No, it's not fifteen days later, God, why did you come today?"
Pei Jing smiled at him, clear and bright: "I went back and thought about it carefully. I have to do my own things. I'll do the Ganoderma lucidum picking myself, so I won't bother you."
The toad spirit was stunned, its eyes almost wet. It imitated humans and clasped its paws together to thank God.
But he was stopped by Pei Jing. He thought that this toad spirit was ugly and cute, so he said, "But I don't know much about the Yunlan Mountains. I haven't found the place after searching for a long time. Can you take me to the place where you usually forage for food?"
The Toad Spirit just wanted to get rid of this plague god as soon as possible, so he nodded repeatedly: "Okay, okay."
A blue-black toad, one meter tall and one meter wide, jumped in front to lead the way, followed by a handsome young man with a sword on his waist. The young man looked around as he walked, with a thoughtful look in his dark eyes.
Following the Toad Spirit, Pei Jing asked, "As for the basket last time, when did you find those heads?"
The Toad Spirit recalled and said, "About ten years ago, when I was still not smart, it was raining one day and I was looking for something to eat as usual. I tripped over something and dug it out. This is it. It looks disgusting, but it tastes pretty good."
Ten years ago.
Pei Jing calculated the time in his mind and asked again: "You have lived in this mountain range since you were a child. Have you ever seen the bride?"
Toad Spirit: "What do you mean by a bride?"
Pei Jing explained: "It's just a woman, wearing red clothes, sitting in a red sedan chair."
The Toad Spirit suddenly realized something, and then added: "Will there be a lot of people following them, blowing and shouting?"
Pei Jing: "Yes, have you seen it?"
The Toad Spirit said, "I've seen them many times. They make so much noise when we pass through the woods, waking me up every time. I was annoyed by them the most when I was a kid. But they seem to have disappeared in the past few years, and I can sleep soundly now."
Pei Jing asked it, "They made such a big noise when they passed through the forest. You were woken up by the noise, but you didn't go to take a look?"
The Toad Spirit said, "Look, of course you should look. But there's nothing to see, it's always the same. The one sitting in the sedan chair is the bride? In red clothes? No way, the sedan chairs I've seen several times didn't have red clothes in them, and they weren't even people."
Pei Jing's eyes turned cold and he said, "Not a human?"
The toad spirit jumped up and down. After living in the mountains for so long, he was lonely. He was in a good mood to chat with people. "Yes, it's not a person. The person sitting in the sedan chair is sometimes a corpse, sometimes a ghost. The bride in red clothes you mentioned has been taken away by someone a long time ago."
"He was picked up by someone?"
"Yes, by a man, probably from the village down the mountain. I saw him several times, with a bag and an axe. When the fog was thick, he took the bride away in front of a group of people, leaving those idiots blowing and knocking."
Pei Jing was silent.
The Toad Spirit was very interested: "Do you have anything else to ask?"
Before I knew it, it was night.
Pei Jing looked up at the moonlight. It was almost the 15th. The moon was round and bright yellow, with a faint red light around it, which looked a bit ominous. He had a vague clue, and even the context of the matter gradually became clear. The bride's disappearance was actually man-made. So now... ... he only needed to prove one thing.
The toad spirit took him to the place where it often looked for food.
It's deep in the mountains, a very remote place.
If he hadn't led the way, Pei Jing wouldn't have been able to find it. The fog turned into miasma, and a swamp was ahead. For the Toad Spirit, coming here was like going home.
The swamp was blood red, with bubbles constantly rising from it. It was filled with poisonous snakes and leeches, and white bones were piled up on one side.
Pei Jing performed a cleansing spell on himself, forming a white barrier to isolate the dirt from the outside world. He chose to close his eyes and not look at the entangled poisonous snakes in the swamp.
The toad spirit jumped around and couldn't stop talking after it was opened. It said proudly: "This place is great. I found it by accident. If I didn't miss the place where I was born, I would really move here."
The swamp was almost filled with poisonous snakes, one after another, in colorful patterns.
The Toad Spirit said, "It's really nice. Coming here feels like going home."
Pei Jing suppressed the churning feeling in his stomach and said, "... It's pretty good."
Finally out of the swamp.
The miasma dissipated, the clouds and fog dissipated, and a forest that was obviously different from the outside appeared in front of Pei Jing.
The whole forest was filled with blood, the soil was red, the trees were crooked and strangely shaped, covered with blue-black moss, and gave off a foul smell.
When your feet step on the mud and sink down, red water like blood will seep out.
The toad spirit said, "It didn't rain the past two days, so it must be difficult to find those heads. It took me a long time to find one that day, it was so rare." Who knew that it was robbed. It couldn't help but feel lost again.
Pei Jing pulled the corner of his mouth: "I'm here to pick Ganoderma lucidum."
“Oh oh.” The Toad Spirit reacted stupidly, turned sideways, and pointed with his claws: “Then I brought you to the wrong place—there are a lot of Ganoderma lucidum here, but they are too heavy to pick, and you’d better not pick them.”
Pei Jing smiled: "There's not much time left to move to another place. Since we're here, we can't go back empty-handed."
The toad spirit's scalp numbed at his laughter. The two frog eyes on its flat head were blank. It turned its head and looked around, not knowing why. It usually came here to look for food, but today, after bringing the plague god, it had a bad feeling about this place. It was very dangerous, and it had to escape.
Toad felt cold and said, "It's up to you. I have to go. I'll take you to the place and you can pick it yourself. You said so yourself. Don't come to me next time."
Pei Jing just smiled: "Yeah."
After being frightened by him like this, the toad spirit will probably never dare to have any evil thoughts again in his life.
After the toad monster left, the atmosphere of the entire forest changed. The road was deep and hidden deep inside, like a bloody mouth, waiting for him to approach. Pei Jing entered the forest with a sword in hand, paying close attention to his feet.
The Toad Spirit said there were a lot of Ganoderma, and it was indeed a lot. He took two steps and found a Ganoderma under a tree, hidden in the grass.
But this Ganoderma lucidum is different - it is exactly the same as the one Xu Jing took out that day.
It is purple-red with black lines all over it. From a distance, it looks like a piece of meat growing out of the ground.
Pei Jing took the sword and cut from the bottom of the Ganoderma lucidum, but found that the sword could not cut it.
He squatted on the ground, lost in thought. The Lingyun Sword could cut through iron like mud. This thing was indeed weird.
Since we can't cut it from the ground, we might as well dig out its roots.
He inserted the sword into the soil, and blood oozed out of the ground with a hiss. Pei Jing felt that the tip of the sword hit something hard. He used his spiritual power and secretly exerted force to pry the soil. Something under the soil was ready to come out, and the soil around it was loose. Pei Jing dug around the Ganoderma lucidum and then dug up something white.
"What is this?" He picked up the dirt and found it was a tooth.
Pei Jing felt a chill in his heart.
When a pit was dug next to the Ganoderma lucidum, what was revealed made Pei Jing's scalp tingle - it was a baby buried alive in the soil!
It has not yet completely decayed, its skin is wrinkled and blood red, its eyes are completely white, and its mouth is forced open, with a blue tongue sticking out.
This Lingzhi grows on the tip of the baby's tongue. To get this Lingzhi, you can only cut it from the soft tongue coating of the baby.
"Using babies to grow Ganoderma, this kind of evil magic cannot be thought up by a mortal."
Pei Jing whispered: "Don't let me find you."
He was about to stand up when he suddenly felt a hand appear on his head, pressing him into the ground. He heard a woman's gnashing teeth from behind. Pei Jing's eyes turned cold, and he swung his sword back, causing the ghost to scream.
Pei Jing turned around slowly and saw a female ghost wearing a white shroud with a grayish-green face. One of her hands had just been chopped off by Pei Jing and she was now twitching and screaming on the ground.
"You just told me not to let me find you, and now you're here on your own."
Pei Jing no longer wants to hide his cultivation level.
A powerful pressure enveloped them, and the ghosts on the ground screamed.
A sword sweeps away the clear light.
After releasing his cultivation, his figure gradually rose higher.
The boy's somewhat childish carefreeness turned into the sharpness of a young man with handsome eyebrows and well-proportioned eyes.
The brown clothes turned into a snow-white robe, and the straw rope turned into a jade crown. The black hair fell down, and the dark eyes seemed to be floating in the sky.
In the forest shrouded in blood mist and miasma, he was alone, flowing with wind and snow, with a pure and elegant temperament. Like the moon on the top of a mountain, he dispelled the haze.
The female ghost was in agony all over, her face was twisted and she was struggling as if she was trying to break free from something.
Pei Jing curled his lips and smiled: "How about you tell me who's behind you and I'll spare your life?"
The female ghost finally couldn't bear it anymore and let out a scream that shattered the eardrums. Her entire pale face broke free from her head, leaving only a mass of flesh and blood without any facial features.
A face floated in the air, looked at Pei Jing ferociously and resentfully, and then slipped away into the woods.
"Still want to run?"
Pei Jing held a sword and followed behind her as if teasing her.
But soon, his steps stopped.
Because, on all sides, there are things approaching.
The ground was moving, and hands covered with corpse spots stretched out from the soil.
The grass and trees were swaying, and a group of snakes sleeping in the swamp came over with their tongues bared.
Even those strange-shaped trees were covered with all kinds of corpses, some hanged, some pierced by branches, some swinging with their eyes looking at him dimly.
"Do you think I'll be scared if you ask someone to come?"
Pei Jing smiled playfully. He had been famous since he was young, and his sword moved everywhere. There was the frivolity and arrogance of a genius between his eyebrows. At this moment, his smile was full of the spirit and confidence of a young man.
The snow-capped clothes shine like stars and moonlight.
A sword swept across, and the clear cry was like a phoenix's cry.
All the corpses that tried to crawl out of the soil froze instantly, forced by an invisible pressure to not dare to come out of the soil. The corpses hanging on the trees also fell to the ground with a crash, and their eyeballs fell out.
The only thing that was not affected was the large group of poisonous snakes that swarmed in.
Pei Jing hates snakes the most in his life.
The thought of killing them myself gives me chills.
However, he had not yet suppressed his nausea and swung his sword again.
The poisonous snakes moving along the grass suddenly went crazy, changed direction, and went to another place.
Pei Jing was stunned.
Following the direction in which the poisonous snake was climbing, looking forward, I saw a person slowly walking out of the miasma of the swamp.
The moonlight was dim, and when it fell on him, it became a layer of cold white light. The man was tall and slender, wearing a black brocade robe and a black cloak, as gloomy as the night. With his head lowered, only his chin and light-colored lips could be seen. A few strands of hair fell from the brim of his hat, and in the faint blood light of the forest, they looked silvery white like frost and snow.
His hands were long, pale, and bloodless, and he held a stick.
The stick was folded again and again.
The poisonous snake had red eyes and died twitching halfway before it even got close to him, with its shape distorted.
Pei Jing became alert as he couldn't figure out the cultivation level of the man in black in front of him.
The poisonous snakes were all dead. The man in black also entered the forest.
He threw away his stick and took off his cloak. His silver hair fell down, as if it was covered with snow. Through the strange moonlight and the fog in the forest, the man in black looked at me with extremely cold and distant eyes. They were blood red, except for the pupils, which were a little black.
He didn't say anything, but the lonely, gloomy bloody atmosphere was already frightening Pei Jing.
As far as he could remember, there was no such dangerous person in the world of cultivation.
Pei Jing subconsciously clenched the Lingyun Sword, and after a long pause, he asked him, "Who are you?"
The black-clothed man's gaze was very indifferent, and when he looked at his eyebrows, it seemed as if there was a lot of things between them.
Pei Jing frowned and said, "Since you don't want to speak first, I will speak first."
He raised his sword, his white clothes shining brightly, his aura as elegant as an orchid.
"My name is Yunxiao, Pei Yuzhi."