Ning Xiaoling's petite body sat in the huge throne, like a princess in the netherworld.
Ning Jiujiu helped her straighten her dress. The hem of the dress was spread neatly on her slender thighs. The dust and blood stains adhering to the dress were extracted with spiritual power, gently brushed off, and turned into fine dust and dissipated into the darkness.
The girl's hand holding the knife was tightly clenched, but her brows were calm and motionless, like a delicate porcelain doll, ready to be manipulated.
In the silent hall, Ning Jiujiu looked at her quietly and smiled.
He never imagined that they would meet in such a place and in such a way.
The dark sea that once contained all souls has lost its source, and this place has become the Dead Sea, as silent and desolate as a real cemetery, with no one worshiping.
Ning looked at her for a long time, his eyes moved down and fell on the blood-red sword.
"Shen Tu?" Ning Jiujiu recognized it at first sight.
Back in the Suzaku world of Zhao State, Zhao Xiang'er had casually forged an imitation of Shen Tu, and he still remembered it freshly.
Ning looked at this ancient sword for a long time. The blade was slender, the blade surface was like water, and the blood-colored light was light and dark. The curve of the blade was very light, and the tip had been broken. If it was intact, it should be as graceful as a girl's hair.
Although this sword has gone through the battles of gods throughout the ages, and the sharpest edge of the blade is obviously damaged and curled, it is still very beautiful. It is conceivable that its former wearer may have been a poet who traveled around the world.
His hand touched the blade.
Before entering this place, Siming told him that what he saw was not the real world of Hades. This palace was just an afterimage of the sea of darkness. The real Hades was hidden in the depths of the spirit. How to trigger it There is only "death".
Ning Jiujiu pinched Shen Tu's sharp edge with his fingers and extracted a little bit of blood from it like a cocoon.
The bloody light approached the neck.
The meaning of death unfolds.
Ning Jiujiu stopped in time.
boom!
His vision suddenly changed.
He was still in the Hades Palace, with blood stains and the twisted soul of the feathered serpent remaining on the ground. The smell of blood flowed along the floor tiles until it reached the abyss that suddenly appeared behind the palace.
The palace of Hades tilts towards the abyss.
An irresistible force pushed him and he fell down the slope.
…
Bang.
Thunder exploded in the sky, and heavy rain poured down. They collided and shattered in the air, splashing into a mist in mid-air.
Ning Jiujiu raised his head and looked at the completely different scenes around him.
He stretched out his hand, and the raindrops hit his fingertips, feeling clammy and real.
"Is this purgatory?" Ning looked around for a long time.
This is a barren mountain range. Almost all the surrounding barren mountains have been broken. The black peaks have turned into huge broken rocks. These rocks are piled up like cities that have been burned by fires several times.
There was still fire left in those stone crevices.
This is not fire in the real world, but the legendary ghost fire. The flame of the will-o'-the-wisp never goes out in the heavy rain. It burns very slowly, like a sleeping little ghost. It is so quiet, but people dare not approach it.
Ning Jiujiu walked forward in the world where water and fire blended together.
"Hello, Saint." A skull-like old man came forward to talk.
Ning Jiujiu looked at him.
The old man didn't appear out of thin air. He was standing on the roadside before, like a burnt old tree. I didn't recognize him at first sight.
"Hello." Ning Changjiu's words were a little jerky.
The skull-like old man asked: "Are you here to save us?"
Ning Jiujiu shook his head and said, "Sorry, I'm just here to find someone."
"Looking for someone?" The skull-headed old man said happily: "Then you are here to save us."
Ning Jiujiu asked: "Why do you say that?"
The skull-headed old man said: "The person you are looking for is a little girl in a white dress."
Ning Jiujiu nodded and said, "Yes."
The skull-headed old man said: "She is in the palace at the end of this road. As long as you keep moving forward, you can see it."
Ning Jiujiu asked: "Is it that simple?"
"Yes, young man." The skull-headed old man seemed to be smiling, but his face looked like a skull, so the smile looked sinister.
Ningjiu thanked him for a long time, and he asked curiously: "How should I save you?"
The skull-headed old man said: "By opening this sky, we can go out and return to the real sea of stars instead of sinking here forever."
Ning Jiujiu asked: "Do you know where you are?"
The skull old man nodded and said: "Of course I know, this is a sinful and irrational world. I only figured this out five hundred years ago. At that time, I devoted myself to studying the Sea of Thorns, and I concluded that I learned about the seventy-six laws of the Sea of Thorns and was preparing to gradually classify and unify them. A remnant soul came in from the outside and told me... "
The old man with the skull seemed to have remembered something sad and couldn't bear to talk about it.
Ning Jiujiu asked curiously: "What did I tell you?"
The old man with the skull pointed at the piled rocks and said, "She told me that in the outside world, water and fire are incompatible."
Ning Jiujiu looked at the stone fire that was poured down by the heavy rain. He was silent for a long time and asked, "Aren't you from the outside world?"
The old man with a skull said: "I am an aboriginal here. I am a creature created by the soul of the underworld. Unlike those foreign souls, I am born with a lot of knowledge."
Ning Jiujiu immediately thought of Si Ming.
Siming is the result of the cultivation of the fetal spirit she gave birth to in the Kingdom of God in the old days.
The Kingdom of God is like a small world, with its own ability to breed life. It is said that the Kingdom of Hades was formed after the death of Lord Hades. Even though it is so broken, it still has the power to conceive and transform living beings.
The old man with the skull recalled what happened that year and said: "I have studied the Sea of Thorns for a hundred years, and then I realized that it was just the absurd imagination of Lord Hades's deranged consciousness after his death. Its end is chaos instead of hope. Studying it is also It doesn't make any sense... Just like on this road, every hundred steps there will be a big copper pillar lamp, from here to the end, without exception. But this does not represent the truth of the world. There are no lights in other parts of the world. Pillar…”
"I once regarded it as truth and believed it for a hundred years." The old man with the skull recalled those high-spirited years and let out a heavy lament.
Ning Jiujiu said: "No matter how dilapidated this place is, it is still a world. Once we return to the spiritual sea, there will really be nothing left."
The old man with a skull said: "The meaning of life is to find meaning, and the meaning of death is to return to reality."
Ning Jiujiu said: "You seem to be a scholar."
The old man with a skull said: "Because Master Mingjun is a poet."
"Ming Jun is still alive?" Ning Jiujiu asked.
The old skull man said: "Yes... and no. In short, you will see her soon. Along the way, you can also see many stone tablets, all of which are poems by Lord Ming."
…
The rain kept falling, and thunder occasionally sounded in the sky, but there was no lightning.
Ning looked around for a long time.
Black flowers bloomed one after another in the surrounding rocks.
The old skull man stopped, leaned down with his thin body, bit into a dark flower, and swallowed it.
"What are you doing?" Ning asked for a long time.
The old man with a skull said: "This is the flower of darkness, something that sustains life. I am very lucky today. In the past, I had to look for it for a long time... You should be a lucky person."
"Is it delicious?" Ning Jiujiu asked casually.
The old man with a skull said: "I can't taste it."
Ning looked around for a long time. As the old man said, a lamppost will appear every one hundred steps. This lamppost is very strange. No matter how big a step you take, it will always appear at one hundred steps.
Ning Jiujiu said: "Is this purgatory?"
The old man with the skull nodded: "Isn't it scary here?"
Ning looked at the desolation washed away by the rain for a long time. It looked like a cemetery filled with green smoke. At most, it could only remind people of a ghost haunting it. It was hard to imagine what kind of horror was hidden there. There was smoke billowing out in the distance, like boiling water, gurgling into the chaotic sky.
Ning Jiujiu asked: "What's so scary?"
The old man with the skull sighed: "It's so scary to be in despair... You'll know later."
The old man took Ning Changjiu and walked forward.
"Have you been waiting for me here?" Ning asked for a long time.
"Yes, Saint." The old skull man said: "The great existence in Hades asked me to wait for you and take you to Hades to prevent you from getting lost here."
Lost
Ning Jiujiu was a little confused.
The old man with the skull seems to be playing the role of a guide, but the road is straight. No matter how you look at it, no matter how blind you are, you can't get lost.
Along the way, Ning Jiujiu saw many more souls.
They swim in this world, most of them have no legs, but are a mass of smoke-like things with a pointed bottom. They were floating low in the sky.
"This is purgatory." The old man with the skull pointed into the distance and said: "These people call themselves the Destruction Sect. They built a city with stones. The whole city is a cannon chamber. This city will destroy those round spheres. Shoot it out, high into the sky. Each of these spheres has been polished for decades, so every time you throw one, it's decades of hard work."
Ning Jiujiu asked: "What is their purpose? War?"
The old man with a skull said: "The war is a thing of the past hundreds of years ago. Many of the remnant souls that entered here at that time died in the war."
Ning Jiujiu asked: "Then what are they doing? Breaking the sky?"
"Yes." The old man with the skull said, "They want to blow a hole in the sky... but this is impossible."
Ning Jiujiu nodded in agreement.
This is the sea of spirit, and thoughts are endless.
They moved on.
Ning Jiujiu saw another huge machine with copper pillars. This machine was somewhat similar to Zhang Heng's armillary sphere.
The old man with a skull said: "This is the Inviting Immortal Sect. Their sect leader is a witch. They are different from the ambitious Destruction Sect. They want to use artificial stars to call for the arrival of foreign gods."
Ning thought about it for a long time and realized that the Hades Palace was suppressed by the entire Ancient Spirit Sect, and the information conveyed by the rituals inside could not even reach the Hades Palace outside, let alone the outside.
The armillary sphere rotated in the rain. It did not rotate naturally, but was dragged by a few wild ghosts. The wild ghosts were wrapped with chains, and their posture was like a donkey pulling a mill. Those chains have been deeply cut into their bones. From time to time, some wild ghosts cannot hold up and fall in the air, turning into a pool of white bones. Soon a new ghost was pushed up in chains and took over its original position.
Their efforts were in vain.
Ning Changjiu shook his head gently and walked forward in silence.
The old man with the skull pointed at the neat array in front and said: "This is the Regicide Sect. As the name suggests, they want to kill Lord Ming."
"Kill Ming Lord?" Ning Jiujiu asked: "Isn't Ming Lord the master of this place?"
The old man with a skull said: "They believe that Lord Ming is guarding the patio leading to the outside world, so they want to kill Lord Ming and replace him. They have been training their troops over the years. When the number of people reaches 300,000, they will send troops to fight against Lord Ming." The palace advances."
Ning Jiujiu said: "You are training soldiers under the eyes of Lord Ming like this?"
The old skull man nodded and said, "The king doesn't care about this."
Ning Jiujiu said: "This is also the world. What's different about living here? Why do you have to go out?"
The old man with a skull said: "Because the end is approaching. If you don't go out, everyone will die. There is a stone tablet outside the Hades Palace, which records the year of the end... So the war has stopped long ago, and everyone is looking for it. A way to escape.”
Ning Jiujiu nodded thoughtfully.
He was not in the mood to listen to this, because the closer he got to the Hades Palace, the more confused his mind became.
They passed many stone tablets, and it was said that those stone tablets recorded long poems by Hades.
Ning Changjiu said: "Do you recognize the words on the stone tablet?"
The old man with a skull said: "Young people nowadays can't read anymore, but we still know each other."
Ning Changjiu asked: "What kind of story do these stone tablets probably tell?"
The skull old man replied: "It's about the arrival of the great Hades into the world, what he saw and heard over the past few hundred years, and... his final demise."
Ning Jiujiu asked: "How did Ming Lord perish in the end?"
The skull old man replied: "The sky was covered, and the monarch was cut off from the rest of the gods. They lost their power and became estranged from each other. Then, a being who was called the 'Dark Lord' by Hades arrived... Well, here we are. .”
The old skeleton man did not say any more. He stopped and bent his thin body facing the magnificent palace in front of him.
"Your Majesty, I have guided the saint here for you." The old man with the skull said piously.
A gust of wind blew from the temple, and the old man with the skull disappeared.
Before the old man disappeared, he suddenly showed a strange smile. He whispered: "Sage, look back, do you think that the world here is essentially the same as the world outside you?"
I would rather look back at the sound for a long time.
The sky was darkened by smoke and smoke.
The end is approaching, and under the dark dome, people are full of hope and struggling in vain.
Is this the same as the outside world
Ning Jiujiu was a little shaken by the beauty outside.
He looked at the stone tablet in front of the temple. The number on the stone tablet read three hundred.
Three hundred days.
The wind came in a roundabout way, like a hand, pushing Ning Changchun forward.
Ning Changjiu crossed the stone steps and walked into the hall.
The Hades Palace in the outside world is simply incomparable to this one. If this Hades Palace is an iceberg, then the previous ones are just the remains of the tip of the iceberg.
Ning Jiujiu walked into the hall.
He ignored the illusive and beautiful paintings around him and walked towards the depths of the hall.
When he reached the depths, what he saw was once again beyond his expectation.
He originally thought it was a story about a senior brother rescuing his junior sister, but when he got deeper, he saw the beautiful girl in a white dress sitting on the throne, looking at him with a smile. Next to her, there was a waiter with a snake bone spine. He lowered his head humbly.
The sacred pillar behind the throne is wrapped with the bones of the feathered serpent.
Behind the huge body of the feathered serpent, there is a bunch of blades with slender wing bones.
"Senior brother." Ning Xiaoling looked at him and smiled, her eyes filled with tears.
…
"Brother, I knew you would come." Ning Xiaoling said: "I was afraid that you would get lost, so I made the only road so straight. I listed all the roads hundreds of miles away from this road. Forbidden area. This way... you can find me."
"The god here has been killed by me, and now I am the new god here, so senior brother... don't be afraid." Ning Xiaoling said with a smile.
Ning looked at her quietly for a long time, with no trace of emotion on his face: "Stop pretending."
Ning Xiaoling was slightly stunned and said: "Senior brother... what's wrong with you?"
Ning Jiujiu asked: "Are you Ming Lord or White Fox?"
Ning Xiaoling stared at him for a while and asked, "How did you know?"
Only then did Ning Jiujiu realize Si Ming's good intentions. If he hadn't carefully sensed Ning Xiaoling's aura in advance, he might have been deceived this time.
"Senior brother will not fail to recognize junior sister." Ning Jiujiu said.
The girl on the throne stood up. She suddenly changed her appearance and said, "Oh, your mouth is so sweet. No wonder this silly girl was so coaxed by you that her final obsession will never go away."
The last obsession
Ning Chang's fists in his sleeves clenched instantly.
The girl smiled and said: "Don't worry, she's not dead yet. As long as you promise me and do things for me, she can live well."
Ning Jiujiu asked: "What do you want me to do?"
The girl said: "Kill a traitor for me. Kill her and I will return your junior sister to you."
"What traitor?" Ning Jiujiu continued to ask.
"Arakawa Ryūque... Well, her name should be Suzaku now." The girl replied.
Ning pondered for a moment and said: "Back then, Longque and Tianzang were enemies of Huanghe. If you were related to Lord Ming, then you and Longque were also unrelenting enemies back then?"
"I know a lot..." the girl said, "But you don't have to tell me where I came from. You just need to tell me, can I kill him?"
"No." Ning Jiujiu shook his head.
This has nothing to do with Xiang'er. No matter what he thinks, it doesn't prevent him from being a match for the Suzaku God.
As expected, the girl said: "Then the difficulty will be lowered, and you can take me out of here, okay?"
Ning Jiujiu asked: "What should I do?"
The girl smiled and said: "It's very simple. Darkness is a sea. If you want to cross the sea, just be a raft. Your junior sister is the best raft. When you take her away, give me a ride. When you get out, I will return your junior sister to you."
Ning Jiujiu said: "You also want to be a parasite?"
The girl said angrily: "Don't compare gods with such despicable beings."
"But you all do the same thing."
"Okay, okay, don't talk about this." The girl said, "Anyway, are you willing?"
Ning Jiujiu said: "I want to see my junior sister first."
The girl uttered an ooh and said reluctantly: "At that time, your junior sister was fighting with a group of big snakes and was dying. If she didn't have my authority, she would definitely not be accepted by the underworld and would have turned into a lonely ghost. The witches from the Immortal Sect have gone to pull Hun Tianyi away. So, I am her savior."
Ning Jiujiu frowned and said, "Are you... Mingjun?"
The girl turned around and asked angrily: "Why are you looking at me like this? Don't you look like me?"
Ning was silent for a long time: "Isn't Lord Ming the husband of Tian Zang?"
The girl said quietly: "God can only guarantee your own immortality, but there is no way to guarantee your gender."
"Are you really a poet?" Ning Jiujiu asked again.
The girl turned back angrily: "Do you like to expose people's shortcomings so much?"
Ning Jiujiu said: "This is not a shortcoming."
The girl stood with her hands behind her hands. Although she was petite, her posture was very majestic. She said coldly: "It's not worth mentioning. It was just to deceive that stupid woman Tianzang."
With that said, the girl led Ning Changjiu towards the rear of the palace.
On the way, she couldn't help but asked coldly: "Then... have you read the poems?"
Ning Changjiu said: "There are all stone monuments on the road, of course I have seen them."
The girl seemed to ask casually: "How was the writing?"
"..." Ning Jiujiu thought to himself, Master Mingjun, do you want me to praise you
"The writing... is very poetic." Ning Changjiu said what he meant.
The girl sneered: "What are you pretending to be? You can't read at all!"
"..." Ning was speechless for a long time.
"But it doesn't matter. One day you will learn the ghost writing, and then you will feel the beauty of it." The girl said.
Ning Jiujiu couldn't help but ask: "Are you really Lord Ming?"
"Are you despising my majesty?" the girl asked.
Ning Jiujiu didn't know what to say. He just felt that all the depression he felt along the way seemed to have been emptied by the image of Ming Jun.
People in the Kingdom of Hades have such a monarch, no wonder they experience such a miserable life.
The girl said: "To be precise, I am not the Ming Lord you call me. You can call me... Ming Lord II."
"Hello, Miss II." Ning Changjiu said politely.
He knew that no matter how harmless this little girl acted, what she held in her hands was the power to destroy cities and countries at every turn.
Deep in the palace, the girl stopped.
She pushed open the palace door. Behind the palace door was... a mountain of stone
"This is a cage." The girl was afraid that Ning would not be recognized for a long time, so she took the initiative to introduce: "Your junior sister is locked in a certain cage. You need to find her yourself."
Ningjiu pretended to be in trouble for a long time. He walked towards the cage while saying that it was very difficult.
"Wait a minute." The girl stopped him.
"What's wrong?" Ning asked for a long time.
The girl said: "You have to pay something to get a chance to open the stone prison."
Ning Changjiu was no stranger to this. In the streets and alleys of Zhao State, he had seen stalls with several rows of items of different values, and then spent money to buy copper rings to set them.
Ning Jiujiu asked: "What do you need me to pay?"
The girl said without hesitation: "Immortal scroll."
This answer was within Ning Changjiu's expectation.
This is what Ming Jun owns.
Ning Jiujiu paid the immortal scroll.
"Your junior sister is not easy to find, um... do you need to buy ten copies at once?" the girl asked.
"No need." Ning Jiujiu refused.
The girl smiled and took the fairy scroll...getting the most important thing first, and then slowly exploiting him until only a set of bones remained. Huh, I don't believe he can choose it in one go...
Ning Jiujiu calmly walked down the stone steps.
He stood behind the Hades Palace and looked at the stone gates one after another.
They are like shrines containing souls, silently waiting to be opened.
His mind found that familiar feeling.
The wind in the Hades Palace blew back and forth, lifting his white clothes.
He came to a stone door and gently stretched out his hand.
The girl who calls herself Hades Lord II has sharp eyes.
"Wait!" The girl wanted to stop him.
Ning Jiujiu has already pushed the door open and entered.
A moon-like white light lit up in the door.
A sleeping, ignorant soul was held in his arms. The curled up soul had been throbbing uneasily, but now that it was in his arms, it calmed down, as if it had fallen into a deep sleep.
It was Ning Xiaoling.
"How...possible?" The girl was confused.
She regretted it after saying it.
He is the second king of the underworld, and should be an omniscient and omnipotent god. Asking questions like this makes you look weak.
Ning Jiujiu hugged Ning Xiaoling's soul and said, "Thank you so much, Miss II, for allowing us brother and sister to reunite."
The girl pursed her lips and said with a struggling expression: "No, try again, you must have used dishonorable means!"
Ning looked at her quietly for a long time.
Shura's dharma body outlined a light that swallowed up the darkness behind him.
The girl stared at Shura Dharmakaya with fear.
In Luo Shu's world, Ning Jiujiu has proven that Shura, who has condensed spiritual power, is nearly invincible in the spiritual world.
What's more, he can also see that the man who calls himself Hades Lord II is not in good condition.
This is also one of the signs of the end of the world.
Ning Jiujiu walked forward with Shura Dharmakaya.
The girl stretched out her hand and said, "Wait!"
"What else can happen to Miss II?" Ning Jiujiu asked.
The girl said: "You came with your junior sister, and there is a cat! I think your junior sister cherishes this cat very much."
Ning Jiujiu thought of the cat paw prints on the note and nodded thoughtfully.
The girl grabbed it casually and took out the cat from another stone door.
"If you want to redeem this cat, trade it for the golden giant behind you," the girl said.
Ning looked at the cat for a long time.
The cat looked at Ning for a long time.
Oh it's you? !
Actually... it's you? !
They looked at each other and were speechless.
"Fish..." Ning Changjiu hesitated whether to call its name.
A glimmer of hope ignited in the Fish King's heart: "Is the fish what I want?"
Ning looked at Ming Lord II for a long time, shook his head and said, "Don't want to."
…
…
(Thank you to book friend 58973254 for the tip! Thank you to book friend for your support~)