ninety thousand miles

Chapter 494 Assimilation
Jiang Mei said: "When Jiang Lei saw us, he looked very surprised, and it didn't seem like he was faking it. After I revealed my identity to him, he said that deep in the underground palace, there were some runes that looked like they were left by the demons. He handed me a jade talisman and told me to just follow the path inside. He also noted the mechanical beasts and the like that we might encounter along the way."

"I proposed to him that I wanted to take Brother Jiang away, and he readily agreed. He said that he did not torture Brother Jiang on purpose, but he was very angry when he saw that the younger generation was so unmotivated, which led to the scene we saw."

"He also asked me to teach Brother Jiang a lesson and guide him onto the right path so that he wouldn't hang out with ordinary people all day and become a laughing stock."

"It's all pretend." Jiang Bai said.

Jiang Mei didn't respond and continued, "So I tentatively asked him about Elder Xiao. He said that he knew that Elder Xiao had attained enlightenment in the secret realm, but their paths were different. He focused on studying the spirit beasts in the underground palace and creating a Qing Sect secret technique, so they had only met a few times and didn't have much of a relationship."

"Then, I asked him about the little demon in the secret realm. He didn't know anything about it either."

"This... does he think you are fools?" Li Chuan couldn't help but say.

Jiang Mei said: "The impression that most Qing Sect monks give to others is like this, they are aloof, protective of their own shortcomings, and ruthless to others."

"Since I couldn't get any information from him, I said goodbye to him and prepared to explore deeper into the underground palace."

"After that, the three of us walked down. Because Brother Jiang was injured, he walked very slowly. It took about five or six days before we reached the seventh floor marked in the jade talisman. Jiang Lei said that the exit was under a dark room on the seventh floor, and there was a secret passage."

"How is your injury?" Li Chuan asked Jiang Bai.

Jiang Bai said: "Brother Jiang cured me and cured all the sequelae."

Jiang Mei: "Thanks to Brother Jiang, we were able to escape from the underground palace."

"What's going on in the underground palace?" Wen Guying asked.

"There are some spirit beasts, magic weapons, and various mechanisms. With the jade talisman given by Jiang Lei, we can easily solve the problem by treating the symptoms." Jiang Mei replied. He paused and said, "After arriving at the dark room that Jiang Lei mentioned, we successfully found the secret passage."

"Xiao Liu discovered something unusual about the secret passage. He said that the secret passage seemed to have been dug out in recent years, and was not originally in the underground palace. But... at that time we had no choice but to continue going down."

"The secret passage isn't long. In less than half an hour, we reached the end. It's a dead end."

"Dead end? No way out?" Li Chuan asked.

"It was dark, and from time to time some sounds could be heard from it. Some of those sounds were like dead branches breaking, crackling, crackling," said Liu Yang.

"Can't you light a lamp?" Li Chuan asked?

"That darkness is not just the absence of light. The three of us can see in the darkness," Jiang Mei explained patiently, "There are many spirits floating there. Brother Jiang said that those are Devouring Spirits that failed to be transformed. Although they failed, they can still devour the soul."

He asked, "Do you know what the Soul Eater is?" "It's a kind of White Walker, but it's born with some deficiencies. It needs some means of intervention to parasitize the soul. But once it succeeds in parasitizing, the speed of infection is faster than that of the White Walkers. After being parasitized, one will gradually lose their memory until the soul is completely devoured. After that, the Soul Eater and the body will dissipate together and will no longer infect other people. There are also... some methods of the demons that can temporarily suppress it." Wen Guying said.

After hearing Wen Guying's words, Jiang Mei asked, "What happened outside?"

Wen Guying said: "There was a troupe of actors who were infected with the Soul Devourer and went to Beijing. They have been cured and there is an antidote."

"Yes." Jiang Mei nodded and continued, "After sensing the danger in the darkness, Xiao Liu said that we should go back and take another look at other parts of the underground palace, or ask Jiang Lei again. Brother Jiang thought that we could beat Jiang Lei into submission before interrogating him."

Wen Guying asked: "You didn't go back?"

"Yes." Jiang Mei explained: "Jiang Lei must have known what we would encounter. When he saw us, he might have been a little surprised, but after five or six days, he probably ran away, or set a lot of traps for us."

"So, we could only step into the darkness. At first, we planned to go in the direction where the sound came from, but after being in the darkness, we found that the crackling sounds did not come from one place, but from everywhere."

"So we chose a direction and kept moving forward. As we walked, I also observed the heavy Devouring Souls floating around me. Gradually, some illusions appeared in front of my eyes," Jiang Mei looked at Wen Guying and said, "To be precise, they were not illusions, but we saw the memories devoured by those Devouring Souls. These memories settled in the darkness, and the number increased. Finally, they passed a certain point, and a strange change occurred."

"Are...are you okay?" Li Chuan asked hurriedly.

Jiang Mei understood what Li Chuan meant and said, "It's not parasitic. Just to be on the safe side, can you show it to us later?"

"Let's take a look, it's safer, right?" Li Chuan said.

"Wait for me to finish," Jiang Mei continued, "There, the Devouring Souls underwent a strange change. They became a whole. A single Devouring Soul had no consciousness, but after billions of Devouring Souls gathered together, they gained consciousness. This consciousness could affect the living beings that sank into it, including the monks, and connected their consciousness with the consciousness of the whole through a resonance, making them indistinguishable from each other."

Jiang Mei said: "So I suspect that the soul-devouring parasite you mentioned may pass through here, and it is not parasitism, but assimilation."

"Brother Jiang woke us up. I found the way based on the memories I got from the illusion."

"There are... a lot of corpses there. Some of them are the corpses of those who died after the collapse of the Huai'an Mountain Secret Realm, and the other part is the corpses of those who died in the past few hundred years."

"Jiang Lei must have discovered this strange change in some way, and then he kept trying. He didn't know how to parasitize, but he relied on the Qing Sect's secret technique and kept experimenting, and finally found a way."

"I suspect... everything in the darkness now is not the end. He is still experimenting non-stop, and will eventually refine all the Devouring Souls into his puppets, to be driven by him and used by him."

"This...is this an evil cultivator?" Li Chuan said.

Jiang Bai said: "Qingzong absolutely does not tolerate such behavior."

(End of this chapter)