I become a god in another world

Chapter 669 True and False Reflections
Chapter 669

Is reincarnation real or fake?

Wu Ciping couldn't stop thinking about this problem.

Such a question is considered outrageous in Wuqing County, as the Chang family's laws possess the ability to devour people's souls and memories.

Before the laws of sacrifice, each person chosen to sit on the load would recount their life story, which could not be concealed. Everything, including secrets, would be offered to the master and the gods.

If he thinks this way, when it's his turn to ride in a cargo ship and recount his life story, he will inevitably tell everyone everything in detail.

When the ghost vine devours his soul and memories, all of this cannot be hidden from the master. It will be recorded in his reincarnation experience, and he will have his merit points deducted. His next life may be a hundred times more bitter than now—no, it is very likely that he will be deprived of the right to be human, and will be made into an instrument for the masters to enjoy, where he can only cry and waile day and night.

The thought of such consequences filled Wu Ciping with fear.

In the past, Wu Ciping was afraid to think about or delve into many things because of the terrifying sacrificial cycle. He could only be numb and drift along, living one day at a time. But now that Zhao Fusheng had brought up the topic, he could no longer deceive himself.

Even so, he still unconsciously muttered to himself:
"What do you mean by that? I don't understand."

"Don't play dumb."

Zhao Fusheng frowned and shouted:
"You know it perfectly well."

“We may appear to be in the South Garden, but in reality, we may not have left the East Garden.” As soon as Zhao Fusheng finished speaking, everyone trembled with fear.

"The imperial court's taxes exploit the people's labor and money, but the demons of Wuqing County exploit the people's spirit." Zhao Fusheng frowned deeply.

"Perhaps it uses some kind of power to devour the flesh and blood of the people, absorb their souls, create an illusion of reincarnation, and force the people under its rule to strive for a 'next life' and then submit to the rule of this ghost, thus consolidating the ghost's position and the Chang family's power."

She added, "The exploitation of faith is similar to the practice of accepting offerings from the people."

However, after Zhao Fusheng takes over the incense offerings, he will use the power of ghosts and gods to repay the people, while the ghosts and gods of the Chang family are raised by the people to deceive them with the illusion of reincarnation.

But Zhao Fusheng's question is: Is there really reincarnation here?
If, upon waking from this dream, the people of Wuqing County awaken and discover that everything was just a dream, and that the so-called reincarnation was not real but merely an illusion created by the laws of ghosts, how should they cope?
"It is possible that we are currently stuck in a maze, going around in circles, or perhaps we are in a ghostly ritual without realizing it."

Zhao Fusheng said:

"There are no laws related to ghost rituals here, no ghostly shadows, no ghostly vines, no objects to carry, so I tend to think that what I'm seeing is an illusion."

These things related to ghostly calamities are far more real than the brightly lit, gloomy house before us; the terrifying and bloody laws are far more real.

Zhao Fusheng's words struck Wu Ciping like a thunderbolt, tearing open his hidden worries.

“You shouldn’t say these things—” He shook his head, his voice weak: “We can’t leave Wuqing County, so why not make our lives a little easier?”

If we know that there is reincarnation and an afterlife, at least we can still be full of hope.

But if they knew that the one controlling everyone was a vengeful ghost, and that the so-called afterlife and hope were just illusions, and that everyone would face death sooner or later, how could anyone endure such a life?
Zhao Fusheng looked at him, seemingly wanting to say something but then stopping himself.

“Some things, if they don’t involve principles, you can play dumb. But when it comes to ghost cases, there’s only black and white.” She shook her head.

"Lord Wu, a vague and unreal hope will only erode your will and crush your fighting spirit, leaving you at the mercy of others, passively waiting for death. What is the meaning of such a life?"

After asking his question, Zhao Fusheng saw that Wu Ciping was hanging his head and remaining silent, so he sighed.
"Never mind, everyone has their own ambitions."

After she finished speaking, her gaze became firm:
"But I'd rather die conscious than live in ignorance."

After speaking, she looked at the burial site and waved her arm:
"Let's go into the ancestral home and see Old Madam Chang."

Meng Po and the others smiled and responded to these words.

Miao Yougong, Wang Ling, and the others were terrified. They wanted to escape, but in such a horrible place, there was nowhere for them to hide. They had no choice but to grit their teeth and follow Zhao Fusheng.

Yu Lingzhu felt as if she had been struck by a heavy blow.

After a long while, she murmured to herself:

"To die consciously, to live foolishly—"

"To die consciously, to live foolishly—"

She read it twice, her voice gradually fading.

The group set off together, and their large numbers made for a very impressive and imposing sight.

Having more people can embolden you, but it also makes you an easy target for the laws of evil spirits. Once you encounter a ghost, the casualties will be severe.

Before entering the tomb, Zhao Fusheng paused at the entrance and remained silent for a moment.

She turned to look at the crowd:
"Let's split into two groups," she suggested.

"Let's split into two teams, one from the capital and one from Wan'an County. We from Wan'an County will go into the ghost house to investigate, while you from the capital will stay outside. If anything seems amiss, then issue a warning and support each other."

After Zhao Fusheng said this, Miao Yougong and the others felt very uneasy.

For ordinary envoys, Wang Zhiyi and Yu Lingzhu, among the people from the capital, were both high-ranking figures of the rank of general, so following them would be a good idea.

But for a ghost tamer like Miao Yougong, he had already realized the strength of Zhao Fusheng and the other people from Wan'an County.

Most importantly, judging from the ghost sacrifice at Baili Temple, Zhao Fusheng was willing to help others, which is why Miao Yougong wanted to follow Zhao Fusheng.

"Let's go together."

Just as everyone remained silent, Yu Lingzhu suddenly spoke:
"If we encounter danger, I am confident that I can get everyone out of the house. Splitting up would only make things worse."

Now that things have come to this, she might as well be honest:
“My ghost law is special. It can reverse time. Let’s say we take the time before we entered the house as our anchor point. If something happens later, I can take everyone back to before we entered the house.”

Such an ability is truly extraordinary.

Wang Zhiyi was surprised that she would reveal the laws of ghosts at this time, and stared at her with wide eyes for several moments.

Zhao Fusheng nodded:
"In that case, let's travel together."

Hearing this, everyone felt slightly encouraged.

Wu Ciping, who had been listless after learning the 'truth' about reincarnation, suddenly brightened up.

If Yu Lingzhu can reverse time, it means that as long as she doesn't die, everyone else won't die in this cycle of ghosts.

“If that’s the case, I’ll lead the way, Meng Po, Man Zhou, and Da and Xiao Fan will walk on either side of me, Ling Zhu and the ordinary messengers will walk in the middle, and Zhi Yi and Jiang Jinshan will bring up the rear.”

Zhao Fusheng assigned manpower.

"it is good."

Everyone responded in unison.

After lining up, Zhao Fusheng walked towards the gate of the burial site.

The gate to the burial site was ajar. Zhao Fusheng approached, paused for a moment, and then the power of the beggar ghost revived.

'Hmph, hmph, hmph.'

The ghostly arm struck the door three times, and the door shattered with a 'ripping' sound.

'call--'

A cold wind swept through the room, carrying something that landed with a 'thud' in Zhao Fusheng's hand.

The ghostly arm grasped the object and then held it tightly.

After that gust of cold wind finished blowing, it disappeared without a trace.

The door was wide open, but the lights inside went out instantly.

Standing in front of the door, everyone was still terrified after the earlier ordeal and didn't dare to utter a sound.

Meng Po stood next to Zhao Fusheng and witnessed the scene of her knocking on the door with her ghostly arm.

The ghost arm knocks on the door, always asking for something.

She looked into Zhao Fusheng's hand and saw that she had somehow gotten hold of a machete with a missing hilt.

The knife looked quite old, covered in mottled rust. The blade was chipped, as if it had been used to cut many things, damaging the edge.

The blade is brownish-black, having become one with the rust.

Meng Po only glanced at it before sensing the murderous aura emanating from the blade, and she immediately said:

"A very ominous object."

Zhao Fusheng nodded.

She weighed the blade in her hand and placed it into hell:

"Placed in a burial site, it must be related to the Wuqing County case."

However, the situation is special at this time, and it is not the time to investigate in detail.

As soon as he finished speaking, Zhao Fusheng stepped into the house.

Upon entering the room, a strange chill swept over us from all directions.

At the same time, her feet sank into the mud, and she instantly became shorter.

"Watch out, the ground is muddy."

Zhao Fusheng's body sank in, but at the same time she was still speaking up to remind him.

The mud stopped when it reached about calf level.

Because of the power of the remaining spirit pearl, Zhao Fusheng did not need to worry about the other messengers. She also had merit points to rely on, so she did not rush to pull her leg out, but stood in place for a moment to feel it.

The people behind her didn't rush in after hearing her words, which gave her a moment of silence.

The first impression that came to her mind was 'quiet'.

It was pitch black all around, so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and it was very quiet.

In the extreme stillness, Zhao Fusheng had a strange illusion: she felt as if she were in a deep pit, surrounded by towering walls, trapping her inside.

Then came the 'tick-tock' sound.

It looks like water droplets falling.

The surroundings were unusually damp, and combined with the mud beneath his feet, a strange thought immediately popped into Zhao Fusheng's mind: the bottom of the well.

But just a moment ago she was clearly in the South Garden of Wuqing County, and she entered the tomb of Old Madam Chang. How could she have accidentally entered the bottom of the well?
As soon as this thought crossed Zhao Fusheng's mind, he suddenly heard a 'whoosh' sound of blowing air behind him.

Then came the smell of sulfur and gunpowder. As sparks flew, Meng Po took out a tinderbox and lit it.

As soon as the firelight appeared, the feeling of being stuck in the mud under Zhao Fusheng's feet disappeared.

At the same time, the feeling of being trapped in a deep well, surrounded by well walls and filled with resentment, disappeared from her mind. The sound of water and the dampness vanished in an instant.

In the firelight, the group filed into the room.

This is an unusually strange house.

The house was very large, like the inner courtyard of a royal palace, with the floor paved with similarly sized blue bricks.

Yu Lingzhu and Wang Zhiyi looked at each other, then Wang Zhiyi stomped her leg on the ground twice.

"It's a stone."

As she spoke, her gaze fell on Zhao Fusheng, who frowned.
"What you see and feel in the dark is different from what you feel in the light."

Wang Zhiyi and the others looked serious.

"When I came in, the ground was muddy and very wet, up to my calves."

She lifted her leg and gestured with her hand to indicate the position.

Meng Po cooperated by holding up a tinderbox and bending down to shine the light. Everyone looked at her legs; she was wearing blue trousers with the legs tied together for ease of movement.

He was wearing white socks and black cloth shoes. Under the light, Zhao Fusheng's feet were clean, and the black shoes were spotless, as if they had just been washed.

This is not right.

The expressions on everyone's faces changed slightly, and they looked at each other, but no one spoke.

Last night, something happened when we were passing by Baili Temple. It was raining heavily and blocking the road. We also encountered a ghost sacrifice and went through a fight.

It's impossible for Zhao Fusheng's feet to be completely free of mud after traveling like this.

Everyone tacitly refrained from saying this aloud, fearing that if they did, the laws of the Ghost Realm would change again.

Yu Lingzhu became more alert, squatted down, and reached out to touch it.

The sensation under my fingers felt like I was actually touching a stone.

"It looks like blue bricks."

She said:
"Same size." But that's too strange.

At this time, quarrying and mining all require manual labor. When people dig stones by hand, oversights are inevitable, and it is common for stones to be of different sizes.

But the cracks in the ground that everyone was stepping on were perfectly straight and neat, unlike stone that was mined by man. Instead, it looked like paper drawn with a ruler, dyed the color of bluestone, and then sewn together when the tomb was built.

As they were talking, Yu Lingzhu noticed that the cracks in the ground seemed to be slowly moving.

The stones, which had previously been uniform in size, quickly began to wriggle and change before her eyes. Their edges were no longer neat, and although they looked similar in size, they had changed—this was the result of the laws of the ghost realm recognizing that she had sensed something amiss and adjusting themselves according to her inner thoughts.

The thought sent a chill down Yu Lingzhu's spine—it meant that the Ghost Realm had been watching her thoughts.

"We've entered a haunted house."

As Zhao Fusheng spoke, he looked around, but nothing had changed.

"It seems that as long as we state the facts without raising any doubts or fears, and our emotions remain calm, the law will be considered correct, and the ancestral grave will not change."

She said:
"In this way, we can be even more certain that what the Yin House and the Chang family saw and felt were all illusions, adjusted according to our ideas and suitable for us."

Ghosts are just ghosts.

No matter how defying the laws of nature, or how high the rank of a vengeful ghost, it can never compare to the agile thoughts of a human.

Zhao Fusheng found a way to recount the incident in a straightforward manner, and the haunted house remained exactly as it had been before.

When Yu Lingzhu heard her mention 'yin house', her heart pounded wildly, but seeing that her expression was normal, and that her tone of voice did not fluctuate, and that there was no change in the yin house, she finally felt relieved.

As she felt a great weight lifted from her shoulders, a complex mix of thoughts arose within her.

Zhao Fusheng's words sound easy, but they are actually difficult to put into practice.

When humans fight ghosts, it's inevitable that they will have thoughts of fear and unease—the laws of the ghost realm will capture a person's feelings and emotions, and it's not true that one can say they are not afraid.

The fact that Zhao Fusheng didn't violate any rules after saying those words strongly suggests that she was genuinely unafraid.

Realizing this, Yu Lingzhu felt strange, yet inexplicably calmed down.

Zhao Fusheng wasn't afraid to enter the haunted house, which must be because she had a backup plan. She could also reverse time and go back to the past, so what did she have to be afraid of?

Thinking this way, Yu Lingzhu's rapid heartbeat calmed down a little, and she said:
“I remember when the tomb was built, there was still furniture and decoration inside, but now it has been emptied out. This is strange.”

As soon as she finished speaking, everyone noticed that the unusually spacious room seemed even larger precisely because it was empty.

Inside, apart from the blue floor tiles, walls, and roof, there were no other miscellaneous items.

Not to mention tables, chairs, and screens, there wasn't even a single window or curtain in sight.

(End of this chapter)