Since the sky was covered, the heavens began to show their holiness

In the eastern part of the Shadow Isles, there was deathly silence.

Thick as ink, the haze weighed heavily on this cursed land, soaking every inch of the air with bone-chilling cold. The jagged dead trees bared their fangs and claws, and the twisted branches were looming in the darkness, as if silently telling of the tragedy and sorrow of the past.

In this dark and strange place, graves stand quietly, exuding a captivating and eerie atmosphere. These graves are extremely simple, with no words engraved on the rough tombstones, like empty faces, silently staring at the world, but seeming to hide endless unspeakable secrets. They are arranged in a disorderly manner, like a ghost army lost in the long river of time, who knows how many years of erosion, still stubbornly guarding this forgotten land.

It seemed that because there were too many people buried here, even the air was filled with a foul smell, and the baptism of time had left many broken limbs and bones exposed.

Suddenly, a series of light footsteps sounded, "rustle" "rustle", the sound was subtle, but it was infinitely magnified in this quiet and almost frozen space. Every sound was like a heavy hammer hitting the heart, making the listener's hair stand on end, as if there were pairs of deep eyes watching quietly in the darkness.

Gwen and Zhou Xian walked side by side into the mass grave shrouded in haze. The smell of rotten soil and death hit them in the face, and the densely packed graves around them were like monsters that broke out of the ground, revealing endless weirdness in the dead silence.

"This is the mass grave." Gwen's voice broke the silence, and his eyes swept calmly across this gloomy place. "Originally, there were not so many graves here. It was Yorick who dug the bodies from other places and buried them here. I don't know what the point of him going through so much trouble to do this was."

Faced with this horrifying scene, Gwen looked calm, as if she had long been accustomed to it; or perhaps, in her pure heart, she was still unable to understand the true meaning of death and fear, and was simply stating the facts before her.

Zhou Xian stood there quietly, his eyes penetrating the thick black darkness and falling on the densely packed tombstones in front of him. These tombstones were either crooked or incomplete, and in this dead mass grave, they looked like countless strange fangs breaking out of the ground.

He narrowed his eyes slightly, thinking, and Yorick's background story emerged in his mind. Before the Curse of Ruin swept across this land like a nightmare, Yorick seemed to be doing a business related to the dead, running around, trying to appease the dead souls and let them rest in peace.

But now, in this cursed Shadow Isle, everything seems to have changed, but Yorick is still doing what he did before. Zhou Xian couldn't help but sigh that Yorick is too dedicated. He works all year round without any salary, which is simply worse than a beast of burden.

Just as Zhou Xian fell into deep thought, a hoarse voice suddenly sounded without warning.

"Gwen? What do you want from me? Huh? And with a human child?"

The sound was like the struggling pumping of an old bellows, or the rubbing of sandpaper. The sound reverberated back and forth in this dead mass grave, and every echo was like a cold hand slowly crawling up one's spine, making one's hair stand on end and one's scalp numb.

Zhou Xian turned his head suddenly and saw a tall man standing not far away, looking at him with interest. The man was wearing a tattered black cloak, the corners of which swayed slightly in the darkness, as if he would be swallowed by the darkness at any time.

Under the cloak, his skin was different from that of an ordinary person, with a sickly pale color, just like a corpse that had just died and was not yet completely stiff, which looked particularly strange in the dimness of this mass grave. He held a shovel in his hand, which was worn and mottled, but it glowed coldly in the dim light and was extremely sharp.

"Is this Yorick the Shepherd of Souls?"

Zhou Xian muttered to himself, looking at the man in front of him with curiosity, as if he was looking at a "special laborer" who worked all year round. He couldn't help but imagine Yorick shuttling between tombs day and night. He didn't know whether it was because of his persistence in the job of "appeasing the dead" or driven by some unknown force. "Yorrick, where did you dig this guy behind you from?"

Gwen asked, her voice clear but echoing in this gloomy place. Her unique eyes were staring straight behind Yorick, with doubt in her eyes. She always felt that the undead behind Yorick was familiar.

Yorick heard the voice, nodded slightly, and looked at Gwen calmly:

"Well, I found it in a stone chamber not long ago. I kept it because it seemed special. By the way, what do you want to talk to me about? You haven't been here for a long time."

He was usually taciturn, but when talking to the simple-minded Gwen, he spoke more unconsciously.

Strangely, as soon as Yorick finished speaking, a faint chill came over him. A figure slowly emerged behind him, floating in the air, with a strange gray color all over, as if all colors had been faded by time and death.

From her slender figure alone, it can be seen that she was a woman. Her face is blurred, with only a pair of empty eyes staring straight into the distance. She exudes a sad and lonely aura, making the air around her seem a little colder.

"Oh."

"Oh."

Gwen responded softly, and her eyes quickly glanced at the undead spirit looming behind Yorick. Although she was full of doubts, she still suppressed them. She quickly turned around, pointed her white finger at Zhou Xian, and said with clear and serious eyes: "This is a friend of mine, he has something to ask you."

After she finished speaking, she turned slightly to allow Zhou Xian to look Yorick in the face more clearly. At the same time, the strange atmosphere in the air caused by the appearance of the undead seemed to fade a little with this simple introduction.

"Oh? I wonder what you want to talk to me about?" Yorick leaned forward slightly, staring at Zhou Xian with curiosity and vigilance in his eyes.

It was rare for a strange human to appear in the Shadow Island, let alone a child. This really puzzled him. His pale face did not show much expression, but the shovel in his hand moved unconsciously, and his cloak swayed slightly in the cold wind, and the atmosphere around him became tense.

"Hello, my name is Zhou Xian, and I want to make a deal with you."

Zhou Xian's young face showed a maturity that was not in line with his age. He stretched out his hand and spread his palm. In this mass grave filled with a gloomy atmosphere, the small hand seemed particularly abrupt. The redness of the palm formed a sharp contrast with the grayness around it, as if it brought a hint of life to break the dead silence.

(End of this chapter)