Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 416 Ghost Kingdom Temple
A chilling wind, carrying with it the scent of death, drifted in.

Ran Qing glanced at the uneasy corpse-driving Taoist priest and said, "...There are far fewer than when I came last time."

The scene he witnessed the last time he came was even more horrifying.

Because of the ghostly mist flooding into the human world and the opening of the gates of hell, a large number of ancient evil spirits poured into Moonlit City.

The ancient kingdom of Gu Luo was much quieter than when Ran Qing last visited.

However, the last time Ran Qing arrived, he was guided by the Ghost Refining Technique in the vat, so the evil spirits in the Ghost Kingdom could not detect his arrival.

This time, Ran Qing and her companions entered the Ghost Kingdom without any concealment, and could be targeted by the evil spirits within at any moment.

Therefore, in terms of their situation alone, Ran Qing and the others are in greater danger at this moment.

After carefully observing from inside the gates of the Ghost Kingdom for a while, Ran Qing said, "Go find that hidden door. Everyone, follow behind me and line up in a row."

Ran Qing reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a red string, tying one end of it to her right little finger.

He then handed the rope to Mo Li, Zong Shu, and the corpse-driving Taoist Liu Fang.

"Tie them all to your right little finger and walk with me."

"If I walk fast, you walk fast too."

"If I stop, you all stop."

Ran Qing explained the precautions, and Mo Li and the other two obediently followed her instructions without any objection.

After everyone had tied their little fingers with the red rope, Ran Qing walked at the front and headed into the shadows of the Ghost Kingdom.

He walked very carefully, holding a small incense burner in his left hand, which contained incense ash from the spirit medium.

Little red rope figures, like lively praying mantises, clung to his body, climbing up and down from time to time.

When Ran Qing got close enough to the evil spirit, the incense ash he was holding suddenly began to boil.

The little red ropes hanging around him were also babbling incomprehensible words.

Ran Qing suddenly stopped, staring at the incense burner she was holding. Based on the frequency and direction of the ashes dancing in the burner, she slowly avoided the evil spirit in front of her.

Their destination was the secret door that Mo Li's elder brother, Wu Suo, had mentioned before his death.

According to Uso's description, the entrance leads to a house with a golden roof and a stone door with a demon face inside.

That door was a secret door left by the lineage of the High Priest of the Ancient Luo Kingdom. Ran Qing, as a spirit medium, could use it to send him to where he wanted to go.

For Ran Qing, this was the best way to traverse the entire Ancient Luo Ghost Kingdom and reach its center without the Ghost Refining Technique in the Vat.

Mo Li also knew the location of the house with the golden roof, which was indeed very close to the gate of the Ghost Kingdom.

At this moment, Ran Qing followed Mo Li's instructions and headed in the predetermined direction.

Soon, they crossed the dilapidated streets and alleys on the outskirts of the Ghost Kingdom, walked up a pebbly uphill road, and passed two small houses built of stone and firewood.

From afar, Ran Qing and the others saw the house with the golden roof.

The house was located on the edge of the ghost kingdom, and there were no other houses around it, making it surprisingly empty.

According to Mo Li's explanation, the house was built of stone and wood, and the roof that looked as conspicuous as gold was not actually gold.

Instead, it was the internal organs dug out from the corpse of an evil lord.

The internal organs shone like gold, yet were as malleable as clay. So the high priest of the ancient Luo Kingdom molded them into the roof of a house, which became one of the temples where the high priest performed daily prayers and divinations.

Because of the high status of this building, no other buildings were built within a 50-meter radius, and the area outside the temple was empty, resembling a small square.

There are several similar temples in the Ghost Kingdom, scattered throughout the city.

But this is the only temple with a golden roof.

Ran Qing saw the temple from afar, which had a unique shape and looked like a thick finger pointing to the sky. Although she had heard Mo Li describe the special features of the building before she came, she was still impressed.

But seeing it with my own eyes now, I am still amazed, amazed by the aesthetics of the ancient Luo Kingdom's high priest.

Upon arriving near the temple with its golden roof, Ran Qing was surprised to find that the incense ash in the censer she was holding had stopped flaring up.

There are clearly no ancient demons around here, not a single one.

The evil spirits throughout the entire ghost kingdom seemed to be consciously avoiding this strange temple.

This was undoubtedly good news for Ran Qing and the others.

They easily and safely crossed the empty streets and alleys, passed through the empty square within a hundred meters of the temple, and arrived directly in front of the straight temple.

The temple, resembling an upright finger, has six sections of wooden beams resembling finger joints.

The very top section is entirely golden in color; that is the roof of the temple, which was also made from the internal organs of the evil lord's corpse.

Seeing the golden, dazzling dome, Ran Qing felt a slight stinging sensation in her eyes. She also suddenly heard the strange, gloating laughter of the evil lords.

The group of evil lords behind the Nuo opera masks seemed to recognize this evil lord who had died tragically, whose body and internal organs had been used as a roof by the people of the Ghost Kingdom.

And they gloated over the other party's tragic death.

The mocking laughter was so jarring that Ran Qing had to shake her head violently and take several deep breaths to banish the agitated and shrill laughter from her mind.

He looked at the temple before him and said, "...Let's go in."

Ran Qing and his group stood out starkly as they crossed the empty space in front of the temple.

Not only did the giant eye in the sky glance over, but several evil spirits wandering nearby also appeared and disappeared in the mist.

But those evil spirits only wandered around the streets and alleys, not daring to step into the fifty-meter-wide open space outside the temple.

Even though the high priest had left, this strange temple seemed to still possess some kind of power that made the evil spirits in the city wary.

As Ran Qing and his companions stepped into the temple, a hot, stuffy, and smoky atmosphere immediately greeted them.

Ran Qing was stunned for a moment upon smelling the aroma of cooking, and felt a sense of warmth, as if she had returned to her hometown.

He stared blankly at the empty temple before him, with many tattered red ropes hanging from the ceiling and white strips of cloth with dark red ghostly script hanging down from the ceiling, covering the entire room.

It looks like curtains made of talismans.

Those dark red ghostly characters were bizarre and ugly, unlike any human writing.

But Ran Qing, a person who walks the path of the dead, felt an immense sense of familiarity with these strips of cloth.

He recognized about 70% of the eerie, blood-red characters on the cloth strip; they were ancient characters used by spirit mediums to write incantations, having been seen in the book "Witchcraft and Spiritual Arts."

Today, these strange red characters hang in the temple of the High Priest of the Ghost Kingdom.

Following the lineage of the Yin people is indeed the inheritance of the high priest of the Ghost Kingdom...

Ran Qing walked quickly to the center of the temple, passing through the strips of cloth covered with ghostly script.

He saw a spirit altar shrine enshrined in the very center of the temple.

The shrine does not enshrine Heaven, Earth, Ruler, Parents, or Teacher, nor does it contain the ancestors of the spirit mediums; instead, it contains a withered and decaying human head.

Ran Qing stared at the withered, dried-up human head, and a strange sense of familiarity in her heart grew even stronger.

Mo Li walked over and whispered, "...In every generation of high priests, they would cut off the master's head, refine it using a secret method, dry it in the sun, and enshrine it in the temple." "It is said that in this way, one can receive instructions from the past priests and sages, and communicate with the ancestors in the unseen world."

The lineage of the High Priests of the Ghost Kingdom maintains communication with successive High Priests and the ancestors of the Ghost Kingdom by using human heads prepared through this secret method.

This is the origin of their exalted status.

Not only could it slay evil spirits, protect the people, and divine good and bad fortune, but it could also communicate with ancestors. This behavior had extraordinary significance in the primitive era.

However, this barbaric and bloody ancient evil art has long been lost in the generations of Yin Walkers... or perhaps the Yin Walkers themselves have given it up.

After all, according to Mo Li's honest confession, the Ancient Luo Ghost Kingdom was indeed a country where evil spirits and living people coexisted.

Her mother was a ghost...

The spirit walkers, who inherited their lineage from such an evil kingdom, and given the notorious reputation of the Ancient Luo Ghost Kingdom, had to make many sacrifices in order to integrate into the world of the living and conceal their identity as high priests of the Ghost Kingdom.

Evil arts that are deeply connected to the Ghost Kingdom and whose origins are immediately obvious to the living must never be exposed.

Mo Li said that many of the legends about the ancient Luo Gui Kingdom in Zangke were not simply hearsay.

The story of evil spirits living among the living and going out to capture and raise living people for food is not entirely fictional.

Therefore, the ancient Luo Kingdom was indeed infamous. After the destruction of the Ghost Kingdom, those who walked the underworld had to hide their identities and erase all traces of their past if they wanted to live peacefully in the human world.

Ran Qing recalled the ancient Luo Kingdom's past as told by Mo Li, staring at the Ghost Kingdom's High Priest Temple in front of her, her expression somewhat dazed.

He must be the first person to return to the Ghost Kingdom Temple in all these years.

Even Aunt Liu probably didn't come to this inconspicuous temple back then.

As for the origins of the Yin-walking lineage, they were lost in the transmission of generations until he accidentally discovered them four thousand years later.

Ran Qing did not touch the withered and rotten head on the altar.

He left the altar and walked to the edge of the temple.

In a corner at the edge of the temple stood a square stone trough, covered in dried bloodstains.

Ran Qing only needed one glance to understand that many lives had been lost in this stone trough.

The trough contained not incense ash, but wood ash mixed with blood.

Four thousand years ago, in an era of ignorance where incense did not exist, the high priests of the Ghost Kingdom used other things to exorcise ghosts and ward off evil.

Moreover, the ash they refined using human blood sacrifices should be even more potent than the incense ash used by spirit mediums in later generations...

But even if it was incredibly powerful, with the passage of time and four thousand years, the ashes in the stone trough had long since cooled and completely lost their former mysterious power.

Ran Qing stared at the stone trough for a while, then stepped over it and walked toward the small door on one side of the trough.

The empty temple was completely bare, with almost nothing in it.

Only in this corner, behind the stone trough, is there a faint, dark door.

Ran Qing went inside, followed closely by Mo Li and the other two.

This place felt as familiar as her hometown to Ran Qing, but to others it felt oppressive, eerie, and suffocating, as if an invisible giant hand was gripping their necks, making it hard for them to breathe.

After passing through the dark little door, there was a dark room inside.

The sweltering heat and smoky atmosphere remained in the air, but a pungent, fishy smell filled the dark room.

Mo Li raised his hand to turn on the flashlight to check.

But Ran Qing quickly stopped her: "Don't turn on the light..."

Ran Qing, a person who walks the path of the dead, stared intently at the dark room before him and said, "You'd better not look at what's inside."

Mo Li stuck out his tongue, somewhat regretfully, and obediently put down the flashlight.

Although she was the Demon King, in the primitive era, the High Priest had the same prestige and power as the Demon King.

On many occasions, the Ghost King even had to compromise with the High Priest.

In addition, Mo Li became the Ghost King at the age of thirteen and had almost no authority, so she had never entered the secret chamber of the High Priest Temple and was full of curiosity about this mysterious secret chamber of the High Priest Temple.

However, Ran Qing's reminder, coupled with the pervasive pungent smell of blood in the air, made everyone vaguely guess what was in the dark room.

One after another, mutilated, ugly, and even grotesque corpses were pieced together or scattered and hung alive in this dark and gloomy room.

Ran Qing's special eyes, as a person who walks the underworld, silently swept over the fragments of corpses in the darkness.

Most of these body fragments only retain a few traces of human presence.

The living people dragged into this dark room were not only killed and decomposed, but even their body fragments were used in various experiments, becoming extremely ugly and bizarre.

There are arms with tiny human faces growing from the palms of hands, broken legs with black hairy tails sprouting from the knees, and human heads with withered tree roots on their faces...

Those extremely horrifying images are so gruesome that even looking at them for a couple of seconds makes one feel nauseous.

No one knows what the high priest of the ancient Luo Kingdom did to the corpse in this dark room four thousand years ago.

Ran Qing even suspected that many of the corpse fragments in this dark room, even after being dismantled into pieces, still retained a vivid consciousness, and were not dismantled after death...

The room was filled with dismembered limbs and fragments; it was horrifying and terrifying.

Its unusually ugly appearance was so terrifying that even a second glance would give you nightmares.

Ran Qing didn't want to add to her companions' mental burden.

Even he felt a chill run down his spine when he saw the grotesque appearance of these severed limbs.

Fortunately, the ghost-faced stone door stood conspicuously in the center of this dark room.

Ran Qing didn't need to search much; he simply glanced around the dark room twice and discovered the stone door.

The stone door stood silently in the center of the dark room, like a flag standing there, not connected to any walls.

The area in front of and behind the stone gate was filled with air, engulfed by darkness.

Ran Qing led Mo Li and the other two to the stone gate, which was carved with extremely fierce and ugly demon faces.

Just looking at the relief of the evil spirit made Ran Qing's hair stand on end instinctively.

It was clearly just an inanimate stone door, but when Ran Qing stared at the demon relief, it felt as if she were being watched by a terrifying evil lord wandering in the darkness.

His instincts, as a living being, were frantically warning him.

Even the three people behind him, Mo Li and his companions, who were in complete darkness and couldn't see anything, whispered uneasily.

"...Ran Qing? Is there something wrong?"

"Why do I feel a chill..."

"It feels like something is watching us..."

The three companions whispered anxiously and cautiously questioned Ran Qing.

(End of this chapter)