The Path to Immortality Begins with the Life-Extending Lamp

Chapter 92 Netherworld - Qishan Region

"Not dead yet?"

Li Qing smoothed out the strands of resentful hair, and with a surge of primordial energy, she caused them to fall off her right arm, then wrapped them around the Long-Hate Ghost Scissors.

He had roughly grasped the principles and laws governing this ghost scissors, but the more profound aspects were beyond his current comprehension.

Li Qing took out a golden sandalwood box from his mustard seed bag, carefully sealed the ghost scissors inside, and placed them in the yellow gourd hanging at his waist.

Looking at the head whose eyes were still moving blankly, Li Qing shook her head gently. She did not completely suppress it. After pondering for a moment, she picked up the Ten Thousand Souls Banner and went into the pavilion, ignoring it again.

The third floor of this pavilion is occupied by two pavilions, one large and one small, which take up a large portion of the area. Walking into the hall from the rain corridor, one is greeted by a painting of steep cliffs and a vast ocean. The true meaning of the painting lingers, as if a gentle stream is flowing right in front of you.

"Judging from this true meaning, the former lord possessed profound knowledge and hidden Dharma intentions, and should not be an ordinary day-roaming ghost or god."

With a sigh of admiration, Li Qing turned her gaze to other places. Behind the hall, on the right, was a rather spacious pavilion, and outside the pavilion was a distant viewing platform.

Li Qing's gaze passed through the pavilion and through the railing, directly reaching another small courtyard diagonally opposite the Underworld.

In that small courtyard, a two-zhang-tall white skeleton was wandering aimlessly:

At the street corner outside the courtyard, an unseen, terrifying presence moved swiftly to the right, leaving only dark brown bloody handprints and footprints on the ground.

"Tsk tsk, it really lives up to its name, Youtian! There are wandering ghosts everywhere."

There are natural rules in the underworld, and Li Qing also ignored those wandering evil spirits.

Turning to the left, one immediately sees a quiet room on the left side of the hall, resembling a study. Li Qing turned to the side and saw that it was also filled with paintings.

The writing implements on one side of the desk in the quiet room were arranged very neatly, and there were also stacks of jade bamboo slips at the top, which immediately made Li Qing feel very good about them.

Before his accident, his study in the Qingxuan Villa of Huadu Prefecture in Guihua Mansion was just like that!
Stepping slightly into the quiet room, one immediately notices a letter on the desk at the head of the room, its page held down by a paperweight.

The great battle is over. Of the seventy-two spirits of Qishan, whether they are the Day Wanderer, the Lord of the Prefecture, or the high and mighty Heavenly Demons, none of their legends have resurfaced!

[Of the many places in the underworld that collapsed, I saw the remains of many clansmen buried beneath those ruins. The five or six small houses in the southeast of Qishan were not severely damaged, and many clansmen survived.]

The restrictions on the Underworld have also malfunctioned. The main courtyard has collapsed, but the Hundred Ghosts Pagoda restriction is too effective against ghosts and spirits; we can no longer enter or leave the various courtyards! Wind blades, heavenly fire, and ice spikes are falling from the sky again. Perhaps we should modify the restrictions...

The first three paragraphs of the letter immediately caught Li Qing's attention.

Is this Lord of the Palace actually a ghost or god from the era of the Great War of Youtian eight hundred years ago?

It seemed to record the past self-salvation efforts of the surviving ghosts and gods of the underworld. Upon seeing this, Li Qing immediately waved his sleeve and summoned the soldiers who had just been refined into the Six Ding and Six Jia generals, ordering them to stand by his side.

"Linglong, go and collect that remnant of the wandering ghost's skull. Don't destroy it; perhaps it will still be useful!"

After sending Linglong to keep an eye on the ghost head in case of any unforeseen circumstances, Li Qing sat down at the desk in the quiet room and began to carefully examine the scroll of records.

This is a firsthand record of the changes in Youtian. Even the various Taoist sects in the South and the schools of thought in the North who have been exploring Youtian for many years do not have a second record as clear as this.

Li Qing looked down from these paragraphs again and saw that the fourth paragraph seemed to have been added a long time ago.

The laws and restrictions of the Underworld were personally woven by our clan's three ancestors and the Heavenly Ghosts residing in the world. No one below the Lord of the Underworld can rewrite them. Does this mean we are trapped and die within the Underworld?

[Cui Yanping, the judge of Xin'an Cottage, has successfully escaped. His cottage was partially destroyed and its protective barriers incomplete, which was enough for him to escape. He has promised to seek help from afar for the clansmen in each of our courtyards!]

Judge Cui has returned, bringing with him horrifying news: the entire Netherworld has been shattered, and the eight hundred miles of Qishan Mountain float in the void of Netherworld like a fragment.

The elders of Qishan have all gone to fight. At this moment, only Judge Cui, a ghost judge at the Day Travel Realm, remains in the Qishan Underworld. He is unable to set foot in the Netherworld, and we are trapped here in the eight hundred miles of Qishan...

Li Qing felt a pang of heartache as she read this.

The Netherworld shattered into countless fragments. Is this eight-hundred-mile-long Qishan Mountain merely one of them? Am I currently situated on a fragment of this eight-hundred-mile-long Yin Earth?
This is utterly unbelievable! Can the heavens and earth really be torn into pieces like a blank sheet of paper and float around in all directions?
Such a record is simply unbelievable!

Clan member, Judge Cui, so this is indeed the underworld belonging to the Cui family. It seems that the Cui clan was a powerful clan during the reign of the Six Heavens Gods!
Seventy-two ghosts and gods from Qishan participated in the battle. The Lord of Dongyuan Prefecture also said that there is only one Judge Cui in the Sun Travel Realm. In other words, the Cui family of Qishan once had at least seventy-two Sun Travel Realm ghosts and gods who participated in the Netherworld War.

But if the Lord of the Underworld is a Yin God Realm cultivator, what about the Residing Heavenly Ghost? Could he be a Yang God Earth Immortal? Or is it merely a title of high rank?
The contents of this file are quite terrifying; it contains the Yang God, who is known as a residing earth immortal!

Li Qing could hardly believe it; even celestial ghosts at the Earth Immortal level had perished in that great battle?
Shaking her head and looking down, the records below seemed to be from a long time ago, so long that the lord's handwriting had become more and more lively, as if she had gone through a long period of self-cultivation.

The very first sentence startled Li Qing, causing her eyebrows to twitch!
[Cui Pan is dead! His remaining half-skeleton struggled back to Qishan, bringing back this news. The Qishan region is no longer safe; the remains of fallen lords and even celestial ghosts have given rise to evil spirits. They are more terrifying than wild ghosts and fierce gods; they devour ghosts and gods!!] [Two hundred years have passed, and I'm almost old enough to travel through the day, but it's been a long time since a proper ancestral temple sacrifice has been held in the mortal world. Is there something wrong with my family? Or is it because the Netherworld has shattered, and we can no longer offer incense and sacrifices...?]

[Three hundred and eighty years have passed, and the incense of kinship has been completely extinguished in this world. On those ruins, I see the remains of my clansmen bathed in a gloomy aura, gradually becoming ghostly. Evil spirits are reborn on their bones, how tragic!]

Without sacrifices, our souls are no longer stable; some members of our clan are already experiencing the dissipation of their souls and are beginning to lose their memories of their human form!

For four hundred and forty years, there has been no feasting, but I have already transformed into a wandering spirit. I planted the purple bamboo and azure precious tree that were potted in the pavilion in the courtyard, but the wind blades and heavenly fire that fall from the sky from time to time are truly unsightly. Although I cannot change the elder's restrictions, I can establish new restrictions, make magic bells, and lay array foundations to create a brand new barrier for the Eastern Garden...

If spirits and deities do not accept sacrifices, they will indeed begin to lose the spiritual essence they possessed as humans. Losing their spirits is equivalent to completely losing that part of what makes us "human."

"Sure enough, it was during the chaos of the Five Dynasties that the Cui family of the Northern Dynasty suffered misfortune and fled to the south of the Yangtze River. It was also during this period that the underworld completely ceased its sacrificial rites!"

"Are those ghosts and gods who died violently due to the collapse of the underworld beginning to be reborn as evil spirits, and are the ghosts and gods who survived also beginning to become vengeful ghosts at this time?"

The question that had troubled Li Qing for so long finally had an answer; he finally knew where all the ghosts and monsters had come from.

The deceased clansmen transformed into ghosts and wandered around devouring everything in their path. She and the others, being ghosts and spirits, were trapped by the Hundred Ghosts Pagoda and had no incense offerings. Fortunately, the Lord of the Eastern Garden was focused on cultivation, tending to the spiritual plants in the courtyard every day, and using this to break through the Day Traveling Realm.

Li Qing looked down again.

This is the last paragraph. This ink mark seems to have been left for a very long time, and the originally lively handwriting has become increasingly numb.

[I am Cui Ying, the master of Dongting Garden. A new person has finally arrived in the front courtyard! It's been such a long, long, long time since anyone has come here! But I feel like I've forgotten so many things.]

[My underground sovereign's edict is beside my bed, and "Minor Supernatural Powers - Five Ghosts' Finger Form" is the first volume on the right side of my desk.]

I vaguely remember that students from the outer courtyard could enter the East Garden...

In this last paragraph, it is clear that the Lord of the Eastern Garden, Cui Ying, has also begun to dissipate his soul essence. He obviously left behind a document when he still had a wisp of consciousness, hoping that the newcomer "Cui Qu'er" in the front courtyard could see it as soon as possible.

But the Ghost Mother, Cui Qu'er, was even worse off than them. The Cui family's ancestral temple in the Northern Dynasty had long been destroyed, and the Cui family line that fled to the Southern Kingdom did not even have an ancestral hall, and the names of their ancestors could not be found.

After hearing that her father and brother had died in battle and that the entire family had been wiped out, Cui Qu'er set fire to the mansion and hanged herself with a white silk ribbon. She was just a wandering soul. By chance, she received a summons from the Qishan Underworld and took over the mansion after the ghosts and spirits in the front yard disappeared.

The Ghost Mother is not a ghost or deity; she does not have complete human memories. However, she is not a purely vengeful ghost either; she still possesses spiritual consciousness.

Regardless, Ghost Mother Cui Qu'er still failed to enter the East Garden, while Ghost Prince Li Qing successfully entered.

He carefully digested the contents of that letter. From those four paragraphs, Li Qing had gained a general understanding of the current state of You Tian.

The ancient Netherworld collapsed, countless Yin Earth grottoes shattered, and fragments of Yin Earth floated in the broken, desolate void, including the eight-hundred-mile-long Qishan region...

"Minor Supernatural Power - Five Ghosts Finger Form??"

Li Qing reached out and took the first jade slip from the table. It contained a 1,300-word decree written in the official script of the Northern Kingdom, with annotations in tiny characters on the side. It was extremely detailed.

This is a combination of the Taoist Five Ghosts Nail-Head Method and the Wonderful Technique of Pointing and Moving Objects.

This technique should be applied after the Purple Palace, to refine wandering ghosts and spirits, to extract the spirits and souls of the underworld, and to condense them into the Five Directions Ghost Spirit Register. The spirits of the Five Yin are of unknown nature and life, neither ghosts nor souls, and their forms are revealed through touch.

He then cultivated the spirits and souls of the underworld, transforming them into the Five Directions Yin Talisman. He held the Five Directions Yin Talisman horizontally in one hand, adept at maneuvering in the void, skilled at casting spells with nails, and adept at pulling souls apart. He could easily capture them from a distance, or he could transform them into the Five Directions Yin Mountains to suppress them.

"It seems to imitate the Buddha's palm flip and the five fingers pressing down, which is called a minor supernatural power, and that should be enough."

Li Qing glanced at the jade slip briefly, gave a light praise, and immediately put it into his mustard seed pouch.

Looking at the letter, Li Qing strode into the Zhongzheng Pavilion and found a golden, shining document that served as a proclamation from the Underground Lord to the Earth beside the bed.

This is the golden light that Li Qing glimpsed on the wall that day.
This document is somewhat similar to Li Qing's underworld magic contract, but it records more about Cui Ying's origins and whereabouts, from the mansion he owned to the number of paper figures, winter clothes, and spiritual plants.

However, when Li Qing picked up the scroll of land decree with his right hand, the scroll, which had been shining with precious light, suddenly changed.

The name "Cui Ying" in the first column disappeared immediately, and the next moment, the names "Li Qing" and "Cui Qu'er" appeared side by side.

Before Li Qing could react, the Earthly Decree suddenly transformed into a golden light and flashed straight into Li Qing's Niwan Palace, landing on the second page of the Netherworld Book Ghost Contract!
At the same time, Li Qing's divine sense slowly merged with this East Garden. In that instant, his vision seemed to rise to nearly a hundred feet, enough to overlook a large area centered on this East Garden.

Is this the authority of the Lord of the Underworld? His divine sense merged with the Underworld, making him seem like a celestial being…

(End of this chapter)