The job change is a bizarre and calamity; the nation begs me to tone it down.

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The scene inside the city was completely different from that outside. If the outside was a desolate yellow mist swamp, then the inside was a complete city built according to some ancient regulations.

The muddy puddles beneath our feet were no longer a path paved with dark blue flagstones.

Dark red moss grows in the gaps between the stone slabs, and it makes a slight hissing sound when you step on it.

The road is lined with densely packed wooden buildings.

It's all cherry blossom themed.

The low-rise townhouses stand side by side, their wooden doors and windows tightly shut, with shadowy figures occasionally visible behind the windows.

But the outlines of those figures were clearly wrong—some were too tall, some were too thin, and some had necks that looked like snakes.

There were no streetlights.

The lighting relied entirely on paper lanterns hanging under the eaves on both sides.

The lanterns are white and decorated with various family crests.

The light emanating from the lanterns was a pale blue, illuminating the entire street like a morgue corridor.

Dark red liquid was flowing in the roadside drainage ditch.

Gu Xu knew without even smelling it that it wasn't red wine.

Further away, several tall buildings can be seen.

There are large mansions that look like the lord's mansion, open spaces that resemble markets, and several shrine torii gates with different designs.

The layout of the entire city is exactly the same as that of a castle town in ancient Japan.

However, all the colors were changed to underworld tones, and all the residents were replaced with blue-faced, fanged monsters.

A cold wind blew from the end of the street, carrying a smell of decay mixed with incense.

White lanterns swayed in the wind, casting flickering light and shadow on the stone path.

Gu Xu peeked out through the gap in the sedan curtain and commented, "It looks quite decent. It's just that the property management is a bit lacking; they didn't even bother to clean up the blood flowing into the drain."

The Styx Ghost Carriage advanced along the main street into the depths of the city.

All the minor monsters encountered on the road were recruited by the Hundred Ghosts Wedding Procession, which had grown to an outrageous size.

Several thousand monsters were lined up in two rows, with werewolves and samurai in front and masked demons and fallen monks in the middle.

Following behind were some miscellaneous monsters that had been dragged out of buildings along the street.

The procession moved in a grand procession through the entire castle town, passing through markets and shrines, and bypassing the lord's mansion.

Finally, at the deepest part of the city, at the end of the main street.

A building appeared in front of Gu Xu.

He lifted the sedan curtain and looked up.

It is a temple.

But it's completely different from the garish and garish palace on the first floor above.

The palace above has bright red, purple, and gold glazed tiles, resembling a hybrid of a Disney castle and a wedding tent.

This one is ancient, solemn, and dignified.

The main body is made of dark blue-green stone, without any superfluous decorations.

The building's lines are extremely simple, and every pillar and every wall exudes a heavy sense of history.

The temple extends upwards in a stepped fashion.

The first level is a wide stone platform with a row of stone lanterns on each side, each lantern burning with a ghostly blue flame.

The second floor is a corridor-style building complex.

The third floor is the main hall.

The roof of the highest hall almost touches the dome of the sky.

The dark blue eaves, illuminated by the dim light, resembled a giant bird spreading its wings.

The entire temple doesn't feel like a building; it looks more like a tombstone.

A tombstone built for a deity.

Gu Xu stared at the temple for a few seconds, then stood up from the ghost sedan chair.

"The second level of the Izumo Secret Realm? The Temple of the Underworld? Interesting?"

He cracked his neck, his knuckles making a crisp snapping sound: "Wife, brothers, let's go see what kind of boss the second level is."

The Styx palanquin passed through the temple gates.

Gu Xu's first impression was not visual, but rather temperature.

Although the city outside was gloomy, it still had some "life"—even if that life came from the blood flowing in the drains and the ghosts wandering around the streets.

But as soon as you enter the temple, the temperature drops significantly.

The cold wasn't the kind you feel when you go out in winter without wearing thermal underwear; it was a cold that seeped into your bones.

It felt like being immersed in an ice cellar, the kind that's been there for hundreds of years.

Secondly, visual appeal is important.

The interior space of the temple is ridiculously large.

From the outside, the temple, though tall, is only so-so in width; at most, it can be considered a large shrine.

But once inside, they discovered that the space inside was at least five times larger than it appeared from the outside.

This is not unusual in secret realms.

Spatial folding is a standard feature in high-level dungeons.

But this was the first time Gu Xu had ever seen something folded to this extent.

The entrance is a long corridor with pen tips.

The corridor is about fifteen meters wide, enough for the Styx ghost sedan chair and the wedding procession on both sides to pass side by side.

The ground was paved with dark gray stone bricks, polished very smooth, reflecting the eerie blue light of the will-o'-the-wisps on both sides.

With each step, a crisp echo could be heard bouncing back and forth in the empty hall.

The walls on both sides of the corridor are covered with painted scrolls.

One after another, densely packed, stretching from the entrance into the darkness at the far end of the line of sight.

These scrolls are all very large, each one nearly two meters high and between three to four meters wide.

The colors in the picture have faded significantly.

In many places, only blurry lines and faintly discernible color blocks remain.

But you can still make out the general content.

It is a scene of sacrificial ceremony.

Gu Xu leaned back in the sedan chair and casually glanced at the first scroll on the left.

The image shows a group of people dressed in ancient sacrificial robes kneeling on the ground, with offerings and incense burners placed in front of them.

Looking up again—the object of the sacrifice—it was depicted as a blurry mass of light.

Nothing special.

Ancient sacrificial rites existed in every civilization.

But the second scroll is quite different.

Gu Xu had already looked away, but when his peripheral vision caught the second image, he looked at it again.

The composition in the picture is almost the same as the first one—there are people kneeling, offerings, incense burners, and some kind of being worshipped.

But those kneeling are not human.

At least they don't look like humans.

They are much larger than humans, and the clothes they wear are not in the style of any human civilization.

Some were wrapped in golden bands of light, some had some kind of symbol floating above their heads, and some were simply non-humanoid beings—a ball of flame, a tree, or a giant eye.

The spot in front of them, the place where they were being sacrificed—the top of the picture—was completely blank.

It's not that it's faded and can't be seen clearly.

That space was deliberately left blank.

Pure blankness.

It stands out conspicuously in the overall picture.

Gu Xu narrowed his eyes.

He then scanned a few more of the scrolls at the back.

The third painting, the westernmost painting, the fifth painting, and the first to the tenth paintings.

The content is largely the same, but a common feature is becoming increasingly apparent—those who kneel in sacrifice are carrying more and more "light".

Golden bands of light, symbols above his head, and a halo around his body.

These are not ordinary people.

These are gods.

Or at least, it is a being that possesses divinity.

What are the gods worshipping?