I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

The handover and transition of Huai'an County was completed swiftly and discreetly.

After the death of the Weeping Goddess, the night in the county town finally returned to normal tranquility. The people slowly reached out their tentacles in the lingering fear. Some dared to light oil lamps in the middle of the night, and some dared to push open wooden doors to pour water in the early morning, but no one dared to talk or laugh loudly on the street.

Earth's support personnel have seamlessly integrated into the city.

Lin Xiaolu was left in Huai'an County. This city, which had just awakened from despair, needed her pharmacy to gradually win over the hearts of the people and use her countless medical skills to solidify Earth's local reputation in this place.

Lu Yan left behind a formation assistant, who, along with several formation masters, lay in wait day and night underground in the Demon Suppression Office, completely transforming the dilapidated name-sealing formation into a low-level "fake registration node," allowing subsequent Earth personnel entering the world to seamlessly integrate into the basic household registration rules of the Great Yu Dynasty.

After stabilizing the foundation of Huai'an County, Han Zhao led a small, elite team of ten, including Xu Chenzhou, Meng Changlu, Xie Wujiu, Fang Bai, Luo Qi, and Tang Qinghe, a medical practitioner. They changed into their travel-worn outfits and, following Shen Yanqiu, the remnant commander of the Qingzhou Prefecture Demon Suppression Division, quietly embarked on the official road to Qingzhou Prefecture.

The true nature of the first realm began to be cruelly revealed to everyone as they left Huai'an County.

The Collapsed State Capital

Along the 300-mile-long official road, there were no caravans, only endless streams of refugees.

In the desolate wilderness beside the road, the ruins of villages and towns, crushed by some enormous creature, were everywhere, and a nauseating demonic aura lingered on the charred walls and rubble. The refugees, pale and listless, moved mechanically toward Qingzhou Prefecture like a group of soulless zombies.

Shen Yanqiu rode his warhorse in silence the entire way.

Along the way, faint fiery talismans would occasionally fly from afar and land in his hand. These were all blood-written requests for help from various counties under the jurisdiction of Qingzhou. Each time Shen Yanqiu finished reading, he would simply crush the talisman into ashes with a blank expression and let it scatter in the wind.

It wasn't that he was cold-blooded, but rather that the Qingzhou Demon Suppression Division was now completely unable to spare a single soldier to fill those bottomless pits.

Two days later, the towering black city walls of Qingzhou Prefecture finally appeared on the horizon.

However, this majestic city, which should have been the guardian of the state's destiny, presented a scene outside that resembled purgatory. For miles, countless soup kitchens and straw mats stretched out, wounded soldiers with severed limbs wailed in the mud, and white banners fluttered wildly in the eerie wind. This massive state apparatus was on the verge of complete collapse.

Upon entering the city, Shen Yanqiu took Han Zhao and the others directly back to the headquarters of the Demon Suppression Division.

Contrary to Han Zhao and his companions' expectations of corruption and extravagance, the government office exuded a strong sense of bloodshed and tragedy.

On the spacious training ground, only a few dozen veterans with missing arms and legs were mechanically sharpening their nicked demon-slaying swords; outside the pharmacy, a long line of wounded soldiers stretched out, the air thick with the smell of inferior wound medicine and rotting flesh; inside the archives, urgent reports about the outbreak of demons in various places piled up like mountains, without even a single document to organize them.

Without wasting any words, Shen Yanqiu directly took out several cold, hard bronze plaques from the armory of the General Headquarters and threw them on the table in front of Han Zhao.

"Guest Elder of Demon Suppression in Outer Prefectures." Shen Yanqiu's voice was hoarse and tired. "With this plaque, the government and the city defense army will not interfere with your actions within Qingzhou Prefecture."

This wasn't based on complete trust, but rather a cold-blooded deal. The Earth team needed legitimate status to operate in the capital city, while Shen Yanqiu needed these mysterious people who could slay the Weeping Goddess to help him deal with the terrifying ailment that the Demon Suppression Division was no longer able to control.

"There's no time to lose." Han Zhao hung the bronze plaque on his waist, his gaze calm yet sharp. "Go to the General Flag Camp in the north of the city."

The eerie empty camp

The North City General Banner Camp was once one of the most elite garrisons of the Qingzhou Demon Suppression Division, with a full complement of three hundred men, all of whom were fierce soldiers who had experienced mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

But at this moment, the camp was so silent that not even a single insect chirped.

Han Zhao and the others pushed open the heavy wooden door of the camp.

The sight before them made everyone frown.

The camp was impeccably clean. On the weapon racks in the drill ground, three hundred standard-issue longswords hung neatly, without a trace of having been drawn in battle. In the large pot in the kitchen, the cooked millet porridge had grown a thick layer of green mold, clearly indicating it had been sitting there for more than three days.

There was no bloodstains, no destruction from fighting, and no ruins ravaged by demonic energy.

Those three hundred elite demon-suppressing soldiers didn't seem to have died in battle, nor did they seem to have deserted. Rather, it was as if, in the dead of night three days ago, they had tacitly put down everything they were doing, lined up in neat rows, and quietly walked out of the camp.

"Luo Qi, record this," Han Zhao ordered in a deep voice.

"Fang Bai, seal off the airflow at the camp gate. Xu Chenzhou, be on alert."

The team quickly dispersed, demonstrating extremely professional reconnaissance skills. Because the boundary repulsion had decreased by one level, they were now able to maintain their aura at the peak of the Qi Refining stage with remarkable stability, and the detection range of their divine sense had also greatly expanded.

A moment later, Meng Changlu strode out of a barracks, his face looking rather grim.

"Captain, Commander Shen, come and see."

The group entered the barracks. It was a large communal room for ten people. The bedding was neatly folded, but strangely, a pair of impeccably clean official boots were placed at the edge of each bed.

However, all of these boots were placed in the wrong direction.

Normally, when boots are taken off, the toes should point outwards from the bed. But on these three hundred beds, the toes of all the boots are pointing directly at the head of the bed and towards the pillow.

"In local folk customs, shoes pointing towards the bed means 'the ghost points the way, and the soul goes in,'" Meng Changlu said in a low voice. "In funerals, this is a rule that only applies before the dead are placed in the coffin. It means... they were called away 'backwards' by something."

Xie Wujiu stepped forward, the tattered paper figure holding a small underworld seal in its left hand, which swayed gently in the void.

The small seal did not emit the dazzling red light that one would seep when encountering a vengeful ghost; instead, it emitted a layer of extremely dull, lifeless, earthy yellow light.

"This isn't just any ordinary ghost." Xie Wujiu's pale face showed extreme solemnity. "There's no malevolent aura of vengeful spirits, nor the resentful aura of demons devouring people. The atmosphere here... feels like grave soil."

Han Zhao squatted down, his gaze falling on the sand outside the barracks threshold.

Although three days of wind have passed, some extremely faint footprints still remain on the sand.

Han Zhao stretched out his finger and gestured in the air to indicate the pressure points of the footprints. His eyes instantly turned extremely cold: "The heels are very deep, and the toes are very shallow. Moreover, although the footprints are facing outwards from the camp gate, the direction of the force is backwards."

"They walked out of the camp gate backwards, one step at a time, with their backs to the gate."

Without wasting too much time in the empty camp, Shen Yanqiu led Han Zhao and the others directly to the chaotic graveyard north of the city, five miles away from the main camp.

This place was originally used by Qingzhou Prefecture to bury unidentified corpses and fallen soldiers, and it was always filled with howling winds. But today, when Han Zhao and the others stood at the edge of the mass grave, the scene before them sent a chill down the spines of these battle-hardened Earth vanguard team members.

In the hazy, miasma.

On this vast, chaotic graveyard, countless human legs stood upright in dense rows.

Those people were bizarrely "planted upside down" into the grave. Their upper bodies were completely buried underground, with only their legs and feet below the knees exposed to the air, like strange radishes stuck upside down in the ground, covering the entire hillside.

What's even more chilling is that a large portion of these people are still alive.

In the silent, desolate graveyard, one could occasionally see a few exposed toes twitching in agony. From deep underground, faint gasps of breath could be heard.

"Clang!"

Xu Chenzhou's eyes sharpened, and the old iron sword at his waist instantly drew half an inch from its sheath. His true essence at the peak of the Qi Refining stage, wrapped in sword energy, was about to step forward and dig out a living person from the edge.

"Don't move!"

Shen Yanqiu abruptly pressed down on Xu Chenzhou's sword hilt, the veins on the back of his hand bulging from the force. A hint of extreme fear and pain flashed in the eyes of this Ironblood leader.

"Don't pull it out." Shen Yanqiu's voice trembled slightly. "Two days ago, I brought some men here. At that time, one of my brothers saw his fellow villager still struggling in the soil and rushed over to try to pull him out."

Shen Yanqiu pointed intently at the inverted legs: "Just as he grabbed those feet and pulled them up... the shadow of that brother on the ground suddenly turned over on its own."

"The shadow seemed to have grown hands, grabbing the brother's ankle and dragging him backwards to the ground with a 'whoosh'." Shen Yanqiu took a deep breath, as if recalling an irresistible nightmare, "He didn't even have time to scream before he became one of them."

Han Zhao's eyes were as calm as a frozen lake, without a ripple. He made a gesture with extreme composure, instructing all team members to take three steps back and not to step into the soft soil of the mass grave.

"This isn't some kind of evil spirit killing people; it's an extremely sophisticated trap based on rules." Han Zhao made a tactical judgment instantly. Before understanding the underlying logic of the rules, any reckless rescue based on humanitarian principles is tantamount to lining up to die.

Xie Wujiu placed the Yin Si seal between his eyebrows, his dark eyes fixed on the graveyard.

After a moment, he lowered his hand, his voice hoarse: "No wonder there's no ghostly aura. Those people underground, in terms of Yin law, aren't dead yet. But their birth dates and destinies have been forcibly written into the 'grave register' of this chaotic graveyard by some terrifying force."

"In the eyes of the rules, they are already part of this cemetery. Whoever touches them is breaking the rules of the cemetery and will be assimilated by the rules."

Meng Changlu frantically searched through the old case files of Qingzhou that Shen Yanqiu had provided on the way, when suddenly, a name that had been buried for thirty years jumped out of his mind.

"Commander, thirty years ago, didn't Qingzhou Prefecture wipe out an extremely evil folk funeral master organization?" Meng Changlu looked at Shen Yanqiu. "The files mention that the organization was called the 'Return to Earth Society,' which specialized in stealing the life force of the living to nourish graves."

Shen Yanqiu's expression changed drastically. Just as she was about to speak, Han Zhao, who was walking at the front, suddenly raised his hand.

"Look ahead." Han Zhao's voice was low, yet it carried a chilling undertone.

Following Han Zhao's gaze, the group looked through the thick miasma towards the deepest part of the mass grave.

There, a very thick black wooden stake stood tall.

On the wooden stake, a flag of the General Flag Battalion embroidered with the totem of the Demon Suppression Division of the Great Yu Dynasty was being hung upside down in mid-air in an extremely humiliating manner, its blood-stained corners drooping helplessly.

Beneath that black wooden stake, three hundred pairs of feet, dressed in the standard official boots of the Demon Suppression Division, were neatly and squarely arranged.

Those were the three hundred elite soldiers of the General Banner Battalion who had gone missing.

Unlike the chaotic crowds on the outskirts, they were arranged in an extremely orderly fashion, "upside down" on the ground, like soldiers lined up in a drill ground, forming a bizarre, desolate, and suffocating "forest of feet."

Just as everyone held their breath to observe.

Among those three hundred pairs of military boots, the pair of feet at the very front, adorned with the jade ornament representing the flag officer, suddenly twitched very slightly.

Immediately afterwards, deep within this desolate, chaotic graveyard, a voice, extremely weak yet strangely familiar, emerged with great difficulty from the cracks in the soil.

Shen Yanqiu's body trembled violently; it was the voice of his most capable chief officer.

"Don't...pull it out..."

The sound was buried underground, like a sigh seeping from hell.

"It's...waiting...waiting for someone to rescue it..."

"Save one... bury two..."

The voice drifted intermittently through the cold miasma, revealing a chilling truth.

This rule of burying people upside down is not for simple killing at all. It is to bury living people upside down, let them slowly suffocate in the mud, and use their pain and despair to send out a distress signal, thus hunting down those who try to lend a helping hand.

Han Zhao stood quietly, looking at the chaotic graveyard filled with living people, which resembled farmland.

A cold wind blew by, stirring up a few pieces of yellow paper on the ground.

Han Zhao slowly pressed his hand on the hilt of the old iron sword at his waist, his eyes turning extremely cold at that moment.

"This thing isn't killing people at all."

Han Zhao's voice rang out at the edge of the desolate graveyard, carrying a chilling quality that seemed to pierce through the very essence of the rules.

"It's using living people to build graves."