I have a ghost diary

Chu Jiang and his companion spent an entire day searching from the main peak to the secondary peak, but they couldn't find any particularly obvious springs. It can only be said that the source of the Luo River is the countless mountain springs here; the saying "thousands of streams and brooks converge to form a river" is not just a figure of speech.

When they returned to the shore of the River God Lake, it was already one o'clock in the morning. The square in front of the temple was deserted, and even the temple gate was locked.

But this was just right. Chu Jiang was about to go into the temple first to take a look when suddenly, Jing Ruoxue stopped him.

"Something's not right. Look over there on the lake."

Chu Jiang looked back and at first he didn't notice anything wrong, but soon he realized that the lake's water level was rising little by little.

Moreover, the water did not spring up from underground out of thin air, but rather flowed back from the lower reaches of the Luo River.

The water level rose faster and faster, and soon it spread over the embankment and surged towards the area in front of the temple!

Chu Jiang and Jing Ruoxue both took to the air. Chu Jiang muttered to himself, "Is this coming for us? Or has that ghost finally lost its temper and is about to reveal its hideous face?"

The lake water surged up from the ground, almost as if it wanted to grab Chu Jiang and the others.

However, due to insufficient height, the lake water splashed back and forth several times before finally crashing onto the stone slab ground with a loud thud.

Seeing the lake and river water mixing together and gushing out more and more, Chu Jiang decided he couldn't delay any longer. Otherwise, a flood might occur, and even Nangao Village would be submerged.

Just as Chu Jiang was about to test the new power he had gained after nearly becoming half-Chu Zombie on the lake water, suddenly, the river water was sucked back, leaving only a few crooked words on the ground:

I am below

Then even those words flowed back, the ground became clean, and even the water level of the River God Lake began to slowly drop.

"What do you mean?" Jing Ruoxue asked gravely. "This shouldn't be a ghost talking to us, right? Could it be that Wang Lei is still alive?"

"It's not necessarily a person or a ghost..." As far as Chu Jiang knew, at least the God of the Holy Word Sect could directly issue decrees to His believers.

Moreover, Ghost Diary is, in a sense, a way of communicating with him through the diary, even if it's indirect.

"Shall we go down?"

Chu Jiang nodded, "That's what we were planning to do anyway, let's stick to the agreed-upon plan."

"Wait for me up here. If I don't come up within half an hour, or don't give you any response, you should immediately leave this place and notify the research institute headquarters to send someone over to handle the situation."

Jing Ruoxue was somewhat unwilling, "If you protect me like this, how am I supposed to grow? Why don't you let me go down and take a look? You can wait for me on the shore."

"If I can't find any clues, then you can go down."

Chu Jiang shook his head. "Since you want to be my employee, the first thing you have to do is be obedient. I'm not saying you can't do anything, it's just not suitable."

"I'll handle the most dangerous part. If you die, the Jing family will probably come after me. At that point, forget about cooperation; we'll be lucky if we don't become enemies."

Jing Ruoxue wanted to say it wasn't that exaggerated, but she understood Chu Jiang's good intentions, so she reluctantly agreed in the end.

After giving his final instructions, Chu Jiang activated the Ghost Domain of the Theater and slowly sank into the River God Lake.

Jing Ruoxue watched this scene unfold. She took a deep breath, then calmly stood guard on the shore, sword in hand...

The water in the River God Lake was fairly clear, but Chu Jiang dared not touch it at all. Although he appeared to be completely submerged, he was actually still under the protection of the Ghost Realm.

The deeper Chu Jiang dived, the more incredible it seemed. It was so deep, completely different from the depth he had sensed on land. He had sunk thirty or forty meters and still couldn't see the bottom...

Chapter 295 The Strange Villagers

Chu Jiang sank to a depth of approximately 100 meters before finally seeing the bottom of the lake, or rather, the bottom of the river.

The riverbed here is littered with broken tiles, scattered bricks and stones, fractured stone statues, shattered shrines, and piles of bones...

These are human bones, not animal bones, and their numbers are alarming.

If Chu Jiang hadn't been certain that there was still a temple up there, he would have thought that the River God Temple had been completely demolished and thrown into the riverbed; that even the villagers of Nangao Village had been killed and their bodies dumped into the river.

Wait! Why is it impossible?

Chu Jiang suddenly thought of a terrible possibility: when he lit the soul-summoning incense in the River God Temple, the incense burned out rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye.

You should know that on that dark road leading to the eerie castle, Chu Jiang lit an incense stick, attracting at least a hundred vengeful ghosts to gather and feed on it.

Even under these circumstances, the incense stick could barely last for two or three minutes, at least giving Chu Jiang time to get on the bus and leave.

Even if the regular version of the Soul-Guiding Incense isn't as good as the high-end version, it should still last for at least a minute, right?

Unless, at that time, the ghosts in the River God Temple were more numerous than the "ghosts behind the scenes" that Chu Jiang had encountered before...

After the incense burned out, Chu Jiang had some doubts, but he only suspected that there were ghosts hiding around him, and even suspected that the river god might be in a weakened state. He then took a big gulp.

But what if all the worshippers thronging the river god temple at that time were dead? Or rather, all of them were ghosts...?

So Chu Jiang is essentially like someone who has unknowingly put all those ghosts into his own ghost realm.

Thinking of this, Chu Jiang immediately took out his phone, wanting to contact Jing Ruoxue first.

But as soon as Chu Jiang took out his phone, his expression froze. This River God Lake was over a hundred meters deep, and wireless signals attenuate extremely quickly underwater, making it impossible to make a call here.

When Chu Jiang was on the shore, he used his extrasensory perception to explore and concluded that this River God Lake was at most only seven or eight meters deep.

So once you go down there, you can use the ghost realm to create a waterless passage and communicate by phone.

However, if the actual length exceeds one hundred meters, even if Chu Jiang stretches the Ghost Domain of the Theater vertically, it will only be about fifty or sixty meters, which is far from meeting the standard.

This made him even more agitated. Could the Ghost Diary loosen the 50% power limit?

According to the old man, the diary controls the ghosts it commands, treating them as ghost servants, and there is no truth to the claim that it can only use half of its power.

Including the Ghost Bride, it even made the female police officer Michiko's "Oma Toki" perform beyond her normal level, so the limitations of Ghost Diary were probably intentional.

"It's better to rely on yourself than to ask others for help," Chu Jiang muttered to himself. He flew back up first to check the situation outside before continuing to investigate downwards.

Then a strange thing happened. Chu Jiang controlled the Ghost Domain to fly upwards for a while, but when he looked down, he found that he was still wandering in the same place.

The most obvious feature is that the distance between the Chu River and the riverbed has remained basically unchanged, and the skeletons in his eyes have always been the same size.

Chu Jiang seemed to be deep in thought; there was indeed something wrong with the water in the Luo River.

Although it's not a ghost realm, entering here is not much different from entering a ghost realm, which is why he insisted on keeping people outside.

Fine, since they won't let us leave, let's go down and see what happens first.

Former assistant Luo Yifeng once confessed that several ghost masters from the European Mystic Society had seen Wang Lei's stone statue in a mysterious area deep in the Luo River.

Since even those minor characters could leave unscathed, Chu Jiang really didn't believe he would be defeated here.

Chu Jiang controlled the Ghost Domain to extend to the bottom of the river, but before he could even land, he felt a strange force suck him and the Ghost Domain down together!

In an instant, Chu Jiang disappeared into the river...

On the shore, in front of the River God Temple, after Chu Jiang disappeared, Jing Ruoxue also lost all sense of him.

However, Jing Ruoxue was not flustered, because the two of them had made a plan during the day, and the current situation was foreseeable.

It is worth mentioning that, in Jing Ruoxue's perception, Chu Jiang disappeared at a depth of about seven or eight meters underwater, which was exactly as predicted.

Suddenly, dim yellow lights appeared in the pitch-black night.

Jing Ruoxue was startled. She looked up and saw that villagers carrying dim lanterns were coming from all directions of Nangao Village.

They seemed to have been awakened by the loud crashing of the river against the ground, but no one rubbed their eyes or anything; most of the villagers looked numb...

Moreover, the villagers' appearance was so sudden that Jing Ruoxue didn't even notice them until the lights came into view.

She looked again toward the Nangao B&B, which caters to tourists, but didn't see any lights on. It seemed that the guests staying there hadn't heard anything unusual.

In the bustling crowd, the old man who had been guarding the temple during the day also appeared. He seemed to recognize Jing Ruoxue, but his expression was blank. He asked Jing Ruoxue, "What are you doing? Where is the other person?"

The old man's voice had subtly changed compared to during the day; it lacked a bit of "humanity" and sounded somewhat eerie.

At this time, Jing Ruoxue was unaware that the peaceful scene in Nangao Village during the day might be a facade, but she wasn't stupid and clearly sensed that something was wrong.

However, in order to reassure the other party, she replied, "It's nothing, I just couldn't sleep, so I came out for a walk. My friend is still sleeping."

“Let us take you back. It’s dangerous here. Don’t fall into the lake.” The old man spoke more fluently and took the lead in walking over. The other villagers followed and gathered around.

......

At the bottom of the lake, or more accurately, at the bottom of the river, Chu Jiang found himself in a mysterious place.

It's like a huge stone cave, filled with water, with rough and primitive paintings on the walls, as if carved from stone.

Chu Jiang couldn't quite understand the specific meaning of the paintings. They were quite abstract, and seemed to depict scenes of ancient sacrifices. In any case, there were little figures holding torches and little figures kneeling around a statue of a god.

After taking a picture and saving it in the ghost realm, Chu Jiang continued to explore forward.

Not long after, after passing through a half-open stone gate, Chu Jiang was surprised to find Wang Lei behind the gate!

No, to be precise, it's Wang Lei's stone statue.

It was a tall statue standing on the altar, at least ten meters high. It wore an ancient official robe with a wave pattern, but its face was exactly like Wang Lei's, with a buzz cut, a hair crown, and an expression that said "keep away."

Chapter 296 River God, Wang Lei

When Chu Jiang saw Wang Lei's statue, Wang Lei also saw Chu Jiang.

At this moment, Chu Jiang noticed that the other party's stone face had changed, revealing a very complex expression, like pain, sorrow, and relief.

Although the statue appeared quite human, Chu Jiang did not let his guard down. He even silently completed half of his body's transformation into Chu Zombie, preparing for the statue to suddenly start killing people.

Behind this grotto is another grotto, but here there are no more murals on the walls, only a solitary statue on the altar at the end.

"Are you... from the research institute?" the statue spoke, its voice heavy and hoarse.

"Yes, I am the current head of Luohe City. I am here to investigate the death of the previous head, Wang Lei, and the local river god worship."

Since the other party seemed to be able to communicate, Chu Jiang didn't mind trying to communicate first.

"How's it going outside right now? It must be terrible..."

"Although I am trapped in this stone statue, my influence can only reach the entire Nangao Village at most. But wherever the Luohe River flows, no matter how far away, I have a vague feeling."

"The paranormal resurgence has become more severe, especially for a period of time when I completely lost my connection to Luohe City, as if the entire city had been wiped off the map."

"When I returned to Luohe City, I noticed it was much less populated; quite a few people must have died..."

Chu Jiang was somewhat surprised. After confirming that he was a member of Research Institute No. 21, the first thing the stone statue asked was how the outside world was doing. How far had the supernatural resurgence progressed? What had happened to Luohe City, and how many people had died?

To be honest, this fits Chu Jiang's "imagination" of Wang Lei.