Chapter 147: Carousel
Once again, it was a jade card.
Qiao Wan's head felt like it exploded, her temples throbbing and her damaged consciousness skyrocketing, as if it was going to break through her mind.
This feeling was like putting a person into an ill-fitting container. In an instant, Qiao Wan's back was drenched in cold sweat.
Struggling to identify the clothing on the body parts, even though the men inside the box had been dismembered in a messy manner, the remaining fabric revealed that they were wearing the same type of armor as the soldiers on the street.
This jade card seems to be a form of identification, similar to carrying an ID card during a march.
In the land of mystical fog, there were three sects: Xuanwu Sect, Lingxiao Sect, and Qingyun Sect. Qiao Wan had never heard of these sects before. If she could find information about them, she might be able to uncover the origin of these Yin soldiers.
But then, something unexpected happened. The corpse pieces inside the wooden box suddenly started to wriggle.
The blood-soaked head, with its eyes tightly shut, suddenly opened its eyes and made a swift grab with its bloody hand!
Caught off guard and with a splitting headache, Qiao Wan was pulled into the wooden box.
*Click*
The wooden box closed again.
Falling into a box full of body parts, the overwhelming smell of blood and decay filled her nostrils. As she felt a subtle touch beneath her, Qiao Wan realized that something was terribly wrong. Fear raced through her body, causing every hair to stand on end.
Beneath her, were the dismembered bodies of men.
Swearing under her breath, Qiao Wan's heart raced uncontrollably. She frantically tried to climb out of the box and pushed at the lid.
But it didn't budge.
A sinking feeling settled in Qiao Wan's heart.
The box had been sealed tightly once again.
As Qiao Wan found herself in complete darkness, the only thing accompanying her was a box of scattered body parts.
The box didn't appear to be large, but somehow it was able to fit an entire person inside.
Even after experiencing the Millipede Buddha and the Buddhist pagoda, being trapped with a box of scattered body parts was a completely different feeling.
She felt a chilly and sticky sensation beneath her, causing a tingling sensation on her back.
Nobody knew where she was sitting right now, was it on her wrist or her foot?
Regardless of how scared she was, she had to face it head-on. Qiao Wan slowly reached into the box, swallowing hard and desperately trying to calm herself.
There must be a mechanism inside this box.
Ignoring the peculiar feeling in her hand, Qiao Wan finally seemed to touch something icy cold.
Before she could thoroughly explore, that thing paused for a second and suddenly wrapped tightly around her finger!
That sensation! It was a hand!
In that instant, Qiao Wan could feel every drop of blood in her body freezing.
She had touched a piece of a little finger.
As the little finger tightly wrapped around her finger, the pile of corpses underneath seemed to come to life, slowly wriggling and rising.
...
Yu Xingzhi exclaimed, "A coffin?!"
No inn would be made to look like a coffin. This place wasn't an inn at all, the whole place was filled with coffins!
Realizing that something was wrong, Yu Xingzhi's face changed. "What about Lu Cixian?!"
Ma Huaizhen looked coldly determined and without hesitation, he wheeled himself into the two-story inn in front of them. "Let's go inside and take a look."
...
Qiao Wan felt as if she had just had a dream.
She looked down.
Wearing coarse clothes, she had a shovel slung over her shoulder, and her hands were large.
But these hands weren't hers.
Gripping the shovel tightly, she took a few uncertain steps forward.
She remembered being dragged into a wooden box by Jing Yongxin . Then, Jing Yongxin's dismembered body wrapped around her... and suddenly, Qiao Wan realized, could she have been dragged into Jing Yongxin's memories?
Just as Qiao Wan took a few steps forward, she suddenly heard a call from behind.
"Yongxin!"
Qiao Wan turned around, and a group of dark-skinned boys came running towards her. They were barefoot and cheerfully asked, "We heard that your mom gave birth to another baby brother?"
Qiao Wan kept silent and thought to herself, it seems that this is indeed Jing Yongxin's memory.
Calmly, Qiao Wan walked through Jing Yongxin's past again in her mind.
Jing Yongxin and his family were just like any ordinary cultivators. They were generations of farmers, working in the fields to make a living. Unfortunately, they lived in troubled times, when the demon realm invaded.
With the invasion of the demon realm, chaos ensued, and strange occurrences and evil beings filled the world.
Except for Jing Yongxin, none of the six members of the Jing family had any spiritual talents. In such circumstances, it was only natural for Jing Yongxin to leave his family and enter the world of cultivation. Due to his limited talent, he could only join the lesser-known Qingyun Sect at that time.
Later, when they went to the battlefield, before they could react, they were confusedly cut into pieces, with an unsent letter clutched in their hands before they died.
Jing Yongxin's life flashed before their eyes like a carousel, finally stopping in a valley filled with corpses.
The valley was surrounded by towering cliffs on both sides, steep and narrow, with strong winds blowing constantly.
Qiao Wan, or rather, Jing Yongxin, looked at the scene in front of them in a daze.
The banner with the word "heat" had fallen, with corpses scattered everywhere and blood forming rivers.
They couldn't feel the pain from their injuries anymore. The north wind blew their face, covered in blood and dust, as if there was a bellows in their chest, with their heart pounding like a drum.
The images in front of them seemed to slow down, allowing them to hear every breath.
It was heavy and short.
Inhale -
Inhale -
Inhale -
When they looked up, the cold sun was hanging in the sky, shining brightly.
Qiao Wan felt like their lungs were about to burst, each breath feeling like an exertion of all their strength.
Their vision blurred for a moment.
A voice screaming angrily came into his ears: "Retreat!! Retreat quickly!"
As he turned his head, he was met with a face full of anger, resembling Cen Xiangnan.
Cen Xiangnan's eyes were bloodshot, and he spat out words in a fierce tone: "Feng Zhao has betrayed us!"
Feng Zhao has betrayed them?
But who is Feng Zhao?
Before Qiao Wan could react, a bright golden light shot past, beheading the man in front of her!
A jet of blood splashed all over Qiao Wan's body.
This golden light moved swiftly within the valley, taking down several cultivators in just moments, like a scythe cutting down wheat.
The blood stained the gravel, and the rough mountain wind blew fiercely against their faces in the valley.
Finally, the golden light landed in the hands of a young monk dressed in robes.
The young monk had a pleasant appearance, with a friendly smile. As his robes fluttered in the wind, he stepped over the corpses and approached step by step. When he lifted his head, a pair of clear, bright eyes were revealed!
Jing Yongxin stumbled ahead, running as fast as he could!
Before he had taken a few steps, a dazzling golden light suddenly appeared in front of his eyes, with intersecting rays of light shining directly into his eyes.
Jing Yongxin couldn't believe his eyes, looking despairingly at a rapidly spreading "red line" in the palm of his hand. The red line quickly spread from his palm to his wrist, neck, and thigh.
In the blink of an eye, his whole body crumbled into pieces, from head to neck, hands, feet, and torso, all shattered instantly.
In his last moments before death, he saw a figure in a blood-stained green robe, a man standing with a sword. On the black and gold hilt of the sword, there were several powerful and bold characters.
"Wen Si Xing Zhu Sword".
Qiao Wan suddenly awakened!
The fear-twisted despair before death and the suppressed gasping for breath echoed in her ears as if it were still happening.
These are the memories of Jing Yongxin before his death, as for the monk he saw before dying.
Four words immediately popped into her mind.
Blue-eyed Evil Buddha.
Qiao Wan instantly tensed her back, a chill running up her spine.
...
There was no one in the inn.
No sign of Lu Cixian's figure.
Ma Huaizhen's face darkened, his gaze scanning around.
No one on the first floor.
Climbing up the stairs, the second floor was also empty.
Almost tripping over a few wooden crates in front, Yu Xingzhi frowned and asked the "young girl" beside him, "What's this?"
Wang Ruyi wondered, "I didn't see these crates before."
Ma Huaizhen decisively said, "Open them and see."
Prying open the crates, Yu Xingzhi paused, his heart almost jumping out of his throat.
Chunks of bodies in the crate!
The heads on top, limbs and other pieces of flesh neatly arranged underneath, with a jade plaque cushioning the head.
His gaze swept over these crates, and Yu Xingzhi clearly associated them with something bad, his face turning pale. "What's inside these crates?"
"Jade plaques," Ma Huaizhen's voice was low and deep. "Give them to me."
Yu Xingzhi glanced complexly at the man in the wheelchair.
He opened the wooden box and saw the broken bodies inside. Ma Huaizhen didn't even flinch.
He took the jade pendant that Yu Xingzhi handed to him and looked at it.
"Cao Luping..."
"Juling Sect..."
"Twenty-four years..."
Ma Huaizhen tightly clenched the jade pendant with a deep gaze.
A flag with the word "summer" on it.
On the way here, Lu Cixian mentioned seeing "Misty Cloud Sect" and "Spirit Peak Sect" on the jade pendant, along with "Juling Sect" now.
Basically, he could confirm the identity of these spirit soldiers.
Ma Huaizhen looked unsettled, and Yu Xingzhi furrowed his brow, saying, "Ma...senior?"
Ma Huaizhen casually tucked the jade pendant into his sleeve and looked up, saying, "Let's find Lu Cixian first."
The man's gaze was cold and stern, sweeping over the wooden boxes in front of him.
The twelve boxes remained silent, peacefully stacked in the hallway on the second floor.
It was only quiet for a moment.
The whole inn was like a giant coffin, and they couldn't stay here for long.
Just then, one of the wooden boxes suddenly moved!
The wooden box shook and someone pushed open the lid from inside.
In the same second that the things inside the box crawled out, Ma Huaizhen quickly made a decision. He turned his wheelchair and protected Wang Ruyi. With a swift motion, he kicked the bloody thing away, sending it flying two yards away!
The things in the box tumbled down the stairs.
Thud—
Their face hit the ground.
Qiao Wan, who had just crawled out of the wooden box, after being kicked down the stairs, groggily wiped the blood from under their nose: "...Damn, that hurt."
After seeing what he had kicked away, Ma Huaizhen's cold expression became strangely subtle for a moment. After a while, he calmly pulled his foot back behind the wheelchair.
Yu Xingzhi turned to look at the wooden box still stuffed with body parts, then looked at Qiao Wan, who had just crawled out of it, and was instantly horrified. He looked at Qiao Wan as if he was looking at a freak: "Lu Cixian?!"
Wang Ruyi peeked out from behind Ma Huaizhen and blinked her eyes. "Xiao Lu?"
Without any hesitation about mistaking the person, Ma Huaizhen calmly and elegantly averted his gaze and said in a low voice, "Since you've found us, let's leave first. We shouldn't stay here for long."
As soon as he finished speaking, there was a loud bang, and the inn's door closed.
Another gloomy male voice suddenly sounded.
Yan Shiyuan stood in front of the door with a gloomy expression. "Taoist friends, you came uninvited and caused trouble. Do you think you can just leave after messing with my things?"
