The city was looking much darker. The Yin winds blew past their ears, causing them to ring. Apart from that, the sentence was strange. On either side of the pitch-black path, they felt like something was going to charge at them at any moment.

　　The few of them walked along the dark pathways. Some time later, they heard some strange noises coming from a certain corner. Tick tock tick tock… something was sounding.

　　“What… what is that noise?” Song Ren jumped. He was highly panicky. His voice was now raised several pitches higher. “Is that water?”

　　The moment he finished speaking, something flashed past the path in front of him.

　　“Ah!” Song Ren jumped. He trembled as he pointed in front of him. “Something… someone just walked past.”

　　The two people in front stopped and turned to look at the long path which they could not see the end of in the darkness. A blood-red light lit up, A rush of red began to fall from above. It was blood – the redness of it all caught their eyes

　　“Bl-bl-blood!” Song Ren’s legs turned to jelly as he dropped to the floor.

　　The blood did not look like it was going to stop flowing. As time went by, more and more blood flowed from above, causing the entire place to flood. The paths were about to be dyed completely red. The scene was extremely eerie. Coupled with the cold Yin winds, this was a scene straight out of the horror movies.

　　That was only if…

　　There weren’t those few ghosts floating in mid-air, holding a couple of pails filled with blood. They were even lined up in straight lines, taking turns to empty their pails. Faintly, Shen Ying could even hear them talking.

　　“Hurry, hurry. It’s drying up. Where are the pails? Can’t you get a bigger one over?”

　　“The Opened Ghost took the big pails to wash his intestines. These are all we have left.”

　　“Hurry, hurry, hurry. Quickly pour the blood! Use the blood to drown them!”

　　“Make good use of the time. Even if we can’t drown them in blood, we can scare them to death!”

　　Therefore… more blood fell down from the sky. Yet, the surface was too wide, and they were standing too far away from where the ghosts were pouring the blood. Although they were pouring buckets full of blood, the blood dried up before Shen Ying and Yi Qing even felt the need to step aside.

　　Shen Ying, “…”

　　Yi Qing: “…”

　　Suddenly, Yi Qing and Shen Ying felt terribly tired on the ghosts’ behalves.

　　“We’re almost there. Where is the Headless Ghost? It’s time for him to make his appearance.”

　　“I’m here, I’m here.” An evil-looking ghost with a green face and sharp teeth appeared out of nowhere. He put on his scariest expression, opened his mouth to bear his sharp teeth, then tore his head right off his shoulders. The ghost pondered for a moment, evidently thinking that he did not look scary enough. He pressed his head back down between his shoulders, causing the hole underneath it to expand and the bottom of his head to be stained with a bit more blood. He tilted the head so that an opening appeared between his neck and head. Blood began to spurt out of that opening.

　　Then, he cleared his throat and presented himself, floating toward Yi Qing and Shen Ying.

　　His eerie voice sounded in the forest. “Give me your life…”

　　The master and disciple, who had witnessed the entire process: “…”

　　The ghost floated nearer and nearer. Two streaks of blood appeared down his eyes on his head, which seemed to be just hanging on, He threatened to jump at Shen Ying.

　　Yi Qing shouted, reached out and conjured a seal to capture the entire group of ghosts.

　　“Ghost!!!!” Song Ren suddenly screamed beside him. He looked like he could not deal with any of this any longer. He ran toward Yi Qing and buried himself in the opening in the lower half of Yi Qing’s robes. In his panic, he grabbed onto something with both of his hands. Yet, he used so much force that the thing gave way and dropped down from Yi Qing’s waist.

　　Shen Ying, “…”

　　All the ghosts: “…”

　　His actions had been so instinctive that Yi Qing did not even have time to react before he felt the entire lower half of his body turned chilly. A strange object appeared between his legs.

　　Everyone present became silent…

　　Even the headless ghost who had floated over earlier paused. His head, which had been hanging on by just a piece of skin, fell to the floor.

　　What was going on?

　　(⊙_⊙)

　　The next moment…

　　A cold aura – even colder than the Yin Qi in the city – rushed out from inside of Yi Qing. The temperature in the city suddenly dropped rapidly, so that they felt like they were going through a particularly harsh winter. The path looked like it was slowly turning to ice and sword Qi filled the skies, surrounding all of the ghost city.

　　Yi Qing kicked a certain ghost who had buried himself in his pants away. A dragon which formed by the condensation of sword Qi appeared in the sky. “I’m going to slaughter you!”

　　All the ghosts in the city felt an overwhelming suppressive force pressing them down. They all fell right to the ground, and their bodies threatened to dissipate.

　　“Chef!” This was the first time Shen Ying saw Yi Qing react this way. After a moment, she tugged at him. “Calm down, calm down!”

　　“Master, don’t stop me!” This was the first time Yi Qing felt the urge to shake Shen Ying’s hand away. “Let me slaughter him! I have to slaughter him! I really have to! Right here! Right now!”

　　“Wear your pants first,” Shen Ying reminded him.

　　Yi Qing paused, as if suddenly recalling something. He hurriedly picked up his pants from the floor. Quicker than he ever did before, he set up an isolation arra and put his pants on, tying a few knots around his waist while he was at it.

　　Shen Ying waited a full ten minutes for Yi Qing to emerge from the isolation array and appear in front of her again. His expression was cold and hard, so that she imagined snow would begin to fall at any time soon. When he made eye contact with Shen Ying, he blushed.

　　“Master…” He sounded extremely wronged.

　　“Heh, don’t worry!” Shen Ying cleared her throat and patted his shoulder comfortingly. “It’s too dark for me to have seen your white underwear. Really!”

　　Yi Qing: “…”

　　Now he really wanted to slaughter someone. What should he do?

　　—————

　　Perhaps because of Chef’s sword Qi, more or less all of the Yin Qi in the ghost city dissipated. Sunlight finally reached the city. As energy from the sun filled the place, ghosts that were hidden at every corner began to present themselves.

　　Chef, who had been held back from beating Song Ren to the point of dissipation with much effort from Shen Ying, looked at the ghosts that were appearing one by one. He had not guessed wrongly there were so many malicious ghosts hidden in this city. Each one looked more terrifying than the last. Some were missing limbs, and others were slumped on the ground like a pile of dirt. It was obvious that they died terrible deaths!

　　“Why are all of you remaining in the mortal world?” Yi Qing scanned all the ghosts coldly. “And you’re gathering in one city to scare others. Don’t you want to reincarnate?”

　　All of the ghosts looked scared at the thought of the strange aura they experienced earlier. Each one of them trembled. The Headless Ghost, on the other hand, who had intended to scare Yi Qing and Shen Ying, stood up meekly. “This… Exalted Immortal, it’s not that we don’t want to reincarnate, it’s that… we’re not able to!”

　　“That’s right, that’s right, Exalted Immortal!” The other ghosts nodded excitedly. “We want to go to the Underworld to reincarnate, but ever since we died, we’ve been trapped here. We had no other choice but to… to look for living people whom we can possess to take us there.”

　　They’re stuck here? Yi Qing paused. He released his divine perception. There are no arrays around this city that are stopping them from going out.

　　“What happened here?” Yi Qing surveyed his surroundings. There were many ghosts, and every single one of them did not look like they died a very long time ago. “How did all of you die?”

　　“Well…” The ghosts all looked confused. After awhile, most of them shook their heads. “We don’t know either. When we woke up, we found out that we had already become ghosts.”

　　“…”