Chapter 245
Chapter 245
General Li Guang hurriedly stopped Chen Daji’s nonsense.
“Good Brother, do not speak recklessly!”
“The cycle of karma never fails to bring retribution. These evil ghosts are being punished by the Valiant Great General because they fully deserve it!”
At that, Li Guang sighed softly.
“The evil ghosts locked on that chain are all enemies of the Valiant Great General!”
“It is a long story…”
Back then, after the Snow Corpse slaughtered his enemies’ entire families, he knelt amid the boundless snowy mountains for nine days and nine nights, freezing to death before the graves of his adoptive parents.
After his death, his younger cousin from the same clan, the “Tiger Marquis” Xu Chu, submitted a memorial to the emperor requesting that the Snow Corpse be posthumously enfeoffed as the Valiant Great General.
From that point on, his heroic spirit endured, and he became a guardian yin deity of the region.
Still unable to let go of the hatred in his heart, the first thing the Snow Corpse did after his true spirit awakened was seize the souls of his enemies, string them along his iron chain, and torture them day and night.
Time flew by in this fashion. Nearly two thousand years passed in the blink of an eye.
Then one day, the Snow Corpse suddenly sensed that “Little Sister Cuilan,” whom he had missed day and night, had finally appeared nearby.
That was why, on the night Hua Jiunan was born, the Snow Corpse appeared to frighten off the Hemp-clad Grandmother and send the Hundred Ghosts Fighting for His Life fleeing in terror.
Honored readers, you guessed correctly.
Hua Jiunan’s mother was the reincarnation of Cuilan.
Unfortunately, the Snow Corpse arrived too late. By the time he reached Deaf Granny’s little courtyard, the woman he loved had once again returned to the Underworld Court.
In the years that followed, the Snow Corpse silently protected Hua Jiunan for five years. Only after he was certain the boy was completely out of danger could he bear the agony of longing no more.
Prepared to have his soul scattered into oblivion, he entered the Underworld Court to seize back his beloved’s soul.
By the time General Li Guang finished the tale, tears were streaming down Hua Jiunan’s face.
He dropped to his knees at the Snow Corpse’s feet.
“Heaven and earth are unjust!”
“Mother… Uncle Snow Corpse… fate has treated you both so cruelly!”
The Snow Corpse looked at Hua Jiunan kneeling before him, then at the woman he loved seated upon his shoulder. Tears glistened faintly in his dry, tigerlike eyes.
He extended one callused hand and pulled Hua Jiunan to his feet.
Trying his best to soften his voice, he spoke one word at a time.
“Good boy! Don’t cry!”
The Snow Corpse’s beautiful yet tragic love story moved everyone present.
A pall of sorrow fell over the group.
The sentimental Eighth Master Chang and Zhao Fei silently shed tears with them.
Chen Daji was so moved that he wailed aloud.
As he wept, he secretly looked down on his own father, Chen Fu.
How could two men be so different?!
Uncle Snow Corpse had remained “widowed” for thousands of years for the woman he loved and was even willing to sacrifice his life.
Meanwhile, Chen Fu had hidden it from his wife while secretly keeping a mistress outside!
Bah! What kind of person did that?!
Before he knew it, Chen Daji had begun reflecting on himself again.
He wanted to date Li Yun, but also dreamed of marrying his female ghost big sister… big sisters. Did that mean he was no good either?
Holy crap, this was a serious problem!
In the end, Chen Daji adamantly refused to admit that he was a bad person.
Instead, he simply blamed the sordid idea of having multiple wives on his father, Chen Fu.
Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes, and a rat’s son knows how to dig holes.
If he was lustful, it was purely because his “stock” was bad and he had failed to inherit the genes of a decent man…
While Chen Daji’s thoughts ran wild, Hua Jiunan finally managed to hold back his grief and addressed Li Guang.
“Thank you, General Li, for caring for Uncle Snow Corpse and my mother all this time.”
“Now that our family has been reunited, we will trouble you no further. We will return to the mortal realm at once.”
Li Guang’s expression grew grave.
“It will be easy enough for the rest of you to return to the mortal realm. But your honored mother…”
As the story quietly reveals, every person must pass eight checkpoints after death. The first seven have already been described.
They are the Ghost Gate, Yellow Springs Road, Three Lives Stone, Home-Gazing Terrace, River of Forgetfulness, Naihe Bridge, and Meng Po’s Soup.
The eighth checkpoint, “Challenging the Ghost King,” is rather unusual. It is not even recorded in many ancient texts.
This checkpoint first appeared during the reign of the First Emperor of Qin, following a declaration by the Queen Mother of the West: “All beings are pieces upon the board, able to cross the laws of the dead!”
It meant that all living beings were merely game pieces and that there was no true distinction between life and death.
Or rather, death was both an ending and another beginning.
A soul in the Underworld Court could choose not to reincarnate, but it had to challenge the Ghost King before it could return to the world of the living.