Chapter 90
Chapter 90
At the sight of Lord Ren’s arrival, the constables who had been cowering at the back suddenly came forward one after another, all volunteering to go with them.
Yu Lang: “…”
Yan Zhengchu said, “The secret passage is narrow. Two people coming along will be enough to watch each other’s backs. There’s no need for too many.”
No sooner had he spoken than he caught sight of a red figure appearing at the entrance of Fu Tower.
Hearing the soft footsteps, Ren Fengjue instinctively looked back. When he saw Xia Ximo, he paused slightly.
He was just about to say something, but Xia Ximo walked straight past him.
There was no room for discussion at all. She headed into the secret passage on her own.
Seeing this, Yan Zhengchu could not help but smile and said to Ren Fengjue, “Let’s go, Young Marquis.”
For some reason, whenever Xia Ximo came along, Yan Zhengchu inexplicably felt as if the burden on his shoulders had lightened by quite a bit.
Looking at the slender figure ahead, he found himself somewhat puzzled.
He thought to himself that the secrets hidden within this woman were definitely far from simple.
He just did not know whether what had happened last night had truly occurred… or whether it had only been a dream.
At that thought, Yan Zhengchu really could not stop himself from quickening his pace to catch up with Xia Ximo. In a low voice, he asked, “Last night… did you come to my room?”
The question sounded somewhat improper.
He quickly corrected himself. “I mean… did your soul come?”
Xia Ximo glanced at him and gave him three ambiguous words. “I don’t remember.”
“…”
How could someone not remember something like that?
Yan Zhengchu wanted to ask more, but Ren Fengjue had silently caught up behind them, so he could only swallow the rest of his words.
It couldn’t really have been a dream, could it?
The secret passage was deep and dark, heavy with chilling yin energy. After they had walked for some distance, a bone-deep cold began crawling up from their legs and spreading through their entire bodies.
Even Yan Zhengchu could not help shivering.
Yet when he looked at Xia Ximo and Ren Fengjue, they were both completely unfazed.
As expected of an Extreme Yin Body and a Pure Yang Body…
At the end of the secret passage, however, another stone door appeared.
Yan Zhengchu held up the wind lantern to illuminate the markings on the door, and his expression changed drastically at once.
“This… This is our Mount Yunhe’s seal.”
He ran his hand over the stone door inch by inch, as if suddenly coming to a realization. “I understand now. This place… is a Yin Tomb.”
Ren Fengjue frowned at that.
This was the capital. Even if it was far from the imperial palace and not located in the bustling Eastern and Western Markets, it was still under the Son of Heaven’s very feet.
How could such a sinister thing exist here?
“What is a Yin Tomb?” Xia Ximo suddenly asked.
Yan Zhengchu turned to Ren Fengjue instead and said, “Do you still remember the matter of the Yin-Yang Fiend from fifty years ago, the one I told you about?”
“Mm.”
“According to my grandmaster’s handwritten records, when the Yin-Yang Fiend was successfully created, it happened to be when the former dynasty’s fate was reaching its end.”
At the time, the realm had been beset by internal strife and foreign threats, and chaos was already looming over the land.
The appearance of the Yin-Yang Fiend had only made the situation even more irreconcilable and chaotic.
But the strange thing was that those ghostly beings gathered in Shangjing one after another. They even began running rampant inside the palace.
Thus, the Former Dynasty Emperor had no choice but to send a trusted general to Mount Yunhe to ask for help.
And Mount Yunhe had always taken ghost-catching and evil-banishing as its duty. Hearing that the imperial family was in trouble, how could they stand by and do nothing?
They immediately dispatched all their disciples down the mountain to the capital.
It took more than half a month before every ghostly being in the capital was subdued.
Yan Zhengchu continued, “Back then, although my grandmaster led the disciples in subduing and driving out all those ghosts and evil things, among them were some Vengeful Ghost and Evil Spirit entities that had lingered in the mortal world for far too long. They were not under the Underworld’s jurisdiction, nor could they enter reincarnation.”
“Under such circumstances, the only option was to find a place to seal them away. That is why this place is called a Yin Tomb.”
Ren Fengjue understood. “So this is where your sect’s founding master sealed away the Vengeful Ghost back then?”
Yan Zhengchu examined the marks on the stone door more closely. “Most likely.”
He lightly brushed his fingers over the curse marks on the door and explained, “The Talisman on this stone door should have been carved by our founding master himself, then reinforced with cinnabar and Pure Yang Blood applied using the Jade Sword.”
“The curse is called the Nine-Star Clear Radiance Curse. It can suppress a hundred ghosts and restrain baleful yin energy.”
“I believe this is also the key reason the entire Fu Tower appears so… ‘clean.'”
Following his explanation, Ren Fengjue quickly pieced the matter together and understood even more clearly.
He frowned and asked, “If the Yin-Yang Fiend is successfully created, will it release the Vengeful Ghost beneath us?”
Yan Zhengchu nodded. “Under the influence of the Yin-Yang Fiend, the Vengeful Ghost will inevitably become even more vicious. Our founding master’s curse is powerful, yes, but so many years have passed. The cinnabar and Pure Yang Blood have both faintly faded. Its power is certainly far from what it was back then.”
After hearing that, Ren Fengjue found himself grateful that only the three of them had entered the secret passage.
Otherwise, if these words reached Yu Lang and the others, who knew what sort of panic they might cause…
He glanced at Xia Ximo, only to find her merely looking at the door, her expression the same as ever.
Cold, indifferent, as though none of this had anything to do with her.
“Since what is sealed here is a Vengeful Ghost, we shouldn’t linger. We should leave as soon as possible.”
As Ren Fengjue made the suggestion, he was about to take up the lantern and lead the way back.
But Xia Ximo, standing beside him, suddenly spoke without warning.
“This curse has already been tampered with.”
She pointed at the center of the stone door.
Yan Zhengchu hurried forward and scrutinized it. Sure enough, the Crane Seal used to reinforce the curse was missing a small piece.
Alarmed, he could not help taking a large step back.
To his surprise, Xia Ximo simply reached out and pushed the stone door. With a dull rumble, the stone door rose, and a hideous skeleton stood right behind it, face-to-face with the three people outside.
At the sight, Ren Fengjue instinctively stepped forward, intending to shield her behind him.
Yet he saw Xia Ximo narrowing her eyes slightly, apparently “admiring” the skeleton before her.
There was no fear in her at all. If anything, she seemed somewhat interested.
Yan Zhengchu had not expected what lay beyond the stone door.
Because inside the stone chamber behind it, aside from that skeleton, there was nothing at all.
What was strange, however, was that although Yin-Sha Qi surged here in overwhelming waves, there were no ghosts whatsoever.
There was not even the slightest trace of a Yin Soul.
“This is bad.”
Yan Zhengchu’s first reaction was that the ghost inside must have already been released.
But if that were truly the case, how could the capital still be so peaceful?
Or had the ghost only just been released?
So anxious that he sighed, he wished he could fly back to Mount Yunhe right this instant and invite his old master over.
Ren Fengjue, meanwhile, stared at the skeleton for a while and made his own deductions in silence.
These were the bones of a man. Judging by the jade crown on his head and the kesi robe on his body, his status must have been noble.
He raised the wind lantern and examined the area around the skeleton, only to discover that on the back of the stone door now lifted above them, there were shocking scratch marks left by fingernails.
It was clear that this skeleton had been trapped here and had died alive.
As for his identity…
Ren Fengjue circled the skeleton again. Just then, he noticed a gold plaque faintly showing from within the wide sleeve.
He bent down and used the lamplight to look more closely. Four words were engraved on the front-Heaven’s Blessing.
On the back was another large gilded character-Qi.
If he was not mistaken, this was the seal of the Eastern Palace from the previous dynasty!