Zong Jiu felt that he was in a very bad situation.
It was as if his entire body had been soaked in ice water filled with ice cubes. His originally unconscious body felt like it was in an ice cellar. It was so cold that his lips turned purple, and the coarse hemp clothes on his body seemed to have frozen into ice shards, freezing his body and seeping into his bones.
It was so cold that it was obvious that something had happened.
He was one hundred percent the chosen lucky goose with an out-of-body experience!
Zong Jiu already had a premonition when Granny Yin said those words.
After all, among all the trainees present, he was the only one with a mole card. Not to mention that his identity as a mole was a novice necromancer, so he was naturally fated to be a shadowy traveler. If one had to say, shadowy travelers and necromancers were kindred spirits. They both dealt with shadowy things, so it was normal for him to be chosen.
Zong Jiu opened his eyes with a sorrowful mood.
Unexpectedly, what he saw was not a pitch-black temple or floating in the air or under a dome.
He was still standing on the ground.
It was just that the color of the ground was a deathly gray, and the surroundings were filled with layers of fog. It was impossible to see clearly at a glance.
Zong Jiu was originally a little confused, but after seeing his milky white body, he suddenly understood.
Could it be that he had been brought into the shadowy world?
After figuring this out, Zong Jiu felt that the land was filled with dead silence, the sky was as dark as eternal night, the fog that couldn't be seen clearly, and the dense Yin Qi were all understandable.
Shadowy travel was a very dangerous thing.
Zhuge An said that he wouldn't interfere with the story of this instance, but in reality, he couldn't resist his occasional outburst of a hidden chatterbox. He took advantage of the afternoon to give Zong Jiu a bunch of information.
Shadowy travelers would usually set up a time point or use other methods to remind themselves that they were from the world of the living.
After going to the world of the living, if they couldn't find their way back during shadowy travel, or if they forgot the incantation while surrounded by Yin energy, then the shadowy traveler would stay in the world of the living forever, never to return to the world of the living.
Without a soul, the body in the world of the living would naturally turn into a corpse.
It just so happened that the threshold to become a shady person was even higher than that of a necromancer. Since they were young, Yin Smugglers would display an innate ability to separate their souls from their bodies. Only those with this innate ability could learn Yin Smugglers. Therefore, Yin Smugglers were usually passed down to only one person. Furthermore, it was extremely dangerous. It was very likely that they would receive a one-way ticket to the Yellow Springs during their work.
In modern times, this profession, like necromancers, had basically disappeared. Only in the Terror Instance Dungeons would one be able to see these mysterious professions.
After thinking it through, Zong Jiu decided to take a look around first. It would be better if he could find Granny Yin. Otherwise, if a living person like him was caught in the netherworld, it would definitely not be good for him to stay for too long.
He slowly walked forward.
As soon as he took a step forward, Zong Jiu found himself floating.
Zong Jiu was speechless.
With great difficulty, he finally managed to control himself from sliding forward. Suddenly, he felt a gust of cold wind blowing around him.
After taking the first step, the vast fog disappeared. What replaced it was a mountain range in the distance, a city decorated with red lanterns, tall towers and black chains rising from the ground, and a blood moon hanging in the night sky.
There were also thousands of pale and twisted faces. Each of them looked at the white-haired youth with malicious eyes, full of desire.
Living souls in the netherworld were like fresh meat thrown into a group of sharks. The ghosts could follow the smell and come up.
Looking at the countless ghostly hands reaching toward him, Zong Jiu's gaze turned cold. He was about to open his System Backpack to take out all kinds of supernatural items, but he found that … he couldn't take them out.
[Trainee is in a special location. Unable to use physical items.]
The white-haired youth was shocked.
He reacted quickly. He turned around and started running. At the same time, he began to try out the items he could use.
First of all, he couldn't use the tarot cards.
Secondly, he couldn't use any of the supernatural items that he had exchanged for earlier.
The strange black box was even more straightforward. At most, he could only take out some hell money.
Zong Jiu cursed silently. Looking at the gloomy faces coming at him from all directions, he was about to retreat when his fingers inadvertently touched something in his pocket.
He froze for a moment, then quickly realized that it was the necromancer's item.
The mole items obtained from the Instance Dungeon couldn't be put into the System Backpack in the Instance Dungeon, so Zong Jiu had been keeping the Soul-Sucking Bell and the talisman in his pocket. He didn't expect that after turning into a spirit, he would bring these two items with him.
"Ring ring ring ring ring —"
The Soul-Sucking Bell was useless on humans. Humans couldn't hear it, but it was a noisy demonic sound in the ears of the ghosts. It pierced through their ears and was unbearable.
The ghosts all hid their expressions and danced in the air, not daring to approach the white-haired youth.
Zong Jiu let out a sigh of relief. He shook the Soul-Sucking Bell as he slowly walked forward.
The only problem was that the Soul-Sucking Bell could only be used for a maximum of ten minutes, and the cooldown time was half an hour.
He estimated the distance in his mind and planned to rush into the ghost town in the distance first.
What he didn't expect was that at this moment, a withered hand suddenly lightly touched his left shoulder.
Zong Jiu's pupils suddenly shrank, and he suddenly turned his head.
Granny Yin, who was wearing a thick black robe, was standing behind him with a lamp in her hand.
A scarlet candle was suspended in the Netherworld Lamp. The top of the candle was dyed red, and it was slowly burning. Zong Jiu remembered that she said in the temple that if she didn't return by the time the candle burned out, then she would never be able to return.
Her voice was sharp, and it was even hoarser and unpleasant to listen to than a hundred ghosts.
"Child, why are you here?"
Zong Jiu revealed a blank expression, "I don't know. After I finished chanting the incantation, I appeared here."
"Forget it, since you're here, then follow this old woman."
In this underworld filled with boundless Yin energy, Granny Yin obviously didn't want to say much. She signaled Zong Jiu to follow her.
A Netherworld Lamp faintly lit up, pushing away the surrounding black clouds and white arms, opening up a path of light in the crowd of ghosts.
With light, one could see how many ghosts there were in the underworld.
In the Great Wilderness, there were countless hungry ghosts, and countless commoners who died by the roadside. Even the Underworld's Ghost Envoys weren't enough. If a normal person died, they could only drift in the world of the living for a month before they could be led down to the underworld. Even so, the number of wandering ghosts queuing up for registration was still as many as the hairs on a cow. Even if the Underworld worked overtime, they still wouldn't be able to count them all.
Zong Jiu followed behind Granny Yin, and the doubts in his heart grew deeper and deeper.
He felt that this matter was really a strange coincidence.
His soul was said to have left his body. If no one did anything to him, how could he mysteriously follow the Netherworld Lamp down to the underworld?
It was so coincidental that it made him look suspiciously at the back of the person in front of him who looked very stooped.
The NPC Granny Yin, at first, was defined by everyone as a help-type NPC. After all, in the setting of an instance, it was impossible to be surrounded by wolves, and there wasn't a single help-type character.
Since she gave them a hint, told them a lot of information, and even provided a temple as a safe haven for the trainees, it was enough to prove Granny Yin's identity. Since the things she did couldn't be faked, the trainees naturally let down their guard.
Since he took the ghost spy card, it was possible that he was an enemy of these help-type characters.
Zong Jiu had suspected that Granny Yin was the perfect corpse he was looking for.
Originally, he wanted to take advantage of the underworld. After Granny Yin's soul left her body, he wanted to see if she was his mission target. Otherwise, he wouldn't have deliberately chosen the position closest to Granny Yin.
Zong Jiu pondered for a long time, but still decided to bide his time.
He was now in the underworld, and he had to borrow the Netherworld Lamp, so he couldn't do as he wished.
It wouldn't be too late to verify this guess after he finished his business in the underworld.
With this thought, he and Granny Yin passed through the underworld occupied by a hundred ghosts, and walked towards the ghost city in the distance.
As they walked, Zong Jiu pretended to casually ask, "Granny, where are we going?"
After he asked, he didn't get a response for a long time.
Just as Zong Jiu was about to ask a second time, a gloomy voice finally spoke.
"To find that old granny's soul."
Zong Jiu, "Where are we going to find it?"
"Just follow, why are you asking so many questions?"
Thus, Zong Jiu obediently stopped asking.
He followed behind Granny Yin, walked through the cold of the underworld wasteland, walked through the surging Wang River, and finally arrived in front of the ghost city.
Along the way, countless ghosts were sizing them up.
No matter how hungry they were, the Netherworld Lamp had an aura that made them afraid, and no matter what, they didn't dare to take a step closer.
The queue in front of the ghost city was endless.
They openly welcomed the unfriendly gazes of the ghosts, and directly cut the queue to the front.
Under the black basalt rock wall, there were ghost officers carrying red lanterns at the entrance, registering them one by one.
Zong Jiu raised his eyes to look inside, and found that the roads in the city were neat and tidy, and the lanterns hanging on both sides were glistening red.
The houses on both sides of the road were arranged in rows, and there were even little ghosts pulling carriages on the road. At a glance, it was densely packed with ghosts.
The underworld, as a place where people in China's traditional culture would return to after death, was actually not as scary as people imagined.
The human world had its own rules, and the underworld naturally had its own rules as well. Now that the human world was in a period of misery and suffering, people didn't even have enough to eat, so how could they have the opportunity to have children, and thus the chances of reincarnation were sharply reduced.
The ghost officer didn't even raise his head, and his skeletal hand nimbly wrote on the rice paper, "Line up one by one, those who cut the queue will receive a whip."
When he dipped his finger in ink to write, he felt that the aura was somewhat similar to a living soul, and only then did he raise his head.
"So you're here to look for someone."
The ghost officer waved his hand, and let the ghost boy at the side take over his job, before speaking, "Did you bring …?"
Granny Yin leaned to the side, revealing the white-haired youth behind her.
"Not bad."
After seeing Zong Jiu, the ghost officer revealed a satisfied expression, and after stroking his long beard, he said, "Follow me."
He brought the two of them into the government office closest to the city gate.
After entering the government office, Granny Yin was welcomed to the front hall, and the ghost officer alone brought Zong Jiu to the rear hall.
Zong Jiu wasn't a fool, and after this series of unforeseen events, he could also guess that Granny Yin had the intention of burning the bridge after crossing the river, so he quietly tightened his grip on the soul-sucking bell in his sleeve.
Who would have thought that after the ghost officer brought him to the rear hall, he would look at him with pity, and bluntly said, "Ask away."
Zong Jiu couldn't figure out what was going on, so he followed his original plan and asked about the old granny from Tong Bai Village three years ago.
The ghost officer didn't expect that he would ask this question, and said in surprise, "That person has long been ranked as an immortal, how could she be in our little underworld?"