Parents' Shrine (7)

Night fell, and darkness pressed down upon the solid, thick high walls of the Jingxi South Circuit Judicial Commissioner's Office. The heavy wooden gates painted in black lacquer were tightly shut, with two soldiers standing guard in front of them. Behind the two entrance gates lay a labyrinth-like prison of the Judicial Commissioner's Office, formed by rows of countless narrow, dark longhouse cells. It was said that even if someone imprisoned here managed to luckily escape from their cell, and even without the strict guards stationed every thirty zhang, they would get lost in the intricate maze and be unable to escape. Even jailers who had worked here for months would still need to carry a map if they went to unfamiliar areas.

Suddenly, amidst the dim firelight, a dark shadow seemed to dart across the roof, like a phantom whirlwind. A soldier who had just changed shifts looked up, only to see the low-hanging layers of clouds. The night wind howled, and the air carried the scent of approaching rain.

Tan Yangzi kept his body low, crouching on the roof, pinching his fingers to calculate the time. He had designed the safest route according to the shift-change schedule, sneaking past all possible blind spots at maximum speed the moment the guards changed shifts. His lightness skill was outstanding; when he skimmed past, he was like a phantom. Now that he hadn't brought Yan Fei along, he had even fewer worries.

Such skill was rare even among the Green Impermanences. After all, Tan Yangzi had been a lone wolf all these years. He had to personally do many things that were originally meant for the Red Impermanence, and he had done quite a lot of sneaking around. Tan Yangzi felt that if he weren't a Green Impermanence but an ordinary human, there would be no way that Lord Yunzhong would get to hold the title of master thief.

The prison of the Judicial Commissioner's Office was divided into male and female wards, with a jailer standing guard at every partition. The first person Tan Yangzi needed to see was Su Liangdi. Looking down from the eaves, he could see the jailer sitting bored on a stool, dozing off, with a handful of peanuts and a pot of cold tea scattered on the table. With a flick of his wrist, an object resembling a canine tooth appeared between Tan Yangzi's ring finger and thumb. That was the Fang of the Sleepy Ghost from Hell. The tooth was hollow and filled with a venom that caused paralysis and deep sleep. Those eyeless Sleepy Ghosts relied on this venom to knock out prey stronger than themselves before eating them.

Of course, Tan Yangzi had no intention of eating anyone. Two hundred years ago, he discovered that this venom had a similar effect on humans. Sometimes, to avoid harming humans while catching ghosts, he would simply knock them out, making this poisonous fang a highly useful divine tool. Thus, whenever he had nothing to do, he would catch a few Sleepy Ghosts in Hell to pull their teeth. It got to the point where Sleepy Ghosts would scatter and flee the moment they saw him from afar, and he had to use bait and traps to hunt them.

Flicking his finger with inner energy, the sharp fang flew silently towards the back of the dozing jailer's neck. Before long, the jailer, who had been leaning against the wall and constantly nodding off, slumped onto the table with a clatter, completely losing consciousness.

With a flash of a green shadow and the settling of white hair, Tan Yangzi stood silently before the cell holding the three female prisoners who had committed parricide.

Seeing a white-haired Daoist priest in green suddenly appear out of thin air outside the cell, the three female prisoners were so frightened that they shrank into the corner, their terrified eyes glinting in the dark. Tan Yangzi looked at the three of them. The one who was around thirty years old should be Su Liangdi. There was also a young girl about the same age as Yan Fei, and a young woman in her twenties. The jailers didn't seem to have made things difficult for them; perhaps they were afraid of catching that madness disease, so they hadn't used torture.

Tan Yangzi stood outside the cell door looking at Su Liangdi without saying a word. He knew that these people seemed to be controlled by some kind of power, unable to speak anything about the parricide. Moreover, the ghost had done a very thorough job; he had tried to indirectly extract some other information from Chen Xujiang during the day, but constantly hit a wall.

Su Liangdi suddenly saw this person appearing like a phantom. It was hard to tell if he was a human or a ghost in the night, so she hugged the two younger girls beside her and asked with a trembling voice, "Who... who are you?"

Tan Yangzi said, "I am not human. I am a ghost."

Hearing this, the three women grew even more terrified, shrinking in the corner and trembling like leaves. Tan Yangzi slowly walked to the spot closest to them and stretched out a hand to slowly grasp the wooden bars. The flickering firelight illuminated the deep contours of half his face, while the hand on the bars was slowly changing.

The fingers grew longer, the nails turned a metallic black and continued to grow, becoming increasingly sharp and curved. The nails seemed to be covered in patches of rust, yet they also looked like bloodstains, appearing incomparably filthy and evil. Fine teal-blue lines spread across the pale skin, intertwining like runes and extending up his robust arm. When that hand slowly opened in front of them, the palm surprisingly parted like a mouth, revealing spiraling rows of densely packed fangs dripping with transparent venom.

This bizarre sight frightened the more timid twenty-year-old woman into tears, and the other two also turned deathly pale. The young girl asked in despair, "Are you here to drag us down to Hell?"

Tan Yangzi's handsome face was also subtly changing. Although the shape of his facial features didn't alter much, teal-blue lines spread down from the corners of his eyes like tear streaks. On his neck, the fine blue vein-like lines grew denser, weaving into a pattern resembling a blue lotus. His originally dark brown eyes now faintly glowed with an evil, clear yellow light; the pupils became as thin and long as a cat's, and faint fangs sprouted from the corners of his mouth. His originally handsome and stern face was now full of demonic energy. Especially that pair of yellow eyes, which seemed to glow on their own in the dim light, exuding an unspeakable malice. He opened his mouth slightly, and a tongue like a snake's flicked out to quickly lick his lips, as if wiping away the drool that had spilled from a craving for food.

"Yes, I am here to send you to Hell. Who told you to kill your own family?" Tan Yangzi purposely smiled in a twisted and evil manner, releasing more of the ghost aura hidden within his body. His white hair grew even longer, dancing behind him like spirit snakes. Two curled horn-like things vaguely appeared above his temples. "Don't be afraid, it won't hurt much. I will tear apart your flesh and skin, pry open your skulls, and eat your brains. I'll finish eating very quickly. When you are reincarnated again, you will be born in Hell."

As he spoke, a purplish-red "tongue" covered in suction cups slowly drilled out from the mouth in his palm. Like an agile snake, it slithered through the gap between the bars into the cell, approaching the three women, and gently licked the cheek of the twenty-year-old woman who was already crying her eyes out. The woman instantly fainted from terror. The young girl's legs also went weak; she knelt down and kowtowed heavily to him, pleading, "Ghost Lord, please don't kill me! I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! I don't want to die!!!"

"Don't be afraid. In Hell, there are no parents and no family. You can kill whoever you want. Wouldn't that suit you better?" Tan Yangzi said with a smile, as if this was the easiest thing in the world. His eyes, brimming with endless darkness, fixated on Su Liangdi's face. He saw that although the woman appeared calm, the depths of her eyes were already filled with fear. This was probably a very enduring woman who wouldn't show her emotions no matter how afraid she was.

Unless stimulated, such a person shouldn't easily do anything extreme.

The ghost was not possessing them. Even if some sort of dark magic had been used on their minds, its power would be far less than that of direct possession or invading their dreams. If, under extreme fear, their desire to survive stimulated the potential within their Life Soul, that dark magic would be shaken. In other words, if extreme fear was used to stimulate them, it might make them reveal some useful information, even if it was just tangentially related.

With a shift in thought, Tan Yangzi decided to reveal his full ghost form in front of these three mortals. The one with the most fragile mind had already fainted, and the youngest one left would probably be in danger of going mad. However, since he couldn't find a breakthrough right now and Black and White Impermanences had gotten involved, he had no choice but to take a risk. At worst, he could just go to Meng Po afterwards and beg for some watered-down Meng Po Soup to wipe their memories.

Thus, he began to slowly shed his human form. Amidst the flickering lantern light, the ultimate nightmare slowly unfurled in the widened eyes of those two people. The young girl let out a scream and fainted, but the scream was trapped by the array Tan Yangzi had laid down and didn't travel far. Su Liangdi's calm demeanor finally began to shatter. She pulled at her own hair and suddenly burst into wild laughter. She laughed while tears streamed down her face, her whole person seeming to have descended into madness.

"I deserve to die! I should go to Hell! They should go to Hell too! That man and his slut, and my own mother! They all forced me, they wanted me to die!" She laughed and then started wailing again, saying viciously, "She doesn't love me! She never loved me! She pushed me into the fire pit with her own hands! Why give birth to me! Why give birth to me! The woman in the dream was right, I've endured for a lifetime, and I've endured enough! We'll meet in Hell hahahahahahaha!"

Accompanying her words, a ray of red light suddenly shot out from her chest. Hearing her cry of pain, a red lotus in the shape of raging fire suddenly bloomed, and an extremely scorching, pure Yang holy aura exploded. Greatly alarmed, Tan Yangzi immediately shrank back into his human form, guarding his head and face with his hands as he leapt backward, but his arm was still struck by the red light. A bone-piercing burning pain made him cry out miserably.

He could already hear the clamor of the jailers not far away; he must have alerted them. Tan Yangzi quickly leapt onto the roof and held his breath, ignoring his right arm that had been burnt into a mangled mess of flesh. Only when the searchers moved elsewhere did he dare to make several leaps and evacuate from the Judicial Commissioner's Office.

Tan Yangzi forced himself to hold on, stumbling all the way, and rushed back to Dasamara's house before dawn. Hearing the commotion in the courtyard, Yan Fei opened the door to check, only to see that Tan Yangzi's right sleeve was completely burned off, and his arm was a patch of blackened, festering wounds. Cold sweat beaded on Tan Yangzi's forehead, but upon seeing Yan Fei, he still tried to play it cool. "You... why haven't you slept yet..."

"Master! What happened to you!" Yan Fei's eyes turned red. He hurriedly rushed over to support Tan Yangzi, wanting to check his severely injured right arm but not daring to touch the gruesome wound.

At this time, Dasamara also heard the noise and came out. Seeing Tan Yangzi in such a state, he also paled in shock. "What happened?"

"The Padma Flower... the Life Souls of those people all have the mark of the Padma Flower!" Tan Yangzi's eyes turned cold as he said in a low voice, "The one who can easily touch a human's Life Soul is probably not a ghost... but a peer of ours!"