The Terror of the Heavens Begins with Gu

Chapter 232: The Arrival of "Zombie Rebirth in Seven Days" and Meeting the Taoist Chen You

The distorted vision slowly became clear.

Li Zhen looked around and found himself in a cramped street.

The sky was gray, and across from it were several crowded, dilapidated high-rise buildings, also gray. From a distance, the windows looked messy, like a few old apartment buildings.

Even from a distance, Li Zhen could sense the eerie aura emanating from the apartment building.

Looking at the pedestrians and street signs on the street, Li Zhen judged that this should be Hong Kong Island two thousand years in the future.

This place feels somewhat familiar...

Turning his head to look at the huge apartment building in front of him, Li Zhen already had some guesses about where he had come to.

The person who summoned him this time was in that apartment building.

Li Zhen strode towards the apartment.

Vampires and banshees shrouded in brand-new black robes followed behind Li Zhen, walking step by step toward the apartment building.

The clouds in the sky grew heavier, making the entire apartment building appear even gloomier.

The gloom that had settled over Li Zhen's heart grew even deeper.

Even after arriving in this world, the sense of crisis in his heart did not disappear at all.

The talisman drawn with golden ink seemed to only postpone the world represented by the calamity for Li Zhen, giving him more time to prepare.

This means that he must increase his strength as much as possible in order to face the Fourth Tribulation.

Recalling his experience of being completely corrupted by yin energy and forced to turn himself into a zombie, Li Zhen felt a little heavy-hearted.

We must be fully prepared...

The "Step by Step Tribulation" mentioned in the "Five Elements Evil Spirit Sublimation Method" is indeed true.

Li Zhen himself was sustained by the benefits he gained from the mission world.

If it were someone else, they would never have gotten to this point.

No wonder this method was lost in the Changshan School for so many years...

However, there is no doubt that this is an extremely powerful method that allows Li Zhen to glimpse the path of immortality in the shortest amount of time.

The thought suddenly popped into Li Zhen's mind again—

Along the way, it seems that he has been practicing unorthodox methods that allow for extremely rapid progress.

This, of course, comes at a price.

Detective Li is already paying the price.

Several residents coming in and out of the apartment building glanced at Li Zhen curiously before brushing past him and his two companions.

Li Zhen, who had remained silent, walked into a passageway between the apartments.

The apartment complex consists of several closely packed buildings that surround each other, forming a central courtyard-like space.

Looking up from here, you can see layers of stairwells and a gloomy sky.

The building casts a huge shadow into the "courtyard," creating a sense of oppression even when standing there.

Li Zhen looked at a woman squatting down in the stairwell opposite.

The woman was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, her hair was disheveled, her face was pale, she looked to be in her thirties, and her eyes were lifeless; she didn't look like a normal person.

Li Zhen glanced at the runes on his arm and confirmed that this was the summoner who had brought him to this world.

Lines of golden runes appeared before Li Zhen's eyes.

[Yang Fengyi, terrified, had lost her mind, but she keenly sensed that the atmosphere in the apartment had become even more eerie. Fearing for her son's safety, she prayed incessantly to the gods during her lucid moments, hoping that her son would grow up healthy.]

Please protect Yang Feng and her son, and help them resolve the source of the evil spirits in the apartment within three days.

In the past, various characters have summoned Li Zhen, but this is the first time a madman has summoned him.

This surprised Li Zhen.

Yang Feng...

Li Zhen murmured the name to himself and walked towards the woman.

The woman seemed to sense something, glanced at Li Zhen, shrank back in fear, and suddenly ran up the stairs on all fours.

Li Zhen looked up and saw a white-haired boy flash by in the second-floor corridor.

The little boy's face was as frighteningly pale as his hair.

This must be Yang Feng's child...

When Li Zhen reached the center of the "courtyard", a mineral water bottle suddenly rolled in front of him.

Looking in the direction the mineral water bottle had come from, Li Zhen saw a middle-aged man with gray hair standing behind the wall.

The man wore small glasses, a robe that looked like pajamas, shorts, and slippers. He held a spatula in his right hand and his left hand hanging at his side. He was looking at the vampire next to Li Zhen with a serious expression.

The man's brows were furrowed, forming several deep furrows between his eyebrows. There was no smile on his face, and he was clearly a serious person.

Seeing the man's somewhat familiar face, Li Zhen was certain that this was the world of "Zombie Rebirth in Seven Days".

The person opposite should be Chen You, one of the main characters in "Zombie," who now makes a living by frying glutinous rice.

Grains of white glutinous rice fell from Chen You's left hand, which was hanging to his side, and rolled down to his side.

After a long while, he shifted his gaze to Li Zhen, the only one still showing signs of life. He focused on the yellow cloth wrapped around Li Zhen's neck, then looked at Li Zhen's face and said, "Come and have a chat?"

Seeing Li Zhen walking towards him, Chen You turned around and went back behind the wall.

Once out of Li Zhen's sight, he looked at his trembling hands and his expression became even more grave.

The glutinous rice trembled from his shaking hands, but was eventually caught in his palm by his slowly closing fingers.

In this day and age, finding a zombie is harder than climbing to heaven.

He had hardly ever seen a zombie since he could remember, so all the skills he had learned were naturally useless. The glutinous rice that was originally meant to fight zombies could only be used to make fried glutinous rice.

But just as he sat down at the stall and finished smoking a cigarette, he suddenly felt a chilling aura of death appear near him.

At first, he thought it was his own hallucination.

But when the peculiar stench of death wafted over from afar, Chen You finally realized that it wasn't his hallucination, but that a truly terrifying zombie was brazenly walking into the apartment in broad daylight.

Even before seeing the zombie, he had already sensed its terrifying corpse aura.

Having lived for decades, he had never seen such a terrifying zombie, and even in the books left by his predecessors, such a terrifying zombie was rarely mentioned.

Zombies are generally not active during the day, unless special circumstances occur.

Upon seeing the zombie and Li Zhen standing in front of it, Chen You's heart sank.

This was the worst-case scenario he had envisioned. With his keen eyesight, he could immediately tell that Li Zhen exuded an aura of evil.

A sinister figure, accompanied by a blood-soaked zombie and an enigmatic creature whose nature he couldn't fathom, arrived at the apartment. His purpose was clearly no small matter.

If not handled properly, the death toll will not be limited to just one or two people.

His fried rice stall was set up against the wall, with several tables and chairs also arranged along the wall.

A bowl of fried rice is placed on a table, with four empty bowls and chopsticks placed in four different directions.

Chen You tapped on the table and said to the empty table and chairs, "Let's go first. I'll treat you to dinner tomorrow. I have guests coming today."

A young woman walked toward his stall. Chen You looked up at her and said, "I'm not feeling well today, so I'm not doing business. You can eat somewhere else."

The man didn't waste any time; he greeted them and turned to leave.

Li Zhen, who appeared next to the stall, watched the person leave with a thoughtful expression.

He could smell a strong Chinese medicine odor emanating from that person from afar.

Turning his head to look in another direction, Li Zhen saw several blurry figures leaving Chen You's stall.

His eyes were extremely sharp; he could tell at a glance that this family were all ghosts.

"Sit down." Chen You's voice drew Li Zhenda's attention back.

Li Zhen walked to the table where Chen You was sitting and sat down opposite him.

The vampire and the banshee stood on either side of Li Zhen's back.

As Li Zhen approached, Chen You sensed an indescribable malice emanating from him.

The evil thought was so strong, like countless tangible needles piercing his skin, making him feel extremely uncomfortable.

The figure sitting before him didn't seem like a human being, but rather like a demon radiating pure malice...

Even more vigilant, Chen You tensed up, suppressing his discomfort and instinct to back away. He poured Li Zhen a glass of water and said casually, "Zombies are full of yin energy. If you stay with zombies for a long time, the living will also be tainted by yin energy, which will shorten your lifespan."

"The practice of refining corpses is inherently a bad thing and also damages one's karma. If you do too much of this, you might not even be able to become a ghost."

His words clearly contained a veiled warning.

Without flinching, Li Zhen said directly, "What you should be concerned about right now is not the zombie I have with me, but the zombie that someone is creating in this apartment building behind you."

"Once that zombie is successfully created, many people will die inside."

Chen You's expression remained unchanged: "Someone's refining corpses here? Are you kidding me?"

Li Zhen gestured to the woman who had just left: "Have many of the people who have come here recently smelled of Chinese medicine? You may have noticed this, and you should find it strange."

"With your keen senses, you should have realized that something was wrong. You may have recorded the Chinese medicine smell that you detected in those odors."

"You just haven't realized it yet, and you haven't figured out the truth behind this matter yet."

Chen You lit a cigarette: "Do you know why those Chinese medicine smells are coming from?"

Li Zhen smiled and said, "You haven't been exposed to the smell of corpses for a long time, so your sense of smell didn't detect the stench of corpses under the smell of Chinese medicine. If I told you that those clothes had a faint smell of corpses, would you believe me?"

Noticing the slight change in Chen You's expression, he continued, "As soon as you smelled those odors, you noticed that they all came from the stitches on the clothes. I also told you that it was to cover up the smell of corpses. You should have already guessed what happened."

Chen You's hand, which had picked up a cigarette, froze in mid-air. He looked at Li Zhen and asked, word by word, "Who exactly are you?"

Li Zhen shook his head: "Who I am is not important. What is important is that there is someone who has not appeared for a long time."

"If I told you that person had been turned into a zombie, would you believe me?"

By observing Chen You's changing expression, Li Zhen had already deduced where the plot had progressed.

The plot of "Zombie" is not complicated.

In one main storyline, washed-up actor Chin Siu-ho, frustrated by both his career and family life, moves into apartment 2442, a haunted house, with the intention of committing suicide.

A terrible murder once occurred in this house. A teacher came to tutor twin students and assaulted them, causing their deaths and turning them into vengeful ghosts.

As he was dying, Chin Siu-ho saw twin vengeful ghosts who intended to possess him.

At a critical moment, Chen You saved Qian Xiaohao and expelled the evil spirit that was possessing him.

The crazy woman Li Zhen just saw was the teacher's wife, who went insane after being traumatized.

The other storyline focuses on the life-extending efforts of the evil sorcerer Ajiu.

The person was suffering from a terminal illness, so he raised a ghost child and used evil magic to supplement yang with yin to prolong his life.

As his illness worsened, ordinary ghosts were no longer enough to prolong his life. So he set his sights on the twin vengeful ghosts, intending to create a zombie as a vessel to house them and continue using the Yin-Yang balancing technique to prolong his own life.

So he set his sights on Ah Dong, an elderly man living in the apartment.

This person first had a little devil kill Ah Dong, and then bewitched Ah Dong's wife, Aunt Mei, to use evil magic to turn Ah Dong into a zombie.

Following Ah Jiu's instructions, Aunt Mei, who had a deep affection for Ah Dong, chose a yin location, used crow blood and placed the body in a camphor wood coffin suspended in the air, and put a copper coin mask on the body so that it could absorb yin energy and wait for the soul to return in seven days.

In a near-miss, she followed Ajiu's advice and fed the son of the madwoman Yang Feng to Adong, who was about to become a zombie, thus turning Adong into a zombie.

The zombie itself wasn't that scary; what was scary was Ah Jiu's mistake, which caused the twin vengeful ghosts, who had souls but no spirits, to combine with the zombie, which had spirits but no souls, greatly increasing the zombie's ferocity.

Ah-Giu herself died at the hands of the zombies.

In the end, Chen You and Qian Xiaohao joined forces to kill the zombie.

Yang Feng and her son are still alive, Chen You is unaware that A Jiu is creating zombies, and the guests here are smelling of corpses again. This means that the plot should have progressed to the point where Aunt Mei is about to be created into a zombie.

Ah Dong in this state is actually not scary.

However, Li Zhen was unaware that his arrival might have triggered some chain reactions.

More importantly, there are ghost messengers lurking here, so Detective Li is extra careful.

Of course, he came not only to prevent the zombies from being created and to stop Yang Feng and her son from being killed, but also to increase his own resources to cope with the calamity.

After hearing Li Zhen's words, Chen You did not completely believe them, but he realized that things were not going well.

Detective Li was right.

Starting yesterday, Chen You noticed that everyone whose clothes were mended by Aunt Mei had a smell of Chinese medicine on them.

He realized something was wrong, so he used his sense of smell to identify the Chinese medicines that smelled, and secretly wrote them down on a piece of paper, trying to figure out what Aunt Mei was doing with those medicines.

Aunt Mei's boss, Ah Dong, hasn't appeared for quite some time...

Li Zhen's words are very logical.

If that's really the case, then things are in a very bad situation.

Chen You took a drag of his cigarette and asked in a deep voice, "Who are you? What do you want from telling me all this?"

(End of this chapter)