Cursed Mountains and Seas

Chapter 367 The Remnant People Weep Blood: Submitting Petitions and Burning the King's Petition (Important Setting)

Luzon Island, Manila.

A terrifying stench of corpses lingered in the Dalun Mountains.

A young man dressed in a tattered long gown, his face haggard and sorrowful, was carrying a little girl who looked to be only four or five years old. He was walking through the muddy forest, which had just been rained on.

In his free hand, he held a peach wood compass with mottled cinnabar, a strand of hair tied to the pointer, as if he were casting a spell to find someone.

"Dad, I miss Mom."

The little girl nestled in his arms looked up and whispered her longing for her mother, biting her lower lip hard to hold back her tears.

But it was precisely this understanding of her daughter that made Ye Zhao feel particularly bitter and guilty. She gently patted her back and comforted her tenderly:
"My dear, we'll find her soon. Daddy will find your mother very soon."

Just a glance at the pointer of the peach wood compass in his hand sent a huge shadow over his heart.

The people of China entered Southeast Asia much earlier than the Eastern and Western French, whose earliest colonists landed here only forty years ago.

As early as the Song Dynasty, there were already many settlements of immigrants from China in Luzon, Java, and Borneo. Most of their ancestors were from Minzhou and Yuezhou.

Although the Ye family did not start that early, they have settled in Manila for three generations and continue to carry on the culture and customs of China.

He himself was a sixth-rank official in the local government, known as a "Yin Songshi" (a court official), and enjoyed considerable prestige among the overseas Chinese communities in the nearby islands.

The spiritual power of this official position is called "Tong You" (通幽), which allows the deceased to speak and seek justice for their spirits.

As long as you seek justice for the ghost, you can gain some of the victim's abilities from their previous life, and even receive the power of the ghost that the victim has transformed into, since there is no underworld to go to in this world anyway.

However, the massacre launched by the Franks came unexpectedly, and the family of three was accidentally separated.

Ye Zhao was able to escape into the deep mountains with his young daughter thanks to his power as a sixth-rank official. He hid there for a month, waiting for the storm to pass before daring to come out.

Fortunately, this is a tropical area, so even October nights are not cold.

Otherwise, the father and daughter, who were relatively well-off, would have died of cold and hunger long ago after living as wild people for a month because they couldn't find food.

A few days ago, when he and his daughter left the deep mountains to use his unique skill of "seeking the way through the underworld" to find his lost wife, an unexpected incident occurred.

The compass was used to cast a spell through a strand of the wife's hair, so the solution should be to see the person alive or dead.

However, the "Seeking the Way" method ultimately led him to several incorrect locations.

Each time I arrived at the destination, I found nothing. The area spanned several mountain peaks, and sometimes it even showed that the "wife" was moving at high speed.

Although Ye Zhao hadn't handled many missing person cases, this situation had never occurred before, making him deeply doubt his own skills.

"This skill has helped me solve several major cases before, so why can't I find Wanhui this time?"

If it is said that his wife is not dead, then the several attempts to consult spirit mediums by ghosts will all be extremely ominous; if it is said that his wife is dead, then no matter what he does, he cannot summon her spirit or find her body.

After missing their target countless times, the compass changed direction again, guiding them into a valley where the river water still shimmered with a suspicious dark red hue.

Finally, it stopped next to a pale white skull half-buried in the mud and sand by the river.

"Wanhui!"

Ye Zhao's heart skipped a beat. Even though she had expected it, she still felt a sharp pain in her heart that made it hard to breathe.

Seeing the horrific marks on his skull was especially devastating for him.

There was a bullet hole in the center of her forehead, indicating that she died from a close-range execution by gunshot; otherwise, the bullet hole from the matchlock gun would not have been so precise.

At this point, there was no flesh or blood on the bones, but even the inside of the skull was covered with marks from sharp bird beaks pecking at it, proving the tragic treatment its owner had suffered after death.

At this moment, its empty eye sockets stared at the sky, its jaw wide open, as if it was still accusing the heavens of injustice.

"father?"

The youngest daughter felt her father's body trembling violently and tried to turn her head to look, but Ye Zhao covered her eyes.

"Nannan, don't look!"

His voice trembled slightly, a tremor he couldn't hide, a tremor of pain, hatred, and regret.

Sensing something amiss, the little girl's shoulders trembled. She first sobbed softly, then couldn't help but burst into tears in her father's arms.

"Mother—! Waaaaah...Mother...Mother."

Ye Zhao hugged her daughter's small body tightly, her eyes red and her teeth grinding together.

He saw his wife, who was now just a skull, and other skeletons buried in the silt in the riverbed, human tendons and hair hanging from the trees, and the emblems and banners of St. Francis, one of the patron saints of the Papacy, everywhere nearby.

This third-rank Yin Litigation Master immediately understood the root cause of all the anomalies when he was looking for the person earlier.

His wife, Wan Hui, had obviously been shot and killed upstream in the valley, and her flesh and blood were then devoured by a flock of carrion birds summoned by the Holy Emblem.

Her soul was completely shattered by this vicious Western ritual, and she was utterly destroyed.

The Francois also feared that this massive massacre would create a terrifying evil spirit that would return to seek revenge.

Ye Zhao's [Seeking the Way] went without any problems. The reason she missed every time before was because "Wan Hui," who was closer to the compass, was the piece of flesh and blood that was being pecked and swallowed by carrion birds!
It wasn't until after the rain that her and many of her clansmen's mutilated remains were washed into the river and stranded on the riverbed downstream.

"Red-haired devil! Ah—!!!"

Overwhelmed with hatred and grief, Ye Zhao's eye ruptured, and two lines of bloody tears streamed down her face.

If his wife, Wan Hui, had simply died.

He also had the ability to use his official position to keep his wife, who had turned into a ghost, by his side.

Although ordinary people lose their reason and memory after death, leaving only their strongest obsessions, they still retain a lingering thought. Moreover, many local shamans in Southeast Asia believe in animism and possess various strange and mysterious magical arts.

In the future, if the opportunity arises, one may be able to worship one's wife as a guardian spirit with her own personality, or even as a local deity.

Now that his soul has been forcibly separated by the Franks, even if living ghosts and gods came here, there would be no hope.

Just by looking at the fate of his wife Wan Hui and the piles of white bones that almost blocked the river, one can imagine what would have become of his relatives and neighbors from childhood.

At this moment, only one thing remained in Ye Zhao's mind:

"revenge--!!!"

I will give my all to make those red-haired devils pay a terrible price.

This [Yin Litigator] seemed like a lone wolf on the verge of death, letting out a mournful howl from the depths of his heart:

"I'm going to kill you scum! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood!"

Unfortunately, the tears of the weak are meaningless.

A lone sixth-rank Shinto official might be able to handle scattered patrols, but he could never shake the Francois' entire Manila colony.

Killing a few soldiers is meaningless and insignificant to the high-ranking officers hiding in the bastion.

Ye Zhao placed her daughter, who had cried herself unconscious, under a large tree by the river. A ghost automatically appeared behind her to watch over her.

He then took out his Qiankun bag and took out a wolf-hair brush, a piece of green vine paper, a bronze incense burner, and so on, setting up a solemn altar.

Then, the talisman and talisman of the Ye family lineage, the Yin Songshi, and the treasure of the state, the Yin Si Chaotian Hu, were placed on it.

This treasure embodies the deep-seated wish that "if good and evil go unpunished, then Heaven and Earth must be biased," and encapsulates the simple ethical view that people, after suffering injustice in the world, yearn for Heaven to have eyes and to judge after death.

These so-called "underworld lawyers" have always believed that the underworld once existed.

The story passed down from master to disciple tells us that this world was not always like it is today, a mixture of Yin and Yang.

It was because of the great upheaval that occurred during the pre-Qin period that the underworld disappeared, causing this world to become what it is today.

The special skill of the Emperor's tablet was called "Delivering the petition from the underworld and burning the royal proclamation"!
When initiated by the Underworld Lawyer, one can use a petition to file a complaint against injustices in the human world with the Underworld Emperor who governs the underworld, so that the Underworld Officials can uphold justice.

The secret Taoist texts say: "As long as one upholds justice and does not act for personal gain, even a seventh-rank Yin lawyer can persuade the Yin official to uphold justice in the mortal world."

Unfortunately, although ancestors throughout history have tried, perhaps because the underworld is elusive, even if this amazing skill is successfully activated, they never receive any judgment from the underworld.

The only pattern discovered is that the closer one gets to the Great Wall of Curses, and the more chaotic the times when a dynasty is on the verge of collapse, the stronger its reaction becomes.

Moreover, starting from the Han Dynasty, the more time went on, the more active the imperial tablet became.

This gave the "Underworld Lawyers" a faint hope that the underworld might reappear.

“We, the overseas Chinese who have been abandoned by the Great Zhao, have really no other way out.”

The imperial court regards us as treacherous people, and the Shanhaihui is too busy to take care of itself. Besides praying that Heaven will have eyes, who else can we expect to give us justice?

Two thousand years have passed; it's time for the underworld to reappear!

Ye Zhao, as a victim, wrote the complaint with her own blood and tears, and then opened the altar to chant incantations:
"The divine king's pronouncements are heard without fail. He governs the six heavens above and the sources of the rivers below. The five sacred mountains and four great rivers swiftly distinguish good from evil. Countless millions come before me."

The petition was burned in front of the "Chaotianhu" (a type of official tablet), and watched as it disappeared into the air three feet above the head with the rising smoke.

Then he knelt down with a thud.

Bang bang bang.
He kowtowed on the bluestone slab until his head was covered in blood, and prayed:
"May the King of the Underworld have mercy and uphold justice for the expatriates in Manila!"

"May the King of the Underworld have mercy and uphold justice for the expatriates in Manila."

I don't know how many times I banged my head, until I was dizzy and my face was covered in blood, looking utterly miserable.

But this "submitting the petition to the underworld and burning the king's proclamation" was just like any other time before. Apart from causing the wind to howl in the forest and the chains to rattle loudly, it did not receive any response from the underworld officials.

Ye Zhao had cried all her tears and blood. Witnessing this scene, the last bit of her willpower that had been supporting her suddenly vanished, leaving her face ashen.
"It's no use, it's still no use!"
Is there truly no justice in this world?

at this time.

Suddenly, a sharp whistle reached his ears. A giant axe, like a wheel, suddenly came from the upper reaches of the valley and viciously slashed at Ye Zhao, who was lying on the ground, determined to cut him in two at the waist.

The dazed lawyer hadn't yet reacted.

Suddenly, five ghosts of different ages and genders appeared behind him, stirring up a gust of yin wind and using the "Little Ghosts Carrying a Sedan Chair" technique to instantly roll him three zhang away.

They narrowly escaped the fatal blow.

The giant axe continued forward, easily severing several large trees behind him, before automatically flying back into the hands of a giant wearing an ivory ornament around his neck.

Ye Zhao looked up and his expression changed drastically.

But he saw that a Franco Marine officer, leading a squad of musketeers and a group of local aborigines, had already surrounded him from all sides.

The Franco officer, with a mocking expression like a cat toying with a mouse, smiled at his men and said:

“I knew that the people of Dazhao have a tradition of collecting the remains of their relatives and burying them in peace.”

After slaughtering their entire clan, as long as they guard these exposed remains, they will surely reap rewards.

Look, we've been staking out this place for a month, and sure enough, we've caught over a hundred fish that slipped through the net. This time, we've also caught a mid-level official.

They all came looking for the remains of their relatives, each one walking right into a trap. They're incredibly stupid, hahaha!

(End of this chapter)