Full-Time Magister: What kind of demonic tree is this? It's clearly a sacred tree!

Chapter 66 The Vanished Yangyang Village

As dusk falls, in this season of long nights and short days, it's estimated that the sun and moon will take over their duties around 5 a.m.

Mo Fan and Zhang Chen had at least seen the dead before, but the deathly silence before nightfall was enough to make them uneasy.

With such a vast land, how can you be sure you haven't stepped onto the territory of a large group of dead souls? That's why you have to pay for a guide to come here. If you come here on your own, the grass on your grave will probably be two meters high by next year.

"Here, eat this." The burly man pulled out a gray, garlic-like thing from the package on his back.

This person was strong and robust, but should be an ordinary person, as he had no magical aura and seemed to lack the vitality of an ordinary person.

This gray thing looks a bit like a sweet potato, and a bit like a large garlic clove.

After taking it, Zhang Chen asked, "What is this?"

"Gray garlic! It's used to mask the life force of the living; with it, the dead won't attack us," the short man explained. "It tastes awful!" Mo Fan chewed it, the taste hitting his head, but he forced himself to swallow it down.

"Shh, listen." The short man's face was solemn as he gestured for everyone to be quiet. Sure enough, while the sky was still hazy, the soil mixed with fine white sand underfoot began to loosen, and suddenly a skeletal arm stretched out.

"Eat the garlic quickly!" the short man hurriedly said to the crowd. The veiled woman and her two attendants did not hesitate and ate the unpalatable garlic in one bite.

Zhang Chen and He Yu also ate the gray garlic directly; the taste was indeed indescribable.

"Ugh! ————"

The sound of something filthy stuck in his throat suddenly came from the ground. Zhang Chen turned around and was shocked to find a head full of maggots sticking out, with drooping eyes and a drooping chin.

"Damn it!"

He instinctively kicked at the head, but instead of flying like a soccer ball, it shattered. The rotting brain matter almost splashed onto Zhang Chen, but luckily he had created a transparent barrier around the three of them before they set off.

The others weren't so lucky; they all got splashed with some water.

"Boy! What are you doing! You—" The two attendants behind the veiled woman and the short man immediately started cursing at Zhang Chen. The veiled woman also looked furious. Zhang Chen said awkwardly, "Sorry! Sorry! I got a little carried away."

Suddenly, a large patch of soil cracked open, revealing a huge tomb less than ten meters away from Zhang Chen.

The tomb must have been quite old; the stone bricks were rotten beyond recognition. Inside lay more than twenty half-corpses, half-skeletons, lying haphazardly. As if hearing the call from the fallen head, they suddenly crawled out of the tomb, their eyes bloodshot!

The skeletons' bones were blackened, indicating they were likely poisoned to death. Looking at the tools scattered around them, they were probably buried with some ancient general. Zhang Chen originally thought that twenty or so skeletons would be a lot, but who knew that there was another tomb below the burial site, from which skeletons kept emerging, each one covered in blood and incredibly ferocious!

Zhang Chen looked around and noticed a tomb like this, along with seven or eight short men. His gaze swept over the swarms of skeletons around them, and he said, "We'd better leave quickly. This must be the burial site of some high-ranking official; the number of funerary people and craftsmen is comparable to a king's funeral!"

"These skeletons are alright; we can handle them if a fight breaks out. The real problem is that there might be some extremely powerful mages in the tomb who have turned into undead generals after death. That would be fatal."

"7

The grey garlic worked very well; the undead seemed to be invisible to them, wandering aimlessly.

Fine pebbles can always be seen everywhere in the Xianchi area. It is said that if they are nourished by death energy for a long time, they can become nutrients for the dead.

With the help of black garlic, the journey was quite safe. Zhang Chen noticed that many spirits were picking up some white fine sand that had absorbed the energy of the moon and the dead swamp, like gold being sifted from a great wave.

The earth spirits were some distance from the outer city walls; they were simply wandering aimlessly, searching for anything useful to their bodies, whether it was fine sand and bones or discarded remains chewed up by wild dogs.

"Since there's such a good way to ward off evil spirits, then the dead aren't as scary as we thought?" said one of the bearded followers of the woman in black stockings.

"Grey garlic is harder to find than gold. It can't be grown. It mostly grows in places teeming with spiritual energy, relying on the flesh of the dead for nourishment. Only the people of Weiju Village know how to harvest it, and the quantity is very limited every year. If my brother didn't have half Weiju Village blood, he wouldn't be able to get his hands on this stuff." The short man said with a smile, "Sheep Yang Village isn't far ahead. The night is still long, let's rest there for a while." The short man pointed to the small hill ahead.

"The village has rules, and you'd better follow them if you want to go in," the burly man reminded everyone.

Everyone nodded and said there was no problem.

They reached the hillside without incident and headed down, eager to see how a human village could survive unscathed in the land of the dead. However, below the hillside, between the mountain streams, and beneath the Qinling Mountains, all they saw was a pile of abandoned and messy logs; there was no village to be seen.

Looking in another direction, all you see is black soil, with nothing but a few pitted burrows!

"Are you playing us?" the bearded man said angrily.

"I—I don't know what happened either." The short man's face changed, and he turned his gaze to the muscular man.

The burly man's eyes were filled with astonishment, as if he couldn't believe it at all.

He started running frantically down the slope to that patch of messy wood where he couldn't even see a corner of thatched huts, let alone a village!

But the strong man acted like he had gone mad, showing no regard for the few undead that were still wandering around.

Zhang Chen casually smashed the undead, then carefully compared the map to the location and said, "That's not right! The map shows this is Yangyang Village! Why is there nothing here?"

From the burly man's distraught appearance, it was clear that the place was indeed Yangyang Village.

However, the entire village suddenly vanished.

If there were wooden stakes and walls, ruins of houses, and some scattered objects, that would prove that the village once existed. But there were only some scattered pieces of wood, and the rest was all black soil. There was nothing left.

They walked down the hillside together and found that this place, which used to be a village, had obvious signs of burning. There were piles of charcoal everywhere, and when the wind blew, a layer of dirty mist spread out.

"I didn't see many bodies, but there were signs of burning. I don't know what happened," the bearded man said to the veiled woman.

In fact, if something really happens, there's no way to detect it.

If a villager dies, he will most likely become a ghost, but the ghosts wandering in Yangyang Village were crushed by the cautious Zhang Chen from afar.

There were burnt ashes everywhere, and even if there were bloodstains, they were not visible.

"So what do we do now?"

'

"Another attendant of the veiled woman said."