After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Zhou Ran looked down at his feet.

Another heartbeat echoed from beneath Jiangcheng.

thump.

It was pressed even lower and more solid than the previous two times.

Cement fragments fell from the top of the bridge arch.

In the distance, the lights of thousands of homes in the city dimmed simultaneously, and the streetlights on several main roads flickered on and off for a few moments before stabilizing.

The remains swallowed another breath of yang energy.

The fire in Zhou Ran's eyes subsided.

We can't delay any longer.

If any of the three deductions Bai Xuan mentioned earlier come true, Jiangcheng will not be able to withstand it.

Staying in the manor, all we can do is wait for that thing to devour the entire city piece by piece.

He knows too little about the wreckage underground.

Remains of an ancient powerful being?

Is this a hidden chess piece buried in the underworld for thousands of years?

Dirty things that fell to Earth from the Void Realm?

The answers are below.

We have to go down.

Zhou Ran flicked out a spark of Asura Demon Fire with his finger.

The black and gold flames landed on Su Xiaoxiao's body, burrowing into her torn flesh.

Su Xiaoxiao opened her mouth, but no sound came out of her throat.

She knelt in the sewage, staring intently at Zhou Ran with her grayish-white eyes, the resentment in them still lingering.

The white robe turned to ash first.

The skin and flesh then collapsed.

The bones were burned to powder.

In the end, only a pair of gray-white eyes remained, hanging in the black and gray, still staring at him.

Just as the demonic fire was about to devour the eyes, a thin, almost invisible gray line emerged from the ground.

The gray thread wrapped around Su Xiaoxiao's tattered soul and pulled her downwards.

Zhou Ran squinted and plunged his Zanpakuto into the ground.

The black and gold blade energy sliced ​​down along the mud layer.

The gray line is broken in half.

The remaining half, still dragging Su Xiaoxiao's last bit of resentment, burrowed deep into the earth's veins.

Zhou Ran didn't chase after him; he simply raised his hand and pressed down.

A black and gold brand was driven into the broken thread.

That line connects to the underground ruins, and also to the underworld.

This remnant soul may escape, but the temple behind it cannot.

Let's remember this debt between the Black and White Impermanence.

In the sewage, only a clump of ash remained.

Zhou Ran put away the Grand Commander's jade token, turned around and walked out of the bridge arch.

The black-gold baby dragon landed back on his shoulder and lowered its throat toward the ground.

Beneath the surface of Jiangcheng, the heartbeats grew even faster.

a bit.

a bit.

Each strike was consuming the vital energy of the living people in Jiangcheng.

Zhou Ran took out his phone.

"Qin San, guard the manor well."

Qin San answered the phone very quickly.

"Boss, where are you going?"

Zhou Ran looked up and gazed in the direction of the old house in the south of the city.

There is a dry well there.

There is a reflection in the River of Oblivion.

There is a gate leading to the underworld.

"Go to the underworld."

Qin San paused for a moment.

Zhou Ran had already taken a step.

……

The underworld.

The Third Hall.

Three bone oil lamps hang above the main hall.

The wick was made of white bone, about the thickness of a thumb.

The lamp oil was taken from the last tear shed by the deceased before death.

The pale green firelight shone down, making the black iron pillars in the hall gleam with a bluish rust.

Emperor Song sat in the main seat.

The purple and gold crown robe pressed down on his shoulders.

Three lines of cinnabar on his face.

The person sat there, so exquisitely detailed that they seemed almost lifeless.

The King of Hell should not have any human presence.

There was another person sitting opposite him.

The First Court of Hell.

King Qin Guang.

King Qin Guang looked younger, wearing a worn-out gray robe, and holding a bowl of the Soup of Oblivion in his hand.

The soup noodles were still steaming.

A white paper flower was pasted on the rim of the bowl.

That was something the little imp on duty outside the hall casually stuck there.

"Third brother."

King Qin Guang put down his bowl.

"The situation is getting worse and worse."

Emperor Song looked at the wall behind him.

A stone tablet hangs on the wall.

The stone tablet is inscribed with eighteen laws of Yin.

Black liquid was seeping out from every single word.

King Qin Guang tapped the table with his finger.

"The Fifth Court has rebelled."

"The people in the Seventh Hall stopped accepting permits last month."

How many soldiers do you have left?

The Song emperor's voice was suppressed in his throat.

"There are still three thousand Yin soldiers left."

"Less than 800 are available to fight."

King Qin Guang frowned.

"Where is the Night Wanderer?"

Emperor Song did not answer immediately.

A cold wind swept through the hall, and a few pieces of paper money slipped in through the crack in the door, only to be licked to ash by the bone oil lamp.

"Those hooligans of the Night Wanderers will follow whoever pays them."

"Last month, the rebels gave us 50,000 catties of ghost money and performed 100,000 merits in the underworld."

"They're too lazy to even patrol at night anymore."

King Qin Guang's noodles were even uglier.

Emperor Song picked up the teacup in front of him.

The bowl doesn't contain tea, but rather clear water from the upper reaches of the River of Oblivion.

In the ten courts of the underworld, only Yama, the King of Hell, can drink that layer of clean water.

"No rush."

Emperor Song looked at the bowl of noodles.

"I asked for a knife."

As soon as he finished speaking, the three bone oil lamps in the hall flickered simultaneously.

The flame turned from a ghastly green to white, then was pulled back to ghastly green by the wick.

The two looked up at the same time.

The dome of the third hall is painted with a diagram of the six realms of reincarnation.

The Way of the Ghosts.

Beast way.

The realm of hungry ghosts.

The Asura Path.

Strands of underworld stars hung outside the picture.

Now, all those stars are trembling.

thump.

Another heartbeat subsided.

This sound came from above the dome, passed through the nine layers of the underground palace, traversed the entire underworld, and finally landed in the third hall.

"woke up."

The Song emperor rose too hastily, causing the jade pendant on his ceremonial robe to clang coldly.

He walked to the entrance of the hall and pushed open the two bronze doors, each three zhang high.

Outside the gate is the third palace tower.

The road to the underworld is paved below the city gate.

Blood-red spider lilies bloom along both sides of the road, stretching all the way to the end.

All the spider lilies were leaning in the same direction.

Upwards.

That's the world of the living.

Emperor Song stood in front of the city gate tower, lowering his voice.

"Qin Guang".

"The boundary between Yin and Yang is being pushed apart by that thing."

"Within three days, the boundary wall will crack open beneath that city in the mortal realm."

King Qin Guang floated to his side.

The two stood side by side, looking towards the end of the road to the underworld.

That place is the Gates of Hell, the River of Oblivion.

Souls descending from the mortal realm first pass through the Gate of Hell, then enter the First Hall for verification, and finally travel via the River of Oblivion to the Gate of Helplessness...

When the Gate of Ghosts and the River of Oblivion were thrown into chaos, the First Hall was destroyed.

With the First Hall broken, the order of the Underworld became a mere formality.

Right now, that great river that separates life and death is shining.

The river, which is usually gray and black, now has a sickly murky white surface.

Bubbles were rising from the bottom of the river, one layer after another.

Something is banging on the door underwater.

The bowl in King Qin Guang's hand shattered with a crack.

The soup seeped into the gaps between his fingers along the crack.

Emperor Song spoke.

"Sealing off the river."

King Qin Guang's eyelids twitched.

"Frozen the river is no small matter."

"With the River of Oblivion sealed, the souls of the dead in the mortal realm cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation."

"They will remain in the human world."

"The resentment is piling up."

Emperor Song turned his head and looked at King Qin Guang.

A dark brown eyeball was visible through the cracks in the vermilion mask.

"Once that thing fully awakens, it's not just the River of Oblivion that cracks open."

"The entire boundary between Yin and Yang will break."

"By then, there won't be just a few hundred souls left in the human world."

"It's thirty million from the cities of the mortal realm."

King Qin Guang shut his mouth.

After a while, he turned and looked at a corner of the hall.

"Meng Po".

In the shadows of the corner, someone moved.

An old woman with a hunchback came out.

A dusty linen coat dragged across the floor tiles, and a chipped porcelain bowl was held in his left hand.

The bowl contained half a bowl of yellowish-brown soup.

Meng Po.

She should have been guarding the Bridge of Helplessness.

That is the very end of the cycle of reincarnation.

But the River of Oblivion never truly recognizes the King of Hell's approval.

It wasn't a ghost messenger's iron chain either.

It is not a ferryman's boat either.

It only recognizes the bowl in Meng Po's hand.

Meng Po walked through the bronze gate.

The rust on the door peeled off on its own.

The muddy water that had seeped from the cracks in the floor tiles also receded.

The guards outside the hall all bowed their heads.

Neither the Song Emperor nor the King of Qin Guang urged them.

King Qin Guang lowered his voice considerably.

"Mother-in-law, only you can do the job of sealing off the river."

Meng Po, holding the bowl, slightly lifted her eyelids.

"I heard you."

Emperor Song asked:

"How long can the lockdown last?"

Meng Po did not answer immediately.

She walked to the edge of the city gate and stared at the layer of murky white light in the River of Oblivion.

Meng Po's noodles sank.

She stared at the river, her voice cold.

"Someone alive has arrived; someone is pulling on the door from the bottom of the river."