Ghost Immortal

There weren't many people left in line. When it was his turn, the guard at the gate just glanced at him and waved him through without asking any questions.

There are too many people coming and going in Qingyan City every day, and a poorly dressed country boy like Li Feng is not worth a second glance.

After entering the city, Li Feng discovered that Qingyan City was much larger than he had imagined.

The streets are wide and paved with bluestone slabs, with two- or three-story wooden buildings on both sides, and all kinds of signs hanging under the eaves.

Fulai Inn, Jubaozhai, Baicaotang, Jinyu Tower...

The streets were bustling with people: wealthy merchants dressed in silk, pharmacists carrying medicine baskets, and wandering cultivators with swords at their waists.

Several scholars dressed in Confucian robes strolled through the city, waving folding fans.

But all this excitement vanished in an instant after darkness fell.

As soon as the sun set, the pedestrians on the street dispersed quickly, like the receding tide.

Shops closed their doors and boarded up their windows, and the lights shining through the windows went out one by one.

In less than the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the entire street became deserted, with only the sound of the wind blowing through the bluestone slabs and Li Feng's own footsteps remaining.

Li Feng sensed something was wrong.

Even in a small county town in my past life, there were still night markets and barbecue stalls after dark.

Qingyan City is the largest city in the surrounding hundreds of miles, so how come it looks like a dead city as soon as it gets dark?

He wandered along the deserted street for about fifteen minutes, intending to find an inn to stay at.

Suddenly, I heard hurried footsteps behind me.

"Bang...bang bang!"

Three clapper sounds were followed by an old man's shout.

"The weather is dry, so be careful with fire!"

"When it's late at night and everyone is asleep, close the doors and windows!"

"Lost and wandering spirits, retreat at once!"

Li Feng looked back and saw a hunched figure emerging from the street corner.

An old man, probably in his sixties.

He was wearing a long blue robe with a hemp rope tied around his waist and straw sandals on his feet.

He held a paper lantern in his left hand and a wooden clapper in his right.

The flame inside the lantern flickered in the night wind, casting his old face in shifting light.

The old man was horrified when he saw Li Feng standing in the middle of the street.

He rushed over in two strides, grabbed Li Feng's arm, and pulled him to the side of the road.

"Little brat, are you crazy?! Running around in the street in the dark!"

The old man looked terrified and dragged Li Feng to hide under the eaves of a closed shop on the side of the road.

After shining the lantern on Li Feng's face to see it clearly, his brows furrowed even more.

"You have a very baby face, you're not from Qingyan City, are you? Whose child are you? Where are your parents?"

Li Feng was a little confused by his series of questions.

But I answered truthfully: "I came down from the mountain and just entered the city. I have no parents and am looking for an inn to stay in."

"Looking for an inn?" The old man's eyes widened.

"Looking for an inn in the dark? Don't you know the rules of Qingyan City!"

Li Feng scratched his head: "What rules?"

The old man's lips twitched. He tucked the clapper into his waistband, freed his finger to point at the empty street, and began to lecture.

"No going out after dark, no turning off the lights when the door is open, no making a sound when the lights are off, and no opening the door if you make a sound. These are the ironclad rules of Qingyan City. Anyone who dares to break these rules will be nowhere to be found the next morning!"

Li Feng was taken aback: "Is it really that strange?"

"Strange?" The old man sneered, tapping the bluestone slab under his feet with his clapper.

"Little brat, do you think the walls of Qingyan City were built so high just to keep out thieves? The walls are meant to keep things from the outside in, but while they might keep out things from the outside, what about things inside the city?"

He lowered his voice and leaned close to Li Feng's ear: "Before Qingyan City was built, this place was called a mass grave. Over the centuries, countless dead people have been buried underground, and no one can say for sure."

"Once it gets dark, restless creatures come out to roam. Women and children have weaker yang energy, making them most susceptible to these things. You're just a little kid, wandering the streets in the middle of the night. Do you have a death wish?"

As Li Feng listened to the old man's words, he subconsciously activated his five senses.

Sure enough, he could sense a chilling aura slowly moving through the darkness on both sides of the street.

These auras were very faint, similar to the aura of the vengeful spirits within Gao Feng's body, but even thinner and more scattered, like a candle flickering in the wind, about to be extinguished at the slightest touch.

There really are unclean things in this city!

But Li Feng also noticed a detail.

The old man was standing in the darkness when he said this.

The flame inside the lantern was weak, but the chilling aura from the shadows did not approach the old man.

They seemed to fear the old man, or rather, they were afraid of what he was holding.

"Old man, you said that dirty things would appear after dark, so how dare you still come out to keep watch?"

Upon hearing this question, a hint of pride appeared on the old man's deeply lined face.

He straightened his hunched back, raised the paper lantern higher, and tapped it three times with the clapper.

"Bang...bang bang!"

The sound of the clapper carried far across the empty streets, and wherever the sound waves reached, the chilling aura retreated and was quickly dispelled.

"Baby, watch closely."

The old man handed the clapper to Li Feng; the clapper was carved from dark yellow hardwood.

Its surface was polished to a smooth, oily sheen, and the body of the scepter was covered with densely packed runes, outlined in dark red pigment, resembling congealed blood.

"This is a night watchman's clapper, an ancestral artifact passed down through seven generations. When the clapper sounds, all demons and monsters within a hundred paces must retreat."

The old man then pointed to the paper lantern in his hand.

"This is a guiding lamp. The lamp oil is mixed with the juice of lamp oil flowers and the blood from between the eyebrows of a child. The light it produces can illuminate invisible unclean things and guide the wandering ghosts entering the city to where they belong."

He then took a large copper bell from his waist and shook it a few times.

"Ring ring!"

The copper bell emitted a clear, tinkling sound.

"This is a requiem bell. If you encounter an unreasonable and vengeful ghost, shaking it three times will temporarily dispel its malevolence."

After showing the three items, the old man re-tied the copper bell.

"My family's night watchman skills have been passed down for seven generations. As long as I have these three ancestral items, I can escape unscathed, let alone ordinary wandering ghosts or even a great demon in human form."

Li Feng looked at the three items in the old man's hand and seemed to be deep in thought.

The runes on the clapper were somewhat similar to the exorcism talismans recorded in his tattered book, but they were more ancient and the strokes were more complex.

The aura emanating from the lantern was very similar to the spiritual energy fluctuations when a talisman was burning.

As for the copper bell, it vaguely resembles a Buddhist ritual implement, but it is not entirely the same.

Is this what the booklet refers to as the transmission of knowledge from the three religions and nine schools of thought?

The profession of night watchman should be considered the lowest of the low.

The booklet records the nine lowest classes:

First-rate witches, second-rate prostitutes, third-rate shamans, fourth-rate night watchmen, fifth-rate barbers, sixth-rate musicians, seventh-rate actors, eighth-rate beggars, and ninth-rate sugar sellers (sugar blowers, etc.).

Li Feng respectfully cupped his hands and said, "May I ask your honorable name, sir?"

The old man chuckled: "My surname is Zhang, and my given name is Geng. People in the city call me Zhang Gengtou, and some people call me Bangzi Zhang."

The old man patted Li Feng on the shoulder and said gently, "Kid, don't look for an inn tonight. Come with me. I have a small courtyard in the south of the city. It's a bit dilapidated, but at least it can shelter you from the wind and rain. It's better than you wandering around the streets and getting snatched away by some dirty thing."

Since Li Feng had nowhere to stay anyway, he nodded in agreement.

He knows too little about the world.

The old man with the bald head recorded a lot of things, mostly his observations and experiences as a corpse carrier, but he made almost no description of a large city like Qingyan City.

This Zhang Gengtou has spent most of his life working in Qingyan City, so he must know a lot of things that outsiders don't.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Zhang."

"Don't call me 'old man,' just call me Uncle Zhang."

The old man waved his hand, carried the lantern, and walked ahead, gesturing for him to catch up.

"Stay close to the old man. Although we have our ancestral treasures to protect us, the filthy things in this city are becoming increasingly unruly, especially in the last few months. Several strange things have happened."

Li Feng followed behind Zhang Gengtou, the two walking along the empty street.

After a short while, we turned into a dark alley.

The walls on both sides of the alley were covered with moss, and clumps of withered grass sprouted from the cracks in the stone slabs underfoot.

From deep within the alley, one could faintly hear a few cat meows, sharp and mournful, like the cries of a baby.

Zhang Gengtou ignored the cat's meows and kept walking, banging his clapper as he went.

The sound of the clapper echoed through the alley, each time it rang out, dispelling the invisible black mist ahead.

Li Feng followed behind, discreetly surveying his surroundings.

He could sense that something was crouching in the shadows on both sides of the alley.

Some resembled cats, some dogs, and others were curled-up human figures, but all were extremely blurry, as if molded from black mist.

They often crouch in corners, under eaves, and near dry wells.

Empty eyes followed the lantern's light, but dared not approach the area where the clapper sounded.

These things are not aggressive; they are more like low-level spirits formed from some kind of lingering yin energy in the city, not even vengeful spirits.

But there are a great many of them; there are no fewer than twenty squatting in this alley alone.

"Uncle Zhang, have there always been this many of these things in the city?"

Zhang Gengtou stopped and sighed heavily: "There weren't this many before. We used to occasionally encounter one or two after dark, and they would scatter after a few knocks on the clapper. But in the past few months, these things have become more and more numerous and denser. There are several alleys where even the old man doesn't dare to go in alone to keep watch."

Li Feng became alert, frowning slightly: "Has something happened?"

Zhang Gengtou gave a helpless, bitter smile: "Who knows? There are all sorts of rumors."

"Some say there's a great demon outside the city, disturbing the city's yin energy; others say there's an evil cultivator in the city crafting some kind of sinister magic weapon, attracting unclean things; still others say..."

He suddenly stopped and used his lantern to light the way ahead.

At the end of the alley is a small courtyard with blue bricks and gray tiles. Most of the black paint on the wooden door has peeled off, revealing the grayish-white wood underneath.

Yellowed talisman paper was pasted on the lintel, with crooked runes drawn on it in cinnabar. The edges of the paper were rolled up and trembled slightly in the night wind.

Zhang Gengtou took out a copper key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed open the wooden door.

The door hinges creaked jarringly, quite jarring in the quiet night.

"Come in."