Ghost Immortal

Feng stopped and sized up his opponent.

The moonlight was too dim last night, so I couldn't see the details clearly.

Looking at it now, I realize that the other person's face was very pale, and their hair was casually tied up with a bamboo hairpin.

The only incongruous thing was that his lips were tightly pursed, as if he were enduring pain.

When Yan Songde saw Li Feng enter, he didn't get up, but simply pointed to the chair opposite him, indicating that he should sit down.

"Attorney Yan, was it you who left me the note last night?" Li Feng asked directly without sitting down.

Yan Songde nodded.

"You asked me to ask you about the source of this dark aura; can you tell me now?"

Yan Songde nodded again, then opened his mouth.

The moment Li Feng saw what was in his mouth, a chill ran from his tailbone straight to the back of his head.

There was no tongue in Yan Songde's mouth.

The tongue was pulled out by the roots!

The wound wasn't cut or severed with a knife; it was torn off.

The jagged wound extends from the base of the tongue all the way to the depths of the throat, with the muscle tissue at the cut turned outwards.

It has an abnormal grayish-white color, as if it was forcibly twisted off!

Even more strangely, the wound did not bleed.

The blood vessels and muscle tissue on the cut surface were necrotic, covered with a thin layer of grayish-white mucous membrane, and emitted a faint fishy and sweet smell.

It smells exactly like the black aura.

Yan Songde shut his mouth, picked up the brush on the table, wrote on the blank petition paper, and pushed it in front of Li Feng.

The handwriting was neat and tidy, exactly the same as the tiny characters on the note.

"I can no longer speak; my tongue was removed seven days ago."

Li Feng asked in a low voice, "Who did it? Why didn't they report it to the authorities?"

Yan Songde continued writing: "I don't know who he is. That night, I was organizing case files when I heard a knock on the door. I went to open it and found no one outside, only a cloud of black mist. The black mist entered my mouth, froze my tongue, and then yanked it out forcefully!"

As he wrote this, his whole body trembled, even his hand holding the pen shook, and the pen tip poked a dot of ink on the paper.

"I fainted from the pain, and when I woke up it was already daylight, and my tongue was gone!"

Yan Songde wrote another line on the paper.

"I can't speak, but I can write down what I know. There are some things that someone has to know."

Li Feng said solemnly, "I am all ears!"

Yan Songde gave Li Feng a strange look. "What the hell are you talking about? Can I speak?"

This is like rubbing salt into a wound!

But his scholarly upbringing prevented him from arguing.

Spread out a new sheet of paper, dip it in ink, and start writing immediately.

He writes very quickly, his strokes flowing like dragons and snakes.

As he wrote, a conspiracy far darker than Li Feng had imagined immediately surfaced.

Yan Songde wrote: "The Phoenix Burial Ground does not bury ordinary female demons, but a descendant of the Phoenix bloodline at the peak of her transformation."

"Three hundred years ago, she married a Qi Refiner from Qingyan City. The couple lived in seclusion in the mountains outside the city. Later, the Qi Refiner failed to break through to the Foundation Establishment Realm and went into a state of demonic possession. In order to suppress his inner demons, he dug out his wife's demon core and swallowed it."

"With the demon core entering his body, his cultivation level soared, and his inner demons were forcibly suppressed. However, his Dao heart was completely distorted as a result. He dared not face the fact that he had killed his wife with his own hands, so he sealed his wife's body underground with burial soil and a demon-suppressing talisman array, and claimed to the outside world that his wife had died of illness."

"The triple suppression in the tomb was not to trap the female corpse, but to trap his own inner demons."

Li Feng was shocked when he saw this.

Humans are sometimes more terrifying than demons.

This version was completely different from the one he had heard from the Taoist priest with four eyebrows.

The Taoist priest with four eyebrows was talking about the deep love between husband and wife, and how the husband built a large tomb for his wife to express his grief.

Yan Songde, however, wrote about killing his wife to obtain the elixir and sealing the tomb to suppress the inner demons.

The former is a tragedy, the latter is a sin.

Yan Songde continued writing: "Three hundred years have passed, and the resentment of the female corpse has not dissipated. It has grown stronger day by day in the tomb. The source of the dark aura is an evil thought that her husband transformed into after his death."

"The evil thought attached itself to the magical artifact he possessed during his lifetime, which was buried deep in the mountains. Several months ago, someone found the artifact and awakened the evil thought. The evil thought absorbed the remnants of demonic beasts scattered in the mountains to strengthen itself."

"The dark aura is the impurities expelled during the growth of evil thoughts, flowing along the underground dark river in the mountain's belly towards Qingyan City."

"The person who awakened the evil thoughts, the person who released the female corpse, the person who sold the tomb map to the tomb raiders, and the person who pulled out my tongue—it's all the same person. I don't know his real name; I only know that others call him 'Gu Zhenren' (Master Gu)."

"He is a Gu cultivator from the Southern Frontier, skilled in using Gu worms to control the dead and the living. The Black Omen Qi is an excellent material for him to raise Gu worms. He wants to use the Black Omen Qi to cultivate a Gu worm called the Sun-Devouring Gu."

"This kind of Gu worm feeds on Yang energy. After entering the body, it can instantly drain the Yang energy in a living person, making them look like they have frozen to death. The self-immolation case is caused by another kind of Gu worm, the Yin-burning Gu, which specifically absorbs Yin energy. When the Yin energy is drained, the Yang energy in the body loses its balance, and the person will self-immolate."

"The reason why Zhao Laosan was able to walk around the city for ten days after his death was also due to the work of Gu Zhenren."

"He implanted the walking corpse worm into Zhao Laosan's body to test the worm's control effect on the human body. Zhao Laosan went to Yihonglou to drink and have fun every day because the worm needed alcohol to maintain its activity. After ten days, the worm died from exhaustion, and Zhao Laosan's body returned to its original state."

Li Feng became increasingly alarmed as he looked at the document.

If what Yan Songde wrote is true, then this Gu Master is not only creating black miasma, but also conducting Gu worm experiments on living people in the city.

The middle-aged man who set himself on fire and the water seller who froze to death were both his victims.

The only thing these people had in common was that they all lived near the north of the city and had all drunk groundwater polluted by the black miasma!

But what Yan Songde said next shocked Li Feng even more.

"Master Gu is not alone. He has accomplices in Qingyan City, and these accomplices are of high status. The clues I have found indicate that his accomplices are hidden among the wealthy merchants and gentry in the city."

"These people secretly provided Gu Zhenren with funds and protection on the condition that after Gu Zhenren succeeded, he would give them a portion of Gu worms to control his competitors and court officials."

"The reason I had my tongue pulled out was because I found out the identity of one of my accomplices: Wu Youde, the owner of Renhetang Pawnshop in the west of the city."

"Wu Youde is ostensibly a pawnshop owner, but secretly he is the biggest loan shark in Qingyan City. He has driven many people to their deaths with his high-interest loans, and then secretly sold their corpses to Gu Zhenren as feed for raising Gu."

"Zhao Laosan's Moon Soul Key was leaked from a secret compartment in Renhetang. I have obtained Wu Youde's account book, which records all his transactions of selling corpses to Gu Zhenren. The account book is hidden in the bookshelf compartment in the backyard of my shop."

Yan Songde folded the handkerchief and placed it on the corner of the table, then continued writing: "The Gu worms have begun to erode my internal organs, and I will die soon."

"You must get the ledger, and you must capture Wu Youde. If the root of the evil energy is not eliminated, Gu Zhenren will turn the entire Qingyan City into his Gu breeding ground sooner or later."

As soon as he finished writing, his eyes immediately went vacant, as if he had been drained of his life force by a ghost, and he collapsed in front of Li Feng with a withered face.

died.