Tianjin, starting with unorthodox methods to achieve immortality

Chen Mo said goodbye to the old lady and left; the night had completely fallen.

The fat man wanted him to stay at his grandmother's house, saying the guest room had already been prepared. However, he politely declined.

"I have to go now, see you in Jinshi."

The fat man paused for a moment, wanting to say something, but after glancing at Chen Mo's expression, he swallowed his words.

He may not be good at anything else, but he's exceptionally good at reading people and situations.

Chen Mo spoke these words casually, but his tone was very firm, clearly indicating that something was really wrong.

"Alright then." The fat man scratched his head. "Then, Uncle Chen, please be careful on your journey. Send me a telegram when you arrive in Jinshi."

Shen Yunjin stood on the threshold of the main hall and nodded slightly to him, "Take care, Mr. Chen."

......

The black lacquered wooden door closed behind him, the copper door knocker making a soft sound.

Chen Mo looked around and, instead of taking the main road, turned into a narrower alley.

After confirming that no one was around, he had an idea and put the suitcase in his hand into the storage space.

The facial muscles began to twitch, and within a few breaths, it transformed into the face of a strange middle-aged man.

After changing into a spare blue robe, Chen Mo walked out of the alley again.

The nights in Ganzhou are not as bustling as those in Tianjin.

The nights here are quiet.

The shops on the street had long since closed their doors, with only a few teahouses still lit by dim lights, their lanterns swaying gently in the night breeze.

He's going to the ghost market.

It's not that I absolutely have to go, it's just that I've accumulated a few things and haven't found a suitable opportunity to sell them.

In addition, I've used up most of the Yin Talisman Paper I have, so I need to replenish my stock.

Those kinds of talismans can't be bought in regular shops; you can only find them in ghost markets.

Unlike Jinshi, the ghost market in Ganzhou is not in the mortal realm.

Ordinary people only know that the ghost market is another name for the black market, and think that it is just a place where business is done secretly in the middle of the night.

But the real ghost markets in the Ganzhou area are actually located in the underworld.

To get in, you must first find the rift where yin and yang meet, and then go down using a specific method.

Ordinary people don't have this ability, nor can they find that door.

Even if you accidentally stumble upon it, you'll only find the place cold and damp, get lost after wandering around for a while, and eventually wander back to the world of the living in a daze.

When a living person enters the underworld, their yang energy will rapidly dissipate, causing them to fall seriously ill or even shorten their lifespan.

Fortunately, Chen Mo is no longer an ordinary person.

He was a cultivator in the late stage of Qi Refining. Although he was still one step away from Qi Condensation, he was already considered to have entered the threshold of cultivation in this world.

......

He stopped at the entrance of an alley and looked up at the sky.

The moon was mostly obscured by clouds, with only a thin sliver of moonlight filtering through.

The time is just right, midnight is approaching, yin and yang are alternating, it is the best time to open the rift.

Chen Mo took a copper coin out of his pocket.

This copper coin is not the kind of copper coin circulating in the market, but a genuine old coin.

Tianxi Tongbao, from the Northern Song Dynasty.

This coin circulated in the mortal world for nearly a thousand years. It was then deliberately soaked in sacred water and offered as a sacrifice in front of incense for forty-nine days. It has become a small ritual object, specifically used to locate the entrance to the underworld.

This was a gift from Fatty's maternal grandmother; otherwise, it wouldn't have been easy to buy one in such a hurry.

He clutched the copper coin and walked down an inconspicuous alley.

The alley narrowed as you walked, and the walls on both sides grew higher and higher.

A damp, musty smell gradually filled the air.

Chen Mo could feel the Yin energy intensifying.

After walking for about 15 minutes, the road ahead was blocked by a wall.

dead end.

He stood in front of the wall, placed the Tianxi Tongbao coin on the wall, and drew a line along the crack in the wall from top to bottom.

"open."

The wall seemed to come alive, gradually rippling, and then revealing an opening more than a meter high.

Chen Mo scanned the area with his divine sense and, finding no danger, stepped through the opening.

The moment I landed, it felt like I had stepped into another world.

It wasn't soil or stone slabs under my feet, but something slightly elastic, like stepping on the internal organs of some creature.

The road surface is dark red with fine lines, which really does resemble the surface of a tongue.

He didn't stop and kept walking forward.

The opening behind him closed silently, and the wall returned to its original state.

The road widened as we walked, and the space above us gradually opened up.

Chen Mo looked up and saw not the night sky of Ganzhou, but a hazy gray sky.

On that gray membrane, something could be vaguely seen wriggling.

There was a faint sandalwood scent in the air.

After walking for a while, a faint light appeared ahead.

It's getting brighter and brighter.

When Chen Mo emerged from the narrow path, the scene before him made him pause for a moment.

Above their heads, a huge red moon hung in the sky.

It's much closer than it appears from the ground.

So close that you could see the red moon covered with countless eyeballs.

Those eyes were densely distributed on the surface of the red moon, some as big as a human head, others only the size of a fingernail.

They open and close irregularly.

The red moonlight emanated from those eyes.

"Red Moon?"

Chen Mo looked up for a few moments, and his eyes inadvertently met those of one of the eyes.

A needle-like sensation immediately pierced through my brow.

Suddenly, images that didn't belong to him flooded his mind...

On the earth without sky, in the abyss without stars, in the pitch-black, boundless void, something enormous was slowly writhing.

Its body was longer than a mountain range and wider than an ocean; every breath it took caused the entire void to tremble...

The scene lasted only two or three seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

Chen Mo tried to look away, but his neck suddenly stiffened, and his eyeballs felt like they were being gripped from all sides, making it impossible for him to move them.

He could feel his pupils dilating, and an abnormal dark red ring starting to appear around the edge of his iris.

A strange itch spread from behind my eyeballs, as if countless tiny hairs were gently sweeping across my retina.

My eyes started to feel hot, and something under my skin was desperately trying to break through and come out.

Chen Mo bit his tongue hard, the sharp pain allowing him to regain a sliver of control over his body.

He quickly lowered his head and subconsciously raised his hand to touch the area below his eye socket, where his fingertips touched a tiny, slightly wriggling protrusion.

Beard.

Flesh-colored tentacles growing from the skin.

They emerged from the pores beneath his eyelids, each less than half a centimeter long, yet constantly wriggling, as if searching for something in the air.

Chen Mo's scalp tingled.

Without further hesitation, he immediately closed his eyes, calmed his mind, and activated the Yin energy within his body.

A cool, moonlit aura surged from the dantian, rapidly ascending along the meridians and flowing into the head.

Wherever the power of the moon passed, the burning sensation was gradually suppressed, and the heat around the eyes began to subside.

He dared not be careless, and concentrated the power of Yin around his eyes, covering the tiny tentacles that were growing.

After four or five breaths, the tiny tentacles began to fall off from the base, rustling down.

It fell onto the dark red ground and turned into black ash in the blink of an eye.

Chen Mo then dared to open his eyes, only to feel a severe soreness and swelling in his eye sockets.

He quickly took out a small bronze mirror from his storage space and looked at himself. There was still a faint red mark around his eyes, but his skin was smooth, without any whiskers or wounds.

He let out a long breath; the back of his clothes was soaked with cold sweat.

"Oh."

A snicker came from the side.

Chen Mo turned his head sharply, and the shadow beneath his feet trembled slightly.

Three steps away from him, an old man appeared out of nowhere.

The other person was hunched over, wearing a dirty gray long shirt, with sparse gray hair and a large bald patch on the top of his head, revealing a large area of ​​scalp covered with brown age spots.

"Ignorant of one's own limitations."

The old man spoke, a hint of schadenfreude in his voice, "A living person enters the underworld, and instead of walking properly, dares to look up at the red moon? They're tired of living, aren't they?"

Chen Mo didn't speak, his gaze quickly sweeping over the old man.

The old man looks like a normal person, but his shadow is wrong.

The shadow on the ground was not human-shaped, but a swirling mass of black mist, as if countless snakes were writhing and twisting within it.

The old man noticed Chen Mo's gaze, grinned, and revealed a set of uneven, yellow teeth.

"What are you looking at? If I wanted to harm you, you would have died three times over while you were rubbing your eyes."

Chen Mo cupped his hands in thanks to him: "Thank you for your guidance, sir. I am new here and do not know the proper etiquette."

"Don't you know the rules?"

The old man chuckled again, pulled a pipe from his sleeve, lit it with something, and took a couple of puffs. "You dare go to the underworld without knowing the rules? Which sect are you from? Didn't your master teach you that you're not allowed to look up at the sky in the underworld?"

Chen Mo's mind raced, and he honestly replied, "I am a rogue cultivator and have no master."

"A rogue cultivator?" The old man looked him up and down. "His qi is pure, he must be following an unorthodox path, but unfortunately he's a hothead."

He tapped his cigarette ash on the ground and pointed to the red moon overhead.

The crimson moon was still slowly rotating, its dense eyes opening and closing, casting a crimson glow that fell on the old man's fingers, creating a dark red halo.

"That thing is no longer the moon."

The old man's voice suddenly lowered.

"If I may be so bold as to ask," Chen Mo said, "what exactly is the origin of the Red Moon?"

The old man didn't answer immediately, but just puffed on his pipe for a while before slowly speaking.

"I don't know either. Those who do know are probably all dead, or have turned into..." He raised his chin and gestured towards the depths of the ghost market, "...turned into those things."

Chen Mo followed his gaze.

The stall owner closest to him, from a distance, looked like a hunched middle-aged man, wearing a tattered cotton-padded coat, squatting on the ground fiddling with something.

But upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that his face is not human at all.

The facial features are still there, but their positions are all messed up.

His eyes were on his forehead, his nose was crooked to his left cheek, and his mouth was split open to his ear. His whole face looked like a crumpled and unfolded piece of skin.

Even more bizarrely, seven or eight tendrils-like things protruded from under its neck, swaying slowly in the air. Each tendril had a small hand at its end, with five fingers and complete nails.

"They all did it because they saw the Red Moon?" Chen Mo withdrew his gaze and frowned.

"Whether you've seen it or not, it's there."

The old man tapped his pipe on the sole of his shoe. "If you stay in the underworld for too long, you'll be affected by it. Look at those who have turned into monsters; they're all old ghosts who have been down there for more than ten years."

"The light of the red moon will slowly change you. Today you'll grow a finger, tomorrow an extra eye, and the day after tomorrow your shadow will start to wander off on its own... Over time, you'll become completely inhuman."

He glanced at Chen Mo, his tone suddenly becoming more serious: "You were lucky just now. You only glanced at it, and you noticed it early enough to suppress it in time."

"If you look any longer, those tentacles won't just grow out from under your eyelids, they'll burrow out of your eyeballs. By then, it won't be enough to gouge your eyeballs out."

Chen Mo felt another chill run down his spine.

"Thank you for reminding me, sir; it saved my life."

Don't give me that.

The old man waved his hand, "I didn't save you; you saved yourself."

He gestured towards a man walking on three legs in a corner of the ghost market.

The person's head was tilted to one side, and there were three mouths on his neck. Each mouth was talking non-stop, but the words they spoke overlapped and contradicted each other, like a one-man show without an audience.

Chen Mo silently withdrew his gaze, took out a few silver dollars from his pocket, and handed them over.

"Old man, this is just a small token of my appreciation..."

"Put it away."

The old man waved his hand impatiently and pointed to a stall not far away.

"I have plenty of money. If you really want to thank me, go to that stall over there and buy me a bowl of tea."

The stall had a tattered cloth banner with two crookedly written words: "Tea Soup".

"The tea that woman sells can replenish the yang energy of the living and stabilize the spirit of the dead. My health has been a bit unstable lately, so I need to drink a bowl."

Chen Mo nodded and turned to walk towards the tea stall.

The ground of the ghost market still had that uncomfortable elasticity when you stepped on it, like stepping on a thick layer of fat.

He walked past several stalls, and the stall owners cast curious glances at him, along with an inexplicable hunger, as if they were eyeing a piece of fresh meat.

The tea stall wasn't far away; it was just a few dozen steps away.

The banner was old, with torn edges, and the words "tea soup" were written with some kind of dark red pigment.

The stall under the banner was also very simple: a low table, two rough earthenware bowls, and a shiny black earthenware pot.

A woman sat behind a low table, wearing a black gown and her face covered with a black veil, revealing only her eyes.

Those eyes had no pupils, only a cloudy, milky white.

Chen Mo stopped in front of the low table. The woman looked up at him with her white eyes.

"Tea," Chen Mo said.

The woman didn't speak, but simply raised one hand and pointed to a wooden sign standing upright on the side of the low table.

A few lines of small characters were engraved on the wooden sign, which Chen Mo could only see when he got closer.

"Yang-tonifying tea, five yuan a bowl."

"A living person is limited to one bowl; any more than that will cause blood to flow from all seven orifices."

"The dead should only drink half a bowl; any more and their body and spirit will dissipate."

Chapter update reminder: Chapter 235, Ganzhou Ghost Market, reading address.