Unending Human-Ghost Romance
Yingshi's mind was a tangled mess. Her greatest worry was that Jing Fengliu could even modify the settings of the Domain, altering the conditions for entering and exiting that they had painstakingly figured out.
Had his authority truly reached that extent?
Perhaps not. If the Domain was something he could completely control, presumably he wouldn't have ended up in a situation where he had to repeatedly halt updates to revise the text, leading to the entire work being locked...
His creation was, to some extent, also a discovery of the world under his pen rather than absolute creation.
Like them, he was also moving forward through the fog...
This realization strangely lightened the massive boulder in Yingshi's heart regarding the omniscient and omnipotent monitor, but she still could not help staring blankly at Xiangxiang.
Clearly, this little pig was still as ignorant and naive as always, without any emotions leaking out, yet she felt its image had become so blurry... She originally thought its mystery was just a type of cheat ability, but now she had to reexamine it!
Did Xiangxiang urgently want to become stronger truly to help in the final battle?
Then why would Jing Fengliu directly modify the settings to pave the way for its evolution?
It was accumulating power by devouring things. Whether it was the karmic fire spirits or the Demon Lord's severed arm, and now its target was the ancient demon essence, could it be planning something massive?
Senior Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All, didn't you ask me earlier if I could hand it over to you? How about I really just give it to you? Yingshi pointed at Xiangxiang, inexplicably uttering this abandonment declaration.
But as soon as the words left her mouth, she was the first to suffer a guilty conscience, feeling that the little pig looked pitiful staring blankly at her.
It had helped them resolve crises before. It had swallowed the spirits in the karmic fire, and it was the first spiritual pet in the Gate of Life to actively choose her... In the worst-case scenario, could it be an envoy sent by Jing Fengliu? But what if it wasn't? The guilt from that suspicion and rejection would be overwhelming...
Yingshi frantically covered her head, then heard Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All ponder, I have lost interest in it... If you find it troublesome to deal with this spiritual pet, why not ask the people of Holy Spirit Mountain?
Holy Spirit Mountain... That's right, they had to go to Holy Spirit Mountain eventually.
If Shuangjian could return on schedule on January 14th, if they could obtain the demon essence as planned on January 15th, and if three days were enough for them to rush to the Immortal-Folding Cave—the Immortal-Folding Cave was within the territory of Holy Spirit Mountain.
According to Shuangjian's speculation, that place was just like the eye of the Marrow-Cleansing Spring's domain, acting as their exit back to the real world.
They were supposed to face the Netherworld Demon Lord there, and then smoothly, after slaying him, return together to her long-parted hometown... Why did she feel things wouldn't be that simple?
Oh, right, that sentence you just asked me counts as a question too, Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All snickered. There is only one last question left. What else do you want to know?
This stinky rat! She thought he had fallen into a dizzy state and lost count of the questions he had answered, but she didn't expect him to be perfectly clear about it!
Yingshi rubbed her chest, which felt stifled from continuous tension, and opened her mouth, ...How is Shuangjian doing right now? Is his progress smooth, and has he been injured?
This was a question that did not exceed the scope of Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All's mechanism.
As Yingshi asked, she couldn't help but think how wonderful it would be if she had a mobile phone.
She could send messages to Shuangjian and call him.
Shuangjian could even film a Netherworld Vlog for her and live-stream his Eight-Directional Demon King Challenge...
Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All stared into the void, grinning widely, and his fingers began to guide streams of light, clicking around. Gradually, he outlined a map of the Burning Heavens Scorched Earth that was much vaster and more complex than the previous demon realm map.
The flickering streams of light were particularly bright in eight directions, but these points of light were dimming one by one due to the wandering of a black streak of energy. In the blink of an eye, less than half remained.
He is doing wonderfully, and his speed is absurdly fast! Your little worry is truly superfluous! As soon as Mr. Hundred-Thousand-Know-It-All's voice fell, the black energy suddenly trembled violently at the fifth cluster of light, seemingly about to be dispersed. Eh? It seems he has encountered a bit of trouble after all... Let me see, whose territory is this? Hmm... the Five Skandhas Demon King...
...
Burning Heavens Scorched Earth, Hall of the Five Skandhas Demon King.
It was not dark, pitch-black, damp, or empty here.
On the contrary, it was bright, broad, and littered with box-like iron shells flashing with various colors, weaving through the roads.
It was also filled with men and women dressed in strange clothes. Most of them had their limbs exposed; the men's hair was unusually short, while the women's hair was mostly scattered loosely.
Shuangjian stood among the flow of people. Behind him were towering, indescribable buildings, completely different from any sect hall in the cultivation world.
The air was filled with complex scents, some sweet and cloying, others salty and sour.
The words spoken by everyone were both familiar and unfamiliar to him.
Familiar in that the pronunciation and intonation were no different, and he could understand them completely, while the unfamiliarity lay in the fact that it was mixed with vocabulary he simply did not understand. Yingshi had mentioned some before, while others she had never spoken of.
He looked up at the sky above and then stared at the ground beneath his feet.
All of this could not be constructed by his impoverished imagination.
The details were too abundant, the logic too self-consistent.
This was Yingshi's original world.
The hometown she had described more than once.
And, it was a test tailored for him by Jing Fengliu.
It was another round of obstacles meant to trap him, specifically targeting him.
Otherwise, why would they appear in the Hall of the Five Skandhas Demon King?
The Five Skandhas Demon King was born from the suffering of the blazing of the five skandhas, arising from the paranoia of form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. He indeed had his own paranoia.
He wanted to delve deeply into Yingshi's world, so this perfectly timed trap presented itself before his eyes.
If he sank deeply into the illusion and could not extricate himself, he feared that the physical shell left behind in the Demon King's Hall would not be far from perishing.
Yet, there was not much annoyance or fear in his heart.
What if he considered this as homework given in advance by Jing Fengliu?
If he was certain that he would step into Yingshi's world, then why not familiarize himself with the examination room ahead of time?
If he understood and explored it beforehand, he would not forever be an otherworldly visitor in front of Yingshi, needing her to painstakingly explain, carefully nurture, and guide him.
He could not tolerate appearing clumsy and apprehensive in her world due to ignorance, not even the slightest bit.
His heartbeat accelerated at this thought, and the moment he felt someone approaching him, it skipped a beat.
Why are you standing foolishly at the door! I have already picked up the tickets, let us go in quickly, the movie is about to start.
His arm was affectionately hugged by someone. The young girl clinging to him had a voice and appearance he could not push away.
It was Yingshi.
Wearing the clothing of this world, a dress he could not describe, he just quietly observed her appearance, imagining how the real Yingshi would dress. It seemed that no matter how he imagined it, she would be even more vibrant and lovely.
His chest grew hot from such a fantasy. Pulled by the Yingshi of this illusion, he headed into the building behind them.
All sorts of intimate words flowed from her lips like water. Even though Shuang Jian remained completely silent, she seemed oblivious to her "boyfriend's" coldness, never once losing her cheerful and affectionate demeanor.
Shuang Jian followed in silence, his gaze slowly sweeping over their surroundings.
He saw people holding flat, glowing, board-like objects, tapping them against a certain magical artifact in the center of the corridor to receive palm-sized slips of paper, which they then took to pass through yet another artifact's checkpoint.
Finally, they walked through a heavy door. Inside, it was no longer bright; it was pitch black, save for a white screen at the very front emitting a silvery glow.
The Yingshi of the illusion pulled him down to sit in a certain spot. Leaning against his shoulder, she whispered to him, "The movie we are watching next is Ghost and Human Must End."
Shuang Jian genuinely directed his focused gaze toward the screen, watching as human faces and voices appeared on it, much like the void projections in the cultivation world.
Blood began to seep from his nose and mouth as his time spent lingering in the illusion grew ever longer.
The blood dripped quietly onto his clothes and flowed down to the foot of their seats, yet the girl beside him remained completely oblivious, still looking at him with a beaming smile from time to time and whispering in his ear.
Shuang Jian did not turn his head again.
He watched this so-called "movie" with great concentration. It told the story of a living woman entangled with an evil ghost.
The woman mistakenly trespassed into a haunted mansion in the mountains and encountered an earthbound spirit who had been trapped there for hundreds of years, unable to escape.
Bewitched by the evil ghost, the woman fell in love with him and decided to help him possess a corpse to resurrect his soul, aiding him in returning from the dead.
However, after the evil ghost was truly resurrected, he and the woman did not find happiness. His existence was not tolerated by the heavens, and so countless disasters followed one after another. Everyone around the woman kindly advised her to leave and stop staying with the evil ghost, yet she remained stubbornly obsessed, refusing to pull herself out of the mire.
Later, dragged down by the evil ghost, her life force was completely drained, and she finally passed away, exhausted amidst the hardships.
It was an out-and-out tragedy, harboring hidden insinuations.
Throughout the viewing, Shuang Jian's expression remained perfectly calm.
But before the final act of the movie could conclude, just as the woman's weathered and murky eyes were about to close, the massive silver screen began to flicker violently.
The images on the screen started to twitch madly and then overlapped.
The woman's withered face and a face still retaining a rosy complexion flashed alternately. The gloomy, disastrous skylight and the clear, bright blue sky also engaged in a repeated tug-of-war. The despairing look in the evil ghost's eyes as he watched the woman die in the final scene was gradually covered by a thick fog... The plot of the movie seemed to be twisting due to an external force. In this bizarre moment, the theater remained dead silent.
Everyone quietly watched as the movie, which was originally about to end, was forcibly rewound to the middle, back to the times when disasters descended over and over again. This time, every single outcome was actually reversed by the evil ghost...
But the rewinding still did not stop. It continued and continued, until the picture returned to the very beginning—
On the screen, only that single line of the movie's title remained in white text against a black background: Ghost and Human Must End.
But the next second, the strokes of the word "Must" began to fade, change, and restructure.
Dots became horizontal lines, sweeping strokes became vertical ones, and a new word forcibly took the original place of "Must."
It was the word "Will Not."
Ghost and Human Will Not End.
A distinct sense of veto ran through the entire film, and the evil ghost's will to "force the issue no matter what" was displayed in its entirety.
A dangerous and subversive obsession... In this illusion born of paranoia, how could it be that paranoia itself gained the upper hand again?
The entire theater, with the freezing of this final title, plunged into absolute pitch darkness.
The moment the light flared back up, all perceptions belonging to the other world quietly faded away. There was no dark theater, no people from another world dressed in various clothes, and the Yingshi in the illusion who had treated him like a lover had also disappeared.
In front of him, there was only the terrified face of the Five Skandhas Demon King.
The Five Skandhas Demon King met Shuang Jian's silently opened eyes. Seeing that the Soul-Annihilating Threads that had originally wrapped tightly around him had all snapped, the demon could not help but take half a step back.
To think that the challenger, who was supposed to surely die in his lost state, could actually use his powerful willpower to reverse and modify the illusion itself?
How could this not make one feel horrified?!
"..."
Looking at the Five Skandhas Demon King's panicked expression as if he had seen a ghost, the blood-soaked Shuang Jian was actually smiling.
What an illusion can trap are those who believe in it.
But from beginning to end, there was never a single moment where he was lost in it.
Jing Fengliu indeed did not understand the characters under his pen well enough. If he hadn't been so overly lucid, he wouldn't have struggled so painfully.
But he thanked him.
Thanked him for once again teaching him a few things.
In the future, when watching a movie with Yingshi, he could be the one to collect the tickets—such a trivial acquisition of knowledge was indeed not worth feeling satisfied over, but this was only his first step.
He and Yingshi could still have many steps, because he was certain he could shatter all the disasters that befell them.
If the heavens were unwilling to bless them... then he would overthrow the heavens.
If the ending refused to favor them, then he would tamper with the ending.
"You obstinate fool..." the Five Skandhas Demon King was about to scold. His hands quickly formed hand seals, attempting to trigger those snapped Soul-Annihilating Threads, but the Nether Ghost Fog that had already quietly lain dormant within the entire grand hall before the illusion completely collapsed suddenly erupted soundlessly.
They converged from all directions, tearing at the demon king's clumsy and massive body. Every short and shrill howl of his was enveloped within it. The more he struggled, the more he accelerated his own disintegration.
Amidst the surging ghost fog, Shuang Jian stood silently, feeling the power that continuously strengthened due to the ghost fog's encroachment.
He raised his hand and carelessly wiped away the bloodstain left on his lips with the back of his hand, but his gaze lingered on the red string around his wrist.
It had accompanied him for so long.
"...Chun Ri"
He gently kissed the bell on it.
—This was the final step of prayer belonging to a believer.
