Chapter 237: [Dragon Blood Mountain] The Sacred Wood

Unlike at Peach Blossom Yard, this time he was no longer involved, he was a spectator, invisible to anyone in the memory, and he walked over to the horsemen, his head bowed, looking at the boy who was crying over the corpse.

A sinew twitches and throbs in the skull.

He felt a bone-chilling, goosebumpy feeling.

Seeing the scene again, he was well aware of the role the young man had ended up playing in Lin'an's shocking turn of events betraying Chu Xun, the eunuch of the Imperial Guard, who had risked the life of an entire city in order to bring his adoptive father back from the dead.

"Xiaoman, you can't come back from the dead, don't be too sad, we can't stay here for long, let's go back."

"No no I'm not going anywhere, I want daddy he, he went to get food for me and that's why he died, I'm sorry daddy"

Mo Ran stares at the teenager.

Who is this man?

is the father of Huai Zui or

His gaze falls on Xiaoman's left hand, which has a black mole the size of a grain of rice on its tiger's mouth.

He suddenly thought of Master Huai Zui's hand in the same place, the exact same spot, with the same mole, exactly the same.

Mo Ran is stunned.

At that moment, the distant voice sounded slowly again.

"I was born in Lin'an at a young age, without parents, and was adopted by a stable boy from the Imperial Guard. When I was fourteen years old, the ghost world was torn apart and Lin'an was suffering.

lit. heart alarmed, body leaping (idiom); fear and trepidation in the face of disaster

Huai Zui, really, is a Xiaoman from two centuries ago

Huai Zui said softly, "When I got out of the city and found him, he had been killed by an evil spirit, his belly was overflowing and his eyes were pecked empty by crows. I will never forget that scene in my life."

Mo Ran's ears buzzed as he followed Xiaoman into the city, back when the Lin'an Heaven was ripped apart and the Ghost King blackmailed the people into handing over Chu Xun. He had seen all these things once before, but when he looked at them again, he still felt miserable and sad, and that people were evil.

He saw Xiaoman begging the night of the incident, begging the crowd not to mutilate his adoptive father and begging the steward to let him wait until Chu Xun returned to see if his father's body could be left intact.

"Please, wait just a little longer, in a little while the Duke will be back, I will watch his body, if it rises, I will stop it, please"

"You can't stop a corpse when it's up. You have to know which is more important."

"No don't tear him apart, please don't tear him apart."

As the rain poured down, Xiaoman knelt and kowtowed, his head and face covered in blood, but he could not be stopped, and his father's corpse was roughly pulled from his arms and dragged outside the palace by the stewards of the Imperial Household, who surrounded the corpse, which could change at any moment.

Xiaoman's view was blocked and after a moment he saw blood flowing from the feet of the crowd, which was instantly washed away by the downpour to a pale pink.

"I was selfish then and just felt disheartened and resentful of everyone, so I rebelled against Lin'an and offered myself up as one of the Ghost King's men, I wanted to get back at them."

With his confession, Mo Ran sees once again the image that once shook him to his core.

The mother emptied the belly and intestines of her child.

The townspeople betrayed their heroes.

Chu Xun kneels on the stone steps in front of the City God Temple, hunched over into the mud, sobbing uncontrollably.

He saw the mob escorting Chu Xun to the temple as if he were a vulture eating carrion, a mass of people who were willing to sacrifice Chu Xun's life so that they could live.

He saw Chu Xun pull out his heart along with the spirit core and hand it over to the scattered people who were mourning for him, telling them to leave the place as soon as possible and not to linger any longer

Xiaoman has seen all of this.

"Later, I went to the ghost world. Many times when I was alone, I would think of Master Chu's miserable state, of the heart he gave, of how well he treated us in the past. Every time I think of this, I feel anxious and I can't escape the condemnation I feel inside."

Huai Zui pauses.

His voice became extremely painful.

"I'm a traitor."

Mo Ran can't tell you what it's like.

Sometimes good and evil are only a thought away. Some people regret the moment the knife falls, but so what?

There was no way back long ago.

"Soon afterwards, I heard that Chu Xun's soul had been thrown into hell. He was a good man, and although he had not reached the peak of his cultivation and could not become an immortal, he was still good enough to enter reincarnation and enjoy a lifetime of wealth and glory. His children, his wife, had their souls confused and torn apart by the cataclysmic event. But the end result was not so smooth."

Mo Ran saw Huai Zui running around in the ghost world. He was too ashamed to face Chu Xun, so he carefully avoided him, but he tried to pull the ghost soldiers and pawns to ask: "What about the wife and children? What did Yanluo say at the end that he could find a way to piece together their souls so that they could reincarnate? "

"Can you think of something please."

"I beg you to help Lord Chu Xun find a way out, whatever it takes."

A ghost pawn laughed at him and said, "I have heard of your glorious deeds.

Mo Ran followed behind Huai Zui and watched him beg and kneel for many people. Perhaps he should not be called a human being, but a ghost. But very often, people and ghosts are actually the same in nature.

As Chu Wanning said, the soul may change its personality, its hobbies, its temperament, but its essence is never changed by the cycle of life and death.

Huai Zui inquired around about the reincarnation of Chu Xun's wife and son, which was soon made known to the Nine Kings.

When he heard that Xiaoman, who was under his command, had helped his old master to ask about reincarnation in secret, he was furious.

He took back Huai Zui's token of freedom to travel to and from the ghost world, scolded him back to earth and took away Huai Zui's eternal life as a ghost pawn.

"Go back to the yang world, and when all the Qi of hell in you has dissipated, you will die. After death, you will fall into the infernal hell forever, and your soul will not be able to live forever." The Nine Kings stared eerily at Huai Zui with the only eye they could still use, "This is the price you pay for plotting for your old master."

The darkness of hell disappears.

Mo Ran hears the sound of rain, it's spring, a fine drizzle that moistens the new green shoots.

He saw Huai Zui fallen into monkhood, walking in the spring rain.

"I returned to the human world, and by this time, a hundred years had passed on earth. Although the Ghost King had taken away my token, the Yin energy remaining in my body allowed me to return to the Ghost World at the height of the Yin energy at midnight, but staying for a long time would cause great loss. I am still afraid of death, so I don't dare to stay in the ghost world for long. Only when I really need some clues or some help will I return to the underworld secretly."

Mo Ran listens to his low self-reporting and looks at Huai Zui, who walks alone in the bamboo forest with his mansard lit in front of him, the winter plum lying in the snow, the summer lotus listening to the rain, as he walks alone, from the spring growth of ten thousand trees to the staining of Shuanglin.

One pair of sisal shoes after another.

Huai Zui was searching everywhere, probing, hoping to get a glimpse of a record that would give the mother and son whose souls he had destroyed, a chance to be reincarnated and reborn.

Huai Zui said, "It was also a chance for me to redeem a little of my sins."

Others might not have felt anything but how ridiculous Huai Zui was, but Mo Ran's eyes suddenly moistened when she heard this.

Atonement.

Everyone who has committed a transgression and wants to repent is as thirsty for redemption as a fish for water.

He did, and so did Huai Zui.

None of them were good people, all of them with dripping blood on their hands and shattered heads at their feet.

How to atone for your sins.

With the hand that once killed a man and released life into a pool of merit, can sins be wiped out? He wished that all the rights and wrongs, blessings and karma in the world could be so simple.

But he knew it wasn't.

"I have walked in the human world for nearly another hundred years." Huai Zui sighed slowly, "In these hundred years, I have always helped when I encountered difficulties and saved when I saw suffering. I know it is useless to do so, and no matter how much goodness I accumulate, I will still go to purgatory after I die and suffer torment and pain. But I just want to make myself feel better. I just think that if my son were still on earth, he would also be worried about people's worries and sufferings."

How much of the past has flowed by in a hundred years.

He saw Huai Zui carrying blind orphans on his back through the mountains and forests, he saw him helping out in the fields, he saw Huai Zui mending old clothes under a lonely lamp, yet he donated all his money just to repair the village destroyed by evil spirits.

" Master Chu, who has never been reincarnated. I then plucked a begonia that bloomed to splendour on earth, and thinking that it was his and his wife's favourite flower, I became faint-headed and summoned up the courage to go to the ghost world to see him once, with the result, needless to say, that he turned me away and made me forbidden to come back in the future."

The image shows Huai Zui's emaciated back as he stands among the lanes and streets of the ghost world.

By this time, his back was vaguely stooped.

"I didn't dare to annoy him and never appeared before him again, but the bunch of begonias, he didn't throw away. I thought he might still like this earthly thing, and since he couldn't see it in hell, I picked it and asked someone to give it to him. I hope that he will hate me less for it, even a little."

"Later, I heard that Madam Chu's soul could be restored, but it would take time, but my son's three souls and seven spirits had been shattered, and I feared that he would no longer be found in heaven or on earth. After I heard this, I felt guilty and regretful until one day I got something."

Moonlit spring mountains and smoky rivers.

Huai Zui sits in the cabin of his boat, the starry fishing fires reflecting in the river and the objects he holds in his hands.

Mo Ran walks over to look and sits down next to Huai Zui, and as he gets closer, he realises it is a piece of wood. It was a strange looking piece of wood, the branches of other trees had rough bark and fine lines, but it did not.

It was only the size of a hand, with smooth, delicate bark and a faint sheen. Even in the midst of the illusion, it was as if Mo Ran could feel the wood seemingly oozing with a fresh fragrance.

" Yandi Shen Mu."

""

Mo Ran's eyes widened suddenly, looking incredulously at the section of broken branch from which the light flowed.

This is Yandi Shenmu

Legend has it that at the very tip of the East Sea, where no one has ever reached, there grows Mo Ran, a sacred tree that is millions of years old.

It is possible to live the dead and flesh the bones.

It can be hardened into a weapon more powerful than Shenwu.

It can even help a mortal to ascend, to escape directly from the sufferings of reincarnation and to be immortalised forever.

Huai Zui, who was obviously aware of these rumours, said softly, "The divine wood has a spirit, so if you refine it into the spiritual core, you can ascend from now on and become an immortal. I will never have to suffer the curse of Purgatory again, and from then on, I can be freed."

Mo Ran was reminded of the rumours about Huai Zui.

It is said that he declined an invitation from the heavenly realm and stayed on earth for a long time.

Could the truth be that he had failed in refining Yandi's sacred wood?

"I really, really wanted to have this divine wood for my own use. There was a time when I even felt that this was heaven's will, that the heavens had taken pity on me and forgiven me and did not want me to fall into hell and suffer, and that was why they allowed this divine wood to come to me by chance."

In the cabin, Huai Zui rubs the section of sacred wood with a look of longing and confusion in his eyes, a look as conflicted as the voice echoing in Mo Ran's ears.

"But I once read in an ancient volume that the Yandi sacred wood is the same as the relics of Nuwa, and that with this sacred wood, a living human being can be created."