"That’s easy for you to say," another gaunt-faced former civil official cut in, his eyes filled with longing.
"But who doesn't want to live a normal life? I heard the city's construction is going great now. The food from the spirit fields is enough to fill everyone's bellies, there are clean houses to live in, and the markets are bustling... It’s even better than our days in White Jade City!"
"If only I could work for twelve hours and spend the other twelve hours living like a regular citizen, enjoying life... that would truly be a life of the gods..." the fat steward sighed again, his tone full of yearning but tinged with the gloom of knowing it was impossible.
"Back in White Jade City, I, Zhang Fugui, was considered someone of status. Now, I’m reduced to sweating away in a mine... Fate truly is a fickle thing."
"That lord is truly a man of great divine power and heavenly methods. We were only to blame for being blind and deaf back then—we failed to recognize the pearl before our eyes and mistook a fish eye for a treasure. Having failed to meet an enlightened master and committing such foolish acts, we deserve this end."
"Thinking about it now, if only I had met the lord sooner... Sigh, what's the use of saying all this now? Let's just mine honestly to atone for our sins and hope that one day the lord will see our repentance."
"Indeed, indeed."
Xing Yue listened, finding it more absurd the more he heard. Twelve hours of forced labor a day? Even livestock aren't worked that hard!
Even for practitioners with strong constitutions, they still needed time to meditate and regulate their breath. This kind of incessant squeezing wasn't labor reform—it was pure torture!
What was even more ridiculous was that these people were actually grateful for it?
Was the essence of an evil spirit's mind control truly this potent, to the point where even basic cognitive perception was distorted?
Just as he thought this, his arms began to ache from the continuous swinging of the bone pick. Subconsciously, he tried to stop his movements to stretch his sore wrists and catch his breath.
Swish!
Dozens of paper doll faces, as pale as the dead, stared at him in unison. Their paper-slit mouths opened at the same time, scolding him in a flat, monotonous voice.
"ARE—YOU—TRY—ING—TO—SLACK—OFF—!"
Xing Yue’s arm froze in mid-air, the veins on his forehead throbbing. A surge of humiliation mixed with absurdity rushed to his head, but he gritted his teeth, swallowing the curse that was about to escape his lips.
A Blackwater Guard being threatened by a demon—who would believe it if word got out?
But now was not the time for conflict.
Endure, lie low...
He forced himself to calm down, noticing the slightly disdainful looks from several former White Jade City subordinates nearby.
Xing Yue took a deep breath, suppressing his roiling blood. He silently lowered his arm, gripped the bone pick even tighter, and slammed it hard against the unyielding rock wall!
Clang!
Chen Zhou heard the system notification and opened his panel.
【Current Ghost Servant count: 99/100】
???
That damned secret realm ate another one of my Ghost Servants?
Chen Zhou immediately connected to the sensory perception of a Ghost Servant inside the secret realm. The location was still marked at that dilapidated park.
The park looked the same as usual, shrouded in dense green corpse poison. However, there was a difference: countless black insects, thick as a black tide, covered the ground, the vegetation, and the broken facilities.
These insects were roughly the size of a fist, their shells dark and shiny. Their mouthparts, like sharp scissors, constantly snapped open and shut, and their compound eyes were crimson—clearly, they had been zombified.
They were frantically devouring everything they could sink their teeth into: the concrete on the ground, the rusted fences, and even the tough mutated plants were not spared.
Chen Zhou could even sense that these mutant insects were not just devouring matter; their very existence seemed to be gnawing at the spatial structure of the secret realm, causing the stability of the park area to fluctuate slightly.
As far as Chen Zhou’s will reached, the majestic death energy of an Eerie Grade evil spirit surged through the Ghost Domain. Like invisible ink, it instantly saturated the entire park area!
There was no earth-shattering explosion, no brilliant magical light.
There was only an absolute, suffocating silence of "death" that quietly descended.
The zombified mutant insects that were frantically devouring everything froze in unison.
Immediately following that, countless "crackling" sounds rang out, one after another.
But the sound didn't come from their mouthparts; it originated from beneath their shells.
On the surface of every insect's dark, shiny shell, pale bone patterns rapidly emerged.
Their hard shells seemed to have become a nursery for bones as sharp, twisted bone spikes burst through their carapaces without warning, growing frantically!
Puchi! Puchi! Puchi!
The dense sounds of piercing were incessant.
In an instant, the black tide of insects that had covered the ground disappeared.
In its place was a dense forest of white sea urchins composed of countless bone spikes, filling the entire park.
Every single mutant insect was impaled by the bones growing frantically from within its own body. They remained in the final postures of their lives, eternally frozen in death.
There was no struggle, no shrieking. There was only the absolute submission of all things returning to silence after the passage of death energy.
This was the power of an evil spirit—transcending common sense, twisting rules, using death as a brush to reshape life forms, bringing about an assimilating infection.
"That’s more like it!"
Chen Zhou was very satisfied with the bone spike hell he had personally created. He then noticed that in the center of the park, a gap had appeared—whether it had always been there or was caused by the abnormal devouring.
It was about three meters in diameter, the surrounding space slightly distorted. Even the dirt and debris on the ground seemed to be pushed aside by an invisible force.
It was like a meticulously kept garden that someone had violently smashed a hole into!
Chen Zhou felt that crushing those insects to death was too light a punishment. No one would be happy to find a hole mysteriously dug in their backyard.
"Perhaps this is why the Ghost Servant went missing?"
But to be cautious, Chen Zhou decided to send a skeleton ahead to scout the path. He picked one at random and controlled it to step into the distorted spatial light screen.
After a brief sensation of weightlessness and spatial displacement, the skeleton's vision returned.
What greeted its eye sockets was a boundless, dusky yellow.
The sky was a murky, earthy yellow, with no sun or moon in sight.
Beneath its feet were scalding sands. The howling wind kicked up dust and grit, clattering against the skeleton's frame.
Not far away, a village sat on this cracked, hard-dirt plain.
The well was dried up, the doors and windows of the houses were mostly shut tight, and not a single shadow of livestock or poultry could be seen within the fenced courtyards. Not even a foraging insect was in sight.
The only sign of life came from the people scattered throughout the village like ghosts.
Most of them were slumped on their doorsteps or leaning against withered trees, their eyes hollowly staring at the gray sky, the rise and fall of their chests so weak it was barely perceptible.
Until the moment the skeleton stepped out of the light screen, this dead silence was instantly shattered like ice.
Everyone’s eyeballs snapped toward it, focusing on the skeleton’s bleached white figure.
In the next moment, they swarmed toward the skeleton from all directions, then knelt in unison like harvested wheat, a vast, dark mass of people.
"The messenger! The messenger of the Great God has descended!"
"Offerings! Quick, bring out the last of the offerings!"
"We beg the messenger for mercy! Please bestow upon us the divine remains!"
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