Chapter Eighty-One: The Stone Man Reappears
"The place recorded on the treasure map should be here." Ding said thoughtfully for a moment, then walked forward.
Push open the door.
Inside the house, a wisp of blue smoke curled up. In the main hall, an incense burner was placed, with three bamboo incense sticks inserted into it. Above it, a blurry-faced deity statue was enshrined, no matter how hard Ding Yin tried, he couldn't make out its appearance.
Enter the house.
Ding Yan scattered his divine sense and found that there was nothing unusual inside the house, no seals or talismans.
"Weird." Walking over to the incense burner, Ding Yan's gaze fell upon it.
Inside the city, there was no one in sight, yet here were still incense sticks that had not finished burning, which was quite eerie.
"Huh? Who are you? Why have you come to Lunhui Guan?"
A pleasant voice suddenly sounded behind Ding Yan.
Ding Yan turned around to find a girl standing behind him. The girl was about 17 or 18 years old, wearing a pale green long dress, with a slender waist and skin as white as jade, her big eyes curiously staring at Ding Yan.
"Is this reincarnation?" Ding Yan's eyes flashed, his gaze swept over, and he found that the girl's body was somewhat illusory, like a ghost, but lacked a hint of yin energy.
"Right." The girl nodded and said "You haven't told me yet, how did you enter the Wheel of Rebirth?"
"I don't know either." Ding Yan rubbed his nose.
"Ah, how could I not know? What's your name then?" The girl asked curiously. "My name is Lin Xi, the xi in stream."
"Ding Yan." Ding Yan looked at the girl, and suddenly a guess appeared in his mind.
Maybe...
Thinking of this, Ding Yan directly opened his mouth and asked "How did you end up here?"
"Ding Yan, Ding Yan." The girl muttered twice, seemingly extremely delighted to death. Upon hearing Ding Wen's question, she subconsciously replied, "I've always lived here."
When I heard the words, I thought it was true indeed.
The yin and yang in his eyes flashed again, and he began to sweep his gaze over everything within the Wheel of Reincarnation.
With Ding Xuan's mental state cultivation, it is almost impossible for an ordinary cultivator to sneak up behind him without being detected, unless they are those who have gone through eight dispersals of the immortal calamity, equivalent to a Mahayana cultivator's high-ranking expert. The girl in front of him was clearly not one of them.
In that case, there is only one explanation: the green-clothed girl is not a human being at all, but an instrument spirit transformed from some treasure in this Wheel of Reincarnation.
"Ding Yan, why aren't you speaking anymore?" The girl looked at Ding Yan curiously.
I don't know why, but looking at Ding Yan, the girl always felt a sense of closeness. Especially after the yin and yang flashed in Ding Yan's eyes, that feeling became even clearer.
After a moment, Ding Yan's gaze fell on the stove in front of him, where incense was inserted.
"Just as I..." At the moment when Ding Yan was about to speak, the ground of the entire Taoist temple suddenly shook violently.
Looking back.
The black wooden door at the entrance of the Wheel of Rebirth suddenly flashed with strange symbols, as if they were moving. The dark wooden door was stunned for a moment, and then began to disperse. Ding Yan was shocked and flew out of the Taoist temple, looking towards the city wall in the distance. The green-clothed girl also wanted to follow him out, but after running two steps, she was bounced back by an invisible force. The girl stomped her foot angrily, turned her head to look at the statue above, and said with a pout, "Dead old man, stinky old man, not even letting Xiaoxi out..."
On the city wall opposite, a giant gate's shadow appeared. The surrounding runes began to flash irregularly.
Rumble!!
A shocking momentum came from outside the city wall, and the ripples reached the inner city.
From afar, Ding Yan's eyes revealed a hint of shocked expression.
"Someone is actually attacking the black city wall of Hard Crash City!"
After a moment, that power was transmitted again.
This time the aftermath was even more powerful, and several crisscrossing cracks had appeared on the streets closest to the city wall. At the same time, the giant gate's shadow on top of the city wall became even more solidified, although he was standing in the inner city, Ding Yan still saw at a glance that this black giant gate was indeed the Ghost Gate!
The opening of the Ghost Gate requires more than ten days, and it's clear that less than half a day has passed since the last opening.
Half a day later, the Ghost Gate opens again!
The only explanation is that someone with supreme power forcibly disrupted the ancient seal of the black city wall.
Outside the city walls, the transmitted power grew stronger and stronger, as if there was a giant on the other side constantly pounding.
About an hour later, the Ghost Gate finally stabilized completely, and the black giant gate opened again. At the moment when the Ghost Gate opened, a complex array diagram appeared out of thin air, followed by a burst of pale blue light on top of the array diagram, as if it had communicated with another world.
A moment later, a huge bony claw stretched out from the array and grasped the ground beside it. Immediately afterwards, another enormous skull rose up from within, this skull being the same seductive skull that Ding Yan had encountered outside the Ghost Gate.
A gigantic, seductive skull slowly crawled out from within, on the bony claws of his right arm, still entwined with that black iron chain.
In the inner city, Ding Yan saw the process of the demon skull crawling out and instantly determined that this demon skull was a kind of sealed evil spirit used to guard the forbidden land. In other words, the so-called Ghost Gate was not an entrance at all, but a trap for massacring incoming treasure-hunting cultivators.
Rumble!!
The massive ghost gate was shattered by a surge of enormous force, countless debris flew into the inner city, crashing onto those houses, producing waves of rumbling sounds. The enchanting skull stood at the entrance, let out a roar, and the flames in its eye sockets turned blood red; at the same time, the iron chain in its hand began to tremble, emitting crisp, reverberating sounds.
At the broken gate, dust fills the air.
Step, step, step.
A figure slowly walked in from the middle.
The ghostly skull let out a loud roar and for the first time used the iron chain in its hand as a weapon, wrapping it around the approaching person.
That person seemed to have no feeling about the incoming iron chain, letting the dark iron chain hit himself. The strange effect of the iron chain seemed to lose its effect on this person's body, whipping at the incoming person, only constantly emitting sparks.
It wasn't until the man approached the city that Ding Yan was able to get a clear look at his appearance.
This person had disheveled hair, a dull expression, and not a glimmer of light in his eyes. His clothes were also tattered and worn out, just like those of the most common beggars in the mortal world. However, when Ding Yan saw this person, he was directly stunned.
It was this person who was the stone man pointing to the sky with one hand that Ding Yan saw on Mount Taiyi back then!
Reborn Stone Man!
As if possessed by a demon, he actually managed to forcefully break open the Ghost Gate.
The skull let out a loud roar, and the bloody aura on its skeleton began to condense, eventually gathering entirely onto the bony claws of its left hand, desperately thinking of slashing at the approaching figure.
It has been left with only one conviction since the day it was sealed, which is to guard the inner city. Now that the stone man has broken out of the door, he goes against the command in Skull's memory, and Skull will naturally try his best to stop him.
The stone man stopped in his tracks, looking at the skull's approaching bony claws, still unaware, and muttered to himself.
"Who am I..."
