The moment the small ghost wreathed in black qi fled into the passage, a muffled pop sounded and it spontaneously detonated, dissolving into a wisp of yin energy that scattered into nothing.
Wang Tiangu, whose spiritual connection to the ghost was still intact, went pale. The backlash dealt him no small injury.
"What's going on? Are there some other traps hidden in this passage?" Wang Tiangu demanded of the scholar, his voice tight with alarm and anger.
"You think the entrance to the Lingmiao Garden is an ordinary tunnel? Forget a little ghost whose physical form hasn't even solidified — even a Ghost King like Li Po, an incorporeal spirit of the highest order, would have its soul crushed to dust the instant it entered. Even I need to hide inside a painting scroll just to pass through. In any case, the entrance is open. Whether you go in or not is no longer my concern." The scholar had grown perfectly composed by now. After speaking these words in an unhurried tone, he transformed into a streak of green light and darted into the painting scroll that had been hovering in midair all along.
Wang Tiangu's expression darkened the instant he heard this. The scholar's words implied that incorporeal beings such as ghosts and demons could not enter the passage directly. He exchanged a glance with the Ghost Spirit Sect Master, and both revealed looks of surprise.
"I've already probed the other side of the passage with my spiritual sense. Although the spatial rift makes it extremely hazy, it is undoubtedly some unknown space on the other side. I have no patience to stand here dithering — the longer we wait, the more chance something goes wrong with the passage. I'll be going first." After a brief moment of deliberation, Wei Wuya spoke plainly, then paid no further attention to the other two. He transformed into a streak of green light and shot toward the passage.
The Ghost Spirit Sect Master's expression shifted slightly.
"You three guard this place. Junior Brother Wang, let's not drag this out — we'll go together. For a chance at the Lingmiao Garden, some risk is well worth taking. Besides, I placed a Soul-Frightening Incantation on that spirit. It shouldn't dare play any tricks." The Ghost Spirit Sect Master issued his instructions while coldly eyeing the painting scroll floating before him. Seeing nothing amiss, his gaze flickered several times.
He reached out and made a grabbing motion at the scroll, drawing it into his hand. With a sweep of his sleeve, he tucked it into his voluminous robe, then he and Wang Tiangu transformed into two streaks of brilliant light and shot toward the passage.
The Lingmiao Garden was said to be teeming with spiritual herbs and natural treasures. If they arrived even a step too late, falling behind Wei Wuya, they would lose out enormously.
And so Wei Wuya's figure, followed by the Ghost Spirit Sect Master and Wang Tiangu in succession, flickered at the entrance of the dark passage and vanished, passing straight through the spatial barrier into another space.
…
"This is absolutely not the Lingmiao Garden!" The one who spoke was Wei Wuya, who had emerged from the passage first.
He was surveying the unfamiliar surroundings, his face a mask of gloom.
It was a space entirely devoid of color save for a uniform ashen gray. Looking upward, one could see nothing but low, dark stone mounds rising to heights of several dozen zhang, the rest swallowed by gray fog. Wei Wuya's spiritual sense swept outward and found the area to span roughly a dozen li in all directions.
But to call this place the legendary Lingmiao Garden — where the ambient spiritual energy was said to be several times denser than in the human world and spirit herbs grew in abundance — even Wei Wuya, let alone the Ghost Spirit Sect Master and Wang Tiangu who had just emerged from the passage behind him, would not believe it for a single moment.
And yet, when the two of them appeared and took in their surroundings, their expressions turned peculiar — seven parts fury, three parts elation.
This made Wei Wuya, who had glanced back at them, feel a flicker of surprise, followed immediately by a surge of wariness.
He had expected that upon discovering this was not the legendary Lingmiao Garden, their faces would turn ugly to the extreme — that they might even summon Senior Cangkun's clone consciousness from the painting scroll to demand answers on the spot.
"Junior Brother, can you feel it? The demonic qi here is at least twice as dense as in the human world. If I were to fight someone here, the power of my demonic cultivation would increase by a full thirty percent," the Ghost Spirit Sect Master said after a prolonged silence.
"Senior Brother, we cultivate the same demonic art — how could I fail to sense it? If we stayed here to train, I believe we would have an excellent chance of breaking through our current bottleneck and reaching the next realm." Wang Tiangu's eyes glinted as he spoke, his expression equally complex.
"You two — shouldn't you be summoning that fellow and putting him through a proper interrogation? Don't tell me Wei Wuya went to all this trouble just to end up in a place like this." After watching them for a while and learning nothing, Wei Wuya stamped his foot on the gravel at his feet and addressed Wang Tiangu and the Sect Master in a frigid tone.
"Of course. If he can't give us a satisfactory explanation, I'll personally ensure he tastes the agony of Soul Refining." The Ghost Spirit Sect Master's own fury at being deceived by the spirit soul was reignited by Wei Wuya's words, and his face twisted into a savage grin.
He hurled the painting scroll he held to the ground, intending to unfurl it and summon Senior Cangkun's clone consciousness.
But before the Ghost Spirit Sect Master could cast his spell, a flash of spiritual light flickered across the scroll's surface and a ball of green light suddenly shot out from it. Wang Tiangu stood nearby and reacted instantly, his hand sweeping backward to seize it — a black luminous hand roughly a foot across materialized and clawed toward the green orb.
Yet the ball of green light seemed to have planned for precisely this moment. Its speed doubled in an instant, and it slipped free of the illusory black hand, tearing through the air and streaking off into the distance.