Kyushu · Endless Nagato

Chapter 121 Ghost Ship (2)
The shark didn't make a sound for a long time.After a while, the silhouette of a large ship appeared in the thick fog, approaching the ship little by little.The appearance of this ship is peculiar, very similar to the Muye Lanzhou used by Yuren to fight at sea, but the Muye Lanzhou was originally characterized by lightness and maneuverability, but this ship is huge in scale, and the tower on the ship is like a huge sea palace. The soaring giant sails are like the wings of a monster, giving people a sense of oppression that blocks the sky and the sun.

Soon, the two boats approached, and the boatman on the shark boat precisely controlled the distance so that the two boats did not collide.A few strong men set up planks between the two boats, and motioned for everyone to go over.Xu Mizi held his head up, leaving the corpse servants behind, and walked over first, and only after An Xingmian and others got on the boat, he called the corpse servants over, looking confident.

It seems that the merman mobilized a secret technique, and the fog covering the ship dissipated. In the space outside the sea ship, the thick fog was still thick, as if it was a barrier specially built for this ship.In this foggy forest, some startling secrets are waiting to be revealed.

After the fog on the boat dispersed, the palace-like tower appeared in front of people's eyes. Two beautiful maids came forward and said, "Master, please come in and talk."

The two maids had fair skin and good looks, and their voices were as usual, and they moved freely, but Xue Huaiqing only glanced at her and told An Xingmian in a low voice: "Dead."

She paused, and then added: "There should be a few living people in the building, but the other people on the deck are all walking corpses, and they are all controlled by the same person. The spiritual connection between them is very stable. Mizi, I guess no one else can destroy it."

An Xingmian was terrified, and felt more and more that the strength of this merman corpse dancer was really not inferior to Xu Mizi.Although this trip was full of many problems, it would be best if the two sides can reason and resolve it, but he still couldn't help but have a thought in his heart: If Xu Mizi and this mermaid had a fight, it would be very interesting.

"I really hope that Xu Mizi can fight with him," Xue Huaiqing, who has a similar heart with him, whispered, "It's rare to meet such excitement once in a lifetime."

"It's better not to fight," Mr. Yuwen smiled wryly, "If I beat the merman to death, my curse cannot be lifted."

While speaking, the three of them had already entered the tower.Before that, An Xingmian imagined the situation in the tower.In his opinion, this merman's pomp is so great, he might be an ambitious self-proclaimed emperor, so this palace on the sea is very likely to be extravagant and lustful, decorated with all kinds of things that the kings on land would like to do. A rare treasure in the sea.Although he has a large number of corpse servants and the corpse dance technique that may be regarded as the best in Kyushu, there must be a dozen real beauties around him, right?besides……

He was thinking that the things inside the tower had been fully displayed in front of him, and when all these extremely impactful things caught his eyes, he felt that his heart almost stopped beating.Only then did he realize how big a fallacy existed between all his previous imaginations and the facts.All of this presented in front of my eyes has nothing to do with emperors, nobility, or splendor.What he saw was—hell.

"This is really a lunatic." Even Xue Huaiqing's voice could not help trembling slightly.

"He definitely is," said Mr. Yuwen, "I understand what I and my family have used for his corpses for so many years."

three

After a raging sandstorm, the Southwest Gobi returned to a temporary calm.In an unknown place deep in the desert, Xue Ji was half lying in the nomadic tribe's tent, flipping through a lot of old books.There was a thick bandage wrapped around his body, and blood was still oozing faintly. This was a memorial left to him by Xu Mizi a few days ago.But he was suddenly unaware of these pains, and devoted all his mind to the paper in his hand.

In the battle a few days ago, although he tried his best, he was disabled after all, and finally lost to Sumeru.But Xue Huaiqing, who had already been sent away by him, came back at a critical moment and handed Cangyinzhiyue to Xumizi. As An Xingmian said, she would never abandon her relatives.And probably out of admiration for Xue Ji's excellent martial skills, Xu Mizi finally let him go and didn't kill him.So Xue Ji learned from the conversation of several people that Sumeru was going to take them to the sea to meet a merman.Xue Huaiqing originally had nothing to do with this matter, but she would definitely not leave An Xingmian behind, so she followed along.

Xue Ji didn't stop her, because this behavior of his daughter reminded him of himself when he was young, but when the group left, he couldn't help thinking why this merman had been trying to take away this mermaid for decades. Two instruments.He smelled something unusual from it.

Regardless of his companions' request to let him stay in the town to recuperate his wounds, he insisted on returning to the desert, because there were some books he had worked so hard to collect over the years.While recovering from his wounds, he was reading the parts of these books related to sharks, trying to explain what the uneasy feeling that had been throbbing in his heart was.

Among the six ethnic groups in Kyushu, the Meizu and the Yuzu have always been two relatively mysterious races.Meizu does not have its own ethnic group and country. Each individual basically grows up alone, and then joins the society of other races according to the form they condense. Live with the Luo people.Maybe there are charms around everyone, but in most cases, it is difficult for people to distinguish them.

The mermaid race has its own ethnic group and society, but they all live in the sea, and they are more wary of humans—to be precise, it is a certain kind of instinctive disgust and rejection, so humans know very little about mermaids.In those limited records, only a few are mentioned roughly. For example, sharks like to live in the form of underwater villages. They also use the buoyancy of the seabed to mine stones and plant fast-growing coral organisms. They build underwater cities in this way. .For example, sharks can transform their legs through secret techniques, change their appearance and posture, so that they can walk on land and communicate with humans.

Among these fragmented records, there is one statement that most interests Xue Ji, and that is the soul.The soul is something that countless people in Kyushu have always believed in, but no one has ever been able to prove it.In various novels and dramas, there are plots such as soul leaving the body, soul possessing, and the appearance of the dead. There are even many funeral rituals related to summoning spirits and guiding death, as well as very frightening summons. death game etc.But these can only remain in legends. No one has ever really proved the existence of souls. Those so-called testimonies often cannot withstand scrutiny and are proven to be lies.

But the sharks have always believed in the soul.According to the legend of the shark tribe, after the sharks die, their souls return to the sea and become a part of the sea. Therefore, the sea is not only the living place of the sharks, but also the habitat of the souls of all their ancestors. This is also the sea area where they stick to themselves. , one of the reasons for rejecting the entry of foreigners.

Xue Ji read this passage over and over again. Although there was no detailed and precise description, the word "soul" always made him uneasy.He pondered the mentality of this merman, and began to think about the functions of Cangyin Zhiyue and Sa Xijialuo.The Cangyin Moon does not directly kill people, but the actual effect is equivalent to killing people, because people who are attacked by the mana of the Cangyin Moon will lose all consciousness and become a living dead with only breathing and heartbeat , It will never be possible to respond to everything in the outside world.

Of course, for the mermen, losing consciousness is equivalent to the disappearance of the soul.In their conception, the Cangyin Moon is probably used to absorb souls.

Drain the soul... Drain the soul...

Xue Ji suddenly hit the edge of the bed with a fist.Due to the excessive force, the wound on his shoulder burst open, and blood flowed out again, but he didn't seem to feel the pain at all.

I understand, Xue Ji thought, I understand what this merman wants to do.But... it is impossible for him to succeed.He no longer dared to think about what consequences this tragic ending would bring to Xue Huaiqing and An Xingmian.

"You must come back safely." Apart from praying, Xue Ji had nothing else to do.He closed his eyes tightly and prayed with the most pious heart for the daughter he just met again.

At the same moment, An Xingmian stood at the entrance of the tower, staring blankly at everything in the building, not knowing what words to use to describe what he saw in front of him.Inside this tower, there are neither gorgeous decorations, exquisite food, nor glamorous singers and dancers, but are full of dead bodies.

The inner walls of the entire tower were covered with various large and small iron frames. Hundreds of corpses were densely hung on the iron frames, and the pungent smell of antiseptic drugs permeated from these corpses.In the center of the tower, there are several different large-scale machines, some of which look like medicine pools, some of which look like incinerators, and some of which use some unknown method, emitting bursts of cold white air.

On the top of the tower, there are long ropes and various pulleys with hooks all over the place. The corpses are hung on the hooks and transported to the machinery at the bottom.This was originally a very sophisticated and complex mechanical system, and I don't know how many craftsmen put their efforts into it, but it was used to transport the terrifying dead bodies. This scene can be described as extremely weird.

The more terrifying scene is yet to come.A door on the other side of the tower opened, and a struggling person was sent out. This is a living person!His limbs were firmly bound, his struggle was futile, his mouth was also blocked, and he could only see his horror from those desperate eyes.He was transported by a pulley to a certain flame-breathing incinerator. The iron hook of the pulley was released, and his body fell straight into the scorching flames, turning into green smoke almost instantly.At the same time, another mechanism seemed to be activated. A long iron hand protruded from the side of the incinerator. At the top was a long steel needle, which pierced into a corpse by the side of the furnace. It is pierced from the forehead.

An Xingmian suppressed the discomfort, looked at what was happening in front of him, and at the same time guessed, what happened just now—burning a living person and piercing the forehead of another dead body with a steel needle—was for the purpose of what.He stared closely at the pierced dead body, not knowing what kind of changes it would show, but in the end, the body did not move at all.

"What are you doing?" Xue Huaiqing asked suspiciously.

"I don't know," Mr. Yuwen replied, "I originally thought that the corpses I provided him were used as corpse servants, but now it seems that is far from the case."

An Xingmian turned her head and looked at Xu Mizi, "You must know what's going on."

Xu Mizi nodded: "Yes, I know."

"But you have always refused to tell us, why?" An Xingmian asked.

"Because it's more interesting that way." Xu Mizi smiled darkly.

"Then you can talk about it now, right?" Xue Huaiqing said, "You are not your old friend Feng Qiuke, and you will die if you don't keep secret."

Xu Mizi didn't correct the word "friend" used by Xue Huaiqing, but looked up at the hellish scene in front of him, and said slowly: "This merman wants to take Cangyin Zhiyue and Sa Xi Jia Luo is neither for killing people nor for dominance. There is only one purpose, and that is to use these two magic weapons..."

These few words were spoken very loudly, but at the end, they deliberately paused to make a fool of themselves. It was obvious that they deliberately wanted the other party to hear them, and this move also had obvious effects.As soon as he finished speaking, there was a mechanical roar from the bottom of the tower—that is, below the deck where everyone was standing. Soon a hole was opened on the deck, and a huge irregular object with strange light came out from under the deck. When it rises up, it looks like a rockery in Donglu Garden at first glance, but it is transparent and surrounded by some seven-color lights.An Xingmian tried hard to see what it was, but found that for some reason, her eyes couldn't focus on it. It was obviously a huge thing, but she couldn't see it clearly.

"Strange, it's right in front of my eyes, why can't I see clearly?" Xue Huaiqing also questioned.

"This is a secret technique that interferes with vision," Xumizi said with some disdain. "If your spiritual power is not so useless, you won't be disturbed."

An Xingmian and Xue Huaiqing simply stopped talking. Anyway, everything they said in front of Xu Mizi seemed to be wrong.He tried his best to concentrate his mental power, staring at the object protected by the secret technique, and gradually he could see its outline clearly.

This is a block of ice, a huge block of ice, and the shape of a human being is faintly revealed in the block of ice, as if someone is frozen in the block of ice, but the specific appearance of this person is really unclear. As Xu Mizi said, his spiritual power is not strong enough.He was guessing, but Sumizi had already said: "This piece of ice is to slow down your body's aging, right? It seems that you have really put in so much effort in order to live forever."

"What did you say?" An Xingmian, Xue Huaiqing and Mr. Yuwen all turned their heads and looked at Xu Mizi in surprise.The unnamed female scout and Liang Jing kept their identities as servants and did not make a sound, but their eyes were filled with astonishment.

"What do you think? What do you think this merman is trying so hard to snatch Cangyinzhiyue and Saxigaro?" Xumizi seemed to appreciate everyone's astonishment, "The merman is a race that deeply believes in the soul. People have always wanted to live forever, but found that the death of the body is irreversible, so they made up their minds to find a way from the soul. He wanted to find a way to transfer the soul, constantly transferring his soul from one body to another , this can also be regarded as a way of immortality.”

He stretched out his hand and drew an arc in mid-air: "These corpses are part of his experiment. Unfortunately, as you have just seen, he failed every time. So his last hope, Probably on these two instruments."

"Seeking eternal life?" An Xingmian was incredulous, "Is such a thing against the sky really worth pursuing?"

It was only then that he realized what this merman had been pestering the Yuwen family for decades.It turned out that his goal was to pursue longevity. Such an ambition, compared with the ambitious people who want to conquer the world, is probably a step further, because human life is limited after all, even if it is possible to unify Kyushu, Decades later, it can still only turn into dry bones and return to dust.But if you have eternal life, you can continue to pursue, occupy and fill your greed endlessly.

"It's really greedy." He couldn't help muttering to himself, but recalled Nagato's Sutra in his mind.Nagato has never pursued the extension of physical life. What Nagato monks have practiced all their lives is to seek spiritual liberation.But if people have a life span that can be extended indefinitely, is such a pursuit meaningful?

"It turned out to be to seek eternal life..." The muscles on Mr. Yuwen's face twitched slightly, and there was a faint anger on his usually elegant face, "For your eternal life, can you let a family member have a short life? ?”

A contemptuous sneer came from the ice: "Yuwen Jingnan, I put your family under a curse. It's not surprising that you hate me, but you don't have the right to say such things. In order to realize your ambition, you killed Are there few people? Everyone is a wicked person, so stop pretending to talk about justice and morality.” The voice sounded unnatural, thinking that this mermaid was frozen in it, his lips couldn’t move at all, and he could only use ventriloquist Techniques and the like to produce sound.

Mr. Yuwen was speechless when he was refuted, but Xu Mizi laughed: "Well said, they are all villains, so there is no need to make so many superficial articles, let's get straight to the point. It sounds like you have already admitted my Judgment?"

(End of this chapter)