Columns rose like dragons.
The lights blazed bright.
Wurong, seated high above, nodded in satisfaction.
Luodu City had been built upon Luodu Mountain, spanning twenty-six hundred li and housing six layers of Netherworld palaces, along with countless halls and chambers.
Even Wurong did not know the exact number; Yu Shen handled such matters.
Yet the Jade Mandate Palace alone, where he was hosting this banquet for the gathered ministers, pleased him immensely.
Though it bore the name of a Netherworld palace, there was little gloom within. Purple wood and red bricks, golden gourd-shaped glazed roofs, strange treasures and exotic beasts adorning the flying eaves and competing cornices; dragons and phoenixes soared amid a hazy violet radiance.
From afar, one might have mistaken it for an immortal's cave abode, a heavenly palace, some wondrous city.
Up close stood towering grand halls, long banners fluttering, and jeweled poles holding them aloft.
Yin Ji danced while ghost concubines attended them.
Look to the high seat.
The Prefecture Lord was raising his cup.
His long black hair was combed without a strand out of place and bound beneath a Three Flowers Crown.
He wore a dark-red great ghost robe.
Pale-faced, red-eyed.
Behind him, fan-bearing Yin Ji stood like clay statues, while an enormous relief, as vast as a city, depicted every transformation of hell.
Look to the feast.
Demons drank freely, ghosts gnawed flesh.
True cultivators of the Dao laughed heartily.
Cup after cup of intoxicating spirit wine went down their throats. It was inappropriate to use spiritual power at the banquet to refine away the fumes, and in this short while, the atmosphere had already become wholly unlike the silence from before. No one remained as mute as a cicada in winter.
The many cultivators finally relaxed.
So the Prefecture Lord had no