Man in a Can

[Evil Poison Value: 57/100]

Vast white mist, endless and boundless...

Who knew how long had passed? Xiao Fan carried his father on his back, circling through the fog, utterly unable to find a way out.

What was more... amid the layers of white mist ahead, a trail of charred smoke drifted upward. It was the remains of the bear demon that had previously been burned to ashes by the Desolate Fire!

Xiao Fan was about to lose his mind. "Damn it! How did we end up back here again?!"

When he had first entered, he had left marks on the ground... yet after following those marks back, the path into the valley had vanished...

This white-mist valley was like a living maze. The paths within seemed to shift constantly, with no fixed route at all!

"If this keeps up..."

His father's breath was steadily weakening, and Xiao Fan grew more frantic by the moment!

"No. I can't keep spinning around like a headless fly. If I can't find the source of this white mist, we may never get out of it for the rest of our lives..."

Xiao Fan stopped to sort through his thoughts. He knew blindly wandering around was no solution.

Since he could not get out, he could only find a way to locate the source of the white mist!

As the saying went, if you couldn't solve the problem, then solve the "person" who created it!

Relying on a martial artist's keen senses, Xiao Fan observed the direction in which the surrounding mist drifted.

He quickly realized that the mist did not disperse in a completely irregular fashion. Instead, it continuously spread outward in a circular pattern.

He had previously tried advancing in the direction the mist spread, but he had found no exit at all, as though the fog truly had no end.

So now, he simply did the opposite and headed against the direction in which the mist was spreading!

If the white mist had no boundary, then its source had to exist somewhere.

With that thought, Xiao Fan hesitated no longer. Carrying his father, he headed toward the source of the white mist...

The vast white fog blotted out the sky and sun, leaving no sense of time at all.

After walking for who knew how long, the fog ahead seemed to be growing thinner.

"Huh?"

Doubt rose in Xiao Fan's heart. This was completely counterintuitive!

Logically speaking, the closer he got to the source of the mist, the thicker it ought to be. Why was it becoming thinner instead?

The strange feeling deepened. As visibility steadily increased, some kind of structure could vaguely be seen ahead?

Xiao Fan felt that he had probably reached the source of the white mist!

As he drew closer to the hazy structure... he found that it was actually a Taoist temple.

What was more, the surrounding white mist seemed to have eyes, all of it avoiding the area where the temple stood.

Within a radius of ten zhang around the Taoist temple, there was not a wisp of fog!

Xiao Fan immediately stopped, suspicion and alarm filling his heart. That Taoist temple was clearly abnormal... there was likely some unusual evil lurking within!

Just as he hesitated, a deep, aged voice suddenly echoed within his mind. "Since you have come, young friend, why not come in for a chat?"

"Holy shit?!"

"Who said that?"

Xiao Fan jolted in fright and looked around. Other than himself and his father, there was not a single person in sight.

Forget people—even the shadow of a corpse ghost was nowhere to be seen.

The aged voice came again. "The Taoist temple before you is this old man's residence. Please, young friend, come in for a chat."

This time, Xiao Fan suddenly understood. The aged voice had entered his mind directly; it was not a "sound" in the ordinary sense.

Transmitting thoughts across the void! A spellcaster's technique... Could there be a ranked spellcaster inside the Taoist temple?!

"May I ask who you are, and why you are inviting me in?"

Xiao Fan did not rashly enter the Taoist temple. Instead, he remained outside the courtyard wall, watching warily.

"What? You dare not enter? If this old man's guess is correct, young friend, you can enter but cannot leave. Is that why you found this place?" The aged voice once more entered Xiao Fan's mind.

"Perhaps this old man may be able to help you leave this misty valley."

The moment he heard that, Xiao Fan's pupils contracted. I can't find a way out anyway. I may as well go in and see for myself!

"Then this junior shall trouble you!"

With that, Xiao Fan carried his father into the courtyard and cautiously headed toward the main hall.

The instant he entered the hall, densely packed formation runes that flew through the air and burrowed into the earth filled his sight.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the air itself were filled with mysterious symbols he could not understand.

All of them were maintaining a sealing formation. One could only imagine what sort of existence required such an extravagant display.

Further inside, the hall—which should have housed statues of the Three Pure Ones—was completely empty. In their place were even denser formation incantations.

Those incantations revolved around something shaped like a chicken egg. When Xiao Fan looked closely, it nearly scared him into stumbling!

That was not an egg, but a porcelain jar tightly bound in strips of cloth covered in incantations—and at its mouth was the head of a white-haired old man!

The porcelain jar stood a little over three feet tall. Its base was very narrow, roughly oval in shape.

A porcelain jar of that size clearly could not hold an intact human body... He simply did not dare imagine what the person inside had suffered.

The old man in the jar had disheveled hair, his grizzled locks hanging in wild disorder and concealing his face.

The old man slowly raised his head. His loose hair parted slightly, revealing that hair-raising face from the shadows.

His eye sockets were hollow, and the places where his nose and ears should have been were empty as well, leaving behind only ghastly scars.

Not only had his body been crammed into that narrow porcelain jar, but his eyes had been gouged out, and his ears and nose cut away.

The sight made Xiao Fan's skin crawl and his legs go weak.

He knew such cruel things as human pigs existed, but the person in this jar was even more horrifying than the human pigs of legend.

Seeing it with his own eyes this time truly left him shaken.

Just then, the old man's voice echoed in Xiao Fan's mind again. "Heh, as you can see, little friend, this old man is trapped here as well, unable to move."

Though the old man did not say so outright, Xiao Fan could more or less guess that he was using voice transmission because his throat and tongue were likely gone too...

"May I ask who you are, Senior, and why you have been... been trapped here?"

Seeing this old man who was neither human nor ghost, sympathy surged uncontrollably in Xiao Fan's heart.

"May I ask, little friend, what year is it now?" The old man did not answer directly, instead asking a question in return.

"Great Liang, the thirty-second year of Hongwu."

At those words, the old man stiffened at once and cried out through voice transmission, "Great Liang? Who is the current emperor?!"

"Emperor Hongwu..."

"This old man is asking for the emperor's surname and given name!"

"Ji Shaotian!"

Upon hearing that name, the old man fell briefly silent. "As expected, it is the Ji Clan... Then where is Ji Mi?!"

Xiao Fan scratched the back of his head and thought for a moment. "Are you referring to Ji Mi, the founding emperor of Great Liang? He passed away long ago."

Upon hearing this news, the old man in the jar was visibly stunned. Then he burst into wild laughter through his thoughts!

"HAHAHA!!! He's dead?! Good death! What a wonderful death!"

Uh...

Xiao Fan grew even more curious about the old man's identity. "Then may I ask, Senior, who exactly are you, and why have you been imprisoned here?"

The old man raised his featureless head and transmitted, "This old man is Xun Huan, a sorcerer of the Bureau of Celestial Observation under the Great Xia Dynasty."

"I have become this neither-human-nor-ghost thing thanks to your damned founding emperor, the one who deserves a thousand cuts."

The Great Xia Dynasty? Xun Huan?

Xiao Fan's pupils contracted slightly, and he found it hard to believe.

Great Xia had been the dynasty before Great Liang. This old man was actually from the previous dynasty!!!