Tea rooms and taverns sold meat and cooked fish.
The few cramped, shabby gambling dens beside the yellow dirt road were filthy, but extraordinarily noisy, packed so tightly with people that not a breath could pass through. A few idlers and wastrels who could not get seats even clung to the window frames with their arms, jostling to peer inside.
Whenever the dice were revealed at the gambling tables within, they reacted as though they shared the gamblers' fortunes, shouting one moment and cursing the next, utterly engrossed.
Porters, flower sellers, mat weavers, sugar blowers.
A peddler stood with both feet in the mud, loudly hawking the rouge and powder in his bundle; a makeshift troupe performed an illusion of melons sprouting from the ground, drawing a crowd that blocked the way, with cheers ringing out endlessly.
Several children played with a yellow dog beneath the great weeping willow at the village entrance, their clothes covered in dust.
Crowds pressed together, voices boiling over...
Viewed from this little hill covered in graves, the distant scene resembled a village market in the mortal world, bustling with young and old alike.
Yet the damp, Yin-laden atmosphere of the Earth Abyss was so heavy that even cultivators could hardly remain here for long.
This flourishing mortal village looked utterly out of place in such a Yin-saturated land, like a melon forced underwater.
And when Chen Heng looked closely and examined it in detail, he noticed several things amiss.
Though the village market was lively and crowded, everyone's face was deathly pale, and purplish-red corpse spots faintly marked the skin exposed beneath their sleeves.
Deep within their eyes, their expressions were stiff and blank.
All their laughter, anger, and curses were merely painted on the surface.
It was as though someone had painstakingly painted