It was still the same desolate scene, swept by whistling winds of yin.
Before long, Chen Heng stopped before a ghost village and lowered his cloud.
The market at the village entrance was still bustling: porters, mat weavers, flower sellers, sugar blowers... all manner of figures crowded shoulder to shoulder.
On the butcher's block several yards away, several more cultivators had already been bound, their limbs hacked off in bloody fashion, their vital presence gone. Clearly, after suffering grievous wounds, they had succumbed to the erosion of turbid yin, their brains and minds destroyed, leaving them utterly dead.
The bare-chested butcher ghost standing behind the block was so hungry that its eyes glowed green. Foul, stinking drool streamed down like cascading springs, impossible to stop.
Yet even so.
Faced with flesh and blood within easy reach, for some unknown reason, it still forced itself to endure.
It merely lowered its head and rubbed its hands incessantly, muttering to itself. Even when stark white bones showed through its palms and fingers, it would not stop.
Looking at these witless turbid ghosts, like puppets worked by strings, Chen Heng laughed inwardly and walked a few steps forward, entering their midst.
In an instant, a chilling yin aura that struck terror into the heart coiled around him.
For a moment, the turbid ghosts, previously ignorant and bewildered like puppets mounted on rods, all came alive, turning hideous looks toward him.
But seeing that Chen Heng also bore the aura of a ghost, they quickly withdrew and returned to their former state of self-contentment.
Seeing this, Chen Heng slowly drew a small gilded bronze bell from his Heaven and Earth Bag and shook it lightly.
It was not a crisp, clear chime.
The bead inside struck the uneven inner wall, then rolled around it,