"Is that so?"
On the ship, Chen Qing, after receiving Wang Ye's telepathic message, glanced at the ship carrying the eldest princess and his entourage ahead, his brows furrowed.
Actually, when the imperial reinforcements were tricked by the Eldest Princess, Chen Qing knew that something was wrong in the capital, but he didn't expect it to be this big!
"You mean the Duke of Wei came to the capital first, then suddenly left, and immediately raised an army after returning to the north?"
"Yes!" Wang Ye replied, "That's the information I've received."
Chen Qing was silent for a moment. "Have you thought of anything?"
Wang Ye: "I've thought of some things, but I'm not entirely sure."
"Are you wondering if it's possible that the Duke of Wei's reason for raising an army, claiming that His Majesty was bewitched by a demon, is true?"
Wang Ye: "."
Seeing the other party remain silent, Chen Qing continued, "Is it possible that the emperor has been bewitched by something, or even worse, directly controlled? Did the Duke of Wei discover that something else is actually controlling the dynasty now? Or perhaps the Duke of Wei received the emperor's plea for help?"
"Are there any demons in this world capable of controlling him?" Wang Ye couldn't help but ask, "You witnessed firsthand how powerful His Majesty is, didn't you?"
Chen Qing rolled his eyes; he really wanted to say a lot more.
However, it is indeed puzzling. The emperor of the Xiao Household is clearly more powerful than the current version. Given that the version is not yet fully released, there shouldn't be anything that can control him.
"Have you encountered anything else strange?" Chen Qing asked.
With too little information, he simply couldn't deduce it.
"Yes, your mother-in-law is dead."
Chen Qing: "."
What's going on?
After Wang Ye explained the situation, Chen Qing frowned even more.
Even the imperial concubines couldn't be protected?
Putting everything else aside, Noble Consort Dong someone who had given birth to a prince, albeit a disabled one. She was still a consort who brought blood to the Xiao Household and had a powerful background. She was said to be the daughter of Yang Rui, a Grand Secretary of the Wenyuan Pavilion.
Such a noble concubine, she just died like that?
Has the imperial palace in Beijing become a sieve? Can anyone just walk in?
He vividly recalled how strict the palace security was back then. Bloodline soldiers were stationed every three steps and five steps, and various magical arrays covered the entire palace like a minefield. In this version before rune masters and array masters appeared, the palace security was arguably the best of the era.
The reason why Thousand-Faced Fox was able to infiltrate was entirely due to the cooperation of Yin-Yang Road and Mr. Origami were his inside agents.
What are they now, and how did they manage to sneak in?
The imperial concubine died tragically; is my fiancée alright?
Chen Qing paused for a moment. To be honest, he had almost forgotten about it before picking up his mother. But when his mother found out that he was going to marry a royal wife, she was overjoyed.
He asks himself Heavenly Capital when he will marry the princess.
"Should I go and visit Her Highness the Princess for you?" Wang Ye suddenly asked.
"Is it appropriate for you, a man from out of town, to ask this?" Chen Qing frowned.
"What are you afraid I, a mere puppet, will do to your fiancée?"
"Roll"
Chen Qing sighed, "Be careful. I think it's best if you don't go to the palace. I have a feeling there's something there you can't afford to offend."
But I'm very curious.
"What are you curious about?" Chen Qing asked, taken aback.
"I'm curious, what could have driven that supreme figure who forced his master to his death to seek help from the Duke of Wei?"
Chen Qing: "."
"That was just a guess; it might not be what I think."
"If it's not what you think, then there's no danger."
Chen Qing rolled her eyes. Was this guy just asking for trouble?
" Wang Ye, why don't you come back first? Come to Liuzhou; I happen to need a capable person there to hold down the fort."
"Aren't there Master Shen San and Wei Gongcheng?" Wang Ye laughed. "I don't want to be confined to some place by your deification just yet."
Chen Qing's system of bestowing gods is very interesting, but it also has a drawback: once a certain divine position is promised, one will be bound to that position. Whether it is Wei Gongcheng as the City God or the Duke of Qi as the God of the West Sea, once they are conferred a title, many things will be restricted.
Wang Ye disliked this; he was a descendant of Evening Elephant, and people of Evening Elephant were the least able to bear being trapped.
He believed that if his master made certain promises, such as remaining trapped in the capital forever, the emperor would not harm him, but his master did not.
Chen Qing sighed; he knew Wang Ye wouldn't be easy to persuade.
A complex feeling welled up inside him. He had been in this world for decades, and if it weren't for Wang Ye, he and his mother, older brother, and others might be hunting roe deer in the north right now.
"Be careful. I'm not so sure about what's going on in the palace. But I do know something about that old steward you mentioned earlier."
"Oh?" Wang Ye immediately perked up; he was very interested in that matter. "You should know, right? After all, you personally established the underworld in Liuzhou."
"These are two different things." Chen Qing's forehead immediately creased with black lines. " The Underworld in Liuzhou is set up by the Divine Path system, and most of the spirits it collects are newly born spirits. The reason you see the Underworld as prosperous now, with most spirits peaceful and indistinguishable from humans, is because most haven't been infected. But have you ever thought about why Liuzhou needs to isolate the evil spirits from the past? What about all those people who died in Liuzhou before? Those from years ago, decades ago?"
Wang Ye was taken aback, then shook his head. "I really don't know. The whereabouts of a person after death has always been a taboo subject. Even my master rarely talks about it, so I know very little."
"Your master rarely talks about it," Chen Qing sighed. "After death, people are drawn to the Yin-Yang Road. No matter how wealthy or powerful they were in life, once they arrive there, they are infected and transformed into something else. Most are devoured, their souls split into countless pieces, scattered in the bellies of numerous evil spirits, utterly torn apart. Especially for sorcerers who have lived long lives, even if they were so powerful and carefree in life, they still suffer the same fate on the Yin-Yang Road. I imagine many sorcerers, after witnessing the fate of their elders on the Yin-Yang Road, are unwilling to mention it."
Wang Ye nodded. This was probably why many elders in sorcerer families wanted to pursue immortality. In this world, death was not a peaceful journey, but rather an entry into a more terrifying place, which was truly hard to accept.
"So here's the question: the butler you mentioned, who retained his human form and spoke almost exactly like the old butler you remember, is that even possible? A hundred-year-old butler, who hadn't cultivated any spiritual techniques, would have been torn apart and devoured even by a high-level sorcerer on the Yin-Yang Road. How could he possibly remain intact?"
So what you mean is...?
"That thing you saw is definitely not the Butler He you're talking about!"
"What is that?" Wang Ye felt a chill run down his spine. Even in his puppet form, he felt a sense of dread, as if he were being watched.
"A very troublesome thing," Chen Qing said in a low voice. "These things are rare even in the Yin-Yang Road. They Spirit Devouring memories and then try to imitate the people in those memories. Moreover, once this thing reaches the Yang Realm, it can quickly find familiar beings from the devoured memories by their scent and integrate into the world."
"Integrate? How can you integrate? You're already dead!"
"Unfortunately, once you get close to something like this, you won't think of it as a dead person anymore."
Wang Ye: "."
"Didn't you just say that after Butler He left, no one remembered it?"
"Like the Thousand-Faced Fox, it can alter people's memories?" Wang Ye asked seriously.
"It's not that powerful," Chen Qing shook his head. "But it's more troublesome. They can't change your memories, but they'll make you feel that its existence is reasonable. For example, even if you know it's a dead person and its presence there is illogical, when it stands in front of you, you'll feel it's reasonable, and you'll chat and laugh with it. When it leaves, you'll also feel it's normal because it's a hypnotic state, so you'll completely forget its existence!"
Upon hearing this, Wang Ye felt a chill that he hadn't felt in a long time spread throughout his body.
Such a terrifying ability sounds even more exaggerated than that of Thousand-Faced Fox.
It means that some things seem normal when they appear, but you forget everything they did when they leave. What does this represent?
This means you might have no idea what these things have done around you, or when they happened!
"How can such a thing exist in this world?" Wang Ye couldn't help but exclaim.
Chen Qing: "."
As long as they're paid enough overtime, what kind of creative monsters can't these designers come up with?
"You just said this thing is very rare." Wang Ye suddenly thought of something even more chilling, "Does that mean there's more than one?"
It suddenly occurred to him that when he left Beijing, there were many rumors about the return of the dead!
"Hmm," Chen Qing smiled wryly, "It's not just one, there are many. If I'm not mistaken, the capital city is probably full of those things now!"
Wang Ye: "."
"This thing's inherent damage is generally limited," Chen Qing said in a low voice. "Back then, this thing also appeared near A Li, also known as the Thousand-Faced Fox, but I didn't pay much attention to it because I knew that its damage was limited and it was very fragile. This hypnotic ability is for self-protection. In the Yin-Yang Road, these monsters use this ability to prevent the surrounding evil spirits from attacking them, and they rarely attack others on their own initiative. They are a rare gentle species in the Yin-Yang Road."
Hearing this, Wang Ye breathed a slight sigh of relief. A non-harmful monster, although its abilities sounded terrifying, was at least barely acceptable if it didn't attack.
"But just now you said you could feel a strange chill?"
"Yes?" Wang Ye's heart skipped a beat again. "Is there a problem?"
"This is a big problem." Chen Qing lowered his voice and said, "This thing is called Yin Devourer, a monster that enjoys the feeling of being present, which is why it impersonates other people's family members and roams the world. But there's a variant of this thing. If this Yin Devourer goes too far and gets devoured by some powerful evil spirit, the situation will be different. We usually call this kind of thing..."
--
" The Yin Devourer Demon!!"
Mr. Black Cloud was sitting outside Great Azure Mountain, flipping through an ancient book in his hand. Inside was a record by an ancient sorcerer about the Yin Devourer Demon.
When the emperor was missing the empress and his emotions were unstable several times, he followed the fox's advice and introduced a Yin Devourer into the Yin-Yang Road.
But now it seems that thing wasn't the Yin Devourer!
It's this stuff in the book!