Blood Pool and Corpse Forest

"That thing really was an immortal," Blind Chen said quietly to Xu Chunliang.

"Once I tell you what they are, you'll understand why I told you to leave Fan City..."

Blind Chen sighed, sat down on a stone lion beside him that was only half a man's height, and gestured for Xu Chunliang to sit too. Then he said thoughtfully:

"I'm not like you. I've only heard of them, never seen them. My master said they were underworld soldiers sent from the underworld to the mortal world to claim lives, also called Yin Immortals. Their long, slender bodies are hidden in patchwork cloth, their heads wrapped in blue cloth and their faces covered with mourning cloth bearing the character for 'immortal.' Black paper cranes fill the sky above their heads. Was that what you saw?"

Xu Chunliang nodded repeatedly. Blind Chen continued, "Then that's right. Those were Yin Immortals sent from the underworld to claim lives.

"When Yin Immortals pass through, the living must keep out of their way.

"Don't look, don't think, and don't breathe. Otherwise, they'll casually take you to the underworld.

"They've come to collect souls. Normally, two of them are enough to collect all the departed souls in a city. So many have come, which means a great many people in Fan City have died according to the underworld's register of life and death. And for some special reason, they can't find those departed souls, so they can only wander blindly through the streets..."

Blind Chen looked east and heaved a deep sigh.

Something stirred in Xu Chunliang's mind. Recalling the hook scale in Guo Family Village, he hurriedly asked, "You mean a lot of people in the city have already died? But for some unknown reason, their souls haven't been taken away? Is it a bizarre entity?"

Blind Chen shook his head and smiled bitterly. "Kid, stop asking so many questions. This isn't something a nobody like you can get involved in. Go on, leave. There's still time to get out of the city within two days. Any later, and you won't survive either..."

"This isn't a bizarre entity, but it's far more terrifying than one..."

"In this world, the ones most capable of harming people are still people themselves..."

With that, Blind Chen took three yellow talismans from his robes and handed them to Xu Chunliang.

"If you encounter those Yin Immortals again, stick one of these talismans between your eyebrows, stand facing a wall, and wait for them to leave. Remember what I said: don't think, don't speak, and don't breathe."

With that, Blind Chen took a single step and vanished into the night. Clearly, he was an exceptionally formidable expert.

Xu Chunliang stood by the moldy wall and thought for a moment, then headed toward the Wine Pool and Meat Forest anyway.

After leaving Xu Chunliang behind in a single step, Blind Chen opened his eyes. Beneath his eyelids were no eyeballs, but a pair of deep black holes. Two green snakes slithered in and out of them, an utterly eerie sight.

He sat cross-legged and [looked] east. The two little green snakes intertwined as they crawled out of his eye sockets, then shot into the darkness with a whoosh.

Blind Chen's perspective shifted to that of the two little snakes.

The little snakes slithered past the clawing shadows of trees in the night and along silent flagstone streets until they reached an exceptionally lively place.

It was a magnificent six-story building, its tiers rising one above another.

The ground before its entrance was paved with white marble, and five-hundred-year-old trees served as the beams and pillars supporting the tallest building in Fan City.

A grand red sandalwood plaque hung a full twenty meters above the ground, bearing four large characters:

Wine Pool and Meat Forest.

The building blazed with light and bustled with activity, a picture of thriving worldly life.

Yet in the eyes of the little green snakes, this prosperous scene was a vast hell.

"Wine Pool and Meat Forest, my ass," Blind Chen cursed as he sat cross-legged on the ground. The little green snake began slithering forward.

It silently climbed the white marble steps and slipped through the crowd exchanging toasts. At the center of the building, it saw the legendary Wine Pool and Meat Forest, which both emperors had been so fond of.

Fragrant wine flowed in an enormous pool that resembled a small lake.

Around the pool hung fat pigs, thoroughly cleaned and roasted to a fragrant, reddish-brown finish, suspended by steel wires.

They looked like a forest of red firs.

Scantily clad palace maids moved among them, occasionally slicing pork from the fat pigs, arranging it on white bone china plates, and serving it onto the diners' plates.

The little green snake quietly slithered up a wooden pillar to the kitchen on the third floor.

An enormous fat man sat in the kitchen.

He was three meters tall, with folds of fat piled upon his body, face, and neck. Sitting on the floor, he looked like a mountain of flesh.

Wearing a tall white hat, he had made himself impeccably clean and indeed had the bearing of an imperial chef.

He was none other than Human Cook, the royal imperial chef who had once been famous throughout the capital and was now famous throughout Fan City.

When he saw the little green snake, an eerie smile spread across the folds of Human Cook's face.

He raised a fat hand and drew a noodle-cutting knife from beneath his huge, drooping breasts. Then he made a casual slash.

A blade wind of white flesh flew from the knife and cut the little green snake in two.

Three hundred meters away, Blind Chen stood up. He tapped his bamboo staff against the ground, and the four characters [heaven and the mortal world] written on his white banner quickly dissolved as though soaked in water.

Then new strokes appeared on the white banner.

They formed four blood-red characters:

[Purgatory on Earth].

With the white banner at the center, black shadows slithered outward like black snakes. In an instant, the blackness covered the entire area between Blind Chen and the Wine Pool and Meat Forest.

When the blackness had settled completely, the diners at the Wine Pool and Meat Forest were astonished to find that their surroundings had changed.

The imposing six-story building had become a huge black cauldron overturned on the ground.

The white antique porcelain plates had become bowls hollowed out of human skulls. The reddish-brown roast pork they held had quietly turned into strips of bleeding white flesh.

Human fingers, eyeballs, hearts, and livers were all among them.

A fat wealthy man had just stuffed a human eye into his mouth and bitten into it, bursting it as he usually did...

The wine pool in the middle of the building became a scarlet pool of blood. The meat forest around it became a collection of naked corpses...

A blood pool and a forest of corpses—this was the Wine Pool and Meat Forest's true appearance.

Blind Chen's chilling voice carried into the building. "Human Cook, birth, aging, sickness, and death are ordained by heaven. How could you set up this Great Blood-Boiling Stove in Fan City to refine the people's blood, flesh, and spirits together into a Three Corpses Life-Prolonging Pill, all to extend the emperor's life?"

"Is it worth using the lives of an entire city to make one Three Corpses Life-Prolonging Pill that can only extend a life by five years?"

"Three years ago, that so-called bizarre calamity in Wood City was your excuse to cover up the truth after slaughtering the entire city, wasn't it? It's only been three years, and you're already preparing a second Three Corpses Life-Prolonging Pill?"

"Stop now, and I can do you a favor and not report this to the [Night-Wandering Gods]. Think it over..."

When Blind Chen began speaking, the guests in the Wine Pool and Meat Forest froze where they were, sitting or standing, as though time itself had been stopped...

Human Cook threw back his head and laughed, then shoved the noodle-cutting knife back into his fat.

As he laughed, ten tall figures abruptly appeared around Blind Chen.

They were clearly all men, yet each wore a red bridal veil embroidered with gold thread and hung with pearls. Thin red threads were wrapped all over their bodies as they stood silently around Blind Chen.

Red blood flowed from the thin threads, forcing back the blackness flowing from the white banner.

Blind Chen gritted his teeth and asked uncertainly, "Royal deathsworn, Blood Pagoda?"