Chapter 441: The Dark Ruins
The crowd’s search soon yielded a discovery.

They found a swirling blood mist beside a mountain stream in the valley.

Everything in this place disappeared, including the crops and the evil fog. Even the mountain streams became dry and without water. As a result, the blood fog swirling in the empty valley became particularly eye-catching, making it difficult not to notice it.

After discovering the blood mist, Shang Lu and others did not rush to approach it. Instead, they watched from afar and found that the blood mist was not large in volume, but it exuded a strange atmosphere.

“Why do I feel that this blood mist seems to have life? And it is constantly getting bigger.” Lu Yang stared at the blood mist with a frown.

“Your feeling is correct. This blood mist is indeed expanding by polluting the surrounding areas.” Rat Patrolman turned around and said.

After receiving Wei Wu’s affirmation, Lu Yang immediately straightened his chest, looking quite proud.

Unfortunately, the Rat Patrolman only said this and did not continue to praise him. He turned to Lu Dao and ordered: “Blow away the blood mist and see what is hidden inside.”

Lu Dao crossed his hands to accept the order, raised his right hand, tapped a few times in front of him with his index finger, then pointed at the blood mist in the distance and shouted, “Wind, disperse the evil spirits!”

A sharp “Woo——” sound suddenly came from in front of Lu Dao.

A hurricane appeared out of nowhere and attacked the strange blood mist in the distance.

The hurricane was extremely fast and the wind was extremely strong, as if it was going to tear and blow away this space.

To Lu Dao’s surprise, although the blood mist in the distance looked strange, it did not resist the witch wind he exhaled and was easily blown away.

“Huh?” Lu Dao raised his eyebrows slightly, feeling that there was something strange about the dissipation of the blood mist.

But he didn’t have time to think about it, because after the blood mist dissipated, he saw a building similar to a yamen standing next to the mountain stream.

How could there be a government office in Pingdu Mountain which was occupied by the He bandits?
What kind of government office is this? Who built it?

Not only Lu Dao was curious, Shang Lu and the others were also full of questions. They looked at the yamen carefully and found that its outer walls were all a creepy purple-black color.

Everyone had good eyesight and soon realized that the outer wall of the yamen was not made of bricks, stones and mud, but of rotten and blackened human heads.

These heads had gray eyes staring at them, black mouths open, and were constantly spewing out evil spirits and dirty blood.

Streams of dirty blood flowed from the wall of human heads to the ground, gathering into a pool of smelly blood and flowing into the mountain stream.

The strange blood mist that seemed to have life was born and rose from the smelly blood.

Unlike the outer wall, the gate of this yamen is dark red.

But this dark red color is not uniform, because it is formed by countless bloody handprints.

It was as if tens of millions of people, with bloody hands, had slammed on this door.

A strong sense of resentment and evil spirit emanated from each bloody handprint.

When they saw these bloody handprints, they could hear the wails and roars of thousands of wronged souls.

For a moment, they couldn’t tell whether the cries of these wronged souls were real or illusions.

Several teams of evil spirits in police uniforms were wandering around the gate of the yamen, just like police officers on guard.

Above the Bloody Hand Gate, there is a plaque made of human bones and skin hanging.

But there was not a single word on the plaque, only blood was constantly flowing out.

Shang Lu and his companions had originally wanted to use the plaque to determine the origin of this strange government office, but seeing this situation, they had no choice but to give up.

However, Shanglu’s eyes, with the blessing of the liver god statue, can see things that others cannot see.

For example, at this moment he saw this yamen built with human heads and corpses, which exuded a strong sense of resentment and death, which made people wonder, could it be the legendary Palace of the King of Hell?
Shang Lu couldn’t help but whisper to Bai Lingxu beside him, “Brother Bai, you are well-informed. Do you know the government office in front? What is it?”

Bai Lingxu smiled bitterly and said, “Junior Brother Shang, you think too highly of me. I only know that it is evil and weird. If you want to ask me where it came from, I really don’t know.”

“What’s the use of guessing here? Why don’t we catch a few ghost officials and ask them, and we’ll know.” Lu Yang said as he was about to release his flying sword to catch ghosts.

The aura emitted by these ghost messengers was not strong, so Lu Yang judged that he could defeat and capture these ghost messengers, so he wanted to show off his skills in front of the Rat Patrol.

What if I perform well and am noticed by the Rat Patrol, and get a fortune-telling to recruit me into the Wu Kingdom? Wouldn’t that mean I’ll be able to rise to great heights?

Fortunately, although Lu Yang was anxious to show off, he also had some sense of propriety. He did not take direct action, but crossed his hands and asked for orders from Zi Shu Xun Shou and Lu Dao.

As a result, both Rat Patrolman and Lu Dao stopped his plan:
“No!”

“Don’t do anything rash!”

The Rat Patrolman didn’t say why not, he just flicked his fingers and a few gray hairs popped out and pressed on Lu Yang’s sword case.

Lu Yang suddenly felt that the swords in the sword box became as heavy as a mountain. Not to mention flying the swords to catch ghosts, he couldn’t even hold them. They fell to the ground with a clang, creating a cloud of dust.

Fortunately, the ghost officer wandering outside the strange yamen in the distance did not notice this and prevented them from being exposed.

As a teacher at the Witch Academy, Lu Dao whispered to Lu Yang and also explained to Shang Lu and the others:

“This is not an ordinary government office or temple occupied by ghosts. There is a very strong chaotic spiritual energy inside it. It is very likely the entrance to a dangerous place!”

“A dangerous place?!”

“There’s another dangerous place hidden in this valley?”

“No wonder the He thief chose this place as his lair.”

Shang Lu and his companions exclaimed in surprise.

A dangerous place is also a kind of secret realm, but because it is filled with a chaotic atmosphere, it is easily polluted, making it much more dangerous and weird than an ordinary secret realm. If you are not careful, you will die, hence the name.

Although dangerous, dangerous places are also important resource areas.

Because in addition to the dangers, there are also many benefits hidden in the dangerous places.

Not to mention anything else, the fact that the dangerous land can produce spiritual liquids, spiritual marrow and other things needed for cultivation is enough for the imperial courts of various countries to organize manpower to develop it vigorously.

However, the spiritual fluid and spiritual marrow mined from the dangerous land are full of chaotic toxicity and need to be purified at multiple levels. Otherwise, they will easily be contaminated after consumption, causing chaos in one’s cultivation.

In addition, many spiritual treasures, spiritual objects, and even things like residual spiritual roots are produced in the dangerous places, and there are also many secret manuals on martial arts.

However, it is best not to try the techniques produced in the dangerous places lightly, because these techniques often contain many problems, and practicing them rashly can easily lead to obsession and madness.

It is precisely because these things can be produced in the dangerous land that, even though it has all kinds of weirdness and dangers, it is still a treasure in the world today. So Lu Yang and Bai Lingxu speculated that the rice thieves had discovered that there was a dangerous land hidden in Pingdu Mountain, so they ran here to open rice fields and grow human rice, and use human rice to exchange various treasures and skills from the dangerous land?

But Shang Lu didn’t think so.

Not to mention He Zei’s initial cultivation level, even if he found the dangerous place, he would not know whether he could come out alive after entering.

Assuming they really have the ability to figure out the strange rules of the evil land and bring out the treasure alive, why would they take the huge risk of going to the ghost market to sell the evil ghosts and exchange for skills and magic treasures? Wouldn’t it be better to dig directly from the evil land?
With such a dangerous place and a strange and evil method of taking humans as crops, this group of crop thieves can completely lie dormant here and secretly accumulate strength.

Wouldn’t it be better to wait until your strength grows, and when the country of Ba is caught in civil strife or war, and then suddenly rise up and use the powerful corpse ghosts you have raised to sweep across the world?

However, judging from the previous performance of the Hezei, they did not seem to be guarding a “treasure mountain”.

After careful observation, Zishu Xunshou, Lu Dao and Xu Shan came to a similar conclusion as Shang Lu.

“This dangerous place is newly created. It is very likely that all the people who were nearby were sucked into this newly created dangerous place.”

Bai Lingxu and Lu Yang were very surprised: “A new dangerous place? It just happened to be here, when we were suppressing bandits. Isn’t it too coincidental?”

“It’s not a coincidence.”

Lu Dao narrowed his eyes, chanted a spell, sensed the fluctuations of the surrounding atmosphere, and analyzed:

“People have been planting crops here for years, which has accumulated a lot of evil spirits and resentment. However, due to the terrain and the fact that the crop thieves are afraid of being exposed, they cannot be vented.

When Jian Cheng and his men arrived here, they had a fierce fight with the thief leader, the fake Shennong Emperor, and a group of thieves including the Eight Ghost Immortals, which resulted in a violent energy shock. In the end, they “detonated” the evil spirit and resentment accumulated here, triggering the arrival of the evil land…”

“Is this possible?” Lu Yang exclaimed in amazement.

“There is precedent for this kind of situation.”

Rat Patrol took over the conversation: “When the State of Chu destroyed the State of Yue, wizards from the two countries fought and killed countless people, which eventually led to the birth of a blood river. After the State of Chu destroyed the State of Yue, it used the strange magic it obtained from the blood river to train many powerful corpse soldiers in the lands of Shen and Xi. They were very powerful and were called the Shenxi Division. They made great contributions to the expansion of the territory of the State of Chu. Afterwards, many countries tried to follow the example of the State of Chu and “fight” a secret realm with bloody killings, but none of them succeeded. I didn’t expect that today, in Pingdu Mountain, a new dangerous place would be created because of the fierce battle.”

The emergence of a new dangerous place is actually good news.

Because once the dangerous land is developed and has a stable output, it will increase the number of breakthrough opportunities for wizards of all levels.

But the current situation is that the masters of the three counties are very likely to have been sucked into this newly born dangerous place. If the masters of the three counties are lost in it, the loss of the Ba Kingdom will be great, and the Chu Kingdom, which is confronting at Xingshan, may take advantage of the opportunity to attack formally.

Although they were anxious, everything in this new dangerous place was unknown, and even the Rat Patrol did not dare to rush in.

After he discussed with Lu Dao and Xu Shan for a few sentences, Lu Dao and Xu Shan sent a message out, asking people to bring the equipment and treasures to explore the dangerous place.

He chanted a spell, pulled out a few strands of his hair and blew on them, turning them into a few black rats. They dug holes underground and drilled into the strange ghost yamen, trying to find out the entrance to the dangerous place and the situation inside.

After the Rat Patrol released the Witch Rat, Lu Dao and Xu Shan also contacted the people in the camp through witchcraft, and informed the reserve team left behind in the camp of their findings, asking them to quickly contact their respective witch academies and send them treasures for exploring the secret realm.

This time, the three counties came to Pingdu Mountain to suppress bandits and kill thieves. The intelligence obtained in advance did not mention the existence of a dangerous place here, so the people from the three counties did not bring any related treasures.

The reserve troops left behind in the camp, after sending messages to their respective witch academies, immediately set out into the valley to rush over and meet up.

By constructing barriers and arranging magic arrays, we can prevent the dangerous land from being polluted by the outside world.

Unlike ordinary secret realms, the chaotic atmosphere in the dangerous land will spread out and pollute the surrounding area.

If there is no restriction, the polluted area will become larger and larger, and the pollution situation will become more and more serious.

People and animals polluted by the chaotic aura will go crazy and become demons.

Therefore, before the reserve team arrived, Zishu Patrol, together with Lu Dao, Xu Shan, and Shang Lu and a few others, began to busy themselves with setting up magic arrays and constructing barriers.

But at this time, the Rat Patrol discovered through the marks of clairvoyance and super hearing that something strange was happening in other parts of the valley.

At the same time, Lu Dao and Xu Shan also received a message reporting:
“The rice fields are withering strangely!”

“The people who were planted in the blood by the demon thief are drying up rapidly!”

“The demons and corpses in the evil fog are dying rapidly, as if an invisible force has sucked them dry…”

The Rat’s expression became very serious at this moment.

He quickly made hand gestures and chanted an incantation, then raised his hand and slapped the ground hard, while opening his mouth and blew a stream of witchcraft air in front of him.

The witchcraft energy surged and turned into a map of the earth’s veins.

This is exactly the direction of the earth veins here in Pingdu Mountain.

On the geomagnetic map, one could see black auras rushing towards them from all directions.

At the same time, the black air also attracted the ground energy of the mountains under Pingdu Mountain, causing all the ground energy to be polluted and rush to this place.

The Rat Patrol was horrified, and without even bothering to put away his magic, he stood up and shouted to Shang Lu and the others, “Go! Go!”

Shang Lu and his companions did not hesitate at all, and no one asked why they were leaving at this time. They all flew at their fastest speeds, some flying swords, some riding pigs, some burrowing underground, and some breathing fire to take off…

I just want to get away from here as soon as possible.

It’s a pity that it’s still a step too late.

The bloody hand door of the ghost yamen in the distance, which had been tightly closed, suddenly opened with a “creak” at this moment.

“boom–“

Rolling blood mist surged out from the door like a flood that broke through a dam. It rushed over in an instant and caught up with everyone.

Zishu Xunshou and Lu Dao roared together and used all their magic to try to blow away the blood mist.

Xu Shan took out the formation plate and activated it, wanting to use the power of the witch formation to eliminate the blood mist.

But neither witchcraft nor witch formations could blow away or eliminate the blood mist.

This blood mist was like a giant mouth of destruction, swallowing up Shang Lu and his group in an instant.

Everyone who was in the blood mist felt that they could not see their hands in front of them and could only see a vast expanse of blood red.

Apart from the exclamations of his companions, there was only a strange and eerie long shout: “Open the gates of hell!” and the wailing cries of countless wronged souls: “Once you enter the underworld, it is difficult to get out of the world——”

At the same time, on the human skin plaque above the yamen, the bloody red blood turned into four big characters: “The Underworld”.

(Does anyone know how long it takes for the swelling from mumps to go away? I apply medicine and get intravenous drips every day, but it’s still as swollen as a pig’s head…)
(End of this chapter)