Chapter 136 Stone Temple

Xiao Zhao's baleful aura surged severalfold in a brief instant. His pupils, which had returned to their original color, became bloodshot, radiating a chilling malevolence.

I looked at him with a half-smile, not uttering a word. Xiao Zhao's eyes darted back and forth, never daring to meet my gaze.

The killing intent born from a moment's hatred was incomparable to the baleful aura honed in the martial world.

Without deliberately exerting any pressure, I could still suppress ferocious ghosts. After a long while, Xiao Zhao finally couldn't bear it any longer, and with a retraction of his baleful aura, said, "I'll go with you to seek revenge on Old Sun."

"A wise choice. Get in the car!" I and Lin Zhao got up and headed to Matigou.

Lin Zhao kept checking the map in the car, "The location of Matigou is separated from Beishui Ancient Town by a river and a mountain. Ignoring those two barriers, Matigou is directly opposite Beishui Ancient Town. Could this be another feng shui formation?"

"Hard to say!" I shook my head. "Repetitive things in the world of術道 (Shu Dao, arts and methods) can happen many times. However, it's too early to draw conclusions now. Let's go take a look first."

At this moment, Xiao Zhao, sitting in the back seat, asked grimly, "Li Po, did you plan this all along? You wanted me to help you find Old Sun, that's why you didn't save me?"

"I remember Lin Zhao saying when he pushed me out the door: There's still hope for him."

I responded blandly, "Don't you know if there's hope for you? I don't believe you didn't remember what happened in the past few days before you died."

"How can a person survive for days without eating anything?"

Xiao Zhao said coldly, "I can't survive in the hands of ordinary people, but in the hands of you術士 (Shu Shi, practitioners of arts), I can definitely come back to life."

My voice sank. "Beat him up!"

Lin Zhao raised his hand and threw a spirit talisman into the back seat. A burst of lightning exploded in the car, and blue sparks wandered around on the seat. Xiao Zhao's ghost also shrank into a ball in the electric fire, his screams incessant.

Without me having to say anything, Lin Zhao threw another spirit talisman, sealing his mouth.

From the rearview mirror, I could only see Xiao Zhao twitching constantly, but I couldn't hear his wails.

Lin Zhao looked at the back seat coldly. "Will there be any problems carrying him like this?"

I sneered, "Ghosts are like people. Sometimes you clearly tell them the truth, but they stubbornly believe you're lying to them. This guy clearly died at the hands of someone else, but he's acting like I'm his mortal enemy."

"I have limited patience to explain to this kind of person. It's more direct to beat him up. He'll be obedient after a beating."

As I spoke, I sped up, and the ghost in the back seat completely quieted down, not saying another word until I arrived at Matigou.

I parked the car near Matigou, turned around, and asked Xiao Zhao, "Hey, can you sense where Old Sun is?"

Old Sun was Xiao Zhao's enemy. Vengeful ghosts might not be good at other things, but they were very good at finding their enemies, even more accurate than術士 (Shu Shi, practitioners of arts) performing spells.

This could be considered a kind of justice given to vengeful ghosts by the heavens!

Xiao Zhao was subdued by my beating, and he didn't dare to talk nonsense with me, so he pointed to the east, "Over there!"

That wasn't the direction into Matigou, but it could be the path to the villagers' ancestral graves.

I drove the car to the end of the road before Xiao Zhao said again, "I feel like he's on the mountain."

After I walked a distance along the mountain path, I saw a small temple about a foot high in the weeds by the side of the road.

The small temple, carved from a whole piece of stone, looked like a bird's nest thrown into the wasteland at first glance. Looking closely, I could see a clay figure about the height of a finger sitting inside, draped in a red cloth.

I drew my dagger and touched the red cloth draped over the clay figure like a cloak with the tip of the blade. The clay figure seemed to be frightened by the blade, trembling twice before returning to calm.

I put away the dagger and said, "Someone is worshiping ghosts here! Let's go further ahead and take a look."

The further Lin Zhao and I went, the more small temples there were ahead. Some were clustered together in twos and threes, and some were scattered alone by the roadside. I walked all the way to an abandoned village, and the small temples used for worshiping ghosts were connected in the broken walls and ruins.

Some were even hung on the beams with ropes, and when the night wind came, the small temples swayed in the wind like hanged ghosts. I could even see the clay figures inside grinning coldly at me through the temple doors.

I looked at Xiao Zhao. "Didn't you say he was here?"

Xiao Zhao trembled, "He should be behind the village."

Just as I was about to move forward, Lin Zhao reminded me, "Be careful of your feet. Don't touch the stone temples. Every stone temple houses a ghost."

"There must have been a massacre here. The people in the village were all killed. In order to prevent their resentment from spreading and harming people, the術士 (Shu Shi, practitioners of arts) deliberately built temples for worship. The place where the small temple is located should be where they died."

I glanced around. "The number of people involved in the massacre back then wasn't large, but the massacre lasted for a long time."

"There were more than a dozen people who were hanged on the houses, and the people enshrined in that area of small temples should be the ones who were concentrated in the house and burned alive. The people who massacred the village back then were either killing for fun or deliberately retaliating."