He had peered into all of the grand halls, and all of the residences. However, no matter where he went, he didn’t see a sign of a single other person.
By this time, he was really getting jittery at how strange this place was.
“There’s no way that I, the inspections commissioner, am the only person inside of the Inspections Manor….” His intuition was indeed telling him that… there were other auras present. It was just that he couldn't find them, as if they existed somewhere between life and death.
“Don’t tell me this place is haunted!” Shivering, he suddenly thought back to the Arch-Emperor’s sepulcher, and the spine-tingling things that had occurred there. Spinning, he looked over his shoulder but there was nobody behind him, not even any paper people.
It was starting to get dark, causing shadows to fill the manor, and making it even more sinister. Flustered, he decided that he needed to leave, but quickly discovered that he couldn’t!! The entire manor was completely sealed and locked down by some sort of restrictive spell.
By now, he was truly terrified, and was convinced that there was something very wrong with this Inspections Manor. After confirming that it was impossible to get out, he found a random building and pushed open the door. Seeing that there was no dust anywhere, he nervously sat down cross-legged.
“I guess I’ll have to wait until the command medallion is completely activated before I can learn the secrets of the Inspections Manor.” Looking down, he confirmed that the command medallion was roughly thirty percent activated.
Gritting his teeth, he rotated his cultivation base to try to get the process to go faster.
“Come on, hurry up! I have a really bad feeling about this. It’s almost night. I'm worried… that this place is haunted!” Shivering, he cursed the black-robed man a bit, then thought about the crappy command medallion. Activating it shouldn’t be that hard, right? There had to be a way to get the blasted thing to activate faster.
Please go to
install our App to read the latest chapters for free
Chapter
759: We're All On The Same Team
It was dark outside as Bai Xiaochun frantically tried to activate the command medallion. It was so deathly quiet around him that it would have been possible to hear a pin drop.
Slowly but surely, his hair began to stand on end. He simply couldn’t remain calm, and was doing everything he could to activate the command medallion as quickly as possible. However, at some point during the night, his work was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from outside the building he was in.
Thump thump. Thump thump…. It almost sounded like a beating heart, although Bai Xiaochun was quite certain they were footsteps. However, after sending some divine sense outside to check, he couldn’t see anyone in the area.
That, of course, caused his scalp to tingle so hard it felt like it might explode.
“It’s really… really haunted….” He felt like crying; other than death, the thing he feared most in life was ghosts. It didn’t matter that he was in the Heaven-Dao Nascent Soul stage, he still couldn’t shake that deep-seated phobia. Without any hesitation he procured a big stack of paper talismans from his bag of holding and began to slap them down all over himself.
They were leftover talismans from his days back in the River-Defying Sect, which he had also used in the Arch-Emperor’s labyrinth. At the moment, he didn’t care at all that using them could theoretically reveal his identity, and he even forgot to use the powers of his mask to change their appearance. After plastering himself all over with them, he was still shaking in fear, and kept pushing the command medallion to activate. At the same time, he kept looking around anxiously, worried he would see a face looming in the darkness.
“I'm the inspections commissioner, and this is the Inspections Manor! How could this be happening…? It shouldn’t be like this…!” As he sat there nervously, he suddenly realized that he could hear more and more footsteps outside, until it sounded like an entire army was passing by.
By this point, he was virtually going crazy.
“So many ghosts….” he thought, his face white as a sheet. It was at this point that, without any warning, someone suddenly knocked on the door.
It was a rigorous, methodical knock that frightened Bai Xiaochun so badly he leaped to his feet and stared at the door, panting and trembling.
After a moment, the knocking stopped, and then the footsteps went off into the distance, as though whatever army was outside had move on.
Eventually, when Bai Xiaochun was sure that everything was quiet, he wiped the sweat from his brow. All of a sudden, he felt a bit embarrassed. After all, he was a powerful cultivator, a Wildlands necromancer who used countless vengeful souls to conjure magical flames. And yet, here he was being bullied by ghosts. All in all, he couldn’t help but feel a bit scornful of his own actions.
“Come on! Is Lord Bai really afraid of ghosts? Nah, I just don’t want to go out until I'm finished activating the command medallion. After all, I wouldn’t want to cause any misunderstandings.” Having reached the conclusion that this was definitely the best way to look at it, he no longer felt very embarrassed, and was just about to continue working with the command medallion when….
All of a sudden, a rumbling sound echoed out as some massive force pushed against the door, causing it to swing open. As it did, a chill wind rushed inside, startling Bai Xiaochun so much that he screamed and unleashed all the power of his cultivation base. Lunging backward, he shouted, “I'm the inspections commissioner! We’re all on the same team here….”
It was impossible to say whether or not it was because of what Bai Xiaochun had just shouted, but after the door opened, it was obvious that there wasn’t anyone standing in the doorway. It was completely empty.
Sweat poured down Bai Xiaochun’s forehead, and his aura trembled unstably. Outside, Arch-Emperor City seemed completely dark, which wasn’t how Bai Xiaochun remembered the place usually being at night. Back in Borough 89, it had always been a lively place. Furthermore, he was now in the central district of the city, in Borough 4, a place which should have been even more bustling.
In the center of the city, the streets were packed day and night. But strangely… even with the door open, Bai Xiaochun couldn’t hear even a whisper of the hustle and bustle that he should have. Everything was dark and quiet.
Apparently, this part of the city center was aware of how things worked near the Inspections Manor, and turned off all of their lights at night.
“What the hell kind of place is this?!” Teeth chattering, he performed an incantation gesture with his right hand and then waved his finger, causing the door to swing closed. Looking around the area vigilantly, he scanned everything with divine sense, but again came up with nothing. Finally, he patted his bag of holding to produce a soulhoarding pagoda, out of which Bai Hao flew.
“You’re a ghost cultivator, my apprentice,” he said. “Help me look around and see if there are any other beings like you around here.” Bai Hao was a bit taken aback, but he looked around for a moment, then closed his eyes for a while. Eventually, he frowned.
“Master,” he said hesitantly, “there are definitely no ghosts around here that have mental faculties like I do…. However, there’s definitely something strange about this place, as if it exists somewhere between the realms of death and life. I really can’t put my finger on it. It’s like this place….” At this point he realized that his Master’s face had turned deathly white, and that he appeared to be completely terrified.
“What’s wrong, Master?” he asked.
Bai Xiaochun licked his lips and mused that he definitely couldn’t allow himself to look scared in front of his apprentice. Thumping himself on his chest, he said, “Hahaha! Nothing! I'm not scared at all, go on with your explanation.”