Chapter 319: The Divine Tomb of the Underground Palace (6)
Yan Shixun understood the mindset of these roadside bandits all too well. With just a few vague but suggestive remarks—paired with his own strength and intimidating aura—he subtly planted a seed of doubt in the villagers’ hearts.
He didn’t say anything outright. He simply let the villagers guess on their own.
—And as for how wild those guesses might get, well, that was their business, not his.
But that initial shock was enough to make the villagers wary of who he might be. They didn’t dare to test him further, afraid they’d end up provoking a killer who already had blood on his hands—bringing disaster upon themselves.
Places like their remote mountain village had seen fugitives before—either hiding out or just passing through. After all, the place was cut off from the outside world, full of winding mountain paths that made it easy to escape and hard to track. It was the kind of terrain criminals preferred.
They’d heard that another village nearby once tried to rob a car, only to discover that the person inside was a fugitive. The fugitive didn’t hesitate—killed a few of them on the spot and drove off without a second glance.
The crying in that village afterward had been pitiful.
They couldn’t afford to end up the same way.
The villagers were now full of regret—what started as a plan to rob someone had turned into a situation where they might have to pay money instead. Their faces were full of reluctance, but they didn’t dare defy Yan Shixun. All they could do was try to bargain with polite words, asking for a bit more time to scrape together the money.
But Yan Shixun didn’t give them even a chance to test the waters. He snorted coldly and snapped back, “What, you think this is a vegetable market? No money—leave your life behind instead.”
The villager who had spoken was terrified and quickly promised to run home and fetch the money.
He had barely taken two steps when Yan Shixun called out to him, “Wait.”
Trembling, the villager turned back, only to see Yan Shixun casually pointing at the flat tire on the car. “Fix my tire first. If not, I’ll use your skin to patch it.”
The man quaked and stammered, saying he’d find someone right away.
After being scared stiff several times in a row, the villagers’ courage was completely shattered. Not a single one dared to resist. They lined up obediently nearby, answering every question Yan Shixun asked without the slightest attempt to lie.
—They’d just tried to lie a moment ago, and before they’d even finished the first sentence, Yan Shixun had let out a slow, deliberate “Hmm?” like a warning. It was as if he could tell instantly whether they were lying or not.
Who could handle that kind of pressure?
The villagers were practically wetting themselves, staring at Yan Shixun in sheer terror. Some of them were probably already half-convinced he was the Jade Emperor himself.
Desperate not to displease him, they spilled everything like beans from a bamboo tube.
They confessed how they’d guarded this road for years, robbing passing vehicles, stealing goods, blackmailing travelers. Not a single detail was left out.
But Yan Shixun wasn’t interested in those stories.
He cleverly buried the real question he wanted to ask among a slew of others, keeping the villagers from figuring out his true goal.
When one villager mentioned that they were currently in the Jiangbei region, Yan Shixun’s heart sank. Even his expression grew sharper.
Just as he suspected.
He had already guessed they weren’t in the southwest based on the sky and the architectural style.
But he had never expected they’d ended up in Jiangbei.
—A full eight hundred kilometers away from the southwest.
Even if they’d traveled at maximum speed the entire time, it should’ve taken them around eight hours.
Yet his watch showed that it had only been three hours since they’d left the southwest.
It should have still been midday, but the sky was dark like early evening.
Yan Shixun didn’t let his emotions show. He just calmly asked the villagers, “What time is it now?”
The villager stammered in reply, “F-five in the evening.”
They had just been getting ready to cook dinner when someone from the village entrance came running back, excitedly yelling that a car was coming—and it looked like a good one too. Maybe it belonged to a rich man, and they could make a big score. So almost all the villagers had rushed out, thinking they’d rob some money and enjoy a feast that night.
Who could’ve guessed that not only would they fail to get anything, they’d end up getting robbed themselves…
They were utterly devastated.
Yan Shixun’s gaze lifted slightly, looking directly into the car.
The King of Hell could feel it—Yan Shixun was staring right at him.
But he felt wronged, completely aggrieved. He wanted to jump out of the car and explain himself.
When it came to matters that involved the heavens and earth, there were never mere coincidences.
What outsiders saw as “bad luck” or “accidents” were actually the result of precise calculations—efforts that consumed far more energy and thought than anyone could imagine.
Each filming location chosen by the show crew might have seemed like Zhang Wubing’s random pick, but in fact, they had all been carefully calculated by the King of Hell.
Otherwise, the remnants of his soul wouldn’t be depleting so quickly.
If he had turned a blind eye to the heavens and earth after escaping the Great Dao—if he had chosen to live on like the old Fengdu instead—then the power he had left would’ve allowed him to reincarnate dozens of times, living a life of wealth and fortune in each.
Instead, he ended up like Zhang Wubing—an unlucky fool, and this was already his final chance at reincarnation.
But this time, the King of Hell hadn’t accounted for the existence of the general. He had no idea that back then, a ghost official had seen the general’s final appearance and even carved it into a statue.
To him, that was an unexpected anomaly that went completely against his calculations. Perhaps only the Great Dao of heaven and earth knew the truth.
As for the King of Hell himself, he was left utterly confused, lost in a mess he couldn’t untangle.
He didn’t even know what questions to ask—so how could he possibly find any answers?
Yan Shixun seemed to sense the King of Hell’s emotions. After staring at him steadily for a few seconds, he quickly looked away and turned to Ye Li instead.
Whether or not this was the work of the King of Hell, he couldn’t say for certain just yet.
But there was one thing he was sure of—Ye Li could not be entirely innocent.
At the moment, it seemed Ye Li might be the only one capable of shrinking the earth beneath his feet, covering a distance of 800 kilometers in just three hours.
Moreover, Yan Shixun had already felt a jolt in his heart the moment he heard the name Jiangbei.
A thousand years ago, Ye Li’s final battle took place at Ye City, which now lay within the borders of Jiangbei.
Though the ancient battlefield had long since disappeared over the centuries, and no one remembered the horrors that once unfolded there, today it was just an ordinary small county town. Even the exact location of the ruins of Ye City could no longer be determined.
But for Ye Li, Jiangbei held special significance.
From Ye City, crossing the River Li meant ascending to become a ghost deity.
Fengdu rose from the earth, bearing witness to the Dao of Heaven and Earth.
Even Heaven and Earth had acknowledged this.
Could it be that their sudden journey to Jiangbei this time was intentionally arranged by Ye Li?
Yan Shixun narrowed his gaze, staring intently at Ye Li.
He concealed his emotions well, so the villagers didn’t notice what he was thinking. They continued to nervously explain the situation here.
This village, along with several nearby ones, was located in the most remote part of Jiangbei. The terrain was mountainous and filled with rivers, making it extremely difficult to leave. Dense forests and limestone caves were everywhere.
Even locals could easily get lost in this area—and one misstep could mean falling into a cave and disappearing forever, neither seen alive nor found dead.
The dirt road that Yan Shixun and the others had driven on was the only road connecting these villages. Though it led out of the mountains, it was fraught with dangers along the way.
In the past, villagers had tried going outside to find work, but they soon gave up because the labor was too hard and exhausting.
Aside from the crops they grew in their own fields to provide basic meals, the village’s main source of income came from guarding this road—robbing passing vehicles.
“We don’t want to be bad people, but, you know, we just can’t survive otherwise.”
One villager said with an awkward laugh: “Those outsiders are loaded. What’s the harm in sharing a little with us? You could say we’re doing that… what do you call it… robbing the rich to help the poor. It’s perfectly justifiable, right?”
Yan Shixun looked at him with a faint smile, half-amused, half-cold. “Right, and with all the lives you’ve taken, what’s the harm if I take a few in return?”
“Oh, and didn’t you just try to teach me a lesson about how high the heavens are?”
He turned to the middle-aged woman who’d been thrown hard to the ground earlier. He beckoned her over and said, “Come, let me teach you what’s truly ‘justifiable’—karma and retribution. Since you didn’t show me any courtesy, there’s no reason I should be polite to you either. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
The woman shook her head in terror, frantically hiding behind others, scared out of her wits that Yan Shixun might come and grab her.
The other villagers immediately went silent, not daring to speak another word.
Just then, the villager who had gone to fetch the tire repairman came running back.
But he was alone, and his face was full of panic and urgency.
“This is bad—really bad! The only young man in the village who knew how to fix tires, he’s run off!”
The man was beating his chest in frustration. “He said he didn’t want to stay in the village anymore, that he wanted to go to the city and make a living using his skills. He left a note and took off! I only realized when I went to find him—his whole house was empty!”
The other villagers immediately panicked: “He ran off? Didn’t anyone keep an eye on his house? Third Aunt Ma, what were you doing?!”
“You can’t blame my family! His mom’s a widow and cursed her husband to death—who would want to go near their house for no reason? It’s bad luck!”
“Ugh, it’s all our fault for not realizing the boy had some ambition. We let his family build a house outside the village. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here clueless that he’d run off…”
The smile on Yan Shixun’s lips slowly faded, his mouth drawing into a tight line.
Amid the villagers’ chaotic squabbling, he quickly pieced together what was going on.
Just like the other road-blocking villages he’d encountered before, this village used the same method—slashing tires to prevent drivers from escaping, then surrounding them to extort money.
If the drivers refused to pay the outrageous fees to repair the tires, they could forget about leaving.
And the one in charge of tire repairs was a young man who had learned the skill outside the village.
But he soon grew to dislike doing such things. He felt that scamming money wasn’t a good way to live, and it weighed on his conscience. It was better to earn a living in the city with his skills—at least that brought peace of mind. So, while no one was paying attention, he packed up his belongings and took his family away.
Since the villagers normally didn’t care about that family, they hadn’t even noticed their departure.
It wasn’t until today, when they unexpectedly saw a car approaching and decided on a whim to scam some money, that they realized the young man who patched tires had long since left.
Yan Shixun, however, didn’t see anything wrong with the young man running off. In fact, he thought that being able to realize early on that he was stuck in a swamp and choosing to leave showed that the young man had great potential.
But the problem was…
The tire had blown out, and their car couldn’t go any farther.
Were they going to have to spend the night here…?
Yan Shixun’s face darkened.
As the villagers began shouting, blaming one another, and tangled up in a brawl that looked moments away from breaking into a full-on fight, Yan Shixun slowly stood up and said evenly, “Since your forum can’t patch the tire, I’ll just use your skin instead. That’s fair, right?”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but the quiet statement was so piercing it reached every villager’s ears with crystal clarity, instantly silencing them.
The villagers, shocked and terrified, dropped their hands and stared at Yan Shixun. Their legs were trembling, fearing that he might strike them down right then and there.
They had spent years robbing and scamming people, but this was the first time they felt such deep regret. They cursed themselves silently for being blinded by greed—now they had kicked an iron wall and looked like they might even lose their lives.
While cursing the young man who had run off, they trembled and begged Yan Shixun for mercy, promising they would find a solution if only given a bit of time.
As they spoke, the villagers desperately tried to shove the money they had taken back into Yan Shixun’s hands.
The others finally snapped out of their shock and scrambled to dig through their pockets, rushing to hand over every bit of broken, crumpled cash they could find to Yan Shixun, afraid that if they were too slow, he would remember them specifically.
The scene was so absurd that the guests in the car were left speechless, their worldview thoroughly overturned.
—Had they ever seen robbers giving money to their victim? And afraid the victim wouldn’t take it?
Well, now they had.
Song Ci rested his face excitedly against the back of the seat, his eyes sparkling with admiration.
But Zhao Zhen caught the key sentence that had made Yan Shixun’s expression change.
“If the tire can’t be patched…”
Zhao Zhen hesitated and said, “Doesn’t that mean we can’t leave this place?”
The car fell into instant silence.
Then, Bai Shuang said with a choked voice, “I just tried—there’s no signal at all. I can’t even call the rescue team.”
An Nanyuan was dumbfounded. “This… then… wha-what do we do now?”
The very situation everyone had feared most had happened.
Even worse than running into malicious locals—they were now trapped here, with no way to leave.
Nan Tian added worriedly, “If we stay too long, what if those villagers change their minds? Brother Yan can’t possibly kill them all, right?”
Only Ye Li and the general sitting in the front remained calm and composed.
Ye Li turned slightly to look out the window at Yan Shixun, and asked the general in a flat tone, “Was that you? The ability to shrink land into inches, to travel a thousand miles a day—you did it once before, when you led one hundred thousand troops from Ye City to strike the southwest. Now you’ve done it again.”
The general lowered his eyelashes slightly and said nothing.
The King of Hell slowly stood up, adjusting his sleeves as he walked toward them. “According to legend, after the battle of Ye City, some kind-hearted citizens, moved by the soldiers’ sacrifices, gathered their bones and buried them deep in the mountains.”
“One of the most credible stories says the burial ground was located near Ye City.”
“In other words, what is now Jiangbei.”
The folding fan spun once in the King of Hell’s hand before falling back into his palm. He let out a soft laugh. “General, your silence—is it an admission?”
“Well, it makes sense. Ye Li has already become a ghost deity. He’s severed his ties with his past life—his experiences and emotions—so his connection to those bones is faint, almost negligible. But you… as a peak mortal warrior… are different.”
“You must know where the bones you left behind on the battlefield are buried, don’t you?”
The King of Hell pressed forward with each step, eyes locked onto the general, unwilling to let even the slightest change in his expression slip by. “You brought everyone here… just for this?”
Although the guests didn’t fully understand everything, they had heard bits and pieces of the truth back in the desolate village in the southwest. They had a rough idea of the people involved and their relationships.
When the King of Hell spoke those words, everyone fell silent, not daring to interrupt.
It was only then that the general slightly lifted his eyes, looking past Ye Li toward Yan Shixun outside the carriage window.
His voice was calm and low, with not the slightest hint of panic from being questioned by both the King of Hell and Ye Li.
“What Shixun wishes for is also my obsession,”
He said: “I don’t know where my remains are. I just don’t want to let Shixun down. I want to fulfill all his wishes.”
“It was my feelings for Shixun that led me here.”
As soon as he said this, Ye Li burst into a rage. His well-defined hand clenched into a fist and swung at the general.
“Bang!”
The general turned his head slightly and easily dodged Ye Li’s punch.
But the chair back wasn’t so lucky.
With that punch, it exploded instantly into a pile of broken parts and cotton stuffing.
The guests were stunned.
Ye Li sneered coldly. “Are you trying to say your feelings for Shixun are deeper than mine? That you want to be with him?”
“Don’t even think about it!”
The general, however, simply curled his lips into a faint smile, unconcerned. “I’m afraid the choice isn’t yours to make.”
Outside the car, Yan Shixun heard faint voices coming from within. He raised his head sharply and glanced toward the vehicle.
Inside, Ye Li immediately fell silent, forcibly suppressing his anger and sitting back down.
Yan Shixun casually flipped the thick wad of scattered cash in his hand and smiled lazily. “You guys didn’t actually think this money could really buy your lives, did you?”
The villagers who had just been rushing to hand over money suddenly froze on the spot, unsure of what Yan Shixun meant and visibly nervous.
“I want everything restored to how it was. If you can’t do that,”
Yan Shixun said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “Then I’ll just use someone’s life to amuse myself whenever I’m upset.”
The villagers were nearly scared to death on the spot.
They immediately imagined all sorts of gruesome scenarios of themselves and their families dying. Without Yan Shixun needing to say another word, they had already scared themselves into trembling uncontrollably, unable to speak clearly.
Yet the one who seemed to be the village chief braced what little courage he had left and suggested to Yan Shixun, “How about… you stay with us for the night? We’ll make sure to serve you well with good food and drink. Then someone from the village can go out to find a mechanic who can fix the tire, what do you think?”
Yan Shixun let out a cold snort. With a light kick of his toe, he hooked up a farming tool a villager had dropped to the ground. It flipped into the air and landed squarely in his hand. In an instant, he pointed it directly at the village chief.
The pointed tip of the tool grazed across the chief’s throat. He could even feel a chill on his neck, as if his throat had just been slit.
Yan Shixun smiled and asked him, “Trying to run?”
“N-no, not at all!”
The village chief broke out in cold sweat and hurriedly said, “What if… what if your people and our villagers go together, to find the mechanic?”
“O-or, maybe your people could climb to the mountaintop. There’s signal up there. They could contact someone from outside, or you could find someone yourself.”
Terrified, the village chief cried out, “Please don’t act on impulse! We were wrong! Truly! We don’t dare anymore!”
Yan Shixun stared at him for two seconds, then swept his cold gaze across all the villagers. Everyone lowered their heads, not daring to breathe, until he finally looked away.
He slowly stepped forward, and in the village chief’s wide, fearful eyes, reached out and patted him on the shoulder — as if kindly brushing off some dust for him.
Yan Shixun smiled and said, “It’s fine. You can just go back to what you were doing before. I don’t mind a little extra amusement to pass the time.”
“Don’t be so tense.”
He bared his teeth in a smile, but it never reached his eyes. “I’m just joking with you.”
Yet his smile struck terror into every villager present.
And still, Yan Shixun wasn’t satisfied. He tilted his head slightly, and calmly asked, “Wasn’t that funny?”
Several villagers burst into tears from fear on the spot, yet still had to force stiff smiles and nod in agreement: “H-ha, haha, funny… very funny.”
Their smiles looked worse than crying.
Running into someone this unpredictable, this unreadable, this moody and deranged — the villagers were filled with deep regret. They had never imagined that people more vicious than themselves existed in the world. Not only had they run into one, but such a terrifying one at that!
After being toyed with and then abruptly threatened again and again, their emotions fluctuated wildly. In the end, they were left completely drained and mentally collapsed.
Now, they would do whatever Yan Shixun told them, without the slightest hesitation — terrified that he might really massacre the whole village if displeased.
They understood all too well: madmen on the run were not to be provoked.
Seeing that his show of power had worked, Yan Shixun finally withdrew the smile from his lips. His gaze turned indifferent — yet remained perfectly rational.
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