After being led into the barracks by the white-garbed Yin Soul, Chen Hao and the others hid in a tent located in a corner.

Not long after entering the tent, Luo Luo asked the white-garbed Yin Soul, "A man came to this wooden city more than two months ago, do you know his current whereabouts?"

"There's no need to say more, he's certainly ended up on the streets!" The white-garbed Yin Soul immediately replied, "Anyone who comes here usually ends up with one fate, becoming a beggar on the streets after their Yang Energy is drained, every evening the emperor makes a trip out of the palace to accept these beggars' worship. If the emperor is in a good mood, he might reward them with some porridge to drink. If he is not, they can only starve until they die. However, you all should know, people can't die here, so they come back to life only to continue starving."

After hearing what the white-garbed Yin Soul said, Luo Luo felt a tight knot in her heart. Her husband, Zhang Chuiping, had always been a man with pride, and she found it hard to believe that he would kneel before others begging for food. Luo Luo hoped her husband would kneel; at least that way he wouldn't have to endure the torment of hunger.

"Ah! In fact, many ghosts seeing them in such a pitiable state also want to give them something to eat, but the food for ghosts is not something these people can consume, so they can only watch them starve to death on the streets time after time." The white-garbed Yin Soul continued with sighs, "Decades ago, a consort was discovered having an affair with a palace guard by the emperor. Enraged, the emperor refused to leave the palace for half a month. Those people could only kneel outside the palace begging him to distribute food. In the end, unable to bear it any longer, those people had no choice but to eat their own flesh. They would eat then vomit, and after vomiting, they would eat again. Even now, thinking of that scene, I still feel frightened."

After hearing this, Chen Hao was stunned, thinking about how Xu Sheng, who was also an Onmyoji, had become so cold and heartless after arriving here.

"That's because he is the supreme ruler here, concerned only with himself; everything here is just a toy to him," Ye Yuqiao suddenly conveyed a secret message to Chen Hao.

"Your Majesty the Queen, when you were the supreme ruler of the Netherworld, were you like him too?"

"Hmph, jerk! How could someone as cute as me be like him?"

"I can't wait any longer, I must find my husband now!" Luo Luo suddenly said urgently and was about to walk out of the tent.

Chen Hao quickly grabbed her hand and said anxiously, "Big sister, don't be reckless! You still have some Yang Energy on you, if you go out now, you'll be discovered. At the very least, you should wait until your Yang Energy is gone. Besides, didn't the uncle just say? Every evening the beggars will gather at the palace, we'll have a much greater chance of finding your husband there."

"My husband is not a beggar!" Luo Luo shouted at Chen Hao with a piercing voice.

Chen Hao blinked, his expression somewhat dazed. After a moment, he nodded repeatedly and said, "Right, right, right, your husband is not a beggar, my mistake."

"I'm sorry, Chen Hao." Luo Luo's tone suddenly changed drastically, becoming low and sincere, "I was too anxious just now, I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"It's okay, big sister, I can understand your feelings. It's just that we need to stay calm at this time. Finding your husband isn't hard, the difficult part is how to find an exit and leave this ghost city."

"Young man," the white-clad Yin Soul suddenly shouted, "why has your Yang Energy not weakened all this time? If it continues like this, you will soon be discovered."

Chen Hao smiled and said nothing, but immediately used the art of soul separation to detach the Yin Soul from the physical body, absorbing all the Yang Energy into the rhinoceros horn pendant he wore.

Seeing this, the white-clad ghost was incredibly surprised and sighed, "I won't lie to you, in the recent decades, plenty of Onmyoji have broken in here, but I've never seen anyone like you whose Yang Energy wasn't drained. I hope, in the end, you can lead everyone out of this cursed place!"

"I guess all those who come here are Onmyoji!" said Chen Hao, considering that there must have been quite a few Onmyoji sent here over the years for opposing the national Yin Yang Master Association and the Disciplinary Management of Onmyoji, and Zhang Chuiping, Luo Luo's husband, was just one of them. If he could rescue all these people, then he might gain more support at the upcoming Onmyoji Assembly in East Country next month.

"Boyfriend, you can't think like that!" Ye Yuqiao's voice rang in Chen Hao's mind, her tone somewhat cold, "These Onmyoji simply hold different views from those people, but that doesn't mean they can be trusted. They might be even more ruthless and terrible than those people. So you can't count on them to lend us a hand. If you want to take down those people, we have to rely on ourselves."

Chen Hao readily agreed several times, acknowledging the truth in Ye Yu's words. When it came to matters of power struggles, she had far more experience than he did.

"That's probably right; it seems no one but Onmyoji can enter this place," said the white-clad Yin Soul. After a pause, he looked at Chen Hao and asked, "By the way, young man, what's your plan now?"

"Wait," replied Chen Hao, "wait until evening to go to the imperial palace gates to find this sister's husband."

"Husband?" the white-clad Yin Soul looked puzzled.

Chen Hao chuckled, "I mean 'husband' in our local dialect; just think of it as slang from our area."

"Oh!" The white-clad Yin Soul nodded, wanting to ask Chen Hao and his companions where they were from but hesitating, and so he began to share his own story. His name was Song Fu, and everybody liked to call him Uncle Fu. He was nearly 1,500 years old, and used to be a wealthy outsider from Red Leaf Town. Later, due to his son's disobedience and gambling addiction, which squandered all his wealth, he died of anger and became a Wandering Soul. Not long after, he was taken to the Wooden City by Xu Sheng and turned into a cat.

Besides, this Yin Soul, who had always been known as Uncle Fu, also told Chen Hao and his companions that Xu Sheng used to be from the same town and had a very pitiable life story. His mother was snatched away by a local official to become a concubine shortly after his birth; at seven years old, with his father severely ill and without money for treatment, Xu Sheng knelt and begged at the door of every wealthy family in town, but no one was willing to help him.

Not long after, Xu Sheng's father died from the illness, and Xu Sheng himself disappeared until twenty years later when he reappeared as a well-known Onmyoji who expels ghosts and bought a large residence in the town to settle down.

After hearing Uncle Fu's story, Chen Hao couldn't help but ask, "Back then, did Xu Sheng seek your help too? You didn't agree, so he brought you here to turn into a cat."

Uncle Fu nodded awkwardly, saying heavily, "Indeed, that's exactly what happened. All the livestock and poultry in the city were once the wealthy masters of the town who refused to help him."

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