"I've truly never encountered anything like this before, nor have I ever walked on the main road. On that road, there are a lot of nether souls, all without consciousness. If it weren't for the overwhelming yin qi there, they probably would've dissipated long ago."

"Alright, let's go then, as long as we don't get lost. We'll have to check it out sooner or later anyway."

Wen Yan didn't hesitate much. This path was right behind his house; whether or not he knew how to handle it, he at least needed to figure out what was going on first.

Especially since Cai Heizi said that the Spiritual Qi Resurgence had entered its second stage, and the focus of this stage might be related to nether souls.

So he was even less likely to let this passage behind his house be left unchecked.

Wen Yan followed the Grave Walker into Old Zhao's villa and chatted with Old Zhao for a bit.

Old Zhao suddenly came out with a line, out of the blue.

"No living person should go down. If you do..."

"Hmm? Did you remember something?"

Old Zhao shook his head, frowning and rubbing his head. He shook his own head right off his shoulders, held it in his arms and gave it a good rub for quite a while before squeezing out the rest of the sentence.

"Don't look back while walking."

Wen Yan tried asking something else, but Old Zhao just looked blank; nothing else could be pried out of him.

All the way to the basement, Wen Yan felt that two passive abilities under Scorching Sun's derivative effects had been triggered.

Eternal Sunrise: The rising sun in your heart will never set; you are immune to certain negative effects.

Sunless Travel: You may use your fleshly body to walk through places where mortals cannot usually go, immune to the native environmental dangers of those places.

Once the derivative effects were triggered, he saw that deep in the basement, another staircase leading downward appeared.

"Brother Wen, stick close and remember—when walking at night, don't look back. I'll try to walk a bit faster. With your yang energy, it shouldn't be much of a problem."

As they walked down the stairs, the surroundings gradually dissolved into darkness. With Wen Yan's sight, he couldn't see a thing—just pitch black, with only the stairs beneath his feet stretching down into the depths.

Descending the stairs for over ten minutes, they finally reached a small dirt path. After a few more minutes, a main road suddenly appeared ahead.

Countless unconscious nether souls wavered as they shuffled forward.

The Grave Walker led Wen Yan onto the main road. Wen Yan's brow furrowed slightly—he could feel the intense concentration of yin qi here, so pure that there was not even a trace of yang energy.

If not for his Sunless Travel derived from Scorching Sun, if he'd just relied on his own yang energy to tough it out, he'd probably only last about ten or twenty minutes at most.

The yin qi here was far denser than even in the Nether Soul Realm.

The Grave Walker had clearly just come from behind, but now, stepping onto this road again, he still continued moving forward.

"Brother Wen, pay attention and stay close.

I've never seen this particular main road, but if it's anything like the others, there's no such thing as turning back the way you came. Never, ever walk back—if you do, you might get lost."

"Alright, I got it."

Wen Yan followed the Grave Walker, joining the flow of nether souls moving forward. The unconscious souls around him would actively avoid him, making some space for Wen Yan in the crowd.

They hadn't gone far before Wen Yan began to hear things by his ear.

"Waaah waah..." the voice of the little zombie came through.

"She's asking why you ran here, and I said, what's the little zombie chasing after you for..." Sparrow Cat was translating.

Wen Yan paused mid-step, forcibly stopping his instincts.

He took a soft breath of yin qi and kept walking forward.

Now he finally understood why Old Zhao and the Grave Walker went out of their way to remind him multiple times.

There really was no way to guard against everything.

After all, just hearing the voice, he felt like that little zombie, the clingy ghost, had definitely chased him all the way here.

"Hey, why are you running? The little one got lost..."

Without any change to his expression, Wen Yan kept going alongside the Grave Walker; even the Grave Walker's pace didn't waver.

"Did you hear anything?" Wen Yan asked.

The Grave Walker didn't look back, just spoke out as if talking to himself.

"Here, if you hear anything, just pretend you didn't. That's all there is to it."

"Okay."

Wen Yan responded softly, then shut his mouth and marched on in silence.

Soon after, Sparrow Cat's voice faded, replaced by Cai Heizi's, then Feng Yao's, then Zhang Laoxi's...

The voices of the people he'd dealt with lately all started popping up one after another.

Wen Yan just sighed to himself. Honestly, this place was really dangerous. If he hadn't been briefed on the main points ahead of time, it would've been all too easy to fall for the tricks.

He just didn't know what would happen if he did, nor did he want to find out.

The noisy voices gradually faded, and a while later, suddenly, the voice of a teenage boy appeared.

"Wen Yan, is that you?"

"Wen Yan, are you dead too?"

"Don't look back; just hurry up and go. This place isn't somewhere you should be. Thank you for helping me get buried back then."

"Did you never go back after that?"

"I saw the dean last time—he showed up here too. He's already dead."

Wen Yan's eyelids drooped as he let out a long sigh, but a ripple still stirred in his heart.

That voice was all too familiar to him.

It was the voice of a companion from his youth. When they were in their teens, he couldn't bear the oppressive atmosphere and couldn't study, so he went out to work on his own.

Unfortunately, three months later, because of lack of safety measures, there was an accident. Wen Yan was the one who found someone to help bury him.

The dean was the director of the orphanage where Wen Yan grew up. The place wasn't in good shape—lots of kids ran off to make their own way in the world before they even turned fifteen, never to be heard from again.

Wen Yan left a bit later; he used to work nights, secretly saving money. It took him ages to scrape together a bit, only for the dean to confiscate it. Then he saved up again for a while, and eventually managed to escape by passing an entrance exam.

Back then, what he wanted most was to get away, to run far, far away.

He'd heard a lot of people went to Nanwu Commandery to work in factories—work there for two months and you'd have enough for a semester's tuition and living expenses. So, naturally, Wen Yan chose Nanwu as well.

And he ended up staying for years. By now, in Guanzhong Commandery, he hadn't been back in a long, long time.

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