Chapter 499

Placed in a new environment, the safest way to protect oneself is to quickly blend into it—adapting to the local customs, following established habits and rules.

As someone in Ghost Realm Fortress, Hua Changxi was undoubtedly an outsider.

To conceal herself to the greatest extent, her behavior and mannerisms had to approach those of the true Lady Chi Yan as closely as possible.

A wise man submits to the circumstances; she understood this principle well.

In any other situation, she would have unhesitatingly adapted to the situation and played it safe.

But right now, manipulating low-level ghostkind and turning them into "food," to provide a "feast" for the attendant ghostkind...

This open, justifiable practice of stripping the weak to nourish the strong instinctively repulsed her.

Ringing the Nightmare Bell was, for her, indeed the safest and most reliable choice.

Yet she did not want to, nor could she.

She was not truly ghostkind, so how could she endorse this naked law of the jungle that ghostkind followed?

She was not the real Lady Chi Yan, and could not bring herself to slaughter low-level ghostkind to feed the ghost attendants by her side.

This was not because she was particularly noble, but because it touched upon the principles of her being human and the bottom line of her conduct.

Principles and bottom lines—these were actually somewhat vague to Hua Changxi, but at this moment, she was exceptionally clear: there were some things she simply could not do.

It wasn't that she could not kill ghostkind, but that she could not endorse this kind of killing that "robs the weak to feed others."

Today, faced with ghostkind, killing a few low-level ghosts to feed her ghost attendants in exchange for her own safety seemed hardly worth elevating to principles and bottom lines; one might even call it a "smart" move.

But actions do not change their essence based on the target.

Robbery is robbery!

Killing is killing!

If one day the environment changed, and in the same predicament she faced humans instead?

Would she also kill and rob others of their lives for her own safety?

Once this precedent was set, today's ghostkind would become tomorrow's humans.

If today she endorsed these ghostkind's law of "the strong prey on the weak" just to protect herself, then tomorrow she might truly become a ghost in human skin.

Just as she had never forgotten that her previous life was as a modern person; she had not truly turned herself into an ancient just because she was reborn in ancient times.

She was human, not ghost!

In that moment, Hua Changxi's thoughts were clearer than ever before; some vague things in her heart seemed to have been solidified.

"Jingle~"

The Nightmare Bell rang, but the sound did not spread beyond Lady's Tower.

The ghost attendants inside the tower heard the bell and first rejoiced, but then their joyful gazes suddenly became hollow and dazed.

The next moment, all the ghost attendants in the tower collapsed and fell into the nightmare of their "feast."

Lady's Tower effectively blocked outside prying eyes. Hua Changxi paid no more attention to the sleeping ghost attendants and continued to inspect everything inside the tower.

Lady's Tower had five floors. The first floor was the residence of the ghost attendants, nothing much to see.

The second floor seemed like an office for handling affairs, storing many books recording the deeds of the Nine Nether, as well as some common Nine Nether cultivation techniques.

The third floor was a storeroom, housing many ghost artifacts, various exotic flowers and herbs of the Nine Nether, and a large number of Nether Stones.

Nether Stones were the common currency of the Nine Nether, much like spirit stones in the human world.

The difference between spirit stones and Nether Stones lay in what they contained: spirit stones held the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, while Nether Stones sealed the mixed, gloomy turbid energy of heaven and earth, namely Netherworld Qi.

Netherworld Qi was not a single type of gas, but was woven from multiple malevolent auras.

There was the icy, bone-chilling Yin Qi that eroded the soul; the vengeful, clinging ghost Qi that stirred obsessions; and even violent ferocity, death Qi that devoured Yang Qi, and filthy baleful Qi mixed in.

These auras intertwined, extremely poisonous to living beings in the human world, but for the various races of the Nine Nether, they were indispensable energy for cultivation.

In Hua Changxi's view, so-called Netherworld Qi was a mixture of various negative energies.

Just picking up a Nether Stone, Hua Changxi immediately felt the yin-cold and violent energy surging inside the stone; in an instant, it stirred her mood and made her restless.

Hua Changxi quickly set down the Netherstone and continued upward to investigate.

The fourth floor was where Lady Chiyan cultivated; the furnishings were eerie and sinister, exuding murderousness and malevolence everywhere, and on the ground were carved arrays for gathering ghostly Qi and refining souls.

A wave of evil aura assailed her. Hua Changxi did not linger at all and continued upward.

The fifth floor was Lady Chiyan’s living quarters.

In Lady Chiyan’s living quarters, Hua Changxi discovered two good things.

One was a skull-shaped white bone storage artifact with an extremely large internal space. Using this white bone skull, Hua Changxi swept clean everything stored on the second and third floors.

The other was a foot-long black bone flute.

The bone used to make this flute was no ordinary substance—it was refined from the throat bone of a Ghost Cart.

The Ghost Cart is a ferocious bird of the Nine Netherworlds, brutal by nature, with a particular craving for devouring souls. Its cry is shrill and uncanny, easily stirring the soul of any listener into violent agitation, or even directly shattering their soul.

The moment Hua Changxi saw the bone flute, she thought of one of the Twelve Techniques of Soul Control—the Soul-Capturing Song.

To perform this technique, one needs a specific soul instrument as a medium in order to convert soul force into invisible sonic blades.

And this bone flute, forged from the throat bone of a Ghost Cart, naturally carried a ferocity that could overawe the soul, making it undoubtedly an excellent medium for playing the Soul-Capturing Song.

Hua Changxi caressed the icy bone flute, unable to put it down. She made an immediate decision, forcing out a drop of essence blood and infusing it into the bone flute, completely refining it at the earliest opportunity.

With the bone flute, she could now play the Soul-Capturing Song, gaining an extra means of self-protection while traveling through the Nine Netherworlds.

Having obtained such treasures, Hua Changxi was in excellent spirits. She walked to the window and pushed open the carved window lattice.

The view from the fifth floor was not high enough to overlook the grand panorama of the entire Ghost Realm Castle, but it already allowed a full view of most of the streetscape in the North Gate area.

Down in the street below, shadowy ghostly figures drifted back and forth under the gloomy green lights; low buildings stood in close rows, and occasionally a sharp howl rang out, sketching out the chaos and noise of the Ghost Realm Castle’s lower region.

Hua Changxi’s gaze did not linger long on the scene below the window. Instead, she looked up at the floating islands in the sky above, her eyes flickering with thought.

Through Lady Chiyan’s memories, she now knew many things she hadn’t known before.

The Four Spirit Realms: above is the Nine Heavens, below is the Nine Netherworlds, and in the middle is the mortal world—a great thousand-world with a fully functioning order of three realms.

When Heaven and Earth first split and the planes first formed, pure Qi rose upward and turbid Qi sank downward, giving birth to the Nine Heavens and the Nine Netherworlds respectively.

The Nine Heavens have Nine Celestial Palaces, and the Nine Netherworlds likewise have Nine Abyssal Depths.

If the Nine Heavens symbolize order and light, a nine-tiered upright pyramid ascending and standing upward, then the Nine Netherworlds represent chaos and disorder, an inverted nine-tiered pyramid that falls all the way down and hangs upside down.

The place where she currently stood was the first domain of the Nine Netherworlds, also the largest and most vast realm.

The Ghost Clan, as one of the major clans of the Nine Netherworlds, had its central city—the Ghost Realm Castle—which directly connected to the Nine Abyssal Depths of the Netherworlds.

From here, one could fall from the first domain of the Nine Netherworlds into the second, third Abyssal Depths...

The islands that she saw floating in the high sky appeared to be hovering in the air, but in truth, they were an inverted image.

Those islands, like mirages, were “minor Ghost Domains” (cultivation grounds) opened up by powerful Ghost Clan members in the second and third Abyssal Depths of the Nine Netherworlds.