Chapter 327: So That’s How It Is — The Chosen Ones Being Tormented!
As long as Rahman gave enough money, he would tell Rahman the information, and he would go get a token for Rahman, so that Rahman could find his contact in the demon cultivator area.
After all, from what those two eerie beings on the third floor said, this guy was very greedy.
This cost Rahman another “huge sum” of money.
When the four-eyed red-clothed eerie being happily took the money and went into the room to look for the token, a special situation was triggered.
There was some movement in the iron cage in the living room. Rahman looked over and found a furry creature. If it hadn’t made a sound, Rahman wouldn’t have even noticed it was a living thing.
This thing stood on two legs and looked very much like a raccoon cat, but its behavior was very human-like.
In the weird world, there were quite a few creatures like this.
The raccoon cat person glanced at Rahman and carefully spoke up: “Young man, are you going to the demon cultivators’ station? I’m a demon cultivator, you know. If you let me out, I guarantee I’ll be even more useful than getting a token! And I’ll give you a reward too!”
He had clearly been caught by the four-eyed red-clothed fierce ghost and brought to this place, his life or death uncertain.
Seeing Rahman appear, he felt as if he had seen a lifeline.
Since he was in the living room, he had naturally heard the conversation between Rahman and the four-eyed red-clothed eerie being.
So he kept tempting Rahman, trying to get Rahman to save him.
This made Rahman very tempted. After all, getting a token was nothing compared to finding a demon cultivator to guide the way.
Moreover, this task even came with a reward.
But Rahman didn’t agree. He tried his best not to violate the rules.
High rewards always come with high risks.
[Rule 3: Do not casually agree to anyone’s requests unless you can complete them.]
This rule seemed to be reminding Rahman that if he agreed and couldn’t complete it, he would encounter danger.
Many pieces of information flashed rapidly through Rahman’s mind. This was the territory of ghost cultivators. Even though he had a peach wood sword, it could only scare ghost cultivators. If he really faced these red-clothed fierce ghosts attacking with their lives on the line, he would still be dead.
If he released someone the four-eyed red-clothed eerie being had captured, he would naturally offend him.
So when he wasn’t sure whether he could save this raccoon cat person, he didn’t rashly agree. He just waved his hand for him to sit down, saying he would think about it and come back later.
This way of handling things was very appropriate. The raccoon cat person also nodded and continued lying in the cage, as if nothing had happened.
At this stage, Zhang Yangqing’s choice was about the same. He could save him, but now wasn’t the time.
Not long after, the four-eyed red-clothed eerie being brought some items over.
Rahman thanked him and, without asking the raccoon cat person anything, left the room.
If he rashly brought it up, he might be suspected by the four-eyed red-clothed eerie being. This was the experience of an old hand in the strange tale world.
Watching the money in his pocket dwindle, Rahman had a bad feeling.
“Could it be that for this stage, I still have to go back to the general store and sell some things to get through?”
Rahman walked while continuing to search for clues about the memorial tablet and the sedan chair.
These four-eyed red-clothed eerie beings didn’t know, so he could only ask around elsewhere, or wait for the plot to begin.
After all, the wedding would start at twelve o’clock. Rahman felt there might be clues at the wedding, so he had to go.
It was now eleven thirty. He still had half an hour to prepare.
Zhang Yangqing wasn’t interested in the wedding at all. Don’t make me pay for a wedding gift and lose a lot of money again.
Don’t look at how Zhang Yangqing was the chosen one who earned the most, but he was also the chosen one who spent the least.
Basically, anywhere he could save money, he absolutely wouldn’t waste it.
The chosen one from Eagle Sauce Nation, Miller, began pondering a question in his mind.
“What exactly is that purple-clothed eerie being? Is it a friend or an enemy? There are plenty of wine jars in the general store. Selling to him would definitely get me a lot of money, but can those things be sold?”
Miller began having bad ideas. After all, he was short on money too.
At this stage, who doesn’t give gifts wherever they go?
If you don’t give gifts or money, people won’t tell you any information at all.
Even if some information is useless, you still need to pay.
It could be said that, except for Zhang Yangqing, all the chosen ones were very short on money.
Miller began judging based on the information he had obtained. The ghost market was a place where all sorts of people mixed together.
It had many rare items, potions, weapons, and so on.
Since the rules reminded the chosen ones to go there, that place definitely required spending a certain amount of money too.
If he spent a large amount of coins in the tomb, then he would have to go back and continue minding the store.
This would delay him by a day. Many chosen ones had no choice but to choose this.
If time was delayed, then the score at settlement would definitely drop.
Since Miller had come into contact with the purple-clothed eerie being, he was considering earning some extra money on the side.
Thinking of this, he suddenly slapped his forehead.
“Oh wow, how did I forget about this? In theory, Young Master Kongxu won’t harm me. When the time comes, I’ll go ask him whether the purple-clothed eerie being can be trusted, and that’ll settle it.”
With this thought, Miller continued wandering through the floors, searching for other clues.
Unfortunately, to his regret, the [living person], [sedan chair], and [memorial tablet] mentioned in the clues were nowhere to be found.
Time was very close to twelve o’clock. Many people were rushing up to attend the wedding. Miller naturally followed along too.
When he returned once again to the main burial chamber on the first floor, many eerie beings with powerful auras had already arrived.
He even discovered two fierce ghosts wearing purple clothes. Just from their bearing, they were already existences Miller couldn’t handle.
Even at Miller’s peak, he felt he wouldn’t last a single move against them.
“It’s hard to imagine. The Dragon Nation’s Celestial Master, even in poor condition, still one-shotted such terrifying existences.”
Miller’s heart was full of emotion.
Previously, he thought Zhang Yangqing was stronger than him only because he relied on the advantage of strength.
If I had some strength, wouldn’t I also pass steadily?
But back then, he was only looking at things from an ordinary person’s perspective.
Now that he had taken the serum and advanced to a transcendent, he realized that Zhang Yangqing wasn’t just strong—he was absurdly strong!
According to the transcendent world, only those infinitely close to top-tier powerhouses truly understand their strength.
A round of gongs and drums pulled Miller’s thoughts back.
The groom and bride appeared, causing a stir at the scene.
Quite a few guests wanted to push forward to look, but the chosen ones weren’t interested.
Because neither the groom nor the bride was human. Both were eerie beings with strange appearances.
Moreover, both of them walked out directly. Neither rode a sedan chair.
So what the chosen ones needed to do was listen carefully at this stage and find useful information.
Sure enough, in the conversations of the crowd, Miller heard some secrets about this tomb.
The groom was one of the people in charge of this tomb, and also a good friend of Young Master Kongxu.
But the bride seemed to be from somewhere else.
And some guests were whispering among themselves.
“This guy got lucky. He seized the imperial tomb and obtained treasure resources here, which is why he cultivated successfully. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to marry a woman of such noble status.”
“What’s so great about that? If I had his luck, I would have worn purple clothes long ago. Unlike him, so useless. That woman marrying him is just to get that resource.”
“You heard too? Apparently, they still haven’t found the tomb owner’s treasure. If you find the tomb chamber where the tomb owner’s memorial tablet is placed, you can obtain the tomb owner’s true inheritance.”
“Shh, you can’t say that carelessly, or we’ll be driven out.”
“Look at how nervous you are. This isn’t some secret. You think you’re the only one who knows?”
Quite a few guests were talking about this. As long as the chosen ones listened carefully, they would learn the important news—the greatest treasure of this stage.
“So the memorial tablet the rules told me to find is this one. I was wondering why I’d be burning incense for Young Master Kongxu’s memorial tablet for no reason.”
Miller slowly began sorting out the many complicated pieces of information.
He finally understood what the main quest of this stage was.
What he knew now was information Zhang Yangqing had already guessed two hours ago.
The treasure he would spend the next few hours searching for, Zhang Yangqing had already obtained just now.
Only when the audience saw this did they wake up as if from a dream.
So this was what Celestial Master Zhang had just found.
Without information support, let alone the chosen ones, even the audience who knew the answer couldn’t have guessed why Zhang Yangqing did this.
Now everything seemed clear. Apart from what hadn’t appeared yet, Celestial Master Zhang had basically found everything that could be found.
After all, it was just finding the main tomb chamber. For Zhang Yangqing, this was too simple.
He only needed to roughly look at the tomb’s structure to guess the builder’s thoughts.
Which floor the main tomb chamber would be on, which direction it would face—these were all “fixed” and didn’t need guessing at all.
It was like some formation diagrams. People who didn’t understand might find them extremely mysterious. A tiny formation could actually have such a huge effect and possess the power to turn the world upside down.
But in the eyes of the person setting up the formation, it should naturally have such an effect. What goes where is all the crystallization of countless ancestors’ wisdom.
To put it plainly, if placed in the wrong spot, this feng shui layout, this bagua formation, simply wouldn’t function and wouldn’t exist.
As long as this tomb’s feng shui layout was operating normally, then the location of the main tomb chamber and the location of the memorial tablet must be placed where they should be.
For such a simple layout, why would Zhang Yangqing need any information? It was clear at a glance.
Not only did it save time, it also saved a lot of money.
However, when obtaining information like the area map, ghost market news, living person news, and demon cultivator news, Zhang Yangqing still needed to explore.
Next, the audience saw a scene in the strange tale world that tormented people.
After the wedding ceremony ended, Young Master Kongxu disappeared, just as expected.
This made the chosen ones who wanted to gain some benefits from him have their hopes dashed.
As for the “delicious” food on the wine table, none of the chosen ones dared to eat it. They all found excuses to leave.
A chosen one with a huge advantage like Rahman spent an hour, plus quite a few gifts and money, before collecting a lot of information.
Based on this information, he came to the depths of the fourth floor. There were already very few eerie creatures appearing here. After passing through those unlit corridors, Rahman twisted open the door of the hidden passage and arrived at a secret chamber.
Lighting the candle in the secret chamber, he could see that this secret chamber had many murals of birds and beasts.
These birds and beasts had half their bodies sticking out, lifelike.
Moreover, their claws, eyes, and wings could all be rotated.
“As long as I rotate these to the correct positions, the secret chamber’s passage will open.”
Rahman still had some experience with solving puzzles like this.
But next came the pure torment phase.
Rahman discovered that no matter how he rotated them, everything seemed very reasonable. That was just too abnormal.
The mechanisms he had encountered before could all be opened by placing them in their original positions.
But where was the original position? He didn’t seem to have found any information about the original position yet.
Actually, the strange tale world had already revealed the answer, but no one had noticed at the time.
Remember when the chosen ones arrived, there were dragon and phoenix patterns on the stone gate.
The patterns here were a smaller version of the patterns at the main entrance.
You only needed to replicate the direction of the dragon and phoenix eyes and the movements on their bodies onto the birds and beasts here, and you could open the hidden passage and reach the tomb owner’s chamber.
Because patterns correspond to patterns. That was the rule.
The patterns at the main entrance were, up to now, the only patterns the chosen ones had seen besides those inside the secret chamber.
At that time, the white-clothed ghost stood at the main entrance holding a lantern for a while, waiting for the gate to open. This did indeed give the chosen ones some time to remember.
But at that stage, the sky was already dark, and the light wasn’t very bright either. Everyone had to face such a “terrifying” place, so they were all very nervous and constantly observing their surroundings. Basically, no one saw this.
Even if some chosen ones noticed, it had already been several hours. How many could still remember?
Actually, Zhang Yangqing didn’t remember either. He simply knew how to arrange this thing.
So this stage was just tormenting people. The strange tale world gave the chosen ones a full six hours.
Some impatient ones went out to look for information, to see if there were any eerie beings who could solve the puzzle, and spend some money to try.
But here, absolutely do not let these eerie beings know that you’ve already found the tomb owner’s secret chamber, or the chosen one would definitely die.
They could only indirectly explore some news and such.
After Rahman tried several times based on his own judgment without success, he began using the dumb method, which was also the method most chosen ones could think of.
That was cracking the code box!
The rotatable eyes, claws, and wings on the mural were like the numbers on a code box.
As long as you rotated the eyes to the “1” position, then rotated the other rotatable parts one by one to judge whether you were correct.
After trying all the positions, there would always be one direction that was correct.
If you wanted to spend less money at this stage, you needed patience.
This was also the strange tale world’s routine method of tormenting the chosen ones.
Chosen ones with better luck spent one to two hours to solve it.
Chosen ones with worse luck nearly went crazy. It took them a full three hours to rotate the claws, eyes, and wings to the correct positions.
They were so tired they wished they could lie on the ground and rest.
During this period, the chosen ones couldn’t sleep either. If they slept, it might trigger an eerie descent.
So the chosen ones who solved the mechanism walked toward the opened hidden passage.
“I knew it. This isn’t over yet.”
Rahman looked at the three towering suspended staircases and felt like cursing inside.
Never mind choosing wrong—even falling would mean death without burial.
The staircase wasn’t wide, only enough for one person to go back and forth.
And there were no railings around. On the side was bottomless darkness.
Rahman wanted to find a safety rope to tie nearby. If he fell, the safety rope could save his life. Unfortunately, the rope he brought wasn’t long enough. If he went out to find rope, he was afraid of being suspected.
After checking around for a long time and indeed finding no hints, Rahman instead felt relieved.
Actually, no hints proved that choosing wrong wasn’t dangerous.
If there were hints, then it proved you had to choose correctly. If you chose wrong, the staircase might collapse.
This was experience.
So he randomly chose a step and steeled himself to climb up.
He truly used both hands and feet, crawling on the steps.
The speed wasn’t very fast, but the important thing was steadiness.
Rahman’s luck was bad. He chose wrong on the first try.
So he could only come down and continue.
But climbing up was easy; going down was hard.
Rahman tried his best not to look at the endless darkness around him. He sat on the steps and slid down layer by layer.
Although this posture wasn’t elegant, staying alive was what mattered.
Among the chosen ones, there weren’t many who dared to walk up directly like Zhang Yangqing and then come down quickly.
But the advantage of transcendents was that they were bold enough. Some transcendents trained daily by walking on iron ropes over cliffs, so this was naturally nothing to them.
When Rahman climbed onto the third step, he indeed discovered the tomb owner’s memorial tablet.
Besides that, there was also a purple-gold incense table, a dragon head holding a pearl, and a brief biography of the tomb owner.
He definitely had to read the biography. If he didn’t read it, how would he become familiar with the owner of this tomb?
It roughly recorded the tomb owner’s great achievements.
After Rahman finished burning incense for him, the dragon’s mouth opened, and the pearl inside fell out.
“This might be the treasure those eerie beings mentioned, but how do I use it?”
Just as Rahman was holding the pearl and thinking, a voice appeared around him.
“Fated one, if you can help me complete my unfinished wish, I can give you a generous reward.”
The voice was ethereal and illusory, seeming to come from the dragon head, but on closer listen, it was everywhere.
Rahman knew the hidden task of this stage had arrived.
And this task had a rule warning: if you can’t complete it, don’t accept it.
In other strange tale worlds, if you couldn’t complete a hidden task, you could run.
But in this stage, failing to complete it might cause trouble.
So Rahman still cautiously asked what he needed to do, but didn’t directly agree. He would see whether the task could be done first.
The ethereal voice appeared again. He needed Rahman to find a special corpse, then carry it to a place he specified.
That way, he could use this corpse to revive, and after reviving, he could give Rahman benefits.
After the voice ended, a note spat out from the dragon head, with his requirements written on it.
This corpse couldn’t be an ordinary corpse either. It needed to have been born on a certain year, month, and day.
It was written very clearly.
Rahman understood. He was being asked to kill someone himself.
According to the information, the ghost market was in the city area, a special place that only appeared during special time periods.
So the person this task required killing was definitely in the city area he would go to next.
As for the person born on that certain year, month, and day, he definitely didn’t know who it was.
But as long as he found that old blind fisherman and satisfied his requirements, making him happy, he would help him find this person.
When all the information gathered in his mind, Rahman understood what to do next.
So everything was connected.
But the problem was, since this task was a hidden task, the person he had to kill was definitely not simple.
He might even encounter huge trouble, the kind that once touched, might become uncontrollable.
That was why the rules reminded the chosen ones: if you can’t complete it, don’t accept it.
Rahman played a little trick here. He said: “I don’t know if I can complete it, but how about I do my best?”
The ethereal voice seemed to pause for a moment, then replied: “That’s fine.”
Hearing this, Rahman was secretly delighted. I didn’t agree that I would definitely complete it. If I fail, don’t blame me.
But the owner of this tomb didn’t seem worried either. He seemed to know that as long as the chosen one couldn’t complete it, the outcome would basically be death.
And moreover, he wouldn’t even need to lift a finger!
