The expression on the cat's face was really hard to discern at this night, so when the little black cat looked up at him with its round eyes, it was hard to tell whether it was more terrified or helpless.
Ethan Xie was not very sensitive to the direction of the route. He would go astray when the stars were bright, not to mention that the two stars above his head were so dim that he could hardly find them in a blink of an eye. Fortunately, in addition to the stars, there were other things in the forest at night. A crow suddenly flew out from the branches not far away, circled in an arc, and then flew away from the entire Huangtou Mountain. It flapped its wings and called "ah---ah---" twice. In this extremely quiet night, the sound could be heard from the mountains to the distant village.
When there are no stars at night, just look at the crows. Ethan Xie patted the little black cat's head, and then happily walked towards the place where the crow just flew out.
The entire Huangtou Mountain is actually a narrow hill with three peaks connected, but the hill is not straight, but curved, like a crescent moon, half-covering a small lake. The outer side of Huangtou Mountain faces the village, and the inner side faces the lake.
The direction Ethan Xie was heading at this time was to cross the low mountain top and go from the outside to the inside of the valley.
The ground was littered with thick dead branches and fallen leaves, but Ethan Xie walked on them without making any sound, and soon reached the place in the valley that was most sheltered from sunlight.
This is less than five meters in front of the lake. Judging from the surrounding terrain, it should be a deep depression, but in fact there is a bulge of earth with a diameter of about two meters. This bulge is not actually prominent, just a little higher than the terrain. If Ethan Xie hadn't paid special attention, he wouldn't have noticed it at a glance.
"An unknown grave..." Ethan Xie raised his foot and drew a mark on the edge of the mound, then touched the little black cat's head and said softly.
He glanced around the mound and saw three grave willows, but the branches of the three willows had shriveled, as if they had been drained of all their moisture and vitality. They stood there in a jagged and twisted manner, bare and in a strange posture. At first glance, they looked like three human figures with their arms outstretched and their necks hunched.
Willows are naturally yin, and there are various theories about why they are especially important on graves. The way these three willows were planted may seem unintentional, but in fact they are very particular.
Ethan Xie hugged the little black cat and walked around them, and calculated in his mind that the number of steps from the first willow tree to the second one was exactly the same as the number of steps from the second to the third one, and from the third to the first one. In other words, the three willow trees perfectly surrounded the entire nameless tomb.
Judging from the shriveled branches of the willow trees, one is pointing to the northeast, one is pointing to the southwest, and the other has one branch facing the sky and one facing the ground... No matter how you look at it, this looks like a "Soul-Nailing Willow".
In other words, someone deliberately planted these three willow trees here in order to pin down the things under the nameless tomb so that they would never be reincarnated.
I just don't know what happened later, so that these three willows all turned into monsters, and they were monsters with high cultivation. Then they were slaughtered and cut into so many pieces, and set up a formation in a place like Kanghe Hospital...
Ethan Xie sighed, and simply picked a shady spot and squatted down in front of the nameless grave. Then he stretched out his blue-gray hand and gently covered the soil on the grave, with his thumb pointing northeast and four fingers pointing southwest, to suppress the ghost gate. He coughed twice, then hugged the little black cat and closed his eyes.
Just as he expected, there was nothing underneath the thin layer of soil in this nameless tomb. The things that were wrapped in it had disappeared, and the hollow grave was filled with the aura of corpses.
This kind of thing might be quite toxic to others, causing skin ulcers and sores at best, or even death at worst. But for Ethan Xie, it was a necessity.
When he was young, he couldn't eat normal food, even though he hadn't lost his sense of smell at that time and could still smell the aroma. But once he ate it, he would feel an extremely strong sense of rejection and then vomit it out completely. Only by inhaling the Yin corpse qi could he truly "fill his stomach".
Now he can adapt to normal food, but when he is really "hungry", only Yin Shi Qi can help.
He frowned slightly, but one corner of his mouth was slightly raised, with a slightly mocking smile, and he absorbed all the Yin corpse qi in the nameless grave into his body. The corpse qi was cold and damp, and it penetrated the thin soil layer of the grave and flowed into his body along the palm of his hand.
The little black cat lowered its head, not knowing whether it was looking at the nameless grave or at Ethan Xie.
His hand, which was covering the grave, was still very thin, straight and slender, with the back of his hand showing protruding tendons and bones because of the slight bend. His skin, which had turned blue-gray, gradually returned to normal and turned pale again, and the red spots under the skin that looked like blood clots gradually dispersed and faded.
Only after he had absorbed the last bit of the corpse's qi did he stop and stand up.
Because he had inhaled too much Yin corpse qi, his hand was extremely cold, as if the coldness came from his bones. He subconsciously wanted to touch the fluffy and warm fur of the little black cat, but stopped before touching it.
"Do you think your hands are dirty because they just touched a grave and breathed in the smell of corpses?" He lowered his head and asked the little black cat calmly.
The cub showed its unusualness at this moment. It looked up at Ethan Xie and meowed, then hooked its neck and hit its head on the palm of Ethan Xie's hand, with a sense of tragic sacrifice.
Ethan Xie: ...
He looked at the brat rubbing his head against his cold palm, the sneer on his face finally slowly disappeared, as if it was about to soften, but finally returned to expressionless.
Since the kitten was so friendly, Ethan Xie naturally couldn't forget that it also wanted to eat. So he stroked the soft fur on its head to warm his hands while walking to the river.
This river looked even more lifeless than the entire Huangtou Mountain. There was no wind in the valley, and the entire lake was completely still. It looked strange and unnatural, as if it were fake. He walked around the lake, and there was no life at all in the entire lake.
Ethan Xie patted the little black cat's round head and said, "Forget it, let's go to Yujia Ferry."
I don’t know if the little brat was stunned by Ethan Xie’s palm just now or what, he lowered his head and lay on Ethan Xie’s hand without responding, and no one knew what he was thinking about.
Ethan Xie naturally did not ask for any more opinions. He just waved his hand, leaving a cloud of black mist and left Huangtou Mountain.
Yujia Ferry is not far from Huangtou Mountain, separated by two cities, and it only takes Ethan Xie a blink of an eye to get there. This is an old ferry crossing west of Cenyun City, with a sluice bridge across it. There is a row of fishing boats parked neatly at the berth under the bridge, but the boats are dark and no one can be seen.
This place is a little further north than the neighboring city, and the temperature is lower at night. There is also a light snowfall. Under the reflection of the street lamps beside the gate bridge, the snow is scattered like dust being shaken into the air.
Ethan Xie landed on the gate bridge, stood by the railing and looked around. Then he hugged the little black cat tightly with one hand, supported the bridge railing with the other hand, turned over and jumped down.
He landed silently on a fishing boat, and when he stepped onto the bow, the whole boat didn't even shake, as if what he had landed on was just a dead leaf.
The ferry didn't seem to be as complicated as the one at Huangtou Mountain, so he could barely recognize the approximate direction, and then used the fishing boat as a stepping stone to walk all the way over.
The river crossing this ferry is a tributary of the river. It is open in the distance, but is suddenly clamped by the land on both sides. It looks like a funnel with a long mouth, and the sluice bridge is located in the middle of the long funnel mouth. At this time, Ethan Xie has bypassed the funnel mouth and reached the wider river mouth.
He was standing in the east, and the west bank should be opposite him. But he was facing an even wider river with no end in sight, and there was only a lonely island in the middle of the river, which could barely be considered west.
Ethan Xie sighed, shook his head and muttered, "It fell in the wrong place."
The little black cat purred from the bottom of its throat, which sounded almost like a muffled laugh, as if it had no expectation that Ethan Xie would be able to recognize the right path.
Ethan Xie slapped it on the forehead without any hesitation. Just as he raised his hand to throw another black mist across the river, he caught a glimpse of a brown-black object on the ground at his feet, with a faint trace of spiritual energy still remaining on it.
He stepped aside and squatted down. After hesitating for a moment, he lowered his head with a little disdain and wrapped his hands with the black mist. Then he picked up the brown-black thing and twisted it between his fingertips. The charred part turned into ash when he touched it, and only a small piece of brown remained.
This was obviously a piece of used paper that was burned by someone using spiritual fire, but I don't know if it was due to carelessness or interruption by something, so it was thrown on the ground without being completely burned, and only this little bit of residue was left.
Ethan Xie looked at the fragment in his hand that was not even as big as a fingernail, and for a moment he could not tell what kind of paper it was before it was burnt by the spiritual fire.
Of course, he couldn't just stand there in the snow in a daze, so he raised his hand to collect the fragment, and then took the little black cat through the Yin Gate across the river. In a blink of an eye, the man and the cat arrived at the small island in the river.
The island looked small from a distance, and even smaller when viewed up close. It was called a small island, but in fact it was only a ten-foot walk away. It was just a mound sticking out of the river. There were some sparsely grown dead reeds, with long, yellow leaves drooping on the tops of the stems, and a thin layer of snow covering them.
As soon as Ethan Xie landed here, he felt that the entire mound was a bit strange. As he walked along the edge, his steps involuntarily became heavy in some places, as if his feet were being dragged to the ground by something invisible.
He walked around twice and found two such points, one in the center of the mound and one on the edge. The one on the edge happened to be far away from the shore, and if he was not mistaken, it was exactly the "Fisherman's Crossing West Bank" written on the note.
"Found it." He scratched the little black cat's head and told it this, then raised his hand and broke off a thin reed. He held one end of the reed with his fingers, and tried to pat the river surface with the dead leaf end twice, then turned his wrist and grabbed it again.
The river water at the edge of the mound suddenly rolled up a huge white wave, as if it was going to push up something from the bottom of the river.
And in fact, it was true. When two big waves came, two lively fish and a black thing were pushed ashore.
Ethan Xie took a step forward, picked up the live fish and looked at them one by one.
The two live fish had a strange appearance, with a shiny black sheen all over their bodies, and they looked almost scaleless. Their entire bodies, including their bellies, were completely black, except for a single white fish eye on their heads. What was even stranger was that they only had one eye on one side, and the other side didn't even have an eye.
Ethan Xie had obviously seen a lot of these fish, and he didn't look surprised at all. He lowered his head and used the black bandaged fingertips to gently pull and scratch the fish's belly. Then he squatted down and rinsed the two fish neatly in the river water. Then, with a "pop", he slapped them in front of the little black cat and said, "I've untied your spirit, come and eat."
Little Black Cat: ...
After the spiritual bond was released, the little black cat could really move.
Of course, it had already been shaken by this simple and rough food and was as stiff as a coffin board. It was so stiff that it had no reaction to jump. It got to the ground purely because Ethan Xie stood up with his hands hanging down, and it naturally rolled to the ground.
Ethan Xie had never raised any living creatures except himself and Gabriel Yin in his life. Of course, the actual meaning of the first half of the sentence is another matter.
Anyway, no matter how unclear the origin of this little black cat is, it is the first pet that Ethan Xie has ever kept. Everything is difficult at the beginning, and this saying is proven very tragically by Ethan Xie. The little black cat squatted in front of the two black fish that were bigger than it, with a fierce face, as if it wanted to strongly condemn Ethan Xie.
However, Ethan Xie's attention was all on the black lump in his hand, and he didn't notice the look in the kitten's eyes at all.
He was not really fishing with a reed pole just now. He was fishing for information about the Oliver Stork corpse. As a result, he caught two living yin fish and a black lump of unknown origin. The former was because it was the same as the Oliver Stork corpse's original form, and as for the latter...
Ethan Xie knocked on the black lump, then raised his hand and peeled off a layer of skin from it.
Once the skin was peeled off, the core inside was immediately exposed. Ethan Xie took a closer look at the grain and determined that it was a piece of willow wood.
The shape of the willow wood is very interesting, square on the top and pointed at the bottom, like a man-made wooden nail. A piece of wood will float on the surface of the river if it falls into the river, but this willow wood nail is wrapped with a thick layer of leather and engraved with a curse, which makes the whole willow wood nail sink directly into the water and nail it to the bottom of the river.
Contacting the three willow trees on the grave, Ethan Xie immediately understood the purpose of this willow square nail. If he guessed correctly, it must have the same function as the willow trees on the grave, which is also to nail the soul.
However, Ethan Xie was a little unsure about what was being nailed this time - was the Yin Fish Oliver Stork the one being nailed? Or was it related to the one being nailed?
The snow on the river was falling a little heavier. This kind of snow could not accumulate, because it was too fine, and it would melt completely if it came into contact with a little heat, so it could not fall on ordinary people at all, and would turn into tiny water droplets when it touched clothes, making the clothes damp.
But the light that fell on Ethan Xie melted very slowly, and finally formed a thin layer on his shoulders.
The originally fierce-looking little black cat's eyes were somehow attracted by the thin layer of snow on his shoulders, and he stared at it silently for a long time. It was not until Ethan Xie started to move again and his body regained some warmth that the thin layer of snow gradually melted, and the little black cat turned his eyes away.
"Why don't you eat it?" Ethan Xie had just put away the willow nail, and turned around to see the little black cat rolling its eyes at the two Yin fishes, with no intention of eating them at all.
Ethan Xie glanced back and forth between the kitten and Yin Yu, and asked calmly: "Aren't you hungry?"
Little black cat: ...
Ethan Xie asked again: "Don't eat raw fish?"
The little black cat swung its tail twice and finally showed some reaction.
Ethan Xie stood there staring down at it without saying anything for a long time. After a long while, he asked again with a blank expression: "You don't eat raw fish either?" and put emphasis on the word "also".
Little black cat: ...
The man and the cat stood in silence for a moment, then Ethan Xie narrowed his eyes, raised his hand to take the two Yin fish, and said with a fake smile: "Okay, take them first, and go back to make ink-dotted white jade for you, how about that?"
Little black cat: ...
Cats can't talk, at least it seems that way, so when it just stares with its round eyes without making a sound, it's really hard to tell whether it is pretending to be stupid or is really stupid.
Ethan Xie left it alone for a while, collected all that needed to be collected, then scooped it up, put a spiritual bind on it, and then was about to leave the mound in the middle of the river.
As a result, just as he was holding the cat and stepping into the black fog, another big wave rolled out on the shore, and white foam wrapped in something hit the mound.
Ethan Xie: ...
He probably didn't think that there was something else, and he didn't know whether it was a sequel to the story of fishing with reed poles, or whether the computer was stuck and unresponsive before.
He stopped and retracted his foot, then walked over to take a look. He saw that the thing that was washed ashore looked like a piece of silk, extremely thin and transparent, covering the dry grass on the ground.
What is this? Clothes?
Ethan Xie stretched out his hand to pick up the thing carefully, but as soon as his fingertips touched the thing, he felt as if his heart was hit by something heavily, dull and painful, and even his brain was almost dazed for a moment.
Then he realized that it was not just his heart that was hit by a heavy hammer, but the entire mound and even the entire center of the river suddenly shook twice. Huge waves of ripples spread rapidly in all directions with the mound as the center, and even Ethan Xie's feet were numb from the shock.
He shook his head violently, shaking out the buzzing sound in his head.
As a result, just as he came out of the dizziness, he felt the solid ground under his feet suddenly loosen and dispersed in the river, collapsing completely in the blink of an eye.
The collapse was like someone had forcibly dragged the entire mound to the bottom of the river.
As soon as the soil under his feet collapsed, Ethan Xie felt his ankles being locked by a huge force, and then he was pulled with a tremendous force, and he fell into the river.
The place where the original mound was located has turned into a vast yellow soup. With Ethan Xie as the center, a huge whirlpool has risen, with white waves flying and rapidly receding.
Ethan Xie choked on a mouthful of water, then raised his hand and swung out a huge black mist, turning his hand under his body, and the entire river surface was cut horizontally as if by a sharp blade. Ethan Xie took advantage of the moment when he was separated from the whirlpool and jumped into the black mist.
A moment later, he appeared in his residence, dripping wet, holding the cat.
There is a Wanling Tree in the house, so he should not open the Yin Gate frequently, because every time he opens it, it will endanger the Wanling Tree, and indirectly endanger himself. But at this time, he can't care about so much...
If it had happened a year ago, such a thing would have been nothing more than a tickle to him. It was not threatening at all, and there would have been no burden or impact afterwards. But now he couldn't be so carefree.
Because this year, his health has inexplicably started to deteriorate. In the past, if someone said that Yinke would be afraid of cold, have chills, and get ordinary diseases, it would be a joke. But this year, he felt that his body was developing towards the state of an ordinary person.
Especially in the past half month, he actually started coughing due to a cold, and he had been coughing intermittently for such a long time and it didn't get better, but even got a little more serious.
The shock Jiang Xin felt just now did not completely dissipate until he landed. Instead, the buzzing sound was still floating in his head and ears, making him feel a little nauseous.
He stood there with a pale face, holding the cat, his head slightly lowered, but his back was straight as usual. After a while, he absorbed all the water from his body, took a few steps, and sat down on the sofa.
Somehow, when he closed his eyes to ease the vibration, he inexplicably thought of what Gabriel Yin had said to him when they were little.
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