"Were they sacrificed to ghosts? Where are they?" When I saw his expression, I knew something was wrong.
Master Zheng struggled to get up from the ground, "I'll take you there, they... they are in the corpse pit!"
I picked him up, followed his instructions, and walked about two miles due north. I found a two-meter-square pit in a hidden corner deep in the valley.
Thick black fog was billowing in the pit, making it difficult to see what was underneath.
Master Zheng pointed down, "This is the corpse pit, which is part of the altar. The couple is below, but... but they estimate..."
Before he could finish speaking, I jumped down with him.
The pit was extremely deep, more than twenty meters long. When he was about to land, he used the Falling Leaf Technique, and his body suddenly stagnated in the air and landed lightly on the ground.
The black mist condensed in the middle of the pit, but the bottom of the pit was gone.
I saw a man and a woman facing each other, eyes closed, sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the pit.
The strange thing is that half of the faces of this man and woman are as dark as ink, and the other half are as pale as paper.
Although many years have passed, I still have some vague impression that these two people should be Jin Zhongyue and Yu Qin.
"There is energy, there is still energy!" Master Zheng suddenly exclaimed in surprise and joy.
Although the couple on the ground looked extremely strange, they did still have a very weak aura.
I took a closer look and saw that there were two iron chains locked on their ankles, which were deeply embedded in the ground.
"The layout here is all arranged by that...that old lady. I don't know where these two iron chains lead." Master Zheng said. He ran to a corner at the bottom of the pit, groped for a while, and found a Take the key, "You can use this to open it."
He hurriedly stepped forward and inserted the key into the keyhole. With a twist, the chain was indeed opened by him.
"Did that old lady stay here?" I was a little surprised.
The couple from the Jin family were placed in this corpse pit, and it was obvious that they were used as sacrifices. According to common sense, they were bound to die.
If this is the case, then why keep this key?
Just an unintentional move?
Or is it that the old lady expected that the couple might not die after the sacrifice, and that she would still use them, so she kept the key?
"The old lady put it here. I took a peek at it and happened to see it." Master Zheng nodded.
I didn't move the two of them immediately. Instead, I found a place to sit down at the bottom of the pit and motioned for Master Zheng to sit over as well.
"Aren't we... going up?" Master Zheng looked at the Jin couple and asked hesitantly.
"Don't worry, let's wait until the blackness on those two faces fades, then we go up." I said.
Master Zheng was still a little confused, but he did not continue to ask. He came over and sat down next to me.
While I was waiting, I asked him to explain the details of what happened.
It turns out that Master Zheng's name is Zheng Shicheng. He is from Ningcheng. He has been traveling around the world with his daughter since three months ago. His original intention was to open his daughter's eyes and gain more knowledge.
But just as they were passing through the western suburbs of Chizhou, they met an old lady on the road. The old lady stared directly at his daughter when she came up.
The daughter asked curiously, "Mother-in-law, what can I do for you?"
Without saying a word, the old lady suddenly grabbed her daughter's arm and pulled her over.
Zheng Shicheng was shocked and shouted hurriedly, "Let go!"
At first, he was concerned about the fact that the other party was an old man, so he didn't attack harshly, but he didn't expect that he would be restrained by the old lady as soon as they met.
Zheng Shicheng was so frightened that he broke into a cold sweat. The power of the old lady was completely beyond his imagination.
He knew that he had met an expert, so he quickly asked for help, saying that the father and daughter were just passing by and did not mean to offend him.
The old lady ignored him, just touched his daughter's face and said, "Not bad, not bad."
Then he picked up his daughter, turned around and left.
When Zheng Shicheng saw that his daughter had been arrested, he was unwilling to give up and hurriedly chased her.
But the strange thing is that although the old lady is carrying a person, no matter how Zheng Shicheng chases him, she is always far behind him.
The two of them chased each other and came to the corpse pit.
Zheng Shicheng rushed to snatch his daughter, but was caught by the old lady and thrown into the corpse pit. The old lady told him that if he wanted his daughter back, he had to be obedient.
Zheng Shicheng had no choice but to obey the old lady's order.
"When I got to the bottom of the pit, I found the Jin couple. They had injured their hands and feet, but they were still conscious. When they saw me, they immediately asked me if I had seen their daughter."
When Zheng Shicheng said this, he couldn't help but sigh, "When I heard what they said, I realized that the couple had a similar experience to me, and their daughter was also captured by the old lady."
"Originally, we should have the same hatred, but the order the old lady gave me was to ask the couple something. If they can't find out something, don't get their daughter back."
"What are you asking for?" I asked him.
"She wanted me to ask the Jin couple who was the one who guided them to build the Yin and Yang Temple at home?" Zheng Shicheng said with some confusion.
I heard something in my heart, "Did they say it?"
"No." Zheng Shicheng shook his head, "Mr. Jin only said that he came up with the Yin Yang Temple himself."
"I also know that what he said must be prevarication. I have no enmity with them, but in order to save my daughter, I can only grit my teeth and threaten them that if they don't tell the truth, don't blame me for being rude!"
"But the couple is determined. No matter how I ask, they insist that they came up with the Yin Yang Temple themselves."
"I really had no choice but to tell them secretly that my daughter was also taken away by the old lady. If I couldn't ask, my daughter would suffer."
"When the couple heard about it, they sympathized with my experience, but they still refused to say a word about who instructed them to build the Yin Yang Temple."
"I really had no choice but to be ruthless and use some small methods on them. Although these methods are not fatal, they can definitely be regarded as unbearable torture for ordinary people."
"No matter how much I tortured them, the couple just refused to let go. In the end, the two of them fainted from the pain, and they didn't ask me what I wanted."
"The old lady told me that no matter what method I use, I must ask, otherwise I will wait to collect my daughter's body!"
"I begged and begged, but the other party didn't listen at all. I had to wake up the couple again and tried to force them to question them again, but the couple were really stubborn and refused to talk."
"Just when I was at a loss, the old lady suddenly said that there was no need to ask, she already knew the answer, and asked me to lock the two of them with chains and arrange the corpse pit according to her instructions."
"Then when I got up from the pit, I found that my daughter was gone. The old lady said that she had failed to handle the matter before and gave me another chance."
"She took me to the blood pool. There were more than a dozen people there, all murderous desperadoes. These people were just like me, and they were all controlled by the old lady."
"That's when I realized that when the old lady asked me to come here, she asked me to preside over the ghost festival!"
