Grudges of the Living, Entanglements in the Netherworld

Chapter 150: Grudges of the Mortal Realm Entangled in the Underworld

The interior of the carriage was a cacophony of noise, yet Wu Hong stood entirely silent. The moment Wu Hong stepped into the carriage, his entire body was locked in place, unable to move or walk, leaving him with only his thoughts.

That King of Hell Ma had initially looked on in sheer terror as Wu Hong dashed into the carriage, attempting to flee. However, he soon realized that his power was invisibly suppressed, leaving him capable only of walking about without a shred of destructive force.

Yet, upon seeing Wu Hong enter the carriage, his expression shifted drastically, and his body froze in place, appearing even less capable of free movement than he himself was. Instantly, the heart that had been stuck in his throat gradually settled back down.

Meanwhile, seeing the mortal enemy who had murdered Huang Ling right before his eyes and watching him grow increasingly at ease, Wu Hong felt a blazing fury surge within him, yet he was completely powerless! He could not even manage the involuntary physical trembling typical of an ordinary person experiencing extreme agitation, which showed just how terrifying this suppression truly was.

What Wu Hong did not know was that, quite apart from being able to suppress mortals, even mighty entities from the Origin Realm who entered the carriage in their physical bodies would instantly lose a portion of their self-control.

Viewed from the outside, the entire carriage appeared to be only about ten meters long, but the space within was frighteningly vast, stretching out boundlessly like a miniature world.

The space inside was crowded with people of all kinds. Some caught sight of Wu Hong boarding the carriage and immediately began to tremble with fear.

Outside the carriage, Ox-Head and Horse-Face finished their final soul-gathering tasks in Yunluo City. With a flash of black light, the two monsters transformed respectively into a yellow ox and a black horse, and the reins of the ghost carriage naturally slipped over them.

The two beasts slowly pulled the carriage, setting off in the direction of Yellow Cloud Town. The scenery outside was grim, gloomy, and utterly devoid of sound, terrifying to the extreme. Occasionally, the stray souls of a few wild beasts were automatically sucked into the carriage.

Those terror-stricken souls, consumed by various negative emotions, caught sight of the incoming beast souls and acted as if they were looking upon the most sumptuous banquet. They swarmed forward frantically, tearing the beast souls to shreds, gorging themselves until their mouths were stained with beast blood—a scene of utmost horror.

After the carriage had traveled for quite a while, tiny dots of energy continuously flew into the carriage from the outside.

The souls aboard the carriage seemed to have lost their humanity, eating whatever came into view. Even creatures like insects and poisonous snakes—beings that normally caused people to turn pale with fright at the mere sight of them—were devoured by the crazed mortals in the carriage.

Yet, in the vicinity of Wu Hong and King of Hell Ma, not a single wandering ghost dared to approach so much as half a step! King of Hell Ma was surrounded by a crimson hue, resembling an explosion of blood-red true qi.

Wu Hong, on the other hand, was shrouded in a gloomy demonic aura, yet it was suffused with an imperceptible trace of upright, masculine energy. These two contrasting auras were sharply contradictory, causing the souls to be all the more terrified of him.

The aura emanating from Wu Hong was not something these ordinary souls dared to approach; even King of Hell Ma, who had always slaughtered without blinking, did not dare come within a hair's breadth of him.

Although he could already tell that Wu Hong's situation was far worse than his own, the aura radiating from Wu Hong turned his face ashen and made his teeth chatter.

In truth, this did not prove how formidable Wu Hong was. Even if Wu Hong were immensely powerful, he would not have been able to scare King of Hell Ma to such an extent. There was only one reason: Wu Hong was still a creature of flesh and blood...

At last, the carriage arrived at Yellow Cloud Town and finally came to a halt once more.

Ox-Head and Horse-Face reverted to their monster forms—one with the head of an ox and a human body, the other with the head of a horse and a human body. Raising two soul-recruiting banners, they began to summon souls! The white soul-recruiting banner in Horse-Face's hand was specifically meant to summon those who had performed many good deeds during their time in the mortal world.

Meanwhile, the black soul-recruiting banner in Ox-Head's hand was dedicated to gathering those who had committed countless evils in the mortal realm.

Until this moment, Wu Hong and the crowd of crazed people inside the carriage still had no idea where this carriage was heading. In fact, the majority of them did not even know that they had already died.

Before long, tens of thousands of people suddenly appeared outside the carriage! Each and every one of them wore a blank expression, as if they had instantly lost all their memories.

As Ox-Head and Horse-Face chanted each person's name, that individual would naturally step out of line and then instinctively walk into the carriage.

Only after boarding the carriage did these people gradually regain all of their human emotions, though the vast majority of these were negative ones.

One by one, the people whose names were called climbed aboard the carriage.

"Number 23,000. Huang Estate, maid Xiaolan." Ox-Head called out a name in a loud voice. Hearing this, Wu Hong felt his soul tremble, nearly losing control as he screamed frantically in his heart, *'How is this possible?!'* Wu Hong remembered very clearly that this maid Xiaolan of the Huang Estate was Huang Ling's closest personal attendant, who had accompanied Huang Ling for many years.

Just a few days prior, when Huang Ling died, her headless corpse had lain cold beside her.

*"How could she possibly still be alive?"* Wu Hong felt a sense of surreal disbelief, coupled with a chilling sensation that made him feel as though none of this were real.

Before long, Huang Ling's maid Xiaolan indeed appeared outside the carriage with a blank expression, before stepping into the compartment. The blankness on her face gradually faded away—and suddenly, she caught sight of Wu Hong, whose body was frozen and unable to move.

"Ah! Young Master Wu? Why are you here? Hurry and come with me to save the Young Mistress! The Young Mistress is in danger!"

Xiaolan rushed directly toward Wu Hong, but as soon as she collided with the demonic aura surrounding him, her body was sent flying backward.

Wu Hong felt towering waves crash in his heart, believing that everything before him transcended the limits of his understanding. Even with his memory loss, he knew that the dead could never be resurrected...

"Young Master, what is wrong with you? Hurry and go save the Young Mistress! The Young Mistress has been poisoned by Ma Luocheng! He's trying to force her into marriage—*cough*!"

Before Xiaolan could finish her words, she coughed up a large mouthful of fresh blood, as real as could be.

"This..." Wu Hong's body could not move or walk, yet terror still gripped his heart. He was genuinely afraid that the events of the past few days had all been a dream, and that Huang Ling was only now truly facing danger. Yet, no matter how hard he struggled, his body could not budge a single inch.

Xiaolan's expression was exceptionally wretched. Her face devoid of a shred of color, she cried out, "Young Master Hong, you know very well how well my Young Mistress treated you! Why would you act like this, refusing to save her when she is in mortal peril?"

Every single word Xiaolan spoke rang in Wu Hong's ears, driving him to the verge of madness, yet he remained utterly incapable of movement. Such torture was far more cruel than the eighteen layers of hell.

Xiaolan tried several times to hurl herself at Wu Hong's body, but each time she was blasted away by the demonic aura, coughing up torrents of blood, until she finally began to curse Wu Hong aloud for being heartless and unfeeling.

Yet, despite Xiaolan's frantic outbursts, Wu Hong felt no anger toward her; he was filled only with endless self-reproach.

Why hadn't he been a little more careful? If only he had possessed even a shred of preventive awareness, perhaps Sister Huang Ling would not have died.

Or if he had accelerated his journey to fetch the bride just a bit more, arriving before Huang Ling severed her own heartstrings, perhaps the tragedy could have been averted.

Just as Xiaolan was hurling curses at Wu Hong for his heartlessness, and while Wu Hong was consumed by self-reproach, both of them heard Horse-Face outside shout a name—a name so bitterly hated that either of them would gladly have torn the person's flesh and feasted on their blood.

"Number 41,200. Ma Luocheng, son of the King of Hell Ma, board the carriage..." Following Ox-Head's chant, the black banner in his hand gave a gentle flick through the air. Among the crowd outside the carriage, Ma Luocheng stepped forth, shrouded in gloomy underworld energy and wearing a blank expression.

Without the slightest hesitation, Ma Luocheng walked past Ox-Head and climbed into the carriage.

The initially vacant expression on Ma Luocheng's face gradually gave way to returning consciousness.

"Scoundrel, I'll kill you!" Xiaolan shrieked in a hoarse voice, charging straight at Ma Luocheng.

"Ha! You little bitch, I never expected you to survive! Those brothers of mine really are good-for-nothings," Ma Luocheng said with a ferocious grimace as he watched Xiaolan charge toward him.

Ma Luocheng instinctively tried to summon his true qi to instantly slaughter the approaching woman, but his expression suddenly shifted—there was not a single trace of true qi fluctuating within his body.

"Ah! Scoundrel, I'll kill you!" Hearing Ma Luocheng's words, Xiaolan became even more frantic, instantly tackling the pale-faced Ma Luocheng to the ground.

The man and woman began a ferocious, clawing brawl right on the floor, tearing each other's hair out and ripping their clothes to shreds in a purely desperate, ordinary mortal scuffle.

Upon seeing his son board the carriage, King of Hell Ma's face lit up with joy. "Cheng'er, are you not dead?" he called out.

Hearing his name amid the brawl, Ma Luocheng looked up and saw King of Hell Ma standing beside him. He immediately cried out, "Father, hurry and pull this crazed bitch off me!"

King of Hell Ma rushed forward to help. Though he had lost all his true qi, his body was still enveloped in a terrifying crimson hue, making his strength far greater than that of an ordinary soul. With a single heave, he managed to pull Xiaolan away.

Yet Xiaolan's face was ferocious, terrifying, and fiercely malicious—a sight that made Ma Luocheng tremble all over. Fortunately, because King of Hell Ma was in a soul state suffused with an overwhelmingly bloody aura, no matter how frantically Xiaolan struggled, she could not break free from his grip.

Shortly thereafter, Ox-Head and Horse-Face chanted dozens, then hundreds of names in succession. All of them were names Wu Hong had once been familiar with, and in Wu Hong's mind, these people were all individuals who had died at human hands.

As soon as these people boarded the carriage and caught sight of the father-and-son pair of Ma Luocheng and King of Hell Ma, they charged toward the two of them with wild abandon.

Blood splattered, limbs were torn apart, and these people frantically wrestled with King of Hell Ma and Ma Luocheng. They bit with their teeth, clawed with their hands, employing every vicious, fatal method imaginable to murder someone, venting their madness without restraint.

Wu Hong could only watch helplessly from the sidelines, completely unable to lend any assistance. Yet the more he watched, the stranger things felt. These servants of the Huang Estate who should have been dead fought fiercely with Ma Luocheng; their heads were frequently knocked off, only to regenerate shortly afterward, after which they would resume their frantic combat and tearing at Ma Luocheng and his father in an endless, never-ending cycle with no sign of stopping.

This scene was by no means an isolated incident. In every corner of the carriage, similar desperate scuffles were taking place—guts spilled across the floor, yet not a single person truly died; all of them revived shortly after perishing.

Seeing all this, Wu Hong, who remained utterly incapable of movement, felt a chill run straight to his bones, planting a daring hypothesis in his mind: Could he be dead?

Were all the people before him also dead? And were the Ox-Head and Horse-Face outside the soul-reception emissaries of the netherworld?

Sure enough, shortly afterward, the souls of the several Postnatal Great Perfection experts whom Wu Hong had personally beaten to pieces entered the compartment.

Upon seeing the mob of crazed Huang Estate servants, their faces drained of all color in sheer terror.

Many Huang Estate servants had been killed, and some of the stronger experts had been dispatched after being poisoned through despicable methods by their opponents.

With their grievances towering to the heavens, every single one of them targeted the father-and-son pair of King of Hell Ma, leaving even King of Hell Ma—a demonic overlord who had slaughtered countless mortals in the living world—with a monumental headache.