Chapter 151 - The Corridor of Time (VII)
Editors: Kitty & Humu
Luo Jian did not answer Clown’s question. He avoided talking about it and laughed indifferently in response. Then he tugged onto Clown’s sleeve and led him forward. As he walked, he said to him, “Let’s try to attract these phantoms.”
“Using light?” Clown remembered the phantom that he had attracted when he just lit the oil lamp.
“It won’t attract much when we use a light source, and it will waste the burning fuel in the lamp.” Luo Jian shook his head. He glanced at Clown and said with a smile, “Listen, Mr. Hong, don’t look down on me. I’m stronger than you think. So no matter what I do later, you should not be scared, let alone be afraid, alright?”
“Afraid?” Clown could not understand the true meaning of Luo Jian’s words for a while because Clown didn’t feel that he would be afraid. Although he had not experienced many secret chambers, he would neither panic nor be so afraid that he would be unable to extricate himself from such feelings.
However, Clown soon understood why Luo Jian told him not to be afraid.
Seeing that the crystal ball had healed Clown’s injury, although Clown still could not see anything, he had stopped bleeding, so Luo Jian took the crystal ball back and changed the form of his weapon again. All of a sudden, what appeared in his hand was a spirit-evocation banner.
“What did you do?” When Clown heard Luo Jian’s movements, he seemed to hear the sound of the flag flapping. Then, Luo Jian explained to him, “I made a spirit-evocation banner.”
“Spirit-evocation banner? Is this really useful?”
Luo Jian said indifferently: “Maybe. I have not tried to copy this thing previously, so this is the first time using it.”
“Copy this thing? First time using it?” Clown didn’t understand, but he still grasped the main points: “That is to say, you haven’t tried to use this device to evoke spirits before, have you?”
Luo Jian said: “I don’t have so much free time that I’d run to the graveyard with this thing, and the place that I used to stay had no spirits either…”
Clown became even more confused, but he firmly uttered, “Alright, I don’t understand this. I don’t know anything about ghosts. I’ll leave this to you!”
Luo Jian stabbed the spirit-evocation banner on the ground. The banner appeared like a big red flag with all kinds of strange characters painted on it. The flag was tied to a bone rod composed of many bones. The bone was filed to be very smooth to the touch and felt strange. This was also the reason why Luo Jian was not willing to use it since the day he had copied the weapon.
“Well, let me see, how is this used?” Looking at the soul-evocation banner, Luo Jian began to recall. He remembered that this was copied from the companion of the netherfire lamp’s owner. Both of them were pretending to be ghosts or G.o.ds and dressed like Taoist priests. But though they did have some capabilities, they did not have the temperament of beings like Taoists or immortals but acted like a medium.
Although the spirit-evocation banner could summon spirits, the banner was best used to summon souls, but because there were no souls in the Asura Realm, the owner of the spirit-evocation banner also came up with new abilities. Since the spirit-evocation banner could not summon souls, it could trigger a large-range illusion. In short, it could create illusions.
This was similar to the way most phantoms attacked others, and the same effect could be achieved by this spirit-evocation banner.
Ordinary ghosts could not materialize. If they wanted to attack someone, they must first cause that person to mentally break down. In short, they had to frighten others to death and use illusions to arouse others’ fear. When the fear reached a certain level, some people may be so scared that they fainted instantly, while others would experience cardiac arrest and die shortly after.
Ghosts were very sensitive to the smell of fear. They had no corporal bodies, so of course, they didn’t have any sensory abilities. They could be described as a group of energy bodies. If they wanted to sense others, they would first have to sense the emotions that a human put out and their pheromones.
Of all the pheromones emitted, the scent of fear was the strongest and most obvious to them.
The principle behind the power of the spirit-evocation banner was probably similar to that. It lured ignorant spirits by sending out a strange pheromone, and most spirits would respond to it. Because it was an nondiscriminatory call for them, so as long as there were spirits and ghosts in the vicinity of the spirit-evocation banner, the strength of the spirit attracted would depend on the strength of the banner’s owner.
If the person holding the flag was not strong enough to utilize its full abilities, then those powerful ghosts would not follow the call of the flag because the strong would disdain responding to a weaker person’s command.
But it was not known if Luo Jian was too strong.
After he placed the spirit-evocation banner down, a gust of wind blew in the empty and enclosed stairway. Luo Jian took the oil lamp that Clown used to illuminate the area previously and set the lamp on the ground. The flame of the oil lamp jumped in the dark and narrow s.p.a.ce. Luo Jian paid attention to the oil lamp given to him by Clown. It was a very old kerosene lamp, which was used before electric lamps were popularized.
Clown also felt the deep and gloomy aura emanating in the air. Suddenly, he felt restless. His heart seemed to be equipped with a motor, and it kept ticking and ticking unstoppably. That made him feel suffocated. Then soon, Clown felt strangely frightened. The sense of fear came inexplicably. It was clear that nothing could frighten him, but deep down, he felt fear.
Luo Jian suddenly opened his mouth and said:
“Ghosts can emit negative energy all the time. They will remind you of some horrible things, things that you are afraid and scared of and upsetting memories. All these memories can make you feel negative. Ghosts will help you recall them in your mind.”
“Why are you so clear about it? I saw that you have the netherfire lamp and the spirit-evocation banner, eh…… Oh, I see! You must have been a medium previously!” Clown instantly thought of that and understood. He was extremely sure about what he claimed.
Luo Jian speechlessly pulled Clown’s sleeve: “I’m not…… I just battled countless enemies before this, and that’s what I’ve learned from them.”
“Enemies? Is your enemy a medium?” Clown exclaimed: “Then you must be a ghost! I see. No wonder you are not afraid of ghosts at all!”
His height was too hateful! Luo Jian was eager to jump up and slap him on the head.
However, disregarding the nonsense that they spoke, Luo Jian also slowly found that the ghosts gradually gathered here, and an unexpected number of ghosts was here. They were all in a translucent state. Of course, most ranged in levels of transparency. The more powerful the ghost was, the closer the ghost would be to its corporeal body. Luo Jian even saw several completely-materialized ones, which were slowly emerging from the walls and ceiling of the stairway and from under the floor. Some of them were so weak that they appeared to be almost a cloud of fog, and some of them were so clear that they had been restored to what they looked like when they died.
“So many powerful ghosts have been summoned. It proves that I’m extraordinarily strong?” Luo Jian whispered to himself: “How strange; my strength should not be reflected even on the spiritual side.”
Clown was still standing there pitifully and expectantly asked, “Are you really a ghost?”
“Shut up!” Luo Jian answered peevishly.
Clown had to shut his mouth. He was now even more pitiful, like he had no attacking power. Luo Jian did not expect him to become someone who could fight. He was allowed to remain on the spot to draw circles. However, Luo Jian stood next to the spirit-evocation banner, staring at the ghosts that were slowly approaching. Most of the ghosts’ feet could not touch the ground. They did not launch any attacks. Many translucent or completely transparent ghosts were harmless, while the powerful ones dared not even approach Luo Jian’s vicinity.
Luo Jian did not feel how terrifying he was at all, but these ghosts seemed to be scared to death and remained a certain range away from him. One of the brave ones finally took the initiative to communicate with Luo Jian.
Ghosts do not have organs to speak. They do not even have bodies, so naturally, they would not have speech organs. However, if they were fully materialized ghosts, they could even attack physically. Naturally, they could open their mouths and voice out horrifying voices. As the ghost trembled, the ghost asked Luo Jian, “Excuse me…… This lord…”
Luo Jian’s eyebrows raised, and the ghost suddenly could not even properly speak his entire sentence. Luo Jian found that the ghost was dressed in ancient garb, which meant that the ghost had been dead for a long time. He was wearing coa.r.s.e linen clothes and had long hair. He had almost condensed into a corporeal body, but his facial features were still vague. He was afraid of Luo Jian, and his tone was also erratic: “Wh…… What can I do for you?”
Luo Jian thought for a moment, and pointing to Clown’s eyes and his injured arm, he said, “Who attacked him just now?”
The ghosts looked at each other as their gazes swept from left to right, and they parted automatically, giving way to a little ghost standing behind. It was indeed a little ghost, and she was still a little girl. The girl was more powerful than that old ghost in ancient garb. Her body had completely materialized. Her feet were on the floor, but she had no shadow. She looked extremely horrifying. Her eyes seemed to have been dug out before she died. In place of her eyes, there were only two hollow holes.
The little ghost saw Luo Jian had come looking for her. Although she was afraid, she did not want to hide. She came forward and said, “This is the never-ending stairway. Someone told me that as long as we kill the living and let them take our place, we can get out from here.”
“The secret chamber’s trickery. Allowing ghosts to find a replacement for themselves.” Luo Jian sneered, and he also did not pity these ghosts.
Most of them may have originally been players who later morphed into ghosts. If a newbie player became a monster, their memory would be completely erased by the secret chamber. Sometimes, the secret chamber would even reconstruct new memories for them, such as Luo Jian’s experience in the Burial Grounds secret chamber. Later, Ying told him that the two, ‘G.o.d and Ghost,’ probably did not exist at all but that a certain player was morphed into ‘G.o.d.’ The player’s memories were wiped clean and new memories were constructed. It was a pity that the player fell in love with an illusion over thousands of years…… Ah, of course, even those thousands of years may have been fictional.
How tragic, wasn’t it? All players were akin to toys in the secret chamber. They would do what you wanted them to do. Happiness, anger, and sadness were controlled by an unnecessary system. No matter how strong the players were, the secret chamber would not let any player escape out of this place.
Ying told this to Luo Jian.
So far, in the entire secret chamber, no players had ever escaped. Those who were allowed to get out of here were the ones who were completely dead to the point where even their souls were wiped out.
Luo Jian did not want to stay in this kind of place. Even if he may lose everything including his body, abilities, memories, and even soul, he did not want to stay in the secret chamber. He had already started to act on his plan. Now, he had long lost his body.
He approached the little girl and said to her, “This place, when someone came here previously, did anyone open a door—a black or a red door?”
“Only one door was opened.” The ghost thought for a moment and replied to Luo Jian, “But I don’t know which door it is. There are many doors here.”
“So is the person who opened the door still here? I mean, if he’s dead, is his spirit still here?”
“Yes.” Another ghost answered Luo Jian’s question. It was the old ghost in the ancient garb. “But you have to go down 30 more levels. He only lingers in that area. You can descend and do another spirit summoning again. You can let him lead the way for you.”
“Thank you very much.” Luo Jian politely expressed thanks, and with a wave of his banner, the ghosts disappeared.
After Clown, who stood at a corner, listened to how everything progressed, he immediately called out: “Student Abyss is so powerful! Are you really not a medium?!”
“If you continue talking about mediums, I’ll beat you!” Luo Jian felt that he could not get angry with him.
T/N: What have all the years that pa.s.sed by done to Clown qaq. The teenage Clown is so adorable.