Chapter 293

Chapter 292

When they suddenly heard the news from Baili Chi, the expressions on Wen Qiao and her companions' faces became somewhat peculiar.

But in an instant, Ning Yuzhou composed himself, speaking warmly and sincerely: "Thank you, Master Baili, for informing us. Without you, we might have waited indefinitely."

Pei Qiyu remained unusually silent, regardless of his personal opinions about Baili Chi. He wouldn't refuse any benefits, naturally not because of any verbal slip or other reasons.

Baili Chi said nonchalantly, "It's nothing. Even if I hadn't told you, you would have noticed eventually."

Ning Yuzhou merely smiled without responding to this, only saying, "Regardless, we all owe you a favor! If we manage to enter the Thirteen Palaces of Dry Bones, should Master Baili have any requests, we will not stand idly by."

"That's wonderful," Baili Chi said happily.

Seeing his genuine, albeit silly, smile with his pink gums showing, Pei Qiyu and Su Molan were at a loss for words to describe him.

After Baili Chi left, the four began waiting for nightfall.

The sky over Bone Town darkened quickly, almost as soon as dusk fell, the sky began to darken, and every household lit their bone lamps. From above, it looked like a scattering of stars in the darkness.

Tonight, Bone Town seemed no different; the distant streets still buzzed with lively noise, as if it were daytime.

Wen Qiao stood by the window, gazing at the starless and moonless night sky, that strange feeling washed over her again. The wind seemed to carry some subtle movement.

A familiar presence appeared behind her, an arm reaching over her to rest on the windowsill, as if embracing her.

Wen Qiao looked up at the man who had appeared behind her, his aura enveloping her completely, interrupting the message carried by the wind.

She stared at his jawline, which was both graceful and strong, and said, "Husband, don't you feel that the night sky over Bone Town has been strangely different lately?"

Ning Yuzhou replied, "I haven't noticed, but if you say it's strange, then it must be."

Pleased that he believed her without doubt, Wen Qiao smiled.

Their awakened divine bloodlines differed; his was more supportive, while hers was more perceptive, making her extremely sensitive to changes in the environment.

"Did you notice anything else?" Ning Yuzhou asked.

Wen Qiao thought for a moment, "The wind... maybe."

"The wind?"

"Yes, the wind! It seems to carry different messages, but unfortunately, I can't discern them." Wen Qiao was somewhat troubled, clearly sensing something amiss, but it was as if a veil obscured her vision, preventing her from seeing clearly.

Ning Yuzhou looked thoughtfully at Bone Town under the night sky.

Bone Town in the light, Dry Bones in the night... Undoubtedly, Dry Bones represented the Thirteen Palaces of Dry Bones, and night meant nighttime. These were easy to understand, but when combined, they were quite perplexing.

At that moment, Pei Qiyu and Su Molan came over and informed them that there was activity upstairs.

"I saw them leave the inn," Su Xing said.

"Now?" Wen Qiao asked, glancing out the window at the night sky. Outsiders like them usually didn't go out at night, a tacit understanding among them.

"Should we go check it out?" Su Molan asked, a hint of anxiety in her voice.

Baili Chi had said tonight would be a full moon, but since dusk, they hadn't seen even a sliver of the moon, clearly indicating a cloudy night, no different from any other day.

But Baili Chi wouldn't lie about such things.

Pei Qiyu, Wen Qiao, and Su Xing all looked at Ning Yuzhou, as if waiting for him to make the decision.

Unconsciously, whenever something happened, everyone would first consult Ning Yuzhou, subtly recognizing him as the leader. When Pei Qiyu realized his subconscious behavior, he silently pursed his lips but said nothing.

Ning Yuzhou didn't hesitate long before deciding, "Let's go out."

The four set off with a spirit artifact and a small iron-eating beast.

As they left, Ning Yuzhou suddenly said, "Take the bone lamps with us."

Wen Qiao picked up the bone lamp from the table, and Pei Qiyu brought the one from the adjacent room. The four descended the stairs.

In the quiet night, the creaking of the bone stairs under their weight was particularly jarring, adding to the eerie and terrifying atmosphere, as if a heavy weight pressed down on their hearts.

When they reached the ground floor, they glanced toward the counter but didn't see Auntie Hua.

Auntie Hua, the innkeeper, usually stayed in the inn's lobby or behind the counter, her presence always felt strong. They rarely saw her leave the inn, as if she were guarding something.

Not seeing Auntie Hua, they didn't try to find her and went straight out the door.

As they opened the door, a damp breeze brushed against their faces.

Pei Qiyu's gaze instantly sharpened, looking down the alley, and said, "This wind is coming from the street."

Su Xing and Wen Guangun clung to Wen Qiao, having never ventured out at night since arriving in Bone Town. Every evening, they would huddle in bed, falling into sweet dreams with Ning Brother and Wen Sister by their side.

"The air is very humid," Su Molan added, raising her hand to touch her face, feeling the moisture.

The humidity was peculiar, yet no mist had risen in Bone Town. It felt as if the area was rich in water sources, despite being built on a mass grave, surrounded by barren mountains and hills, with no rivers or even puddles visible within a hundred miles.

The four, cautious, held their bone lamps and crossed the alley to reach the only main street in Bone Town.

The street was bustling, brightly lit, with each shop's doors wide open, emitting the laughter and chatter of cultivators inside.

However, when they clearly saw the interiors of the shops lining the street, their hair stood on end.

Through the open doors, the shops were empty, devoid of any human presence. The noise came from the bone houses themselves, simulating the voices of different cultivators, creating an illusion of the bustling life of the mortal world.

If they hadn't seen it with their own eyes, they would have almost believed these places were filled with patrons, drinking and chatting as usual, discussing recent events in town.

It turned out that the lively sounds they heard every night came from this.

This scene was so bizarre that it sent chills down their spines.

Looking at the bone houses on both sides of the street, which emitted various sounds, they soon realized that these sounds were produced by the bones that made up the houses, successfully mimicking the noises of cultivators practicing during the day.

"Where are the people in the town?" Su Molan asked softly, her voice trembling slightly.

Bone Town was not short of cultivators; due to its uniqueness, it accommodated spirit cultivators, evil cultivators, and demon cultivators. These were not people to be trifled with. Despite the mysterious deaths of some people every day, Bone Town still had a large population.

So many people seemed to have vanished overnight, leaving behind only a stark white bone town.

Ning Yuzhou and the others naturally did not know either.

They observed their surroundings, trying to find any clues.

The third alley was not far from the town entrance. Wen Qiao instinctively looked towards the town entrance, but what shocked her was that where she usually saw the chaotic burial ground outside the town, there was now only a winding bone path leading to an unknown destination.

And in the other direction, there was also an endless bone path.

The four people who emerged from the alley seemed to stand in the middle of a bone path that extended infinitely in both directions, with no end in sight.

"Which way should we go?" Pei Qiyu asked, voicing everyone's question.

The entrance to Bone Town had disappeared, replaced by an infinitely winding bone path.

Ning Yuzhou turned his head to look at Wen Qiao and suddenly asked, "Chui, which way do you think we should go?"

Pei Qiyu and Su Molan simultaneously looked at Wen Qiao. Although they did not understand why Ning Yuzhou let Wen Qiao decide, they did not ask further.

Wen Qiao listened to the wind, closing her eyes to capture the information it carried.

After a while, she opened her eyes and pointed towards the direction of Bone Town's entrance, saying, "Let's go this way."

"Alright."

Without hesitation, Ning Yuzhou took her hand and headed towards the winding bone path leading to the town entrance.

Su Molan and Pei Qiyu quickly followed them.

The bone path was long and winding. Gradually, the bone houses on both sides disappeared, leaving only a pitch-black expanse. The sheer darkness could even deceive cultivators, making it impossible for their vision or spiritual senses to penetrate.

Only the faint light from the bone lamps they held illuminated the path beneath their feet.

Suddenly, the light on the bone path brightened again.

The four of them looked up at the night sky and saw the moon rise.

The pale moonlight illuminated the bone path, allowing them to see clearly the shape of each bone underfoot. The combination of moonlight and bones made the world even more eerie and strange.

"So tonight is really a full moon," Su Molan murmured, finding Bone Town incredibly mysterious.

Who would have thought that the moon would appear in such a place? Bone Town, as those cultivators said, had no sun or stars, and the moon appeared only in another place.

But the pattern behind this, they still could not fathom.

Even though Wen Qiao had a vague sense of something, it was like a veil still covering her understanding, giving her only a faint idea.

After walking for an unknown amount of time, the sound of water splashing was heard.

Pei Qiyu, with the highest cultivation level, immediately caught the sound of water and cautiously said, "There's water ahead. From the sound, it seems to be a river."

The four of them quickened their pace.

As the sound of water grew closer, they finally saw the end of the bone path, where a towering gate stood out in the darkness, impossible to ignore.

In front of the gate stood a huge bone stele, inscribed with five blood-red characters in a flowing script.

Under the moonlight, they clearly saw the blood-red characters surrounded by fresh blood, as if tears of blood were dripping, unable to bear the weight. Though the characters were peculiar, when they saw them, they instantly understood their meaning:

Thirteen Palaces of Dry Bones.

On closer inspection, the imposing gate was constructed from several large bones, shaped like human thigh bones but magnified nearly a hundred times.

After observing for a moment, Ning Yuzhou said, "Let's go in."

The group entered the Thirteen Palaces of Dry Bones.

Tonight was a full moon, and the moonlight was particularly bright, allowing them to see clearly this hidden world.

Ahead, a river appeared, the gurgling sound of flowing water making the world even quieter.

When they reached the riverbank, the first thing they saw was the fine, light sand on the shore, exceptionally soft and free of impurities. But upon closer inspection, they discovered the true nature of the sand—clearly, it was bone powder ground into dust.

Both banks of the river were covered with this fine sand. How many bones must have been piled up to create this?

Perhaps because they had spent considerable time in Bone Town, living in bone houses built from human bones, the four of them had adapted well and felt no discomfort.

Observing their surroundings, they soon realized that the river was the only path, and they had to cross it.

Ning Yuzhou retrieved a bone boat.

Su Molan and Pei Qiyu looked somewhat bewildered and asked, "Where did you get this bone boat?"

"I refined it."

When the bone boat was thrown into the river, it quickly transformed into a normal-sized boat, emitting the aura of a grade-level spirit item. Only then did the two realize that the boat was merely bone-shaped but was, in fact, a spirit item, unrelated to evil artifacts.

"Aren't you afraid of being laughed at for doing this?" Pei Qiyu was somewhat amused and puzzled, not understanding Ning Yuzhou's logic. Even if Bone Town was strange, there was no need to refine a boat into the shape of bones, right?

An astute observer could easily spot the signs.

Ning Yuzhou casually remarked, "Though it is a spirit artifact, it contains a fair amount of demon bones, so it can be considered a bone boat."

Although the quality of these demon bones was not high, they still met the characteristics of Bone Town—except that they were demon bones rather than human bones, which should not matter.

It turned out that a boat made from demon bones could also be used on this river.

They did not control the bone boat but let it drift with the current.

Time ticked by slowly. Wen Qiao's hand rested on the whip at her waist, and she couldn't help but glance at the sky. The full moon hanging high showed no sign of setting, as if frozen in the air, its light illuminating the area.

"Miss Wen, have you noticed that several hours have passed, and it will soon be dawn," Su Molan walked up to Wen Qiao and whispered.

Wen Qiao nodded, pondering, "Perhaps the Thirteen Palaces of Dry Bones are always under a full moon."

Su Molan found this speculation highly plausible. She looked ahead at the waterway, which, like the previous bone path, seemed endless. As the bone boat passed, ripples spread across the water, and the reflected full moon in the water swayed with the ripples, the pale moon appearing to shatter into pieces.

No!

Su Molan quickly reacted, slashing a ghastly white skeleton that leaped out of the river back into the water with her sword.

The sudden change happened in an instant. Wen Qiao and Pei Qiyu swiftly summoned their weapons, knocking the skeletons that jumped out of the river back into the water, while Ning Yuzhou rapidly set up an array on the boat.

In a moment, the entire river seemed to be filled with countless skeletons.

These skeletons were ghastly white and not particularly fearsome.

Their movements were unusually agile, and their hollow eye sockets glowed with a blood-red light. Whenever one met those eye sockets, it gave the illusion of being stared at.

A beam of spiritual light illuminated the bone boat, blocking the skeletons that leaped out of the river, preventing them from advancing further.

Only then did Pei Qiyu and Su Molan realize that Ning Yuzhou had already set up a defensive array on the bone boat, which clearly could withstand the attacks of the skeletons emerging from the river.

After attacking for a while and finding they could not break through the bone boat's defenses, the skeletons' teeth chattered, making a clacking sound, giving the impression that they were communicating.

Wen Qiao and Su Molan watched them warily.

"What are these things?" Pei Qiyu frowned, noticing that the river was full of these skeletal frames, which was unsettling.

"They can be considered bone demons," Ning Yuzhou said.

Everyone looked at the skeletons in the river, finding the term "bone demons" quite fitting.

"It seems the Thirteen Palaces of Dry Bones are not very safe," Su Molan furrowed her brow, looking ahead with concern, sensing the dangers ahead and wondering if their journey would go smoothly.

Pei Qiyu glanced at her and stroked his chin, saying, "I'm curious where the people in Bone Town have gone."

When they left the inn and didn't see Auntie Hua, it seemed strange. But upon seeing the state of the main street, they had a hunch that Auntie Hua had likely disappeared along with the other missing people from Bone Town.

How could such a bizarre place exist on the Primordial Continent?

"Bone in the light, dry bone in the night," Ning Yuzhou suddenly said, "Their whereabouts are probably related to these two phrases."