Tie Sha was momentarily stunned, then softly said, "I’ve heard a little about it, there are some mysterious people in the Central Plains, these people are called the Wanderers.
These Wanderers can do many unbelievable things, controlling beasts or demon beasts to spy is something only they can do.
The elder told me that the reason these Wanderers have such power is because they... are people destined to die but didn’t.
They have all been to the Ghost Realm and encountered ghosts, they should have died, but for unimaginable unknown reasons, they haven’t died yet.
Their divine souls have mutated, their personalities have become extremely peculiar, they are actually already dead, yet they can still walk and exist in a human way... this is what is called the Wanderers."
...
...
In the dimly lit Black Market, the wheels of an ox cart rumbled as new live goods were brought in.
Having learned from previous lessons, this time the brokers diligently searched the belongings of the live goods, ensuring no one could easily approach them.
Feng’Er leaned against the cold iron bars, sitting on dry straw, her eyes meeting the heavy black fabric.
She stared coldly into the distance, and after training, she no longer spoke.
She didn’t even know where this was...
She once wanted to say she was a good friend of Elder Li’s wife from Shanbao County, that if they took her there, they’d surely get a reward.
But she saw another woman, who claimed she was a relative of some important person, and as a result... that woman was brutally whipped many times.
The brokers said, live goods... must have the awareness of live goods, don’t speak recklessly.
But Feng’Er was still unwilling, she shouted loudly, and then... she too was lashed over and over until she learned to keep quiet.
The brokers said, there are many who falsely claim connections, better behave.
So...
Feng’Er was transported to the Black Market.
But she didn’t know which Black Market this was.
She had never even been to a Black Market.
All she knew was that people would occasionally come by, lightly lift a corner, and look inside as if inspecting goods.
A few days later, the little girl beside her was taken away.
A few more days passed, two other people were taken away.
But no one chose her, perhaps because her resentment was too strong, or maybe because there wasn’t a trace of life in her eyes...
Time passed day by day.
Winter came to an end, and a pale snow suddenly swept over this land again.
Feng’Er began to cough heavily, she fell ill...
She kneeled on the straw, coughing up blood, yet her face remained expressionless.
The brokers, afraid she would infect others, decided to move her out, to transfer her outside.
But when the brokers pulled back the heavy black cloth early one morning, they found that the woman, devoid of any vitality, was already dead, so they hired a miscellaneous task worker to drag her outside and bury her.
The worker took the money, but found it troublesome, so he wrapped her in a straw mat, stuffed her into a sack with stones, and under the cover of night, threw her into the lake, then turned away and left.
The sack sank... sank... descending into endless darkness.
Yet the dense, almost tangible resentment enveloped a transparent human form, rising upwards with it...
When it broke through the lake’s surface, a powerful suction came from deep within Central City, pulling the human form towards it...
In the process, the form was torn apart, becoming strange, deformed... eerie, no longer human.
As this transparent, bizarre shape entered, Central City’s original guardroom seemed to reach some extreme, and suddenly... was "detonated."
The dim, dark bed began to decay, the stench of corpses spreading everywhere, the bed started to bulge from below, as if something bizarre was pressing against the bedboard...
In the snowy night, the terrifying sound of doors crashing echoed again, continuously, without stopping...
For a long time, a long time...
Until midnight, a broker yawned as he walked by from a distance, he had just returned from playing by Silver Creek, now heading back to sleep.
Suddenly... a sharp, eerie door-opening sound rang in his ears.
The broker thought it was an auditory illusion, so he ignored it, cursed, and continued walking.
After a couple of steps, his neck suddenly twisted, then creaked as it moved, his eyes bulged out, and he fell onto the snow, dead...