Chen Jing finished speaking and sat down cross-legged, inhaling the yin spirit energy of this space. Inhaling spiritual energy was just a way to calm one's mind, doing something that could calm one's restless heart. Visualizing oneself, feeling the yin spirit energy entering the body, transforming into one's own magical power, sensing the yin spirit energy nourishing the flesh, could make people calm their minds and spirits. This was the easiest way for cultivators to calm their minds, in the past Chen Jing only needed to inhale the first mouthful of spiritual energy to calm down, inhaling the second mouthful would enter a state of selflessness, but now he couldn't do it at all.

  As soon as he sat down, his heart felt constrained and restless. It was as if he had suddenly been controlled by someone else, feeling uncomfortable all over. This conflicted intensely with his usual desire for freedom.

  Swallowing the yin spirit's energy, at first it was just a feeling of inexplicable restlessness in my heart, but as I intentionally suppressed it, that feeling grew stronger. The irritation quickly transformed into another emotion, and suddenly a thought emerged in my mind.

  "Could it be that this spirit is trying to harm me, could she also be fake, intentionally letting me sit still so she can secretly cast a spell to harm my life." As soon as this thought arose, a murderous intent suddenly emerged.

  He suddenly opened his eyes, which were already filled with bloodshot. Looking towards where the spirit was, it had vanished into thin air, and there was no sign of the woman in white clothes. With a cold laugh, he slapped the ground and flew up, rushing towards where the spirit had stood earlier, disappearing into the darkness. From afar, his cold voice boomed, followed by the chilling sound of shattered sword fragments piercing the air.

  In the darkness, there is a wind that seems to be absent, unable to distinguish space, unable to clarify the changes in time, as if it were the heaven and earth before the chaos opened.

  Chen Jing's broken sword pieces danced around him, while he himself was dashing about in the darkness, his thoughts flying wildly like the swords around him.

  In the darkness, it was impossible to determine the passage of time. After a long while, Chen Jing finally calmed down and slowly sat down, but he himself didn't know if he was still in the same place or not. At least in his eyes, nothing had changed - the same darkness, the same blurry ghostly shadows. The ghostly shadows seemed to exist only in his imagination.

  He didn't find the Void Spirit, it was as if it had never appeared at all. The sword hum of the flying sword pieces suddenly cleared his mind, and after the killing intent dissipated, he felt incredulous about the sudden emergence of that killing intent within himself.

  A flash of panic crossed his mind, and he hastily sat down, maintaining a hint of clarity in his heart, suppressing the inexplicable unease and sudden murderous intent that had arisen. He suddenly discovered that, at some point, his thoughts had become unusually clear, reflecting on everything about himself over the past few days, as if he had changed into a different person, even he himself found it somewhat frightening.

  He realized at this moment that something must have happened to him, only he didn't know when it started, maybe it was when he entered the Qin Guang City, or maybe it was when he woke up in that wooden house, or perhaps it was when he killed that Youyou with one sword.

  "Xu Ling, come out." Chen Jingjing suddenly shouted in a neither light nor heavy tone while sitting in the darkness.

  After a while, a person slowly walked out of the darkness, wearing white clothes and a white flower on his head, as if he was in deep mourning. It was actually Youling. He slowly walked out, made a profound bow, and said: "Youling has seen the River God."

  Chen Jingpan sat there and said: "You go ahead, I'll watch, nothing will happen."

  The pale and quiet eyes of Chen Jing, a slight smile, took out a black mirror from his arms, saying: "This mirror is called the Soul Treasure Mirror, it can reflect the soul of all living things, no matter what kind of creature, how high their Tao is, their soul state cannot be changed."

  She said, slowly wiping the mirror surface, after a while, she turned the mirror to Chen Jing. The mirror flashed, and a person appeared clearly in the mirror. Or rather, it was not a person, but a demon.

  That man was missing half his head, with eyes that were bloodshot and a face as pale as iron. He looked ferocious and terrifying, even if he had been familiar to you before, just by looking at his appearance, it would be impossible to recognize him as Chen Jing.

  "This is what Heishen Ye looks like now, you know what he looked like when I first saw him in this Qin Guang City?"

  "What's going on?" Chen Jing was shocked and disbelieving in her heart. She didn't feel any changes in her body, so how could she have turned into this?

  "It's just like those black-armored dark riders we saw outside the city, only with black armor and no body or face. I was able to recognize you because I'm a wandering soul from this realm." Xū Líng gazed intently at Chen Jing, paying attention to his changes, fortunately, Chen Jing's current expression was shocked but didn't have the intention of killing her like before.

  The Soul-Reflecting Mirror in Xul Ling's hand flickered slightly, and the image in the mirror had already changed.

  In the mirror, a riverbed was visible, with mist rising from it. On the riverbed sat a person who looked exactly like Chen Jing. However, upon closer inspection, it became apparent that the person's body wasn't made of flesh and blood, but rather a condensed mass of mist. In his hand was a sword also formed from condensed mist, and within the misty sword, an insect-like creature wriggled back and forth. Chen Jing knew that this was the Sword Slasher and the sealed Soul Wasp.

  What made Chen Jing puzzled was that there were some red dots wrapped around the soul in the mirror, and those red dots lingered on various parts of the body. Upon closer inspection, they seemed to be moving as if they had life.

  And the place where the red light was most prosperous was on his head, which was exactly the position where Chen Jing's physical body lacked a shell.

  "What is that red light?" Chen Jing asked, suppressing the excitement that was quietly rising in his heart.

  Xu Ling's face was as white as paper, staring at the red light spot in the mirror and saying: "If I'm not mistaken, this should be 'Wang Hun Meng Yan Zhou'."

  "Is it a curse of restless spirits? Is there a way to lift it?" Chen Jing asked in alarm.

  The art of incantation is extremely rare in the world, but its reputation is great. Even among cultivators and divine spirits, incantations symbolize mystery and terror.

  Xu Ling shook his head and said, "Legend has it that a long time ago, the witch tribe was powerful in the world, with divine powers. Curses originated from the witch tribe, and no one can lift them once they are cast."

  "Haha, no one can solve it, how is that possible? If so, where are the Wu tribe now?" Chen Jing retorted.

  "The witch tribe generally refers to the curse as a sacrifice, at the cost of their own life."

  "How do you know so much, and who are you?" Chen Jing suddenly raised his head to ask. Yu Ling didn't respond, but instead showed a deep thinking expression. After a long while, he said: "I don't know either. My past memories only knew that I was just a lonely soul on the verge of disappearing, searching for a place with yin energy everywhere, and finally attached myself to the ancestral tablet in Heqian Village to enjoy the incense and worship. Only then did my body slowly take shape, and my consciousness became clearer."

  "But how would you know these things, these matters that are known to few in the world, and no one can know what really happened a thousand years ago, let alone the people from back then."

  "I think I should be the lost soul here, and by chance left this place to enter the mortal world." The spirit had already turned the Soul Mirror around to reflect herself, her expression calm, and brushed aside the black hair hanging from her shoulders. No one knew what she saw in the mirror, Chen Jing naturally didn't ask, because he felt his irritation surge up, accompanied by various emotions, resentment, hatred... murderous intent surged out wildly, only thinking of breaking through the darkness in front of him, destroying everything in the darkness.

  The ghostly figure slowly retreated, and just as it was about to disappear, it said: "River God, the only way to get out of here is during the Ghost Festival, which occurs once a year." As soon as the words fell, it had already vanished without a trace.

  But for humans one day is equivalent to one year here.

  A year in the mortal world is not long, but a day here is equivalent to a year. A year in the mortal world is equivalent to 365 years here, and in this endless darkness, even a true cultivator of Tao would find it difficult to maintain a calm state of mind, let alone Chen Jing, who was just one of countless small gods in the world. Everything comes from the Imperial Edict, and as for cultivating his mental state, he had no idea how to compare with those Taoist cultivators.

  The worst part is that he has now fallen under the curse of the Wandering Soul Nightmare, and it's likely that even before the endless darkness and loneliness drive him mad, he will already have been consumed by the curse and turned into a mindless killing zombie.

  Qin Guangcheng seemed to have become a world of his own, without sky or earth, boundless and endless. Perhaps this was just Chen Jing's feeling, but now he found it increasingly difficult to judge whether everything he saw when he woke up from the wooden house was real or illusory.

  "Could it be that everything was just a mistake in his own consciousness, or was what he saw back then the true appearance of this Qin Guang City?" This was just a fleeting thought that occasionally flashed through Chen Jing's mind. He didn't have the energy to investigate what this world was really like, because he was constantly fighting against the various crazy ideas that were surging up in his own heart.

  Those negative thoughts would come flooding in like a tide, and only after they receded would Chen Jing's mind have a brief moment of clarity. Every time this happened, he would try his best to hold on to and prolong this hard-won thread of lucidity, thinking desperately about how to dispel the "Wandering Soul Nightmare Curse". Meditating and focusing his mind obviously didn't work, and neither did quiet contemplation - again and again he fell into that frenzied state. If Chen Jing could remember his own eyes when he was in that crazed state, he would discover that they were almost identical to those of the five evil spirits on that ghostly seal: full of resentment, malice, bloodlust, coldness, and cruelty.

  It was unclear when it started, but Chen Jing found that the time he spent being clear-headed was gradually shortening, while the time he spent in a state of confused consciousness grew longer and his own consciousness grew weaker. At first, he could still try to suppress it, but later on, he could only struggle to maintain his sense of self from disappearing.

  "No, I can't go on like this. If I do, I'll be completely extinguished, and there will be no me left in the world." Chen Jing thought to himself during a brief moment of clarity, as he was about to be overwhelmed by negative emotions again, with the pain of the sword piercing his body's painful acupoints. But under those negative emotions, this pain somehow made Chen Jing feel a sense of comfort. A flash of fear crossed Chen Jing's mind, afraid that he might accidentally kill himself.