Chapter 98: Boundary Stone

When Jueyuan said this, my heart was tense for a moment, but then I felt relieved. What is there for me to worry about?

This thought relieved my tension. My blood was slightly heating up, and I was actually caught in a strange tranquility. It was not until Jueyuan called me that I came back to my senses from this emotion.

“Chengyi, come and take a look. The so-called boundary stones are also a kind of scenery, of course, if this place is not a little hell,” Jueyuan said to me.

I stretched lazily and walked over to Jueyuan. I saw Huigen rowing the boat closer to an island, shrouded in a misty fog, and I couldn’t see clearly. It wasn’t until I was less than ten meters away from the island that I saw a huge stone monument standing in the middle of this small island. It was like a statue that had been deliberately enlarged and carved, and it actually gave people a feeling of looking up.

This is enough to show the monument’s size, and the monument is simple and unadorned, with only two ancient characters I don’t recognize carved on it. This is surprising to me, after all, I have been exposed to a lot of writing since I followed my master.

“These two ancient characters are relatively rare. I heard that they are a symbol of Taoist civilization. In fact, the meaning is really very simple, which is the word ‘boundary stone’,” Jueyuan explained to me.

But I was shocked. If that was true, how long had this place existed with such an obscure word? But the secrets of ancient times are no longer for us to explore.

As I talked to Jueyuan, the boat slowly approached the island. I asked Huigen, “Are you tired? Do you want to rest?”

Huigen shook his head and said, “No, Master Jueyuan told me to stop the boat here.”

“After the boundary stone, you must walk. This is the rule. You will never reach the boundary stone by boat,” Jueyuan explained to me. This is indeed very strange.

But it was still within my acceptance range. After all, I had also encountered such a situation before, when I participated in the real secret ghost market!

At first, I was worried that the boat would restrict our movements, but when we actually had to leave the boat, I felt like I had been stripped of my sense of security. The moment I stood on the island, I felt my legs were weak and I couldn’t help but keep looking in the direction of the boat.

Jueyuan saw us standing at the entrance to the island, tightly next to our boat. He wanted to comfort us by saying not to be nervous, but he wasn’t doing much better himself. After a moment of silence, Jueyuan suddenly said to us, “This is the second time I’ve set foot on this island at the entrance. The first time was when I first came here. Dingyuan told me that I always had to come to worship the mountain. People who come here, whether they are monks or Taoists, always have to come here first to worship the boundary stone.”

After saying this, Jueyuan first performed a Buddhist ritual towards the boundary stone. After the ritual, he looked at us and smiled, showing his beautiful white teeth and said, “Do you want to worship too? I don’t know about other places, but I know that on this island, outside the boundary stone, it is absolutely safe.”

Since this is the rule here, we naturally could not decline. We all followed the highest etiquette of our sect and bowed to the boundary stone in turn. It was amazing that the boundary stone, which looked ordinary at first glance, made me feel a kind of vicissitudes of life, ancient atmosphere and aura after worshiping, which made people feel reverence.

I had experienced this aura on the outer wall of the Dragon Tomb, but compared to this boundary stone, the long outer wall felt a little less imposing, and I couldn’t explain it.

After I finished worshiping the boundary stone, I realized that this island was very strange. It was almost a rocky island with no vegetation, but there was a wooden stake tied to the boat where we had moored the boat.

Tao Bai walked over and tied the boat to the wooden stake. Jueyuan said calmly, “Tie the boat here, even if the sky falls, the boat won’t be lost. Of course, this is a record in our lineage, and I don’t know if it’s true or not. After all, there is only one person in our lineage who has entered the island.

I didn’t know if Jueyuan’s words were meant to comfort me or to hurt me. I glared at him angrily, but then I saw that Jueyuan had already walked ahead.

There is only one road on the entire island, winding its way towards the boundary marker. The fog here seems to be a little denser than in other places. As we walk along this winding path, we can barely see the person in front of us at a distance of one meter.

The island is shaped like an inverted bowl. The entire island is not very high, and it takes less than half an hour to reach the top as you slowly walk up the winding path. The peak is where the boundary stone is located.

When you get to this point, there is inexplicably some wind, the wind blows away some of the fog, and the visibility is also a little higher. You find that there are also some plants growing on the top of the island, with strange-shaped dead grass. Jue Yuan looked at it for a moment and said, “Everything here, including this grass, has a ghost attached to it.”

Yes, I had already noticed it. Originally, it was just ordinary dead grass, but upon closer inspection, the lines on it formed the faint outline of a human face.

Since we’re on the subject, Brother Chengxin couldn’t help but ask, “Jueyuan, what about that body of water we first entered? I’m talking about the flowers! I once read an ancient book, and I read it as a historical anecdote. It describes the plants of hell. There is a saying that people only know about the flowers of the other shore, but they don’t know that the flowers of the other shore are just the most common plants in hell, and in hell, there are actually many plants. For example, in the deep pools of hell, there is a type of lotus that blooms. The fragrance of this lotus is the most powerful poison for the soul! It can induce the deepest emotions and wounds in the soul, and it can also cause the soul to fall into a long sleep, and in the end, in the cycle of long sleep, forget everything and return to nothingness.

Cheng Xin said this for a while. Compared to it, it really does look like the strange flower we encountered when we first entered. However, when I think about it, is its power really that great, and is it worthy of being called the most powerful soul poison in hell?

Jueyuan heard what Chengxin said, but he didn’t answer the first time. Instead, he took us a few steps and came under the boundary stone.

“Here, under the influence of the inexplicable, even time is not accurate. However, after years of a regular life, my biological clock in my body is incredibly prepared. If the estimate is correct, there are about five hours left until dawn, when the rooster crows. Let’s cross this boundary stone after that. This time is not good for us.”

After saying that, Jueyuan sat cross-legged under the stone monument, and we followed him over. Although there was a slight breeze at the top of the peak, it was strangely the warmest place we had been since entering the natural formation. There was a peaceful temperature here that was comfortable, with a mysterious, simple, and ancient atmosphere, and a strange sense of security.

“Here, it is actually safer than staying on the ship, and you can rest without dreams for a night. And crossing the boundary stone, you should see something different.” Jueyuan said calmly.

We don’t need to hear about it from Jueyuan to understand this feeling. After packing up our luggage, we decided to rest here. No normal person would choose to enter the ghost city in the middle of the night.

In response to Brother Chengxin’s question, Jueyuan also gave an answer: “The flowers you encountered have always been here, and they can be said to be the most dangerous existence in the wild. Don’t forget that this place is known as a small hell. Even if you can’t grow the real lotus of hell, under the influence of yin qi, ordinary aquatic plants will also produce bad mutations. The most important difference is that this flower is parasitized by evil spirits that can confuse people! And only a ghost with a certain degree of power of confusion can parasitize on it, and there is more than one. In this way, do you understand?”

“I understand. You said that every plant and tree here may have a spirit body parasitizing it, and we have roughly understood that. We just don’t understand why, as soon as we entered here, we encountered a storm, and even drifted to that kind of flower. Is it our bad luck?” Xiao Chengqian lay on the ground with his head resting on his luggage. He was still indignant.

Jueyuan didn’t say anything this time, and subconsciously glanced at the other side of the boundary stone. There was thick fog rolling around, so how could anything be seen there? However, looking at Jueyuan’s slightly worried eyes, I understood one of the meanings.

I don’t know who is trying to scare us. But what about the strange purple color of the plants? I don’t think even Jueyuan can answer that.

That night, I slept well. As I was falling into a drowsy sleep, I heard Jueyuan telling Huigen about the grass here. He said that the grass under the boundary stone was the luckiest grass, and that the spirit that possessed it was the luckiest spirit. Over time, you could see that the grass pattern, which originally had an angry and distorted face, would slowly become peaceful, even with a compassionate smile, until the grass pattern completely disappeared. This was a kind of transcendence, and this was the ability of the boundary stone…

This is a truly strange thing, I thought, and fell into a deep sleep. The air filled with the scent of antiquity surrounded me, like the womb of the mother, the place where humans first came from, and like the end that humans seek, it was full of a peaceful atmosphere.

I slept soundly without a dream, and I slept more soundly than I had in Hucun.

“It’s time to go,” Jueyuan said to me.