PD -Chapter 128 Peach Blossom Mountain of the Underworld

With a heavy bang, the thick vault door was shut from the outside by the security guards, followed by the sound of gears and mechanical components locking tightly into place.

Inside this oddly “girlishly decorated” sealed vault, only four of us remained—me, Liu Xiaopeng, Zhu Zhu, and Shentu.

I fell silent for a moment, then looked at Liu Xiaopeng.

“Alright… shall we begin?”

He nodded and lay down on the sofa beside me. After thinking for a moment, I sat back up, reached into my pocket, and took out a talisman, handing it to Zhu Zhu.

“This is a Soul-Calling Talisman drawn with my blood and Liu Xiaopeng’s,” I said. “If anything goes wrong, burn it. It will pull our primordial spirits back into our bodies.”

Zhu Zhu took the talisman and examined it for a long while, though she clearly couldn’t understand Taoist symbols. She simply nodded.

“Remember, don’t use it unless it’s absolutely necessary. If our spirits are forcibly pulled back, everything we do in the Underworld will be ruined. Getting back in again would be much harder,” I warned her.

She carefully put the talisman into her bag. “Got it. Don’t worry.”

Hearing that, I felt a bit uncomfortable and rolled my eyes. “What do you mean ‘don’t worry’? Can’t you at least wish us some good luck?”

Zhu Zhu stuck out her tongue and smiled. “Anyway, I, Miss Zhu, will protect your physical bodies. Nothing will go wrong. Trust me.”

Then she looked at Liu Xiaopeng, the smile slowly fading as concern crept into her eyes.

“Just… be careful down there.”

“Alright, alright, enough like we’re heading to a funeral. Can we hurry up already?” Shentu urged from the side, arms crossed.

I glanced at her, sighed, and lay back down on the sofa with Liu Xiaopeng. Closing my eyes, I turned inward, focusing my consciousness on my primordial spirit. After reciting the calming incantation several times, my spirit smoothly detached from my body.

I saw my own primordial spirit sit up from the sofa, while my physical body remained lying there motionless. Liu Xiaopeng was in the same state—his translucent spirit stepped down from the sofa, walking toward Shentu while his body remained behind.

The scene was bizarre beyond words, even I felt uncomfortable looking at it.

Let alone Zhu Zhu, who had never seen anything like this.

Her eyes widened. She even reached out and pinched Liu Xiaopeng’s physical face on the sofa, then ran over and tried to touch my spirit.

But her hand passed straight through my translucent form. I was now purely spiritual—there was nothing for her to touch.

“So amazing! When you come back, I want to learn Taoism too!” Zhu Zhu said, examining us excitedly.

“Girl, you should stand farther back,” Shentu finally said, no longer watching idly.

Then she waved us over. “Come closer. Each of you hold one of my hands.”

I rolled my eyes, reluctant, but still reached out.

What shocked me was that Shentu could actually hold our incorporeal hands.

I had assumed her current female body was something she had taken from a human in the mortal world. But I quickly realized I was wrong.

The Shentu standing before us had no physical body at all.

What astonished me even more was that she had condensed her primordial spirit into a tangible form using immense spiritual power—so solid that even after spending so much time with her, we had never noticed.

As I was still in shock, her hand gripped mine.

In the next instant, a cold surge of spiritual energy wrapped around my entire being.

It was completely different from the warm, sun-like energy inside my own body.

If I had to describe it, it felt like being drenched in ice water in the dead of winter—chilling to the bone, making me instinctively shiver… even though I no longer had a physical body.

At that moment, a force suddenly pulled us downward violently.

A massive sensation of weightlessness surged through me, as if I were falling from a great height.

Everything before my eyes plunged into darkness. I could hear only the whistling of wind rushing past.

Fortunately, the sensation didn’t last long. Soon, I felt my feet touch the ground.

The darkness also faded slightly, and I could vaguely see shadowy shapes around us.

Shentu released our hands immediately.

I felt dizzy for a moment before finally recovering, and realized those “shadows” were actually dense peach trees.

This place was most likely what Shentu had called Peach Blossom Mountain.

The trees were lifeless—no blossoms, no vitality, only dry branches tangled together.

It wasn’t as eerie as I had imagined, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant either.

“So this is the Underworld?” I thought to myself.

I looked around. The light was dim, but it wasn’t night. Above us, the sky looked like a dark blue curtain—no sun, no moon.

“Don’t keep staring,” Shentu said, noticing my gaze upward. “This place is different from the mortal world. There is no day or night cycle. The light changes slightly with the twenty-four solar terms, but the rules here are completely different. No need to dwell on it.”

I looked down at my hands.

What had been my translucent spirit was now a solid body, no different from a physical one.

I turned to Shentu, studying her closely.

She noticed my gaze. “Once you enter the Underworld, your spirit becomes like that of the dead. Aside from divine beasts like Di Ting, even Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva—Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva—has no physical body here. So spirits naturally manifest as实体 forms.”

I kept staring at her and finally asked, “But you can maintain a physical-like form in the human world as a spirit… so why did you take Tang Shanshan’s body?”

My tone was serious, even carrying a hint of anger.

Shentu sighed, as if she had already expected this question.

She didn’t resist answering. Instead, she looked into the distance and said after a long pause:

“I don’t need a physical body to function. But she… needs one to accomplish what must be done.”

I froze for a moment before realizing something.

The “she” Shentu referred to was the other two-thirds of herself—the current Five Direction Ghost Emperors.

Before I could think further—

“Something’s moving!”

Liu Xiaopeng suddenly spoke in a low voice.