Chapter 111: The Vision of the Underworld

In Wei Chen’s eyes, the monster looked more like a black snake with gills. Yes, a snake with gills, not an eel. This was because it had fangs and could shoot poison that corroded even stone.

The fight continued for about ten minutes before one of the warriors pierced the monster’s brain with his weapon. No, it looked more like a harpoon than a spear, as it had a rope linked to the end of it. That rope was connected to the largest ship.

After killing the monster, the group dragged its corpse to the shore, while the first fisherman pulled out the crystal two more times. He stopped only when the basin-like container on the boat was filled.

Wei Chen’s vision continued to observe the group. The monster was dragged to a butcher’s workshop and dismantled piece by piece. The butcher worked with skill and precision, treating every part like a treasure, especially the large green spherical orb, about the size of a tennis ball, that was taken from the monster’s heart.

The scene changed to a massive tower filled with powerful underworld qi. At the base of the tower, cart after cart of green crystals was being moved inside.

Inside the tower, Wei Chen saw workers pouring the crystals into furnaces on the first floor. The red-green fire burning within the furnaces shone brightly like a star as the crystals were quickly consumed.

The crystals disintegrated into a gaseous substance and rose through vents toward the top of the tower. From there, green and red flames burned brightly, releasing underworld qi throughout the underworld.

Wei Chen was stunned. Were the green crystals that dropped from souls into the river the source of underworld qi?

What truly astonished him was the process itself. He had expected something far more mystical.

Instead, what he saw felt like an early industrial revolution. There were workers everywhere. The people of the underworld looked no different from mortals. Each of them had a job and a duty.

In his imagination, all of this should have been integrated into nature itself, not something with such an industrial atmosphere.

Why was this epiphany so strange? At first, he thought the reason he needed to understand where souls came from was related to the Samsara Sovereign’s Scripture. But after seeing this process, he was no longer sure.

The scene changed once again, this time to a place that looked like an immigration checkpoint. Souls that had just arrived from the shore were guided to this location.

Groups of people dressed like immigration employees received the souls washed ashore. The lines were so long that there were more than a thousand of them, each stretching far enough to feel as if they could span the distance from Brazil to the United States.

The souls transformed into forms resembling ordinary people the moment they were received. They walked toward gates that looked like airport immigration counters.

The procedures, the questioning, and the registration carried out by the employees were extremely similar to what Wei Chen had seen in modern airports.

If this were not an epiphany, and if he were standing there in person, he would have already made a face like the Jackie Chan disbelief meme.

At the gates, he saw several cultivators causing trouble. Warriors stationed there stepped in to subdue them, beating them with police baton-like weapons, martial arts, and artifacts.

Some cultivators even managed to defeat the gate warriors, but moments later, stronger underworld warriors arrived and swiftly beat the crap out of those cultivators.

The scene shifted again. The cultivators who had been beaten senseless were sent to a place resembling a prison, with black crystals embedded in the ceiling. These crystals immediately drained all spiritual qi and a strange white power from the cultivators.

The drained crystals appeared weak at first, then gradually grew brighter and brighter until they were full. Employees wearing protective suits, similar to those seen in pandemic films, entered the area.

They removed the filled crystals and replaced them with new ones, leaving Wei Chen even more confused by what he was witnessing.

Then understanding struck him.

Those crystals were used to drain excess lifespan from deceased cultivators.

The green crystals he had seen earlier were formed from death energy that fell from souls onto the riverbed of the River of Souls. These crystals were converted into underworld qi, which nurtured all beings in the underworld.

This included newly deceased souls as well as those who worked there.

Wei Chen continued watching as the scene changed once more. He saw a vast city with an ancient Chinese architectural style blended with towering skyscrapers.

The city was so enormous that it resembled an ecumenopolis. Yet this was only one planet.

Several planets floated within the void of the underworld. The River of Souls, which looked more like a trail of stars, connected only to the main and largest ecumenopolis, while colossal beasts served as transportation, carrying underworld residents between the different ecumenopolises.

At this moment, Wei Chen woke up from the epiphany.

More and more questions filled his mind. If those visions he saw were true, why was the underworld like that? Was it not supposed to be one vast realm where everything functioned naturally?

Why was there a need for employees at every single process, from fetching souls to the immigrant-like processing area? And why were cultivators, who were not that strong, able to resist the warriors at the gate?

Wei Chen could feel it. Those cultivators had died before the end of their lifespans, and they were quite powerful. Even though their cultivation was only at the Nascent Soul realm, they could defeat warriors who were one major realm higher than them.

Was it because of their excess lifespan? Or was it something else? Furthermore, he had also seen that those cultivators used their artifacts to resist. Were they not supposed to arrive with only their souls?

There were many things that left him deeply confused.

All in all, the vision of the underworld he saw, along with the understanding he gained from the epiphany, looked like a reflection of the mortal world. No, it looked more like a vision of chaotic modern society. If the vision had shown a group of people raiding convenience stores, he might have thought he was seeing his previous world.

“What the hell was that?” Wei Chen muttered to himself.

He then suppressed his confusion and slowly calmed himself down. He had gained an epiphany from the Samsara Sovereign’s Scripture, but why had it shown him the inner workings of the underworld instead?

It felt more like a video showing how the underworld’s immigration system worked rather than an epiphany about a summoning technique.

But regardless, he could feel a strange space within his Nascent Soul space. It was a space that could contain something other than items and artifacts. He was certain that this space was meant to house summons.

With this knowledge in mind, a smirk appeared on Wei Chen’s face.

“It’s about time, baby,” Wei Chen muttered like some badass character from a Hollywood movie.

He exited the pagoda, and the scene that greeted him was a small pile of corpses.

Some were burned to a crisp, some had lost their limbs, and some were missing their heads. Nearby, he saw Max sitting down, wagging its tail with its tongue hanging out.

A strange, ominous feeling hit Wei Chen, and he quickly called up the interface of the redeeming shop.

But the moment he opened it, he saw a red warning on the interface.

Warning, penalty exceeds current balance of your underworld gold coins.

-50% penalty due to the damage caused by your pet.

UGC: -325,000

Seeing that his underworld gold coins were in the red, he could not help but want to cry.

“Shit…” Wei Chen uttered as he hardened his heart, bracing himself for the experience of being called into the CEO’s office and receiving a brutal grilling session.

But look at the bright side. Instead of getting a one hundred percent penalty, it was only fifty percent because the deaths were caused by Max.

Wei Chen let out a sigh, but then he looked at the pile of corpses and a smile crept onto his face.

“Let me test it…” Wei Chen stood still and took a deep breath, his voice becoming deep.

“Arise…”

…

…..

…

..

Nothing changed. The pile of corpses was still there. Nothing moved. Other than a dead leaf that flew past in front of Wei Chen due to the wind, nothing changed.

“ARISE!” Wei Chen raised his voice, but after a moment, nothing changed.

“Resurrection!” “Come! My servant!” “Wake up, my creature!” “Awaken, my monster!” “Pika[Beep], I choose you!”

He tried every keyword he could think of, but nothing moved.

“Ahem…” A familiar fake cough came from behind him. He turned to see who it was.

And it was Ms. Youqi.

“Err… when did you arrive, Ms. Youqi?” Wei Chen asked.

“From the moment you spoke the first ’arise,’” Youqi said with a trace of a smirk.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep