A week had passed since Gu Chenling had arrived in the underworld. He had done some exploring around the island his residence resided on.
His little courtyard house was not the only one of its kind on the island. In fact, there were quite a few in its vicinity. The nearest neighboring courtyard was only a hundred meters away. And after walking past that courtyard, there would be another hundred meters until one would reach the next courtyard.
Like that, it could be said that two hundred or so courtyard houses on this side of the lake formed a small village. The other side of the lake was mostly untouched nature with mountain forests that looked great for hiking and getting lost in.
During the last week Chenling had ordered some vegetable seeds in the mall and had planted them in a small field behind the courtyard house. It was accessible through a backdoor which Gu Chenling had hired a few ghost workers to add. The quality of the work was good and it had only taken up a day so he had been satisfied overall.
Gu Chenling had watched the whole process with interest and had even offered them something to drink, but had been refused vehemently. The men had not engaged with him but had kept to themselves, not even having established eye contact when being talked to which had made Chenling raise an eyebrow.
It had only been the next day when he had met his neighbor for the first time that he had finally found out why the workers had acted so timidly.
"Boy, those workers were fourth order ghosts," his grandpa neighbor had explained patiently, "Since you are a second order ghost you have a deterring aura to you that intimidates them."
"Seriously?" Gu Chenling had given a confused look. He had not noticed any sort of aura around him nor around anyone else.
The old man had laughed at Chenling's confused expression. "You are new to the underworld so you have yet so see the severity of the segregation of the different order levels. If you want to look at people's aura, then you have to concentrate your yin energy into your eyes."
Gu Chenling had followed the man's words, still having some trouble at the beginning as he had never tried actively using yin energy before. But he had soon gotten the hang of it.
A cool energy had accumulated in his eyes and all of a sudden it had been as if a veil had fallen off his eyes. He could perceive a golden glow surround his neighbor.
A little gasp had escaped his parted lips in surprise.
"Do you see it?" The old man had asked, already knowing the answer. "The golden glow represents the karmic luck one has accumulated throughout life. And it also is an indicator of what order level you belong to. The aura usually makes people feel comfortable around you. But that does not count for those ghosts who have committed a lot of sins. You will occasionally hear stories of fifth order ghosts temporarily getting blinded by a higher order ghost's aura. It's not that uncommon."
Having heard that, Gu Chenling had not known whether to count himself lucky or to pity those unlucky lower order ghosts. But then he had remembered that those lower order ghosts were most likely rapists, killers and other kinds of human trash during their lifetime and the pity he felt went away.
After bidding his neighbor goodbye Gu Chenling had returned home and had passed the next few days by tending to his vegetable garden and exploring the island.
Today he decided to hike up the nearest mountain to his home. Halfway up the mountain, he got tired of walking and started floating instead. It was quite convenient being a ghost.
Once reaching the top of the mountain he flew up the tallest tree in his vicinity and sat down on a sturdy branch to have a better view of the surroundings. There he found out that there was another village on the other side of the mountain. It was of a similar size as the village he currently lived in. It also consisted of more than a hundred courtyard houses and the only real difference Chenling could catch with the naked eye was that instead of a lake they had a small river only a few meters wide running through the village.
Wondering where the river led to, Gu Chenling flew over and followed the river until he reached the edge of the island where the river turned into a waterfall. Chenling stood floating at the edge and looked down. The cascading water had a long way down until it landed in a lake of a bigger island several hundred meters below. There was a big city surrounding the lake.
Curious, Gu Chenling jumped and controlled his falling speed while keeping a safe distance to the waterfall so that he would not be accidentally carried off by the torrent.
It took him roughly five minutes until he reached the surface of the lake with the waterfall just a few meters behind him. Gu Chenling did not dilly-dally. After estimating the distance between him and the shore on all sides, he chose the shortest distance and calmly started walking on the water.
However, only a few minutes into walking he felt some kind of premonition. Something felt off.
Was it the lack of sounds? Or was it the eerie tranquility that the lack of ripples on the lake created. Despite there being water rushing down from above there were barely any waves just meters away from the point of impact. The surface of the lake was as calm and as smooth as a mirror.
Gu Chenling observed the clear water thoughtfully.
Suddenly, he saw a huge shadow swimming past not far away from him.
He frowned and quickly flew up to get a better view. It was fortunate that he did so as just two seconds after he had flown up a black shadow appeared underneath the place he was before.
Something huge broke through the water surface. Whiskers whipping around frantically, a giant catfish opened its mouth wide in an attempt of snatching Gu Chenling out of the air.
The sight of the catfish had Chenling widen his eyes and his body stiffen in surprise. He had never seen such a humongous catfish before. It was at least ten meters long and its head three meters wide, definitely big enough to swallow an adult human.
Luckily for Gu Chenling, he was already out of the giant catfish's reach.
Seeing that it could not get to Chenling, it stared at the floating ghost greedily before it sank back into the depth of the lake.
Gu Chenling could feel a chill run down his spine. He was sure that if he had been inattentive and stayed close to the water surface, the catfish's attempt to eat him would have been successful.
Not feeling like feeding the fish today, Gu Chenling picked up his pace and flew towards the shore. He kept his eyes trained on the water while maintaining a certain height in flight. During the time it took him to fly to the shore he saw several shadows flitting around in the water, some smaller, some bigger. There were also a few more fishes trying to catch a bite but failing to do so.
It was not until he had landed on safe ground that he breathed a sigh of relief.
The underworld was not as safe as he had thought.
Done catching a breath, Gu Chenling turned to look around. He was faced with the sight of an ancient-looking city. The architecture reminded him of period dramas. But the people walking and floating around were not dressed as uniformly.
Just like the time when Chenling had entered the underworld and stood in line to be judged the people wore clothes from different time periods. It was quite a peculiar picture. Especially, those who were dressed in modern clothes looked out of place when put together with the backdrop of the ancient style city.
But Chenling could only shrug internally. After all, he was one of those people who stood out like a sore thumb due to his clothes. Fortunately for him though, the people of the underworld were already used to this hodgepodge of dress styles.
No one looked at him funnily or paid him any mind as they went their way.
Given how busy the place was where Gu Chenling had landed, he soon realized that he was probably at the fringe of a business district.
Wanting to know more, he consulted his jade pendant. After some brief research he found out that he was currently in Tranquil Lake City. The whole city was basically a huge business district with no pure residential buildings. All the buildings in this city had a commercial purpose, selling goods and services.
As Gu Chenling did not have any particular goal in mind he drifted through the streets aimlessly. Soon he realized that the streets could be divided into categories depending on what the shops sold.
He had just left a street full of restaurants and entered another street that was dominated by shops that sold medicine and other services pertaining to health. There were even signs in front of a few buildings that read "doctor's office" or "Chinese medicine clinic" amongst other stuff.
Chenling explored a few more streets and roads, even accidentally entering the red light district. He had not realized that he was in the red light district as it was still daytime and the businesses were still closed. But when he read the sign boards hanging above the shops that had names such as "Flower Pleasure Hall" or "Happy Chrysanthemum Garden" and saw the gaudy silk drapes decorating every window within this street, the realization basically almost jumped at him.
As a certified virgin Gu Chenling felt his ears grow hot. Embarrassed, he hurriedly left the red light district only to find himself at the periphery of some sort of bazar.
There were ghosts running small stalls everywhere, some shouting advertisements for their booths in attempt to lure customers in. Others stayed silent, only speaking up when being addressed by a potential customer.
Gu Chenling quickly left his embarrassment behind and looked through the stalls. The products sold varied from booth to booth. Herbs, items with strong yin energy, cursed artifacts, they had it all.
Chenling stopped in front of a stall that sold what looked like paper scrolls. They did not look like regular paper scrolls as they were full of yin and other types of energy.
"Sir, excuse me for asking, but can you introduce your products to me?" He turned to the stall owner who was covered from head to toe in a dark brown cloak. Even the face was not visible as it was shrouded in darkness.
"The scrolls contain skill manuals. I have all types of weapon skills," an old and throaty voice sounded from the cloaked figure, "sword skills, saber skills, spear skills, whip skills, movement skills. Choose as you please."
As the person behind the stall whose gender Chenling still had yet to figure out recounted all the scrolls on display Gu Chenling felt more and more like he was in some sort of wuxia or fantasy novel.
'Don't tell me that you can even cultivate in the underworld…' Chenling half jokingly thought.
But still he briefly checked his jade pendant for information. There was no cultivation like in those cultivation novels with foundation stage, gold core stage and all that nonsense until one reaches immortality.
Gu Chenling felt slightly disappointed. But then he remembered that ghosts are pretty much immortal to begin with as long as they get enough yin energy and do not die through external forces. Ghosts could not even starve to death or commit suicide. Otherwise there would be less fourth and fifth order ghosts in the underworld.
Who could actually stand suffering from hunger and other physical pain for decades or even hundreds of years if they weren't forced to do so with no escape?
Cultivation aside it was possible to learn martial arts skills and gain other types of energy if one was lucky and found some enlightenment in the dao. Gu Chenling figured those energies surrounding the paper scrolls were those kinds of martial arts energies.
'Eh, should I buy some skill manual scrolls and learn some new skills?'
Gu Chenling was deep in thought, actually considering buying something. He had been in need of a new hobby after all.