Master of Strange Dao

Yu Ziqing's consciousness was somewhat hazy.

Oh, he had exhausted all his Qi Blood Power. How long had it been? There was nothing left to digest. Was he beginning to digest his own muscles?

His mind was desperately resisting, even if it meant digesting his own flesh and blood, to supply his brain with energy, to keep him a little more alert.

Yu Ziqing struggled to sit up, leaning against the rock wall, looking ahead where the wall was covered with scratch marks and fist imprints.

Those were the traces he had left during his increasingly frenzied moments before.

But now, he didn't even have the strength to be furious.

Not knowing how long he had been staring, there seemed to be some movement on the stone wall in front of him.

Moments later, a sharp claw broke through the wall, reaching out from inside.

Sensing something, the owner of the claw became even more frantic. His skin split open, flesh torn, claws snapped off, but still, he did not stop. After a moment, he had dug a small hole barely over a foot wide.

A hungry ghost squeezed through the hole into the cave where Yu Ziqing was staying.

The hungry ghost, upon seeing Yu Ziqing, was overjoyed. It stood up and anxiously paced in place, gesticulating for quite a while, trying to say something, but it was unable to make a sound.

After spinning in circles a few times, it seemed to have thought of something. It turned around and continued to frantically enlarge the hole, seemingly wanting to make it big enough for Yu Ziqing to pass through.

"Stop digging, it's not needed..."

Yu Ziqing murmured weakly.

The hungry ghost seemed to think of something else and disappeared back into the hole.

Time passed, and as Yu Ziqing's consciousness began to blur again, there was more movement from the hole.

The hungry ghost carefully crawled in with a wooden bowl in its grasp.

With both hands on the bowl, it respectfully placed it in front of Yu Ziqing.

Yu Ziqing didn't move, but his eyes shifted slightly, recognizing the wooden bowl. It was the same bowl he had once used to bring soup to the hungry ghost. He had teased the ghost for not returning the bowl after eating, joking who would bring it food next time.

But now, he saw that at the bottom of the bowl, there was some thick soup that had long since gone bad.

Yu Ziqing instantly understood that it wasn't that the hungry ghost had drunk the soup and failed to return the bowl; it had not even finished that little bit of soup to this day.

So much time had passed, and there was still half of it left in the bowl, already turned gelatinous and spoiled. The hungry ghost had probably drunk less than a quarter of it.

Yu Ziqing looked at the anxious hungry ghost, its hesitant and seemingly scared demeanor, not daring to come closer. Then, seeing Yu Ziqing seemingly exhausted, the ghost picked up the bowl and slowly walked towards him.

Seeing the hungry ghost muster the courage yet trembling in fear, Yu Ziqing forced a smile, and as he did, tears rolled down his cheeks.

"This has gone bad, it's poisonous, I can't drink it anymore. You drink it."

"Come here."

The emaciated hungry ghost hesitated for a moment, then slowly came closer to Yu Ziqing, still stubbornly holding the bowl and crouching in front of him.

Yu Ziqing stretched out a hand that was nothing but skin and bone and placed it on the ugly head of the hungry ghost. He gently patted its head and then stuffed the last strip of beef jerky into its hand.

"Take this, I'm giving it to you."

The hungry ghost was reluctant to accept it, trying to give it back to Yu Ziqing.

"This is an order. I'm giving it to you, and you must take it."

The hungry ghost, not daring to refuse, hesitantly held the strip of beef jerky in its arms, fearing it might drop it.

"Are they looking for me?"

The hungry ghost nodded.

"Go tell them not to look for me any longer. I'm about to finish, and I'll be back soon."

"Then you should go, too. No need to come here anymore."

"Go on, I don't have the strength to talk anymore, so tired..."

The hungry ghost, holding the beef jerky, left, but still stubbornly placed the wooden bowl in Yu Ziqing's hand.

Yu Ziqing slumped there, leaning against the wall, the light in his eyes growing dimmer. He no longer felt hunger, just weariness, lack of strength, and the desire to be still, to think of nothing and conserve his energy.

He knew that his clear consciousness now was just the last flicker before death; he was about to go.

The Life Fire was dying out. After some time, Yu Ziqing slightly drooped his eyelids, motionless. The brilliance in his eyes began to fade, his consciousness had vanished, and his body was nearly dead.

The death he had least wanted to face.

Starvation.

As Yu Ziqing completely lost consciousness in an instant, wisps of black energy began to emerge from his body.

The amount of black energy exploded exponentially, rapidly enveloping Yu Ziqing's body within it. Right after, the black energy began to congeal, turning into black liquid, and then once more solidified into something like viscous black oil.

The world around began to erode, to warp. The solid rock wall, as if weathered, crumbled to powder, consumed by that oily black substance.

A terror filled with madness, despair, unwillingness, and an icy chill condensed into a black flame. With a whoosh, it ignited in Yu Ziqing's still heart, replacing the Life Fire that was about to die out completely the next moment.

Slowly, his body, which had lost its human form, began to rise, like a grotesque mass of giant black filth, distorting and corrupting everything around it. Its aura rapidly climbed in a state like never before.

A large clump of black, oily filth grew larger and larger, until it completely filled the entire underground cave, continuing to erode everything around it.

At the same time, in the village, within the depths of a cave that had always been sealed off and never entered by anyone, in the buried land, pairs of eyes suddenly snapped open.

They had once been people of the village, who, after starving to death, had become starving ghosts, but didn't wish to harm the people of the village. While still sane, they had crawled into the cave and buried themselves.

And at this moment, an unknown and terrifying aura had already permeated from deep underground, beginning their awakening.

It was as if they all saw a new path to life unfolding before them. Just by stepping on it, a glimmer of new hope would be seen in their dark and dead end lives.

Without any hesitation, all of the starving ghosts chose to set foot on this path.

For they saw that the only light in the darkness would offer them something they had forever longed for—the hope to eat once again.

One by one, the self-buried starving ghosts underwent a fundamental change in their life form at this moment; they became hungry ghosts.

Similar in name, but entirely different existences.

A swarm of hungry ghosts burst out of the cave.

A brief disturbance occurred in the village, but soon they realized that those emaciated ghosts, looking like dry corpses with seemingly no organs, paid them no mind at all.

After emerging from the ground, the large group of hungry ghosts only bowed gratefully in one direction, to express thanks and respect to the being that had given them new hope.

And the hungry ghost that had had contact with Yu Ziqing knelt at the very front of the procession, its mouth agape, revealing the vortex deep in its throat, and the small hole at the center of the vortex.

This gave the new hungry ghosts even more hope.

With fervor and anticipation in their eyes, the hungry ghost cradled the piece of beef jerky given by Yu Ziqing, feeling it close to its heart.

The tiny strip of beef jerky was glowing.

The villagers stood at a distance, both wary and shocked.

Yang, watching from afar, saw the gaping hungry ghost and was somewhat stupefied.

"What are these…?"

However, the village chief suddenly remembered the words Yu Ziqing had once said, and the message the hungry ghost had quietly left before; whatever happened, stabilize the village.

He straightened his back and shouted assertively.

"Everyone stay calm. Remember what was told to you before: Even if the sky falls, do not panic, do not get chaotic. Do what was said before!"

The village quickly returned to calmness, all the people and the hungry ghosts maintained peaceful coexistence, with the hungry ghosts not harming anyone—even ignoring them—simply kneeling there, seeming to be waiting for something.

Three days later, that terrible aura grew even stronger, so much so that even the villagers could feel it.

An extremely frightening power was awakening. A terrifying being was about to awaken.

They immediately thought of the Jade Tomb behind the mountain, but after investigating, they found the Jade Tomb was exactly the same as before, without any change.

Seven more days passed, by now several months since the mines had fallen into the Void, and the stored food in the village was nearly exhausted despite their efforts to ration. Everyone was barely keeping from starving to death.

It was today that the people saw something resembling black, oily filth rising from all around the minefield, enveloping the entire area.

They looked up to see a massive, indescribable clump of black filth surging towards the sky, blotting out the sun.

Then they saw that the billowing black filth slowly took the shape of the upper half of a person, except where the head should be was just a dark mass.

Immediately after, black flames started to burn on the surface of the indescribable filth, and a crack formed where the mouth on the gigantic head would be.

A deep rumble of a growl, almost like a weird chant, echoed through the heavens and the earth.

"Hungry…"

None of the people understood the language, yet in an instant, they all grasped the meaning of the word.

Then they saw the giant being, which they tentatively referred to as human-shaped, slowly open its eyes, where fiery, blood-colored flames blazed intensely.

Within those flames, as if connected to an endless purgatory, endless suffering, all the pain and despair of the world were being consumed by the fire.

At this moment, everyone who saw this giant had a word spontaneously come to mind.

Hungry ghost.

They knew then that this was a hungry ghost.

And all those kneeling on the ground, they were all hungry ghosts.

An unprecedented alien species not of human ilk.

And this formless giant, unnamable, was their king, the beginning and the end of all hungry ghosts.

King of the Hungry Ghosts, God of the Hungry Ghosts, call it whatever you like.

The King of the Hungry Ghosts scanned his surroundings with his eyes, the Void a blank expanse; he saw the glowing beef jerky in the hands of the hungry ghost on the ground and did not give it a second glance.

He turned his gaze toward the dark Void.

At the same time, in the Despair Abyss, the performance in the small theater suddenly came to a halt.

In Cece's arms, a blinding light bloomed; she took out the object, the piece of beef jerky that Yu Ziqing had given her before.

She felt something, gazing into the unknown distance with a radiant smile.