Tian Laoqi grew serious. He was not a superpowered individual, but over the years, he had formed a symbiotic relationship with the tomb miasma here, which was why he was unaffected.
Through the tomb miasma, Tian Laoqi sensed a trace of energy directly from the mausoleum on Wen Wen!
The person before him had absolutely come into contact with the Northern Yin Emperor's Tomb!
Wen Wen shook his head and said, "Who I am is not important. A few days ago, a beautiful girl stayed here for a night and then disappeared. Can you tell me where she is?"
Tian Laoqi's dark eye sockets fixed on Wen Wen. "Please leave. I haven't been open for business in a long time, and no girl has stayed here."
Behind Wen Wen, grey-black mist began to writhe and claw, stealthily approaching Wen Wen.
As one of the only two tomb guardians in Lingyuan County, Tian Laoqi was far more resolute than Wang Dayi.
He had not trained a new tomb guardian, simply because he had no descendants, and... he did not need to!
Having no family or friends, Tian Laoqi, after losing his sight, wished to spend the rest of his life by this inn. A blind old man in such a situation would certainly not live for long.
The nights here were filled with deadly tomb miasma. All who were corroded by the miasma would enter an eternal 'sleep,' and only those who resided here long-term would awaken as usual after this sleep.
Although Tian Laoqi was a local to Muyuan District, he had left for a period. Therefore, at most, he could last a little longer than outsiders.
However, as his time living here increased, Tian Laoqi suddenly adapted to the tomb miasma of the nights here, even gaining some control over it.
Under the effect of the tomb miasma, Tian Laoqi could live healthily without eating or drinking, and even felt no aging since then.
Even with his sight lost, the nourishment from the tomb miasma did not hinder Tian Laoqi from carrying out any normal activities.
So, he continued to sit in front of the inn, guarding the Yin Emperor's Tomb in his own way.
Tian Laoqi disliked killing innocents, so when outsiders came, he would advise them not to stay here at night.
But if they refused his advice, it meant they had ulterior motives for coming here. And to Tian Laoqi, ulterior motives meant they were targeting the Yin Emperor's Tomb!
Therefore, everyone who insisted on staying here was sent into an unwakeable 'sweet' dream by the tomb miasma of the night.
As for the person before him, it was confirmed that he had come into contact with the tomb, so regardless of whether he was willing to leave, Tian Laoqi intended to keep him here forever!
But before the mist could touch Wen Wen, a hazy white mist rose, forming a mist giant ten feet tall. The giant lightly swung its fist, dispersing all the grey-black mist gathered around Wen Wen.
On his way here, Wen Wen had conducted several experiments on these grey-black gases. The results showed that the most effective was the white mist from the Box of Mists. As long as the white mist was present, the grey-black mist could not approach Wen Wen.
This indicated that, at least in terms of hierarchy, these grey-black mists were inferior to the white mist from the Box of Mists. Su Dan Novel Network
After the two attacks were scattered, the grey-black mists, mimicking the white mist, condensed into a grey-black giant. It performed a set of military exercises in front of the white mist giant in a flashy manner, only to be instantly defeated by a single punch from the white mist giant.
The grey-black mist was merely mist. Even if its concentration was high or its shape was peculiar, it was still just mist. The white mist giant, however, possessed genuine upper-order strength.
Seeing that the Sleep Mist was ineffective against Wen Wen, Tian Laoqi panicked and immediately jumped like a monkey, rushing into the inn.
The speed and explosive power of this blind old man in his seventies or eighties far surpassed that of physically fit young men, even approaching Master Ye's level.
But to Wen Wen, this was no different from slow motion. He had only taken two steps before Wen Wen grabbed his collar, lifted him up, and pinned him to the wall with several black light swords.
Initially, Wen Wen did not intend to resort to force. He wanted to negotiate with him. After all, the previous tomb guardian, Wang Dayi, was relatively amenable, having persuaded him after a brief 'merciless' encounter.
But when Tian Laoqi began to make a move against Wen Wen, Wen Wen immediately realized that this Tian Laoqi was an enemy, and it was even possible that the missing people were knocked out by weapons controlled by Tian Laoqi.
"I'll ask again, where are my assistant and the other missing people!"
"Don't think that because you have no family, no friends, and no fear of death, I can't do anything to you. If you don't tell me, I'll immediately blow up the Northern Yin Emperor's Tomb, and after blowing it up, I'll take out the corpses inside and chop them up to feed to you!"
"I'm not a good person, and I can definitely do something like that!"
Wen Wen would certainly not do that, but having fused with a part of Wen Li's personality, his threats sounded so genuine that he appeared like a ferocious, neurotic inmate, and no one doubted that Wen Wen truly would do certain things.
Upon hearing Wen Wen's threat, Tian Laoqi immediately panicked. He had dedicated his entire life to the Northern Yin Emperor's Tomb, and he could not let Wen Wen blow it up so easily.
Tian Laoqi said tremblingly, "On the first floor, the seventh room on the left has a secret door hidden by a carpet. It leads to the inn's cellar. The cellar is no smaller than the space above. They are all there..."
"But it's useless even if you find them. Although they are not dead, they have fallen asleep under the Sleep Mist and will never wake up..."
Wen Wen scoffed disdainfully, "You, a dead person, can awaken. Why do you say they won't?"
"I, a dead person?" Tian Laoqi was stunned, finding Wen Wen's words hard to believe.
Wen Wen raised his eyebrows slightly and tossed over a mirror. "Interesting. You seem to genuinely not know. Then, take a look for yourself."
The mirror floated to Tian Laoqi, causing his emotions to instantly collapse.
In the mirror, his eyes were rotten, oozing foul pus, with maggots wriggling within. His skin was dark and covered in corpse spots...
No matter how he looked at it, he was nothing more than a corpse that had been dead for a long time.
"So that's how it is. I died a long time ago... I was wondering, how could I, a blind old man, not live for long."
Upon seeing his own face, Tian Laoqi immediately remembered everything.
The residents of Muyuan District had long been affected by the nightly Sleep Mist. Thus, when the blind old man arrived here, no one cared for him, and he starved to death on the fifth day.
On the sixth day, some residents of Muyuan District came to collect Tian Laoqi's body, only to find that Tian Laoqi had come back to life and appeared as a kindly old grandfather.
Even though the people of Muyuan District were not normal, they knew that an old man who had starved to death suddenly coming back to life was not a normal occurrence.
But they had no intention of telling outsiders. They only knew for sure that they would never enter this inn.
This was also why the two groups who had come looking for Tao Qingqing had stopped at the inn's entrance and then silently departed...