Drip...

Drip...

Drip...

The sound of water droplets constantly falling,

Carrying a sense of utter emptiness, ceaselessly echoed around.

A drop of water landed on Zhou Ze's forehead, and he slowly opened his eyes.

This time when he woke up,

He only felt a cold, hard sensation beneath him, making him very uncomfortable.

Instinct told him that he hadn't woken up in his bedroom bed this time, and Bai Yingying, who was always waiting by his side whenever he woke up, wouldn't be there either.

Yes,

The surroundings were a depressing expanse,

Above his head, dark clouds loomed, and the distance between the sky and the earth was infinitely shortened here, making the sense of oppression even stronger;

In the gaps between the dark clouds, a broken blood moon hung there; it wasn't illuminating, nor was it emitting light, it was more like an eye, silently watching everything below with an emotion of mockery and derision.

This place,

Wasn't the human world,

But,

Hell!

Sitting up, Zhou Ze suddenly felt a little hot, a stuffy heat that made him feel flustered and uncomfortable, like being thrown into a sealed truck container in the middle of summer.

With his hands supporting the ground, he slowly stood up, and looking around, Zhou Ze discovered that he was next to a pit.

The pit wasn't very big,

Only the size of a small pond,

Nor was it very deep,

Only about the height of two people.

The pit was covered with a layer of yellow-brown grass, dense but lifeless, like the hair of countless old women, swaying back and forth in the scorching wind.

A bit,

Familiar.

Zhou Ze silently took two steps forward,

Then he remembered,

This place,

Was indeed familiar,

Because he had been here several times.

Originally, there should have been a pond here, filled with water, as if the resentment of the dead, a landscape formed by the concentration of the water dripping out from the edge of the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld).

Deep in the pond,

There should also have been Zhou Ze's old acquaintance,

The Faceless Woman.

But,

The scene before him clearly gave off a feeling of "people gone, building empty,"

The water was gone,

The Faceless Woman was also gone,

As if a hand had reached out here and severed all the vitality.

Hell,

Could it also be arid?

This question floated up in Zhou Ze's mind,

At this time,

It should be a dream,

A dream returning to Hell.

Zhou Ze remembered that there was a celebrity named "Dante" in foreign history who had traveled around Hell in a dream and wrote a book called *The Divine Comedy* after waking up.

After being reborn, Zhou Ze had specifically found this book and read it with an unprecedentedly serious attitude,

After reading it, Zhou Ze confirmed that the celebrity had indeed dreamed,

But it was a daydream,

The Hell he described was completely different from what Zhou Ze had seen with his own eyes.

Zhou Ze looked into the distance, where the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld) was.

Regardless of day or night, regardless of when,

That road was always a densely packed, busy scene,

Because people were dying every moment,

No matter how bizarre and unique their deaths were, the final destination of the deceased was here.

However,

When he looked over,

Zhou Ze saw that although the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld) was still full, those people didn't continue to move forward, but stood in rows, like elementary school students lining up to attend a flag-raising ceremony.

A gap had been cleared on the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld), like an emergency lane on a highway.

From Zhou Ze's perspective, the souls on the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld) looked like they were going to participate in the "Yellow River Cantata," only missing someone to start it off,

Followed by a roar of cheers and an overwhelming momentum:

"The wind is howling, the horses are neighing, the Yellow River is roaring, the Yellow River is roaring..."

Breathing was a bit difficult, although you didn't need to breathe in Hell at all, you could still feel that terrifying sense of oppression, like it was coming from your chest.

He felt like an ant thrown onto a crepe-making pan, that would char after a few bounces.

Zhou Ze continued to walk forward, he slowly walked to the edge of the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld), and then, walked onto it.

Why is it so hot here,

Also,

Why have the people on the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld) all stopped?

Just then,

Zhou Ze suddenly heard shouts coming from afar,

Turning his head to look over,

A group of people were rushing towards here.

If they could still be considered people.

Because, although they retained the image of humans, their entire bodies had long been tortured by various unimaginable and bizarre punishments, completely disfiguring them.

It was a degree of abuse that was difficult to describe in words,

When Tang Shi was still in the bookstore,

Zhou Ze had asked her, what was the difference between the tortures in Hell and in reality?

Because although they were both "stowaways" in Hell, Zhou Ze had only dabbled in the periphery, and came out early by relying on his fingernails; he hadn't experienced the madness deep in Hell.

Therefore, Zhou Ze felt a strong curiosity every time Tang Shi shuddered whenever she heard the word "Hell."

Because of the unknown, hence curiosity.

Curiosity about why such a resolute and strong girl would be so reluctant to talk about those two words.

Tang Shi's answer was concise,

The general meaning was,

The tortures in the human world had to be careful not to kill people directly, because once the person being tortured died, then doing any more torture would be meaningless.

But the tortures in Hell were different, they had ten thousand ways to ensure that your soul wouldn't collapse,

Then,

On this basis,

All kinds of tortures that tormented people were like little angels who had lost their shackles,

Beginning to crazily display the insane imagination of the working people of Hell.

What Zhou Ze was seeing, running towards him,

Was a group of convicts.

They were running, they were running in a daze, possibly not knowing why they were running, nor knowing where they could run to, but they were still running.

Perhaps,

For them,

Being able to run,

This process,

In this life of constant torment in Hell,

Was also a kind of happiness.

Because of their running, many of the souls on the nearby Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld) also had some slight changes; their faces, which were originally numb, now showed other emotional fluctuations.

People,

Have a herd mentality,

And even ants try to survive, let alone people.

Just as Zhou Ze thought that the domino effect was about to be triggered,

"Pa!"

The sound of a whip cracking,

Like a thunderclap crashing down!

Those souls standing on the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld) whose faces had just shown some slight changes instantly returned to numbness under this sound,

Even among that group of convicts, there were several who had stopped running, and stood numbly to the side, joining the standing army of the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld).

But there were still many people continuing to run, even though they were now very uncomfortable, even though they were now very confused, but they were like moths,

Continuing to run forward.

Running in the front,

Was a girl,

In the real world, to describe how avant-garde a girl is, you can say how little clothing she wears, how simple and perfunctory the parts covering her flesh are,

The girl in front of him,

Was even more avant-garde,

Because she didn't have much flesh on her body,

A little on her face,

A little swaying on her chest,

A few strands on her legs,

So avant-garde that it was almost impossible to add to it.

Zhou Ze subconsciously reached out to stop her,

Even preparing to use his fingernails,

But just then,

The second crack of the whip came,

Zhou Ze only felt his ten fingers go numb, and a heart-wrenching pain immediately transmitted over, making it somewhat unbearable for him, and at the same time, it also made him feel a little vigilant.

The convicts ran past Zhou Ze one after another,

Zhou Ze lowered his head and found that blood was already gushing from the position of his fingernails. Some convicts even exaggeratedly passed straight through Zhou Ze's body, as if Zhou Ze didn't exist at all.

Yes,

I'm not a real soul returning,

This is just a dream.

After who knows how many convicts ran past him,

Behind,

Another group of people chased after them, they were wearing black and white ancient costumes, holding chains and shackles in their hands, and some convicts who had stopped running were directly captured by them.

Finally,

Zhou Ze saw a woman in the crowd wearing a phoenix coronet,

Looking to be about thirty or forty years old,

Her face seemed to be covered with a thick layer of rouge, making it difficult to see her true face clearly.

But in her hand,

She was holding a leather whip,

It was a purple leather whip,

More than twenty meters long, when held in the hand, it was like a giant python flying in the air, and on the leather whip, countless faces of people screaming were imprinted, as if they were sins detained within it, never to be released!

"Pa!"

The leather whip fell,

The souls on the Huangquan Road (Road to the Underworld) seemed to have returned to their old mode,

Beginning to continue walking forward on tiptoes with numb expressions,

Like pigs and dogs raised in a pen.

"Pa!"

Another whip fell,

The wind rose around him,

Then,

It rained,

In an instant,

The heavy rain poured down,

The dry pond that Zhou Ze had seen before slowly began to accumulate rainwater again.

The woman wearing the phoenix coronet and holding the leather whip seemed to deliberately glance at the position where Zhou Ze was,

Frowning slightly,

Subconsciously raised the whip in her hand,

And lashed it towards Zhou Ze!

For a time,

Zhou Ze only felt a mountain-like momentum crushing towards him,

He was like a small boat in a huge wave,

That could capsize at any time.

"Pa!"

…………

"Pa!"

Zhou Ze suddenly sat up in bed.

Bai Yingying, who had just helped Zhou Ze swat a mosquito to death, looked at him with great surprise and shouted:

"Boss, you're awake!"

"Hoo... hoo..."

Zhou Ze was only concerned with breathing heavily, and didn't have time to respond to Bai Yingying.

"Boss, you scared me just now, you were sweating a lot, let me help you take a bath."

As she said that, Bai Yingying walked over, preparing to carry her boss downstairs.

She was used to doing these things,

And Zhou Ze himself was used to it too.

However,

Just then,

The bedroom door was suddenly pushed open,

The little loli stood panting at the door.

"What are you doing!"

Bai Yingying looked at the little loli standing at the door with a pout, thinking that she was deliberately here to ruin her time alone with the boss.

"Zhou Ze... Zhou Ze..."

The little loli gasped as she held up her ghost officer's license,

And hurriedly shouted:

"Zhou Ze, it's bad, a batch of evil ghosts...escaped...escaped from Hell."