Chapter 104: Divine Bottles Beneath the Tree

As the Phantom Train steered by Dead Man's Head drew closer, Gao Tian finally made out the "black dots" clinging to the bark. Stretching across the trunk like a massive wall, they were actually corpses suspended in a transparent, amber-like resin. Every single one had its eyes shut, completely motionless, as if deep in slumber.

He didn't need Dead Man's Head to explain; Gao Tian could already guess what they were.

Most ability users operated on painfully tight lifespans. Terrified of exhausting the life granted by the Divine Tree and devolving into mindless Fierce Ghosts, they spent their idle time sleeping inside these solid, amber-like shells, entering a state similar to hibernation.

That way, their lifespans wouldn't drain away.

A small door opened in the bark of the Divine Tree. Dead Man's Head parked the Phantom Train right in front of it and signaled for Gao Tian to step off. "Brother, this is as far as I take you.

"Boss Xu Yuan is waiting for you at the center of the Divine Tree. Grab the bottles first when you get inside. He wants a private chat with you afterward.

"Good luck. Hope you pick the bottles you want."

After dropping Gao Tian off, Dead Man's Head steered the Phantom Train back into the boundless sky. It shrank into a thin black line before vanishing over the blood-red horizon of the Inner World.

The door in the Divine Tree opened into a gray-green corridor leading deeper into the gargantuan trunk.

Standing ten thousand meters in the air, Gao Tian watched the clouds drift past the outer bark before turning and walking inside.

The scenery ahead remained stubbornly unchanged. Gao Tian had no idea how long he had been walking, but he didn't spot a single ghost along the way.

Just as he began to wonder if he would be trapped in this gray-green hallway for the rest of his life, the first room finally appeared ahead of him.

The room was roughly a hundred square meters. The floor, ceiling, and walls shared the same gray-green hue, broken only by a five-meter-tall decorative tree planted in the center. Instead of leaves, an assortment of empty bottles hung from its branches.

There were red ones, green ones, blue ones, and transparent ones. Whenever a breeze drifted through, the bottles gently clinked against one another, chiming with an exceptionally pleasant melody.

Were these the little bottles produced by the Divine Tree?

Gao Tian stepped under the decorative tree and reached out. The bottles hung perfectly within his grasp.

Gao Tian wasn't greedy; he would only take two small bottles.

Xu Yuan wasn't an idiot. In a room this important, who knew how many hidden eyes were watching him. If he foolishly took too many, Gao Tian would probably be swarmed the very next moment.

He selected a pale yellow bottle, paused in thought, and walked around to the back of the decorative tree to pluck a purplish-pink one.

Every little bottle was initially empty. However, the moment they were plucked, shadowy shapes began to materialize inside them, each corresponding to a different Supernatural Item.

With a sharp crack, the Supernatural Item inside the pale yellow bottle finished forming. Expanding to its full size, it shattered the pale yellow glass and appeared straight in Gao Tian's hands.

Gao Tian could hardly believe his eyes.

Inside the bottle was... another bottle.

Except this bottle was considerably smaller than its pale yellow outer shell, and it was entirely transparent.

Gao Tian pressed a hand encased in his Human Skin Gloves against it.

[Luck Jar]:

Surplus Ghost Luck from above the head can be collected and stored in this jar.

It can be released later when needed.

The description was brief, but it was exactly what Gao Tian needed.

During the fierce battle with Ghost Cave, the deranged entity had slaughtered over a thousand people in the Jinhai Building. This had completely satiated the Black Tie, granting Gao Tian the Ghost Luck of a thousand dead souls—an effect that would last for dozens of hours.

But their actual battle had ended in under half an hour. The dark cloud of Ghost Luck, crisscrossed with blood vessels, was still swirling over his head. Without another fight lined up, all that luck would essentially go to waste.

Gao Tian had originally been thinking that he couldn't just let this Ghost Luck slip away for nothing. Since he had already come to the Inner World, he considered stopping at a station later to see if he could burn through the remaining luck and exchange it for something useful.

Now it seemed that wouldn't be necessary at all.

He immediately opened the jar and held it beneath the Ghost Luck over his head. He watched as the crisscrossing blood vessels within the black cloud slowly liquefied into a foul, blood-tinged black sludge that trickled smoothly into the jar.

This was the effect of the first small bottle. With it handled, Gao Tian turned to examine the second bottle.

The Supernatural Item inside had also finished materializing. With a little pressure, the bottle's outer shell fell away, revealing the object hidden within.

It was a blood-red diamond roughly the size of a spectacle lens, shaped as an irregular rhombus. Just by looking at its appearance, there was no way to tell what it did.

Gao Tian pressed his Human Skin Gloves against it once again to check its information.

[Hanged Man 57's Ansheng Stone]

Upon encountering Hanged Man 57, place this stone at the center of the cross. You will directly gain control of its ghost domain.

Hanged Man 57?

Gao Tian recalled for a few seconds before it clicked.

It was the black Inverted Cross from the Supernatural Bus—the one embedded in the old woman's forehead that had later assimilated Ling Feifei.

The Inverted Cross possessed an absolutely heaven-defying effect. It could drag someone into its ghost domain, and it had even confiscated all the Ghost Cards on his soul. This was equivalent to drastically increasing his own number of resurrections.

Was it named Hanged Man 57 because of the bloody eye inside the ghost domain constantly repeating the number "57"?

Its last known stop was the Old District, a place plastered with warnings forbidding the living from entering. It looked like he needed to make a trip there as soon as possible to track down Hanged Man 57.

After all, his soul now carried four more Ghost Cards, leaving him feeling rather insecure. With every resurrection, there was still a certain probability of being killed.

At the end of the gray-green room was another door, this one blood-red, opening into a crimson corridor that looked like a path straight into hell.

Gao Tian tossed his two newly acquired Supernatural Items into the Mirror. He continued to move forward.

Behind him, the vigorously growing decorative tree withered into a dried-up husk the instant Gao Tian stepped away. The countless unpicked bottles on the tree also instantly dissolved into dust on the floor.

At the end of the corridor, in another crimson room, a tall, middle-aged man in a gray suit was already quietly waiting for Gao Tian's arrival.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Memory Ghost.

"I wonder if the two small bottles you selected from the Divine Tree were to your liking."

The man's voice was exceedingly steady, sounding exactly as it had over the mobile phone. Half of his face was permanently veiled in shadow. The exposed lower jaw was already rotting and ulcerated, with white maggots crawling in and red threads writhing out.

Gao Tian had seen Xu Yuan's corpse at the Sapphire Mall. He knew that the figure sitting here right now wasn't Xu Yuan's true body.

Xu Yuan must have used some method to possess a corpse. But that wasn't important.

He didn't answer Xu Yuan. Instead, he shot back a question of his own: "What exactly is this 'future of human destiny' you talk about?

"Your long-cherished wish is to end the supernatural era. What do you plan to do to end these immortal, indestructible Fierce Ghosts?

"And what is this Ghost Nation you mentioned earlier? Is that the utopia you plan to use to end this era of supernatural revival?"

The questions were thrown out, one after another.

Now it just depended on how Xu Yuan would answer.

Of course, Gao Tian was harboring another doubt in his heart, one he wanted to ask Xu Yuan even more.

What was the deal with the jar he had stolen from Xu Yuan's hometown that could predict the future, and the skeleton inside it calling itself Master Yunshan?

Naturally, Gao Tian only kept this question in his head; he absolutely wouldn't dare ask it.

If he asked, wouldn't it prove he was the one who went to his hometown to steal the jar that day? It would also expose the fact that he was a living person.