"Exactly." The young girl, wearing a brown apron with many small pockets, pulled out a tea bag from one of them. The bag was emblazoned with the characters "Meng Po Tang"!
She tore open the bag, revealing a "medicine" similar to cold granules. She poured it into an empty bowl, then fetched half a bucket of Nongfu Spring water, poured it into the bowl, and stirred it a few times with her finger. The water turned tea-colored, and a bowl of Meng Po Tang was ready.
"In the morning, more people came to reincarnate, so I brewed a whole pot in the teapot. If someone reincarnates alone, I usually make one bowl per person," the girl explained with a smile.
Just then, the sound of a small train, "creak, creak," could be heard from the other side of the bridge. I turned my head and saw a small train being pushed along by two men in long robes. For some reason, the train on this side moved quite fast, almost as fast as a car.
The train stopped, and two ghosts disembarked, heads bowed, walking towards the Bridge of Helplessness.
As the little Meng Po spoke to me, she brewed another cup of tea. "It's best to give them fresh tea. The pot brewed this morning has a lower potency. Some Meng Po are quite lazy and only brew one pot a day. That's why some newborn babies don't cry but laugh – their memories haven't been completely erased. However, luckily, when people are three or four years old, there's another evolutionary process of complete forgetting. They won't remember anything about the underworld or their past lives."
So that's how it worked.
The two ghosts crossed the bridge, standing still and obedient like eggplants that had been poisoned. The Meng Po carried two bowls of tea over and handed them to them. Without a word, they took the bowls, drank them down in one gulp.
I was about to say, "How about I send them over for you? It's on the way." But after drinking the Meng Po Tang, the two people returned their bowls to the Meng Po, then turned and jumped into the sand pit by the bridge!
"...Why didn't they go to the City God Temple?" I asked, puzzled.
"Those who don't go to the City God Temple for reincarnation jump directly into the River of Forgetfulness, and that's reincarnation," the Meng Po replied.
"Sou ga," I nodded. So this was the process. Although I had been here a few times before, I had never encountered anyone reincarnating.
"Thank you for your hospitality and explanation. I have something else to attend to, so I'll be going now." I cupped my hands in farewell.
"Alright, Lord Wu, travel safely." The young Meng Po continued to tear tea bags. "I still have a few more ghosts to reincarnate, so I won't see you off. The City God Temple is that way."
She pointed in a direction, and using my Qi sensing technique, I could vaguely perceive a faint aura about three kilometers away.
I formed a hand seal, and hmm, I couldn't fly anymore. Right, this was the mortal world again, so there should be mobile phone signals. I bid farewell to the little Meng Po again and walked towards the City God Temple. I also turned on my phone, and indeed, I had signal. I first sent a message to the fox spirit to report my safety, saying I had arrived, and then I would contact Yaoyao. Her phone was still unreachable.
This guy, it's a town outside, where am I supposed to find her!
I tried the eagle demon's phone, also unreachable. Da Ji was the same.
Could it be that the three of them waited too long for me and went back into the mountains?
I arrived at the entrance of the Ghost Gate Pass and stepped out, startling the judge on this side. I showed him my soul-summoning token. Seeing that I was a ghost envoy, the judge respectfully let me pass.
This City God Temple was located halfway up the mountain. In human vision, its main body was a cave. There were three characters at the cave entrance: Qing Feng Guan. Perhaps it was a Taoist temple before, but there were no traces of human construction visible anymore. Perhaps there were cultivators who practiced here, in a completely pure way, requiring no buildings, using the cave as their temple?
I don't understand these cultivators' affairs. This place is quite nice. Standing at the cave entrance, I could see the panoramic view of the town at the foot of the mountain. It was a flat area in the mountains, probably called a "bazi." It wasn't large, about three kilometers long and one kilometer wide. In the center of the town, many modern small buildings were densely packed. There were a small number of paddy fields around it, and on the relatively gentle slopes at the foot of the surrounding mountains, there were some terraced fields.
"Seven mountains, two waters, and one portion of field," this geographical description should refer to this kind of landscape.
I had to use my Qi sensing technique again and discovered that there were quite a few high-level auras in the town, both human and demonic. Yaoyao's mid-level purple aura was among them, and she was with several blue-aura demons. Strangely, Ya Nan was not among these powerful blue-aura demons, and I didn't find Da Ji's aura either.