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"Go up."
Nyarlathotep said, and then he jumped up.
The boat shook violently as he stepped on it, and he stretched out his arms and tried his best to keep his balance until the boat calmed down again.
Jiang Lu also jumped up and followed suit.
However, he was not in human form at the moment. In his spiritual form, he was much more bloated than a human. The boat could not accommodate all parts of his body, and a considerable part of it was squeezed outside the cabin, hanging above the river.
"Sit a little more in the middle, or the boat will capsize," Nyarlathotep warned.
So Jiang Lu had to move forward and sit in the center of the boat.
Then Nyarlathotep stood at the bow of the boat and began to row.
"What are you doing?" Jiang Lu was puzzled: "Didn't you ask me to help you break the balance and stop him from expelling you from his body?"
"Don't say it so harshly. I don't like the word exclusion."
Nyarlathotep sighed:
"If it's just a spiritual battle, even a hundred of them would not be my opponent. But the problem is not that. The problem is that his spiritual river has undergone a change and he has developed an obsession.
Obsession is something without consciousness, just like a mental patient who cannot be controlled. However, it is precisely such unstable things that can destroy the stability of the spiritual realm and cause cracks in my control.
I should have eliminated all potential threats long ago, but for some reason, this most difficult situation still occurred.
I have countless ways to erase the obsession, but there is only one way that can be achieved without destroying him, and this method requires the help of others, so I have to ask you for help. "
"So what do I need to do?"
Jiang Lu asked.
"What we have to do is find out why obsession arises."
Nyarlathotep replied:
“What you need to do is to extract all of his past events that may be related to his obsession from the long river of his mind, and then tamper with them.
But you have to note that this is not just a tampering of memory. There is no time in the spiritual realm, so changes in the spiritual river will affect reality.
Any change you make is actually determined by what he has actually done and experienced. It is equivalent to you standing at the present time node, but you can change any decision he made in the past, and through him change the past of the entire world.
Therefore, any slight change will cause a change in the trajectory of his life.
To give a simple example, a tree planted a thousand years ago could cause a person who takes shelter under the tree to be struck to death by lightning a thousand years later.
Jiang Lu probably understood: "It means I can change the past and influence the future?"
"Yes."
Although Nyarlathotep spoke in a light tone, Jiang Lu could sense the danger involved.
Among all the gods in the heavens and worlds, there is no one who can truly control time.
Even if there is, it is only the ability to make small changes within a short range.
For example, Jiang Lu used today's evil god's left hand to hit yesterday's glue. In fact, this is already a very supernatural ability. Although the damage is not great, it is something that many main gods cannot do.
The ultimate reason is that time is a forbidden area that cannot be touched.
As the only measure of all movement and change, if there is a problem with time, then everything measured by it will be affected to varying degrees, or even collapse.
But to hear Nyarlathotep talk about it, it seemed as simple as eating and drinking water, which made Jiang Lu feel inexplicably creepy.
Although he did not directly reverse time and change the past, Nyarlathotep could influence a person through the spiritual realm and indirectly change the past. Although the process was a bit troublesome, it was no different from playing with time.
In addition, he said that the spiritual realm is a realm that only their people can control, which means that the Outer Gods have more or less the ability to influence time, which is really too terrifying.
“Isn’t this technology too difficult?”
Jiang Lu hid his inner shock and pretended to be annoyed:
"Why don't you do this yourself and just let me row the boat."
“I want to do this, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work.” Nyarlathotep said helplessly, “I’ve been the one doing this all along, so if I continue to do this, it will not only fail to eliminate the obsession, but will make it more stressful and worse.”
"But I'm worried that I might cause trouble. What if I move something that I shouldn't move? Wouldn't that cause a big mess?" Jiang Lu was really a little scared.
Even someone as arrogant as him doesn't dare to play with time easily.
“It doesn’t matter. I can see all your operations here, and I will tell you what to do and what not to do.
And even if he made mistakes, it didn't matter. His obsession probably appeared before he became the main god. At that time, he had no ability and no qualifications to influence the overall situation, and it was impossible for him to cause too serious consequences.
The most urgent thing now is to get him back under my control, and other things can be discussed later."
Nyarlathotep encouraged.
"Fine."
Jiang Lu no longer had any reason to refuse, and since he was already here, he began to pick up the fragments of his past from the spiritual river of the Yin Emperor as Nyarlathotep had said.
These fragments are like strips of film, recording all of Yin Di's experiences since birth.
Although he is also the Lord of the Underworld, he does not have Jiang Lu's extraordinary talents, nor does he die young like Jiang Lu.
He was born in an ordinary family in the underworld. Like all the people in the underworld, he grew up in an ordinary way, hoping to pass the exam and get a job that would ensure him no worries about food and clothing for the rest of his life through hard work and practice.
He has been a person with a strong sense of justice since he was young. His dream is to become a judge in the court of justice and judge the souls who were sent to the underworld to be punished for their crimes after dying in the world of the living.
With his unremitting perseverance, he finally became an immortal at the age of 300, becoming the lowest-level ghost immortal and getting the opportunity to intern in the Judgment Department.
Compared with Jiang Lu's talent of striving to become a Lord God at the age of 30, this is nothing worth mentioning. However, his advantage is that he never compares himself with others and is always satisfied with everything at the current stage.
Having achieved his expectations, he did not ask for anything excessively. His only wish was to become a regular employee as soon as possible and hope to become a fair judge.
In the year when he was 350 years old and became the official Lord, Jiang Lu also became the Lord of the Underworld with an absolute advantage - nearly 90% support rate in the underworld.
All the processes were fair, just and open, and he was the true king at that time.
As for why so many people supported him, it was of course because Jiang Lu at that time had not yet cured his impotence, was devoted to cultivation, and never touched wine, sex, money, or power.
In everyone's eyes, he is a person who only cares about cultivation.
He is a ruthless man who doesn't talk much. This is exactly the kind of leader the underworld needs.
In the eyes of most people, a person who is excellent in one aspect must also be excellent in other aspects.
So all virtues, whether they existed or not, were attributed to him at once.
Jiang Lu was shaped into a nearly perfect person without even knowing it.
Yin Di, who was still a judge at that time, also cast a vote of support. He believed that Jiang Lu would be the one who led the underworld towards prosperity and justice.
Yin Di believed that Jiang Lu was different from the hypocrisy of the gods in heaven, and also different from the ignorance of mortals in the world. His short cultivation career conveyed only five words - absolute purity.
It seemed to him that he saw himself.
However, this also became the thing he regretted most in his life.
Yin Di never expected this.
This tall man whom he regarded as a role model and a benchmark, secretly smokes and drinks!
Chapter 263: Emperor Yin's life is like walking on thin ice
Yin Di’s first day at work.
At that time, he had not yet realized that the trial place, which represented absolute fairness, was not as good as he imagined.
He just felt very excited, excited that the life he had been looking forward to had finally arrived.
After becoming a regular employee, I can finally realize my dream and become someone who can judge those evil people from the most objective and fair perspective.
Perhaps they were not punished for the evil they committed in the world of the living, and some even died of old age, but as long as he is there, he will make them receive the punishment they deserve in the underworld and justice will be served.
The beauty that was within reach made him, a man who usually appeared gentle but was actually serious and rational, feel elated. He became restless and eager to start his first trial right away.
But just when he put on the judge's uniform and his happiness reached its peak, a piece of bad news struck him like a bolt from the blue.
After he lost consciousness, he asked the chief judge with a dull look:
"Why... Sir, are you kidding me? What do you mean by canceling the trial from today?"
"I don't have time to joke with you. This is all from above."
The chief judge was picking his ears, with a nonchalant expression:
"The Lord of Hell has spoken. All those who are sent to the trial are guilty anyway, so we just need to arrange a tour of hell from the first level of hell to the eighteenth level of hell.
Therefore, we don't need to conduct any trials in the future. Our main task is to arrange the punishment time of those ghosts reasonably and ensure that every hell can operate smoothly. We must not allow a situation where one hell is crowded while other hells are empty.
Oh, by the way, I heard that you worked in each hell for a period of time before becoming a judge. It's a good opportunity to give me some reference ideas. I plan to assign a number to each ghost, and then implement a number limit in hell, so that they can be punished at different times. What do you think?"
"How can you be so careless?" Yin Di expressed his confusion. "It is true that they are all guilty, but everyone's crime is different. It is our duty as judges to sentence them according to their sins and give them a reasonable judgment."
"Ah, that was true in the past, but from today on it is no longer true."
The chief judge patiently explained:
"The Lord of Yin said, do not commit an evil deed no matter how small it is, and do not refrain from doing a good deed no matter how small it is. Even the smallest evil, if not stopped in time, will turn into a greater evil.
If he dares to urinate and defecate on the street today, he may tear the head off a passerby tomorrow. It's scary."
"But after they are punished, they will enter the six realms of reincarnation. Is there any point in stopping them?" Yin Di argued: "Their evil ends here."
"No and no."
The chief judge shook his head:
"Then why are some people born kind and some born bad?
The Lord of the Underworld believes that those who are born bad are because they did not receive enough punishment in the underworld and they do not know how to repent, so they become even worse after they are released from prison.
The proposition that human nature is good or evil is a false proposition. It all depends on whether they have been reformed in the underworld.
For those who have repented, no matter how many punishments they are given, they feel that it is not enough to atone for their sins. They are happy to accept it and it is not a big deal.
On the contrary, those who are convicted solely based on their crimes may not even know how to repent. Such people must be severely punished.
To sum up, the more punishment, the better. Don’t you think this is the truth?”
As the chief judge spoke, he threw the files in his hand into the brazier beside him and burned them, muttering: "These things will be useless in the future."
"It feels... like there is some truth to it." Yin Di couldn't find any fault with it for the moment, but he vaguely felt that something was wrong.