Chapter Eighty-Five: Hundred Spirits

The inscriptions on the tombstone were all written in archaic classical prose, obscure and difficult to understand.

I had to marshal nearly all my strength just to suppress the ravenous urge stirring within me, and I could make no sense of what they said.

“Wang Dongming, styled Yuanlang, from the ancestral home of Qianshui, of the Wang family estate. He died in the year of Yi-Hai, in the month of Jia-Shen, on the day of Xin-You, during the Hungry Ghost Festival. He lived to the age of twenty-six. In his youth he showed promise, establishing a household fortune by the Qianshui River and founding a town to gather the people.

“But in those troubled times, when the Japanese invaders finally entered the mountains and forests, he sought immortality and the Dao in order to preserve peace for Qianshui. He set a geomantic ward upon the land. Before the bandits even arrived, Yuanlang succumbed to illness and was laid to rest here.

“At the moment of death, his heart remained fixed on the safety of the townspeople of Qianshui, and his eyes would not close. His corpse did not decay, nor did his voice fall silent, and so forty-nine burial nails were used to seal the coffin, granting him at last a place of rest.”

Li Yue murmured the entire epitaph aloud, then raised her head to look at me.

My face had gone slightly pale. This man had actually died more than forty years ago.

He had been the one who built this town of Qianshui.

And he had died decades ago, in the years when the nation was on the brink of ruin, still in illness, still for the sake of defending Qianshui.

A thought suddenly rose in my heart.

This ghost could not be shattered into scattered spirits.

Li Yue bit her lip lightly and said, “He shouldn’t be a ghost full of such overwhelming resentment. It’s probably a lingering obsession. No wonder that Taoist drove us away so fiercely. He may well have known whose coffin this was. Even after something as strange as a coffin floating upstream happened, he still insisted on it.”

I was silent for a moment, then shook my head. “Not necessarily. He’s been dead for decades; whether anyone knows is hard to say. Didn’t your master say this ghost carried resentment, came from the water, wanted to go home, and was also trying to avoid the emissaries of the underworld?”

“We’ll follow the original plan and go to where he lived. Whatever happens, subdue him first, then decide what to do.”

Whatever the inscription on the tombstone said, time had passed too long.

No one could be certain nothing had changed.

Of course, this ghost still could not be killed. He was not an evil man; he had done so much good. If he were slain, karmic retribution would surely follow.

Li Yue nodded and got to her feet.

My vigilance did not lessen, because Li Cangshui had given another warning: there was more than one ghost in this town.

Li Yue walked out of the graveyard.

I followed closely behind.

This time, I felt a chill seething behind me, yet those yin-cold currents dared not come near.

I quickened my pace. The craving in my awareness grew harder and harder to suppress.

Just then, Li Yue cried out and suddenly fell sideways.

My expression changed at once. I shouted a warning and lunged out, reaching for her arm.

She had fallen too quickly. My hand only managed to catch her wrist, but half of her body had already plunged into a nearby mound of grave earth.

Li Yue kept making muffled sounds, struggling with all her strength.

Yet her body continued sinking straight into the burial mound!

My face darkened horribly. What frightened me even more was the thing gripping Li Yue. Its strength was monstrous; even with me holding tight, she was still being dragged inch by inch into the grave soil.

Her struggles were growing weaker by the second.

Panic began to rise in my chest. If Li Yue were pulled in, her chances of survival would be slim indeed.

There were too many ghosts here, and they were far too bold. Even after I had just devoured one, they still dared to strike!

I was on the verge of losing my grip on her.

Suddenly, a chill swept over the back of my hand, as though an ice block had pressed against it. Then that cold sensation vanished in an instant, and a ghastly pale shadow shot out from the back of my hand toward Li Yue’s body, plunging into the burial earth.

My eyelids twitched violently.

That thing had come out. It was mine.

And it had emerged from the covered patch on the back of my hand.

The next moment, a piercing scream rang out from within the grave mound.

The pale shadow instantly returned to the back of my hand, and I felt the sinews and blood vessels there convulse violently.

At the same time, the force dragging Li Yue also vanished abruptly.

I yanked her out at once.

Because the pressure disappeared so suddenly, Li Yue crashed straight into my arms.

My chest wound had still not healed.

My vision went black, and I nearly fainted. I collapsed and sat down hard on the ground.

From the grave mound, however, a stream of vivid red blood began pouring out, a sight so ghastly it was almost unbearable.

A vicious-faced ghost in ragged clothes rose from the blood-soaked earth.

A large wound opened at the center of his brow. The flesh within was twisted and knotted, exuding wisps of black vapor.

I panted hard, my eyelids twitching wildly, gooseflesh rising all over my body.

The cold on the back of my hand still lingered, faintly pulsing.

That thing was truly alive.

If not for its existence, Li Yue might well have been doomed, and I would have had a very hard time saving her.

After all, the ghost had already grown wary of me and had deliberately avoided me when seizing Li Yue.

At that moment, Li Yue’s face was white as paper, her brow tightly furrowed. She had fallen unconscious.

I pressed at the point beneath her nose, but her brows only knotted tighter, and she did not wake.

I helped Li Yue upright and hoisted her onto my back before striding toward the exit.

Just as I moved, a sudden surge of force struck my foot from below.

A fierce hatred rose in my heart, and that devouring urge could no longer be suppressed. I lowered my head and sucked hard at the darkness beneath me.

The ghost that had grabbed me did not reveal its body, only two arms.

Those two arms shattered at once, and a strand of black vapor rose from underground into my nose and mouth.

A wave of ease washed through my consciousness. The craving to feed grew stronger and stronger.

But I dared not pause, and kept moving outward.

Before I had taken two more steps, my thigh was seized again with brutal force.

Without hesitation, I turned and devoured the two-headed ghost that had grabbed me.

As they dissolved into black vapor, their eyes remained deathly still and cold, as though they felt no fear at all. That expression sent a shiver through me.

And I could already feel that the sensation in my mind was no longer one of comfort, but swelling pain, as though my skull might split apart.

The desire to feed had vanished; what remained was a splitting headache.

An ominous unease surged in my chest, and I quickened my pace even more.

Yet the yin energy around me suddenly began to churn.

Dense fog rose rapidly from the grave mounds, and though it was broad daylight, the whole place was instantly shrouded in cold gloom.

Just then, Li Yue on my back suddenly trembled.

“A hundred ghosts... all out at once... get out, now. Something is controlling the ghosts here...”

Her voice was very weak, but filled with terror. She lifted a hand.

From her palm there suddenly spread a faint blue-green mist.

The next moment, within that hazy fog, more than a hundred dead-faced spirits were advancing to surround us.

The road ahead had been completely sealed off.

My expression changed.

Earlier, Li Yue had not woken and had not seen my power.

Now I had no thought of hiding it. But when I tried to devour the ghosts, I could not do so at all. Instead, a wave of dizziness and swelling agony hit me, nearly toppling me to the ground.

“A talisman...”

At that moment, Li Yue’s weak voice sounded again.

Only then did I remember that I still had a Thunder Quelling Talisman on me.

With one hand I drew it out and flung it fiercely ahead. A burst of bloody light exploded.

The path before us was instantly opened.

More than a dozen ghosts were blasted to pieces.

I broke into a mad sprint, and only when the fog began to close in again did I manage to charge out onto the road beyond.

I did not dare stop. I ran back along the road we had come for another two minutes before finally being forced to halt.

Li Yue slumped to the ground, her face frail and pale, and she began coughing.

I hurried to steady her and patted her back.

At the same time, my gaze fell toward the graveyard.

What sent a chill through me was that the fog there had grown even thicker.

Li Yue’s voice trembled faintly as she said, “I know what they’re trying to do now. That ghost going back may not have been its own intention, but once it opens a way, these ghosts will be able to follow it into Qianshui Town! We can’t stop them. We have to find that ghost immediately and make it come back. We have to sever this road of ghosts!”

A coldness also rose in my heart.

Sure enough, the fog was already pressing toward the riverbank.

Li Yue looked up at me, still trembling slightly as she spoke. “Your talisman... it’s terrifying. More than a dozen ghosts, and they were just wiped out that way.”

I forced a bitter smile that would not quite form. After helping Li Yue to her feet, I carried her again and headed toward Qianshui Town.

“Don’t take the town entrance. I know a side path. Once we get in, we’ll go look for the Wang family manor. I walked around inside several times before, and I did indeed see an old residence.”

“We have to hurry. We can’t wait too long. Once these ghosts enter the village, the thousands of people here will all die, and our own burden of sin will become even greater...”