“It’s a Soul-Devouring Banner, so now we should…”
Shi Menglan’s words were cut off by Yun Mu’s communication jade talisman, which began beeping incessantly.
Yun Mu took it out to check; it was Song Ke’s voice, carrying a trace of urgency: “Elder Yun, we discovered something on the eastern side…”
The voice abruptly cut off.
[Saying half your words is like mixing arsenic into your rice.]
It looked like the other side had encountered a similar situation; he could only pray for their safety.
“Something’s probably gone wrong on the eastern side! Ever since we entered the village ancestral hall, the Soul-Locking Array here has been triggered. We must break the formation core here first.” Yun Mu whipped out the Siyu Sword, paused, and added, “Everyone be careful, make it quick and decisive; the enemy might still be waiting for us.”
Sui Yu silently followed behind him, his fingertips inside his sleeve gently rubbing the half-sheet of talisman paper he had just plucked from beneath the offering table.
The talisman paper still retained some residual warmth, as if someone had been holding it not long ago.
The fog outside the village ancestral hall grew even denser, like an invisible net slowly tightening.
Over at the theater on the eastern side, the three characters “Shengping Court” on the vermilion lintel had been stained pitch-black by the gloomy mist.
Song Ke’s profound-black Taoist robe hem swept across a floor of shattered tea cups. Beside his ears still lingered Shen Xingshuang’s screams just moments earlier; that girl had been chased by a puppet swinging water-sleeve dances on the stage until she overturned three round tables, and was currently cowering behind the shrine housing the statue of Lord Guan, her hairpins crooked and hair disheveled, truly frightened out of her wits.
“Friend Gu!” Song Ke gripped his profound-iron sword, turning around to hack apart a cyan-robed puppet that lunged forward, his fingertips stained sticky and wet with black blood. “Go protect your junior sister!”
Before his words finished falling, seven or eight more puppets wearing mutton-fat jade beards and pheasant-tail plumes somersaulted down from both sides of the stage. Beneath their brocade theatrical costumes, bare skeletons were exposed, and ghost-fire burned green within their eye sockets.
Gu Renran wiped the bloodstain from his brow, his medicine pouch slashed open with a tear, leaving several Rejuvenation Herbs dropping into the mud.
“I know!” Clasping a handful of talismans and gripping the disciple sword distributed by the sect, he gritted his teeth and blocked in front of the shrine. “Xingshuang, don’t be afraid! The resentment of these puppets is suppressed by the Soul-Devouring Banner; as long as we find the banner…”
Before he could finish speaking, a martial-artist puppet strapped with rigid armor swung a wooden saber to hack at him. As Gu Renran dodged sideways, blood instantly bloomed across his left shoulder.
Shen Xingshuang clutched his blood-stained sleeve, her fingernails nearly digging into her palms. Her voice trembled as she forced herself to reach out and support him: “Gu… Gu brother, are you, are you alright…”
“I’m—I’m fine.” Gu Renran forced a smile for Shen Xingshuang.
Meanwhile, Jiang Yuandao had no idea what kind of sheer dumb luck he had run into. When he chopped down his second dan-role puppet, his boot sole happened to kick against a copper lock in a hidden compartment of the stage.
Curious, he leaned over to check, and it actually allowed him to discover the location of the formation core.
“Master Uncle Song!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, prying open the hidden compartment with one hand. Sure enough, he saw a banner pole wrapped in black silk wedged diagonally beneath the floorboards. “Found the Soul-Devouring Banner! It’s right here!”
Song Ke’s pupils shrank sharply.
He remembered Yun Mu saying that pulling out the Soul-Devouring Banner would trigger a backlash of Yin malevolent Qi, and he immediately hurled out three thunder talismans: “Nephew Jiang! This banner is extremely heavy with Yin malevolent Qi; do not touch it directly with your hands. Use your sword to pry it out, and I’ll guard you!”
Jiang Yuandao acknowledged the order, and his Yuxiao Sword hummed as it unsheathed.
The moment his sword brushed against the banner handle, black fog surged up from the hidden compartment, and countless wailing vengeful souls coiled around his arm.
“Ah—!” Gritting his teeth, he couldn’t care about anything else; if he didn’t break the formation now, several of them would perish right here.
Reaching out to grip the dark-colored pole handle, he yanked with all his might. The Soul-Devouring Banner was pulled out amidst rotting blood and mud, but the Yin malevolent Qi also surged along his arm into his meridians. A crisp “crack, crackle” sound echoed from within his dantian, and a sweetness suddenly rose in his throat, causing him to spit out a mouthful of blood as fine cracks spread across his Golden Core.
Simultaneously, back inside the Fu’an Village ancestral hall, the spirit tablets on the offering table suddenly oozed dark red beads of blood.
“Disobedient descendants, how dare you offend your ancestors?!” The massive sandalwood spirit tablet right in the middle exploded with a “bang,” and a cyan-gray ghost shadow darted out from within, its fingernails fully three inches long. “Daring to presumptuously meddle in Fu’an Village’s ancestral hall, you’ll all be buried with your ancestors!”
“Having ancestors like you is truly a blessing for your descendants, for real.” Yun Mu blurted out mockingly.
He flipped his hand to draw the Siyu Sword, curving his slender jade fingers slightly to pluck the sword body with a crisp “ding.” Warm-yellow spiritual energy dispersed like ripples, radiating outward in concentric circles.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Sui Yu about to raise his hand to form hand-seals, and immediately said in a deep voice: “Sui Yu, do not overestimate yourself; stand behind Master and stay hidden!”
Sui Yu’s footsteps paused, the half-sheet of talisman paper in his sleeve crumpled into wrinkles. He gazed at Yun Mu’s blood-stained sleeve—smudged when he blocked that ghost claw just for him—and a lump caught in his throat.
“Yes,” he answered extremely softly, like a feather nobody cared about.
“Liyue! Seal the four corners of the village ancestral hall!” Yun Mu tapped the tip of his sword against the ground, and red radiance surged from the earth, trapping those ghost shadows in the center. “Menglan, Ling Guang, use the Spirit-Cleansing Incantation to dissolve their demonic Qi!”
Shi Menglan’s hand-seals hesitated for a moment, as if she were waiting for something.
“This disciple obeys.”
The sound of exploding spirit tablets grew denser and denser, and over twenty ghost shadows darted out from the memorial positions, lunging frantically toward everyone.
Liyue’s heavy sword gave a low hum as it unsheathed, its sword Qi crushing past like a towering mountain. The fiercest blue-faced ghost was cleaved in two; Ling Guang’s fire talismans were thrown out one after another, burning the red-dressed female ghost until she shrieked; yet Yun Mu found the battle easier and easier. He suddenly discovered that his newly cultivated body-refining technique had already brought his physical strength to initial fruition—ghost claws leaving only white marks upon his body without drawing blood.
“The opportunity is here!” Spotting the moment when the ghost shadows fell into disorder due to the fire talismans, he tipped his toes against the ground and leaped onto the offering table.
His left hand formed an anti-malignancy seal to protect his chest, while his right hand formed a claw to grip the handle of the Soul-Devouring Banner.
Last time when breaking the formation in Ping’an Town, he hadn’t had time to set up defenses because he was busy protecting Sui Yu, but this time no matter what…
“Rise!” Yun Mu gave a low shout, and the Soul-Devouring Banner was yanked up three inches amidst black blood.
The surface of the banner suddenly billowed like a sail, and countless vengeful souls rushed out from within, only to be blocked completely by the anti-malignancy seal surrounding his body.
With another burst of force, the entire banner pole finally broke free from the tabletop, and the humming sound of the Soul-Locking Array instantly dissipated.
Sui Yu’s gaze remained glued to Yun Mu. Even with his cultivation realm fallen and his spiritual power stagnant, this person still remained immensely strong. If he could recover to his peak strength from his past life, what trouble would a mere few Soul-Locking Arrays be? It would be nothing more than a flick of the wrist.
“Master! We’ve successfully broken the array!” Ling Guang’s excited shout interrupted his thoughts.
Sui Yu raised his eyes and saw Yun Mu storing the Soul-Devouring Banner into the Spirit-Dwelling Pagoda, blood droplets clinging to his hair tips, while his eyes radiated a brilliance he had never witnessed before.
“Let’s go, replenish our spiritual power on the way and go find Clan Head Song on the eastern side.”
Yun Mu stepped out of the village ancestral hall first, rummaging through his storage ring for the medicinal pills he had fleeced from his Sect Master Senior Brother, distributing them to his disciples one by one.
Sui Yu followed closely behind, pondering silently in his heart. He knew clearly that this mission was far more complex than imagined; the appearance of the Soul-Devouring Banner and the sacrificial refining secret hidden behind Fu’an Village both signaled that a massive dark hand was manipulating everything behind the scenes.
“Master, who do you think is messing around behind the scenes?” Sui Yu finally couldn’t help asking aloud.
Yun Mu pondered for a moment and said, “It’s still unknown at present, but being able to set up a Soul-Locking Array of this scale and possessing an evil item like the Soul-Devouring Banner means their cultivation level is definitely not below mine. We must proceed with caution on this trip.”
#Sui Yu’s current corruption value: 80%#
[What’s going on? Can chatting for a couple of sentences lower the corruption value? Does it have to be this simple?]
System: [‘Mumu, you better pay attention; 80% is still very high.’]
[It’s fine, as long as it can drop, there’s hope.]