The wild grass stretched mournfully toward the hills behind the fishing village.
Beneath the grass, a faint glimpse of stone steps could be seen—the mountain path built by villagers in years past to make pilgrimages to the shrine of Venerable Qingji.
The sky was overcast and dim.
On both sides of the road stood numerous statues of varying sizes, their faces similar but their poses different. Some smiled gently while holding flowers, some leaned back in contemplation, some lay reclined in cultivation. Rong Chunsong thought to herself, these must be the statues of Venerable Qingji.
Several of them seemed to tell a connected story. A snow-white lasso, as if condensed from moonlight, was held in the immortal's hand—long and ethereal. The mountain split apart, and the Venerable bound it with his immortal rope, causing the peaks to close together again. A tsunami surged, and the Venerable blocked it with his immortal rope, calming the sea in an instant. At first glance, this Venerable Qingji truly rescued the suffering, blessed the people, and protected the land.
But the higher they climbed the mountain, the more distorted the statues' faces became—split mouths, bulging eyes, missing noses, limbs stretched to unnatural extremes.
Perhaps it was that as time passed, the craftsmen who carved the statues had become increasingly afflicted by spiritual pollution.
In any case, each one had its own unique "charm"!
Along the way, a wind seemed to blow down from the mountaintop, obstructing Shang Daoling's progress in the scene.
But it was merely a desolate mountain breeze—what could it do to him?
Finally, the temple at the summit was reached. After all, this male lead had very long legs, so it was only natural he walked quickly.
The temple had long fallen into disrepair, stained by moss and spider silk. A massive web hung down from the ceiling, blocking the entrance. Shang Daoling wrinkled his nose in disgust and cast a fire incantation, burning away the spider web at the entrance in one burst—no joke, his newly bought clothes couldn't be sullied by such filthy dust.
Rong Chunsong naturally noticed this as well.
"It seems Little Shang is very fond of your new clothes."
Shang Daoling let out a lukewarm snicker: "These clothes cost me two hundred wen."
His subtext was roughly that he, a strict penny-pincher, had spent a fortune on a new Daoist robe for the sake of her orders. Oh, well. But our Huazang Cult didn't provide any clothing allowance subsidies—this was all voluntary on this little K6's part.
Rong Chunsong then said: "So expensive, two hundred wen."
[Ding. Achievement "Your OOTD Is Utterly Unremarkable" unlocked. The host ignored the target's desire for praise after dressing him up.]
[Ding. Achievement "League of Echoes" unlocked. The host chose to repeat the target's lines, extremely perfunctory.]
Oh? There were achievements too?
She zoomed in on the scene—not just achievements, but "Special CG" had also appeared.
In the scene, the handsome young man was clearly a bit rattled. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he barely managed to maintain his usual relaxed, joker-like smile.
Ah, if only there were a rewind function, she would replay this moment of the male lead's small breakdown over and over.
Shang Daoling: "…"
Forget it. Why was he bantering with her? He was just asking for trouble.
Casually swinging his sword to slice through an incense burner, he cast his gaze darkly toward the front.
At the center of the temple, an aloof and ethereal deity statue sat upon the platform. At first glance, it was just an ordinary great immortal or true lord. But the erosion of time had corroded half of its features—one half was a gilded human face, the other half mottled and pitch black.
A flash of pitch-black sword light, and in an instant, Shang Daoling had severed the statue's head.
The handsome man parted his thin lips in a smile. "Well, there's no one left in this village anyway, so no one's going to repaint it. Rather than slowly waiting for the other half of the gold paint to peel off and it becoming even uglier, it's better to have me slice its entire head off right now. Die early, be reborn sooner."
What a fine plan to split heads from bodies! But all was silent around them—nothing happened.
Rong Chunsong thought to herself, the statue had been destroyed, and this big-shot protagonist had practically pressed his face against it, yet the thing still managed to keep its composure.
The System's interface actually had a small map in the upper right corner at all times. The map was originally pitch black, but the "little figure" in the display—that is, Shang Daoling—would reveal flat layouts of any areas he walked through or explored.
Any entrances or exits he passed by would also be marked on the map. Normally, this little map only marked the doors and windows of taverns, teahouses, and inns, so she hadn't paid it much attention. But now…
"There's an entrance behind this statue."
A small door-shaped symbol had already lit up on the map behind the statue.
"Don't just focus on cutting off its head, little Shang—slice up the whole statue."
Shang Daoling's long brows twitched slightly. Being directed and ordered around by this Ghost Immortal did stir a hint of displeasure in his heart. But he still executed a graceful flourish of his sword, the dark blade streaking through the air like an inky black dragon in flight, and the statue on its pedestal was instantly sliced into layers upon layers, collapsing to the ground in rubble.
And honestly, the cross-sections of the broken pieces on the ground were quite smooth.
"If you became a sashimi chef, you'd be a real talent—destined to become the God of Sashimi in no time."
Though, in the original novel, he did refine other people's whole elixirs into omakase meals every day.
What the hell was a sashimi chef? And what was sashimi? Piercing through someone's body? A faint smile curled at the corner of Shang Daoling's lips. If it meant piercing through someone's body with a single sword thrust, he'd be more than happy to be the God of Sashimi.
Rong Chunsong saw his sinister smile and thought to herself that he definitely wasn't thinking anything good. She only urged him on: "Go take a look in the underground passage."
Behind the collapsed statue, there was indeed a pitch-black doorway.
A ball of crimson flame ignited in Shang Daoling's palm, illuminating the darkness.
At first glance, it seemed to be just an ordinary underground passage.
That is, if one ignored the fact that the passage was also overgrown with the same withered white weeds as outside.
Shang Daoling was genuinely getting annoyed.
A wisp of brilliant firelight flew from his fingertip, and in an instant, it blazed fiercely across the weeds, like the parting of the sea, carving out a path strewn with ashes through the middle of the dead grass.
Walking amid the flames, he drawled lazily, "Cult Leader, didn't you say you found these weeds strange?" Might you have any brilliant insights?"
Ah, so now he remembered to call for outside help?
Rong Chunsong said, "Why don't you try pulling a few up and see? Maybe there's something underneath the grass."
Shang Daoling's gaze paused.
Seeing the contemplative look on this kid's face, she knew he didn't usually enjoy horror stories—he hadn't seen enough of those plots where corpses are hidden beneath flowers and plants.
But the next moment, Shang Daoling slowly broke into a smile, deliberately dragging out his tone: "The Chief and I truly are kindred spirits—we think alike. I've been feeling since just now that these weeds look a lot like human hair."
Rong Chunsong fell silent. Fine, this was the big protagonist of a dark, edgy male-oriented novel, after all. She'd only thought there might be victims' remains underneath; he went even further, directly saying the ground was packed full of severed heads.
A paper crane flew out from Shang Daoling's sleeve, its long beak clutching a blade of grass and dragging it outward.
Normally, the root system of a single blade of grass would extend only a meter or two at most.
But at this moment, the paper crane had already pulled out several meters of grass roots without reaching the end. Any other cultivator might have broken into a cold sweat by now.
Yet Shang Daoling merely felt his patience running out, and simply burned all the grass with a burst of fire. He said with a smile, "Forget it, whatever this grass is, it's all that so-called Frog Sovereign's mischief anyway. I'll just 'send it flying' with a sword later and it'll be fine." Deliberately, he used the term Rong Chunsong had used before—send it flying.
What a copycat!
At the end of the tunnel was a massive underground cavern, so vast it could almost hold an entire village.
Rong Chunsong thought to himself, digging such a huge hole underground without it collapsing—that Demonic Entity really does have some tricks up its sleeve.
A blazing red light rose up.
Shang Daoling had already sensed that the tunnel led steadily downward, straight to the depths of the earth. As he looked up, the eerie flames illuminated the top of the cavern as well.
This cavern was at least several hundred meters tall.
Clusters of withered grass clung to the stone ceiling in an inverted posture. A gust of wind shot from his palm, parting the grass above—and sure enough, it revealed densely packed human faces. The same pale, twisted faces he had seen beside the ancient locust tree on the village road.
A small fishing village from a hundred years ago wouldn't have this many victims. Rong Chunsong thought to himself, over the past century, surely many passersby had also been…
Pale withered grass "grew" from the thousands of twisted faces, drifting in the darkness like underwater seaweed.
"So it really is the hair of these Wraiths?"
Hearing the Ghost Immortal's voice, Shang Daoling felt rather pleased with himself. A hint of a smile surfaced on his magnificent face, like a brilliantly colored, eerie tiger having its chin scratched. Rarely, he had scored a point against her, making her admit that his observation was superior.
But in the next instant, the Ghost Immortal actually said, "No, wait—they seem to be merely connected by those grass blades like ropes."
How could this fellow change expressions so quickly? Just a moment ago he was all smiles, and the instant she voiced her new speculation, his face immediately fell.
After a long pause, Shang Daoling put his smiling mask back on as if nothing had happened: "Oh?"
"Look, those grass blades merely pass through their skulls—they don't grow from the crowns of those Wraiths' heads." This Evil Immortal, or rather this demonic entity disguised as an immortal, was truly vicious. Devouring these innocent lives wasn't enough—it had to skewer them through their skulls like piercing the collarbone, binding them here.
Following the guidance of the female voice by his ear, his gaze shifted, and he narrowed his eyes slightly.
The human faces writhing among the grass—upon closer inspection, they were indeed pierced through the skull by the withered grass, strung together in one mass.
Shang Daoling truly couldn't understand what these lowly things were thinking.
Was it necessary?
If one wanted to use human lives to boost cultivation, just devour them directly—why go through the trouble of making a pitch-black cavern to display one's trophies? The twisted Wraiths strung together looked to him like someone with extremely poor taste showing off their clumsily woven handicrafts. Moreover… encountering this kind of thing that only dares to prey on mortals, again and again and again, had made him feel extremely, extremely bored.
The Jiang family. The evil thing in the Li residence. This so-called Frog Sovereign.
When would he finally run into a Demonic Entity with a bit more cultivation to play with?
As the flames swept through, the faces on the stone walls screamed, twisted, and turned to ash within his eerie, brilliant fire. Having cleared away the wild grass and Wraiths that shrouded the stone walls, thousands upon thousands of cave shrines appeared before the two of them.
…Once they could see clearly what the thousands upon thousands of sculptures inside the caves actually were, Rong Chunsong truly wished he could summon the ancestors who had originally founded the Dunhuang caves across time and space to file a lawsuit.