Among the villagers who arrived, Bai Xianxian recognized two of them—Li Fugui and Li Chenggong, two of the few households that had yet to move away from the foot of the mountain. When the three elders had ridden back to the mountain on Third Elder's tricycle that afternoon, these two had been planting crops in the fields and had greeted them warmly.
The other three faces were unfamiliar, and they were young as well. They were panting from the rush to get up the mountain, but the moment they caught sight of Second Elder in his long robe, their eyes lit up with hope. "We didn't expect there really to be an old Daoist master in the mountains!"
Li Fugui said, "We told you, but you wouldn't believe us—we wouldn't lie to you!" He saw the other two elders also walk out of the house, and his expression grew excited. "All three elders are here—there's hope now!"
Second Elder spoke gently, "Fugui, what's happened?"
Li Chenggong cut in from the side, "It's Old Mrs. Zhang from the town!"
Third Elder let out a hiss. He delivered packages in town every day, so he was far better informed than First Elder and Second Elder. "You mean the old lady who passed away a few days ago? Isn't she being buried today? What happened?"
Fear was written plainly on the men's faces. Li Fugui swallowed hard and said, "It's… it's what happened during the burial!" He trembled as he spoke. "On the way to the funeral, the coffin tipped over. The lid, which had been nailed shut, somehow came loose and fell off, crushing a man to death!"
All three elders' expressions changed at once.
Funerals carried a great deal of arcane significance. Whether it was the mourning hall rites or the feng shui of the grave site, each followed its own set of procedures and rules. For someone who died a natural death, as long as the procedures were followed, nothing would normally go wrong. Even if something did happen, it was usually just an unfulfilled wish or a reluctance to die—those were easy to resolve.
But when a death was involved, matters were no longer simple.
A fresh corpse carried Malevolent Aura to begin with, and when that aura met blood, it became far more vicious.
First Elder suddenly thought of something and turned to Second Elder. "This Old Mrs. Zhang—is she the one who…"
Second Elder sighed and nodded. "The Underworld Walker from Bai Town. Over a decade ago, we worked together to expel the Yellow Immortal that had possessed a child in Thirteen Village."
Underworld Walkers were also known as spirit mediums. They formed their own school and served as bridges between the living and the dead. Whether it was the wishes of the living or the wishes of the dead, they could descend to the underworld to relay messages between the two, warding off calamities, averting misfortune, driving away evil, and curing illness.
Most people who called themselves Underworld Walkers these days were frauds, but Old Mrs. Zhang had genuine skill.
Someone like her, who had possessed extraordinary abilities even in life, had now died and caused a death in the process. Her Malevolent Aura would likely be unstoppable—she had probably already transformed into a Vengeful Spirit.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, the three elders dared not delay. They immediately gathered their things and prepared to head down the mountain with the villagers.
Bai Xianxian was still holding a strawberry in her hand. She wanted to help but had no idea where to begin.
Just hearing them talk about ghosts and malevolent auras had already scared her witless.
First Elder changed his clothes and took out his copper coins. Seeing Bai Xianxian trembling like a coward, his gaze at her was both exasperated and helpless. He didn't scold her in front of the outsiders, only said, "Xianxian, light the incense burner for me."
An incense burner sat before the statue of the ancestral master. Bai Xianxian ran over to the shrine, and only with the six ancestral masters before her did she feel a little less afraid.
Once the incense burner was lit, First Elder's expression grew solemn. He held three copper coins over the incense smoke, offering them up with a prayer.
This was a form of divination called Coin-Substitution Divination. First Elder was especially skilled at fortune-telling and would divine the auspiciousness of any undertaking before he began.
Bai Xianxian didn't understand any of this. She stood beside him, watching him cast the hexagram. When the result appeared, First Elder seemed to freeze for a moment.
Bai Xianxian glanced at him, then at the incomprehensible hexagram. "First Elder, how is it?"
But he didn't answer. He calmly put away the coins and rose to his feet. "Let's go."
As he stood up from his kneeling position, the wind caught his mouth, bringing on a fresh fit of coughing. Bai Xianxian heard how violently he coughed, and she was both anxious and worried. But seeing the urgent looks on the villagers' faces, she knew he would definitely be going down the mountain.
Seeing all three elders ready to set out, Bai Xianxian gritted her teeth and stamped her foot. "I'm coming too!"
Third Elder glanced at her in surprise. "You've been afraid of funerals and mourning rites since you were little—you'd go out of your way to avoid them even if you just passed one on the road. Why aren't you scared today?"
Bai Xianxian steeled herself. "With you all here, I'm not afraid!"
Third Elder chuckled. "Alright, let's go. Let you see what the elders can really do."
Second Elder suddenly turned back and said, "Xianxian, go bring the Six-Spirit Sword."
Bai Xianxian was taken aback. Second Elder said, "Once we get there, we may not be able to watch over you. The Six-Spirit Sword is filled with spiritual power—Vengeful Spirits won't dare come near. Take it for protection."
The Six-Spirit Sword was the magical artifact passed down through the Bai family.
In the past, only the most accomplished Daoist of each generation was qualified to wield the Six-Spirit Sword. But generation after generation, the time came when no one could lift it anymore.
Even the three elders couldn't use it with ease. Second Elder had once said, "With the Six-Spirit in hand, it's like holding a block of iron."
That meant the wooden sword felt as heavy as a solid block of iron in their hands—merely lifting it was exhausting, let alone wielding it in ritual.
Bai Xianxian was the only person in nearly a hundred years who could lift the Six-Spirit Sword with ease.
Hearing the Second Elder say this, Bai Xianxian quickly turned around and ran back to the ancestral temple. She first knelt before the statue of the founding master and paid her respects, then carefully took down the Six-Spirit Sword that was enshrined on the altar.
As her hand gripped the hilt, Bai Xianxian inexplicably shuddered.
She looked down at the Six-Spirit Sword.
The blade was translucent like jade, with what seemed to be light flowing through it, as if it were a jade sword. Bai Xianxian had once thought the same.
It was only later that she learned the Six-Spirit Sword was actually a wooden sword, crafted a thousand years ago by the six founding masters from a single piece of Lightning-Struck Jujube Wood. From the founding masters onward, the Six-Spirit Sword had been used in the hands of the Bai family to slay vengeful spirits and vanquish demons. Over a thousand years, the number of demons and ghosts this sword had cut down probably exceeded the number of meals Bai Xianxian had eaten in her life.
Imbued with the spiritual power of every generation of the Bai family, its might was easy to imagine.
Bai Xianxian weighed the light blade in her hand, and much of the fear in her heart dissipated.
Once everything was prepared, they set out immediately. The villagers had driven up the mountain, but the road up only accommodated the Third Elder's three-wheeled vehicle, so the group had parked their cars halfway up the mountain. When they descended to the mountainside, Bai Xianxian and the three elders rode in one car, while the others took another.
The sky had already turned pitch black, and the mountain was eerily silent, with only the sound of the engine startling small nocturnal animals.
Bai Xianxian cracked open the car window a sliver to let in some air, and heard the Second Elder ask, "Fugui, you've been helping out at the Zhang family these past two days—do you know what exactly happened?"
An old woman wouldn't turn into a vengeful spirit from malevolent aura without reason. There had to be something else they didn't know about.
Li Fugui drove as he recounted what he had heard.
Old Lady Zhang had passed away a few days ago at the county hospital—cancer. According to the doctors, not a single son had come to visit her during her hospitalization, and even her medical bills had been delayed again and again.
She had four sons, but none of them were her biological children.
It was said that Old Lady Zhang had remarried into this area when she was young, becoming a stepmother to four children at a tender age. Because she couldn't bear children of her own, she raised those four children as if they were her own flesh and blood.
She had already been an Underworld Walker by then.
She was famous throughout the surrounding villages, earning money to support the family through her Underworld Walking, and even putting all four children through school.
In that era, an ordinary family simply couldn't afford to send all four children to school. Later, when her husband passed away, she still didn't abandon those four children who shared no blood with her, supporting them all the way through college graduation.
But those four children grew colder and colder as they aged.
They hadn't liked her as children, calling her a witch behind her back. They hated their stepmother, and they hated how she kept altars and burned incense at home, making the place feel strange and eerie.
They never believed she could truly walk the underworld—even now, they thought it was just her superstitious nonsense and tricks to deceive people.
Li Fugui gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Even though they were in the car, he still lowered his voice: "And you know what the worst part is? A few days ago, when those four unfilial sons carried the old lady back from the county hospital, they brought her in through the side door!"
Bai Xianxian was a bit curious: "What's the side door?"
The Second Elder said, "In ancient times, there was a distinction between the side door and the main gate. A proper wife entered through the main gate; only a concubine came in through the side door."
Li Fugui nodded vigorously: "Right, right, right! Elders, tell me—isn't that outrageous? The old lady worked her whole life to raise them, and yet in their hearts, she was just a concubine in the family! I heard her spirit tablet in the Zhang family ancestral hall was even placed below their biological mother's tablet. I said right then that something bad was going to happen! The woman wasn't even buried yet, and they dared to pull something like that—it'd be a miracle if nothing went wrong!"
The First Elder asked in a low voice, "Who was the one crushed to death by the coffin lid?"
Li Fugui slapped his thigh: "It was none other than the eldest son of the oldest brother—he'd just graduated!"
Bai Xianxian recalled the gossip she'd heard during the day—the eldest brother who was an official, and the betrothal money packed in a box.
The one who died was a blood relative, which showed just how great the old lady's resentment was.
The First Elder asked again, "Where is the body now?"
Li Fugui replied, "Because someone was killed, nobody dared to touch anything. They only sent the eldest son's body to the county funeral home. The old lady is still there, cordoned off with a circle of red string."
The Third Elder said, "This is bad!"
Li Fugui jumped in fright: "What's wrong?!"
Bai Xianxian hugged the Six-Spirit Sword tightly as well.
The Second Elder sighed and said, "Old Lady Zhang is no ordinary person. She understood both yin and yang on her own, and with resentment in her heart, having now claimed a life, her corpse exposed under the moonlight may absorb the moon's essence and condense into physical form—making her far harder to deal with than an ordinary vengeful spirit."
After death, most people become a mass of energy. The good ones are just yin energy, lingering for a few days at most before going off to be reborn on their own. The bad ones become malevolent aura, causing mischief for a while before being dragged back by the underworld messengers to be reborn.
Whether yin energy or malevolent aura, it's all just energy—to harm people, it still needs to possess a body.
But once a vengeful spirit condenses into form and gains a physical body, the ghost becomes akin to a demon, and is very difficult to deal with.
Bai Xianxian stammered, "Then… then what do we do?"
The Second Elder said, "Let's go check the situation first. We can't let her keep harming people."
The car sped down the mountain at breakneck speed.
When they reached the entrance of the town, Li Fugui was unwilling to drive any further: "Elders, I really don't dare to go any closer. I'll just drop you off here!"
Third Elder, who was familiar with the town's layout, complained, "It'll take twenty minutes to walk from here! Drive a little further!"
Li Fugui shook his head like a rattle-drum: "No, no, I can't." He glanced at the Six-Spirit Sword that Bai Xianxian was clutching tightly in her arms. "I don't have any defensive magical artifact on me. I don't dare to go. Please, elders, you'll have to walk the rest of the way yourselves!"
Bai Xianxian: "…" She said, "I'll drive."
Third Elder: "You know how to drive?"
Bai Xianxian hopped out of the passenger seat and switched to the driver's side: "I got my license last year, but I haven't touched a car since. There's no traffic here anyway, so I can be your chauffeur!"
First Elder snorted from the back seat: "That's about all you're good for."
Bai Xianxian: "QAQ"