Chapter 225: A Mountain Suspended, A River Submerged (39)
After discovering the strange condition of the corpse inside the hanging coffin, Yan Shixun immediately used the pretense of searching for Nan Tian to go around and pry open each of the hanging coffins they had used as resting points, checking the dead bodies within.
Then, Yan Shixun realized that not every corpse inside the coffins looked as fresh and lifelike as Liu Ming’s had.
In most of the other coffins, the corpses had long since weathered into nothing more than piles of dry bones.
Not a trace of flesh remained.
If there was one thing all these corpses had in common, it was that each of them held a bouquet of chrysanthemums in their hands.
The difference was, the corpses that looked like they were still alive—like Liu Ming—were holding fresh, vibrant chrysanthemums. But the skeletal hands of the others clutched only withered and shriveled flower stalks.
The brittle bones and dried flowers stared up at the sky with hollow, dark eye sockets from within the coffins, as if yearning for a freedom that had come too late.
Yan Shixun quietly held the empty gaze of one skull for a moment, then sighed and propped the coffin lid to the side instead of closing it, letting the mountain breeze flow in.
The dried flowers clutched in the skeletal hand instantly crumbled to dust, carried away by the wind.
At first, Yan Shixun hadn’t realized that there was anything unusual about these coffins filled with only bones—until he saw a fragment of clothing on one skeleton that looked strangely familiar.
He remembered seeing a similar style and color in a group photo.
A photo of the hiking team.
According to the hiking team leader, everyone in the group had died. Even if a few members had made it to the upstream Longevity Village, they had left before the festival and never returned.
Suddenly, the difference between the two became clear.
Those corpses that looked alive were still living in Longevity Village upstream. The ones that had turned into nothing but bones had died twice—completely vanished from the village.
Because the bodies had decayed to the point that no flesh remained, and there were no other clues to identify them, Yan Shixun could only guess that this particular skeleton once belonged to one of the hikers. He had no way of knowing exactly who it was.
But as Yan Shixun bent down to inspect the tattered cloth on the skeleton, he froze.
…A line of blood-red tears slowly trickled from those dark, hollow sockets.
The soul of this skeleton was still trapped inside!
The softness in Yan Shixun’s eyes instantly sharpened. He quickly formed a spell with his fingers, attempting to extract the soul from the remains.
Normally, after death, a person’s soul would not remain in the body. It would be guided away by Yin officials to the underworld to face judgment, and from there, move on to the next life or remain in hell to be punished.
There were rare cases where souls lingered in the mortal world due to resentment or attachment, or because they lost their way. But even then, they didn’t stay within their bodies.
However, just as Yan Shixun tried to draw the soul out, he was struck by another realization.
The soul was tightly imprisoned within the skeleton—not by its own will, but because the body had turned into a cage, making it impossible for the soul to leave, even if it wanted to.
With the spell activated, Yan Shixun could clearly see the fragmented, flickering soul—like a candle in the wind, so faint that it could vanish at any moment.
The skeletal ribs formed a solid prison, and no matter how the broken soul struggled, it couldn’t break through the bones, let alone leave the coffin or be guided away by the Yin officials.
Then, at the center of that soul, a faint, extremely thin golden thread caught Yan Shixun’s eye.
That thread connected the soul to the dried flowers held in the skeleton’s hands—like the roots of the flower.
Even though the chrysanthemum had withered, the golden thread remained strong, piercing through the pale ribs and soul, trailing down into the bottom of the coffin.
It acted like a nail, pinning the soul firmly to the coffin.
Yan Shixun reached out to touch the thread, but the moment he came close, it lashed out like a vicious beast smelling blood—rushing forward to stab into his finger and devour his flesh.
But before it could pierce him, another slender hand shot out, a fierce gust of force swiping the thread aside. That hand then grabbed Yan Shixun’s tightly.
Ye Li’s long brows furrowed as he stared at the golden thread, his expression cold and fierce, displeased that it had tried to hurt Yan Shixun.
The golden thread, as if it had touched fire, burst into flames. In the chilling mountain wind, it quickly burned to ashes, scattering into the air.
The trapped, broken soul also began to burn violently.
Yan Shixun froze, then instinctively lunged forward, trying to snatch the soul from the flames.
But Ye Li pulled him back, arms wrapping firmly around his waist to stop him.
“Shixun,”
Ye Li’s low voice murmured, “He already died many years ago. His soul was wiped from the world. His name doesn’t even exist in Fengdu anymore.”
“You can’t save him.”
Ye Li let out a soft sigh by Yan Shixun’s ear. “That soul has long since shattered. What you’re seeing is merely the final piece of obsession he left behind before death. It’s so broken that if it were to leave the coffin, it would vanish immediately.”
“He has been trapped in that small coffin for far too long. Only by truly dying can he finally rest in peace.”
Ye Li’s palm enclosed Yan Shixun’s hand. He pointed into the air toward the skull, now stripped down to bare bones with all flesh rotted away: “He will thank you for this.”
Sure enough, Yan Shixun saw that the skull, which had been weeping blood moments ago, now appeared to be smiling. The earlier ferocity had vanished completely. Even the aura it emitted had become as gentle as a spring breeze.
The skeletal jaw moved up and down, making soft clicking sounds, as if it were saying to Yan Shixun and Ye Li—
Thank you.
The very next second, a mountain breeze swept through, and the entire skeleton crumbled into fine powder, scattering with the wind.
The coffin was now completely empty. Only a tattered piece of clothing remained, fluttering lightly in the mountain wind.
Nestled in Ye Li’s embrace, Yan Shixun slowly straightened up. His gaze followed the direction the ashes had drifted, his expression gradually turning cold and furious.
“Ritual Master… Nan Heye, he used everyone as nourishment. Even the souls of the dead weren’t spared.”
Yan Shixun clenched his teeth, trying to suppress his fury. “So this is what he called a plan!”
Ye Li lowered his eyes and said quietly, “Nan Heye’s goal was never about bringing happiness to life as he claimed. What he truly sought… was to become a god.”
“Shixun, you know under the Great Dao, even gods come in different forms, don’t you?”
Recalling the past, Ye Li’s gaze grew darker.
“Some gods are born from nature itself, conceived within the Great Dao. Others become gods through the sheer strength of their reputation—when the people’s faith after their death elevates them.”
“But there are also those… who, by relying solely on their own strength, conquer heaven and earth, even suppressing the Dao, and thus ascend to godhood.”
“Decades ago, Nan Heye tried to become a god through fame. The villages around Nanming Mountain worshipped him as a deity, offering sacrifices every year. But even then, his power was too weak. So he turned his attention to the living, trying to explore the Great Dao by using souls.”
“But because of the Nan Village’s shaman, his plan failed.”
Ye Li said calmly, “Nan Heye had considered starting over, but twenty years ago, I completely blocked that path. So afterward, he turned to his final method.”
“—To suppress the Great Dao and become a god.”
Yan Shixun pondered. “So that’s why he tried to strike at me in the dream?”
Ye Li nodded, a trace of ridicule appearing in his narrow eyes. “Even after borrowing the power of the world’s essence from the souls, Nan Heye still wasn’t worthy. Heaven and earth refused to acknowledge his existence. After all, in order to escape from me, he erased even his own name and the very evidence of his existence.”
“Even though the accumulation of thousands of lives allowed him to pose a real threat to the Great Dao, in and of himself, he was nothing more than a foul, dirty breath of air to the heavens.”
“If you, Shixun, had been willing to help him, only then would Heaven have truly been unable to stop him. What a shame.”
Ye Li sneered. “Just delusional nonsense.”
Yan Shixun’s eyes darkened. “Back in the dream, when trying to win me over, Ritual Master said—under my deliberate questioning and guiding—that this Winter Solstice Festival was the most critical one yet. He even claimed he had seized the Dao.”
“Looking at it now, what he really intended was to use this Winter Solstice Festival to fully merge with the Great Dao, perhaps even to suppress it.”
“And the final source of power…”
Yan Shixun’s gaze shifted toward the villagers with lanterns on the mountain path, and he said in a low voice, “Since he failed the first time because of Grandma Nan, then for this final attempt, relying on the cycle of yin and yang, the one who can help him become a god is most likely Nan Tian.”
After all, Nan Tian carried Grandma Nan’s bloodline.
If the Nan Village hadn’t met with disaster back then, and if Grandma Nan hadn’t both despised the village and worried for Nan Tian, sending him away—then most likely, Nan Tian would have become the next Ritual Master of the Nan Village.
The cycle of cause and effect: back then, Grandma Nan suppressed Ritual Master. Now, Ritual Master would need to suppress or even devour Nan Tian in order to regain the power he had lost because of her.
Yan Shixun cast one last look at the now-empty suspended coffin, then gripped a protruding rock on the mountain wall and leapt upward, landing steadily atop the coffin being carried on the villagers’ shoulders.
Even as the coffin swayed, Yan Shixun remained perfectly balanced.
He raised his head and looked toward the winding trail of ghostly white lanterns held by the villagers up ahead.
Since Ritual Master had fled the dream out of fear of Ye Li—having realized Ye Li had discovered his presence and was somewhere on Nanming Mountain—then driven by both fear of Ye Li and panic over his plan collapsing, he would surely do everything in his power to quickly gather strength. Even if he couldn’t confront Ye Li for now, he would accelerate the Winter Solstice Festival, trying to complete the final step before Ye Li could find him.
And then, he would become a god.
He might even suppress the Great Dao itself.
Only at that point would Ritual Master no longer fear Ye Li.
If that was truly his intention, then what would Ritual Master do?
Where would he place Nan Tian, so that he would be safe and the ritual wouldn’t be interrupted?
Yan Shixun furrowed his brows and pondered for a moment. Suddenly, his gaze lifted and shot toward the end of the winding mountain path.
The main peak of Nanming Mountain was steep and treacherous—practically a straight vertical column. Even after years of holding annual rituals, there was still only one narrow path up the mountain.
Although Yan Shixun didn’t know the exact format of the Winter Solstice ritual, no matter how one looked at it, this kind of narrow mountain road didn’t seem suitable for such a ceremony.
However, there was one place where the terrain was different from everywhere else.
Near the summit of Nanming Mountain, there was a massive depression in the rock—like a naturally formed platform.
Just like the hanging coffins Yan Shixun had seen before, which used the natural landscape to keep the coffins in place and prevent them from falling off the cliff, this depression in the mountain made it more convenient for any sort of manipulation Ritual Master might plan.
If Ritual Master wanted to regain the power he had lost because of Grandma Nan, and do so as quickly as possible, then maybe he had placed Nan Tian close to the ritual site. That way, he could compress the time needed and finish everything before Ye Li found him.
In that case… Nan Tian might be at the very front of the villagers’ procession.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Ritual Master, acting cautiously to avoid Ye Li, had hidden Nan Tian among the large group of coffins, making it hard for Yan Shixun to locate him quickly.
But Yan Shixun decided to bet on Ritual Master’s desperation.
—Would caution win out, or would his greedy urge to become a god faster override his reason?
Moreover, although the winding mountain path made it impossible to see the back of the mountain clearly, the villagers carrying coffins were clearly heading toward that sunken platform.
The lanterns in their hands lit the road ahead and also acted like guideposts, showing Yan Shixun their direction.
Having made up his mind, Yan Shixun pushed off with a powerful step and dashed forward.
His tall figure was agile and light. Every time his foot landed, it precisely stepped onto a coffin.
The narrow mountain path, previously crowded with villagers, now served as a straight passage under his feet, leading him directly to the front of the procession.
The coffins swayed slightly from the villagers’ movements, but they weren’t affected by the sudden addition of weight.
However, some of the pale lanterns in the villagers’ hands flickered out due to the slight jostling.
At the sunken platform on the opposite mountain wall, Ritual Master suddenly sensed something. Alarmed, he looked up into the distance.
He saw that the previously unbroken string of lantern light had suddenly developed a series of black gaps.
Ritual Master’s heart jolted as panic seized him.
Because Yan Shixun was moving too fast, barely lingering on each coffin, his rapid motion even left behind afterimages. Blending into the darkness and the mountain wall, it was nearly impossible to distinguish him from the surrounding night unless one looked closely.
And ever since Ye Li had severely injured him, Ritual Master’s control over Nanming Mountain had begun to wane. He couldn’t see Yan Shixun directly.
But having already grasped the Dao and sensed the essence of heaven and earth, Ritual Master could faintly perceive…
The one being he feared most was coming for him.
His breath suddenly grew ragged. In panic, he looked down at the coffin at his feet and hurriedly bent over, trembling as he tried to lift the lid.
However, Ye Li’s blow in the dream realm had truly wounded him badly. In his frantic attempt to escape Ye Li, he had practically abandoned all the flesh and blood of his body.
Just like twenty years ago, Ritual Master had discarded life, death, and his own name, merging himself with the mountain’s grass and trees. That was how he had managed to escape.
But this brought about an even worse problem—
His already fragile skin had begun to rot from the lingering power Ye Li had left in him.
Holes of varying sizes were corroding through his once intact outer skin, as though drenched in strong acid. The sizzling sound echoed through the silent, lifeless mountain, making it terrifyingly eerie.
Ritual Master’s movements were also severely restricted. Even a simple action like bending over took a huge toll on his limited strength, making the effort extremely difficult.
He couldn’t even manage to lift the coffin lid.
On the coffin containing Nan Tian, yellow chrysanthemums had bloomed all over.
Large patterns of chrysanthemums spread across the wooden surface, accompanied by soft crackling sounds as they expanded in all directions. In the blink of an eye, the design engulfed the entire coffin, wrapping around it like a dense spiderweb, leaving no room for escape.
Golden threads stretched along the wood and finally disappeared into it.
They looked like aerial roots of a plant, floating softly in midair. Where the golden threads gathered, bright yellow chrysanthemums bloomed brilliantly, swaying gently in the breeze.
When Ritual Master reached out his hand, the chrysanthemums leaned in affectionately, like small animals nuzzling against his hand that was nothing more than human skin. The moment they touched, the flesh on his palm visibly plumped up, no longer limp and deflated like a balloon out of air.
However, despite trying several times, Ritual Master couldn’t manage to lift the coffin lid. Whether it was because he was too flustered or simply too weak to perform the action, he failed each attempt.
As he watched the chrysanthemums on the coffin start to wilt and curl at the edges, anxiety overwhelmed him. He couldn’t help but glance to the side.
“Ah Yu, come here!”
He called out urgently to the person beside him.
A slender figure was almost completely blended into the shadows next to a large, sunken rock.
It wasn’t until he called her name that the young girl timidly stepped out from the shadows.
She glanced up at Ritual Master with fear, then quickly looked down, not daring to meet his gaze.
If Yan Shixun had been present, he would’ve been shocked to recognize this girl as the same little sister he had seen when he first arrived at Longevity Village.
But unlike the cheerful and adorable girl he had seen, this version of her looked utterly terrified, as if frightened out of her wits.
Not far away, the silent older sister stood watching. A trace of pain flashed in her eyes.
And buried deep within, though not openly expressed, was suppressed anger toward Ritual Master.
Still, Ah Yu didn’t dare defy Ritual Master. Her lips, pale from fear, trembled as she pressed them together. She hesitated several times before finally stepping forward slowly, clearly trying to delay her approach to the coffin for as long as possible.
Ritual Master had already lost all patience.
In that moment, he tore off the gentle, benevolent facade he had worn as a so-called god, and roared at her harshly, “Hurry up!”
Startled by the sudden shout, Ah Yu flinched and hastened her steps toward the coffin.
When she crouched down and reached toward the coffin, she paused to look up at Ritual Master, as if silently begging for mercy, hoping he would change his mind.
But in Ritual Master’s eyes, she didn’t exist. All of his attention was focused entirely on Nan Tian lying inside the coffin.
In truth, the original Winter Solstice ritual was far more complex than merely drawing out power. The elaborate rites helped communicate with heaven and earth, allowing the living soul to drift between life and death, drawing even greater power.
However, sensing that the Evil Spirit Bone Transformation and the ghost deity were closing in, Ritual Master had decided to abandon everything else.
What mattered most now was not completing the ritual perfectly.
He refused to let the tragedy from twenty years ago repeat itself.
The helplessness, the trembling before the heavens and ghost deities—he never wanted to experience that again.
A ruthless glint flashed in Ritual Master’s eyes. His twisted, ferocious expression was filled with hatred toward Ye Li and Yan Shixun.
If not for them, he could have prepared thoroughly and performed the Winter Solstice ritual flawlessly.
Although the sudden appearance of the shaman’s descendant had been a pleasant surprise, his original plan had been to use this Winter Solstice to complete the final cycle of power.
Like a fish leaping into a dragon.
Once he broke through that final barrier, nothing and no one would ever be able to harm him again.
He would use every life to become a true god.
But because of the two of them—especially that ignorant and defiant Evil Spirit Bone Transformation—he had been forced to disgracefully resort to using the shaman’s descendant. To him, this was a mark of weakness and humiliation.
Ritual Master brooded with hatred, determined that once everything was complete, those two would suffer endlessly—trapped forever between life and death, unable to live, unable to die.
Under Ritual Master’s stare, Ah Yu trembled as she inched closer to the coffin.
She had seen what happened during previous rituals. She knew that anyone other than Ritual Master who got close to those eerie chrysanthemums would suffer terrible consequences.
Those people had turned into skeletons, their corpses now hanging in suspended coffins on the cliffs below, their souls forever trapped within, unable to escape.
She didn’t want to end up like that. She still wanted to go beyond the mountain. The hostess from outside had promised to give her a new dress the next time she came. She didn’t want to…
“What are you waiting for, Ah Yu!”
Ritual Master noticed her hesitation. Furious, he bent over and reached his barely recovered hand toward her. “Or have you grown disloyal too?”
Ah Yu burst into tears from fear, desperately trying to defend herself.
She didn’t want to become one of those corpses. She had seen people killed by Ritual Master with her own eyes. She was terrified of death.
Just then, a calm voice spoke from behind.
“Ritual Master, Ah Yu is timid and clumsy. She won’t do it well. Let me.”
The older sister stepped out from the shadows, her expression steady, entering Ritual Master’s view.
He turned to look and, moved by her maturity, his expression softened slightly.
“It wasn’t in vain that I spared you sisters and kept you by my side all these years. Ah Lan, you’re a good child.”
The older sister bowed calmly. “Yes. We sisters would never forget your grace, Ritual Master.”
But as she lowered her head, her eyes burned with silent rage and unwillingness.
Still, for the sake of her sister’s life, she forced herself to suppress her emotions and remained composed as she walked toward the coffin, pushing her sister aside.
“Older Sister…”
Ah Yu felt a wave of relief but still looked on anxiously, filled with guilt and worry.
Her sister gave her a reassuring smile, then crouched down, took a deep breath, and reached toward the coffin.
The moment her skin touched the coffin, the flower-like markings covering its surface began to slither toward her, and the floating golden threads, like beasts catching the scent of blood, surged toward her hand, stabbing into it with force.
Vital energy flowed endlessly from her body into the chrysanthemums, making them bloom even more vibrantly. But the older sister groaned, her face draining of all color as the blood faded from her skin.
The younger sister was tightly gripping the hem of her clothes, on the verge of crying.
However, Ritual Master was standing nearby, watching them, and the younger sister dared not do anything.
The heavy coffin was slowly lifted in the older sister’s hands, creaking loudly with a sharp, grating sound.
As the coffin was opened, a strong, living presence leaked out from the crack.
Ritual Master’s eyes gleamed with excitement. His trembling hands could not stop themselves, reaching forward as though he had already glimpsed the moment he would become a god.
A sense of delight and excitement filled his heart. In the face of such overwhelming temptation, his usual cautiousness faltered for a moment, and his own energy leaked out briefly.
The older sister endured the pain as she opened the coffin. However, when she saw the person lying inside, her eyes widened in shock.
The person was holding the very fabric she had sent out from the village!
The one who had said they would leave the village—was this person the chosen sacrifice?
In that instant, the older sister was nearly consumed by despair.
She had thought that at least she had saved one person, but it seemed that wasn’t the case… Had she even been able to resist in the end because of her unwillingness?
But soon, the older sister noticed that the person’s face didn’t seem to match the one she had seen in the village, and their clothing was also different.
Upon closer inspection, the person looked more like the face of the body she had once seen belonging to the Nan Village’s shaman.
A ridiculous thought suddenly sprang up in her mind.
Could it be that the shaman who died at Ritual Master’s hands years ago still had descendants?
Did this mean that Nanming Mountain still had a chance of being saved?
The older sister, once hopeless, now found a glimmer of hope upon seeing the facial features of Nan Tian and Grandma Nan that vaguely resembled the body in front of her.
From a distance, Ye Li looked up the moment Ritual Master’s energy leaked out, and his eyes shot out like lightning, locking onto the direction from which the energy came.
He had found it.
The guilty soul, who had been evading capture for years and had gone to great lengths to hide—was right there.
After locking onto Ritual Master’s position, Ye Li quickly moved toward Yan Shixun. With a swift movement, he wrapped his long arm around Yan Shixun’s slender waist, holding him in his arms, and they tumbled off the mountain path, heading toward the nearby steep cliff.
The wind from below whipped past Yan Shixun’s ears, and the strong gust nearly blinded him.
Yan Shixun, startled, looked at Ye Li. “What are you doing?”
“I couldn’t determine the position of Nan Heye before, so I held back my power to avoid alarming them and letting them escape again. But now…”
Ye Li’s eyes were cold and sharp. “Now, he won’t be able to escape.”
Black mist spread beneath Ye Li, quickly engulfing the entire valley.
The mist seemed almost tangible, filling the abyss below and flattening the land. Ye Li, holding Yan Shixun, sped across, shrinking the distance between them in the blink of an eye, almost instantly crossing from one side of the cliff to the other.
Even though they were separated by darkness, Ye Li’s sharp eyes still locked firmly on a natural hollow formed in the mountain.
There, a figure that Ye Li despised stood.
Ritual Master seemed to sense something as well. His hand, which was about to reach for the unconscious Nan Tian in the coffin, paused. He looked up and squinted his eyes.
It was as if the nightmare from twenty years ago had returned.
The ghost deity’s face was stern, surrounded by an intimidating, heavy aura. The wind it brought with it seemed to have the sharpness of a blade, cutting through the hard rocks and leaving deep marks. Stones fell from the cliff.
Twenty years ago, the ghost deity had been the same, walking toward him after he had killed the Nan Village’s shaman.
The power had formed a net, making escape impossible.
Ritual Master even thought he had died once more.
But he quickly regained his senses. His survival instinct took over, and in a panic, he desperately lunged toward the coffin, attempting to wrap the lifeless skin of his body around Nan Tian’s slumbering form.
However, the older sister, who had been observing Ritual Master’s movements, also saw him pause and look toward the cliff.
Since the time Ritual Master had taken her and her sister to Nanming Mountain, the older sister had never seen him lose control like this.
Curious, she also turned to look.
The older sister didn’t recognize Ye Li, nor did she know that he was a ghost deity. Growing up on Nanming Mountain and dealing with the dead had made her numb to the concept of life and death, unable to distinguish between humans, gods, or ghosts.
But she immediately recognized the person Ye Li was holding—Yan Shixun.
She remembered clearly that this man had shown kindness to her and her sister in the village and even wanted to take her younger sister away from Nanming Mountain.
Could this person help them defeat Ritual Master?
The older sister wasn’t sure.
But as she felt the life force draining from her body and saw Ritual Master she loathed and feared beside her, she finally gritted her teeth and made a decision.
She was going to die anyway, so what was there to fear?
She had been afraid for over a decade, even being cautious and subtle in her attempts at resistance. She would only dare to secretly send out the woven fabrics to people outside the mountain, hoping to let them leave alive, but she always failed.
Now, for her sister’s life, she had to fight.
Her gaze instantly became firm.
Just as Ritual Master was about to pounce on the coffin, she suddenly let go of her hand and swiftly closed the coffin again.
“Boom!”
There was a loud bang, and the coffin snapped shut in an instant.
Ritual Master collided with the coffin from the outside, missing his target.
He was stunned at first, then quickly understood and angrily turned toward the side: “Ah Lan, you—!”
Her face pale, she sneered coldly: “Go, die—old monster!”
Ritual Master’s expression turned from disbelief to rage. He reached out and forcefully pushed her away from her position, roaring as he desperately tried to pry open the coffin.
The weak older sister could only helplessly be pushed away by the force, flying outward, straight over the giant rock, like a wounded chick, falling down the cliff.
Her sister gasped in horror and screamed, “Sister!”
But that brief moment of delay was enough for Ye Li to shrink the distance from afar, racing over at lightning speed.
The dense fog enveloped everything, the pale light flickering on the mountain path. The entire Nanming Mountain, along with the surrounding world, was instantly within Ye Li’s perception.
Originally isolated from the world by Ritual Master’s control, Nanming Mountain was now under the control of the ghost deity once more, and the heavens turned their gaze toward it.
The surrounding area became sealed by a heavy force, and Ye Li separated life and death within the black mist, ensuring that no event from twenty years ago could be repeated.
As a result, everything within the fog’s reach was instantly stripped of life and death.
The villagers carrying the coffin along the mountain path, the corpse inside the coffin, the hanging coffins on the cliffs, and even these two sisters… except for Yan Shixun, who was unaffected due to the power of Ye Li coursing through his meridians, everyone else instantly lost consciousness.
This included the program crew and rescue team from Longevity Village downstream, and even the elderly who were unnaturally healthy in the village—they were like lifeless husks, speaking one moment and the next collapsing weakly to the ground.
The corpses that had been attacking the program crew and rescue team exploded like punctured water balloons, their blood and flesh splattering in all directions, leaving only their human skin to fall onto the dismembered remains.
The Longevity Village, which had been embroiled in a desperate battle, suddenly fell silent.
The entire Nanming Mountain was dead silent.
Only Lu Xingxing, who had temporarily gained Ye Li’s power, remained standing still in the midst of the fallen bodies.
The cold mountain wind blew through the battlefield-turned-Longevity Village, dispersing the stench of the rotting corpses and bringing a slight chill, which helped calm Lu Xingxing, who had been crazed with the desire to kill.
Lu Xingxing was covered in the blood and flesh from the exploded corpses, his hair soaked in the foul stench.
Holding the long staff he had used as a weapon, he looked around in confusion at the spreading black mist, unsure of what had happened.
However, the power flowing through his meridians seemed to adapt well to the black mist, even giving him a faint sense of joy, like a puppy seeing its owner.
—Of course, this was just Lu Xingxing’s personal feeling.
Lu Xingxing blinked his heavy, blood-drenched eyelashes and suddenly realized something.
“Holy shit…” he muttered in disbelief. “Could it be that master aunt did something?”
Lu Xingxing couldn’t hide his shock, even growing fearful of Ye Li’s identity. He couldn’t imagine how strong Ye Li must be to cause all this.
However, after a brief moment of stunned silence, Lu Xingxing quickly snapped out of it, crouching down in a hurry to check for anyone’s breath.
Then, with horror, he discovered—
Except for himself, everyone had lost their breath and pulse, as if they were dead.
But they weren’t truly dead; their life force still remained within them.
It was as if everyone’s life and death had been paused in that moment.
Neither alive nor dead.
Like the elderly people in Longevity Village, they could not be found in the boundaries of life or death.
At first, Lu Xingxing panicked, but then he realized that master aunt wouldn’t have killed everyone.
Even though he feared Ye Li, he trusted Yan Shixun more, and with his Master Uncle there, everyone should be alright.
So, Lu Xingxing thought for a moment on the battlefield, then happily bent down and snatched a butcher’s knife from an elderly man.
Then, with glee, he began to chop at the paused battlefield.
“Pchhh!”
The viewers watching on the main screen were horrified as they saw everyone fall to the ground, unable to move. They immediately exclaimed: [What’s happening? Are they all dead?!]
[Lu Xingxing??? What is he doing? Ahhh!!!]
…
Ritual Master had no idea what had happened downstream in Longevity Village.
He had been cut off from his control over Nanming Mountain, and even the life force that had continuously sustained him through chrysanthemums, allowing him to survive despite his severe injuries, had been blocked from him.
At that moment, Ritual Master was like a critically ill patient, dependent on expensive medication and machines to stay alive. His face instantly withered, his once-smooth skin rapidly filled with wrinkles, becoming grotesque and terrifying. He could no longer maintain the serene appearance he once had as an immortal.
He clung tightly to the coffin, unwilling to give up as he desperately tried to seize the power from Nan Tian’s soul, raising his eyes with bloodshot, resentful eyes toward the front.
“You actually did something to this extent.”
Ritual Master’s voice was hoarse and filled with venom. “What’s the difference between you and me? Ghost deity, ha! Aren’t you also standing on the corpses of the living? Why does the heavens not acknowledge me, but instead acknowledge you!”
Ye Li slightly lowered his gaze, his eyes cold and filled with disgust as he looked at Ritual Master.
At this moment, the great Dao was with him, and the heavens looked down upon the tiny ants with heavy authority.
“You once escaped through life and death.”
Ye Li’s voice was deep as he spoke: “This time, you have nowhere to run.”
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