Chapter 297: Ritual Money, Old Capital (24)
After confirming the relationship between Ye Li and Yan Shixun, Li Chengyun finally realized what the life chart he had once read for Yan Shixun truly meant.
And it was only then that he understood—perhaps the reason Yan Shixun had managed to survive was precisely because of the current Lord of Fengdu standing before him.
A ghost deity had bestowed his power upon Yan Shixun, breathing new life and vitality into what should have been a gradually weakening body corrupted by ghostly energy, allowing it to grow and thrive instead.
Because of this, Yan Shixun had formed karmic ties with the ghost deity.
When Li Chengyun finally pieced everything together, he couldn’t help but be amazed—karmic ties with ghost deities were truly not easily repaid.
—In the end, did it actually come down to repaying it with one’s life?
Li Chengyun never expected that the next time he would hear news of his dear Xiao Xun, it would be that Xiao Xun had already ended up with a ghost deity.
But judging by Ye Li’s attitude, Li Chengyun felt somewhat reassured.
A ghost deity’s words were bound by heaven and earth and could not be broken.
The way the Lord of Fengdu treated Xiao Xun—seriously and solemnly—even Li Chengyun could clearly see that. Despite some lingering sadness, he was happy that Xiao Xun was no longer alone.
Out of love for the one his Xiao Xun cherished, Li Chengyun did not hold anything back when speaking to Ye Li about his past years of experiences.
Aside from his own judgment of Ye Li, he also trusted Xiao Xun’s instincts.
He believed that since Xiao Xun had already managed to locate the former Fengdu, then during the years he was gone, Xiao Xun must have grown enough to shoulder the burdens of heaven and earth.
Even though Xiao Xun wasn’t particularly good at expressing emotions, he would never misread someone’s heart. The Lord of Fengdu—was trustworthy.
Li Chengyun walked slowly and steadily across the battlefield that had already been cleared. With a flick of his long robe, he casually sat down on a massive boulder, smiling lightly as he began recounting to Ye Li the things he had seen—both in life and after death.
Yan Shixun had always carried guilt toward Li Chengyun. He believed that if he hadn’t gone to Binhai University that year, he would’ve accompanied Li Chengyun to the southwest as usual, traveling together to Baizhi Lake to deal with the malevolent spirits.
If that had happened, perhaps Li Chengyun would not have died.
At the very least, he wouldn’t have died all alone in a strange, remote mountain wilderness.
But what Yan Shixun didn’t know was that—even if he had been with Li Chengyun at the time, Li Chengyun still wouldn’t have taken him along.
Some paths had to be walked alone.
Like death.
That year, during the Lantern Festival, the courtyard’s entrance had been lined with slanting wintersweet branches, snow falling upon palace lanterns.
Li Chengyun had stood at the gate with his sleeves folded, quietly watching Yan Shixun’s silhouette as he walked away.
Only when the tall figure disappeared from view did the soft, warm smile on his face slowly fade, replaced by a lonely sigh.
It was at that moment that an old friend had called to tell him that the long-sought method to exorcise ghosts in the southwest had finally been discovered.
Li Chengyun had immediately set out from Binhai City. He had already known that, back then, the ghost exorcists of the southwest had reluctantly resorted to a method called Bone Substitution—and that the technique had long since leaked out.
The ghosts of the southwest had been unable to reincarnate, and after hundreds of years of accumulation, they had severely encroached on the living space of ordinary people.
Though the exorcists were left with no other choice, they led the spirits into wooden sculptures with living mouths and eyes, and then exorcised them. But even before they began, they had already anticipated the price they would pay.
—Destroying a soul would surely come with karmic retribution.
The exorcists understood this deeply, but for the sake of peace among the living, they hardened their hearts and chose to cleanse the masses of spirits.
They had knowingly walked into death.
And what happened afterward proved that the exorcists had been right.
They knew that the Bone Substitution Technique, which shattered souls, had already gone beyond the rightful bounds of an exorcist’s power.
So once the spirits had been dealt with, the sects involved silently sealed away the technique together. All records were destroyed. Even the wooden sculptures with living mouths and eyes that had served as vessels were kept under strict instructions never to be shared. The craftsmen were told to forget what had happened—as if it had never occurred.
In the years that followed, everyone involved died in “accidents” one after another.
Only a few younger disciples from the sects—who hadn’t directly participated—survived by sheer luck.
However, the secret that should have been buried and forgotten resurfaced once again.
Near Baizhi Lake, tourists began spotting the wooden sculptures with living mouths and eyes.
One tourist, hunted down in the forest by one of the sculptures, fled in terror. Just before it could kill him, the sun rose and a rooster crowed three times. The sculpture turned back into an inanimate object, and the tourist narrowly escaped with his life.
After leaving Baizhi Lake, he immediately went to find a master, sobbing as he recounted the entire incident and begged for help.
That master happened to be Li Chengyun’s old friend. Realizing how serious the situation was, he immediately called Li Chengyun.
After learning the full story of what happened back then, Li Chengyun discovered that an old friend of his happened to be a descendant of one of the sects involved.
That sect had long since withered away. The once-young disciple had now grown old, his white hair covering the black strands of youth. Yet he still silently guarded the secret, determined to take it to his grave without ever speaking a word.
Li Chengyun found this old friend and solemnly shared everything he had learned. He asked the man to go with him, to head together to Baizhi Lake, where the evil energy was thickest, and guard the sinister presence there.
The exorcist never expected that despite all his precautions, the secret would still be revealed—because of that carpenter from years ago.
Although shocked, he didn’t hesitate in the slightest. He agreed to go with Li Chengyun immediately.
Only as he turned to leave did he pause. Holding onto the doorframe, he looked back with complicated emotions at the young disciple still sleeping inside.
He knew that this journey… he might never return.
And the only person he had in this world—his disciple—was still too young, not yet grown enough to stand on his own.
From now on, the path ahead could only be walked by that child, alone.
Even though he was young, even though the road would be hard, it would be one he had to face alone.
Li Chengyun witnessed this scene too.
It suddenly reminded him of his own Xiao Xun, who was also young, just like the disciple. But what was different was that he believed Xiao Xun would one day grow strong enough to protect all living beings. After his death, Xiao Xun would be the one to uphold a world on the verge of collapse.
Ten years ago, he had found the young boy at a street market—but in truth, it wasn’t he who had given the child a home.
It was the child who had given him one.
From that moment on, the drifting cloud that was he had found somewhere to stop. The crane that once called all four seas home now had someone to think of. No matter how far he wandered, he would always return.
But at last, the time for parting had come.
Li Chengyun sighed, closed his eyes, and shut away all the longing and memories in his heart.
When he opened them again, he was once more the white-robed hermit whose smile was as light as the wind and clouds.
Li Chengyun didn’t rush him. He just stood silently outside the door, waiting for his old friend to say goodbye to his disciple.
But his old friend simply shook his head, sighed, and quietly closed the door.
“It’s cold. The child is sleeping soundly—don’t let him catch a chill.”
He didn’t look back again. His steps as he walked away were firm and resolute. “Let’s go. To Baizhi Lake.”
“Don’t worry. Your disciple is a good child.”
Li Chengyun gently comforted him with a sigh. “Even if we are no longer here, he will still grow into an excellent exorcist. He’ll carry on the work we left unfinished, and this dead-end road…”
“…he’ll flatten it into the Great Dao.”
The old friend couldn’t help but glance at Li Chengyun, and what he saw in the white-robed hermit’s face was absolute seriousness and sincerity.
He wondered—was Li Chengyun talking about his disciple, or was he referring to his own disciple with the Evil Spirit Bone Transformation?
The old friend couldn’t tell.
But he knew one thing: Li Chengyun wasn’t wrong.
One day, his disciple would come looking for him.
Perhaps all that would be left was a pile of bones, or maybe not even that—just a handful of ashes. But the boy would still bring him home. And then, he would continue the mission left unfinished.
The inheritance of the Great Dao had never truly been broken.
Before heading to Baizhi Lake, Li Chengyun had already calculated that the lake was filled with heavy yin energy and restless spirits.
But when the two of them saw Baizhi Lake with their own eyes, they were still shocked.
To say the yin energy was heavy was an understatement—it was as if the entire lake had been formed from it. To others, it looked like a lake. But to them, it was a deep pool of overwhelming resentment and death.
It felt like all the ghosts once driven from the Southwest had returned and now converged in this lake, with evil spirits howling day and night.
In the nearby deserted village, which had long since been abandoned, all the belongings were still intact. It didn’t look like the residents had moved away—it looked as if something terrible had happened to them, and they had never come back.
From the remnants left behind, Li Chengyun divined and reconstructed the events that led to Baizhi Lake’s current state.
He clearly saw what those villagers had done to bring about the catastrophe that destroyed their village.
But at the same time, he was stunned to find that the spirits of the villagers had neither been guided by Yin officials to reincarnation, nor had they left the area.
Instead, they still lingered in that forsaken village.
Even though it was broad daylight, the dense green vines of creeping fig plants clung to the walls and sealed off every window and door, keeping the houses in complete darkness.
Those spirits stood silently behind the windows, their hollow eyes staring out at Li Chengyun and the exorcist.
Like wolves waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
The exorcist let out a sigh and said that the Southwest had long been known as a ghost town in the rumors. And yet, within this ghostly domain, not even a single Yin official could be seen. Every soul that had died here was trapped.
But Li Chengyun immediately saw that there was something wrong with the villagers’ spirits.
—They were not lingering here because no Yin officials had come to guide them away. They were being controlled by some unknown force that would not allow them to leave.
From the results of his divination, Li Chengyun saw that these villagers had all directly or indirectly caused the deaths of others, and thus bore heavy sins.
But that wasn’t all.
The karmic burden on the villagers’ souls far exceeded what would result from killing one or two people. It was as if their guilt weighed as heavily as having destroyed an entire village or city.
After a brief moment of confusion, Li Chengyun quickly realized—it wasn’t that the villagers had killed so many people.
It was that they had brought about the death of one person, who, consumed by resentment, had turned into a fierce ghost and eventually brought disaster upon countless lives.
Heaven and earth had tied the karma of that catastrophe to the villagers, and the burden of guilt crushed their very souls.
The place where they had once lived and committed their sins had now become their prison in death. It trapped them, forcing them to wander endlessly, day and night, gradually slipping into a daze. They forgot who they once were, yet remembered the weight of their sins, suffering in agony without end.
But the village was not truly deserted.
When Li Chengyun saw the man named Zheng Shumu, he noticed the spirits trembling, scrambling to retreat into the darkness, as though terrified of being seen by Zheng Shumu and inviting fresh torment.
Yet in the next instant, Li Chengyun noticed something subtle.
The spirits certainly feared Zheng Shumu, but not to the point of terror. Their emotions were clearly directed—more like resentment, as though they hated Zheng Shumu for killing them.
The one the spirits truly feared…
Was the adorable little girl walking beside Zheng Shumu.
The girl wore a beautiful dress. She held Zheng Shumu’s hand in one of hers, calling him “brother” with a bright smile, while the other arm hugged a lifelike little wooden puppet.
As she skipped along, the puppet bounced with her, its tiny limbs swinging. The wooden joints exposed to view made it clear it was a carved doll—but its face…
Its face was a masterpiece of the living-mouth, living-eye woodcarving technique, so lifelike it was indistinguishable from a real person at first glance.
The exorcist followed Li Chengyun’s gaze and, upon seeing the puppet, was so shocked he immediately wanted to step forward and question them.
But Li Chengyun stopped him.
He smiled faintly and slowly shook his head at his old friend. Forming a hand seal, he concealed them both so that the strange pair of siblings wouldn’t notice them.
Zheng Shumu and his sister walked right past Li Chengyun without sensing a thing.
Yet as the little girl passed by, the puppet in her arms moved its limbs and reached up to tug her hair.
“Hm?”
She let out a puzzled sound and stopped in her tracks, slowly turning to look in their direction. Her eyes fixed directly on where Li Chengyun and the exorcist were hiding.
When the exorcist got a clear look at the girl’s eyes, his heart nearly stopped. He hurriedly raised a hand to cover his mouth and nose, not daring to make the slightest sound.
This time, he didn’t need Li Chengyun to warn him—he instinctively suppressed his presence as much as possible, terrified the girl would notice them.
In contrast to his friend’s anxiety, Li Chengyun remained calm and composed. Hidden behind the invisible formation, he even looked down at the little girl with a gentle smile, his eyes calmly observing her. He had already seen through her true identity.
This child… was a ghost infant.
She had died full of resentment before she could be born, unwilling to give up her chance at reincarnation. She had torn open her mother’s belly and crawled out into the world.
Then, she had been raised as a human child, growing up into a sweet and innocent age.
Until the ghost infant awakened—remembering her past hatred and becoming a ferocious vengeful spirit.
She had even taken control of the entire village.
That was why the spirits feared her so much.
Li Chengyun raised his eyebrows slightly, a deep and thoughtful look in his eyes as he observed the girl.
Not all unborn babies who died could become ghost infants.
The timing, the location, and human influence all had to align perfectly.
Most crucially, there needed to be a source of power to support the fragile soul of a fetus and allow it to become a ghost infant.
Li Chengyun had seen ghost infants before. Among the ancient texts he had collected, there were many records of dark rituals for “creating” ghost infants.
Some exorcists, desperate to increase their own strength or compensate for poor natural talent, would target vulnerable pregnant women.
By controlling the timing, location, and ghostly energy, they would kill the woman at the most inauspicious moment, cut open her womb to extract the suffocated fetus, and then infuse it with power—thus artificially creating a ghost infant.
Because they died at the very edge of birth—just a step away from reincarnation—ghost infants harbored extraordinary resentment, which in turn granted them tremendous power.
Exorcists who used these dark arts would keep ghost infants by their side, using them to intimidate other ghosts, or even to steal others’ fortune and luck, all for the wealthy clients who paid them.
But among all those who used such methods, Li Chengyun had never seen a single one meet a good end.
Though many didn’t believe in karma, it had always existed—unseen, but everywhere. Even the smallest good or evil could accumulate like a mountain.
Let alone something so cruel as stealing the power of a ghost infant.
Those who stole from others would always pay double. Those who harmed others would eventually die an unnatural death.
Whether it was the ghost infant’s own hatred, or the karma of stealing from another, in the end, those exorcists usually died by the very ghost infants they had created when the spirits turned on them.
Many people still didn’t understand this.
Even some of the wealthy patrons who paid for these services had no idea how the process actually worked. They were swayed by the exorcists’ promises and handed over their money.
But Li Chengyun clearly wasn’t one of them.
He had witnessed—and even personally resolved—cases where ghost infants turned on their masters and caused chaos beyond control.
That was why he could so easily detect the subtle differences between ghost infants. With just a bit of analysis, he could determine exactly how one was formed—whether through human evil, or…
An influence of pure ghostly energy.
It was immediately obvious that the little girl before them was not an artificially created ghost infant.
The black mist coiling around her body nearly engulfed her completely.
Even standing in direct sunlight, to Li Chengyun, she appeared to be a ghostly shadow that the light could not penetrate.
Such thick and powerful ghostly energy reminded Li Chengyun of only one thing—Old Fengdu.
—One of the important reasons he had come to the Bai family village was the southwestern shadow puppetry that originated here.
According to legend, the elusive Fengdu was hidden within the scripts of these southwestern shadow puppet plays.
Because the predecessor of this form of puppetry was ghost plays.
Although Li Chengyun had come for this very reason, he remained skeptical of the claim.
It wasn’t until he saw the ghost infant that he suddenly realized—perhaps the legend was true.
Otherwise, there was no way to explain where the ghostly energy forming a ghost infant could have come from.
The little girl was like a cat fixated on a fish, staring intently into empty darkness, refusing to leave.
Her beautiful eyes were wide open, but they held none of the charm or innocence typical of a child. Instead, they were terrifyingly hollow and lifeless, like two inanimate black glass beads.
The exorcist hiding behind the formation was also frightened by the way the little girl lowered her head but looked up at them. His heart pounded, and the fear of being discovered clung to him like a shadow.
Li Chengyun lowered his gaze and tucked his sleeves calmly. The smile that usually lingered on his lips had long faded, leaving behind only a serene expression as he stared at the little girl through the barrier.
“Tian Tian.”
Just then, Zheng Shumu, seeing that his younger sister refused to leave, called out to her in confusion, telling her to come home.
The little girl pouted, cast one last deep look at the empty air in front of her, then skipped away with Zheng Shumu.
But Li Chengyun noticed something—when Zheng Shumu pulled his sister away, his gaze briefly swept across Li Chengyun’s position before quickly withdrawing.
It seemed like a casual, fleeting glance.
Yet Li Chengyun’s sharp perception caught it instantly.
Zheng Shumu’s gaze was different from that of the ghost infant.
The ghost infant could only vaguely sense something was off because of the ghost energy, so her gaze wandered aimlessly. She knew something was there, knew something wasn’t right—but she couldn’t actually see what it was.
However, Zheng Shumu’s gaze had locked onto a specific target from the moment he looked over.
—Zheng Shumu had seen them. Yet he had not told the ghost infant, and even deliberately led her away before she could discover them.
He might not have known exactly who they were, but he wanted to leave them a path to survive.
Li Chengyun watched Zheng Shumu’s receding figure with great interest, making a mental note of this carpenter who had inherited the tradition of crafting vivid wooden sculptures.
His old friend was so frightened he went limp, taking a long time to recover from the ghost infant’s gaze—yet even then, his legs remained shaky.
When Li Chengyun asked with concern, the old friend gave a bitter smile and said that in all his decades of exorcising ghosts, he had never seen something so terrifying. Just one glance had far surpassed any ordinary evil spirit.
No—in fact, that child was more like the embodiment of all evil spirits.
It was as if all the resentment of the ghosts across the southwest had gathered in her eyes.
Hearing this, Li Chengyun grew even more certain of his theory.
He explained his thoughts to his friend, then decided to postpone his search for the successor of ghost plays and instead verify the connection between Fengdu and the ghost infant first.
His friend readily agreed and reached into his robe to take out a compass.
But as soon as he unwrapped the cloth, the compass exploded in his hands.
The ghostly energy in the village had far exceeded what the compass could withstand.
Fortunately, at the exact moment the compass shattered, Li Chengyun keenly noticed the direction from which the force detonating it originated—it pointed outside the village.
And the area with the heaviest yin energy… was Baizhi Lake.
In the past, when villagers died due to “accidents,” they would leave the village via the lakeside road to be buried in the ancestral graves on the mountain. During the funeral processions, paper money would flutter into the air and fall onto the surface of the lake.
Layer upon layer of paper money had blanketed the lake completely, as though the souls of the villagers could never leave its waters to see the light of day again.
With suspicions in his heart, Li Chengyun decided to thoroughly inspect the entire abandoned village before sunset.
For an ordinary exorcist, remaining in a village where all the residents had clearly perished and thick ghostly energy filled the air would be akin to courting death.
But both Li Chengyun and his friend were seasoned and unafraid of death, so they walked the village openly and confidently.
As they turned a corner, they suddenly came face-to-face with a ghost silently standing in the shadows.
Li Chengyun remained unshaken. He simply took two steps back to put some distance between them.
He even smiled and gently asked the ghost if it knew anything about the ghost infant.
But at the mention of the words “little girl,” the ghost panicked and tried to flee in terror.
Li Chengyun grabbed it by the head and dragged it back, smiling as he said, “If you don’t tell me, I’ll go tell the ghost infant that you already told me everything. But if you do tell me, I’ll keep it a secret for you.”
The ghost looked at him with a wounded, disbelieving expression. It never imagined that a living person could be even more terrifying than an evil spirit.
If the ghost infant found out that it had leaked information, this ghost—already imprisoned by her—would face even more horrifying torment.
Using the ghost infant’s reputation, Li Chengyun easily frightened the ghost minion into submission. Without much effort, he extracted the truth about everything that had happened in the Bai family village.
Yet, instead of joy over a plan proceeding smoothly, Li Chengyun only felt a heavy sigh of “as expected,” mixed with compassion for the ghost infant’s past. Then he tossed the ghost into Baizhi Lake.
The ghost screamed and cursed wildly, desperately trying to escape under the terrifying pressure of the lake, but an invisible force dragged it down, slowly pulling it beneath the surface until it was completely submerged.
Li Chengyun stood at the edge of the shore, sleeves gathered, calmly watching everything unfold.
When the ghost cursed at him, he still had the mood to respond with a smiling face, “How did I deceive you? Didn’t we agree that once you told me, I’d keep it a secret for you? See? This method of secrecy is foolproof. Even if the ghost infant finds out, it still won’t be able to locate you.”
Li Chengyun chuckled softly and said to his old friend beside him, “Young ghosts these days… how can they believe what people say? Isn’t it just like how we always tell our disciples not to trust what ghosts say?”
He spread his hands with an air of nonchalance, showing not a trace of guilt or stress, despite having just completely played a malicious spirit into utter confusion.
The malicious ghost that Li Chengyun had tossed into Baizhi Lake only confirmed his suspicions about the lake.
That ghost was like a piece of raw meat thrown into a crocodile pond to test the waters, allowing the people on the shore to clearly see the dangers lurking below.
While his old friend stood in stunned silence, Li Chengyun turned and walked back into the village. He searched through every household the ghost had mentioned in connection with the death of Carpenter Zheng’s family, turning each place upside down.
Aside from burn marks inside the homes, what stood out most to Li Chengyun were the wooden figures hidden in the darkness.
In every household, the wooden figures with vivid eyes and mouths bore an exact likeness to the deceased former residents of the home.
His old friend concluded that it must have been Zheng Shumu, acting out of vengeance. After the villagers died, he must have trapped their souls inside the wooden figures to eliminate the ghosts once and for all.
But Li Chengyun had a different theory.
“It wasn’t Zheng Shumu.”
Li Chengyun remembered how Zheng Shumu had still chosen to help them, even after clearly seeing who they were. He spoke calmly, “It was the work of the ghost infant.”
His old friend was shocked. “But… can a ghost infant create animated wooden puppets?”
“Guilt,”
Li Chengyun replied slowly. “Guilt toward others becomes a hell that binds you.”
Li Chengyun saw it clearly. From the results of his divinations, it hadn’t been the ghost infant who killed the villagers — it had been Zheng Shumu.
But many years ago, when that young man slaughtered the entire village to avenge the deaths of his parents and sister, he hadn’t returned to the world of the living afterward.
Instead, he had fallen into a deeper hell.
Even though Zheng Shumu smiled, and his sister remained by his side, he was never free — constantly tormented, forever trapped in hell.
That’s why Li Chengyun suspected the wooden figures were carved by Zheng Shumu, but controlled by the ghost infant.
Out of guilt toward his sister, Zheng Shumu would never refuse her anything.
For him, being used by his sister was a way to ease his guilt. It was his form of atonement.
Li Chengyun sighed. “He’s a pitiful man, too.”
However, the presence of the wooden puppets in every household put Li Chengyun on alert.
Immediately, he and his old friend set off toward the Bai family’s ancestral tombs.
With a flick of his sleeves, the white-robed cultivator snapped off a branch from a nearby tree, chanted a spell, and started digging up the ancestral graves.
His old friend was so shocked by Li Chengyun’s actions that his jaw dropped and he stood frozen, unable to react for a while.
“Digging up graves… isn’t that a bit much?” his old friend asked hesitantly.
But Li Chengyun moved with such speed and familiarity that, while his companion was still hesitating, he had already dug up all the graves with death dates matching the year of the village massacre.
The coffins were opened.
His old friend widened his eyes in disbelief and rushed forward, clutching the edge of a coffin and peering inside, checking again and again to confirm what he saw.
—The coffins were completely empty.
There were no decayed corpses, no bones, not even any traces of fluids or stains that would have been left behind by decomposing flesh.
From the very beginning, the bodies had never been buried in those coffins.
“That pair of siblings hated the villagers so much that they refused to let them rest in peace, even in death. How could they possibly allow their bodies a proper burial?”
Li Chengyun wasn’t surprised at all by the outcome.
He gave a light push off the bottom of the grave and leapt effortlessly onto the ground, landing lightly. Dusting off the loose dirt from his clothes, he once again appeared to be that carefree hermit wandering the world.
It was as if the decisive man who had just dug up graves and opened coffins wasn’t him at all.
While his old friend was still in shock, Li Chengyun had already tilted his head back and gazed at the forest behind the ancestral tombs.
He asked his friend whether those trees looked familiar.
“Locust trees,”
“The same type of wood used to carve those puppets we saw in the village just now.”
Li Chengyun lowered his eyes slightly, and in that instant, everything became clear to him.
Locus trees were among the easiest species to be infested by spirits. Moreover, the wood carvings with moving mouths and eyes were created specifically to allow ghosts to inhabit them…
In this small, unknown village by Baizhi Lake, a massive surge of ghostly energy had been brewing. If left unchecked, it would one day erupt completely,
affecting the entire southwestern region.
On their way back from the mountain, the two of them passed by an equally abandoned temple.
The statues inside had long since vanished, leaving only a scattering of ceremonial instruments, all covered in thick dust.
The murals on the walls didn’t depict deities once worshipped here, but rather the faces of villagers who had funded the construction of the temple. One after another, the faces beamed with pride and vigor.
His old friend bent down and picked up each ceremonial object, arranged them properly on the altar, brushed off the dust, and then respectfully and solemnly bowed toward the now-empty pedestal.
“They’re all made of gold and silver. This village must’ve been wealthy and prosperous once. But sadly, people without virtue can’t hold on to wealth.”
“There’s no statue in the temple. Maybe it was destroyed when the ghost infant first appeared, unable to withstand the resistance.”
Li Chengyun said calmly, “If we want to suppress the evil spirit of Baizhi Lake, we’ll need to find another object of suppression.”
“One that can hold back that kind of ghost infant?”
His friend gave a bitter smile. “Easier said than done.”
While his friend continued to rack his brain for a solution, Li Chengyun quietly committed that sentence to memory.
He couldn’t help but wonder—if Fengdu really did lie beneath this place, then why had no powerful monk or Taoist master been able to find it over the past thousand years?
Perhaps… it was because Fengdu itself had also been suppressed.
It wasn’t that no one could find Fengdu—but rather that Fengdu was no longer able to appear in the mortal world. So aside from lingering rumors, no one had ever truly seen it again.
With this hypothesis in mind, Li Chengyun went to find Zheng Shumu early the next morning.
Standing in front of Zheng Shumu, his posture upright like a pine tree, his snow-white robe fluttering gently, he smiled warmly and said to him, “You have the ability to save more people.”
“You know your sister’s condition very well. Then you also know what kind of consequences would follow if she lost control.”
Li Chengyun sighed softly. “Why not forgive yourself? You’ve confined yourself long enough. Now that your revenge is complete, it’s time to live a few peaceful, quiet days like an ordinary person.”
From the moment Zheng Shumu had stepped forward to resolve the situation for him, Li Chengyun’s view of him had changed. He was no longer just the inheritor of the animated wood carving, or the son who avenged his parents—he was now something more.
—Someone who still held a sliver of kindness toward the human world.
Zheng Shumu bore hatred, yes—but it was directed toward the villagers of the Bai family village.
When he had left the village and struggled to survive outside, many kind-hearted people had reached out to help him. Toward them, Zheng Shumu bore no ill intent.
But between his sister and strangers, Zheng Shumu had wavered on the scale.
Only Li Chengyun saw the buried kindness in his heart—and was willing to step in, to tip the scale toward the side of humanity once more.
Li Chengyun temporarily stayed in Bai family village.
Aside from Zheng Shumu, he discovered someone else was living there too.
It was Master Bai, the man who inherited the ghost plays tradition of the Southwest.
From Master Bai, Li Chengyun learned of the complete tradition, caught a vague glimpse of the truth from a thousand years ago, and also learned about the changing of Fengdu.
In that moment, it was as if divine insight struck him—he understood everything.
He grew more certain that the old Fengdu must lie beneath Baizhi Lake, guarded by a suppressive object that kept it from re-emerging.
Having obtained the answers he sought, Li Chengyun bid farewell to Zheng Shumu.
Though their time together had been short, Zheng Shumu had been genuinely moved by this white-clad hermit. He regarded Li Chengyun not only as a close friend, but as a mentor who had unraveled years of confusion and soothed his pain.
Learning that Li Chengyun was leaving, Zheng Shumu grew deeply worried.
He knew what Li Chengyun was after—therefore, he also knew that once he left, he might never return.
“Some people scrape by for a hundred years, yet live each day in sorrow—no different from pigs or dogs.”
Li Chengyun looked at him gently and offered one final piece of advice. “No matter your past or karma, no matter your identity—so long as you hold fast to your Dao and protect all living beings, you are worthy of being called a cultivator.”
“To give your life for the Dao is also a form of happiness.”
He nodded slightly at Zheng Shumu. “After I leave, the peace of the Southwest will rest in your hands.”
“Brother Shumu.”
Zheng Shumu watched helplessly as Li Chengyun left the Bai family village.
But what Zheng Shumu didn’t know was that once he left the village, Li Chengyun dove straight into Baizhi Lake.
He allowed himself to sink to the bottom.
In the final moment before losing consciousness, Li Chengyun saw what lay beneath the lake.
—There was a ruined city.
The city was engulfed in dense ghostly energy. Scattered around it were bones, all bleached white. Not a single fish swam there.
Instead, rotting corpses, drawn by scent, drifted toward him.
But Li Chengyun laughed.
A stream of bubbles rose. His white robe floated gently in the water, beautiful as a dream.
At the bottom of that dark lake, his eyes remained calm. He opened his arms peacefully, letting the corpses surround him completely.
At his lips was a smile—one that told of a plan fulfilled.
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