Chapter 304: Ritual Money, Old Capital (31)
In the desolate village outside the mourning hall, wooden puppets were scattered everywhere.
They hid silently in the darkness and corners—under beds and inside wardrobes were their favorite hiding spots.
These wooden figures would crouch motionless around corners, silently lying in wait. When an unsuspecting Taoist passed by, they would launch a sudden ambush. The attack came so abruptly that the Taoists had no time to defend themselves before being struck.
At first, the Taoists followed a pattern they had gradually discovered together—checking the faces of the wooden puppets.
If the face didn’t belong to anyone from the rescue team or the production crew, if none of the Taoists recognized it, or if it matched the face of a villager seen in the files, they would deem the puppet to be controlled by the Ghost Dao and immediately smash it into splinters without hesitation.
But soon, the Ghost Dao—who had been manipulating the wooden puppets from the shadows—quickly caught on to their method of identification and changed tactics. The faces of the wooden puppets began to shift at random.
One moment, a puppet might bear the face of a villager, and the next, when another Taoist looked at it, the face would have become that of a rescue team member.
The Taoists were both shocked and furious, yet they had no choice but to walk right into the trap, knowing full well it was deliberately set. Stripped of any reliable means to judge, they became hesitant and restrained, unable to attack the wooden puppets with full force.
The Ghost Dao could gamble with human lives, treating this as a deadly game with the Taoists—where the stakes were the lives of rescue personnel and the crew.
But the Taoists couldn’t afford to gamble.
They didn’t have that luxury.
If they won, they would eliminate a portion of the Ghost Dao’s forces. But if they lost…
It would mean they had personally killed the very people they were supposed to protect.
So after gaining a brief upper hand, the Taoists once again found themselves at a disadvantage, seething with helpless rage as they watched the Ghost Dao seize the momentum once more.
The wooden puppets could appear from any corner of the deserted village, forcing the Taoists to remain on edge constantly, alert at all times, with every rustle of wind or blade of grass turning into a potential threat.
This was yet another part of the Ghost Dao’s scheme—to drain the Taoists’ physical and mental strength through endless, pointless guessing.
In such a high-tension environment, the Taoists quickly became exhausted. They hadn’t even encountered a true ambush yet but were already burdened by both physical and mental fatigue.
Moreover, almost all of them had been injured in the village—some lightly, some seriously.
Because their talismans had lost effectiveness, the Taoists could no longer use healing spells like before to stop the bleeding or perform emergency care.
They had to rely on the medical supplies they carried—using gauze to wrap wounds and tightening tourniquets to slow blood loss as much as possible.
But the results of such treatment were barely better than nothing.
During fights, while being hunted and surrounded by the puppets, Taoists often had no choice but to abandon their supplies or repurpose them as tools to counter the enemy, trying to make up for the absence of talismanic support.
By now, only a few Taoists still had emergency materials like bandages and medicinal powder—resources that now had to be shared among all the injured.
Even after roughly bandaging their wounds, the Taoists didn’t have the luxury to rest and recover.
There was no time to let wounds heal.
They continued to fight on the frontlines, unable to spare a single thought for their injured bodies. Whether attacking or dodging, they had to move with full force—repeatedly tearing open the same wounds they had just wrapped.
Blood soaked through the bandages again and again, staining the originally dark blue Taoist robes until they were a deep red—nearly black.
By this point, every Taoist was pushing through sheer willpower, forcing themselves to hold on against the puppets. Everyone was in a terrible state.
But no one called for a stop. No one backed down.
Even with their strength nearly depleted, with torn muscles and pain slowing their every movement, and with injuries piling up, their eyes still burned with unwavering determination.
The people trapped in the village—the lives they had vowed to protect, the responsibility they had taken on—left them no room to relax.
And absolutely no right to fall.
The Taoists gritted their teeth as they fended off more and more wooden puppets, but their movements had clearly slowed.
“If this continues, we’ll all be completely drained before long. We have to think of a way out of this—we can’t keep letting these evil things lead us around by the nose.”
One Taoist with a long beard finally couldn’t hold out any longer after counter-killing a puppet that tried to ambush him. He collapsed against a brick wall, his strength utterly spent. His muscles trembled violently, beyond control, and his limbs began to fail him—he couldn’t even stand on his own.
Another Taoist nearby reacted quickly, sweeping his sword across and knocking away several puppets who had spotted the long-bearded Taoist’s weakness and tried to attack.
But even though they had escaped danger this time, they wouldn’t always be so lucky. If this continued, it would only spiral into a vicious cycle, until none of them had the strength left to fight the Ghost Dao.
“It’s very likely that the Ghost Dao predicted this exact outcome from the start. It detained the crew members who entered the village earlier and hid them away somewhere unknown—just so it could use them as hostages to restrict our movements.”
The long-bearded Taoist smiled bitterly and shook his head. “The Ghost Dao has long seen through all our weaknesses. It knew exactly how to push us into a desperate situation of our own accord… Even though we knew everything was orchestrated by the Ghost Dao, we still couldn’t ignore it. Despite our unwillingness, we could only walk into the trap willingly.”
“So this is the Ghost Dao…”
The long-bearded Taoist was dazed, the bitter smile on his face laced with threads of despair. “Although it was born from ghostly energy, treating spirits as living beings and the living as evil entities—ultimately, it is still a Dao. It’s a force that can contend with and rival the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth.”
In the southwestern region and the city of Binhai, the Ghost Dao had even overwhelmed the Great Dao. Hordes of ghosts crossed the boundaries between life and death set by the Dao, running rampant in the human world.
How could such a force possibly be defeated?
A path ahead with not even a glimmer of hope… filled everyone with an irrepressible sense of despair.
The other Taoists also felt extremely heavy-hearted. They knew what the long-bearded Taoist said was the harsh truth.
Cruel and burdensome, but a reality they had no choice but to accept.
“If we can kill one ghost, then we kill one. If we can save one life, then we save one life.”
Another Taoist’s throat felt dry as he spoke. “But what if… we can’t even tell whether the enemy is human or ghost?”
The most terrifying scenario was having strength, yet not knowing where the enemy was.
Worse still, one misstep could lead to harming their own people by mistake.
The pain and guilt from such an error could utterly destroy any Taoist who had attained spiritual cultivation.
But more than fearing their own pain, the Taoists were terrified that their actions might endanger the whereabouts-unknown members of the program crew on the other side, making an already dire situation even worse.
They weren’t afraid of dying—what they feared was causing others to die because of them.
For a moment, silence and bitterness silently spread among the Taoists. No one spoke anymore, each lost in somber thought.
It was at this moment that the previously missing Taoist Li suddenly let out a loud and cold snort from a distance behind them.
“What the hell are you lot dawdling for? What, are you being paid by the hour now? Or were you planning to leave these evil spirits as a gift for me? Should I be praising you for that, you little brats?”
Taoist Li’s voice was filled with dissatisfaction, and his words were completely blunt and unreserved.
Yet his grumbling, irritable tone sparked a sense of familiarity in all the Taoists. Their instincts reacted before their minds caught up—as if they had found their pillar of support, hope reignited within them.
Every Taoist firmly believed that as long as Taoist Li was here—as long as this grandmaster from Haiyun Temple, the most senior and most accomplished among them, was here—then no matter how perilous the situation, it could still be overcome.
The sky wouldn’t fall.
Taoist Li’s scolding, though merciless, felt like a new surge of strength injected into all of them, pushing them to keep going.
They turned around in joy to look behind them, and the first thing to catch their eyes was the towering blaze under the night sky—
And the spirit money carried by the wind, dancing through the air with the sparks.
White paper money fluttered and fell, like a final farewell to the dead, but the moment it touched the flames, it ignited. Amid the soft crackling of burning paper, sparks floated with the half-burnt fragments.
All the Taoists were startled. None of them knew when this massive fire had even started—only now had they noticed it, and it was already burning at this intensity.
In fact, if Taoist Li hadn’t spoken up just now, they might not have noticed it at all.
This unexpected event deepened their wariness toward the eerie village once again.
As everyone’s gaze shifted from the blaze, Taoist Li’s figure also came into view.
He stood with his hands behind his back at the gate of the courtyard where the fire had broken out. His snow-white hair and beard gently floated in the breeze. Reflected in his aged but still bright and piercing eyes, the flames blazed like a sun burning in his gaze—
Vibrant with life, unextinguished.
The Taoists, who moments ago had been overwhelmed with doubt about whether they could ever overcome the Ghost Dao, suddenly felt new hope take root in their hearts. Even their exhausted bodies seemed to surge with renewed strength.
The will and conviction to protect life finally triumphed over all doubt and despair. It became a new driving force that supported their actions.
But soon, one sharp-eyed Taoist noticed the large swaths of bloodstains all over Taoist Li’s body.
The blood had soaked through his robes and was dripping down the hem, pooling into a small puddle of blood at his feet.
The Taoist looked shocked. He let out a short cry and pointed in disbelief at the pool of blood at Taoist Li’s feet. “Grandmaster, y-you’re injured!”
But Taoist Li didn’t seem to care in the slightest. Even though blood kept pouring from his chest, and his complexion had turned pale and ashen, such a severe wound didn’t appear to hinder his movements at all.
He shot a glance at the shouting Taoist, his tone full of disdain. “Making a fuss over nothing. It’s just an injury, so what? What, am I not human and therefore can’t be hurt? I’m your grandmaster! I’m not even allowed to get injured now?”
One of the Taoists chuckled awkwardly and said, “Granduncle, it’s not that your seniority means you must suffer more wounds. That’s not what we meant. We’re just worried about you. Your wound looks too serious, and…”
It didn’t appear to be caused by any blunt object or sharp weapon. On the contrary, it looked like an injury caused by an evil spirit. And wounds caused by malevolent forces were far more dangerous and difficult to deal with than ordinary ones.
The latter part of the sentence remained unsaid.
But everyone else already felt a chill run through their hearts. They instantly realized the gravity of the situation, and their expressions turned anxious and worried as they looked at Taoist Li.
Taoist Li waved it off casually and stepped forward toward the others. “Why are you still standing here? Is everything done already? You’re all grown men—some of you even have disciples of your own—yet you don’t act like masters at all.”
“Maybe when you get back to Haiyun Temple, you should all start over with my useless disciple.”
He added with disdain, “Oh, and let’s throw Song Yi in with the bunch too.”
The Taoists: “…………”
It seemed they had accidentally dragged Taoist Song Yi and his disciple into trouble as well?
But once the Taoist came to his senses, he quickly stepped forward and briefly explained the situation to Taoist Li.
“It’s not that we didn’t act. It’s just that in this situation, where we can’t even distinguish between people and ghosts, we really didn’t dare.”
He gave a bitter smile and added, “If we ended up hurting a real person by mistake…”
Taoist Li understood what he meant, and he also knew that for these Taoists, the current circumstances were indeed difficult.
Those with exceptional talent often couldn’t understand ordinary people and were frequently puzzled why something so simple remained incomprehensible to others.
The Taoist broke into a cold sweat as he listened to Taoist Li calmly recount what had happened in the mourning hall. And when he learned where Taoist Li’s injury had come from, he felt waves of lingering fear.
Still, he felt more like a failing math student being stared at by Feynman, confused by his questions.
Fortunately, Taoist Li had dealt with “ordinary people” before. He had a grand-disciple named Lu Xingxing who managed to infuriate him to death and back to life on a daily basis.
So he understood how difficult it was for ordinary people to comprehend the Great Dao.
Taoist Li swept his calm gaze across the desolate village. As he saw the Taoists still struggling with the wooden statues, he also took note of the various carved faces that couldn’t be clearly identified as human or ghost.
But to Taoist Li, it was immediately obvious who was who—whether they were people or spirits.
—The ghost infant from the mourning hall had originally controlled these wooden statues. It had stuffed the villagers’ corpses into the hollow statues with its own hands, trapping their souls inside as punishment.
And Taoist Li had defeated that ghost infant in the mourning hall.
Even if the Ghost Dao refused to admit it, Taoist Li’s victory was beyond dispute.
If it wanted to become part of the Dao, it had to follow the rules and act justly.
Just like under the Great Dao, when a vengeful ghost killed an exorcist, it would also suppress the exorcist’s spiritual attachments with ease.
At this moment, Taoist Li stood in the same position in relation to the ghost infant.
So with a single glance, he could identify the true nature of the wooden statues—whether they were evil spirits or missing persons.
However, this also reminded Taoist Li of something Zheng Shumu had told him earlier in the mourning hall.
—All of Baizhi Lake had been fragmented by excessive forces, layer upon layer of worlds overlapping each other. If one wasn’t careful, they could easily fall into a different realm and be unable to leave.
Since the missing people could now appear here in the form of wooden statues, the only explanation was that, in this place, they were no different from ghosts.
And in the world of the missing persons, it was the Taoists who appeared as ghosts.
Both sides had misunderstood each other. If they continued to fight like this, not only would they miss the best opportunity to confront the Ghost Dao properly, but they would also end up suffering needless losses on both sides.
All the while, the Ghost Dao would sit by, reaping the rewards.
This was something that Taoist Li would absolutely never allow to happen.
Because of this, he immediately made up his mind.
“There’s no need for you to interfere anymore. Step aside and make room.”
Taoist Li waved his sleeve, driving the other Taoists away as if they were a flock of chickens.
These Taoists, who normally carried themselves with great dignity and commanded respect, now stood before Taoist Li like confused and timid chicks. Though they didn’t understand what was happening, they obediently stopped what they were doing and stepped aside.
In just a few breaths’ time, the deserted village had been cleared.
The Taoists now stood beside Taoist Li as meekly as kindergarten children.
As for the wooden puppets controlled by the Ghost Dao, they suddenly found themselves without opponents. Standing alone in the empty battlefield, a look of confusion even appeared in their wooden eyes.
Taoist Li walked forward steadily, his palm extended.
He paused briefly, then lowered his eyes and began to chant scripture in a calm voice, forming seals with his hands.
—He was borrowing strength from Baizhi Lake, the southwestern land, and all living beings between Heaven and Earth.
As the first syllable rang into the air, the wooden puppets that had previously been still began to stir restlessly. The moment they saw the old Taoist back on the battlefield, they charged at him.
But Taoist Li remained unshaken. With a flick of his robe, he sat cross-legged swiftly on the ground. His mouth never stopped reciting the scripture, and he dipped his fingers into the fresh blood from his chest, using it as ink to quickly draw an array on the ground around him.
The bright red blood, infused with his spiritual cultivation, touched the earth and instantly connected with the land’s meridians. It became one with Heaven and Earth, allowing Taoist Li’s voice and plea to travel farther through the earth’s currents.
He kept his eyes lowered, entirely focused on the formation before him, as if he hadn’t even noticed the approaching wooden puppets.
A Taoist nearby gasped and instinctively tried to rush to his aid.
But another Taoist quickly held him back.
The latter slowly shook his head and silently mouthed an explanation. As he listened to the scripture Taoist Li was chanting, a sudden realization struck him like a divine revelation. He finally understood what Taoist Li was trying to do.
The Ghost Dao had upended the natural order and temporarily replaced the Great Dao, preventing all cultivators from borrowing power from the gods and deities. It had turned them into nothing more than “evil spirits” hunted by all.
This had drastically weakened the cultivators, leaving them helpless as true evil spirits wreaked havoc.
Even Taoist Li couldn’t borrow divine power under these conditions.
But he had found another path—he refused to be stopped just because the gods could no longer help.
—He turned instead to the living beings of this world.
Even if the Great Dao had been obscured and humanity stripped of its name, the heavens remembered. The plants remembered. The winds and moon in the mountains had witnessed humanity’s history for thousands of years.
They knew who the true spirit of all living things was.
What Daoist Li sought was the memory of these beings—the faith and strength of all who resisted the Ghost Dao.
These people may have been small, their strength feeble.
But they had never given up hope.
Even the tiniest spark had its own resolve, its own deep attachment to the kindness and beauty of the mortal world.
Taoist Li’s formation took effect quickly. Faint golden light traced the lines of blood and instantly filled the entire array.
The wooden puppets that had lunged at him were immediately blocked by the formation and thrown back violently.
Caught off guard, they were flung into the walls with a loud crash.
Bricks and stones collapsed. The puppets were reduced to splinters, fragments of flesh, and pools of blood.
And then, one by one, specks of glowing light began to rise slowly from within the array.
They were breathtakingly beautiful.
The Taoists watched, stunned, holding their breath for fear of disturbing Taoist Li.
His calm and resolute expression was illuminated by the glow. In that moment, his eyes seemed to contain the rising sun and moon—steadfast in their devotion to life itself.
More and more glowing lights began to gather, slowly rising from the formation like fireflies, softly dancing in the desolate darkness of the village.
The light sphere grew larger and larger, until it illuminated the entire village and pierced into the deep, shadowed forest.
Above the deserted village, the massive sphere of light rose slowly like the dawning sun.
The Taoists all lifted their heads, hardly believing what they saw.
The light reflected on Baizhi Lake, a lake once filled with ghostly energy. It began to boil like a pot of water brought to a rolling heat.
Piercing, agonized screams of the evil spirits erupted one after another. They tried to flee but were dissolved into wisps of smoke under the glow.
Only dry bones remained, sinking into the lakebed.
In that instant, both the old Fengdu and the Ghost Dao turned their eyes toward Daoist Li, recognizing what he had done.
Even if they hadn’t understood him before, they now saw clearly.
—Taoist Li was gathering the power of all life to stand against the Ghost Dao.
The Ghost Dao was enraged.
The old Fengdu fumed in fury, and waves crashed against the shore as the lake water surged violently, trying to extinguish the rising sphere of light.
But Taoist Li showed no panic.
He simply let out a low chuckle and said, “Fools chasing a hopeless dream!”
“Those people—some are ordinary folk who eat three meals a day, some believe in spirits and gods, and some don’t believe at all. But what they all share is their belief in life.”
He raised his hand and pointed to the glowing orb, shouting, “Even the light of fireflies can become sun and moon—enough to uphold Heaven and Earth!”
“Go—!”
As his words rang out, the sphere of light shot into the sky, tearing through the heavy, dark clouds and soaring toward the heavens.
Even as ghostly energy tried to stop it, nothing could hinder the ascent of the light.
Some of the glowing motes detached from the orb and tangled with the ghost energy, forming a protective barrier around it, ensuring the sphere could rise without resistance.
As the ghostly energy thickened, the struggle grew fiercer. More and more motes peeled off and charged into the darkness without fear, battling the ghosts.
The light sphere grew smaller.
But the next moment, even more motes appeared, joining the orb and making it swell again at an astonishing rate.
Taoist Li looked up at the rising light, a satisfied smile on his face.
Then his expression hardened, and he shouted, “Let me lend you a hand!”
With that, he plunged his hand into his chest, letting more blood spill onto the array, adding new lines and expanding the formation’s power outward in all directions.
The light sphere grew rapidly.
By the end, it could no longer be called a sphere.
—It had become a brilliant rising sun.
No one knew that it had begun as a single flickering firefly in the wind, fragile enough to be snuffed out at any moment.
And yet that sun, after breaking through countless obstacles, now hung high in the sky.
In an instant, the entire Baizhi Lake was bathed in brilliant light.
The evil spirits looked up in shock but saw only the hazy outline of the sun before they shrieked and turned to ash in the scorching radiance.
All the evil spirits hidden within the wooden carvings didn’t even have time to scream before they were devoured by the flames ignited on the wooden bodies, burned to a crisp, reduced to humanoid-shaped pieces of blackened charcoal.
In nearly an instant, all the evil entities on the grounds of Baizhi Lake were swept clean.
The Taoists stood dumbfounded.
But Taoist Li’s face only grew more ashen. His Taoist robe was soaked through with blood, which had been absorbed by the formation.
In the end, even the warmth of his body drained away.
He sat cross-legged in the formation, his expression solemn and dignified, looking up toward the sun wheel in the sky.
Then, Taoist Li smiled faintly.
With great effort, he raised his hand and pointed toward the sky, tilting his head back with loud, unrestrained laughter: “Want to overturn the heavens? Try again after I’m dead, you bastards!”
With a smile still on his face, Taoist Li finally closed his eyes.
His arm fell heavily to the ground.
He remained seated in meditation within the formation, but he was no longer breathing.
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