Chapter 25.2 Gilded Baby Corpse 07
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It was nightfall. Chen Yang and Zhang Qiudao sat in the living room of He Tianna’s room, waiting for the sorcerer to arrive.
He Tianna lay alone on the bed in her bedroom, clutching the yellow talisman tightly, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Only a small lamp was lit in the bedroom, casting an eerie and dim light. After a while, she quietly got up and opened the bedroom door slightly. “Master, it seems there’s still no movement.”
Chen Yang turned back. “Not so fast. Go back and continue lying down.”
“Oh,” He Tianna grumbled and went back.
Gao Tianliang clicked his tongue twice. “If I were in her shoes, hiding alone in the bedroom, I would be scared too.”
“Why don’t you go keep her company?” Zhang Qiudao suggested.
Gao Tianliang waved his hands repeatedly. “No, no, if I’m there, what if the sorcerer doesn’t come?”
“That won’t happen.” Zhang Qiudao put away his phone and glanced at the time. “With the ‘buy one, get one’ deal, how could they not come?”
Gao Tianliang: “…”
“Brother Chen, it’s midnight,” Zhang Qiudao said.
Chen Yang nodded. The period from midnight to 2 a.m. was the most sinister and evil time. If that sorcerer wanted to harm He Tianna, it would be during this time. The room was quiet, with only a dim yellow light, giving it an eerie atmosphere.
He Tianna turned onto her side, facing the window. She felt a wave of boredom. Originally, she was quite scared, even with Chen Yang and Zhang Qiudao guarding outside. But after lying there for a few hours with everything calm and peaceful, she no longer felt afraid. In fact, she even wanted to call her friends over to play a game.
Just as she took out her phone and opened the game interface, she suddenly heard the cry of a baby. He Tianna paused for a moment, listened carefully, but heard nothing else. So she continued to focus on the game. The next second, a piercing and mournful cry of a baby burst into her ears.
It was so close, causing a shiver to run down He Tianna’s spine. Her heart leaped into her throat, pounding loudly. A small hand rested on her shoulder, accompanied by a chilling breath. She stiffly turned her head, and in front of her appeared a terrifying baby face, pale and swollen, with white eyes and blackish-purple skin. Its mouth stretched to its ears, revealing a row of shark-like teeth. The sharp cries of the baby emanated from its mouth.
He Tianna reflexively wanted to scream, but she realized that she couldn’t produce any sound no matter how hard she tried. She attempted to move her hands and feet, but they remained motionless. When she looked down, she nearly had a heart attack from fright.
It turned out that her wrists and ankles were tightly gripped by pale ghostly hands, causing sharp pains to shoot through her. She had ignored the pain earlier due to the shock, but now it became unbearable.
However, no matter how much she tried to call for help, she couldn’t make a sound. The little ghost behind her opened its sharp teeth and lunged towards her throat. He Tianna’s pupils contracted, and in a critical moment of life and death, she summoned all her strength and intelligence. She pressed the talisman she was holding onto one ghostly hand, causing black smoke to emit from it. The ghostly hand vanished, and He Tianna seized the opportunity to throw the little ghost away with all her might.
The little ghost let out a thunderous cry of “Waaah!” In the next second, the bedroom door was kicked open, and Chen Yang, holding Zhang Qiudao’s peach wood sword, wasted no time in throwing it towards the little ghost, hitting it right in the throat.
The little ghost let out a wailing cry and transformed into black smoke. The ghostly hands that had been gripping He Tianna suddenly released their hold and retreated under the mattress.
“Thinking of running away?” Chen Yang took out a red string and forcefully dragged those ghosts and spirits out from under the mattress, giving them a beating and tying them together in one go. The ghostly hands, like rubber, was stretched out and thrown on the ground.
Afterwards, he pulled out a willow branch from behind and lashed it three times at the ghostly hands, causing them to shrink one after another. When Chen Yang raised his hand to strike the fourth time, all the little ghosts hidden under the mattress came out, pleading for mercy.
Before him were two young-looking ghosts, each with short and deformed arms. The two little ghosts bowed and kowtowed to Chen Yang, begging him to spare them. They hadn’t committed any evil deeds yet.
Gao Tianliang, puzzled, asked Zhang Qiudao, “Where did Master Chen get the willow branch from? And why use a willow branch?”
Zhang Qiudao: “He plucked it from the courtyard of a household in the evening. Ghosts beateb with willow branches become smaller with each strike. Just now, Brother Chen lashed each of these two little ghosts’ hands three times, and they shrunk three inches each time. If you strike their entire bodies, their entire bodies will shrink by three inches. Don’t underestimate beating the ghostly form. If they can’t recover before reincarnation, no matter what they become, they’ll turn into deformities.”
Gao Tianliang’s eyes sparkled. “The willow branch is so effective?”
“Of course, it’s effective. But not many people can use it,” Zhang Qiudao coldly interrupted Gao Tianliang’s thoughts. “Beating ghosts and killing people both diminishes one’s yin virtue. The underworld keeps track of your accounts. Willow is Yin, and Yin leads to Yang. Not every willow branch can be used to beat ghosts. If not handled properly, it’s not just a minor punishment, but it will directly shatter the ghost’s soul. That will become your karmic debt, recorded in your book of life and death.”
Gao Tianliang awkwardly waved his hand. “I wouldn’t dare to touch a ghost either.”
With one little ghost clinging to his side, it was already terrifying enough. There was no time to hide, let alone willingly approach a ghost.
Tears welled up in He Tianna’s eyes, her heart still trembling with fear. Suddenly, upon seeing Chen Yang and the others, she broke down and cried, “Why did it take you so long to come?”
Gao Tianliang ran to her side and said, “We didn’t hear any noise in the living room. It was Celestial Master Zhang’s compass that alerted us to the problem. The door wouldn’t open, and it took Master Chen some time to forcefully open it. Are you okay?”
He Tianna stopped sobbing and extended her wrists and ankles. “It hurts.”
Chen Yang glanced at the scratches on her wrists and ankles, then turned to Zhang Qiudao. Understanding his intent, Zhang Qiudao took out a bottle of red flower oil from his bag and threw it to Gao Tianliang.
Gao Tianliang: “What is this for?”
“She’s in pain. Can’t you help by applying some oil?” Zhang Qiudao threw a talisman at him as well. “Put it on her to drive away the evil spirits. Fortunately, it wasn’t some fierce and malevolent ghost holding her. Otherwise, we would have had to perform an exorcism.”
Gao Tianliang took the red flower oil and talisman, hesitated for a moment, then pulled out several more talismans from his pocket and handed them all to He Tianna. “Take them all. I… never mind, you can apply them yourself.”
To avoid being accused of taking advantage.
Gao Tianliang had been interested in He Tianna before, but unfortunately, she showed no interest in him and avoided him as if he was a fierce tiger. It made him lose some hope, but just now, He Tianna’s teary-eyed appearance stirred something inside him.
He Tianna whispered, “My hands hurt. Can you help me apply the oil?”
Hearing that, Gao Tianliang’s eyes brightened. He took the red flower oil, gently massaging it into her hands with a delicate touch.
Sensing their mutual interest, Chen Yang turned away and interrogated the two little ghosts, “You should know that causing harm to others makes you fierce ghosts, destined to be sent to the Six Palaces of Luofeng!”
The two little ghosts trembled in fear, pleading incessantly, “We haven’t harmed anyone. To this day, we haven’t harmed anyone. Please, Celestial Masters, understand that it’s because no one has offered us worship for many years, and as wandering souls, we couldn’t resist temptation and strayed onto the wrong path. Fortunately, we were intercepted by Celestial Master, preventing us from committing grave mistakes. We implore the two Celestial Masters to give us another chance and spare us from being reported to the Six Palaces of Luofeng.”
Chen Yang merely wanted to frighten them a bit. “Who instructed you?”
The two little ghosts exchanged glances and then said, “A celestial master.”
“A celestial master? Not a sorcerer?”
“It… doesn’t seem so. We saw him wearing a Celestial Master wooden plaque.” The little ghost hesitated slightly and continued, “To be honest with the two Celestial Masters, that Celestial Master has been buying the loyalty of wandering souls and ghosts near Longdao Ridge for several months now. Some… couldn’t resist the temptation and ended up killing people, becoming fierce ghosts. My brother and I had no choice and didn’t dare to harm anyone. We only assisted from the sidelines on our first attempt.”
“What does he intend to do?”
“We don’t know.”
“Has anything unusual happened at Longdao Ridge recently? Have people died there before?”
“We have only been dead for a little over a decade. People only die when there are plans to develop Longdao Ridge. Otherwise, there are no deaths. But recently, Longdao Ridge… is very dangerous.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain, but we can sense the danger.”
Chen Yang nodded, and the two little ghosts asked with great care, “Master, may we leave?”
“You must not harm anyone. You need to report your sins to the ghost officials,” Chen Yang instructed.
“Understood.”
Chen Yang waved his hand, allowing the two little ghosts to depart. After they left, Zhang Qiudao asked, “Brother Chen, how did you determine that the person who targeted Miss He was a sorcerer?”
Chen Yang handed him the paper talisman he had picked up earlier in the day and said, “Nanyang sorcery. You saw that little ghosts just now. The person who wanted to harm Miss He should be a sorcerer who uses ghost subduing. I just didn’t expect that this sorcerer would have connections with a celestial master, and there’s a good chance they are related to Longdao Ridge.”
The so-called “ghost subduing” referred to the Nanyang’s practice of raising ghosts. It was an eerie technique that involved using special rituals to control malevolent ghosts and corpses to do one’s bidding. Among them, the most ferocious form of ghost subduing was raising little ghosts, which involved using live infants in the process.
During the process, the infants were still alive, but they became something neither human nor ghost, feeding only on blood and displaying savage behavior. Once fully developed, these little ghost sorcerers were known as “blood vampire descents.”
The little ghost that attacked He Tiana earlier was not a fully developed blood vampire descent. Otherwise, He Tiana would not have survived so easily. However, it was likely that the sorcerer who controlled the little ghost had suffered a backlash from Chen Yang’s attack.
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