Chu Shuzhi and Daqing didn’t know what the Great Houtu Seal was, and Shen Wei spoke so calmly that he might’ve been talking about a button having fallen off a shirt—a few easy stitches and it would be back in place. They started to relax.
Zhao Yunlan, on the other hand, gave him a thoughtful glance. To anyone who didn’t know better, Shen Wei generally came across as someone who was always composed, who knew his limits and never crossed the line…but in reality, not a single thing about him was inside the line. Zhao Yunlan was fairly confident about what was actually going on here: Shen Wei had already gotten what he wanted, and as a result, he was probably completely at ease now. He might not care at all about the Great Houtu Seal at this point; Zhao Yunlan suspected he might not even care about his own life or death.
“I suppose the Netherworld must be in complete chaos right about now.” Shen Wei smiled as he spoke, then realized he was perhaps letting his schadenfreude show a little too blatantly. As that was a bit ill-mannered, he wiped the smile off his face and quietly cleared his throat. “No matter. Everyone, follow closely behind me.”
Chu Shuzhi and Daqing deserted their boss at once, opting instead to stick close to the boss’s mighty “wife.”
Meanwhile, Zhao Yunlan had a vague sense of foreboding. At first, when he’d casually handed this life-lending case off to Lin Jing, he hadn’t given it too much thought. But thinking back on it…wasn’t “life-lending” what had set off the Reincarnation Dial case?
And the Reincarnation Dial was in Ghost Face’s hands.
The Great Seal was weakening. It could still hold back most of the gui, but it could no longer contain the Chaos King of the Gui. Three of the Four Hallowed Artifacts had already appeared, and while their side didn’t have possession of the Reincarnation Dial, they had both the Mountain-River Awl and the Merit Brush. Trouble was, the Four Pillars were like four legs: not all four needed to be destroyed to bring down the entire Seal. If the gui could knock out two of the four legs, that would be enough.
The critical question, then, was the location of the Soul-Guarding Lamp. But who had the first clue as to where the mysterious lamp of legend might be?
As they headed in through the pedestrian walkway by the main gate, the thick stench of death hit them in the face. Daqing’s fur stood on end. The Soul-Guarding Whip surreptitiously twined down Zhao Yunlan’s arm, its tip peeking out near his wrist. With his other hand, Zhao Yunlan felt for the little dagger hidden in his sleeve.
From Zhao Yunlan’s perspective, the Spring Harbor Resort was essentially a dangerous trap. Lin Jing’s video hadn’t shown him going inside. Lin Jing’s level of caution and care meant there was no way he’d go into such an ominous, menacing environment alone without contacting the team first.
Something must’ve misled or even coerced him, stripping him of his senses before he even set foot inside. Even as a direct descendant of Bodhidharma himself, Lin Jing still wouldn’t be able to withstand the force of the brutality erupting from thousands of chi below the Huangquan River when the Great Seal cracked open.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill him directly, though? Who were they trying to lure here by keeping him…? The Soul-Guarding Order? Shen Wei?
The charming little path was completely empty. Every building was eerie and vacant, inhabited by not even the shadow of a ghost. Somewhere along the line, Shen Wei’s black robes had manifested, and in response to something, the Soul-Executing Blade was already in his hand. The footfalls of three people and a cat seemed unusually loud on the empty path; the carrying sound only contributed to the indescribably creepy atmosphere.
The setting sun hung on the horizon, but its light was no longer a warm reddish orange. A dull, bloody red reminiscent of the color on the cheeks of paper dolls at funeral stores, it gave off a chilly glow. The light dragged their shadows on the ground, turning their silhouettes disturbingly long and dark.
Zhao Yunlan gave the black cat a sudden nudge away with his foot and took a huge stride forward. Before he even turned, he was already holding his dagger up to the middle of his back. There was a tooth-grinding clang as youchu fangs met the steel blade. The youchu lost a few teeth, and a crack appeared in the steel.
With all his weight on one foot, Zhao Yunlan was about to pivot and strike the beast again when sheer horror suddenly spread across the youchu’s face. Its hideous form was sucked into Shen Wei’s palm like a deflating balloon. Countless bells rang out at once in the distance as a black mist rose half a meter high on the little resort’s clean roads.
There was a sharp yowl as the black cat shot up to Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder. Pustule-ridden hands were reaching up from below the ground!
Youchu had climbed onto the roof at some point, materializing the way zombies would suddenly appear behind people in the movies. There was a whoosh as one jumped down and clamped huge claws down on Chu Shuzhi’s head. The youchu opened its mouth to bite down. In an instant, Chu Shuzhi’s stick-thin hand turned as hard as stone and, as if competing with the gui to see who was crueler, he punched directly through the youchu’s throat. It staggered back a few steps, then toppled to the ground. Before it even breathed its last, countless other gui of even more bizarre shapes threw themselves at it, devouring it down to the last scrap in the blink of an eye.
Still more gui climbed out of the ground, each uglier than the last. The corner of Shen Wei’s eye twitched. He had been born a gui, and his deep-rooted loathing for his own kind only deepened as they dared to appear in front of Zhao Yunlan. He drew his blade.
Zhao Yunlan hurriedly said, “Shen Wei, hold on. This doesn’t seem like—”
But it was too late. The Soul-Executing Blade grew several meters, effortlessly cutting down countless gui. Shen Wei’s expression was glacial. With a flip of his wrist, the blade pressed down with thousands of tons of pressure, far too sharp for anything to block. He split the thick black mist beneath the resort with one swing, and it dispersed before disappearing entirely. Then the blade struck the ground, opening a long, narrow crack dozens of meters deep. A bloodcurdling scream rang out. Shen Wei glared viciously down into the fissure. “Get the hell out here!”
With the astounding force and lightning speed of his attacks, it wasn’t until then that Zhao Yunlan, who was not even five steps away, finally managed to grab his arm and hold him back. “This doesn’t look like the Great Seal breaking! I think it’s some distorted kind of Ghost Army Summons! Don’t do anything rash!”
Laughter echoed from all around them before he was even done speaking. “Yes,” a voice said. “Too bad the Guardian’s brain and mouth aren’t as fast as the Lord Emissary’s blade.”
The crack Shen Wei had opened started to break further apart. Shen Wei caught hold of Zhao Yunlan and held him close; Chu Shuzhi and the black cat landed on the other side of the rapidly widening gap. In no time at all, it was too wide to even see the people on the other side.
There was a muffled grunt from Shen Wei as his hand, which had a firm hold on Zhao Yunlan, seemed to be dragged away. A ball of black mist wrapped around his arm with the stickiness of cobwebs.