At this point, more voices piped up from the doorway. “Old man Yanluo, we all followed you up Kunlun Mountain in a collective bid to defeat the King of the Gui, but you stabbed all of us in the back. What do you have to say for yourselves?” It was the Three Pure Ones of Daoism speaking. “The Netherworld’s shamelessness knows no bounds. We know now why you had us all gather atop Kunlun Mountain. You secretly put a mark on each of us to attract the Chaos within the Place of Great Disrespect when it spilled over. You ensured everyone would suffer together! If the Netherworld had even an ounce of conscience, wouldn’t you have kept it securely underground?”
By now, everyone who was anyone seemed to be there, even the Arhats of the West and unaffiliated immortals from all the land.
The Qin’guang King was furious. “The Great Seal splintering is a catastrophe for all Three Realms! Why should the Netherworld bear the burden alone?!”
Saying that was like stirring up a nest of hornets. All the great immortals started to argue within the Yanluo Courts, yelling over each other. At that moment, the black shadow beneath the Wangchuan River rose dozens of meters. Every single oil lamp went dark at once. A scream rang out. “Gui!”
A small group of gui were the first to float out of the water. There weren’t many of them, but their appearance jabbed right at everyone’s tightly wound nerves. And then, as luck would have it, Ghost Face too appeared in the Wangchuan River.
In reality, the Great Seal was on the verge of collapse but had yet to truly break. The current uproar in the Netherworld was due entirely to the fact that Shen Wei had released the bit of Chaos he’d captured into the Yanluo Courts, feeding into Ghost Face’s neurotic paranoia. Shen Wei’s ambiguous comments under the Ancient Merit Tree had made Ghost Face immediately suspect that Shen Wei was conspiring to make use of that scrap of captured Chaos.
Ghost Face had tracked his own trail of Chaos there. The very instant he surfaced from the water and saw the scene onshore, he realized he’d been duped, but it was already too late to leave.
“Chaos King of the Gui!” someone yelled.
The Qin’guang King, who was almost surrounded, immediately took advantage of the situation. “Look! The King of the Gui has already emerged! Is now really the time to debate who’s right and who’s wrong?”
As if on cue, the choir of the Ten Kings rushed to harmonize with him. “If you can all still see the big picture here, then please, let’s set aside our prejudices and band together to deal with the gui!”
In the blink of an eye, Ghost Face was surrounded. He shot several meters higher above the river and whistled. Countless gui answered his summons, bursting forth from the Wangchuan waters. The Chaos that could swallow everything formed a huge blockade behind them. The Yanluo Courts had become a battlefield, inside and out.
Worry for her fourth uncle made Zhu Hong try to join the other yao, but Zhao Yunlan held her back. “Take a good look at the class of fighters out there. Don’t get underfoot, little girl.”
A high-level gui on a killing spree suddenly came dangerously close to Zhao Yunlan. He fired off a shot, but the gui managed to dodge. He was just about to take aim again when a familiar bell rang behind him. Lin Jing, who had been missing for several days, unexpectedly appeared and tossed out several talismans marked with sauwastikas.13
The gui disappeared at once in a curl of black smoke.
Lin Jing dragged Zhao Yunlan toward the secret chamber that held the Soul-Guarding Lamp. “Heads are getting bashed in left and right! What are you two hanging around here for?”
Zhao Yunlan studied him, expression inscrutable. “Were you the one who yelled ‘Chaos King of the Gui’ just now?”
Lin Jing hesitated. “I tried to pitch my voice higher.”
“Pitch your voice higher? I’d know your voice even if it were breaking.” A storm cloud descended on Zhao Yunlan’s face. “Shen Wei, get the fuck out here!”
In response, Shen Wei slowly slipped out from behind the chamber’s massive stone door. He looked far more anxious now than he had a moment ago during all his scheming and plotting.
When Zhao Yunlan’s gaze fell on the crusted blood on Shen Wei’s chest, his fist clenched hard enough that veins popped out on the back of his hand. He looked like he wanted to hit Shen Wei.
Instantaneously, Lin Jing reacted, grabbing Zhu Hong and covering her mouth as soon as Shen Wei appeared. Despite her confusion, he pulled her off to the side.
Zhao Yunlan stayed silent for a long time, and Shen Wei’s anxiety grew by the second. Finally, Zhao Yunlan spoke. “Shen Wei.”
Shen Wei was instantly reminded of Zhao Yunlan’s exhausted words after he’d seen through Shen Wei’s deception in the Great Divine Tree: “If you keep doing this, I’ll really be angry with you.” Panicked, Shen Wei took a step toward him.
“Stay over there,” Zhao Yunlan said, voice very low. “Don’t come over here yet. It’s not time for you to reveal yourself.”
As if frozen, Shen Wei stood stiffly in place.
Zhu Hong, who was still completely in the dark, turned to Lin Jing. “What does he mean, it’s not time for him to reveal himself?” she asked blankly. “Why not?”
“Amitabha, don’t worry about it,” came Lin Jing’s calm response. Zhu Hong shut her mouth.
Zhao Yunlan pointed at the bloody mess on Shen Wei’s chest. “Does it hurt?”
Shen Wei began to nod, but he only made it as far as lowering his chin before pausing and quickly shaking his head. In the end, not knowing how to answer, he could only give Zhao Yunlan a pitiful look.
Sizing up the situation at once, Lin Jing asked, “How could it not hurt? He passed out twice from the pain.”
Zhao Yunlan inhaled sharply, expression dark.
Lin Jing developed a sudden, keen interest in the ongoing battle. He tugged on Zhu Hong’s arm and pointed. “Look, Benefactress, they’re fighting.”
“I hold the power of the mountains and rivers,” Shen Wei hurried to explain. “So in truth, the Mountain-River Awl was always under my control. I arranged for it to appear near Qingxi Village to lure Ghost Face and place a mark on him. Then I tricked him into using the Soul-Tempering Cauldron to summon the Great Merit Brush, leading him to use the Three-Life Rock as the hearthstone for the cauldron on Kunlun Mountain. The only thing he had that was made from the Three-Life Rock was the Reincarnation Dial, and it, along with the Merit Brush, is connected to one of the corporeal souls of every living being. As long as he used the stone from the Reincarnation Dial as the hearthstone, the two would be connected through the Soul-Tempering Cauldron. Meanwhile, the Mountain-River Awl was the best ‘lock’; through the mark I’d left on Ghost Face, the Awl locked onto both the Reincarnation Dial and the Merit Brush at the same time.”
“That means this whole time, Ghost Face has been running around doing all this work for someone else’s benefit. Even the Merit Brush I got then was a dupe, wasn’t it? Which means you already held three of the Four Hallowed Artifacts in your hands,” Zhao Yunlan said slowly. “And on the peak of Kunlun Mountain… When the Netherworld had gathered everyone there, you also left marks on them all, right? That way, as soon as the Chaos beneath the Seal began to leak out, everyone got a taste of it, so no one could escape unscathed—and they’d all think it was the Netherworld’s doing.”
Shen Wei opened his hand, revealing a long strand of hair on his palm. He waved, and the pitch-black hair Zhao Yunlan loved so much floated up before his eyes. A profoundly inauspicious black smoke seeped from it, identical to the Chaos that Ghost Face was collecting.