Chapter 47 Part 1

Wuxian leaned against the wall, her gaze lowered, glancing sideways at the telephone set mounted there. Suddenly, she smiled. Perhaps because her eyes always held such resentment, her smile seemed to contain a thousand bitter sorrows.

In an instant, the black of her pupils expanded, nearly filling the whites of her eyes. It was unmistakably a sign of devilish obsession!

The person on the other end of the line couldn’t possibly sense this and continued, “Come back to Wise City tomorrow. The Five Gates have matters to discuss.”

“Say it over the phone,” Wuxian replied, offering no respect whatsoever.

The person on the other end was silent for a long moment, then ground out, “You are indeed a rare genius among the Five Gates, but you’ve walked the crooked path and refuse to repent. We have resolved to expel you from the Five Gates!”

The bitter smile on Wuxian’s lips vanished completely. Her eyes grew dense with Ghostly Qi, and the previously faint resentment and fury intensified, making her seem once more like a disheartened destroyer of worlds.

“Wuxian, this time it’s not up to you. I will no longer hide your previous acts of Ghost Raising. If there are already signs of backlash from an Evil Spirit on your body, the Five Gates will inevitably capture you alive for purification.”

Wuxian trembled all over, the indignation in her chest like boiling water about to burst the lid off a pot.

Her voice hoarse, she said, “Back then, you were the ones who took away the name that originally belonged to me. I said I would go by the single character ‘Xian,’ and only after you agreed was it written into the family register. Now, you not only want to erase my given name, but you want to capture me!”

“You are the one who keeps making mistakes, time and time again!”

Wuxian drew in a sharp, grating breath, her throat making a rasping sound. Her heart was utterly dead. “You want to strip me of my surname as well, don’t you?”

The person on the other end remained silent for a long time.

“Cross my name out then!” Wuxian raised a hand to cover her pitch-black eyes, lest any passerby see them. “I won’t hide it from you. I spent some time at Ivory Mast Beach. I made some arrangements there.”

“What did you do!” the person on the other end immediately demanded, terrified she had committed some heinous, unforgivable crime.

“I won’t say for now. In a while, you will inevitably find out.” Wuxian hung up the phone, her head bowed, convulsively shuddering as if in a fit.

Someone nearby saw this, assuming she was having an episode, and rushed over frantically, only to see Wuxian raise her head and brush past him with extreme coldness.

Late at night, Wuxian entered Overgrown Mountain again.

Back then, there were no Jiangshi or Plague Ghosts in Overgrown Mountain. It was silent and desolate, only the occasional chirp of insects or cry of a wild beast breaking the quiet.

Wuxian passed the stone platform and headed straight deeper into the mountain. Among the towering, verdant trees that pierced the clouds, she could see a colossal giant.

Looking closer, it wasn’t a giant at all, but a massive stone statue that seemed to prop up the sky.

The statue was dressed in a Buddhist nun’s robe, its eyes wide open, its expression one of cynical misanthropy. Its left hand formed a mudra, and its right hand pointed into the distance—pointing north, unmistakably in the direction of Wise City.

Who would ever erect a statue for themselves? At least, Wu Yinyu had never heard of such a thing.

Near daybreak, the villagers from Ivory Mast Village arrived one after another. Upon reaching this place, they naturally noticed the extra carved characters on the stone platform.

The strokes of those characters were sharp, the engraved marks particularly deep, as if carved in one swift motion by the Lightning Duke and Thunder Mother themselves.

The villagers were never very literate to begin with, let alone with characters that didn’t quite look like those in books. They exchanged puzzled glances, unable to grasp the profound meaning of the words, nor could they figure out who had come in the deep of night to carve these.

They were paid to do a job, so they naturally had to follow orders, knowing what was their business and what wasn’t.

“Boss Wu didn’t ask us to carve any words.”

“Then who carved these?”

“Who would come here in the middle of the night to vandalize the stone platform? Boss Wu will definitely be angry when she sees this.”

“Just yesterday we went back and divided the money, and now this happens. What do we do? Do we have to return the money?”

“But I… I already spent it!”

All the villagers grew frantic. Unable to find Wuxian anywhere, they simply waited there. They had to at least explain themselves.

Someone asked, “Could Boss Wu be deeper in the mountains? She mentioned a few days ago she wanted to personally carve the statue’s eyeballs. I wonder if she’s finished.”

“Then let’s not go looking,” another person held him back. “Boss Wu doesn’t like being disturbed.”

Deep in the mountains, a woman did indeed stand quietly before the stone statue. She wore an earth-colored long robe, turning the Buddhist prayer beads in her hand. Her lips moved slightly, seemingly chanting scriptures to purify her mind and cleanse her thoughts, but in truth, she was reciting a curse.

It was Wuxian!

The moment the curse completed, a thunderous rumble sounded from beneath the stone platform, as if something was about to burst from the earth.

The villagers, mistaking this for an earthquake, turned and ran. Before they could flee the mountain, a tendril of Yin Energy wound around their legs.

The Yin Energy burrowed into the villagers’ backs, blackening their foreheads and forming a seal at the base of their skulls.

A mark resembling a black mole.

Returning to the village, the people realized there had been no earthquake. The tremors had occurred only within Overgrown Mountain; everywhere else had been completely steady.

The villagers thought themselves lucky to have escaped with their lives. No matter how much money Wuxian had given them before, they were now unwilling to enter the mountains again.

But did Wuxian ever intend to let them escape so easily?

Not long after, people in the village began to fall ill. It spread from one to ten, from ten to a hundred. Not just the young adults, but even the elderly and children were bedridden.

Close investigation revealed that the first people to fall sick, without exception, had all entered Overgrown Mountain.

Far from the city, it was agonizingly difficult to even request a doctor. The outcome? The doctor fell ill too.

The few relatively healthy villagers who remained were actually the first to die.

In some households, everyone fell sick. No one survived. Corpse Qi rushed to the sky from those houses, yet no one dared to go and handle the bodies, for fear of catching the accursed disease. The most anyone would do was paste a Calamity Notice on the door to warn passersby to stay away.

If they truly wanted a cure, they needed to know how the disease arose. Since the first batch of sick people had all entered Overgrown Mountain, they had to go into the mountains to investigate.

But who would go?

The villagers shifted responsibility, no one wanting to face death. Yet they couldn’t send the elderly or children. In the end, the remaining young people had to go into the mountains.

Result? Not a single one came back out. All became servile minions of the Jiangshi, walking corpses that just wandered the mountain woods, luring unsuspecting living people inside.

The villagers who died of illness became Plague Ghosts, all swarming towards Overgrown Mountain. An invisible force within drew them, wave after surging wave.

Trapped in the mountains, the Plague Ghosts could only constantly seek substitutes, causing the Yin Energy in Overgrown Mountain to flow endlessly, unceasingly.

And every wisp of that Yin Energy was drawn towards Wuxian’s stone statue. Before long, the pristine white stone became pitch-black and grimy, covered in marks, as if it had weathered countless ages.

Wuxian was clearly using the Plague Ghosts to nourish her own Soul Essence, supplementing Yin with Yin.

As the stone statue was eroded by Ghostly Qi, so too was Wuxian subjected to its backlash. Though still in her prime, her hair was streaked with gray, and even her lips took on the hue of death.

She could no longer be considered human, yet her natural lifespan hadn’t been exhausted, so she couldn’t be called a ghost either.

Dragging this body that was neither human nor ghost, Wuxian descended to the Two-World Sea. As she crossed the Lone Log, the myriad ghosts in the sea fell silent, not a single ghostly hand daring to break the water’s surface.

Passing the Lone Log, she encountered the Nether Guards.

A living person bringing their physical body to the netherworld—the ghost bailiffs had never seen such a thing before.

Should they block her? Naturally. But not a single Nether Guard could stop her.

The Yin Energy emanating from this person was more ferocious and more malevolent than their own, accumulated over centuries as Fierce Ghosts. Her aura was even more imposing than a Judge!

Wuxian climbed the Nether Pagoda and saw a black-faced Judge seated at his desk. No matter what the Judge asked her, desiring what she sought, she didn’t answer a single word.

That Judge, notably, didn’t wear a mask. And by the sound of his voice, he wasn’t the same one currently in charge of the Two-World Sea.

The Judge suddenly raised a hand, intending to force the approaching woman back, but before he could, his own throat was seized, and his ghostly soul and spirit were brutally torn to shreds!

Wu Yinyu watched, drenched in cold sweat. Even with her audacity, she had never imagined Wuxian would commit such an evil act.

Wuxian was… killing a Judge to usurp the seat.

Once the Judge was dead, Wuxian indeed replaced him, sitting steady on the Seat of the Judge, flipping through the Underworld Register on the desk.

Then, she did another thing. From among thousands of wooden drawers, she found one register—a thin volume intimately connected to the Wu family’s lost-and-found daughter.

The register shattered, its pages like white butterflies fluttering to the floor.

She had torn it up.

To tear up the Underworld Register meant that person’s fate was null and void. Their life or death was now entirely at the whim of another.

Having usurped the Judge’s seat and with the ritual platform and stone statue in Overgrown Mountain still standing, Wuxian not only received offerings but also had a ceaseless flow of Yin Energy nourishing her.

She was able to glimpse a spark of Auspicious Light—a light that guided her to a transcendent realm, which was: Wisdom Water Red Mountain.

But the Two-World Sea had to be managed, or chaos would erupt between the Yin and Yang realms. And the question of how Wuxian could “depart” remained a problem.

The Judge she had killed, it turned out, had a brother. Leveraging that Nether Guard’s hatred and fury, she allowed him to slay her with his own hands, finally achieving her ascension.

In this world, hers was a death that was also a birth.

The newly appointed Judge wore a mask, never revealing his true face, because Wuxian had carved the words “God-Killer” upon it!

A brand etched into the soul—how could it ever easily vanish?

Back then, Wuxian held a short, three-inch blade and said with bitter resentment, “Hate me as I hate the world! Let that hatred be engraved upon skin and bone! Let it last to the very end of heaven and earth!”

As her last words fell, her soul fragmented and scattered.

The new Judge’s hatred was monumental. Even killing Wuxian with his own hands couldn’t quell his fury.

And from then on, the Five Gates were forced to repay this karmic debt. Rules were established within the sect: no surnames outside the original family lines could ever again be entered into the Five Gates’ ancestral genealogy book, and the adoption of outsiders was forbidden.

The new Judge, driven by personal vendetta, decided that since they must repay the debt, it would be repaid for generations. As long as the Five Gates’ incense still burned, each generation would be required to leave one soul in the Underworld, toiling until death.

Another cycle of dizzying, spinning chaos unfurled. Colors swirled before her eyes, like vibrant ink splashed across a canvas.

Wu Yinyu suddenly remembered. She had seen Wuxian before—back when Wuxian first entered White Jade Capital.

Wisdom Water Red Mountain truly possessed celestial palaces in the sky. The immortals’ pavilions and terraces stacked high, adorned with rainbow banners and crimson regalia, surrounded by iridescent clouds. Colorful butterflies danced gracefully.

Even the sweet fermented rice in White Jade Capital was delicious—not bitter or sour. Once swallowed, it felt like a cleansing baptism, leaving mind and spirit refreshed.

Carrying a wine jug, feeling light and airy all over, she walked towards Little Enlightenment Ruins, as casually familiar with the route as if heading home.

Little Enlightenment Ruins—the dwelling place of the Buddha. How could it be tainted by the smell of alcohol? Yet she intended to bring that smell there.

A Heavenly Soldier on the road saw her and hurriedly dropped to one knee, performing a grand salute. Looking up, the soldier asked cautiously, “Where is the High Immortal headed?”

“Little Enlightenment Ruins,” Wu Yinyu slurred, drunk, her voice drawn out long.

The Heavenly Soldier panicked immediately, hesitantly stepping in front of her. “But High Immortal, you’ve been drinking. Perhaps… it’s better to go later?”