Chapter 23

The ice-blue eyes were like a snow lake under a clear sky, but they were utterly incongruous with her body, clad in a magnificent palace gown, creating a horrifying, jarring grotesqueness. The iron chains clanked with a heavy, primal sound as the Nine-Tailed Fox stirred. The talismans emitted a dazzling golden radiance that clashed fiercely with the surging demonic energy. The scent of blood grew thicker, and the blood seeping from the severed tails quickly dyed the ground red.

Xie Chaoyun met that pair of eyes. A thousand years seemed to dissolve between them. Yet this reunion was far too cruel, so much so that the ghostly aura around Xie Chaoyun roiled erratically, her ghastly face seeming stained with blood, like a Ferocious Ghost bursting with resentment.

“You’ve come?” A voice rang out. The talismans on the chains tangled with the rampant demonic energy, but in the end, the demonic energy gained the upper hand, suppressing the piercing golden light. Yet Tushan Yi neither attacked nor attempted to break free of her prison. She merely channeled that bit of demonic energy into herself, slowly subduing the demonic aspects of her body and transforming into a stunning beauty. Nine soft, fluffy fox tails swayed gently behind her, but this illusion masked an extremely bloody reality beneath.

“How did it come to this?” Xie Chaoyun’s voice was tragic, trembling with a terror even she was unaware of.

“Isn’t this what you asked for?” Tushan Yi gazed at Xie Chaoyun and smiled softly. “You’re in ghost form now. Once you entered the cave, every talisman could act on you. How long can your Merits sustain you?”

“No, it’s not—” Xie Chaoyun seemed not to hear the last sentence. She stumbled back a step, immersed in her own thoughts. Back then, they had only said “seal and suppress.” Who severed her nine tails?

“Not what? To sever my nine tails, to try and dissect my inner core—this is what you, Xie Chaoyun, wanted! Otherwise, guess why you didn’t scatter and vanish completely, but remained as a ghost spirit in the human world, your soul residing in Soul-Nourishing Wood? You are truly the epitome of hypocrisy.” Tushan Yi’s tone abruptly turned shrill and piercing. She suddenly stood up. The chains behind her rattled violently. The power within the talismans was stimulated to a deeper level, transforming into a golden Eight Trigrams diagram pressing down upon her. The previously overflowing demonic energy gradually condensed and contracted. In mere moments of conflict, Tushan Yi could no longer maintain her human form, turning into a pitiful Nine-Tailed Fox with severed tails, barely clinging to life.

This was the second time Xie Chaoyun had seen Tushan Yi’s true form, but its aura seemed vastly different from before, carrying an added sense of illusion and unreality.

The first time was in the Qi Palace. The demon-subduing Daoist Wang had lived up to expectations and subdued the Nine-Tailed Fox. She had wanted to hold that pitiful-looking little white fox then, but that impulse had quickly been suppressed by reason. Now, after a thousand years apart, the gulf between human and demon had turned into one where both demon and ghost were aberrations.

The piercing howls turned into faint, mournful whimpers.

Xie Chaoyun’s emotions were beyond control. She neared the dark, sunken pool, and the golden light on the altar abruptly burst forth, more ferocious than ever before! The golden light tangled with the demonic energy and ghostly energy, and upon collision, erupted into a shower of flying sparks that quickly swept in all directions. Fu Er couldn’t dodge in time, and with a hiss, was consumed by the flames.

Fu Juan was piling stones into an altar to set up an array.

Suddenly, she looked up, a strange light flashing in her eyes. She used her Seven Star Sword to flick a nearby stone into place, and the simple, imperfect altar—missing one corner—was complete. Sitting in her wheelchair, she found it impossible to walk the Pace of Yu. Instead, she cut another gash on her hand and used her own blood to complete the step of communicating with the heavens. She took out a talisman, formed a hand seal, and chanted: “Thunder-Fire envoys, a million azure dragons. Rumbling thunderbolts, speedily enter this talisman. Swiftly, swiftly, by the command!” With a loud, sharp crackle, the talisman ignited spontaneously. Long, drawn-out dragon roars resonated as a dragon silhouette materialized and shot swiftly toward the cave!

Jiang Yiguang stood nearby, her ears buzzing from the dragon’s roar. She stared at Fu Juan, dumbfounded, until she saw Fu Juan spit out a mouthful of blood. Only then did she suppress her shock. She frowned and instinctively walked toward Fu Juan, the overwhelming concern nearly spilling from her chest. But the moment she opened her mouth, she became vigilant again. This concern… she didn’t know if it came from the control of fate or from herself. Fearing manipulation by an intangible external force, Jiang Yiguang chose to take a deep breath and suppress all her surging emotions.

“What happened?” Wang Xuanming abruptly turned to Fu Juan, the shock in his eyes no less.

Fu Juan said coldly, “The ghost has turned into a Ferocious Ghost.”

Wang Xuanming shivered at her words!

Jiang Yiguang listened intently to their conversation. When she heard the word “ghost,” she couldn’t help but think of Xie Chaoyun. If it was a “ghost,” it could only be that Empress Wenzhao from a thousand years ago, right? But didn’t she have Meritorious Golden Light on her? How could she suddenly turn into a Ferocious Ghost? As Jiang Yiguang was wondering, Fu Juan’s voice rang out again.

“She’s a ghost body, separated from the world of the living. Xuanmen talismans subdue demons and eradicate evil; they also subdue and suppress ghosts. Every time, she used her Merits to offset the impact. Once the Merits on her are gone, only a ghost body remains. I just don’t know what inside there made her turn ferocious.” Fu Juan frowned.

“The Nine-Tailed Fox?” Jiang Yiguang interjected. From that illusion, one could see the relationship between the two wasn’t pure. “Where emotion runs deep,” it was very easy to stir the heart’s inner demon. Or perhaps there was a trap within the cave itself? Her one sentence had given Xie Chaoyun the idea to enter the cave—was this fate forcibly steering things, forcing everything into the plot’s trajectory?

Fu Juan neither confirmed nor denied. Her face was ashen, like paper. But at that moment, she didn’t stop her actions. She employed the Daoist art of Scatter Beans to Form Soldiers. This technique was one of the Thirty-Six Heavenly Stars methods. As soon as the four talisman beans hit the ground, they transformed into four Yellow-Scarf Divine Soldiers, each wearing a yellow scarf and armor, wielding weapons with wrathful expressions. They nodded toward Fu Juan and then strode rapidly into the cave!

Wang Xuanming wasn’t idle, either. He slapped a talisman, and his ritual sword shot out like a beam of light, straight into the dark cave. Although Jiang Yiguang despised Wang Xuanming, she had to admit, as the favored junior among the Wang clan’s younger generation, he had some real skill. This Flying Sword technique spanning a thousand li wasn’t something just anyone could perform.

Compared to Fu Juan and Wang Xuanming, who had studied the Dao for years, she, Jiang Yiguang, truly seemed like dead weight, a side character easily cannon fodder.

If her heart hadn’t been clouded, could she have stood alongside Fu Juan and the others now? A sudden competitive drive surged within Jiang Yiguang. Standing within the ritual altar, she strained to recall the steps recorded in the Daoist scriptures and tried to form a hand seal and cast a spell. It was embarrassing; she stumbled midway through the steps, but the talisman pinched between her fingers suddenly burst into a ball of scarlet fire, instantly burning to ash. Yet from the ashes, a force shot out like an arrow loosed from a bow—it was the power of the Evil-Subduing Incantation.

Jiang Yiguang’s face lit up. She secretly thought that she, too, had an affinity with the “Dao.”

Fu Juan’s gaze was fixed straight ahead. She silently lowered her hand seal.

Blood dripped onto the black handle of the wheelchair, but the cave was too dark for anyone to see.

“Thump, thump, thump—”

Muffled sounds came from far away, drawing nearer. The baleful energy and eerie chill swept toward them like a gale.

The three of them broke out in cold sweat on their backs, their hearts, beating erratically, suddenly clenching tight!