Chapter 68: The Turbulent Shoal, the Heterogeneous Stream

Inside a secluded monk’s chamber, three or five itinerant cultivators had gathered, almost all of them practitioners of the second stage.

“Aren’t you going out?” A burly monk, who was lodging in the courtyard, sprawled lazily on his couch and drawled, “Doesn’t it seem a bit disgraceful for us to act this way?”

A bearded Daoist, his eyes half-closed, sneered coldly. “The venerable Master Da has perished. Among this whole courtyard of monks, is there anyone left worth currying favor with?”

“Not going, not going. The night is too dark, the fog too thick; you can’t see a thing. Whoever wants to go can go,” another wanderer yawned, hugging a wine gourd.

Three young acolytes gathered around a woman, whispering, “Sister Mei, are they afraid of the monsters outside?”

The bearded Daoist shot them a fierce glare. “Children, let me teach you something: when you’re out in the world, what you encounter might not be monsters at all. It could be the mount of an immortal, or a foreign guardian spirit.”

“I understand now,” one of the boys nodded in sudden realization, then quickly hid behind the woman and shouted, “You’re just afraid of offending people!”

“Haha!” The bearded Daoist was not angered. Stroking his beard, he laughed heartily. “What a clever child. Yes, I’m terrified of offending people—terrified to death! Ha ha...”

But his laughter only made the children more uneasy; they fell silent and didn’t dare say another word.

The large monk, hearing the commotion outside, turned to the wanderer with the wine gourd and asked impatiently, “What’s really going on out there?”

The wanderer hiccupped tipsily. “The ones dying are all first-stage cultivators, and a few disreputable practitioners of forbidden arts.”

“So the killer up there is acting with purpose, sowing chaos in the monastery,” the bearded Daoist mused, eyes closed. “Could it be for the remaining relic—the bone sarira?”

The burly monk rubbed his greasy chin, shook his head, and pondered a moment. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s too dark, the fog too thick—let’s wait a while longer… just a while longer.” The wanderer hugged his wine gourd and feigned sleep, his ears twitching as he listened for any sound from outside.

“The noise has stopped.”

Suddenly, the wanderer spoke.

“Who will go take a look?” The bearded Daoist’s gaze landed on the woman surrounded by the children. Stroking his beard, he suggested, “How about you, Madam Zhang? You’re a disciple of the Spirit Medium and a member of the Panhu Sect. If that flying centipede was sent by one of your own, you could plead our case.”

“Exactly!” Two other Spirit Medium disciples chimed in, “Your master must have given you some treasures. It’s time you took responsibility.”

A smile played on Madam Zhang’s lips; her eyes glimmered with amusement.

“You want to see my treasures, do you?” Her arm snaked out, boneless and sinuous, in an instant stretching across to the Spirit Medium disciple who had spoken, seizing their face in her grasp.

Within her palm, a centipede twisted, its bloody jaws gaping as it crawled into the disciple’s eye socket, clutching the eyeball tight.

The disciple clutched their eye, sweating and shivering in pain. “Secret Serpent Body—you’ve actually practiced a second secret technique.”

With a sudden bang, the door swung open. A monk’s shaven head appeared outside, his gaze wrathful as a thunder god.

“As expected, you’re all heretical riffraff—ungrateful jackals, hiding away for your own safety, caring nothing for your late master’s—”

But before he could finish his furious tirade, the bearded Daoist burst out laughing. The monk paused, and in that instant, a flash of blade swept across his neck, severing his head in one clean stroke.

“Never one to purify the heart—only to kill and behead,” the bearded Daoist remarked as he stroked his beard. Just then, a cold, ghostly green light pierced through the air with a howling wind, illuminating him so starkly that every detail was laid bare.

He froze, lips pressed tight, while the others tensed, not daring to move. Only after a long while did the jade bead of light dart away.

Above the monastery, Ji Ming’s rampage had not drawn out a single second-stage cultivator to slay monsters and exorcise demons. It turned out they were all hiding in a single monk’s chamber.

Soaring amid the clouds, Ji Ming soon understood these people’s hearts. After all, they were only human—none would act until they had measured the threat for themselves.

They were waiting, no doubt, to discern his true strength before daring to emerge.

On one hand, he had indeed sown chaos, giving the Three Ghosts of Fortune ample opportunity to work. On the other, he still wanted to find a solitary second-stage wanderer in the monastery to test his skills against.

As for those like Lord Chi Yi or Wen Daoyu, he would not dare risk a direct confrontation. Only these wandering cultivators had courage but no true art—a perfect target to test himself.

Time was running short. Ji Ming conjured up a baleful wind, snuffing out the fires rising in the monastery and slaying several petty thieves who had taken advantage of the chaos.

After all, the approaching consecration still required the bone sarira of Master Da.

If the monastery were to burn because of his plundering, he feared the sarira, being a spiritual relic, would not serve his designs.

Once the flames were out, Ji Ming wasted no time. He pocketed the Heart-Gathering Pearl and flew away.

Next destination—the Fox Shrine.

...

Within the mountains, at the Fox Shrine burial grounds.

Here, wild grass grew rampant, brambles choked the earth, and crooked, slanted tombstones dotted the landscape. Torn shrouds poked from the soil, and tattered prayer flags, battered by the wind, leaned askew against the graves, as if silently attesting to the desolation.

Scattered bones, exposed atop earthen mounds, were mottled and worn from wind and rain. Occasionally, flies would alight upon them, their faint buzzing the only sound.

A strangely-shaped, charred corpse altar stood erect, half-collapsed, with heaps of cremated ash seeping into the ground, leaving vast swathes of blackened filth.

Ji Ming arrived, cradling his pearl.

Here, traces of the Fox Shrine’s illusions were already fading, the burial mounds looming amid the forest like a mirage.

Cautiously, Ji Ming flew a circuit inside and outside the shrine, wary of running into Hu Tuer, who had just finished her trials in the bamboo grove—he wanted to avoid unnecessary trouble.

Satisfied that there were no signs of foxes or humans, he placed the ancestral tablets on the ground. Soon, a cold wind swept up, swirling jewels into a small pile.

The Three Ghosts drifted in and out of the chill wind, clearly exhausted, yet none dared ask Ji Ming for more rewards.

“Here you go!”

Ji Ming produced three talismanic offerings. With a snap of his will, they ignited, and the Three Ghosts eagerly leaned in, inhaling the flames with relish.

“Not much left in the reserves,” Ji Ming mused as he wandered the burial ground. Most of these bones were leftovers from his last ritual here; the quality of the corpses was mediocre at best.

He would have to make do for now—better materials weren’t easy to come by at the moment.

No, wait—there was one other place: the spot where Lady White Bone had fallen. That place… those memories reached back ages, to his previous life.

Ji Ming decided to relocate, though he would not let this place go to waste.

Hoisting the paired scythe-legs from his segmented body, he began collecting skulls from the scattered remains.

“Let’s go!”

With a heap of skulls in tow, Ji Ming signaled the Three Ghosts to help carry the treasure to another location. Sated from their recent meal, they let out low whines and set to work.

By the riverside, in a tangled, shadowy thicket, Ji Ming descended. His flight had grown ever surer, ever swifter.

He had only been here once before, with Mouse Four. They had barely caught a glimpse from afar before a bolt of heavenly lightning sent them fleeing.

The forest was dim, the interwoven branches blotting out all sunlight, but Ji Ming could already sense faint tendrils of yin energy.

He recalled Mouse Four once saying that abandoned infants often drifted here, collected by Lady White Bone, who sought to forge a forbidden artifact from their remains.

“Light!”

After some time, he spotted a shaft of sunlight ahead, diffusing in the gloom.

Drawing closer, he found a shallow, scorched pit, scattered with fragments of bone. Ji Ming picked up a finger bone—this, surely, had belonged to Lady White Bone, struck down by lightning.

A chill wind swept across the ground, stirring heaps of decaying leaves. In Ji Ming’s ears, the wind became children’s laughter.

“Cluck, cluck, cluck—”

The laughter was clear and innocent, yet it only made Ji Ming more tense.

He followed the source of the wind and came upon three or four tiny towers of stacked bones.

Each tower was a triangular pyramid, formed by the dried, withered corpses of infants, knees drawn to chests, and at the apex of each tower, a talisman was affixed to the child’s forehead.

“Cluck, cluck, cluck—”

“Did you come to see me?”

“To see me.”

“It’s me.”

“Hurry… look at me.”

The childish voices, once sweet, grew eerie and rough, finally turning into commands for Ji Ming.

The chill wind became a gale, whipping the bright yellow talismans atop the bone towers.

The spirits of the abandoned infants were trying to tear away the talismans, to break their seals and free themselves—so they could draw the centipede spirit into sharing their fate.

“All right, all right!” Ji Ming raised the White Bone Heart-Gathering Pearl, laughing. “Good children, don’t be anxious. Grandpa will come and see each of you—one by one.”