After a night's rest, we departed from Tie-sha Mountain the following day.
Naturally, we can only return to Si Gui Mountain.
There are no clues about Mao San's whereabouts in the Underworld. I have already contacted Huaiqi and asked her to search for him through the ghost altars in various places.
However, I'm not too hopeful about this.
Of course, we took away the remains of the Bai family. Tie Sha Mountain has no other malice.
There are a few twists and turns in this. One of them is that Wu Jinluan sent all the gentlemen in the Jinniang Mengfu to Tie Sha Mountain.
According to what he said, Liu Taixuan talked to him very well. He hopes that some scholars in the Mountain Gate can help him look for any great feng shui or large tombs in the Ningkong area near Heishui River. If they can find even one or half a preserved feathered corpse, they can extract the corps e'ldrug.
Wu Jinaluan is not a servant of mine; he has his own decisions, which is quite normal.
Secondly, Xiang Kai died in the car when we were taken away. The people of the eight residences didn't notice him, and neither did the people of Tie Sha Mountain. He has now returned to Si Gui Mountain safely.
Thirdly, it is Wu Jinaluan's intention.
He thinks that relying on ordinary people to find Mao You San is an extremely slim possibility.
We should still make good use of Bai family's corpse.
And it's not the corpse taken out of the ancestral temple, but from the Bailang Cave. They also don't want their bloodline descendants to become vicious, right?
In actuality, this doesn't quite count as using it; it's more like helping out the Bai family.
Wu Jinaluan's words are indeed true, but rules are still rules.
I told him to inform the eldest disciple as soon as he gets back, and then take action.
Wu Jinaluan had no objections.
It took two or three days to return to Si Gui Mountain, within the Mountain Gate.
Regarding Han Jing, he appeared very silent and remained in the Shenguan Hall, closing the door and not receiving visitors.
Even I can't manage to retrieve Han Qu's soul.
Fourth Elder, Fifth Elder, and other elders can explain the affairs of Tie Sha Mountain and other things they know to themselves. We don't need to explain it to them.
The return of Bai family's corpse is a major event. Si Gui Mountain will hold a ceremony to bury them or place them in the ancestral temple.
I discussed Wu Jinaluan's idea with He Youtian, and as expected, He Youtian did not refuse.
However, this has encountered a problem.
The corpse no longer contains a soul.
All four corpses have huge openings in them, which are the traces of phantom crawling and the marks left by spirits being forcibly separated.
Wu Jinaluan's opinion on this matter is that over these years, the spirits have been scattered amidst the worms, and people have long been separated from their bodies. They were eaten by Han Jing, and then purified with Tian Gong Spring, which is equivalent to their spirits being scattered and their bones becoming hollow shells.
Without a soul, it is difficult to achieve the effect of finding people. One can only take some parts of the corpse and set up a harsh feng shui to make Wu Binglang uneasy.
He Youtian had no objections to this decision either. All arrangements were handled by Wu Jinaluan.
After that, He Youtian took me to the Dao Hall where the Si Gui Mountain stored its classical books, allowing me to browse through them whenever I was free.
Many things are temporarily put on hold, or forced to be put on hold. When I have nothing else to do, I can only browse through the classical books here to deepen my understanding of the Yin-Yang realm and various Taoist temples.
Yes, I did one more thing, which was to contact Huaiying, advising her to be careful.
There wasn't much to say between the two of them; everything was understood without words.
In a flash, such peaceful days passed by in just over a month.
From the classical books of Si Gui Mountain, I learned about something called 'exit yinshen', or bringing out the yin spirit.
It is a profound realm before the emergence of the yang spirit. Actually, one might not call it profound either; when the yang spirit emerges, it necessarily rises to the nine heavens. But when the yin spirit emerges, it can return.
The transition of yin spirit to yang spirit is also a form of torture. The body must be incinerated, all the yin qi must be burned away, leaving only pure yang qi. This form of suffering is quite terrifying.
It is even more painful than the process of directly transforming into a yang spirit and dissolving.
Of course, the burning doesn't just refer to fire. The excessive flow of zhensha qi can also be considered a form of burning.
Therefore, I can judge that Ding Ruipu was then using that method to let herself out of the yin spirit. She might have been close to the realm, but she was killed by me due to a misunderstanding and also because of my use of Gao Tianjian to pour into her mouth, forcing her to undergo the process of burning away her yin qi. She managed to survive this ordeal and did not lose her soul in the process. So due to a misunderstanding, she became a yang spirit.
This is also why Ding Ruipu did not seek revenge on me.
If it were just to kill her, she wouldn't have been killed. A living person's body can only be transformed into feathers, and death is impossible.
She would have been haunting me endlessly, and a yin spirit is quite terrifying. Its thinking mode is also completely different from that of a normal person. A soul drowned in yin qi can have what good thinking?
This is fate, and it's also like Ding Ruipu's opportunity.
Therefore, Ding Ruipu helped me.
Saving my life is the last favor I can repay her. She left only after that, probably to find people from the Ding family or to wander around, experiencing the height and loneliness of emerging as a yang spirit.
I made an inference.
I deduced that Mao San should be using the souls in his possession to control those real people's bodies through various methods, creating yin spirits and then controlling them to complete what he referred to as "that important matter."
Emergence of yin spirit...
He himself may be an emerging yin spirit. That's why we didn't see him do anything, yet he caused severe harm to Bai Zhi.
This realm is quite distorted, it's hard to evaluate how much stronger it is than a true person, but it's enough to change Mao San's actions and everyone's perception of him.
Indeed, he is a scholar.
A scholar should not have much ability, relying on feng shui arrays, fortune-telling, and strategizing from afar to win battles.
Mao San, he has all the abilities of a scholar, knows the fate of the world through half a divination, and has another ability - his true arrogance and capital of pride, which is himself!
Who could have anticipated that a scholar would suddenly emerge as a yin spirit and give you a fatal blow?
That night, Old Gong was still nowhere to be found, as he had gone to meet Sister Lu in secret.
Here is a twist in the story. It happened that Sister Lu came to find me and gave me a pair of white-soled, black-faced shoes.
That wasn't for me; it was for Old Gong.
That shocked me for a long time.
But then, I realized it was natural.
Putting aside the ugliness of Old Gong, when he is serious, his knowledge is several times more than Wu Jinaluan's, making him a high-level scholar. Now that he has become a true ghost at the level of a real person, he must have created some attractiveness. Sister Lu, an ordinary middle-aged female Taoist practitioner, changing her views about him is quite natural.
"Little elder, Master Han Jing wants to see you." A young Taoist stopped in front of me, breaking my train of thought.
I happened to be coming out of the Hall where the classical books are kept, and stopped in front of him.
"I will go, I know," I replied calmly.
After that, I went to the Lingguan Hall.
Once upon a time, the Lingguan Hall was where Zheng Rencun lived. In fact, this was also the residence of the true master himself. He Youtian never lived here; instead, he went to the poor Six Palace and held meetings in the Upper Palace.
This is the difference between him and Zheng Rencun.
Perhaps there are some internal grudges, as this Lingguan Hall had harbored the deadly weapon that killed the Si Gui Taoist for a long time, and it had been imbued with Zheng Rencun's aura for a long time. He didn't want to be reminded of all that?
The peach grove outside was rustling with the wind, making a rustling sound.
The hall inside was very quiet, and there was a cushion below the statue of the deity. Han Jing sat quietly, his back as straight as anyone else's, but his smooth head had never grown any hair.
I felt a sense of loneliness from him.
The Lingguan Hall is very quiet.
There are no young Taoists at ordinary times.
Nor are there... elders.
This matter, He Youtian has mentioned it to me before.
Han Jing's existence indeed had no objections from the elders. On the surface, the elders also agreed with him, but only because of one reason.
Si Gui Mountain lacks enough real people, but Han Jing is strong.
However, some of Han Jing's behaviors have been reported to him by Kuo Hui. They were all discussed with He Youtian.
He Youtian relayed it to the elders, of course, everything about Wu Ling was hidden.
Han Jing's mischievous nature and his approach to many things have led the elders to believe that Han Jing can only remain at Si Gui Mountain, even going to the Ancestral Temple.
If he were to leave, it would inevitably cause harm to Si Gui Mountain, even possibly leading to a disaster.
Exactly for this reason, over this long period of time, no elder has ever come to see Han Jing, let alone the etiquette of bowing.
Han Jing is a lone wolf.
He has long been out of touch with Si Gui Mountain.
"They think I am a sinner, so for all these years since I returned to the mountain, I don't know what has happened. I tried to find an elder, but the elder had something urgent to do. Then I found a disciple of Taoism, who knew nothing. He Youtian avoids seeing me deliberately. Luo Xianshen, what have you done about this?" Han Jing didn't turn around; he quietly asked me.
