Chapter 181
Chapter 181
“Ren Yao” summoned the Jade Sword and began battling Master Tianji with magic inside the secret chamber.
At the sight, Yan Zhengchu immediately ran for the exit.
Bai He watched him go, hesitating. But from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of countless ghostly hands swarming out of the nearby cauldron.
His heart quailed. He knew he had no choice but to run.
Yet he had barely turned and taken two steps when wind whistled past his ear.
Then a ghostly hand shot forward like an arrow, piercing his back and bursting through his chest.
Bai He did not even have time to react before he died on the spot.
As he fell, a lozenge-patterned mirror dropped from his body.
The mirror’s surface, covered by a Black Talisman, trembled once and began to crack. In moments, the entire mirror shattered into fragments.
Three figures swiftly emerged from within.
After running out of the secret chamber, Yan Zhengchu could not help glancing back, still worried about Ren Yao and Ren Fengjue.
That one look made him freeze in horror.
A horde of Vengeful Ghosts had appeared inside the secret chamber, each with a grotesque and extraordinary shape.
Realization struck him. The ghosts controlled by Master Tianji’s Ghost-Commanding Art were not ordinary souls. In all likelihood, they were…
The same Vengeful Ghosts once sealed in the Yin Tomb beneath Fu Tower!
Yan Zhengchu was horrified. He then remembered how the Crown Prince had said at the Eastern Palace that a Daoist had broken the seal on the secret chamber…
He had originally suspected that if the Daoist was connected to Mount Yunhe, the matter might somehow involve Martial Uncle Tianwen.
Never had he imagined that this too was an atrocity committed by his own master.
A chill spread through his chest.
By then, the Vengeful Ghosts were already fighting to pour out of the secret chamber. Yan Zhengchu immediately chanted an incantation and closed the stone door, then swiftly bit his finger and used his blood to draw a Soul-suppressing Talisman upon it.
But he knew the talisman could not hold for long. The most urgent task was to protect the people below the peak before the entire horde escaped.
With that thought, Yan Zhengchu dared not linger. He turned and raced away.
In the guest quarters below the peak, Yu Lang had only just begun to feel sleepy when the building shuddered.
He sat bolt upright in fright and shoved Axia, who was sleeping soundly beside him.
Axia slowly woke and rubbed his eyes. “Is it morning?”
Yu Lang climbed out of bed and began dressing. “Stop sleeping. I think something has happened.”
Sure enough, the moment he finished speaking, the door burst open with a bang. Daoist Yan stood at the entrance, his clothes and hair in disarray.
“Young Master Yu, Axia, come with me at once!”
One look at his grim expression told Yu Lang that his guess had been correct. Something must have happened. He hurriedly asked, “Where is Lord Ren?”
Yan Zhengchu had no time to explain. “We have to go now. I will explain later.”
They immediately left the courtyard and gathered in Mount Yunhe’s main hall.
A gilded statue of Mount Yunhe’s Grandmaster stood inside the hall and could suppress evil. Yan Zhengchu had his junior brothers secure the doors and windows, then work together to lay a Yang-Protecting Array around the hall.
Yu Lang hid beneath the statue and watched nervously from the side, all trace of sleep gone. At last, he could not resist complaining to Axia.
“Why are there ghosts everywhere we go? I thought Mount Yunhe would at least be peaceful…”
He was tired. Truly tired.
Axia did not dare relax for even a moment. “If Daoist Yan is this nervous, they cannot be ordinary ghosts…”
“…”
Only after Yan Zhengchu finished setting up the array did he have time to give Yu Lang a brief account of the situation.
Vice Minister Yu’s jaw nearly dropped when he heard. “You mean your master is also…”
Faced with so many pairs of clear, innocent eyes around him, he struggled to swallow the words “a rotten bastard.”
Instead, he asked, “What about Lord Ren? Is he still trapped in the secret chamber?”
“My martial uncle’s soul is protecting him, so he should be safe for now…”
Yu Lang breathed a slight sigh of relief, then thought of someone else. “Then… what about Miss Xia?”
Yan Zhengchu had naturally gone to Xia Ximo’s courtyard, but she was nowhere to be found.
Knowing what she was capable of, however, he was not worried.
“She isn’t in her room, but there is no need to…”
To his surprise, Vice Minister Yu loyally sprang to his feet without letting him finish. “That won’t do. I have to go out and find her…”
Daoist Yan grabbed him and was about to say something reassuring when a gigantic shadow slowly appeared across the doors and windows.
Something was clearly approaching…
At the sight, Yan Zhengchu could barely steady his own heart. Gripping his Jade Sword, he said solemnly, “Young Master Yu, the Vengeful Ghosts have found us. You absolutely cannot leave now.”
From the shadow cast across the doors and windows, Yu Lang could roughly guess that the Vengeful Ghost outside was probably larger than the statue in the hall.
More frightening still, there appeared to be more than one…
Fear struck straight into his heart. He instantly behaved himself and raised no further objections.
The pressure on Yan Zhengchu was immense as well. But with all his junior brothers beside him, he knew that as their senior brother, he could not reveal the slightest fear.
When the Vengeful Ghosts began pounding on the doors and windows, he drew a deep breath and shouted, “Brazen fiends! Mount Yunhe is no place for you to run wild. Are you not afraid of being sealed away again?”
The Vengeful Ghosts outside laughed wildly in response. Their laughter, some deep and some piercing, howled through the night like a maddened gale.
“The old Daoist died long ago…”
“Now Mount Yunhe has nothing but a group of wet-behind-the-ears brats. What is there to fear?”
“Tonight we will raze Mount Yunhe and wipe away our old disgrace!”
“Hahahahaha…”
…
The Vengeful Ghosts continued shouting as they battered the doors and windows with ever greater force.
Standing at the heart of the array, Yan Zhengchu called to his junior brothers, “You remember the incantation for the Yang-Protecting Array, don’t you?”
“We do!”
“Recite it with me!”
“Yes!”
As more than a dozen young Daoists chanted together, golden light immediately enveloped everyone inside the array, forming an unbreakable barrier.
No matter how violently the Vengeful Ghosts attacked, the doors and windows remained intact.
Yan Zhengchu rejoiced inwardly, but did not dare relax in the slightest.
Then all sound outside abruptly vanished, and the enormous shadows on the doors and windows faded with it.
One young junior brother saw this and cried out in delight, “Senior Brother, wonderful! The Vengeful Ghosts were frightened away!”
The other junior brothers immediately stopped chanting and cheered.
Yan Zhengchu was about to warn them not to stop when a thunderous crash erupted. A terrifying force not only shattered the doors, windows, and array, but also knocked everyone in the hall off balance.
Several ghostly figures flooded inside, their sinister laughter ceaseless.
With the array destroyed, Yan Zhengchu hurriedly shielded his junior brothers behind him. But how could he alone withstand so many deeply cultivated Vengeful Ghosts?
He gripped his Jade Sword, ready to fight to the death. Just then, he saw a red figure slowly approaching from outside the hall.