Chapter 286: Ye Bing

"Dead?" If I could eliminate Lu Xing's right-hand man right here, my odds of winning tonight would drastically increase.

The bullet passed right through his body. There was no horrific scene of his cranial cavity exploding as I had imagined.

His flesh and blood were still intact. The bullet had passed straight through Qiu Ren's cheek as if it hadn't touched him at all.

"Gao Jian! Get back, this is an evil arts array!" Daoist Priest Xianqing's willow branch whipped the ground in front of me, splashing muddy water to stop my advance.

I steadied my arm and kept firing. This time I aimed for Qiu Ren's heart, but the outcome remained exactly the same.

"Is the Qiu Ren standing in front of me just a phantom?"

I had seen the array laid out around Qiu Ren used by Zichou in a nightmare. Three Infants Spirit Gathering could draw in all the Yin energy within a hundred meters for his own use.

My Chasing Eye swept over the three infant skulls arrayed in front of Qiu Ren. They were crystal clear and exquisitely smooth, looking nothing like mortal objects.

"What is he doing?"

Standing in the center of the array, Qiu Ren acted as if he didn't recognize me at all, focusing entirely on manipulating the formation.

"Daoist Priest Xianqing, how did you run into him?" The situation was too chaotic to read, so I could only ask him directly.

He stood at the edge of the Three Infants Spirit Gathering array, stepping carefully as he tried to inch his way inside. "I have no grudge against this man. Blame it on my habit of meddling. I saw that little girl being tortured and in mortal danger, so I tried to pull her from the fire. But who could have guessed this evil cultivator would be so bizarre, cunning, and powerful? We fought to a standstill, and in the end, he used a Mara Mirror Ghost to swap out his true body and lure me into the array."

"A Mara Mirror Ghost?" I hadn't realized Mirror Ghosts were divided into so many categories. Mara seemed to refer to certain Indian supernatural entities. "Daoist Priest, how can I help you break out of this?"

It was obvious Daoist Priest Xianqing was in a bad spot. I paced back and forth outside the Three Infants Array.

"Don't panic. I've already located the array core. It will only take the time it takes to drink a cup of tea to break it. However, this array was laid down a long time ago and has gathered a substantial amount of Yin energy. I still don't know his true objective, and I'm afraid that breaking the array now might prematurely release some vicious entity."

The primary function of the Three Infants Spirit Gathering Formation was to accumulate Yin energy and convert it into pure baleful aura. Back in the nightmare, Zichou had also set up this array to use a Deity-Inviting Talisman. Thinking about it now, Qiu Ren's purpose for establishing this array had to be similar to Zichou's.

Looking inside the array, despite what the priest said, there was no one else present apart from the Qiu Ren manifested by the Mirror Ghost and that voluptuous woman dressed in mourning clothes.

"Who is he gathering all this Yin energy for?" I used my Chasing Eye to observe closely. Although there were a few Black Talismans pasted on the Mara Mirror Ghost, their strokes were very simple; at best, they could only be considered Lesser Vehicle Talisman Paper.

"The Mirror Ghost's existence is solely to maintain the array. The problem probably lies with that woman."

Keeping Jiang Chen in a chokehold, I dragged him around to the other side of the array. When we caught sight of the voluptuous woman's profile, both of us hesitated for a moment before saying in unison, "Ye Bing..."

The woman was wearing an ordinary nightgown underneath, but mourning clothes and hemp cloth had been forcibly layered over it.

Her once-delicate face was collapsed in the mud, pale and stained with dirt.

The heavy rain blurred her vision, but she still spotted me and Jiang Chen immediately.

She tried to sit up but couldn't muster an ounce of strength. Paralyzed in the muddy water, her face soaked by the rain, she opened her mouth and mouthed a word, seeming to form the name Gao Jian.

The mouth movements for my name and Jiang Chen's name were completely different. Both of us saw this clearly.

The torrential rain drenched everyone, just like it had five years ago.

Qiu Ren, who had been ignoring me all along, finally raised his head. His face was cold and deathly pale; from my angle, he looked incredibly eerie.

"Gao Jian, you really did chase us here. Lu Xing was right. You are very smart and very decisive, but that happens to be your biggest weakness." The Qiu Ren manifested by the Mirror Ghost spoke word by word like a machine, without a single pause in between, sounding incredibly bizarre.

"You were able to find this place because of this, right?" Qiu Ren pulled out a bug from his pocket that looked like a silkworm, only much smaller. "The Mother-Child Gu. That Gu master from Miaojiang planted this on Lu Xing. When he handed this thing over to you, were you overjoyed, thinking you had grasped Lu Xing's lifeline?"

Qiu Ren casually crushed the child gu to death. A sudden movement came from my pocket; the Mother Insect thrashed around inside the Black Wooden Box for a while before slowly losing its life.

Mother and child were linked, living and dying together.

Yin energy corroded the corpse of the child gu. Qiu Ren stomped on it again, twisting his foot viciously. "You and Lu Xing are actually very similar. Deep down, you are both lunatics. But where you fall short of him is that he can use anything as a chip for victory, whereas you still cling to a bit of hypocritical righteousness."

Lu Xing had discovered the Mother-Child Gu a long time ago. Just as I had suspected, he beat me at my own game, using the child gu as bait to throw me off.

"I was careless."

"It wasn't carelessness. Those who achieve great things have no friends. You shouldn't have trusted that Gu master. In this world, no one is worthy of trust except yourself."

"If no one is trustworthy, why are you still following Lu Xing? Even after paying the price of an arm, you still stay by his side, just like an obedient watchdog." My words were barbed, but I was actually trying to stall for time.

I kept a close watch on my surroundings. He couldn't be too far away to manipulate the Mirror Ghost; he had to be hiding nearby.

Bullets couldn't kill a Mirror Ghost, but to take out the real Qiu Ren, a single shot would be enough.

"Lu Xing is a lunatic, but he isn't a lunatic in the way you usually define it. You mortals wouldn't understand, just like an ant will never comprehend what immortality is. This is the gap between you and him."

"I might not be able to understand your so-called immortality, but I do understand reincarnation and karma. Even for this heaven and earth, a boundless kalpa will descend every 130,000 years. There is nothing in this world that can truly be immortal. Also, don't compare me to that lunatic. I don't want to be compared to a dying man."

Waves of Yin energy billowed out. The raindrops approaching Qiu Ren were blown in other directions by an invisible force. The Yin energy inside the Three Infants Array was on the verge of saturation.

"Don't be so certain about who will live and who will die. The Buddha has waited too long for this day. This time, no matter what, there will be no failure." After saying this, Qiu Ren burst into laughter. Then, the Mirror Ghost that had taken his form to deliver this message was enveloped by Yin energy, its face twisting out of shape.

"Gao Jian, before you die, I have one last question for you. Five years ago, when I was preparing to kill my final sacrifice, I had tricked all the police in the city. Why were you the only one who found me ahead of time? I've pondered this question for five years, but no matter how I think about it, I still can't figure it out. The entire plan was flawless. How did you know I would choose to kill someone there in the end?"

The freezing rain battered my face as a sharp light flashed in my eyes. "Go to the Netherworld and keep thinking about it. You'll have plenty of time down there anyway."

I retreated backward. While I was conversing with Qiu Ren, Daoist Priest Xianqing had already advanced quite a distance into the array.

Walking across the seemingly ordinary mud, Daoist Priest Xianqing's footwork was dazzling. Without triggering the array, he had managed to reach its core.

He plunged one hand into the mud and pulled out an Octagonal Token.

This wasn't my first time seeing this pitch-black token. It seemed to be a symbol identifying the disciples of the Two-Faced Buddha.

With the core uprooted, the accumulated Yin energy instantly turned berserk. The Mirror Ghost in Qiu Ren's likeness was ripped to shreds, and a black tornado seemed to erupt over the wasteland.

"Get back!"

Daoist Priest Xianqing shouted, waving his hand to toss out a few pieces of Talisman Paper, but amid the torrential rain and thunder, the talismans proved mostly ineffective.

I grabbed Jiang Chen and pulled him far away. "Daoist Priest, hasn't the array been broken? Why is it still causing such a massive commotion?"

Daoist Priest Xianqing's expression was grave. "This was an open conspiracy. If the array isn't broken, the Yin energy will continue to gather. But the moment it is broken, all that accumulated Yin energy will drill into that little girl's body. Either way, her life is in imminent danger."

The vortex of Yin energy on the wasteland didn't dissipate; instead, it swirled around Ye Bing, whipping her mourning clothes about and revealing her dirt-stained face.

Just a few weeks ago, this very same face had come into my little shop with an overbearing arrogance. If I hadn't been stung by her words, I probably wouldn't have chosen to risk my life taking Xia Qingzhi's commission.

"Everything is fate."

Through the heavy rain, Ye Bing screamed in agony. As the Yin energy drilled into her body, I could clearly see her fingers lose their pale softness, turning a sickly blue-black.

"Overlapping barriers in her eight characters, a person whose fate carries the draping hemp, Mourning Guest, and mourning gate?" Daoist Priest Xianqing stared at Ye Bing's blue-black fingers, his expression changing drastically. "Few know of the fatal strike at the transverse pass; the fierce deity of the monthly fortune arrives precisely on time. Even if auspicious stars were to gather and overlap, if she doesn't suffer execution, she will still face absolute peril."