Chapter 287: A Hundred Corpses Worship the Fox (1)

Wrists of white and skin of pink like shoots of jade; plucking the lute or drawing strings, slender tips displayed.

Ye Bing's hands had always been beautiful. In my memory, they were flawless.

But the sight before me was completely different from the woman in my memory. The contrast was simply too stark.

Her once-slender fingers were shriveled inward, resembling sun-dried cured meat. They were a dark, livid color and looked absolutely hideous.

"T-that's not a human hand." Jiang Chen sat in the mud. He looked at the wife he had once lived with under the same roof, but his face showed no worry or concern. Instead, he was filled with panic and a deeply concealed trace of disgust.

"You have no right to say that about her," I said. "You fostered a Little Ghost to make her bear a Ghost Infant for you. You're just wearing the skin of a good person." Looking at Ye Bing's fingers, I remembered something that had happened during my broadcast at Bridge No. 3 Crematorium.

A fierce entity was suppressed beneath the crematorium. It had originally planned to use the power of the Ten Evils Divine Fiends to escape, but I accidentally stopped it.

During that confrontation, the fierce entity had broken through the seal and stuck out a single finger.

Even though my mind had been in a trance from inviting spirits into my body at the time, that finger had left a deep impression on me.

It was exactly like Ye Bing's hand right now—dark and livid, shriveled inward, resembling a dead tree root buried underground.

'Did the fierce entity escape?' When I went to Bridge No. 3 Crematorium tonight, Mr. Gu was the only one in the mourning hall. I hadn't noticed any other spirits. Thinking back on it now, it felt a bit abnormal.

The crematorium itself was a massive array covering a ten-li radius. It involved the Ten Evils Divine Fiends and possessed ten layers of variation. It could gather ghosts within ten li, guiding and absorbing them for its own use.

My vitality had been drained dry by the Deity-Inviting Talisman back then. I barely held on until dawn before collapsing. I had managed to keep my life, but I didn't even know how I was brought to the hospital, let alone have the strength to destroy the Ten Evils Grand Formation.

The array had been completely intact. Yet, when I arrived tonight, the place was surprisingly clean. There were no ghosts or lingering spirits longing for the mortal realm.

Where did all those filthy things go?

As I pondered this, a green willow branch suddenly wrapped around my waist, and a gentle force pulled me backward.

"That girl is possessed by something. Don't get too close," Daoist Priest Xianqing said. He had already exited the Three Infants Array and motioned for me to stand behind him.

His interruption jogged my memory. "Daoist Priest, Qingtu Temple is so close to Bridge No. 3 Crematorium. You must know about the fierce entity suppressed beneath it, right?"

"That's not exactly a secret in Jiangcheng. Many people know about it. Why bring it up now?"

"I suspect the thing possessing Ye Bing right now is the fierce entity from beneath the crematorium."

Daoist Priest Xianqing's expression changed at my theory. "How certain are you?"

"Seventy percent." The mutation of Ye Bing's fingers was only one reason. I also connected it to the recent changes at the crematorium, along with the fact that Lu Xing and Qiu Ren had happened to go there earlier. That was how I reached this conclusion.

"This is bad. If that's true, I'm afraid the two of us will be leaving our lives here." Daoist Priest Xianqing looked as though he was facing a formidable foe, and his gaze toward Ye Bing grew hesitant.

"Even if we join forces, we're no match for that thing?" Tucked inside my jacket, wrapped in a raincoat, I still had a complete set of Two Dragons Emerging from Water Formation Talisman Paper and a Random High-Tier Talisman exchanged from the Underworld Live Show. These items were the trump cards that gave me the courage to stand here.

"If it really is that fierce entity possessing her, I'm guessing only our resurrected grandmaster could subdue it." Daoist Priest Xianqing sighed. "The one who originally suppressed that fierce entity at Bridge No. 3 was the grandmaster of our Corpse Driving Lineage. Truth be told, this thing has quite a deep connection with our lineage."

"The various street rumors about the fierce entity actually contain a lot of fictional elements. No one knows the real truth, and even our direct disciples have no idea about its true origins." Xianqing sighed again. "Not long after the grandmaster suppressed it at Bridge No. 3, he disappeared. He left behind a handwritten letter instructing future disciples not to look for him, forbidding us from stepping half a foot into Bridge No. 3 Crematorium, and ordering that members of the Corpse Driving Lineage must never be buried in the earth after death—especially not within ten li of Bridge No. 3."

"Your master?" Daoist Priest Xianqing was over fifty. If this traced back to his grandmaster's generation, wouldn't the fierce entity's origins date back over a hundred years?

"Yes. The Corpse Driving Lineage had its days of glory, and only began to decline in modern times. Calculating the time, it was right after the grandmaster's death that the lineage fell apart, as if we had incurred the wrath of heaven. By my master's generation, there were only two or three disciples left. Now that it has been passed down to me, I only have Yun Chuan as my sole disciple."

"Could the decline of the Corpse Driving Lineage be related to this fierce entity?"

My casual remark made Daoist Priest Xianqing fall into deep thought. "That makes some sense. However, our top priority right now is to drive this thing out of the girl's body."

Daoist Priest Xianqing was deliberately avoiding certain topics. The fierce entity suppressed beneath Bridge No. 3 Crematorium seemed to be a taboo within their lineage.

With yin energy invading her body, Ye Bing's hair hung disheveled, and her appearance grew increasingly bizarre.

"Sha!"

Rainwater swept backward as sinister winds kicked up around Ye Bing, adding a touch of cruelty to the already desperate, pitch-black rainy night.

"I'll hold it back. Go find Yun Chuan quickly," Xianqing said. "Tell him to take the Fox Immortal Corpse and leave immediately. Running into this demon today, I'm afraid we won't be able to proceed with the corpse reanimation normally."

"Daoist Priest, can you handle this alone?" I glanced at the continuously surging yin energy on Ye Bing's body, then looked at Daoist Priest Xianqing, who held nothing but a willow branch. I lacked confidence in him.

"I have to try even if I can't. Hurry up and go!"

To buy time, Daoist Priest Xianqing stood his ground with only the green willow branch. "Go!"

I grabbed Jiang Chen and turned to head outside. The moment I turned my back, the howling of a sinister wind rushed at me from behind.

Ye Bing lunged straight at me. She had gone completely mad. All her former beauty had morphed into terror; she had lost her mind, baring her fangs and brandishing her claws like a monster.

"Freeze!" Daoist Priest Xianqing threw out two pieces of Talisman Paper, but talismans meant for corpse reanimation were completely useless against Ye Bing. Seeing that Ye Bing was about to grab my shoulder, he lashed out with the willow branch. Goodness knew what the green willow had been soaked in, but as it struck Ye Bing's body, it left streaks of purple-black welts.

Ye Bing's movements slowed, and I took the opportunity to flee.

Sprinting into Xinhu High School, I noticed several sneaky silhouettes lurking around the Incineration Trench. At first glance, I thought the student corpses inside the building had run out.

"Out of the way!"

Pressing the muzzle of my gun to Jiang Chen's head, I pushed past several armed police officers and entered the Incineration Trench.

Just as I stepped into the single-story building, I felt a chill on my forehead. I looked up and saw the Original Destiny Soul Hanging Talisman on the door fluttering without any wind. It was incredibly bizarre.

"Yun Chuan?" I called out instinctively, but no one answered.

Choking Jiang Chen by the neck, I entered the inner room once again.

Weaving through the gaps between the standing corpses, I stepped over the dark layer of charred residue on the floor and walked up to Yun Chuan.

The thick white face veil I had lifted earlier had been drawn back over his face at some point. I didn't think much of it and reached out to lift a corner of the veil. "Yun Chuan, your master..."

My pupils shrank abruptly. Reflected in my eyes was the face beneath the white veil. That wasn't Yun Chuan's face at all—it was the face of a fox!

My fingers seemed to spasm, trembling involuntarily, and the white veil fell back down.

"How is that possible?" I took a step back and examined the tall figure before me. He was wearing a black garment with red trim. His appearance, build, and clothing hadn't changed at all. This was undoubtedly Yun Chuan, but why did I see a fox's face when I lifted the veil?

I didn't know much about corpse driving, nor did I understand why Daoist Priest Xianqing had made Yun Chuan stand among the corpses with the Fox Immortal Corpse on his back. "From what Daoist Priest Xianqing said, I think it was something about 'corpse reanimation'?"

Time was of the essence. With a trembling hand, I lifted the veil covering Yun Chuan's face once again.

"What happened to my master? Why did you stop halfway?" This time, the face beneath the veil was Yun Chuan's own. Although his complexion was poor, his mind was clear.

"It's nothing. I probably just saw things wrongly earlier." I tilted my head to look at the fox corpse on Yun Chuan's back, but its face was similarly obscured by a thick veil, hiding everything from sight. "Your master is in trouble. That evil cultivator is hard to deal with, and he wants you to take the Fox Immortal Corpse and leave first."

"The altar is already open, and the meal for the dead has been eaten. How can we stop halfway?" Yun Chuan gestured toward the surrounding offerings with his mouth. He meant to point out the gnawed rabbit meat, fish, and pork, but perhaps by using too much force, he accidentally shook the veil right off his face.

As the white veil fell away, I saw the other half of Yun Chuan's face that had been covered.