Chapter 473: Corpse Driving Secret Manual

"Stay away from us." The Security Guard and the electrician stepped back at the same time, then seemed to realize they were overreacting. "That had to be a coincidence, right?"

I picked up my carrying pole, casually peeled off the luck talisman Blind Liu had stuck on me, and gave the two of them a flat look. "Maybe."

The taxi's rear windows had been completely shattered. Scared half to death, the driver scrambled out of the car trembling, and the street descended into chaos.

'It all looks like a string of coincidences, but every step is a death trap.' Without the warning from my carrying pole, my skull would have been smashed to pieces. Standing by the roadside, I felt a chill run down my spine where my sweat-soaked shirt clung to my back.

I glanced down at my watch. It was 2:15 p.m. Time was passing exceptionally slowly today.

In my suit, carrying pole in hand, I pushed through the crowd and set off on foot toward Bridge No. 3 Crematorium.

...

Even though I stayed on high alert the entire way, plenty of accidents still found me. By the time I finally made it to Bridge No. 3 Crematorium, it was already five thirty.

Yun Chuan had changed into a plain Daoist robe and was waiting outside the crematorium's memorial hall. Seeing the battered state I was in, he stared in surprise. "Destined Patron, what happened to you?"

"Don't ask." I alone knew the grief I'd suffered. I gave the carrying pole in my hand—now bearing seven or eight fresh cracks—a slight shake as a wave of lingering fear washed over me. No one would believe what I had run into on the way here even if I told them.

Right after leaving the hospital, I encountered someone jumping off a building over a broken heart, and of all places to land, he plummeted straight toward me. After I barely managed to dodge him, I ran into a drunk driver who jumped the curb and barreled down the sidewalk, chasing me for over ten meters.

Every moment was heart-stopping. After spending the strength of nine bulls and two tigers just to leave the city center, I stopped by a small shop on the outskirts to grab a pack of cigarettes. I hadn't been standing there for more than a dozen seconds when a loud bang from renovations on the second floor shook loose the high-speed ceiling fan right above me, nearly shredding my head.

There were far too many incidents like that—leaking high-voltage junction boxes, missing manhole covers, objects falling from the sky, and so on. Never mind me, even Xue Zhuo, hidden atop my spirit platform, was on edge, constantly crying out to help me avoid danger.

By the time I reached Bridge No. 3 Crematorium, Xue Zhuo's will had gone completely silent, seemingly having fallen into a deep slumber from sheer exhaustion.

My suit was covered in dust, both knees were torn wide open, and my arms were scraped raw. Showing up looking like that immediately earned me the crematorium's "special attention"—two staff members shadowed my every step until I met up with Yun Chuan.

Only Yun Chuan and I had come to see Daoist Priest Xianqing off one last time. Once the ceremony was over, Yun Chuan carried Daoist Priest Xianqing's funerary urn to the columbarium and made an unexpected decision.

"The wind has no fixed course, and human life is impermanent; life is like drifting duckweed, meeting and parting in a vast haze." After a day and a night, Yun Chuan seemed to have made peace with the loss. Rather than taking Daoist Priest Xianqing's ashes back with him, he paid a fee and asked the crematorium to keep Daoist Priest Xianqing's urn on the premises.

"Yun Chuan, what are you doing? They say the dead are the greatest—shouldn't he be laid to rest in the earth?" I had assumed Yun Chuan would bury Daoist Priest Xianqing somewhere around Qingtu Temple, letting him return to his roots.

"Destined Patron, everything I'm doing is on my master's instructions. This crematorium is a sealed ground, and he wished to become an earth spirit to stand guard over it." Yun Chuan's words earned an eye-roll from the staff member nearby. I grabbed him and hurried outside, waiting until we were clear of the crematorium before asking him for the full story.

"Destined Patron, do you still remember the tablet my master told you in his letter never to lose?"

"The Grandmaster's Tablet beside the statues of the Three Pure Ones? Did you find something on it?" My curiosity was piqued. I normally gave Bridge No. 3 Crematorium a wide berth. Daytime was one thing, but at night I wouldn't set foot near the place unless I had no choice, because I knew full well it was a ten-extinction feng shui grand formation suppressing a peerless fiend beneath the earth.

Yun Chuan nodded. Ever since tragedy befell Daoist Priest Xianqing, he seemed to have matured overnight, his demeanor calm and unruffled. "Beneath that tablet lies the greatest secret of our Corpse Driving Lineage. Counting from the founding grandmaster's generation down to mine, there have been well over a hundred recorded orthodox heirs. Many among them were brilliant figures of extraordinary talent—some even drove heavenly corpses and battled Drought Demons."

Awe flickered in Yun Chuan's eyes as he raised his head, as though gazing up at ancient legends. "Mortals rarely live past a hundred, and the path of corpse driving doesn't cultivate longevity, so most practitioners die relatively young. That creates a very dangerous problem. Fierce entities are hard to kill outright; most of the time, we rely on the terrain of mountains and rivers to seal them away, using the spiritual essence of heaven and earth to grind them down slowly—a process that takes anywhere from several years to over a century. The Corpse Driving Lineage sealed away many such fiends, but as time passed, the Celestial Masters who bound them turned to dust while the fiends inside the seals had yet to perish completely. To prevent anything from going wrong with the seals and letting those horrors break free, the Corpse Driving Lineage left behind a secret manual that only the Dao Zheng is permitted to read. It records every dangerous fiend the entire Corpse Driving Lineage has sealed away over hundreds and thousands of years since the founding grandmaster's generation."

His voice was slow and heavy; ever since reading that ancient volume, he had felt the crushing weight of responsibility on his shoulders. "This secret manual documents the sealed fiends in exhaustive detail—their exact locations, the sealing methods used, and all the natural treasures needed to repair the grand formations."

Hearing this from Yun Chuan shook me to the core. To my mind, this secret manual wasn't just a heavy responsibility—it was a massive crisis waiting to happen.

If Two-Faced Buddha or the Three Yin Sect caught wind of it, they would stop at nothing to get their hands on that secret manual. Fierce entities and evil spirits were calamities to ordinary mortals, but to fate usurpers and heretical practitioners, they were prime partners and tools to be exploited.

"Yun Chuan, this is of grave importance—you must never let a third person find out! Otherwise, everything the Corpse Driving Lineage has sacrificed over hundreds and thousands of years will be for nothing." I was uneasy about Yun Chuan. He was only in his early twenties, making him the youngest Dao Zheng of the Corpse Driving Lineage, and as the last living corpse driver, he had no one to guide him. Even if he wanted to handle many of these problems, he simply didn't have the strength.

"I know," Yun Chuan said with a nod. "That was why my master didn't want me to read that letter at the time. I don't have the strength to protect the secret manual, and possessing it might even drag me into disaster."

He might have seemed stiff and slow-spoken, but still waters ran deep—he understood plenty beneath the surface. "Although my master was always kind to others and stayed out of trouble, people still came to Qingtu Temple looking for trouble over the years—like the Three Yin Sect, the true masters behind the scenes in Jiangcheng. Now that my master is gone, there's no guarantee they won't sneak into Qingtu Temple. Keeping this secret manual in my hands is far too dangerous, so I want to leave it with you for the time being. Even if someone sees it on you, they'll probably just take it for a book of myths and never suspect what it really is. Once I've cultivated the Corpse Driving Art enough to protect myself, I'll come take the secret manual back."

I was about to agree right away, but on second thought, a wry smile took over my face. "Yun Chuan, I can hold on to the secret manual for you, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow."

"That's fine. That day, you were willing to be torn limb from limb and bear false accusations for the sake of a million lives in Jiangcheng—my master and I both trust you completely." Misunderstanding what I meant, Yun Chuan slipped a pale yellow ancient book into my tattered suit jacket. "Only heaven and earth, you and I know of this."

Feeling the weight of the ancient book, I started to pull it back out, but Yun Chuan suddenly reached over and pressed a hand against my arm. Without changing his expression, he gave a slight shake of his head. "Don't open it here."

Only then did I sense that something was off with Yun Chuan. Thinking back to how he had deliberately delayed the time to see Daoist Priest Xianqing off, I realized something else must have happened at Qingtu Temple this afternoon. "All right, I'll hang on to it for you first."

"Thank you, Destined Patron." Yun Chuan cupped his hands in salute. "There is one more matter that didn't come from my master. If I may be so bold to ask—Destined Patron, have you ever considered learning corpse driving?"

"You want me to learn corpse driving?" My mind blanked for a second, unable to figure out why Yun Chuan was bringing this up out of nowhere.

"Your talent for corpse driving far surpasses mine, Destined Patron. If you're willing to learn it, I will honor you as my Senior Brother and even hand the position of Dao Zheng over to you. All the Daoist scriptures and canons of our Corpse Driving Lineage will be yours to read freely," Yun Chuan said in dead earnest.

"Forget it. Truth is, I already practice the arts of three different paths—Buddhist, Daoist, and spectral—so what I've learned is already a tangled mix. Besides, I don't like being tied down. I'd better pass on the Corpse Driving Art."

I waved a hand, and Yun Chuan didn't press the matter. Surreptitiously pointing a finger toward the crematorium staff, he said aloud, "If you ever change your mind, Destined Patron, you can come find me at Qingtu Temple anytime."

No matter how slow on the uptake I might be, I could tell by now that something was wrong. Yun Chuan had already dropped plenty of hints.

Following the direction of his finger, I saw the two staff members bustling in and out. They looked busy, but their eyes never left Yun Chuan.

'He's being watched?' I thought back over Yun Chuan's gesture and everything he had just said. 'The answer has to be hidden in his words.'

Yun Chuan had quietly slipped the priceless secret manual into my suit pocket after mentioning that people had come to Qingtu Temple looking for trouble, and then he specifically named the Three Yin Sect as the true masters behind the scenes in Jiangcheng. Putting it all together gave me a jolt—he was warning me to watch out for the Three Yin Sect. For all I knew, they had already made their move, only allowing Yun Chuan to see his master off and meet with me so as not to tip me off.

Keeping my expression completely composed so as not to give anything away, I quietly activated my Judging Eye and glanced at the staff members in the distance.

The crematorium staff weren't wearing matching uniforms, and a dark miasma hung between the brows of those two men—a telltale sign of people under an evil spell.

'Could they be spies for the Three Yin Sect?'

Today was already perilous enough, and the last thing I wanted was to stir up more trouble. Yet now that they had their sights set on me, this wasn't going to end peacefully.

'Natural disasters and human malice—heaven's will really is dead set on killing me.' Human malice was every bit as terrifying as heaven-sent calamities. The King Yama Notice on me had never been fully purged, only suppressed inside my body for the time being. If the Three Yin Sect went all out to trigger it, that horrifying scene of Impermanence coming to claim my life would play out all over again.

'This is tricky.' The secret manual of the Corpse Driving Lineage could never be allowed to fall into the hands of the Three Yin Sect. Not because I had some noble desire to save the world from ruin, but purely because the Three Yin Sect and I were irreconcilable enemies—letting them have the secret manual would be no different from arming the enemy.

Yun Chuan and I exchanged a few more casual words before parting ways. He boarded the Route 14 bus back to Qingtu Temple, while I walked slowly back down the road. 'Things haven't reached the worst-case scenario yet. If Two-Faced Buddha also sends people after me under the influence of heaven's will, I really won't be able to hold out.'