Chapter 630: Eternal Auspiciousness and No Misfortune!

The ghost art communicated with the Desire Ghost, and it sensed no danger.

I gritted my teeth, picked up the pace, and followed the dilapidated wooden stairs down into the deep darkness.

A dozen seconds passed before my feet finally touched solid ground. I scanned my surroundings—an abandoned storeroom.

The walls were painted white, and a massive iron water tank sat against the wall.

"Basements are usually coated with anti-mold and moisture-proof paint, but here they just used plain white paint," I murmured, staring at the pallid walls on either side. It felt like staring into the face of an evil spirit.

Still pinching the neck of the infant corpse, I turned to the girl. "Do you know why the hospital is completely white? Why the walls and floors are all painted with white paint?"

The girl's ghost tilted her head and huddled into herself. Even after a long while, she gave no response.

"Communication is so difficult." I walked past the water tank. Its top was sealed by a layer of sheet metal, and a continuous bubbling sound echoed from within, much like the growl of a starving person's stomach.

I wanted to climb up and take a look—the tank had been a point of curiosity for me—but the moment I approached it, the girl's ghost frantically waved her hands. She stepped between me and the tank, babbling incoherently with a somewhat contorted expression.

"Is this water tank dangerous?" The tank in this hidden passage was sealed shut with sheet metal; the only way to see inside would be to pry it off. Seeing the girl's resolute attitude, and deciding it was better to have one less trouble, I pulled my hand back and stepped away.

Only when she saw me move away from the tank did her expression return to normal. She turned and led the way.

'Did she stop me because she was afraid I'd run into danger?' I thought. The living weren't always good, and ghosts weren't always evil. Although Daoist master Wan had judged the girl to be a proxy ghost, I didn't think she was. I couldn't put the reason into words; perhaps due to my cultivation of the Yin-Yang Ghost Art, I possessed a special intuition regarding ghosts and evil entities.

Her dry, yellowish hair hung loosely down her back, and her frame was painfully thin. She seemed completely unaccustomed to walking on her own two legs. Her gait was awkward, like an infant who had just taken their first steps.

'Congenital leukemia. Receiving treatment from the moment she was born, constantly recuperating in various hospitals... she probably never even had the chance to learn how to walk.' Coating my palm in a layer of yin energy, I gently pressed on her shoulder. She was so frail that it felt as if nothing but bone lay beneath her loose hospital gown.

Feeling her shoulder being touched, the girl looked back at me with vacant eyes, as if bewildered or afraid of something. She immediately stopped in her tracks, too scared to move.

'There's a fundamental difference between humans and ghosts in the end,' I thought. Retracting my hand, I went back to pinching the neck of her original body and stopped letting my imagination run wild.

The girl's ghost and I reached the storeroom door. Looking out, the corridor bore no signage; I had no idea which underground floor we were on. 'The wooden stairs are rotting, and the hidden passage's entrance lacks tiles and is extremely crude. Someone must have dug this path out later. With the water tank sitting at the end of the passage, it's safe to deduce that whoever excavated these hidden tunnels beneath the hospital did so to raise corpses.'

Preoccupied with these thoughts, I hadn't been paying attention. It wasn't until I nearly stepped out the door that I noticed the girl's ghost had already stopped in the corridor, shaking her head at me repeatedly.

'What does she mean?' I halted, hid in the shadows, tightened my grip on the corpse in my hand, and concealed my presence.

A moment later, an eerie white blur sprinted down the corridor. It was an exceptionally massive white fiend.

Scattered bandages wrapped around its body, revealing cracked, hideous skin underneath that sprouted inch-long White Fur. Unlike those monsters that had just crawled out of the water tanks, this one looked far stronger and more ferocious.

This white fiend's attitude toward the girl's ghost was also bizarre. Swirling with corpse qi, it simply swatted her aside and hurried away.

The girl's ghost waited until the white fiend was far away before standing back up. She seemed to encounter this frequently and had already grown accustomed to it.

Seeing her babble at me again, I finally stepped out of the storeroom.

'Did this girl just save me?' I thought. She had given me early warning before the white fiend passed by. Without her, I would likely have ended up clashing with the white fiend deep underground. Considering I still hadn't found the corpse controller, starting a fight now would be highly disadvantageous.

'Did she only save me out of self-preservation, afraid that in a scenario where the fish dies and the net breaks, I would destroy her original body?' No matter how I framed it, there was no denying the fact that the girl had saved my life. My trust had been rewarded.

The underground structure of the Third Ward was incredibly complex. The deeper we went, the more eerie the layout became, resembling some sort of array.

At regular intervals along the white-painted walls, I could also spot those peculiar characters, which looked like some kind of lost talismanic script.

With the girl's ghost leading the way, my courage gradually grew. I pulled out my phone in the darkness and captured the shape of the characters on camera.

"Daoist master, are you still there? Do you recognize the talismans on this wall?"

I had only asked Daoist master Wan with the mindset of giving it a try, never expecting to actually get a reply.

Daoist master Wan: "This is the ancient character for 'Life.' You ignorant brat, you don't even understand the most basic feng shui, so it's understandable that you don't recognize it."

"Daoist master, your words are getting more and more biting," I said, flashing a grin. I didn't bicker with Daoist master Wan over such trivial matters. Taking a few more steps forward, I aimed my camera at the next character. "Then what does this one mean? I've seen many similar ancient characters on the walls. They're pure white, so they don't stand out against the white paint."

"You don't even recognize such a simple character? This is the ancient form of 'Human.'"

"I just wasn't sure, alright?" Looking closely, the character in front of me wasn't much different from the modern word for 'Human.'

Daoist master Wan: "This place is a Pit of Ten Thousand Corpses. The feng shui is exceptionally sinister. If someone hadn't cast a spell to seal it, the negative energy would affect an area of ten miles in every direction. These characters on the wall should be part of some ancient grand array. As for why they are white, I'm not entirely sure either. Perhaps the person who laid the array ground glutinous rice to make ink for writing."

'So that's how it is.' When the hospital relocated, they must have invited an expert here to perform the rites. These characters were likely left behind from back then, but so much time had passed that they were gradually losing their effectiveness.

"Daoist master, you're a font of knowledge, truly well-versed in both ancient and modern lore. You know everything. Could you help me see what the rest of these characters mean?"

I shamelessly sought his guidance, and Daoist master Wan answered me one by one. I walked on for a dozen meters, but right after looking at the final character in the corridor, Daoist master Wan suddenly vanished from the livestream chat.

"Daoist master, what's going on? Where did you go?"

The screen was filled with the complaints and banter of the livestream viewers. I even activated my Judging Eye to observe the chat, yet I still couldn't find a single comment from Daoist master Wan.

I stopped in place, the girl's ghost tilting her head to stare blankly at me. This lasted for a minute or two before Daoist master Wan reappeared in the stream.

Daoist master Wan: "Brat! You've run into some wicked luck!!"

'Wicked luck?' Daoist master Wan had a different personality from Half-Immortal Liu. He rarely used exclamation marks in his comments, always maintaining an unflappable, aloof demeanor as if he were the only true immortal around. This time, however, he had broken his own rule.

I immediately asked him what was going on, my eyes glued to the phone screen.

Daoist master Wan: "Do you know what those characters form when strung together? 'The living are all ghosts, buried within by the rites. Cycles loop without end, eternal auspiciousness and no misfortune!'"

These ordinary Chinese characters, when arranged in this specific sequence, surprisingly exuded a unique and imposing aura.

I drew in a sharp breath. "Does this phrase carry some special meaning?"

"Meaning? This phrase is the overarching principle of the Burial Scripture!" Daoist master Wan didn't shy away from the other livestream viewers; he fired off his messages one after another.

"A century ago, the number one wonder book of feng shui, the Burial Scripture, was lost to the world. Since then, the feng shui arrays of the world have always lacked perfection. There are many who understand Yin and Yang, astronomy, the Five Elements, and divination, but those who understand earthly burials are few and far between. Even I only read a fragmented rubbing of it in my early years. This scripture is of monumental importance! Since you've encountered it, this is destiny! You absolutely must not miss this chance!"

"Forget about that Uncorrupted Bone! Turn back immediately and memorize all the characters along the way!"

"The Nine Volumes of the Green Satchel can bury three lifetimes! To think that the Burial Scripture would actually be hidden in a place like this."

"Remember this: you absolutely must not let the news of your obtaining the Burial Scripture leak out, or it will draw the covetous eyes of all factions!"

Looking at Daoist master Wan's barrage of comments, I gave a bitter laugh and finally broke in. "You just blurted it out in front of tens of thousands of livestream viewers. How am I supposed to keep it a secret now?"

Hearing my retort, Daoist master Wan finally stopped spamming the chat, leaving behind only one last sentence.

"Do you reside in Jiangcheng, my young friend? Good. Three days from now, this Daoist will absolutely pay you a visit!"

Staring at Daoist master Wan's domineering message, my mouth twitched again. Great, this Daoist master had just broadcasted my location to the entire stream as well.

"The Burial Scripture might be precious, but I need to survive the night to actually bring it out." Even so, at Daoist master Wan's vehement insistence, I aimed my camera at the characters on the other side of the corridor.

"For burials, the Azure Dragon sits on the left, the White Tiger on the right, the Vermilion Bird in the front, and the Black Tortoise in the back. The Black Tortoise bows its head, the Vermilion Bird dances in flight, the Azure Dragon coils, and the White Tiger bows in submission. If the terrain goes against this, the ritual brings destruction and death." As Daoist master Wan became completely engrossed in studying the Burial Scripture, I looked at the characters on the wall and felt a vague sense of familiarity. This wasn't the first time I'd had this feeling.

'Where have I seen this before? There were characters like this beneath the Bridge No. 3 Crematorium. Later, Yun Chuan told me that the vicious entity under the crematorium was sealed by their Qingtu Temple. Qingtu Temple...' My eyes shot wide open. I immediately shoved my phone into my pocket, ducked into a secluded corner by myself, and pulled out an ancient, weathered scripture from my inner breast pocket.

This was the secret Daoist text of Qingtu Temple. It was said to record the exact locations where the Corpse Driving Lineage had sealed away vicious entities over the generations.

'Is that really the truth?' I flipped to the first page, and several familiar ancient characters immediately caught my eye.

"The living are all ghosts, buried within by the rites. Cycles loop without end, eternal auspiciousness and no misfortune!"

Comparing them with the ancient characters written further down, my shock only deepened. Even the hand holding the book began to tremble.

'So this book is the Burial Scripture!'

An innocent man invites trouble simply by possessing a jade ring. Now, I finally understood why Daoist Priest Xianqing had handed this scripture over to me—someone who didn't recognize ancient characters at all—for safekeeping!