Chapter 663: Birth of the Great Terror (2)

"I'm a demon? I ruthlessly attacked my fellow disciples?" Mr. Paper laughed in sheer fury, nearly tearing the white paper sealing Wang Shi to shreds. "A bunch of hypocritical, shameless scoundrels! With your silver tongues, it's no wonder you can bewitch the world into believing in you!"

"The living beings of this world act according to their own wills. We have bewitched no one. Grasping power is true cultivation; being dominated by power will only turn you into a demon, and your end will be miserable." Xu Yan had already closed the distance to within three paces of Mr. Paper. His expression was solemn.

"Nothing but nonsense! You cultivate a false Dao. You are all puppets of heaven's will, mere chess pieces living on a board. Pitiful fools, you won't understand this even when you die!" Mr. Paper's voice pitched high. His theories were completely at odds with orthodoxy—they could be called outright heresy. But thinking about it carefully, I realized this man might actually be speaking the truth. At the very least, what he said closely mirrored my own experiences.

"There is nothing to debate with a demon like you. Cultivation lies within oneself. By relying on external objects and trying to break the natural order, you are doomed to fail," Lu Jingxiu said. This good-natured old man's face was tinged with gray; the corpse poison inside him was spreading.

"Break the natural order? You really are stupid beyond saving! The Dao is a great thief! Cultivation isn't about becoming captive livestock, but plundering destiny and leaping off the chessboard!" Mr. Paper's tone shifted. "Even if I only get one look at the world beyond the board, if my body dies and the Dao dissolves, what does it matter?"

Bad people weren't terrifying. Those who committed crimes out of selfish desire or blinding greed weren't terrifying either. What was truly terrifying was the kind of person who, even after committing utter madness, stubbornly believed they had done nothing wrong.

Someone who treated slaughter as a faith, who became a blood-soaked executioner for the sake of some lofty ideal—that kind of person was the most horrifying of all.

Clearly, Two-Faced Buddha's subordinates were all lunatics just like him.

"Cultivation? Pure nonsense! Heaven's net is vast and sparse, yet it lets nothing through. Eliminating you is my cultivation!" Xu Yan stepped forward. With a sweep of his Daoist robes, the corpse qi was scattered, and he raised his hand to unfurl a Five-Colored Soul Banner.

Unlike ordinary soul-summoning banners, this one swayed in the billowing corpse qi, snapping loudly like a war flag within the cavern.

The banner's head was painted with the sun, moon, and stars, while its body was embroidered with mountains, rivers, and great lakes. Further down were flowers, grasses, fish, and insects. This single long banner seemed to encompass the entire world.

"The banner hangs high with sacred names, granting grace without end! Protected by the gods, heavenly sins shall be cleansed!"

Holding the soul banner, Xu Yan looked like a reincarnated deity. Shielded by the will of heaven, neither corpse qi nor earth qi dared approach, as he forcefully pushed back the dense corpse qi inside the cavern.

The long banner fluttered. Any corpse qi that touched it was swept away and absorbed into the flag. In just the blink of an eye, the corpse qi in the cavern lessened significantly.

'This isn't good.' With the corpse qi dispersing and visibility clearing, if I stayed where I was, my chances of being exposed would drastically increase.

If I retreated, I wouldn't be able to keep track of the battle inside the cave the moment things changed, and I really wasn't willing to give that up. 'The sect cultivators are all focused on the fierce battle between Mr. Paper and Xu Yan. They shouldn't turn their heads to look at me.'

Comforting myself with that thought, I ultimately stayed where I was and continued to peek using my Judging Eye.

Xu Yan's soul banner was definitely a rare magical artifact. It was likely on par with some of the things I had seen in the Live Show's merchandise catalog.

The soul banner reversed the situation the moment it appeared, dispelling the corpse qi and opening up a large, clear space.

However, to Xu Yan's surprise, Mr. Paper didn't try to stop him upon seeing this. Instead, a hint of pleasant surprise appeared on his stiff, corpse-like face.

Xu Yan was confused, but hiding in the back, I had already guessed Mr. Paper's intentions.

He was trying to find a way to suppress the Uncorrupted Bone. Now that the soul banner had appeared to absorb the corpse qi leaking from it, it was effectively helping him lighten his burden.

A moment later, Xu Yan's initial confidence slowly gave way to an inescapable predicament. Because his soul banner had absorbed too much corpse qi, the divine patterns on its surface began to fall into chaos. The great lakes dried up, the mountains and rivers collapsed, the sun and moon lost their light, and the stars fell from the sky—an apocalyptic scene.

"Riiip!"

An ear-piercing sound suddenly echoed through the cavern, shocking everyone. Looking toward the source of the noise, they saw that the very bottom of the soul banner, where the birds, beasts, fish, and insects were painted, had actually torn open a tiny rift! Corpse qi was now seeping out from that gap!

"What?!" Xu Yan's expression turned ugly. "To be able to corrode my precious banner, this absolutely isn't the corpse qi an ordinary Walking Corpse could emit!"

More and more tears appeared on the soul banner, and the birds, beasts, fish, and insects painted on it suffered heavy casualties. Seeing this, Xu Yan formed hand seals and chanted a spell: "The scripture ends, the banner falls, the clouds swirl back to heaven! Obey the decree, delay not for a second!"

He manipulated the soul banner to release a portion of the corpse qi, but even so, the artifact had already sustained irreparable damage.

Two-thirds of the corpse qi in the cavern had been sucked away. But to everyone's dismay, barely a minute or two later, even more corpse qi surged up from the collapsed pit.

Mr. Paper had been happy when the corpse qi was absorbed, but he hadn't expected the sect cultivators to be this incompetent. He sneered, "Are these the only methods the so-called Five Great Upper Sects have? You can't even handle some corpse qi?"

The way I saw it, Mr. Paper was probably trying to goad them into action, borrowing Xu Yan's hands to wear down the Uncorrupted Bone's power. He calculated well, but unfortunately, reality deviated from his expectations.

The several sect cultivators all thought he was maliciously provoking them and began hurling curses in response. As for Xu Yan, his expression had reached the absolute peak of ugliness.

He looked at the precious banner in his hands. What was once a beautiful and dazzling five-colored, five-leafed treasure was now riddled with holes, looking more like a white funeral banner.

"This precious banner is one of the few Daoist artifacts on Mount Qingcheng. It was originally just a Five-Leaf Spring Banner, but it responded to the mandate of heaven, blessing the various villages and towns beneath Mount Qingcheng with favorable weather for almost twenty years. Dao Zheng only then invited it into Qingcheng. I wanted to use the life force and fortune on the spring banner to wear away the corpse qi here, but in the end, I still underestimated the enemy." A fierce gleam flashed through Xu Yan's eyes. "The Walking Corpse beneath that pit has very likely reached a critical moment in its transformation. Once it succeeds, it will become a divine entity out of legend."

The destruction of the precious banner seemed to cause a misunderstanding for Xu Yan. He thought the pit hid a Walking Corpse that had reached a critical moment in its transformation, but in reality, what was suppressed down there was an already fully-matured Uncorrupted Bone!

Xu Yan couldn't be blamed for this. After all, no one could have imagined that as early as twenty years ago, Two-Faced Buddha was already capable of raising a terrifying monstrosity like an Uncorrupted Bone.

Hearing Xu Yan's words, Lu Jingxiu thought carefully and felt that something wasn't quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on what the problem was. He looked at Mr. Paper blocking the way, then at the increasingly dense corpse qi constantly spewing out, and stopped hesitating. "If that's the case, then we absolutely cannot let it finish its transformation. Otherwise, this Walking Corpse will be even harder to deal with than a Ghost Mother."

With Xu Yan's precious banner broken, Lu Jingxiu stepped up. Before the yin energy could close in again, he walked directly toward the pit.

He treated Mr. Paper as if he didn't exist. His face was calm, and though the corpse qi battered his Daoist robes, this slightly emaciated old man currently stood like a reef welcoming giant waves in the open sea. No matter what came, nothing could stop his advance.

"Old sir, I've practiced feng shui for decades. I've met all kinds of people, and many of them were just like you—stubborn and incapable of adapting."

By the time Mr. Paper finished speaking, Lu Jingxiu had already walked right up to him. The two stood face to face, but neither looked the other in the eye.

"My old bones have lived long enough. I have no desire to debate the Dao with you today. If you do not move, don't blame me for bullying the young." Lu Jingxiu silently raised his hand. Resting in his palm was a dark blue Dao Talisman. The talisman gave off an extremely terrifying pressure, as if he held the stars of the heavens in his grasp.

"Many people have said similar things to me, only for those words to quickly become their last." Mr. Paper's stiff face slowly cracked into an incredibly frightening smile. It was the first time I had seen an expression on his face, and it was completely different from a normal person's smile. It looked more like a paper doll grinning.

"Taiji comes from Wuji, and beyond Wuji is Taiji once more. The heavenly cycle repeats. To be born as a human and to turn into a handful of yellow earth after death—one should feel at peace with this. What need is there for last words?" Lu Jingxiu looked Mr. Paper in the eye and said plainly, "Fellow Daoist, you are blocking my way."

Before his voice faded, the two men attacked at almost the exact same time.

Mr. Paper scattered a shower of paper talismans across the ground, all written with a special ancient script. Standing in the distance, I focused my gaze and was completely taken aback. The ancient characters were identical to the script in the Burial Scripture.

The paper talismans transformed as they hit the ground, turning into giggling paper dolls and spirit horses. They flickered in and out of sight within the corpse qi, completely surrounding Lu Jingxiu.

Holding that dark blue Dao Talisman, not a trace of panic could be found on Lu Jingxiu's face. After seeing the blue talisman, Xu Yan, who was standing to the side, had no intention of helping either. It seemed that this talisman alone was enough to quell the chaos.

"Arrogant and conceited! Today you destroy the Buddha's physical body, and tomorrow, one hundred thousand Ghost Tathagatas will surely bathe the Five Great Upper Sects in blood!" Mr. Paper waved his palm, and the giggling paper dolls in the corpse qi lunged at Lu Jingxiu.

"You have fallen too deep into the demonic path. You are the one who is truly beyond saving." Lu Jingxiu shook his head and slowly raised his hand. The Dao Talisman in his palm was densely covered in star patterns. If they weren't deep underground, this talisman would probably have displayed even more extraordinary anomalies.

"Nine Stars of the Big Dipper, Great Sage of the Mid-Heaven. The towering star palace of the Violet Apex, shining brightly upon the earth below. As the mouthpiece of the heavens, determining the disasters and blessings of the human realm. A thousand prayers met with a thousand responses, ten thousand wishes all granted!" Lu Jingxiu's face was illuminated by the starlight from the Dao Talisman, making him look like a deity descended to the mortal world. As the starlight blazed brightly, both Mr. Paper and the Uncorrupted Bone in the pit felt a massive threat.

"Old man! Are you trying to practice inviting spirits?"

Lu Jingxiu used his actions to confirm Mr. Paper's guess: "Disciple Lu Jingxiu of the Lingbao Sect, believer in the methods of spiritual resonance, recites the name of the Great Sage of the Big Dipper, the True Lord of the Nine Origins, and prays to the Nine Emperors and Nine Truths of the Big Dipper, the Exalted Dao Sovereign Emperor Star Lords!"

To know the limits of drawing a talisman will cause ghosts and gods to tremble. Not knowing the limits of drawing a talisman will only make ghosts and gods laugh.

Lu Jingxiu's talisman had clearly reached the realm of startling ghosts and gods. He held the Dao Talisman up as if supporting a small mountain. Carrying an astonishing aura, the moment he finished chanting the final incantation, he smashed the Dao Talisman directly into the pit!

'Not good!'

Mr. Paper on the battlefield and I, hiding in the dark corner, felt our hearts skip a beat at the exact same time. The Uncorrupted Bone had originally been sealed by the coffin, but Lu Jingxiu's strike was very likely to cause a massive disaster!