Chapter 664: Bury Them All Alive!

The talisman Lu Jingxiu used bore star marks—an extraordinary piece, rare even among Upper Vehicle Talismans.

With the man himself channeling it, its power far surpassed the Heavenly Capital Thunder Talisman I had used back then.

The corpse Qi blasted apart on impact. Though we stood nine levels underground, endless beams of light and shadow seemed to plunge straight into the Yellow Springs.

The aura radiating from that talisman sent a tremor through the soul, cleansing the heart and sweeping away all calamity and evil.

Under the talisman's radiance, my Judging Eye was nearly blinded. Strangely enough, the moment I reined in my malice toward the sect cultivators, my eyes felt much better.

When I opened my eyes again, the corpse Qi in the underground cavern had been swept completely clean. Even without my Judging Eye, I could see everything clearly.

Lu Jingxiu's long hair whipped through the air as starlight flowed across his Daoist robe, making him look like the True Lord of the Big Dipper descended to the mortal realm.

Chanting an incantation, he poured decades of cultivation into driving the blue Dao Talisman that had plunged into the pit.

No one knew how deep the pit, crushed open by the Uncorrupted Bone's Suspended Coffin, actually went. Two or three seconds passed before a deafening roar finally reached everyone's ears!

"Boom!"

Like a blade from the heavens, the Divine Talisman cleaved straight down onto the coffin.

The ground he heave and the mountain shook as if struck by an earthquake. Dirt, stones, and grit pattered down from overhead while everyone swayed unsteadily on their feet.

Of everyone present, only Xu Yan, Lu Jingxiu, and Mr. Paper managed to keep their footing.

"You've caused a disaster! Old Daoist! You've brought down a monstrous catastrophe!" Before the tremors had even faded, Mr. Paper roared furiously at Lu Jingxiu.

Channeling the Divine Talisman, Lu Jingxiu seemed to sense something amiss as well. His ever-unfailing Big Dipper Nine Emperors Nine True Talisman had met its match this time.

He could feel that something down in the pit had taken the full brunt of his attack and endured it through sheer force.

The Dao Talisman had failed to destroy it, inflicting heavy injuries at most.

Expressions shifted across the cavern. Before long, a second tremor rippled through the earth veins. Cracks as thick as chopsticks snaked across the underground chamber; the Broken Face Wenqu Terrain that Mr. Paper had spent over twenty years constructing was collapsing.

In the blink of an eye, the fissures spread to the sect cultivators' feet. Earth and stone shattered as the sunken pit steadily widened.

"Get back!" Lu Jingxiu shouted, his voice pitching sharp. Standing right on the edge of the pit alongside Mr. Paper, only the two of them could see what was happening down inside.

The cultivators scrambled backward, and I retreated right along with them.

"Roar!"

Before I could back out of the cavern, an earth-shattering corpse roar tore from the pit, slowly twisting into an eerie laugh.

Shifting between male and female, the sound made every hair stand on end!

I wasn't the only one who felt it—the sect cultivators who hadn't yet made it out of the cavern reacted even more strongly. The moment the laughter turned male, several of their faces changed drastically.

"This... how is that Fellow Daoist Chen's laugh?!"

"It's Chen Jiuge! So he was here all along! He's not dead!"

Before the sect cultivators could recover from their shock, a towering column of corpse Qi erupted from the pit, carrying snapped dragon poles and shattered planks of the wooden coffin.

Seeing the coffin wood carved with ancient Talisman Incantations, Mr. Paper's pupils shrank to pinpricks. "The seal is broken. I trapped it for twenty years, and it still managed to get out."

Boundless darkness pressed down against the starlight, and Lu Jingxiu's expression turned grim as death. "The corpse Qi is monstrous! Just what kind of monster was sealed down there?"

The eerie laughter grew louder and louder, yet the voices never merged into one; instead, they coexisted in a warped symbiosis.

As corpse Qi surged forth, Mr. Paper saw that the situation was beyond salvaging and beat a decisive retreat, leaving Lu Jingxiu standing alone at the edge of the pit.

"Old Daoist! You've stirred up a colossal disaster! The Heaven you worship won't forgive you, and neither the Buddha nor I will ever let you off! Every last one of you deserves to die!" Mr. Paper backed away in a hurry, only to be cut off by Xu Yan as he passed by.

"What is sealed beneath this ground? Unless you explain yourself clearly, you aren't leaving here tonight." Though shock sent towering waves crashing through Xu Yan's mind, his face betrayed nothing; only his once-cloudy eyes now shone crystal clear, like a slumbering dragon wide awake.

"You think you can stop me?" Unwilling to linger, Mr. Paper flung out a handful of paper effigies and spirit horses, moving to force his way through.

Yet Xu Yan didn't even spare those things a glance. Knowing the urgency of the moment, he formed a spirit seal with his hand and chanted aloud, "Heaven has three wonders: the sun, the moon, and the stars—piercing heaven and earth, startling ghosts and gods!"

Hearing just that opening line, Mr. Paper hastily dodged aside. "Qingcheng's Three Wonders Talisman Command? You're the Dao Zheng of Qingcheng?!"

Xu Yan gave him no answer. With a sweep of his sleeve, a talisman token appeared in his hand.

"Blazing and radiant, manifest my divine light! Wind, fire, and thunder, stand guard at my side! By the Emperor's decree, strike down all evil on the spot!"

As he held the talisman token aloft, the talismans beneath his Daoist robe glimmered with wind, fire, and thunder. A small portion surged toward Mr. Paper, while the majority shot straight for the pit to back up Lu Jingxiu.

"Old bastard, you're actually still alive! Fine, fine, fine! We'll settle our old scores and new grudges together later!" Mr. Paper took the brunt of several talismans head-on. His clothes showed no change at all, yet his exposed skin shriveled and wrinkled like a sheet of white paper soaked in water. Stranger still, an oily liquid seeped out from beneath his skin; there was no telling what it was, only that it looked nothing like human blood.

When immortals fight, Little Ghosts suffer—several sect cultivators were buffeted left and right by the corpse Qi while still having to fend off the paper effigies Mr. Paper had scattered.

The paper effigies weren't large, but each held an evil spirit or fierce ghost bound inside, making them deeply troublesome for ordinary cultivators.

Wounded by the talismans and his body warping, Mr. Paper didn't slow down in the slightest—instead, he ran even faster. He knew the terror of an Uncorrupted Bone, and he understood all too well that staying here meant certain death.

Xu Yan hadn't expected Mr. Paper to risk heavy injury just to break out. Baffled, he felt the unease in his chest deepen. "Halt! Tell me what is sealed in this place!"

"What is it? You'll find out soon enough!" Mr. Paper was only halfway through his sentence when another explosive blast tore from the pit. Fragments of the Suspended Coffin were blown everywhere by the corpse Qi, and amid the flying debris, a dazzling blue Dao Talisman was blasted right back out as well.

Spotting the Dao Talisman, Lu Jingxiu instinctively formed a hand seal to recall it; after all, it was one of the Lingbao Sect's foundational treasures.

Just as the talisman was nearly back in his grasp, an arm suddenly shot out from the thick corpse Qi!

Slender as a lotus root, spotless and unblemished, it looked as though it had been carved from precious jade.

It possessed a near-perfect form, its five long, slender fingers tinged with a heart-stopping pallor.

With effortless ease, it caught the blue Dao Talisman out of the air—a Dao Talisman of the highest grade even among Upper Vehicle Talismans!

Its five fingers tightened, and right before Lu Jingxiu's eyes, it tore that Dao Talisman to shreds!

Because the talisman was linked to his mind and spirit, the destruction of the Dao Talisman made Lu Jingxiu spit out a mouthful of blood. His vitality ebbed away, aging him more than a decade in an instant, as if he already had one foot in the coffin.

"Flesh of ice and skin of jade, spell-breaking at the Pre-Heaven Stage. Ninefold Nether Opening, undying and uncorrupted. I should have thought of it sooner—I should have realized long ago!" His face ashen, Lu Jingxiu used nearly the last of his strength to look back and shout, "Run! This is a Consummate Uncorrupted Bone!"

"An Uncorrupted Bone?!" Xu Yan knew all too well what that name portended. His mind reeled, and his control over the talisman token faltered for a split second.

Mr. Paper, who had been watching from the side for an opening, seized that flaw at once. Taking several talismans head-on, he flashed past and broke out of the sect cultivators' encirclement.

Seeing him sprinting my way, I quickly pulled back and hid in the shadows outside the cavern entrance.

I held in my aura as Mr. Paper's ranting rang in my ears.

"Whatever suffering I endured today, I will repay double in the days to come!"

Battered and disheveled, Mr. Paper fled upstairs without looking back once, passing right by my hiding spot without noticing me.

After all, no one would ever suspect that another person was hiding in the underground cavern at a time like this.

Knowing he was powerless to turn the tide, he fled without hesitation. Only after he had gone far did I step out from my hiding place.

'The Uncorrupted Bone's emergence is a foregone conclusion. Judging from that laughter just now, neither Gu Tongtong nor Chen Jiuge wiped the other out—they chose to coexist. With the Uncorrupted Bone keeping the sect cultivators tied up here, my top priority is to find Chen Jiuge's corpse.' I glanced at the cavern sealed off by corpse Qi, unwilling to set foot inside again, and turned to chase after Mr. Paper.

Mr. Paper had been badly wounded in his clash with Xu Yan. Of course, that didn't mean Xu Yan was far stronger than him. Mr. Paper specialized in feng shui; inside an intact feng shui grand formation, several sect cultivators combined wouldn't have been his match. His misfortune was that the formation's core had been destroyed, leaving only a broken array across Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital.

'How did the Five Great Upper Sects find their way here? Did Chen Jiuge tip them off, or was someone else guiding them?' Once out of the underground cavern and free from the pressure of the sect cultivators and the Uncorrupted Bone, Mr. Paper slowly calmed down. Turning things over in his mind, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.

'Something isn't right. I must inform the Buddha of this matter. I'm in terrible condition right now and cannot stay long.' He pulled a sheet of spirit money from his pocket, folded it into a paper kite, and commanded, "Swift!"

I couldn't tell what incantation Mr. Paper chanted, but as he opened his palm, the paper kite flew straight off. "My ride isn't here yet. Since this place has been exposed, there's no point in leaving this broken formation behind."

He hurried all the way upstairs into the room where Chen Jiuge had originally controlled the grand formation. Chen Jiuge's corpse still lay on the floor, though its position had shifted, as if someone had already searched and moved it.

"The Five Great Upper Sects are definitely no match for the Uncorrupted Bone, but I still can't leave anything to chance. The best way is to bury every last one of them underground." Mr. Paper's voice carried a frantic edge. Walking over to the edge of the sand table, he casually stripped off his tattered suit jacket, baring his upper body.

To him it was just an offhand gesture, yet it revealed a deeply unsettling sight: Mr. Paper's torso was covered in bluish-black tattoos of ancient characters. What shocked me even more was that those ancient characters bore an eighty to ninety percent resemblance to the script in the Burial Scripture!

As Mr. Paper came to a halt beside the sand table, the ancient characters tattooed across his skin seemed to writhe to life.

He drew in a breath, his aura slowly shifting. "Living people are all ghosts, method of burial within; alternation and return from start to end, forever auspicious and without misfortune!"