Chapter 669: The Three Yin Sect's Foundation

Henshan was pitch-black in the dead of night. By the time I arrived at the Premium Cemetery Area, it was already past three in the morning.

'There are security guards patrolling the cemetery, so avoiding them won't be difficult. The real question is where to flee after entering the Three Yin Sect?' I thought. The vast expanse of Henshan made it incredibly difficult for the police to conduct a search, but I couldn't stay hidden in the deep mountains forever. With another Live Show broadcast in two days, I would definitely have to leave.

According to my original plan, I would first rest and regroup at the Three Yin Sect. Once everything was settled, I would put on the Human Skin Mask and use the knowledge I'd learned from the ancient disguise technique to alter my appearance, returning to the city under a completely new identity.

As for whether I should return to Jiangcheng to monitor the sect cultivators or head to Jinghai City to find the other Streamer, I hadn't made up my mind yet.

'Going to Xinhu to find the Two-Faced Buddha wouldn't be a bad idea either. I could hide in the shadows and investigate slowly. At a critical moment, I could even step out to help the sect cultivators and borrow their strength to eliminate the menace that is the Two-Faced Buddha.' Man proposes, heaven disposes. My idea was good, but putting it into practice would be extremely difficult.

'The sect cultivators will definitely turn Jiangcheng upside down to catch the killer. When that happens, the Underworld Live Show might also be exposed,' I thought. I wasn't worried about the Live Show itself; I was afraid of getting implicated. If the next live broadcast mission turned out to involve the sect cultivators, I would be in deep trouble.

'I should lie low for a while,' I decided. I had an unregistered bank card from Director Huang on me, holding 500,000. I had decisively secured it from Huang Boyuan earlier when I realized things were going south.

After running the adult store for a few years, I had saved up less than 50,000 in total, and I'd already spent most of it during my time streaming. If not for my cooperation with Qian Ding Pharmaceutical Company, I probably wouldn't even have the money for a bus ride right now.

Money wasn't everything, but without it, many simple things became incredibly complicated.

Seeing a mountain makes you run a horse to death; it was almost four in the morning by the time I actually entered the interior of the cemetery.

Carrying the Black Leather Suitcase was extremely inconvenient. To avoid being discovered, I had to slow my pace.

The nights in late autumn were relatively long, which was the only good news for me.

It took the strength of nine bulls and two tigers to finally cross the cemetery. As I approached the pine forest on the back mountain, my left hand trembled slightly, and faint characters began to surface on my skin.

I looked down. Back then, I had grasped that chess piece in the ley lines with my left hand, taking control of the death gate of the Ten Directions Ghost Refining Grand Formation. Now that I was close to the grand formation, my left hand was actually resonating with it from afar.

The Mountain God Sculpture represented the life gate, while the Black Chess Piece represented the death gate. When I pressed down on both items that day, they had left an inconspicuous symbol branded on each of my hands. These were my credentials for controlling the grand formation.

The back mountain of the cemetery was shrouded in heavy fog all year round. Naturally, this fog wasn't ordinary water vapor, but an amalgamation of yin energy and the resentment of the dead. If an ordinary mortal inhaled too much of it, their luck would be affected, leading to illness and disaster. However, this stuff had absolutely no effect on a Ghost Cultivator or ghostly entities.

I activated my Eighteen Yin Apertures to absorb the yin energy simultaneously and summoned the Desire Ghost and the others. Looking at the three somewhat excited ghostly entities, I suddenly froze. Despite all my careful planning, I had overlooked a very important detail.

'Wang Shi!'

I took out the piece of white paper that sealed Wang Shi; he was still inside the painting and hadn't come out yet.

'This is bad. Wang Shi has the Qingcheng Sect's Yang Talisman on him, so the sect cultivators might use it to track him down!' I took a deep breath to keep myself calm. 'Back then, Xu Yan was able to track the Yang Talisman using that special Compass in his hand. Right now, both the Compass and Xu Yan himself should be buried beneath the Third Ward. Without the Compass, the sect people shouldn't be able to track Wang Shi.'

The newly arrived sect cultivators didn't know about the Yang Talisman, but my fear was that Xu Wugui and Leng Qingxuan might run their mouths.

Looking at Wang Shi sealed within the white paper, I hesitated. The best approach right now would be to destroy the white paper along with Wang Shi inside it. This was the safest and simplest method.

If the sect cultivators had a way to sense the Yang Talisman, simply throwing the white paper away meant they would sooner or later find it.

And once Wang Shi fell into the hands of the sect cultivators, many of my secrets would be exposed.

The Real Death Game Live Broadcast, the Death Train Live Broadcast, and if you counted the Jianghu Cancer Research Live Broadcast—Wang Shi was connected to three of my live broadcasts.

For someone who knew me inside out, I either had to keep them by my side, or I had to silence them forever.

As I stared at the blurry figure inside the white paper, a hint of crimson flashed in the depths of my eyes.

'If I kill Wang Shi, how am I any different from Lu Xing?' I shook my head. Truth be told, I had also noticed lately that my personality was slowly and subtly changing.

It might be due to the immense pressure from my external environment, or perhaps it was the internal influence of the Good and Evil Asura Mask. Regardless, there was an unfamiliar, almost destiny-like power trying to twist me into something else.

'I won't become the kind of person I despise. I definitely won't.' I put the white paper away, quickened my pace through the pine forest, and stood at the highest point of the back mountain.

By this time, a trace of light was already appearing on the distant horizon. I utilized my Judging Eye, my gaze piercing through the heavy fog to look down at the Three Yin Sect in the mountain valley.

The terrain here was also quite particular; it was surrounded by mountains on all four sides, with only a gap in the north that revealed a great river flowing horizontally past.

'I don't have a compass or a GPS. If I rush into Henshan blindly, I might get lost. Moreover, the Depths of Henshan are strange as well—take that bizarre Suolong Village, for instance.' Henshan was part of Jiangcheng's millennium-old feng shui grand formation, so it wasn't surprising that it bred all sorts of supernatural anomalies. It just made things difficult for me as I prepared to enter the deep mountains.

'If I want to go to Xinhu, I just need to follow Henshan. But if I want to head to Jinghai City, I'll have to cross the great river.' I looked at the gap north of the Three Yin Sect and sighed. Crossing the river would be too difficult.

Walking down from the mountaintop, I entered the gates of the Three Yin Sect for the second time.

'This place has finally become a true ghost sect in name and reality.' The main gate of the Daoist temple wasn't closed. The various furnishings inside hadn't changed either, largely remaining exactly as they were when I'd left.

'No one has come back.' With the master of the Ghost Infant Lineage fleeing with severe injuries and the Current Meng Po of the Meng Po Lineage still receiving treatment elsewhere, the Three Yin Sect essentially existed in name only.

I patrolled every room in the temple and saw no bloodstains or signs of a struggle. I had already cleaned up everything when I last left, throwing all the corpses into the Henshan Yin Vein.

'This is the source of the Henshan Yin Vein. From a feng shui perspective, it's also a crucial link in Jiangcheng's feng shui grand formation.' Check the aura upon entering the door—this was something Daoist master Wan had taught me. Having gone through so many live broadcasts with them, I had learned quite a bit just by being around them.

After getting roughly reacquainted with the surroundings, I headed straight for the main hall.

I had left in a hurry last time, so I didn't take any of the good items in the main hall with me.

The Three Yin Sect didn't revere the Three Pure Ones; they worshipped the Three Yins. Three shrines sat in the main hall, all covered with thick cloth.

'I was really curious when I first came here, and now I finally have the chance to see what's inside.' I lifted the cover off the first shrine. Inside sat a Clay Figurine of Empress Houtu. It looked as though it were molded from common dirt found anywhere, yet it was remarkably lifelike, enshrined there with a serene expression.

'Why would they enshrine Empress Houtu?' Empress Houtu was the Mother of Earth in Huaxia mythology, governing yin and yang and nurturing all living things. There was nothing inherently wrong with the Clay Figurine itself, but it completely contradicted the principles of the Three Yin Sect.

In front of the Clay Figurine sat an incense burner containing two unlit incense sticks.

'There were supposed to be three originally, but She Qian stole one back then.' This incense was called Soul-Soothing Incense; it could make the souls of living creatures fall into a deep slumber.

'Empress Houtu presides over mountains and rivers. Sculpting this Clay Figurine and offering Soul-Soothing Incense to it probably has nothing to do with faith. It's likely just to suppress the ley lines.' I bowed three times to the Clay Figurine before taking down the Soul-Soothing Incense. In truth, if the incense burner hadn't been so inexplicably heavy, I would have taken it along too.

I arrived at the second shrine. The one situated in the center was the most luxuriously built.

I pulled back the black cloth. The space inside the shrine was vast, holding three oil lamps that had already gone out.

I had seen similar oil lamps before. This kind of eternal lamp represented a sect's karmic luck. Daoist Priest Xianqing had lit one of these lamps when he was driving the Fox Immortal Corpse in Xinhu High School.

A person's death is like a lamp going out. As long as the lamp remained unextinguished, the sect's karmic luck remained.

'She Qian borrowed fire from the oil lamp to light the Soul-Soothing Incense. That was what caused the oil lamp to dim, laying the groundwork for the downfall of the Three Yin Sect. Now that I've become the master of the Three Yin Sect, what will happen if I relight it? Will the Three Yin Sect's karmic luck return? Or will the renewed karmic luck of the Three Yin Sect descend upon me?'

I took out my lighter and tried a few times but couldn't get it to light. I gave a bitter smile, abandoning the thought, and looked deeper into the shrine.

Three bizarre objects were enshrined behind the oil lamps: a shed snakeskin from a giant python, a mummified infant corpse with three eyes on its head, and a White Soup Bowl.

I wasn't surprised to see the first two items, but that White Soup Bowl caught my attention.

'It's so familiar... This bowl is identical to the one I got from the train attendant during the Death Train Live Broadcast!' I furrowed my brows. 'The three bizarre objects correspond to the Lord Snake, Ghost Infant, and Meng Po branches. Could this soup bowl be the bowl for holding Meng Po Soup? Does Meng Po really exist in this world? Is there an Underworld?'

The items enshrined in the shrine symbolized the sect's teachings. On normal days, disciples were absolutely forbidden from approaching the shrines.

'The treasure I'm looking for might be hidden right here.' I moved the enshrined objects aside and tapped around, quickly discovering a hidden compartment.

Pulling back the wooden plank, I reached in and took out a palm-sized Jade Token.

'A talisman command?' If I hadn't seen Daoist Master Xu Yan use a talisman command at Jianghu Cancer Research Hospital, I really wouldn't have recognized this thing.

'The one Xu Yan used seemed to be called the Three Wonders Talisman Command, which is one of Qingcheng's foundational sect treasures.'

Cold to the touch and seamlessly whole, I held the Jade Token up to my eyes, only then seeing two extremely domineering ancient seal characters written on it.

'Ten Directions!'