Chapter 80

At these words, the Xianzun's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. He rose to his feet, his face a mask of disbelief. "What did you say?"

A disciple who had remained silent until now spoke up: "That's impossible! Weren't there nearly a hundred people accompanying the Divine Maiden to the Earth Immortal Temple last night? Even if the Ghost King were formidable, he couldn't possibly have taken out that many people single-handedly, right?"

Though he said this, the moment the messenger had stepped into the hall, everyone present knew those nearly a hundred people were in dire straits. As for Lin Yu, as long as the Ghost Tribe wasn't stupid and realized she had value, they wouldn't harm her for the time being.

The messenger had no knowledge of the Xianzun's plans, nor did he understand anything about the Earth Immortal Temple. All he could piece together from fragmented information and the beast's words today was that the Ghost King had been killed by disciples of Heaven's Mandate Tower, and the beast, enraged, had taken the Divine Maiden hostage during the Spring Sacrifice.

His eyes darted around the hall, carefully gauging the mood of each person present. Everyone standing here was among the highest in status and skill in Heaven's Mandate Tower, and he feared that one wrong word might get him dragged out and executed. But now all eyes were on him, and he had to respond.

So he spoke timidly: "It wasn't the Ghost King. The Ghost King is dead... Judging by what the beast said when it came to show off its power, it must have arrived after the Ghost King's death. When it saw the Ghost King's miserable state, it intercepted the senior brothers and sisters who were returning. They were all killed or injured by that beast."

"Just one beast?" someone said shrilly, his voice sharp with anger. "It admitted it did all that? I don't believe one beast could have that kind of power!"

Another chimed in: "What kind of beast is it? Our senior brothers and sisters could kill the Ghost King. How could they be at the mercy of a mere Ghost Tribe beast, dead or alive?"

"It said... it was raised by the Ghost King..." The messenger's mouth twitched. "...a pet."

He continued: "When it arrived, there were many people in Senior Brother's courtyard. It just swept its tail once, and everyone fell. Some died, some were injured. Senior Brother was gravely wounded and carried away."

For a moment, silence fell over the hall. No one spoke. Their senior brother, Zhou Yu, came from a powerful family. Though he had spent a fortune to become the Xianzun's chief disciple and had trailed behind others in competitions over the years, he had been training abroad recently, enduring much hardship. He had returned not long ago, and the Xianzun had remarked that his strength had greatly improved. How could he have been brought down so easily, gravely wounded?

"How many dead and injured?" the Xianzun asked after a long pause.

"Roughly seventy or eighty... Many people witnessed the beast with their own eyes. Its words should be true. To look at it, it was just an ordinary low-level creature, hardly a threat, so no one in the courtyard paid it much mind when it arrived."

"It wasn't until it demanded we trade something for the Divine Maiden's return—its attitude utterly obnoxious—that someone charged at it. But in an instant, everyone fell. A lot of people died in that single strike. The ones still alive are mostly the senior disciples among us."

At that, the Xianzun grabbed the leftover tea cup from the table and hurled it with force at the feet of the messenger. The disciple didn't dare dodge, letting the tea splash over him. A sharp crack rang out, and the whole hall held its breath.

The Xianzun took a deep breath and asked, "And the beast?"

"Ran... ran off... It said its piece and fled."

"No one stopped it?!"

"S-someone tried, but they couldn't stop it. They didn't even last a single exchange—all fell. The beast just swaggered away."

The Xianzun closed his eyes. His head throbbed, a dull ringing in his ears. He fought to suppress his emotions, forcing himself not to think about what came after today. On the day of the Spring Sacrifice, the Divine Maiden had been snatched away by a beast, nearly a hundred disciples were missing and had failed to protect her, and the beast had slipped into Heaven's Mandate Tower unnoticed to provoke them and kill more people.

If word of this got out, what authority would Heaven's Mandate Tower have left?

Of course, it also proved the tower's incompetence. Its gradual decline, the ineptitude of its disciples—this was what the Xianzun least wanted to admit. In his view, the disciples he had sent to kill the Ghost King were the most formidable in Heaven's Mandate Tower, among the best in the entire cultivation world.

And now, his strongest disciples had proven utterly negligible before a single beast from the Ghost Realm, dissipating as lightly as dust.

The human realm had produced no extraordinary cultivators in far too long. The path of cultivation had been monopolized by aristocratic families for twenty years now. So long as one touched a bit of magic, performed a few flashy tricks, they could become an object of admiration and be called "Daoist Master." Beneath this veneer of false prosperity, even the Xianzun had nearly forgotten the gap between them and the outside world.

He had forgotten that, besides mortals, there were the Ghost Tribe and the Demon Tribe buried beneath the earth—and above them all, the unapproachable gods.

The Ghost Tribe had bided its time for years while humanity stagnated. If a mere beast of the Ghost Tribe was this powerful now, what of the gods? Could frail humanity truly still ascend to godhood?

A cold shudder ran down the Xianzun's spine. He felt a chill spreading through his body. Since raising a Rain Goddess twenty years ago, he hadn't seen the threshold of the heavenly realm even once.

For twenty years, countless living sacrifices had been offered. He had presided over one ritual after another, drawing divine power mostly from his sacrifices. Over all these years, the gods of the heavenly realm had inevitably grown much stronger. So could the Divine Maiden he was now cultivating possibly match the cultivation of the heavenly immortals and successfully ascend?

His intuition told him no.

If even a Ghost Tribe beast possessed such power, then humanity had already fallen far behind the other realms. Under the current circumstances, such a gap could not be closed in less than a century.

The dream of becoming a god had been shattered. The Xianzun felt his blood run cold, waves of chill washing over his heart. He could not accept such a drastic fall from grace—his life's work reduced to nothing.

It was like a farmer trapped in a secluded paradise, sealed off from the world. He dreamed of being a general, so he painstakingly raised and trained an army he believed could rival thousands upon thousands. But only when he marched to war did he see for the first time how powerful his enemies truly were. His army, before the foe, crumbled like a chaotic swarm of ants.

The Xianzun opened his eyes, composing his expression into a mask of authority. "What does it want?"

"It wants you to help it become a god."

"Delusion! The lowly Ghost Tribe dares to covet divinity?"

"Xianzun! Xianzun!" At that moment, another disciple burst in, scrambling and weeping in panic. "The bodies of Senior Brother Yan and the others have been sent back!"

The newcomer rushed into the hall and slammed his head against the floor, ignoring the blood trickling from his forehead. "Xianzun, forgive me... they..." He groped for words, speaking in fragments and disorder, even biting his tongue in his panic.

Finally, he mumbled, "X-Xianzun, you should go see for yourself. Something terrible is happening outside..."

The Xianzun had anticipated this, but he didn't actually go out. He didn't need to think to know it was the returned corpses causing a panic. He rubbed his brow. "Where are the bodies?"

"At the halfway altar."

The Xianzun's head had never ached like this. The beast's first provocation had been in Zhou Yu's courtyard, among his own people. Even if all of them died, as long as the believers didn't know, the tower's prestige remained intact.

But in less than the time it takes a stick of incense to burn, the beast had delivered the bodies of the disciples sent to kill the Ghost King to the altar. The halfway altar was now packed with believers who had come to observe the ritual.

So what would it do next? Appear before the believers and massacre them, or continue targeting the disciples? The Xianzun dared not think further.

The newcomer kowtowed heavily once more, then, biting his lip, repeated the beast's words in one breath: "The beast said that while everyone is still alive, it will give you the time of one incense stick to consider. If you refuse, when the incense burns out, it will kill a second batch and send their bodies back, dropping them wherever it pleases. If you still haven't agreed within an hour, it will kill the Divine Maiden and display her corpse at the gates of the Imperial City as a public spectacle."

Lin Yu stood behind the Xianzun, separated by a single wall, having heard enough. She edged sideways a few steps. Diagonally ahead of her stood a sculpture, and from her angle, she could glimpse a corner of the hall, directly facing the Xianzun's back. The sculpture conveniently concealed the sliver of her body that was exposed.

As she idly took in the frantic faces of those in the hall, Lin Yu reviewed her plan. Before parting ways with Di Ting, she had told him to first make a demand the Xianzun couldn't possibly fulfill—ideally to scare him—and then threaten to have the ghost messengers send back batches of disciple corpses every stick of incense.

After all, those people were dead and gone. They had even gone to the trouble of sending ghost messengers to collect the bodies, so they might as well put them to good use.

By the time Lin Yu and Di Ting returned, it was already noon. Only two hours remained until shen shi [3 PM]. Time was too short, so they had to move fast. To keep the Xianzun from stalling with ritual preparations, the best approach for someone so concerned with face was to humiliate him. So they had to create a stir to intimidate him.

Last night, when Lin Yu had the ghost messengers collect the bodies, she had already allocated how to use them. By sending back twenty bodies every incense stick, within less than an hour the Xianzun would inevitably grow restless and demand to negotiate with Di Ting directly. At that point, Di Ting would present his demand: that the Xianzun support his claim as Ghost King. And the Xianzun would have no choice but to agree.

Though the Ghost Tribe looked down on humanity, their status was low among the four realms. With the Ghost King dead, Di Ting couldn't simply become the new Ghost King at will. He had been ordered around in the underworld by the Ghost King for so long that he had never considered commanding respect or rallying subordinates. Essentially, he stood alone. If he wanted to be the king of the underworld, he'd need the other ghosts to submit and build up his own circle of trusted followers.

In the eyes of those influential city lords, judges, and others, Di Ting was just a beast to be summoned at will. With the Ghost King dead, there would certainly be those vying with Di Ting for the position. And Di Ting, simple-minded as he was, would likely lose the throne.

But if the Xianzun—who, among humans, stood closest to the gods—recognized Di Ting's position and vouched for him, then the human realm acknowledging this new Ghost King would suppress the would-be usurpers and give Di Ting breathing room to stabilize after ascending.

Whether he could seize the opportunity and hold the throne would be left to fate.

Lin Yu leaned against the wall. The hall had fallen utterly silent, broken only by the soft footsteps of the Xianzun pacing back and forth before his desk. The incense in the burner burned shorter with each sigh from the assembly. Then, the final ember was buried under ash, and the first stick of incense burned out completely. Almost on cue, another cry of alarm erupted.

The crowd listened expressionlessly to the reports of the situation at the mountain base, their faces blank. No one reacted with much surprise. The atmosphere was stretched to its limit. The messenger finished his report but dared not rise, remaining kneeling and motionless.

Soon another stick of incense burned out. This time, twenty corpses, mangled and crushed, were hurled onto the long stone steps before the main gate of Heaven's Mandate Tower. The usually bustling steps were now jammed with people. Some, terrified, let out shrieks and curses.

Still, no one voiced doubt. Everyone remained silent as mice, listening. The messenger, seeing the deathly stillness, quickly withdrew after reporting.

The hall enjoyed another stick of incense of silence before it was again torn by commotion. This time, in addition to the disciples' bodies, a blood-stained robe worn by the Ghost King before his death was returned. The garment was torn with a hundred slashes, a ghastly sight.

The messenger added another line: "The beast said that after another stick of incense, all our senior brothers and sisters will be dead... and after that, the next thing sent back will be the Divine Maiden's corpse..."

Finally, the Xianzun could sit still no longer. He took a deep breath, trying to steady his racing thoughts, then strode out of Bushou Hall. The disciples, silent for so long, followed suit and filed out after him. The hall was left empty, a spacious void.

Lin Yu stepped out from behind the wall. She paced around the trashed hall, her gaze eventually landing on the sculpture beside the wall. She remembered that the Xianzun's residence hadn't had this sculpture before—meaning it had been placed there within the past two days.

The sculpture depicted a tall, slender woman in ornate robes, hands folded properly before her. The face was featureless, a blank canvas save for a hint of a curved smile on the empty cheeks, as if her lips were lifted in a smirk. Apart from that, the sculpture bore no distinguishing traits at all.

Intrigued, Lin Yu reached out and touched the sculpture's surface. As expected, it was made of gold. Gold for a statue was usually reserved for divine images. But aside from the face, this sculpture's posture, movement, and clothing had been set in stone, impossible to modify. How could there be such a featureless divine image?

Divine statues were typically cast in pure gold, and people identified them by their distinguishing features—the Earth Immortal's seated cross-legged form with a beard, the Rain Goddess holding a lotus and smiling. Lin Yu carefully recalled every ancient text she had read, but she could not match this sculpture to any god.

Still, she didn't dwell on it. She lingered in Bushou Hall only briefly before turning and leaving.

...

At the rear mountain, the Temple of Ten Thousand Gods.

Yun Chi knelt on a cushion, hands pressed together in prayer. She stared at the enormous statue before her for a while. Behind the statue, a Crimson Netherstone had been placed, its halo casting the carved Crimson God in a solemn, awe-inspiring light.

Yun Chi's expression was calm, but her eyes held no trace of reverence. She stared fixedly at the statue's half-lidded eyes, locking gazes with it for a long time. Finally, she closed her eyes and began her usual prayer. Every year, every day, she had knelt here, praying to the gods, but they had never shown her mercy.

Thousands of supplications, never a response, never a shred of pity.

"Gods above, I beseech you..." Yun Chi paused for a beat, then opened her eyes again, changing the reverent phrase she had been about to utter. With contempt, she said, "I beg you to die, won't you?"

"Yes—" Lin Yu walked in from outside the temple, answering for her.

Hearing a voice, a flicker of surprise crossed Yun Chi's face. Her body trembled almost imperceptibly. She turned around and met Lin Yu's gaze, who was now looking at her with a smile.

Lin Yu appeared casual: "I guessed right. You were indeed here."

"You..." Yun Chi was taken aback. "Why are you here? Aren't you..."

"You were about to ask if I wasn't taken by the Ghost Tribe?"

Yun Chi hesitated for a moment, then realization struck. "It was all your doing?!"

Lin Yu didn't answer. Instead, she walked straight over and sat down on the cushion beside Yun Chi, brushing the dust off her skirt as she did. She smiled at Yun Chi. "Someone saw you kill the High Priestess, so I figured you'd come here to seek refuge from the god you revere most."