The boy looked hesitantly at the person in the coffin. "What is it?"
"Do not tell anyone that you encountered me. Do not tell anyone that you ate this pearl."
The coffin-dweller's tone suddenly turned chilling. A chill ran through the boy's heart, and he unconsciously took a step back. Yet the person in the coffin raised a hand and tossed the pearl over. The boy caught it instinctively. The coffin-dweller looked at him coldly again. "Can you do that?"
Radiance flowed over the pearl in his hand, making the boy's face flicker between light and shadow. But when he thought of that dragon boat and the girl who had been taken away, he no longer hesitated. He raised his head, looked at the person in the coffin, and nodded hard.
"So all those words were not wasted after all. Go on, eat this treasure first." As he watched the boy bring the pearl to his mouth, an imperceptible glimmer of delight surfaced in the coffin-dweller's gray-white pupils.
Amid the pitch-black desolate graves, the glowing pearl was still a foot from the boy's face, yet it had already dyed his features a deep blue. Along with the coffin-dweller only a few feet away, wrapped head to toe in a scarlet robe with even his eyeballs gray-white, everything seemed unspeakably bizarre. Yet the stranger it became, the more determined the boy was to swallow the pearl. He had never seen such a miraculous treasure before. He felt that if the coffin-dweller wanted to harm him, it would take no more than lifting a hand—there was no need to go to such lengths and waste a pearl like this.
"How laughable, how laughable. The dignified Dharma King of Lanke Temple had actually fallen so low as to swindle a mountain child..." Suddenly, such a voice drifted from the mass of graves, long and distant, as though someone far away were chanting in a drawn-out tone. Yet it sounded as if a layer of dry, rotten paper had been caught in the speaker's throat, unbearably parched and strange.
A black shadow darted out from several dim ghost flames and flapped onto a broken stele nearby. That dry, bizarre voice had come from this black shadow. The resolute, bold boy turned toward the sound. But at the sight of it, he could no longer contain himself. An icy chill surged through his heart, and he cried out in alarm.
The source of that strange human voice was actually an old crow with feathers black as night!
Ghost flames flickered amid a wilderness graveyard, and an old crow spoke in human words. To the boy, this was another utterly inconceivable thing. As he cried out, his palms were already drenched in cold sweat, his mind utterly blank, incapable of considering what the crow had said. But the red-robed figure in the coffin remained expressionless. Without even looking at the crow, he merely lifted his head slightly to gaze at the sky and said calmly, "What a fine art of clinging to the six senses. I had not expected you to find this place so quickly."
"You were struck by my senior brother's Soul Erosion Demonic Spell. This place of extreme yin is most detrimental to you. I had not expected you to hide here either." The old crow continued in its strange tone. At some point, a stream of black qi had risen in the western sky, thick as ink, rolling endlessly through the night like a black dragon. The coffin-dweller stared indifferently at it. In an instant, the black qi swept down. A wild wind rose in all directions, and when it faded, the boy saw that a gaunt man stood in the clearing. His face bore a trace of smugness and mockery, his entire body hidden in a pitch-black Taoist robe. Golden patterns wound around the white short staff in his right hand, which was full of holes—intricate, obscure, ancient, and terrifying at a glance.
"First place yourself in the jaws of death, then be reborn. Use a secret art to conceal the treasure aura of the Mò Chà Pearl, then have this mountain child swallow it. When the time came, even if this child dropped dead before our eyes, we would never imagine that the Mò Chà Pearl was in his belly. Old ghost Kongtong, your plan was quite good." The old crow had flown off with frightened caws as soon as the black-robed man appeared. Compared with the crow's voice, this black-robed man's voice was a hundred times more pleasant. Yet the boy only felt the events before him becoming ever more sinister and strange. Then the black-robed man's gaze suddenly fell over him, and he shouted, "You ignorant little wretch courting death, why have you not thrown me the thing in your hand? If you swallow it, this pearl will take root in your belly. It will suck dry all the qi and blood in your body. Then, after this old ghost recovers, he will cut open your stomach, take out the pearl, and escape."
The boy did not know whether the black-robed man spoke the truth. Unable to resist, he turned to look at the coffin-dweller. Yet that pale face still bore no expression. "Miro, you are spewing utter nonsense," he said calmly. "The Mò Chà Pearl is merely cold in nature. At most, swallowing it will cause ice to form in one's belly. How could it possibly suck away all one's qi and blood? Besides, if I wished to take the pearl, why would I need to use such a cruel method as cutting open his stomach?"
If ice formed in his belly, how could he still live? Though the coffin-dweller said he had no need for such a cruel method, his words were cruel and vicious beyond measure. The boy's whole body stiffened at once. But the black-robed man did not waste breath arguing with him. With a cold laugh, he swept his left hand, and a cloud of black qi rolled directly toward the boy.
With a boom, a streak of red light shot from the coffin-dweller's hand and smashed the black qi into fragments. The spilling shockwaves drove the standing boy five or six steps back, and he fell beside the grave before the coffin. Miro's attack had failed, but he threw back his head and laughed. "So much nonsense. After talking for so long, you still have to fight in the end."
After clashing head-on with Miro, the coffin-dweller's face became even paler. Yet upon hearing Miro's shrill laughter, he merely sneered. With a pinch of his left hand, the red robe on his body suddenly flew out, splitting into six and falling to either side of the coffin, sheltering both him and the boy within. Only then did the boy realize that the blood-red robe wrapped around the coffin-dweller was actually six blood-colored red banners. Once the six banners were deployed, crimson light blazed all around the graveyard. The boy felt scorching heat pressing against him. More than a dozen golden threads like lightning snakes shot from the black-robed man's short staff, but the instant they touched the crimson light, they shattered with crackling sounds into tiny golden sparks. In the next instant, the crimson light flared even brighter. The blood-red banners grew in the wind, slowly rising into enormous banners over ten feet tall. Amid a series of crack-crack-crack-crack sounds like growing bones, the dense crimson glow suddenly gathered into a ghostly face with two horns, four eyes, sharp teeth, and fangs. It floated above the coffin-dweller's head, as solid as a physical thing.
"Good old ghost, who would have thought that your tattered red robe was such a magic treasure?" Miro cackled repeatedly, pointing his short staff at the heavens. "Wait." Just then, the coffin-dweller suddenly called out, "Think carefully about where this is before fighting me."
Miro froze for a moment, then asked, "What place?"
"You do not even recognize Shushan?" The coffin-dweller pointed at the dark mountains faintly visible in the distance and sneered. "This place is less than a hundred li from Shushan's mountain gate. If you want to kill me, are you not afraid Shushan's disciples will notice? And surely you saw Kunlun's Ground-Leaving Flame Light Boat just now?"
"Old ghost Kongtong, so this was what you were planning." Miro's eyes shifted, and he laughed. "No wonder you did not run toward your own sect, but hid in this place instead, leaving my Senior Brother unable to catch you. But after so long, you are still sitting in that coffin. You must already be at the end of your tether. Is your lower body nearly rotted away, so that you cannot even leave the coffin? What if Shushan and Kunlun discover us? By the time they arrive, I will have killed you and departed long ago. How about it? So long as you can stand up from that coffin, I will not attack. But if you cannot stand, stop wasting words." With that, he swept his short staff. The tiny holes in it released waves of ghostly howls, and black waves instantly rolled across the sky. A giant black claw flashed into view, then transformed into countless streams of black flowing flame that poured down.
The coffin-dweller's expression changed at once. This man was originally Kongtong, Dharma King of Lanke Temple in Nanyue. By a twist of fate, he had obtained the Mò Chà Pearl, only to be spotted by Miro's Senior Brother, Hetu. Miro and Hetu were disciples of Daoist Yinxiao, a Rogue Cultivator of Beiman. They were not members of the righteous path, and the insignificant Lanke Temple had never been in their eyes. Moreover, Hetu recognized the pearl and knew that the Mò Chà Pearl involved an enormous secret. To cultivators like them, it was even more precious than a suitable magic treasure. Thus, Hetu naturally moved to seize it by force. In their battle, Kongtong was no match for Hetu and fled after suffering grave injuries. Yet Kongtong was exceedingly cold, calculating, and meticulous. He knew that with his injuries, he would be intercepted and killed by Hetu before Lanke Temple's aid could arrive. So he instead raced in the opposite direction, fleeing to Mass Grave Hill, less than a hundred li from Shushan. Hetu's Soul Erosion Demonic Spell was an exceptionally venomous art. Those struck by it had yin souls invade their bodies, and could only slowly expel the yin poison in a place of extreme yang. In a place thick with ghostly qi and heavy yin energy like this, the injuries would instead worsen. Thus, Kongtong truly evaded Hetu's interception. He hid here while waiting for an old friend to come meet him. He had only not expected that Kunlun would somehow learn that the Mò Chà Pearl had emerged and would covet the precious pearl as well, searching everywhere for it. Though Kongtong had just concealed his aura with a secret art and avoided discovery, he had still broken out in a cold sweat. Then, hearing the boy weep bitterly, inspiration struck him. He wanted to trick the boy into swallowing the Mò Chà Pearl. Even if someone found him afterward, if they could not find the pearl, they would certainly not kill him immediately. He could delay until his old friend arrived. But Kongtong had not expected Miro to catch him just as he was deceiving the boy into swallowing the Mò Chà Pearl. And although Miro's cultivation was inferior to Hetu's, he was every bit as shrewd and ruthless as Hetu. He was not swayed by Kongtong's words in the slightest and simply attacked without further warning.
"Go!" The crimson light of the six red banners surged, but Kongtong was truly at the end of his tether. The arrow-like black flames vanished one after another upon touching the banners' crimson radiance, making only popping explosions. Yet Kongtong's entire body shook as if struck by lightning, his mind violently jolted. The six red banners swayed wildly, and the ghostly face that had just formed seemed about to scatter.
"Old ghost Kongtong, if you hand over the Mò Chà Pearl now, I can still spare your life." Miro's arts were exceedingly venomous, and unlike many so-called upright sects, he was never bound by pedantic scruples. As wild laughter burst from his lips, his hands did not pause. Before the black flames had even vanished, he had already thrown out a spinning silver sphere, smashing it toward the six red banners that were on the verge of collapse.
This silver sphere was Daoist Yinxiao's unique magic treasure, called the Thunder-Commanding Silver Bead. Daoist Yinxiao had refined it in a pill furnace through talismanic arts, using vast quantities of silver, lead, mercury, tin, platinum, refined Eastern Sea gold, and other essences. Tempered through the Five Thunders True Law, a single blow weighed more than a thousand jun, and it could also unleash lightning it had accumulated over time, with countless marvelous uses for breaking demonic forces. Daoist Yinxiao had refined four of them in all, and Miro's Senior Brother Hetu also possessed one. When Kongtong fought Hetu that day, he had suffered greatly beneath this bead. Now, seeing Miro hurl it out, Kongtong, who was already barely holding on, felt his heart and soul split apart. As he forced his hands into a hand seal, he bit through the tip of his tongue and sprayed a mouthful of blood essence mixed with his life-source true essence onto the red banners before him.
In an instant, the red banners erupted with a series of crack-crack explosions. The ghostly creature floating above Kongtong's head actually took solid form and charged out, carrying blazing firelight as it struck toward Miro.
"A trapped beast still fighting!" Miro sneered and suddenly drifted into the air. The ghostly creature had only just rushed out when the spinning silver bead let out a shocking series of crackle-pop sounds. Streaks of silver lightning spiraled forth, transforming in an instant into dazzling bolts as thick as a child's arm. Within a radius of one li, lightning flashed and burst everywhere, like a net of electricity, densely interwoven as it blasted against the ghostly creature and the red banners.
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