Jiang Taigong

Zhou Sheng rushed back home and found that Master was nowhere to be seen. Only a note had been left in the main hall.

"Someone has suddenly fallen gravely ill and asked me to treat them. Practice on your own today. If I have not returned by noon, go to the restaurant for your meal."

Three taels of loose silver had been placed atop the note.

Zhou Sheng was not surprised. Aside from performing Yin Opera, Master was also quite skilled in medicine—at least, he was fairly well-known throughout Qinggu County.

Wealthy households often came to seek his help.

Picking up the Opera Box, Zhou Sheng hurried toward Pear Blossom River. He could already make out faint figures along the way. Worried that someone might head to the riverbank, he quickened his pace.

His figure drifted like a feather, his movements flashed like lightning. He seemed to ride the wind itself, able to leap several zhang in an instant, lighter and nimbler than a civet cat.

Beyond the movement and leg techniques he had trained bitterly since childhood, the main reason was the lightening effect of the Immortal's Cloud Mica Pill.

Legend had it that after He Xiangu consumed mica, she could tread across towering mountains and steep ridges as though walking on level ground, nearly flying.

This showed just how exceptional mica's lightening effect was.

Before long, Zhou Sheng arrived once more at Pear Blossom River. The sky was still dim, with only a sliver of fish-belly white showing at the edge of the clouds.

The place was empty and silent, without a soul in sight.

Zhou Sheng frowned, because the corpse had already vanished from the river.

Staring at the blue-black surface, he did not rashly enter the water. Instead, he took something from the Opera Box.

It was incense ash wrapped in yellow paper.

Whenever they traveled, Master always had him bring extra incense ash from Patriarch Huaguang's burner. This stuff was remarkably useful. Besides killing ghosts, it could also be used for tracking.

He scattered some of the incense ash into the water and saw that the surface showed no abnormalities.

"Not in the water?"

Patriarch Huaguang hated evil as though it were his mortal enemy. He was the Fire God worshiped by the people, and the incense ash from his burner carried demon-subduing fire qi. The moment it encountered any yin-evil thing, it would ignite instantly.

Such was the irreconcilability of righteousness and evil.

If the unclean thing were hiding in the water, part of the surface would have begun to boil and scald.

But now, nothing happened. Everything remained as it had been.

That meant...

That unclean thing... had come ashore!

At the thought, Zhou Sheng whipped around. Only after seeing nothing unusual behind him did he let out a breath.

He pinched up more incense ash and scattered it again, but this time, not into the water—onto the ground.

"Zhou Sheng, disciple of the Yin Opera lineage, asks the Patriarch to guide the way and pursue the fiend!"

Whoosh~

The incense ash drifted down with the wind. The instant it touched the ground, sparks burst forth, followed by rows of pitch-black footprints leading in a certain direction.

This was Immortal Guides the Way.

Without hesitation, Zhou Sheng carried the Opera Box and chased in that direction.

For one thing, the people of Qinggu County had always treated him like one of their own children and had cared for him greatly since he was young. Naturally, he could not stand by with folded arms.

For another, he wanted to help Luo Shu accumulate energy as soon as possible, so it could calculate the true Immortal's Cloud Mica Pill.

Following the direction of the footprints, he stopped at every fork in the road to scatter more incense ash before continuing onward.

Using it sparingly like this, he finally arrived before a grand residence just as the incense ash was about to run out.

A lofty plaque hung over the gate, ebony and vermilion lacquer gleaming beneath it. Stone lions stood on either side, making the place look exceedingly imposing.

The words "Zhu Residence" were written in strokes like iron hooks and silver slashes, rimmed in gold.

Images of door gods were pasted upon the gates: the famed Tang generals, Qin Qiong and Yuchi Gong.

Zhou Sheng halted and observed from afar, for this was the residence of Qinggu County's magistrate—the Zhu Residence.

The footprints also vanished here.

"Strange. Why would the corpse come here? With its yin qi, it should not be able to enter this residence."

The stone lions by the gate were inherently capable of warding off evil, while the door god images pasted upon the doors were even more mighty and majestic.

After observing for a moment, Zhou Sheng scattered the last of his incense ash.

Sure enough, the messy black footprints at the entrance unmistakably showed that the corpse had paused here to watch.

Wait...

Zhou Sheng's gaze suddenly sharpened. Judging from the footprints, after realizing it could not enter through the front gate, the corpse had immediately changed direction, as though it had an extremely clear route planned out.

He tracked it again, eventually arriving at a corner of the Zhu Residence's rear wall.

There was actually a dog hole here, blocked up with bricks and stones. On the surrounding wall, Zhou Sheng found damp patches of mold and black corpse fluid.

The corpse had entered the Zhu Residence through here!

Judging from the route, it seemed thoroughly familiar with the place.

Naturally, Zhou Sheng was not about to crawl through a dog hole. Carrying the Opera Box, he easily vaulted over the wall and landed lightly.

There was no incense ash left, but he had already discovered the pattern.

Everywhere the corpse passed, it left damp, moldy traces and black droplets that stank to high heaven.

As long as he looked carefully, they were not difficult to spot.

Following those traces while carefully avoiding the residence's servants, he soon arrived beside a well.

A maid was drawing water, but the water she drew was fetid and foul-smelling, terribly murky.

She took a sip and nearly vomited, dry-heaving again and again.

"Why is this water so horrible? Could some wild cat have died in the well?"

As she complained and kept wiping her mouth, she failed to notice a hand with rotting skin and mangled flesh slowly reaching out from the well toward her.

Then, at that hair's-breadth moment, a whip cracked with a bang, like a string of firecrackers exploding, faintly carrying the rumble of thunder.

Immediately after, a golden whip danced in like a nimble spirit snake, whistling through the air before lashing viciously across that arm.

A scream rang out. The arm exploded on the spot, corpse fluid spraying everywhere, its flesh charred black. Its corpse qi scattered in rolling waves like snow meeting boiling soup.

When the maid turned around, she found herself staring directly into a pair of hollow eyes that maggots had gnawed until they had completely rotted away.

She fainted from fright at once.

But before she lost consciousness, she vaguely saw another figure racing toward her.

It was a strange man clad in a dark robe and wielding a golden whip, seemingly a character straight from an opera.

Gold formed the base like an autumn moon, silver threads traced patterns like prophetic script.

Seven star-like moles lay beneath his lips, while a Taiji Diagram was painted upon his brow.

Though his name was absent from the Investiture of the Gods, the Twenty-One Section God-Beating Whip struck at all manner of Ghosts and Gods.

"Jiang Taigong is here—nothing is forbidden!"

An operatic cry rang out, sonorous and forceful, bearing the clang of gold and stone. It seemed to descend from the Ninth Heaven, containing a vast and resplendent divine might.

The corpse seemed to feel fear and immediately tried to flee back into the well.

But the golden whip snapped out again, coiling around its neck like a black python and binding it fast.

This was the Water Sleeve Technique from opera, originally used mostly by female-role performers, yet Zhou Sheng had applied it to his whip technique.

After more than a decade of bitter training, his whip technique had likewise reached a consummate realm. It moved as naturally as his own arm; wherever he pointed, it struck, answering his every wish.

The saber, sword, golden whip, and Snake Spear in the Opera Box were not there merely to make up the numbers.

"Demon—do not flee!!"

Zhou Sheng planted himself firmly in a horse stance, Magic Power surging into both arms. With an angry roar, the golden whip hummed and drew taut, dragging the corpse out inch by inch.

At the same time, the engraved Demon-Subduing Corpse-Suppressing Spell and Taoist thunder patterns on the golden whip blazed with light, making the corpse seem as though it had been thrown into a raging fire. It screamed again and again.