Carrying Wine and Singing Long Songs

He turned around, brushed the dust off his body, and then looked at the two hundred young boys and girls below the stage, the civil and military officials, and the Grand Princess Tang Ruowei, who was still standing in place. Xue Ling swept his gaze over the souls there and frowned slightly.

"Hmm!" The Underworld Emissary began his work in an orderly fashion. He took out his iron chain; the Soul Reaping Chain, which originally looked only an arm's length long, was capable of infinite extension. Xue Ling bound the wrists of all the ghosts here, lining them up in a row, while Bai Qiuran watched from the side throughout the entire process.

"Father Emperor!" Bai Qiuran nodded.

In the darkness, the cold, rhythmic sound of wooden clappers echoed once more, accompanied by a faint, ethereal chanting coming from nowhere. The green-faced Underworld Emissary led the long line of ghosts, slowly walking into the void until they vanished from sight.

"You lot play slowly; I'm leaving."

"With so many victims who died unjustly and haven't reached their destined lifespan in the Book of Life and Death, what exactly have the Demonic Cultivators of your world been doing?" Bai Qiuran stood up and looked at them, speechless, while Tang Ruowei coughed and whispered a reminder: "Father Emperor, your decorum, your decorum!"

Xue Ling retracted his gaze, tugged at the chain in his hand, and then pulled a paper lantern from out of nowhere. The lantern emitted a faint light, illuminating the path within the void.

"Here."

"I, why does My head hurt so much?"

"Yes, yes, I know." After casting a few runes, Bai Qiuran stopped. Two minutes later, a crisp sound of wooden clappers—audible only to someone like him who was on the verge of death—approached from afar, slowly emerging from the void.

However, those thousands of soldiers were different. To amplify their combat power, Tang Zhouxie had used other methods, transforming them into things similar to corpse soldiers, so Bai Qiuran felt no psychological burden when killing them.

"He's out! He's out!"

Bai Qiuran let go of his hand. Tang Zhouxie's blood-covered corpse collapsed onto the altar, blood flowing all over the ground.

"The same old routine: murder, blood extraction, soul reaping, and then preparing to practice arts."

"I what?" Finally, he asked: "Hey, this time, I've added another entry to your merit book, haven't I?"

The Shangxuan Emperor shook his head and said: "I remember I was performing the sacrificial rites, what happened after that?"

"Hey, why do you speak in fragments?"

"Exterminate evil completely, exterminate evil completely." Bai Qiuran decisively refused, then beckoned to the Imperial Advisor Fu Qianqiu: "That Imperial Advisor over there, I have some things I want to ask you. You handle the matters here first; I will come find you later."

"Ah? Immortal Master, at least let Me express My gratitude for your great kindness!"

Snap.

Bai Qiuran looked up toward the direction of the ghosts gathered in this hollow. Because of the arrival of the Underworld Emissary, these ghosts instinctively felt a sense of dread.

Seeing the Shangxuan Emperor clutching his head, seemingly having regained consciousness, Tang Ruowei hurriedly ran onto the altar to support him.

"Immortal Master, this time, thank you for your help. On behalf of the millions of subjects of the Shangxuan Kingdom, I thank you for your grace."

"Hmph." Xue Ling let out a cold snort but said nothing. For a Demonic Cultivator like Tang Zhouxie who had committed so many acts against the heavens, being captured by them meant being sent to the Abyssal Hell to suffer until his soul was extinguished. Bai Qiuran beating him until his soul scattered was, in a sense, saving the Underworld some trouble.

Bai Qiuran took a step, his peerless True Qi pouring out to destroy the formation on the ground that had bound their freedom. He then began to chant a Magic Incantation to ferry these wronged souls.

"It's like this..."

"Ahem."

"Let's go, follow me."

Bai Qiuran replied: "But I beat that guy to death, so you don't need to go searching for his soul."

Tang Zhouxie had transformed these soldiers into neither-human-nor-ghost monstrosities, and the process was irreversible. It was better to kill them and let them go to reincarnation sooner.

Bai Qiuran touched his head, puzzled.

"These souls, your work has arrived."

He could only clap his hands and mutter: "Lunatic."

He tunneled out of the soil, his body emerging from the solid ground of the Imperial Mausoleum, but before he could even stand steady, he heard someone shouting nearby.

Xue Ling tightened his grip on the chain and replied: "But don't think you can easily offset your crimes of repeatedly escaping the limits of your lifespan just like that."

"No, it's nothing."

Tang Ruowei nodded blankly.

He had plenty of debts anyway, and he never intended to use the ferrying of souls to offset the records against him in the Underworld.

"Are you alright?"

The Shangxuan Emperor coughed lightly to cover up his loss of composure. He thought for a moment, then bowed to Bai Qiuran with some hesitation.

Upon entering the hollow in the ground, Bai Qiuran's nose was hit by a pungent smell of blood. Through his Spiritual Vision, all the slaughtered commoners gathered toward him; their facial features looked like melted wax figures, and their eyes and mouths had become pitch-black hollows, looking exceptionally painful and terrifying.

In the vast void, a dark road wound and stretched. Then, Bai Qiuran saw the figure of his old "acquaintance" Xue Ling slowly solidify from the void and walk toward him.

"Hmm, it doesn't matter."

However, his method of ferrying was different from the methods of the Heavenly Saint Buddhist Sect. Those bald monks used scriptures to weave bridges to wash away the resentment of the wronged souls and connect them to the other shore. But by doing so, after the souls entered the Underworld, they had to wait for a very long time to complete the formalities because they hadn't entered through the proper channels of the Underworld Emissaries.

Bai Qiuran's method was much simpler. In a way, it was like calling the police directly and asking them to handle it themselves.

The Shangxuan Emperor shouted at him.

This girl stared at him blankly, and after thinking for a moment, Bai Qiuran wiped the blood off his hands and gave her a harmless, innocent smile.

"I don't want to eat."

The Underworld Emissary still wore that expressionless dead face. He kept his livid face straight, put away the wooden clappers in his hand, and asked: "Bai Qiuran, why did you summon me?"

"It's like this."

He actually made things easier for Bai Qiuran. Although he could have forced his way through by using a Qi shield, it would have certainly led to many entanglements.

Just at this moment, beside Bai Qiuran, the Imperial Advisor Fu Qianqiu, who was standing at the edge of the altar, suddenly clutched his head and let out a painful groan. A moment later, the Emperor of the Shangxuan Kingdom also began to moan while holding his head.

Bai Qiuran waved his hand.

"I know."

Bai Qiuran was still thinking about Xue Ling's previous hesitant demeanor, but he couldn't think of anything he would have to say to him.

Tang Ruowei began to explain the sequence of events to her Father Emperor, while Bai Qiuran tunneled into the ground on his own. He still had things to do; the souls of the innocent commoners whom Sima Yingbo and the others had captured for Tang Zhouxie to build the formation were still trapped in the soil formation beneath the altar, unable to find release.

He pointed to the corpse beside him and said: "He was the one who started it first."

Xue Ling lined up all the ghosts into a long dragon and stood on the small path extending from the void. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered something, he looked at Bai Qiuran and said: "By the way, Bai Qiuran, you..."

"No need, what I want, you cannot afford."

Bai Qiuran turned his head and found that the Shangxuan Emperor and the Imperial Advisor were excitedly pointing in his direction, while Tang Ruowei beside them was blushing and tugging at her Father Emperor's sleeve.

The civil and military officials present seemed to have all woken up. They were currently forming a circle with Bai Qiuran as the center, watching him emerge from the ground. It seemed that once Tang Zhouxie died, the evil arts used to control their minds had dissipated without the caster. Since the Imperial Advisor and the Shangxuan Emperor had the highest cultivation levels present, they were the first to wake up.

"Then, at least let Me host a banquet to entertain the Immortal Master."