He Ping saw it clearly. The fierce ghost's form seemed frozen in place; even its black umbrella could no longer turn.
He interlocked his ten fingers and pulled them apart like he was weaving a finger-string game. The silk strings stretched between his palms, becoming a small net.
"...One beginning without a beginning. One divides into three. The ultimate has no end. Heaven is one-one, earth is one-two, man is one-three..."
He Ping chanted the incantation nonstop, but kept his eyes fixed on the fierce ghost.
A mass of swirling shadows surrounded it, shielding the ghost at its center, but the array's lingering power had faded. It could no longer protect it.
"The chance is here!"
He Ping quickly finished the incantation, then bit the tip of his tongue and sprayed a mouthful of blood onto the strings between his palms.
As the blood mist burst forth, a change took place—
The "Formless String" swiftly turned from faint and invisible to blood-red. It extended from his fingertips into the void, and hundreds of fine strings, like countless blood vessels, spread outward from the palanquin, forming a gigantic spiderweb that dropped from the air.
"Got you!"
He flung his hands apart. The strings shifted and twisted into countless coils, sweeping in from all directions to wrap around the fierce ghost's shadowy, black-mist form.
The fierce ghost's body was not solid, but merely a phantom. Yet the layers of blood-red strings wound around it as if clamping it in place, leaving it unable to move.
The fierce ghost tried to struggle, but could not break free. As the blood-red light from the strings seeped into its body, it grew weaker and weaker. Even the black mist protecting it was gradually stained with a trace of vermilion.
"I refuse to believe this 'Eight-Origin Bone-Locking Technique' can't suppress you, too."
He Ping let out a cold laugh.
"Soul-Calling Shadow-Binding, Eight-Origin Bone-Locking, Body-Shifting Demonic Curse"—these three forbidden spells were powerful methods of restraint recorded in the Formless Secret Treasury.
The volume of the Formless Secret Treasury said that as long as one learned these three techniques, one could use them to fight any enemy other than an expert who had attained the Dao.
Of the three forbidden techniques, He Ping had only learned the Eight-Origin Bone-Locking, known as the "Spider Binding Technique." Now that he had spent his own essence and blood to activate it, it had indeed struck true.
"It's all over."
His expression was cold. He moved his hands and launched a lethal attack. In an instant, the strings twanged and spun, tightening around the fierce ghost. It had no room to struggle; the black mist around it burst apart, and it vanished into dust.
"A mere ghost could never withstand my forbidden technique. Cough, cough, cough..."
Using a secret technique like the Eight-Origin Bone-Locking had cost He Ping a great deal of his vital essence. Still, he was glad. If the Screaming Soul Blood Silk Array had not been controlled by a fierce ghost, things would not have gone so smoothly.
"Ghosts really are stupid. If it had been a living person, they would have abandoned the ancestral hall and closed in on me to launch a desperate attack. My Spirit-Exploding Witch Puppet packs a powerful blast, but if it explodes too close to me, I'd get caught in it, too."
He Ping knew his own limitations. His Spirit-Exploding Witch Puppet was not easy to use; if he misjudged the distance when deploying it, he would be caught in the blast himself.
After all he had done, the Chen Family Ancestral Hall had been badly damaged. In an instant, He Ping, seated in the palanquin, sensed a subtle change—
A strange tremor suddenly passed through the ground. The air around him stirred, as if the clouds were dispersing, and the dense ghostly aura pervading the village receded like a thin mist.
"Looks like I broke the Screaming Soul Blood Silk Array. It seems the village's ghost array is about to break, too. But that has nothing to do with me. I'd better take the 'warding object' here and get out of this array as quickly as possible..."
At that moment, several uninjured paper puppets began clearing the battlefield. In front of the gate, which was buried beneath bricks, tiles, and dust, one of them picked up a black umbrella.
"Could this black umbrella be some kind of magic artifact...?"
He had been too focused during the earlier fight to pay attention to it. Now He Ping sensed that the black umbrella was unusual. The Immortal Puppet Sect specialized in making and controlling puppets, not magic artifacts. However, he had heard that experts in the Dao arts from many sects crafted all kinds of magic artifacts. This umbrella might well be one of them.
"Looks like a good thing, too. I'll take it back and figure it out later..."
Afraid that the umbrella might conceal a spell restriction or some other trap, He Ping wrapped the blood-red strings, still infused with the Eight-Origin Bone-Locking, around it to suppress it for the time being. He then ordered the paper puppets to investigate deeper inside the ancestral hall.
To be safe, he did not go in himself. He would wait until the paper puppets had searched the place first.
After all, He Ping valued his life. He had no intention of being caught off guard by an enemy through some accident.
Before long, the paper puppets cleared away the piles of rubble. In the collapsed hall, they found a room hidden behind the central hall, filled with black spirit tablets.
The room reeked of burned incense, candles, and paper offerings. Judging by its position within the ancestral hall, this was probably where the array's core lay.
"Hm?"
He Ping's palanquin was carried to the doorway. He blinked and saw a woman in red lying in the room.
She had a breathtakingly beautiful face; she must have been lovely in life. But now, a clear ligature mark circled her neck.
The woman was dead, her skin turned an iron-blue color. A layer of black qi seemed to seep across it.
"She died bearing a grudge, and her corpse was left in a home built on baleful ground. She's been struck by baleful energy!"
He noticed a layer of white fuzz on the hands hanging from the woman's sleeves.
"If this thing isn't dealt with, the corpse might turn!"
Faint white hairs were also sprouting on the woman's face. Her pupils were dark red, and her features carried a hint of savagery. At this rate, she would become a full-fledged walking corpse in a few hours...
He Ping was not worried about the woman turning into a corpse. Even if she did, what was there to fear? Even the half-ghost, half-corpse Green-Grasping Ghost had been no match for his Milo Blade. He hardly cared about a mere white-haired zombie.
"Come to think of it, zombies are rare, too. The Immortal Puppet Sect's puppet-making arts include several types of puppets that require corpse skin as a material."
With that thought, he found himself looking the female corpse over a few more times.
With a bang, the spirit-tablet table in the room was thrown aside. Someone had been hiding beneath it.
"Don't kill me! Don't kill me! Don't kill me!"
The person wore a blue robe and had their arms wrapped around their head, curled into a ball. They were utterly deranged. Seeing their state, the paper puppet knocked them unconscious.
"So it really is him."
After a glance at the man, He Ping recognized him as the young servant who had tried to assassinate Xie San. He had no idea how the man had ended up hiding here. As for the female corpse, she must have come here with him, since she had not been dead long.
"The warding object is somewhere around here. Search carefully."
He looked around, preparing to search the array's core for the warding object hidden within.
The paper puppets circled the room and discovered something odd about the floor bricks. They smashed them apart and found a hidden compartment beneath the bluestone tiles. Sure enough, something was concealed inside.
When the paper puppets pulled the object out from underground, He Ping was astonished.
It turned out to be a Bodhisattva statue carved from black stone. The stone was slick and smooth to the touch. The statue's outline was somewhat blurry, and its craftsmanship was crude.
But on closer inspection, the black-stone carving seemed strange. For some unknown reason, the Bodhisattva carved into it had no pupils.