New World, Great Black Buddha Mother

Whoosh!

The world spun once more.

The ancient temple remained the same, golden light shimmering on the altar as the phantom of the Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict slowly coalesced.

Huang Bai's figure appeared alongside it.

"Phew, finally back."

His first reaction upon landing was not to scan his surroundings, but to look down and check his physical body and hands.

"Good, the body is still here."

Before returning, his situation had been extremely perilous.

His body and soul had been separated; his body was hidden in the shadows while his soul was outside battling the Ghost King Li Cheng. If his soul had returned only to find his body left behind in that world, he would have been in serious trouble.

He could not accept becoming a Corpse-Liberated Immortal who was nothing more than a wandering soul.

"I practice the dual cultivation of essence and life, not discarding my body for the sake of peace."

Huang Bai sat cross-legged, steadying his mind.

His goal had never been to become a ghost immortal with a lifespan of a few hundred years; he aimed to walk the path of Lü Dongbin, Yang Jian, and Nezha. If he truly lost his physical body, the difficulty of ascending further would only increase.

Once settled, Huang Bai slowly recalled the battle in The First Commandment.

Thinking back on it now, he still felt a lingering fear.

Fortunately, the ghosts in that world didn't possess any outrageous abilities. While possession was disgusting, once they possessed a body, they were still vulnerable to guns and artillery; their weaknesses were too obvious.

Truth be told, those things were less like vengeful ghosts and more like some kind of infectious plague that could burrow into people.

It was precisely because of this that Huang Bai dared to let his soul leave his body.

However, such a tactic could not be replicated in every world.

"In the future, if I encounter places with genuine sorcery, I cannot let my soul fly around so recklessly."

"If I happen to run into some old monster who decides to snatch me up, I won't even have time to cry."

At the end of the day, he could not yet be considered a true, high-level cultivator. Reaching this point had relied more on his external elixir and the Corpse-Liberation method.

When his soul was out of his body, even if it wasn't a master who attacked him, if a stray dog were to chew up his physical body and leave him in the state of Iron-Crutch Li, it would be enough to disgust him for a lifetime.

Thinking of this, Huang Bai felt fortunate that nothing had gone wrong this time.

"Still, the harvest was quite significant."

The Four Great Secret Incantations of Huang Chuping could be considered true magic. In a horror world, they were definitely sufficient means of protection.

As Huang Bai pondered, his brows suddenly twitched.

"Hmm?"

He sensed another change within his body.

He opened his mouth and exhaled, and an inner elixir slowly flew out.

Only this time, the elixir was no longer its original black-gold color.

The entire body of the elixir was a deep, ghostly green, with strands of dark red patterns floating on the surface, looking like blood vessels or perhaps a twisted, ghastly face. It was chilling.

Huang Bai stared at it for a moment, then smiled.

"So, I swallowed that bit of the Ghost King as well."

[Yaksha Inner Elixir]: Formed by absorbing the power of a vengeful ghost. Activating this elixir can summon a Yaksha demon to exist for half an hour.

Huang Bai tossed the inner elixir into mid-air.

The void rippled slightly, like a stone dropped into a pond.

Whoosh!

The next moment, an eight-foot-tall Yaksha demon knelt before him.

It had indigo skin, knotted muscles, a green face with fangs, hair as red as fire, and pupils of a ghastly, deep green. Just by kneeling there, the temperature in the temple seemed to drop several degrees.

"Greetings, Master."

Huang Bai walked around it twice, looking it up and down, his expression satisfied.

"Not bad, I've gained a guardian spirit soldier."

The Mount Mao lineage raised corpses, and folk traditions raised vengeful spirits; it was common for practitioners to have a guardian by their side. Now, he had finally filled that gap.

It was just that this Yaksha was truly not very pleasing to the eye.

Huang Bai glanced at it twice, lost interest, and waved his hand to signal it to step aside.

"It's ugly, but it'll do for now."

He looked up at the empty ancient temple and couldn't help but sigh.

"This ghost place again."

The temple was deathly quiet. Aside from the altar, the statue, and this ugly creature, there wasn't even anyone to talk to.

A thought suddenly occurred to Huang Bai.

"I should find a way to raise a female ghost in the future; at least she'd be easier on the eyes and could help pass the time."

As soon as the words left his mouth, he laughed at himself.

He didn't know how much time had passed when the Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict on the altar lit up with golden light once more.

A new line of text slowly emerged.

[Travel to Incantation, slay the Great Black Buddha Mother.]

"Great Black Buddha Mother..."

Huang Bai stared at the line, the smile on his face slowly fading.

He knew the movie Incantation.

Generally speaking, it was about Li Ruonan, who, in order to save her daughter, kept digging into the truth behind the Great Black Buddha Mother.

But while she investigated, she acted extremely selfishly. Knowing the curse would spread, she still tried to pass it onto others, dragging innocent people into the mess. To put it bluntly, she used others as stepping stones for her own benefit.

Huang Bai didn't care whether such a person lived or died.

The Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict wanted him to kill the Great Black Buddha Mother, not to act as a nanny to save that mother and daughter.

What truly concerned Huang Bai was the "Great Black Buddha Mother" herself.

"This thing, I'm afraid, won't be easy to touch."

According to the lore in Incantation, the Great Black Buddha Mother could no longer be considered an ordinary ghost; she was closer to some kind of evil deity.

The ancestors of Chen Family Village had used the flesh and blood of children as offerings, borrowing the Buddha Mother's power to perform evil arts for profit, only to be bitten by her curse in the end, unable to escape for generations.

That was how the Chen Family Village lineage had come to be.

Simply put, they were raising a god with living people. And what they raised was an evil god.

Such a thing was on a completely different level from the possessing ghost in The First Commandment.

No matter how fierce a vengeful ghost was, it was still just a ghost.

The Great Black Buddha Mother, however, had already touched the realm of "godhood."

What was more troublesome was that the curse of this thing spread through cognition and incantations. Once you touched it, recited it, or saw it, you were often already trapped in the game.

"Hou-ho-xiu-yi, xin-sa-mu-mou..."

Huang Bai whispered the incantation once.

"The name sounds like something from the Tantric path."

Such evil deities might not necessarily be instantly killed by the Solar Curse.

It might be able to injure her, but it might not reach the root of the problem.

As for the soul-separation technique, he definitely couldn't be reckless with it this time.

When dealing with ordinary ghosts, separating his soul from his body was an advantage. But if he were to run into this kind of evil deity, one moment of carelessness could lead to his soul being captured, and that would be far worse than just suffering a minor loss.

Thinking of this, Huang Bai actually calmed down.

The bad news was that this thing was difficult to deal with.

The good news was that since there was an evil deity, there were likely righteous gods and lineages that could suppress it.

This was something he could exploit.

"I'll go over and take a look first."

Huang Bai swallowed the inner elixir, picked up his ritual sword, and gathered a few items.

The Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict flashed with golden light, and he vanished from the ancient temple in an instant.

Taiwan, Changhua.

A childcare orphanage.

On the playground, a group of children stood in rows, singing a song.

"You have no father and no mother, none of you have a home, with no friends or family to help you, are you afraid of being all alone..."

"Who says we have no home, who says we have no home. The orphanage is so warm, the teachers love me like a father and mother..."

The singing was crisp, echoing across the playground.

Huang Bai leaned against the railing, listening for a while, his expression somewhat strange.

"So it's not a song for cursing people."

"It's actually quite warm."

He had heard fragments of it before and thought it was some kind of sinister, mocking tune. He hadn't expected that, heard in its entirety, the lyrics were quite upright; it had just been twisted by others later on.

Just as he was thinking this, footsteps sounded behind him.

An auntie wearing a red vest, with a black mole between her eyebrows and a kind face, walked over and smilingly interrupted his train of thought.

"Director, some kind-hearted people have brought over some relief supplies. Would you like to go and receive them?"

"Of course I should." Huang Bai snapped back to reality and nodded. "It's a kind gesture, after all; we shouldn't let them feel discouraged."

In this life, the identity the Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict had given him was that of an orphanage director.

Huang Bai followed the auntie outside.

A truck was parked at the gate, piled high with supplies, with a company banner hanging on the side. A middle-aged businessman with a pleasant face stood there, smiling as he waited.

"Director Huang, hello." The man reached out his hand first.

"Hello, Boss Chen." Huang Bai nodded politely in return.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the man smiled and asked:

"Director Huang, the television station will be here in a moment to film some footage. Would it be convenient for you to appear on camera?"

Huang Bai didn't particularly like being in the spotlight, but after glancing at the truckload of goods, he agreed.

"No problem."

Since the man was willing to spend money and provide goods, regardless of whether he was chasing fame or genuinely wanted to do charity, the deed was done. A gentleman judges by actions, not intentions; there was no need to refuse such a favor.

Soon, the television crew arrived.

The flash went off.

Click.

The lens froze on Huang Bai's smiling face.

A new world, a new identity, and a new story had officially begun.