Whoosh!
The world spun around again.
The ancient temple was still the same. Golden light shimmered over the altar as the phantom of the Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict slowly took shape.
Huang Bai's figure appeared along with it.
"Phew. I finally made it back."
His first reaction after landing wasn't to look around, but to lower his head and check his body and hands.
Fortunately, his body was still here.
Before returning, he'd been in a perilous state.
His body and soul had been separated. His body was hidden away while his soul fought the Ghost King, Li Cheng, out in the open. If his soul had returned at the end but his body had remained in that world, what a mess that would've been.
He couldn't accept becoming a Corpse-Liberated Immortal with nothing but a soul left.
"I practice Dual Cultivation of Nature and Life. I didn't abandon my body just to find peace."
Huang Bai sat cross-legged and first steadied his mind.
His goal had never been to become a Ghost Immortal with centuries of Yin Lifespan. He wanted to follow the path of Lü Dongbin, Yang Jian, and Nezha. If he really lost his body, it would only become harder and harder to progress.
Once he was settled, Huang Bai slowly recalled the battle in The First Commandment.
Now that he thought about it, the memory still gave him a scare.
Fortunately, the ghosts in that world didn't have any outrageously powerful abilities. Possession was disgusting, but even after possessing someone, they still feared guns and cannons. Their weakness was far too obvious.
To be precise, those things were less like Vicious Ghosts and more like some kind of ghostly plague that burrowed into people.
That was exactly why Huang Bai had dared to separate his soul from his body.
But he couldn't use that tactic in every world.
"I can't go flying around with my soul whenever I run into a place with real magic."
"If I happen to run into some old monster who casually captures me, it'll be too late to cry."
At the end of the day, he still wasn't a proper great cultivator. He'd made it this far largely by relying on External Elixirs and Corpse Liberation techniques.
While his soul was away from his body, even if no expert came after him, some stray dog could chew up his body and leave him like Iron-Crutch Li. That would disgust him for the rest of his life.
Thinking of that, Huang Bai was instead relieved that nothing had gone wrong this time.
"But I did gain quite a lot."
The Four Great Secret Incantations of Huang Chuping could be considered genuine spells. They were more than enough to use in a horror world.
As Huang Bai was thinking, he suddenly raised an eyebrow.
"Hm?"
He sensed another change inside his body.
He opened his mouth and breathed out. An Inner Elixir slowly flew out.
This time, though, it was no longer the same dark golden color as before.
The entire elixir was a deep green, and dark red lines covered its surface, like veins of blood or twisted ghost faces. It looked sinister.
Huang Bai stared at it for a moment, then smiled.
"So I swallowed some of the Ghost King's essence too."
[Night Yaksha Inner Elixir]: Formed by absorbing the power of Vicious Ghosts. Activate this elixir to summon a Yaksha demon for half an hour.
Huang Bai tossed the Inner Elixir into the air.
Space rippled slightly, like a circle spreading across the surface of water.
Whoosh!
The next moment, an eight-foot-tall Yaksha demon knelt before him.
It had indigo skin, bulging muscles, a green face with fangs, blazing red hair, and eerie, deep-green pupils. Just its kneeling there seemed to lower the temperature in the temple by several degrees.
"Greetings, my lord."
Huang Bai walked around it twice, looking it up and down. He seemed fairly satisfied.
"Not bad. I've got myself another guardian spirit soldier."
The Mount Mao lineage raised corpses, folk practitioners cultivated spirit soldiers, and having a guardian by one's side was nothing unusual for a cultivator. Now, Huang Bai had filled that gap too.
It was just that the Yaksha was rather unpleasant to look at.
After two glances, Huang Bai couldn't be bothered to keep looking. He waved for it to move aside.
"You're a bit ugly, but you'll do."
He looked up at the empty ancient temple and couldn't help sighing.
"This place again."
The temple was so desolate that, aside from the altar, the statue, and this ugly thing, there wasn't a single person to talk to.
A thought suddenly occurred to Huang Bai.
"Maybe I should find a way to raise a female ghost someday. At least she'd be more pleasant to look at and could keep me company."
As soon as he said it, he chuckled to himself.
Who knew how much time had passed before the Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict on the altar glowed with golden light again.
A new line of text slowly appeared.
[Go to Incantation and slay the Great Black Buddha Mother.]
"The Great Black Buddha Mother..."
Huang Bai stared at the words, the smile slowly fading from his face.
He knew the movie Incantation.
Broadly speaking, it was about Li Ruonan constantly investigating the truth behind the Great Black Buddha Mother in order to save her daughter.
But though she kept investigating, she acted selfishly. Even knowing that the curse would spread, she kept passing it on and dragging others into it. Put simply, she was willing to use other people as sacrificial pawns for her own benefit.
Huang Bai didn't care whether someone like that lived or died.
The Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict had ordered him to kill the Great Black Buddha Mother. It hadn't asked him to play babysitter and save that mother and daughter.
What really concerned Huang Bai was the Great Black Buddha Mother herself.
"This thing probably won't be easy to deal with."
According to the setting in Incantation, the Great Black Buddha Mother could no longer be considered an ordinary ghost. She was closer to some kind of evil god.
The ancestors of Chen Family Village had used children's flesh and blood as offerings, borrowing the Buddha Mother's power to perform wicked rites and seek profit. In the end, they were bitten back by her curse, bound to it for generations.
That was how the Chen Family Village lineage had begun.
Put simply, they had raised a god using living people. And what they'd raised was an evil god.
This was on a completely different level from the possessing Vicious Ghosts in The First Commandment.
No matter how fierce a Vicious Ghost was, it was still a ghost.
But the Great Black Buddha Mother had already touched the realm of the divine.
Worse, the curse spread through knowledge and incantations. Just touching it, reciting it, or seeing it could mean you were already caught up in it.
"Fire Buddha, cultivate one; heart, sa-mu-mu..."
Huang Bai recited it softly.
"The name sounds like something from the esoteric Buddhist tradition."
An evil god like this might not be the sort of thing he could simply obliterate with a Solar Curse.
He could hurt her, sure, but that didn't mean he could strike at her essence.
As for separating his soul from his body, he couldn't risk that this time.
When dealing with ordinary ghosts, leaving his body as a soul was an advantage. But against a real evil god, one careless mistake might get his soul trapped. That wouldn't be a matter of merely taking a loss.
At that thought, Huang Bai felt a little calmer.
The bad news was that this thing would be hard to deal with.
The good news was that if there was an evil god, there was probably a righteous deity or lineage capable of suppressing it.
That was something he could make use of.
"I'll go take a look first."
Huang Bai swallowed the Inner Elixir, picked up his ritual sword, and casually gathered a few things.
The Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict flashed with golden light, and he vanished from the ancient temple in an instant.
Changhua, Taiwan.
Children's Welfare Home.
A group of children stood in several rows on the playground, singing.
"You've no father and no mother, none of you has a home. No friends or family to help you. Aren't you scared, all alone..."
"Who says we have no home? Who says we have no home? The orphanage is so warm, and our teachers love us like parents..."
Their clear voices rang across the playground.
Huang Bai leaned against the railing and listened for a while, his expression a little odd.
"So it wasn't a song mocking people."
"It's actually pretty heartwarming."
He'd heard bits and pieces of it before and assumed it was some sarcastic song. But now that he'd heard the whole thing, the lyrics seemed quite wholesome. People had just twisted it later.
As he was thinking, footsteps sounded behind him.
A kind-looking auntie in a red vest, with a black mole between her brows, walked over and interrupted his thoughts with a warm smile.
"Director, some kind people have brought over supplies. Would you like to go greet them?"
"Of course." Huang Bai came back to himself and nodded. "They went to the trouble of bringing all this. We can't let their kindness go unappreciated."
In this life, the Heavenly Dao Talisman Edict had given him the identity of the welfare home's director.
Huang Bai followed the auntie outside.
A truck was parked at the gate, piled high with supplies. A company banner hung beside it. A genial-looking middle-aged businessman stood there, smiling as he waited.
"Hello, Director Huang." The other man held out his hand first.
"Hello, Mr. Chen." Huang Bai nodded politely.
After a few pleasantries, the other man asked with a smile,
"Director Huang, the TV station will be coming by in a bit to film some footage. Would you mind appearing on camera?"
Huang Bai didn't usually like being in the spotlight, but when he saw the truckload of supplies, he agreed.
"No problem."
Whether the other man was after a good reputation or genuinely wanted to do charity, he was willing to give money and supplies, and the deed itself had been done. A gentleman judged actions, not intentions. There was no need to turn down this kind of help.
Before long, the TV crew arrived too.
The flash went off.
Click.
The camera captured Huang Bai's smiling face.
A new world, a new identity, a new story. It was a proper beginning at last.
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