Commanding All Troops Under Heaven

North America, Raccoon City.

In a church cemetery, a light rain pattered down as a group of Chinese mourners in black suits listened to a priest recite prayers.

The priest was an elegant young man with long hair. His eyes were closed, but the scripture he recited was a Daoist one.

"Taiyi Jiuku Tianzun casts down his merciful light, drawing souls from Nine Nether and absolving their sins. May the departed leave Fengdu and reach the shore of the Dao... The Jade Purity Talisman Edict descends, pardoning sins and clearing karmic debts. May the dead transcend the Three Realms and attain immortal truth... The sacred names of the Three Pure Ones shake the netherworld. Golden light guides them onward. May they ride cloud chariots to Penglai-Yingzhou and roam free..."

No one around him found anything strange. The family members even burned paper money and paper effigies brought over from China.

This priest was Huang Bai.

Huang Bai's background was that he was a third-generation Chinese American. His father had been a priest, while his mother had been a witch.

A few months earlier, his parents had died in an accidental car crash, leaving behind little inheritance: a house, less than eight hundred dollars in cash, and a mortgage payment of over a thousand dollars every month.

He was on the verge of being cut down by the financial axe.

So Huang Bai picked up the trades of both priest and witch. There had been a slight mishap this time—he was supposed to wear Daoist robes—but it was no big deal. No one cared about such minor details.

"Thank you, Daoist priest. You've worked hard."

Once the ritual ended, the family handed him a thick red envelope.

"You're welcome. It's what I should do."

Huang Bai felt the thickness of his wallet and smiled politely.

Chinese people really were more generous than those stingy white folks.

Before long, Huang Bai headed home.

This time, he intended to settle in for the long haul.

Raccoon City would be the epicenter of the future biovirus outbreak. He would establish himself here first, then seek other benefits.

"The T-virus can grant the body extraordinary physical qualities. That counts as a body-tempering method too. It's worth investigating."

Huang Bai parked before his detached house.

A mess of delivery boxes sat by the door. They had been shipped over from China and contained materials for refining a Spirit Army Altar.

Several white people were anxiously waiting outside as well. An elderly white woman hurried forward and said nervously,

"Father, I dreamed of demons again." The old woman looked distressed, while the young man beside her wore a helpless expression. Clearly, he was not much of a believer.

"Demons? Let me take a look."

Huang Bai held a Bible and studied the old woman for a moment.

"So it's this necklace. Come, place it on the white cloth."

Huang Bai took out a piece of white cloth, wrapped the necklace completely inside it, then placed the bundle beneath a tree in the yard.

With a devout expression, he took out the Bible.

"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father..."

"Evil spirit, begone!!"

Huang Bai recited aloud, pointing a cross at the white cloth beneath the tree.

Before long, blood seeped through the cloth.

"Woooo..."

Ghostly wails and howls echoed from all directions.

The white people jumped in fright and dropped to their knees, praising the Lord's name.

"Such audacity! Die!"

Huang Bai raised the cross again.

Poof!

The white cloth burst into flames on its own, leaving behind only the pitch-black necklace.

The white people thanked him profusely and left behind a substantial sum of money.

Just then, a woman's cool voice sounded beside him.

"Can you really make money like this?"

The speaker was a woman in a red high-slit dress with short black hair.

Her gaze was fixed on the speaker hidden in the tree, and she had seen through Huang Bai's trick at once.

"Don't misunderstand. It's just an exorcism prop."

Huang Bai smiled.

The woman before him was Ada Wong, one of the heroines of Resident Evil—a spy who worked for criminal organizations to obtain Umbrella Corporation's virus. She was also his neighbor.

Over time, the two gradually became acquainted.

Perhaps due to a spy's vigilance, Ada Wong often kept an eye on what went on here. Of course, Huang Bai made no effort to hide it.

"Are you a Daoist priest or a priest?"

In Ada Wong's eyes, this neighbor was simply a strange con man.

"In China, I'm a Daoist priest. In North America, I'm a priest. See you tomorrow."

Huang Bai turned and returned indoors, slamming the door shut with a bang.

Inside the living room.

Huang Bai spat out his Inner Elixir, which transformed into a Yaksha.

"Yaksha, I'm giving you one night to dig out a basement."

"Yes, my lord." The Yaksha answered mechanically.

Over the next several days, construction materials were delivered from time to time.

The Yaksha dug away with grunts and snorts. The noise at night kept Ada Wong awake. She wanted to call the police, but when she considered her own identity, she gradually dismissed the idea and could only burrow under her blankets and stew in silence.

Night fell, and all was quiet.

Beneath the house, candlelight flickered dimly.

At the center of the basement stood a five-tiered Dharma Altar, five feet high and eight feet wide.

Yellow prayer banners hung from the altar's eight directions, symbolizing Yin and Yang and the Eight Trigrams.

An Eight Immortals incense table stood in the center of the altar. A large black jar was enshrined atop it, its mouth sealed with a white paper talisman.

"Gods use yellow talismans, while ghosts use white paper. It really is a Lower-Altar Troops altar."

Everything was ready. What followed was the long process of refining the Dharma Altar.

Once the altar had been established, it needed to be continuously supplied with incense offerings.

At the same time, the formation created by the altar would continuously draw in the surrounding Yin energy, forming Yin Soil within the altar.

"Besides that, there's the Soul-Seizing Incantation for actively capturing ghosts. I can use it during rituals from now on."

That was the real reason Huang Bai had not given up his identities as both priest and Daoist priest.

In the days that followed, Huang Bai gradually made a name for himself. Nearly every funeral nearby invited this extraordinarily capable exorcist.

At a cemetery, after Huang Bai finished his eulogy, his right hand secretly formed a hand seal.

Whoosh!

Faint green Yin energy, invisible to everyone else, flowed into his sleeve.

"Strange. Where are the souls?"

After that, he presided over two more funerals in succession.

"Huh? Could this be a low-magic world without ghosts?"

Huang Bai vaguely formed a suspicion.

Half a month later.

He presided over a gangster's funeral. The deceased had suffered brutal torture before being shot in the head.

This time, there was more Yin energy than before, mixed with a trace of blood energy.

In the basement.

"Spirit, spirit, come to my altar. Feast upon incense and offerings, and accept my command... Edict!"

Whoosh!

The incense candles swayed as the Yin energy turned tangible. All the Yin energy accumulated over the past days poured into the newly captured Yin energy.

At last, beneath the billowing black smoke, a shadow gradually took shape.

The shadow fell into the Spirit Army Altar.

The first ghost was complete.

"People who die miserably have more Yin energy. Are they more likely to be refined into souls for my use?"

Wasn't this essentially the same as a Blood Sacrifice?

The difference was that he had not killed them himself.

Sure enough, Blood Sacrifice was the proper way to use Lower-Altar Troops.

If he relied solely on delivering souls, he probably would not refine qualified spirit troops even after a hundred years.

After all, ordinary wandering ghosts were afraid even of the vital energy of a grown man, let alone useful in battle. A ray of sunlight might scatter their souls completely.

Moreover, as his demand for Yin energy increased, the occasional person who died violently would definitely not be enough.

"No, wait. Do zombies count too? Zombies are dead but not rigid, and they die with unresolved resentment. Their Yin energy and baleful energy are even stronger. Besides... killing zombies counts as Blood Sacrifice, and it does not even harm heavenly harmony."

When the zombie outbreak came in the future, wouldn't there be no shortage of Yin energy and refining materials everywhere?

They might be weak, but at least there would be plenty of them.

"Haha."

Looking at the Yin energy above the altar, Huang Bai let out a hearty laugh.

"I will command all troops under heaven."

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