Great Yu's Dipper Steps, Purple Talisman of Cultivation

2442 Haunted House.

Huang Bai stepped into the place once more.

This time, he focused on the interior layout.

The beam crushed souls, the ceiling fan hung baleful energy, the bed trapped resentment, Yin gathered in the corners, and even the windows' orientation had been altered.

The entire unit 2442 was like a carefully polished coffin, made specifically to imprison dead souls and nurture resentment.

He casually sensed the White Crane Boy Death Summons Writ and summoned the Body-Protecting Golden Light.

"Come out."

Huang Bai stood in the middle of the room and looked up at the ceiling.

"If you truly want revenge, at least let me understand this place first."

The moment his words fell, the temperature around them plummeted.

The snow-white paint began to peel from the walls. Bright red blood slowly seeped from the cracks, while strands of pitch-black hair hung down from the ceiling and crawled along the walls, like countless living snakes slithering through the room.

The next instant, two figures slowly emerged.

They were two girls in white dresses.

Their faces were deathly pale, their long hair hung loose, their eyes were black, and bloodstains mottled their bodies.

Most bizarrely, they were not entirely separate. It was as though some invisible force linked them together; their movements alternated between quick and slow, yet their resentment was completely unified.

They were the twin Vicious Ghosts of 2442.

They stared fixedly at Huang Bai without immediately pouncing on him. Clearly, they knew the power of the Body-Protecting Golden Light.

Huang Bai formed a Dipper hand seal and began walking in a strange pattern, bending one leg and hopping on the other.

This gait was called the Yu Step. Legend said that Great Yu had been lame, and shamans imitated his movements while taming the floods to gain divine power.

With the Yu Step, hand seals, and the Sixteen-Character Feng Shui Secret Art, Huang Bai quickly spotted the flaw in the formation.

He placed the Evil-Warding Talismans drawn by A-You at every key point. Arranged according to a certain pattern, the talismans covered the haunted house.

"Open!"

Whoosh!

The scene changed, and the room became a churning sea of blood.

At the center of the blood sea stood two lonely girls in snow-white dresses. Their eyes were covered by red cloth, and they howled venomously at their surroundings.

"This is the secret of the formation."

The reason the twin Vicious Ghosts attacked everyone indiscriminately was that someone had blinded them.

On top of that, the feng shui formation constantly absorbed Yin energy, so their resentment naturally accumulated more and more.

Huang Bai slowly approached the twin Vicious Ghosts.

The blood sea churned around him, revealing scenes from the past.

Before Huang Bai was no longer the old public housing unit, but another home from many years ago.

Back then, this place had not been so sinister.

There were textbooks, desks, and two similar-looking little girls. One was writing while the other laughed. They leaned together as they spoke, like the most ordinary, quiet pair of sisters in the world.

A teacher beside them guided them through their homework.

The next moment, the door opened.

A man's figure walked in.

His face was blurry, yet Huang Bai recognized him at once as Zhong Jiu. He was clearly not in the state a normal person should have been in.

A faint, faint wisp of Negative Chi coiled around Zhong Jiu as he hid in the shadows and watched the three of them studying.

Zhong Jiu formed an Incantation seal. The teacher's eyes turned hollow, as though something had gently pushed her, and from then on, she fell into the abyss.

What followed were cries, struggles, blood, shattered objects, and screams of utter despair.

Huang Bai's brows slowly furrowed.

Then the scene shifted again.

The sisters were already dead, but their souls had not departed. They were trapped in this house, watching their own corpses, watching people come and go outside, watching the years slowly pass.

Zhong Jiu hammered nails into the house, drew talismans on the fan, buried hair in the corners, and secretly chanted Incantations at them.

They had originally been nothing more than ghosts who died unjustly, yet they had been raised step by step into what they were now.

Their resentment did not disperse, their souls could not leave, and they suffered torment day and night. They could neither be reborn nor truly avenge themselves.

Whoosh!

Huang Bai tore the red cloth from the two ghost sisters' eyes.

"The one who harmed you was an evil cultivator, not the teacher you loved," Huang Bai revealed the truth.

In an instant, their memories returned, and the sea of blood collapsed.

The resentment around the two ghosts began to disperse.

"I have broken this formation for you. Your resentment has already dissipated."

The moment he said that, both Vicious Ghosts were visibly stunned.

They had been trapped in this house for so many years.

Some had feared them, some had been foolish, some had been consumed by lust, and there had also been Zhong Jiu, who wanted to use them to practice his arts.

Never had anyone voluntarily helped lift their restraints while possessing the power to suppress them.

The air fell silent for a moment.

Suddenly, one of the female ghosts floated a step forward, and two streams of bloody tears slowly flowed from her black eyes.

Then the other one moved as well.

They stood before Huang Bai, one on each side. Their resentment was no longer as frenzied as before. Instead, it was like something suppressed for far too many years finally finding an outlet.

Huang Bai's heart stirred, and he asked,

"You want revenge?"

The two Vicious Ghosts nodded at the same time.

A fierce Yin wind suddenly swept through the entire room, and the blood on the walls began to stream downward. That towering hatred seemed ready to overturn the whole house.

Of course they wanted revenge.

They did not want to kill unrelated people to vent their hatred. They wanted to tear the people who had truly harmed them into ten thousand pieces.

For themselves, and for their teacher's family.

Huang Bai looked at them and slowly understood.

"If you follow me and enter the Spirit Army Altar, then from now on, you will no longer be merely ghosts. You will become ghost soldiers in my altar, unable to break free for all eternity."

"If you enter my Dharma Altar, you must follow my rules. You cannot kill recklessly or harm innocents without cause."

The two twin ghosts stared straight at him.

After a moment, they bent their knees together and slowly knelt.

Huang Bai stepped forward and used the Soul-Seizing Incantation.

"Good. From this day forward, you will be ghost soldiers under my command."

After saying this, he raised a hand and summoned the Spirit Army Altar.

Now that he possessed the [All-Heavens Ritual Altar], although the Spirit Army Altar's true body was not before him, its phantom could be projected directly from the ancient temple.

Whoosh!

A phantom of a black altar slowly emerged in the air. The white talisman at its mouth glowed faintly, Yin energy roiled, and the figure of the Yaksha appeared with it.

The moment the Yaksha appeared, the twin ghosts visibly became wary.

Huang Bai raised his hand and suppressed the Yaksha's murderous nature.

"One of us."

Only then did the Yaksha restrain some of its baleful energy and stand to one side holding shackles.

Pitch-black chains flew from the altar toward the two women, wrapping around them in an instant and refining them at once, dragging them into the deep void.

It was a gray, hazy region, where Hundred-Year Yin Soil nourished the Yaksha standing within the void.

The twin Vicious Ghosts took root there. Tadpole-like winding patterns covered their soul bodies, and paired with their beautiful faces, gave them an even more bewitching charm.

As the female ghosts were refined, 2442 began shaking madly. Large swathes of wall paint peeled away, bloody water gushed from the cracks, and the Yin energy in the room rushed outward as though it had gone insane.

The twin ghosts appeared beside the altar's phantom and stared fixedly at it all.

They could feel that the cage which had trapped them for so many years was finally being destroyed.

"Possession, symbiosis, invisibility? Not bad." Huang Bai sensed the two ghosts' abilities.

Compared to the Yaksha's direct, overwhelming style, they possessed several more layers of concealment.

Just as Huang Bai destroyed the feng shui formation, Zhong Jiu, far away, abruptly opened his eyes.

The candles on the Dharma Altar suddenly toppled without warning. The Ghostling Smoke in the burner flared high with a whoosh, then swiftly dimmed.

"What's going on?"

Zhong Jiu's expression changed, and he immediately lunged toward the altar to inspect it.

The next instant, the Attraction Talisman he had placed in 2442 exploded with a snap. The ashes in the altar trembled slightly, and even the strand of Yin energy connected to the twin ghosts was forcibly severed.

Zhong Jiu's chest tightened, and he spat out blood on the spot.

His already weak body became even weaker.

"Someone is breaking my formation! Huang Bai? Chen You? I'll tear you to pieces!"

He was both shocked and furious, and his gaze instantly darkened to the extreme.

He had nurtured this formation for so long. It was just about to mature, yet it had been destroyed now.

Zhong Jiu gritted his teeth and formed a hand seal, intending to spy back along the Dharma Altar. But as soon as he activated his art, he sensed another completely different aura cutting in, and he lost all perception of the female ghosts.

Whoosh!

The incense and candles immediately went out.

"Good. Very good."

Zhong Jiu's face turned livid, but a layer of viciousness slowly crept into his eyes.

He had originally planned to wait a while longer, until the demonic evil had been fully nurtured, before reeling everything in at once.

But now, it seemed he could wait no longer.

They had become obstacles in his path. No matter what, he had to kill them first.

No matter the price.

He slowly opened a box. Inside lay a purple talisman, still and silent. It was a Corpse-Refining Purple Talisman, something only those with profound cultivation could draw.