The General's Temple on Yin-Yang Mountain

(New book release—if you're passing by, take a look...) Yin-Yang Mountain was a strange place. One half was thick with lush green woods and grasses; the other was bare and barren.

From a distance, it looked like a man's head shaved on one side, an utterly peculiar sight.

The mountain was a notorious taboo in Lower River. Local people would never dare climb it without good reason, and they were wary even of mentioning it.

Countless tales surrounded the mountain. The locals even spoke of four deadly places: Gourd Islet, the General's Temple, Three-Course Dam, and Dead Man Mountain. Enter any of the four, and you passed through the gates of the underworld...

Dead Man Mountain and the General's Temple were both on Yin-Yang Mountain!

The mountain's desolate half, bare of trees and strewn with exposed rock, had another name: Dead Man Mountain!

The General's Temple, mysterious and feared in its own right, stood atop the mountain's wooded half.

With two forbidden places on Yin-Yang Mountain, it was more than taboo enough for the locals. No one dared come here.

Legend had it that, several decades ago, a band of fifty or sixty bandits angered someone at the General's Temple.

By morning, every last one of them was dead. None had been left in one piece; their bodies lay scattered as if some savage beast had torn them apart...

And these were no ordinary bandits. They carried guns and killed without batting an eye. They had even stormed and looted the county town!

During another turbulent time, a group came to smash up the General's Temple. Every one of them went mad. They slaughtered one another before countless witnesses, and that was not the end of it.

They stripped off their clothes, one by one, and leaped from the cliffs of Dead Man Mountain near the mountain pass... men and women alike...

Many older locals had seen it with their own eyes. Countless elders swore it was true!

Yet today, in the pouring rain, a dozen or so people in rain capes were marching up Yin-Yang Mountain. Armed with clubs and other implements, they looked ready for trouble!

"Damn it, what kind of godforsaken place is this? You can't even drive in. What's the boss thinking, spending money to buy this mountain? Has he got more money than he knows what to do with?"

"Exactly! And that priest at the General's Temple won't even sell. Who's that stupid?"

"If it were me, I'd have sold ages ago. The money would build several temples in a big city, and the incense offerings would be far better than here!"

They laughed and joked as they made for the General's Temple, grumbling about the godforsaken place. They couldn't drive in and had to climb the mountain on foot.

At the General's Temple, the main doors were shut. Inside, a Daoist priest knelt motionless before a divine statue.

On the altar before him stood a fierce Divine General, clad in iron armor and holding a Steel Whip. His face was blue-green, and fangs jutted from his mouth.

A closer look revealed that the armor on the life-sized Divine General statue had not been painted on. It was genuine Bright Light Armor...

Stranger still, incense burned before the priest, and its smoke rose in a perfectly straight column. It climbed more than three feet to the statue's nose and mouth, then vanished.

It was as though the blue-faced, fanged figure on the altar were drawing in the incense smoke himself.

The statue already had a hideous face, like an evil ghost. At such an eerie sight, anyone else would likely have wet their pants in fright.

But Tang Changsheng seemed not to notice!

He murmured to himself, bowing low. "Ancestors above, this disciple has failed you. I have made nothing of my cultivation! The clan's ancestral rites are almost upon us. I have failed you, but I have no choice but to take a desperate gamble!"

He remembered how his master had warned him over and over on his deathbed:

Unless the sect faced its final hour, he must never use the key. Tang Changsheng sighed once more and knocked his forehead hard against the floor.

If he still could not perform the art at this year's ancestral rites... the General's Temple would be finished!

When Tang Changsheng rose, his face was set with resolve.

He carefully walked behind the statue and retrieved a small, unremarkable box.

It seemed to be cast from some kind of metal. Dull gray and rather heavy, it looked utterly ordinary.

But Tang Changsheng remembered what his master had told him before he died: the key inside this box was tied to a secret of staggering importance.

Years ago, three ancestors of the General's Temple who had reached the Heavenly Human Realm had died for that key...

It must not be used unless there was no other choice and the sect's very survival hung in the balance!

And now the key was in Tang Changsheng's hands!

He bowed again. If he did not use the key in the box now, he would probably never have another chance!

If Tang Changsheng could not perform the Soul-Refinement Art at the ancestral rites and refine the departed souls, the last scraps of the General's Temple's standing would vanish... and the three Lower River families would no longer honor it.

That would be the end of the General's Temple, whose lineage had endured for centuries.

As the General's Temple's sole disciple and its leader in this generation, he could not allow that to happen!

He would pay any price to prevent it!

He bowed before the statue once more. Amid the incense smoke, the Divine General's blue-green face and bared fangs looked fiercer than ever.

Yet Tang Changsheng seemed not to notice!

This was the Guardian Divine General the General's Temple had worshiped for generations. Outsiders might fear the sight of him, but if a disciple of the temple was frightened too, their fellow practitioners would laugh their teeth out.

These days, though, finding a few genuine fellow practitioners to do the laughing was no easy task!

In years past, the General's Temple's ancestors had summoned and commanded ghosts and gods, keeping the region under their protection. Even mountain gods and City Gods had shown them respect.

Not just Yin-Yang Mountain but the whole of Lower River for hundreds of miles around had revered the General's Temple as though it were a deity.

Those had been the General's Temple's days of greatest glory and power... but they had also been an age that produced cultivation masters in abundance.

Now, with a great calamity having swept through heaven and earth, the age of declining magic had arrived. As far as Tang Changsheng knew, every cultivation sect was in the same plight.

Many sects that had once been vastly more powerful than the General's Temple had fallen into ruin, their members scattered like stars and drifting clouds.

The General's Temple, remote as it was, had at least managed to keep up appearances.

But even that façade was on the verge of collapse!

Tang Changsheng sighed softly. Not long ago, a developer had announced plans to buy the mountain and turn it into a commercial cemetery.

They had even sent people to threaten Tang Changsheng. If he did not know what was good for him, they would soon send someone to teach him a lesson!