"Who exactly cast a spell to keep that corpse from stiffening after death?"
Li Ling had no objection to the others' arrangements, but after leaving the riverside country lane, he summoned Zuo Zhongliang and voiced his doubts.
"That's difficult to say. It might have been the Demonic Path's work, or a transformation caused by the natural environment."
Soon, Zuo Zhongliang's voice came from beside the carriage.
"But in my opinion, it was probably the Demonic Path. That Water Monkey emerged looking as though it had been waiting all along. Their hidden hand must already have reached into the waters around Duckbill Township."
Li Ling asked, "How did they do it?"
Zuo Zhongliang said, "They probably drew on divine authority."
"Divine authority?" The Ninth Princess sounded slightly surprised.
Hearing a woman's voice from inside the carriage, Zuo Zhongliang showed no surprise. "Indeed. Divine authority."
"Besides gathering various corpses and souls, the Demonic Path promotes illicit worship for another important purpose: to give the Great Lin River God a vessel to inhabit and gain authority over the waters!"
"They possess secret techniques that let them project evil spells through a stretch of water, as though a deity were manifesting its power!"
Hearing this, Li Ling sighed inwardly. Just as I thought.
He asked aloud, "Then someone from the Demonic Path elsewhere might have been secretly causing trouble just now?"
Zuo Zhongliang said, "Exactly. Otherwise, a newly formed Walking Corpse couldn't speak."
Li Ling asked, "And what about that Water Monkey?"
Zuo Zhongliang said, "Unless something unexpected was involved, it was probably there to collect the girl, drag her underwater to drown her, then take her elsewhere for processing."
"From the look of things, they already control at least this stretch of the river. Once I return, I intend to report this and have such Illicit Worship dealt with severely."
Li Ling frowned inwardly at that.
The Demonic Path's deeds truly extinguished every trace of humanity.
Still, he said little more, merely offering praise. "You certainly live up to your expertise, Hundred-Household Commander Zuo. You know the Demonic Path's methods like the palm of your hand."
Zuo Zhongliang said, "You flatter me, Prince Consort Li. I simply happen to have encountered them before. Incidentally, if those Demonic Path practitioners refuse to give up, they may retaliate tonight."
The guard captain had been listening all along. At that, he snorted. "What, would the Demonic Path dare storm into the Royal City?"
Zuo Zhongliang said, "Not that, but divine authority includes Soul-Possession Dream Transmission. They may use the influence of things such as mysterious yin water baleful energy to send their power into the mind!"
The guard captain faltered.
He would readily claim he could handle low-level demons and monsters, but the realm of the mind was not his specialty.
Li Ling asked in surprise, "There's such a thing?"
The Ninth Princess said softly, "Don't worry, husband. They're merely evil spells that cause a little disturbance to the soul."
Zuo Zhongliang said, "Indeed. What the Demonic Path creates are sinister ghosts and evil gods. Their usual methods involve intimidation, giving ignorant country folk endless nightmares and leaving them mentally exhausted. But that is all."
"In the worst cases I've heard of, people couldn't withstand their fear and were tricked into going to the waterside to worship and beg for mercy. Then, inexplicably, they threw themselves into the river. Folk tales call it Ghostly Bewitchment."
Li Ling mused, "Ghostly Bewitchment..."
Zuo Zhongliang said, "It isn't some profound spell to begin with. But once you worship, the perception of ghosts and gods can reach you no matter how far away you are. You must be on guard."
"I see," Li Ling said. "Then how do we guard against it?"
Zuo Zhongliang said, "As everyone knows, apart from natural deities, all gods, orthodox or evil, draw their power from sentient beings. The Demonic Path may resort to murder to cow ignorant country folk, but ultimately, those people's ignorance gives others a handle to use against them."
"They themselves provide the mental foothold, they themselves come knocking, and in the end, they themselves kill themselves. How is that a matter of techniques?"
"To guard against it, it ultimately comes down to four words: courage high, spirit strong."
Killing someone from afar with mental power?
Ordinary Demonic Path practitioners could not possibly possess such ability.
The truly profound and powerful aspect worth guarding against was the connection established through divine authority.
But as long as one had courage and confidence, there was no need to worry too much.
As the saying went, if you did nothing shameful by day, you need not fear a ghost knocking at midnight. Mortals actually possessed tremendous mental strength. At the very least, their souls were not inferior in rank to those of low- and mid-level cultivators. Indeed, because their own remnant souls were incomplete, ordinary ghosts and even deities had reason to fear the living.
The material world, by contrast, was entirely different. An ordinary cultivator could kill a mortal with a single palm thunderbolt, and divine sense could easily move objects. Such things were practically impossible to resist.
Zuo Zhongliang had reason to say those murdered mortals had given others a handle against them. Demonic Path cultivators could employ all manner of methods in reality to harm people with these evil spells, but in the mental realm, they could only deceive, bluff, and intimidate.
After hearing this, Li Ling understood the matter completely. His soul was naturally extraordinary, and he also practiced Incense-Feeding Soul Tempering. Its rank was no lower than that of a great cultivator.
His body was connected to his essential life and shared the same rank, making it equally difficult for evil influences to invade.
If the Demonic Path dared come, he had plenty of ways to teach them a painful lesson.
Yet after returning, he ate, bathed, and went to bed without incident.
To put it plainly, he never saw so much as a ghost's shadow.
Either they can't find their target, or they don't dare come, or they don't want to...
Fine. If you won't come looking for me, I'll go looking for you!
Li Ling could understand those Demonic Path practitioners' choice. After all, one hurried glimpse from afar would have told them the people of the Prince Consort's Residence were difficult to handle. Better to save themselves the trouble.
But he could take the initiative and trouble them!
After waiting until past midnight, Li Ling simply used soul projection to reach the Fragrant Incense Pavilion, lit a piece of Returning Soul Incense for himself, then went to Barren Mountain in the Northern Suburbs and retrieved the statue.
With practiced ease, he established mental contact. Layer upon layer of prayers washed over him like sleep-talking, their interwoven mental currents carrying a hundred mingled flavors.
After briefly resisting them, Li Ling regained complete clarity. As usual, he used the incense essence of prayer power to hone his mind while roaming about in search of a target.
He looked almost like someone cracking sunflower seeds while carrying a cleaver through empty streets, searching for an enemy.
Then something awkward happened.
He found nothing. He did not even know who the actual culprit was.
Li Ling wondered helplessly, Should I just find Lin Rouniang instead?
Of all the beings capable of communicating with the divine kingdom and establishing a connection, she was the only one he knew.
But she might not have been the one playing ghost and god today. Li Ling really wanted to find the mastermind behind this incident, and only put it on her account if he could not.
Suddenly, Li Ling was struck by inspiration. Right, Duckbill Township!
They might not dare come to the Royal City, but that doesn't mean they won't go to Duckbill Township. Give those gentry and ancient elders another fright, and they might secretly abduct another girl to throw into the river as a sacrifice!
With that thought, Li Ling immediately had a target. Rather than travel there in person, however, he submerged his mind once more in the divine kingdom domain within the statue and searched along the way.
After studying this object over the past several days, he had gained some understanding of it.
What appeared when he connected to the statue were the towns around the Great Lin River basin within the Mystic Xin Kingdom. The sounds and illusory scenes filling heaven and earth were all formed from the incense and fire prayer power of countless people.
People were like firewood. As they burned, their vital energies rose to the heavens like columns of beacon smoke, opening up a vast, magnificent divine kingdom domain in the void. With the support of a divine station, it could actually endure.
Although this divine kingdom was not a physical space, the blessing of certain laws of heaven and earth made it correspond strictly to reality, point for point. It merely existed in another dimension of time and space, like overlapping light and shadow.
Through the statue or other mental connections, one could cross the void and move between the divine kingdom and reality.
Perhaps this was the truth behind the projection of evil spells Zuo Zhongliang had mentioned.
As Li Ling realized this, the illusory realm, previously vague and boundless like a dream or a bubble, seemed to become real.
The Great Lin River within it, in particular, was almost as tangible as its real counterpart.
At that moment, Li Ling also discovered a sensible pattern: the closer he was to the river, the clearer and more lifelike the images projected into his mental world became. The farther away, the blurrier and more unreal they were.
No wonder everything was hazy before, with no sign of the actual terrain. It was because I was up on the mountain!
Li Ling's hiding place was on Barren Mountain, somewhere even floodwaters could scarcely reach. The divine kingdom's influence was clearly weak there.
Keeping this thing on the mountain was a brilliant choice!
My spirit body is powerful enough to cross the distance from the mountain to the nearby river. I can find them, but they can't find the statue!
The divine kingdom domain was filled with prayer power. Ordinary people who rashly ventured deep into it would become lost. Li Ling only dared do this because he had spent these past days honing his mind through it and felt capable of resisting.
Many secrets lay hidden here. Li Ling vaguely sensed that simply entering and exploring could yield tremendous gains.
As he thought, the scenery ahead abruptly changed. He seemed to have arrived at Duckbill Township, which he had visited during the day.
Space seems to have been distorted? No, this isn't normal space at all.
I thought about finding this place, and actually skipped the irrelevant stretch in between, arriving in mere moments.
Li Ling suddenly realized that Duckbill Township within the divine kingdom had exactly the same terrain he had seen during the day. Yet to his spirit body's perception, thick, smoky mist shrouded every direction, above and below, like a haunted realm of the dead.
Even his spiritual consciousness seemed somewhat affected, its detection range greatly reduced.
Fortunately, the Returning Soul Incense now displayed astonishing effectiveness. Its scent still reached him, seemingly ignoring dimensional boundaries.
Smelling it, Li Ling felt considerably more secure. He also began to understand why the ancestor had wanted him to devote himself to researching it.
It really was useful.
Suddenly, Li Ling's spiritual consciousness detected a wisp of smoke like a strange snake emerging from a nearby house.
Like a real snake, it wriggled along and quietly slipped into another home beside the water.
Li Ling hurried after it and discovered that, though shabby, the room was furnished like an ordinary rural home. Furniture, bedding, pots, bowls, ladles, and basins were all visible.
Only people were absent.
The strange snake entered the room and crawled all the way to the bed in the inner room before stopping.
Could this be a Demonic Path practitioner's mental spirit body? The Jade Scroll seems to have recorded this phenomenon. But using the divine kingdom domain to infiltrate physical space already involves divine authority. There is something quite mysterious about it.
Come to think of it, I'm also using the statue to communicate with the divine kingdom. Could this be a public place anyone can enter?
Li Ling seemed to understand something.
While his attention wandered, a plume of smoke suddenly appeared from nowhere, and a reclining human phantom abruptly materialized on the empty bed.
Seeing this, the strange snake burrowed into the figure's head.
The figure seemed to be merely a projection of mental power, unable to display its actual appearance. Soon, however, it began trembling uneasily, and a voice like sleep-talking emerged.
"Grandfather River God, spare us! We didn't mean to..."
"Yes... yes... we'll definitely replace your sacrifice!"
"Thank you, Grandfather River God..."
Not long afterward, the strange snake departed, but the figure remained, apparently still trapped in a nightmare.
Did someone just communicate with the divine kingdom, causing reality and the void to overlap?
The snake entering the head seems to represent mental power entering the brain. They really are frightening the villagers and demanding a replacement sacrifice!
Li Ling had witnessed the truth behind Soul-Possession Dream Transmission. This was how they fooled the common people.
He quietly followed the strange snake to the next household. Sure enough, it established mental contact and issued threats in exactly the same way.
When those people wake tomorrow and compare their experiences, won't they all believe the River God manifested?
Those gentry and ancient elders will very likely secretly find another girl to throw into the river as a sacrifice.
Li Ling watched with anger blazing three feet high. But when he tried, he found he could not follow it into their minds and enter their dreams.
He sensed almost instinctively that those human figures were extremely fragile. If he exerted just a little more force, they would burst like bubbles.
That would only startle them awake from their dreams. It would not let him explain the truth and set the record straight.
Forget it. At a time like this, why bother explaining the truth?
I don't know dream transmission techniques, so I can't solve the problem. I'll simply deal with the person creating it!
He immediately caught up with the departing snake, raised his foot, and stomped, crushing it outright.
Glancing at the black smoke dispersing beneath his foot, Li Ling suppressed his disgust and carefully sniffed.
Amid the prayer power's pervasive scent of incense sticks, candles, paper offerings, and sandalwood, a rotten, fishy stench emerged, becoming the trail Li Ling actively sought.
It smells disgusting, but that's good. The worse it stinks, the more obvious it is.
I can find you!
Following the scent, he flew toward the river and began moving upstream. As he flew, he seemed to pass through the void again, crossing a considerable distance in an instant.
At the same moment Li Ling crushed the strange snake, a Demonic Path cultivator in an ordinary house in a county town upstream from Duckbill Township shuddered violently and sat up as though jolted awake from a dream.
Dressed in coarse cloth like an ordinary townsman, he had slept fully clothed. He lowered his head and wiped his forehead, finding it covered in cold sweat.
"What happened? Did the dream transmission fail? Something seems to have attacked my dream spirit!"
The Demonic Path practitioner shivered for no apparent reason and involuntarily looked toward an Ebony Divine Statue, deliberately placed in a wall shrine near his bedside.
The Great Lin River God's face was imposing, its eyes bright as it stared fixedly at him.
The practitioner often used this object to communicate with the divine kingdom, lodge his spirit within a vessel, and impersonate a deity. He had always regarded it as nothing more than an inanimate object.
Yet for some reason, today it seemed extraordinarily lifelike, as though about to come alive.
"Could I have walked the night roads so often that I finally met a ghost? Is there really a Great Lin River God?"