That was Huang Santainai's soul.
Whole, clear, and much younger than the wrinkled face on the screen.
Her graying hair was pinned up, she wore a blue cloth jacket, and she held a cane formed from light.
Her aura was very clean, carrying a certain...
Upright purity that Yang Yong could not quite describe.
Like sandalwood incense burned in a temple for decades.
Or pages in an old book repository that had spent a lifetime in the sun.
"You came."
Huang Santainai's soul spoke, her voice a little more solid than it had been through the screen.
"Who was that master of yours?"
"The last heir of the Daoist tradition."
"He suppressed the Dragon-Headed Toad Venerable beneath Black Water Marsh, then sealed himself in the deepest part of the ancient tomb."
"He said that thing would wake sooner or later, and he had to leave a door."
Leaning on her cane, Huang Santainai turned and walked deeper into the stone chamber. "Come with me."
She led Yang Yong through the stone chamber and into a narrower passage.
The seal-script characters on either wall grew denser, and the blue light grew brighter.
Yang Yong noticed some... patterns he had never seen before appearing on the walls.
Human figures.
Carved in lines, arranged row upon row like a list of names.
A line beneath each figure's feet converged at the end of the passage.
The figures came in all manner of strange forms. Some were twisted, some had several heads, and some did not look human at all.
"What are those?"
Huang Santainai stopped and looked at the figures on the wall.
"Those are the Eerie sealed in here over the generations."
Her voice was level. "My lineage carved every Eerie it sealed inside onto the walls."
"Once a wall was filled,