He turned his head and looked at Huang Santainai's face on that tentacle.
"She isn't my disciple. She's my shadow. I let her out."
Yang Yong stared at him.
The Ten-Thousand-Forged Primordial Furnace in his palm grew hotter and hotter.
"Then what do you want me to do now?"
There was nothing in the Daoist's white eyes.
Yet Yang Yong could feel something watching him from deep within those hollow sockets.
"I want you to take it back."
"How?"
"You have a banner on you. That banner can capture souls."
The Daoist's voice sank lower. "Capture my shadow, and the seal on this ancient tomb can close again."
"That thing beneath Black Water Marsh will never get out again."
Yang Yong did not move right away.
He looked at the Daoist.
The shriveled Daoist who had been chained up for over a thousand years, whose own shadow had burrowed into his flesh.
"You just told me not to believe everything you say."
The Daoist fell silent.
Huang Santainai's face on the tentacle slowly changed.
The corners of its mouth no longer curled upward.
Its lips turned down, forming a crying expression.
But that crying was fake.
"Yang Yong," it called to him in Huang Santainai's voice. "You promised me."
"Help me get rid of the impostor, and I'll teach you the secret arts of talismans."
"That Daoist is a fake."
"He's lying to you!!!"
Yang Yong did not move.
"Yang Yong." The Daoist spoke too.
He used a different voice.
That voice was very old and deep, as though rising from the deepest reaches underground.
"Yang Yong." A third voice rang out.
It seeped from the seal-script characters on the stone chamber's four walls.
It was Yang Yong's own voice.
It said, "Run. You mustn't wade into these muddy waters."