It was not only Yuan Jue and the monks of Dayin Temple who had arrived — Qing Xuzi was among them as well.
The group swept the mountainside as they advanced, destroying countless minor demons along the way.
By the time they finally reached the midpoint of the mountain, Qing Xuzi was searching everywhere for Qin Yao in a state of mounting frustration. Surrounded on all sides by palace people but with no sign of his disciple anywhere, he couldn’t help growing more and more irritable.
Fortunately, people from the Crown Prince’s and Prince Wu’s retinues soon arrived to guide Yuan Jue and Qing Xuzi to the small hill where the Emperor was. A good number of the officers who had been fighting demons back at the camp had also gradually made their way over, helping Lin Xiao and Qin Yao deal with the Ghost Swordsman and the pack of minor demons. In no time, the hillside was crowded with people.
When Qing Xuzi arrived, the crowd was so thick that he searched for a long while without spotting Qin Yao. He had no choice but to push his way through the crowd, calling out loudly, “A’Yao! A’Yao!”
Though Qin Yao was busy directing the fire dragons, her ears were sharp, and she caught Qing Xuzi’s voice at once. Overjoyed, she quickly turned and called back, “Master, I’m here!”
Catching Qin Yao’s response amid all the noise, Qing Xuzi’s gaze fixed in her direction, and he strode toward her at once. Halfway there, a mountain demon lunged straight at him. Qing Xuzi let out a cold laugh and gave his whisk a light flick, sending the creature flying off into the distance with thorough impatience.
Seeing only her master and no sign of her senior brother, Qin Yao couldn’t help but pause, asking her master, “Where’s my senior brother?”
For as long as she could remember, whenever her master went out to exorcise evil spirits, he always brought her senior brother along — never once leaving him alone at the temple.
Qing Xuzi avoided the question, instead looking toward the Ghost Swordsman, who was locked in close combat with Lin Xiao. “This creature has already enlightened all the evil spirits across several neighboring peaks. Any with even a modest accumulation of years has been drawn into the demonic path. If we don’t get rid of this thing soon, it won’t just be the creatures of Shouhuai Mountain — puppets will likely come pouring in from every direction.”
Even as he spoke, Yuan Jue had already asked the Emperor and Consort Yi to step back to safety, while he himself led his disciples in setting up a formation around the Ghost Swordsman.
Amid a wave of chanting, the bronze bowl in Yuan Jue’s hands burst forth with ten thousand rays of golden light, enveloping the Ghost Swordsman directly, while the rest of the monks held their wooden fish, reciting the Vajra Mantra. Caught in an assault from every direction at once, the Ghost Swordsman’s swing of his black blade slowed considerably.
Finding a brief moment to spare, Qin Yao asked Qing Xuzi, “Master, what exactly is this thing’s origin? How is it able to enlighten so many demonic creatures?”
Looking at the minor demons, most of them seemed to be ordinary mountain beasts and wild creatures commonly found in the forest — nothing that should have been capable of transforming into man-eating spirits on their own. It looked instead as though they had been forcibly enlightened by someone, and had thus fallen into the demonic path.
Qing Xuzi drew the Boundless Mirror from within his robes, waved his whisk to summon the mirror spirit, and drove his inner energy to raise the mirror high into the air.
The Boundless Mirror instantly blazed with radiant light, scattering its glow across the demons on either side.
The Boundless Mirror was renowned for its power to cleanse evil and dispel demonic influence. Any creature touched by its light collapsed limply to the ground, shuddered once, and transformed back into the ordinary mountain animal it had originally been.
The soldiers, mid-swing with their weapons, found in the blink of an eye that the demons before them had simply vanished, replaced instead by mountain deer, roe deer, and other creatures scattering about in confusion. Utterly baffled, they all froze where they stood.
Seeing what her master had done, Qin Yao understood at once — these creatures had originally harbored no malicious intent at all, but had simply been transformed by the Ghost Swordsman and, through a twist of misfortune, turned into his accomplices. Seeing some of the soldiers, not understanding the situation, still moving to cut down these innocent animals, she called out, “Everyone, please hold your weapons. These are not evil creatures by nature — please spare them.”
Once the soldiers had stopped, she took her master’s whisk and used it to shoo the animals away. “Go on, quickly! Go!”
The sika deer and roe deer, having been forced back from fearsome demons into their original forms, didn’t dare linger now that someone was willing to spare them, and scrambled, racing each other, down the mountainside.
With that, the number of demons on the hillside dropped considerably once more.
Qin Yao went back to keeping the fire dragons wrapped tightly around the Ghost Swordsman, and continued the conversation from before. “Master, you still haven’t answered me — what exactly is this thing’s origin?”
Before her master could answer, she suddenly remembered her earlier encounter with the Ghost Swordsman in the cave beneath the cliff, and said quickly, “I used the Soul-Tethering Technique on him once before, and found that although he’s covered in death energy, he’s not actually an inanimate thing at all — he’s a living creature.”
Qing Xuzi showed not the slightest surprise. “It’s covered in demonic energy — where would death energy come from? It’s nothing more than an ancient demon a thousand years old.”
“A thousand-year-old demon?” Qin Yao stared, dumbfounded, and quickly turned to look back at the Ghost Swordsman, who was now surrounded and besieged by the monks, scanning him over and over with her eyes. After a long moment, she sighed in admiration. “This thing’s powers of transformation are truly formidable. Turning itself into human form is one thing, but to be able to manifest a weapon that feels every bit as solid and real! In our first few clashes, I genuinely took him for a vengeful spirit capable of animating outside objects. Master, can you tell what kind of creature it really is?”
Qing Xuzi stroked his beard and studied the Ghost Swordsman intently. The formation cast by Yuan Jue and the others had it bound as though caught in an inescapable net. Though it still swung its arm stiffly, striving to strike at Chixiao in Lin Xiao’s hand, every time its sword met the blade, the weapon in its grip would warp for an instant, shifting abruptly into something else entirely.
Qin Yao stared unblinking at the Ghost Swordsman’s sword, recalling the scene from the night they’d rescued Consort Kang, when Lin Xiao had clashed with the Ghost Swordsman before. The longer she watched, the more the shapes the blade kept warping into struck her with a strange, unplaceable familiarity.
After watching for a while longer, Qing Xuzi saw the Ghost Swordsman’s armor beginning to fall away piece by piece. His expression shifted slightly, and he quickly stepped back twice, saying to Qin Yao, “This is bad — this thing is about to reveal its true form. Quickly, have the Young Lord come back so we can set up a formation together. Once it shows its true form, Yuan Jue and the others’ formation will only be able to hold it for a short while at most, and there won’t be time to spare to fully subdue it through any other method. In a moment, Chixiao will need to strike its vital point!”
Sure enough, Qin Yao saw the muscles in the Ghost Swordsman’s face twisting and writhing without pause, his form suddenly growing far larger than it had been a moment ago. Panic surged through her, and she quickly used the fire dragons to shield Lin Xiao, calling out urgently, “Weijin! Weijin!”
Hearing the urgency in Qin Yao’s call, Lin Xiao’s heart jumped, afraid something had happened to her. He turned at once and saw her waving him over, as though she had something to tell him. Lin Xiao knocked aside the ghostly blade thrusting at his chest, retreated two steps, then turned and came to her side. Looking at her and Qing Xuzi, he asked between breaths, “What is it?”
Seeing the sweat covering his forehead, Qin Yao felt a pang of tenderness for him, and couldn’t help pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve to wipe it away, saying, “Master wants us to set up a formation.”
“A formation?” Lin Xiao immediately thought of the Three Yang Formation they had used against Luo Cha before. Now that he and Qin Yao were married, that particular formation clearly wouldn’t work anymore.
A little flustered, he coughed twice and asked Qing Xuzi, doing his best to appear composed, “Daoist, what formation should we set up?”