“Keep screaming! I’ll fight you to the death today!”
Nan Yan crouched at the secret room’s entrance, observing for a while. Seeing her brother so energetic, she figured he might not need rescuing. She scanned the room, turning all mirrors and mirror-like objects face-down before approaching.
Yin Que’s eyes glowed purple, his expression wild. Nan Yan understood why; ghosts continuously emerged through the walls. Even with her years of Buddhist cultivation, she felt uneasy. She could only imagine how Yin Que felt.
Fortunately, Buddhist cultivation naturally countered ghostly and demonic entities. As Nan Yan rushed forward, the ghosts surrounding Yin Que scattered.
“Brother, wake up! Let’s get out of here…”
As she approached, Yin Que swung the chair at her indiscriminately. Dodging it, she realized something was wrong. Mere fright couldn’t cause this state; it must be related to the blood sigil on his face. Nan Yan grabbed the bloodied Li Chi from the ghost pile, gripping his pulse point. “What curse did you put on him?”
The Extreme Pleasure Palace was Li Chi’s stronghold, and as a State’s prince, he possessed numerous treasures. Though physically injured, he quickly regained consciousness once Nan Yan pulled him from the ghosts.
“Who sent you? Chenzhou?”
“I’m asking the questions now.”
Though urgent, Nan Yan’s voice retained its characteristic serenity. Li Chi, momentarily dazed, looked up sharply. “You’re merely at Core Formation. Daring to touch me is courting death. Don’t you want to save him? If convenient, remove your mask.”
Nan Yan: “It’s not convenient.”
Li Chi grew more suspicious: “Do you want him to die?”
Nan Yan: “Let me be clear: your sister lies at the door. If anything happens to my sworn brother, don’t blame me for taking up the blade and becoming a demon on the spot.”
As she spoke of becoming a demon, her usually benevolent Buddhist aura took on a bloodthirsty edge, stirring something in Li Chi.
…It must be her.
“Why so harsh? If he’s your sworn brother, I won’t harm him.” Feeling the powerful Buddhist force at his wrist suppressing his demonic energy, Li Chi gritted his teeth in pain. “My sister’s blood sigil was designed for demonic cultivators, inducing their bloodline instincts to facilitate life force absorption. It can’t be undone, but he can’t break free either. After all, these chains are forged from spirit-absorbing iron—”
Before he finished, a snow fox’s apparition appeared behind Yin Que. Nan Yan remembered Yin Que was at the seven-tailed stage, but now an eighth tail was forming. The surrounding demonic and ghostly aura intensified to suffocating levels. With a crisp sound, the spirit-absorbing chains on his limbs shattered.
…Oh, dear.
Seeing Yin Que about to break free, Li Chi tried to grab Nan Yan while she was distracted. But she was prepared, exchanging a few swift moves before retreating. She formed a Buddhist mudra and chanted a purification mantra.
Yin Que seemed to gain momentary clarity, though his eyes remained an ominous crystalline purple. Li Chi sneered, “You dare act recklessly in the Extreme Pleasure Palace? You underestimate a State prince’s resources!”
He activated a hidden mechanism, and a teleportation array appeared beneath them. Nan Yan, reacting quickly, grabbed Li Mian before they were transported. After a spatial distortion, they found themselves in the Extreme Pleasure Palace’s main hall.
Four Nascent Soul cultivators, including Xuanyan, were present.
“Seize them!” Li Chi shouted.
The Nascent Soul demonic cultivators, interrupted from their feast, saw only a blood-sigil-covered man surrounded by evil spirits, and a bloodied Li Chi emerging from behind a broken screen. One exclaimed in surprise, “Where did this ugly creature come from?”
“Who are you calling ugly?”
“You, of course! Look at your monstrous face!”
Nan Yan’s heart sank. Before she could intervene, Yin Que swept aside a group of Evil Dao cultivators and, in full view of everyone, smoothly produced a shining mirror from his storage ring.
The next moment, the mirror shattered under his touch. As demonic energy swept out, his eighth tail fully formed.
“Who did this?!” he roared.
As the Prison Lord’s fury erupted, countless ghosts surged forth. All Nascent Soul cultivators flew back in shock, though they still believed they could handle the situation.
“He must be the new Youquan Prison Lord the Marquis told us to find… No matter, he’s not yet proficient with ghost energy. In moments, we can—”
At that instant, another wave of ghost energy, dozens of times colder and heavier, descended ominously. A gentle voice spoke from the darkness:
“What if you add another Prison Lord to the mix?”
…
As the moon reached its zenith, the Dragon Lion Guard, having spent the day dealing with Qitian Yuan’s ceasefire matters, climbed a sea cliff and gazed towards Cangxuan Valley Nan of Qitian Yuan.
“Prince, it’s time.”
After the Youquan Creek incident, Mu Zhanting took charge of reclaiming Qitian Yuan upon returning to Chenzhou. Progress was slow; the Nascent Soul elder from the Dragon Declaration Guard responsible for negotiating with Sizhou had dragged things out for a month with no results. Frustrated, Mu Zhanting consulted with familiar elders in the Dragon Capital and decided to personally visit Cangxuan Valley, which should have been reclaimed, as an uninvited guest.
Approaching Cangxuan Valley, Mu Zhanting sensed something odd.
“Aren’t the clouds too thick?”
Outside the valley was fine, but dense clouds gathered above, with sounds of surging tides between them. Strangest of all, upon reaching the Extreme Pleasure Palace, they expected a confrontation but found only howling ghostly winds. After a thunderous commotion, an eerie silence fell, with even the Sizhou cultivators patrolling the entrance hanging their heads.
Watching from afar, Mu Zhanting felt an intensely uncomfortable sensation from deep in his memory. A nearby Dragon Lion Guard offered him a wine flask.
“The Extreme Pleasure Palace seems changed, likely due to ghostly mischief. Prince, you’re here to reclaim Chenzhou’s territory. There’s no need to fear. Have some wine to steady yourself.”
In this situation, Mu Zhanting couldn’t retreat. Steeling himself, he approached the Extreme Pleasure Palace. The Dragon Lion Guard asked:
“Prince, doesn’t the Extreme Pleasure Palace seem to be missing something?”
Mu Zhanting scrutinized the palace’s main gate, using his deep literary knowledge to identify the flaw.
“It’s missing… a couplet?”
The Dragon Lion Guards fell silent, fearing Mu Zhanting might be inspired to compose poetry. They quickly ushered him into the Extreme Pleasure Palace. Once inside, Mu Zhanting observed further and realized, “There’s no sound in this hall.”
The usually bright candles throughout the Extreme Pleasure Palace had dimmed. Voices could only be heard within a few yards; beyond that, in the darkness, all sound vanished, and even divine sense couldn’t penetrate.
“Hey, are you alive?”
The Dragon Lion Guards found a dazed-looking cultivation vessel standing in the corridor. After shaking him, he angrily pushed them away, then fell to the ground, clutching his intact right leg and wailing.
“My leg! Old hag Yuan Yue, I’ll come back as a ghost to find you!” He crawled towards the darkness, howling.
“He must be referring to the Sizhou demon Yuan Yue, who fell at least 200 years ago. Could this man be… possessed by the ghost of a Nascent Soul cultivator?”
Amid the silence, Mu Zhanting noticed someone nervously pointing toward the end of the corridor.
A figure approached, holding a green lantern. Though all sounds were swallowed by the darkness, his footsteps rang out clearly.
Mu Zhanting held his breath until the person was within fifteen yards. Then he sighed in relief.
“Why are you here? What’s happening in this Extreme Pleasure Palace? Was that man possessed?”
Ji Yang shook his head. “It’s not possession… It’s a long story. Come with me, I’ll show you something interesting.”
…
In the main hall of the Extreme Pleasure Palace, an eerie scene unfolded.
The Nascent Soul cultivators present had joined forces to create a massive array, trapping most of the frenzied cultivators inside. Their faces were etched with fear.
“The one in that woman’s body seems to be Old Demon Zheng from thirty years ago.”
“And that old woman even knows about the senior brother I killed during my trial as a youth… She must be a senior aunt from my first sect.”
Among the four Nascent Soul cultivators, only Xuanyan dared not speak, nervously glancing at Ji Yang entering from the hall door.
None of them dared move, as countless Yin Prayers lurked in the shadows of the Extreme Pleasure Palace, waiting for the Prison Lord’s permission to devour their life force.
“Yin, what exactly are you trying to prove?” Li Chi had never encountered such a situation. They should have been able to subdue these people, but after the Nascent Soul cultivators suppressed the first wave of ghosts triggered by Yin Que, a large number of Yin Prayers appeared in the Extreme Pleasure Palace.
Yin Prayers, entities formed from the resentment and filth of heaven and earth, were undying and consumed lifespans. Even Tribulation Passage cultivators wouldn’t dare provoke them lightly, let alone the four Nascent Soul cultivators present.
Under this pressure, they had no choice but to sit down and talk.
“The matter of the Nine Springs Prison Lord has been hidden for years, but you should all have heard of it, including… the Youquan Creek incident.”
Someone skeptically challenged, “Based on just a Core Formation stage demonic cultivator?”
Ji Yang explained, “The ‘You’ in Youquan means silent, implying that the living should not speak, and only the voices of the dead can reach the netherworld.”
Indeed, under Yin Que’s wave of ghost energy earlier, everything in the Extreme Pleasure Palace had fallen silent.
Nan Yan exclaimed, “Oh! Then doesn’t that mean Huangquan is…”
“Ah Yan, we’ll discuss that question another time,” Ji Yang said softly to Nan Yan before continuing, “The Nine Prisons were once just nine prisons, but now there’s another theory. Places without Prison Lords that can only confine souls are called Soul Nurturing Pools.”
An Evil Dao Nascent Soul demonic cultivator addressed Ji Yang: “I’ve heard about our sect’s fellow Daoist Hanlei, who went to Youquan Creek with Miss Mian, also aiming for the Prison Lord position but failed… I don’t know the details, but since you’ve been undercover in the Evil Dao for so long, you must have some basis.”
Ji Yang lit the lampstand with his green lantern, facing curious and hateful gazes alike. He calmly said, “Let’s start with something we all tacitly understand. You’ve probably recognized that most of these haunting souls are cultivators who died in Sizhou in the past.”
Cultivators often couldn’t rest in peace after death, especially after reaching the Nascent Soul stage. With their three hun and seven po souls fused into their Nascent Soul, they weren’t truly dead as long as their Nascent Soul remained intact.
“Sizhou people should understand this best… Since the death of the Demon Master Senluo hundreds of years ago, Daosheng Tian helped rebuild Sizhou. But from that time on, souls of those who died in Sizhou couldn’t reincarnate.” Ji Yang’s gaze fell on the trembling Venerable Xuanyan. “After death, the souls of all Sizhou’s deceased couldn’t freely reincarnate. Instead, they were confined by the ‘Soul Nurturing Pool’ of Youquan Creek. They lost their chance at rebirth, waiting for a new Prison Lord to reopen the path of reincarnation. In Youquan Creek earlier, besides us and the people from Sizhou, there were also powerful beings from Daosheng Tian, all aiming for the Youquan Prison Lord position.”
Venerable Xuanyan lamented again. After today’s events, Daosheng Tian would surely not let him live. He struggled to interrupt Ji Yang: “Preposterous! The Nine Springs Prison Lord is a deity of this realm, presiding over endless reincarnations. No matter how strong Daosheng Tian is, how could they interfere with reincarnation…”
“If they couldn’t, then why can the Prison Lord now be replaced,” Ji Yang turned to Yin Que, implying, “or even devoured?”
“…”
“Let’s think more boldly… In this mortal realm, we inhabit, those high and mighty gods who controlled life and death have been slain by Daosheng Tian. They can now control the death of the deceased. By extension, might their next step be to interfere with the lives of the living?”
In the deathly silence, Mu Zhanting, who had been listening, said, “I heard the Dragon Lord say that Daosheng Tian is already powerful enough. If they allow their Daotian Supreme Teachers, whose lifespans are nearly exhausted, to rely on reincarnation, even if all other States united, we could hardly restrain Daosheng Tian.”
The nearby Dragon Lion Guard, still wary of Ji Yang, reminded, “But these are all internal affairs of Sizhou. What does it have to do with us?”
“It has everything to do with us!” Li Chi interjected, his face grim as he dropped a bombshell. “Daosheng Tian used Youquan Creek as a Soul Nurturing Pool, promising that someone from Sizhou would become the Prison Lord in the future. Now that it’s fallen into outsiders’ hands, they just demand we hand it over, disregarding Sizhou’s fate entirely. I’m not afraid to break ties with them—the previous prince of Chenzhou was surrounded and killed at Daosheng Tian’s behest. They want to incite war between the two States, collect more souls in Qitian Yuan, and create a new Soul Nurturing Pool… And this new pool is right beneath our feet, meant to control Chenzhou!”
“What did you say?!”