Ye Fan and the others were all completely stunned. Even the Black Emperor’s copper-bell eyes went wide and round, its crimson tongue lolling out, looking rather dazed — none of them had anticipated that Duan Fatty would pull a move like this at the very end.

“Come help me!” Duan De shouted. By himself he couldn’t hold the ghost soldier down at all — it was incomparably strong, shaking heaven and earth.

“Duan Fatty, have you lost your mind?” The others finally snapped back to their senses.

Ahead there were tens of thousands of ghost soldiers. Even remote ancient sages had stepped aside at the sight of them to clear the way — if these came charging back, who could possibly hold them off?

“It’s fine — they can’t come back!” Duan De called out, pressing the ghost soldier to the ground and pulling out a ghost-binding rope to tie it up.

The manner in which he did it truly resembled hog-tying, so audacious that no one could even find words. This was a tool he always carried with him — indispensable when entering old tombs and ancient mausoleums, consecrated through the art of geomantic burial.

“ROOOAR!“

From the far side of the stone arch bridge, the tens of thousands of ghost soldiers turned their heads in unison and let out a furious roar, sending the heavens and earth caving in. A devastating and harrowing energy swept over them — every one of the group spat great mouthfuls of blood, their physical bodies nearly shattering to pieces.

The ghost soldiers charged back, their killing intent dominating the entire expanse of sky!

Yet at this moment, the mist was thinning. Everything on the far side blurred, and the tens of thousands of ghost soldiers rapidly faded away, vanishing together with the Netherworld Soil of the far bank.

In this moment, even the monkey’s palms were sweating. If those soldiers had charged all the way back, not one of them would have survived. He thought this fat man truly was playing with fire — boundlessly daring.

“Hurry and help — if you want to rescue the wild man, this fellow right here may be the key!” Duan De was on the verge of being overpowered. He was in a frenzy, with the ghost-binding rope in his hands but unable to get it looped on.

“Tomb raider… you are too ferocious!” Even the Black Emperor could only say as much, then opened its great gaping maw and charged over.

Ye Fan and the others rushed in as well — some pressing hands, some grabbing legs, some twisting its neck. For the first time in their lives they were grappling with a ghost like this. The moment they touched it, it was ice-cold and bone-piercing, and somehow prickly to the hand.

The ghost soldiers only appeared on the stone arch bridge and the far bank. Once dragged back it was impossible to see its true form clearly — but after Duan De scattered a heap of powder over it, it immediately took on a visible shape.

“This was ground from the coffin planks of the Undying Celestial Emperor’s ancient tomb — you could be the Great Luo Immortal Ghost in person and you’d still have to show your form for me!”

The ghost soldier’s strength was enormous. Apart from Ye Fan and the monkey, no single person among the rest would have been able to hold it down on their own. Duan De wound the ghost-binding rope around it eighteen times forward and backward until it was bound thoroughly and completely.

When everything finally calmed down, they looked at one another. For the first time in their lives they had caught a living ghost!

It wasn’t that they hadn’t encountered yin spirits before — but those had all been incorporeal, reduced to ash with a single blow, not worth mentioning. What they’d caught this time was something rather out of the ordinary: it was corporeal.

“Quite a lot of substance to it.” Duan De felt it over thoroughly and said: “Want to try for yourselves?”

“You are truly depraved!”

But they all crowded in anyway, studying the ghost soldier together. Its entire body was covered in black iron armor. Its flesh was pale and bloodless. The Black Emperor was rather curious and felt it over repeatedly, finding that one of its great paws was nearly going numb from the cold.

The battle attire on its body was very ancient — its age impossible to determine — bearing the stamp of the ages upon it, solid and undecaying.

“These battle garments must have been a rare ancient armor even before the primordial era. Truly incredible — they are not transmitted holy weapons. How have they survived for such an immeasurably long span of time?” The monkey was baffled.

Crack!

The moment these words left his mouth, the black battle garments cracked apart. Strand after strand of dark netherworld energy seeped out, and the battle attire began to decompose, crumbling into dust.

“What has happened — is it that so many ghost soldiers gathering together had allowed them to withstand the passage of time, and now that he’s separated, it’s finally returning to dust as dust, to earth as earth?”

Clang!

Duan De struck out, knocking off the ghost soldier’s helmet and revealing its true appearance — an ashen pale face, eyes tightly shut, gray hair hanging loose, with a death energy around it deeply frightening.

This was a man who appeared to be in his forties or fifties, utterly motionless. Once bound by the ghost-binding rope he had ceased all struggle — like a death sculpture.

Duan De intended to confine a memory imprint from between his brows to see what the so-called Netherworld Soil was all about. But at that moment, the death energy emanating from the man intensified. His entire body radiated a cloud of dark light — as though it had ignited — and then began shrinking continuously in the most bizarre fashion, reducing to the size of a thumb before falling to the ground with a ding.

Dark light flickered. The middle-aged man vanished. In his place on the ground was only an ink jade carved figurine — lifelike, identical in every detail to the ghost soldier from just moments before.

“What is this — how did it turn into this?” The Black Emperor came forward and prodded it with its great paw.

Duan De’s expression shifted with a flash of light. In his palm materialized two similar ink jade figurines — also only thumb-length, exquisitely lifelike — and he said: “I dug these out of an ancient mausoleum. They were left behind by a geomancer of an earlier era.”

“What good are these things? Truly bizarre.” Li Tian and the others crowded up, picked up the ghost soldier jade figurine from the ground, and puzzled over it without any conclusion.

“It’s a pity that handwritten journal was never completed. That geomancer was scared to death in his stone chamber, otherwise we would certainly understand far more.” Duan De clasped all three ink jade figurines in his palm.

“Let’s set this aside for now. We should go rescue the wild man first.” Li Heishui said.

“I feel somewhat uneasy — I can’t say why, but I find the sight of the ghost soldiers borrowing the road deeply strange…” Ye Fan murmured to himself, looking back over his shoulder. He saw nothing.

“What are you looking at? Don’t scare yourself — the ghost soldiers disappeared long ago.” Li Tian grumbled.

Ye Fan let out a sudden cold snort and stamped hard on the ground. Origin energy transformed into a great dragon rushing forward from beneath — rearing its head and leaping, brilliant and dazzling.

“Is there truly something there?!” The monkey and the others were startled. Even with their formidable spiritual awareness they had sensed nothing.

Ye Fan stared out at the dim ancient battlefield, ribbons of demonic fog curling through it. He could see no shadow of any person — yet in the darkness there was always a presence that kept his unease alive.

From then on they fell silent. No one spoke as they pressed forward. Ye Fan borrowed the Divine Maiden Furnace and remained on constant alert, ready at any moment to launch a fierce strike.

“It’s here again — again — I can truly feel it, and it should be coming for me…” Ye Fan sent his voice into the minds of the group.

After advancing more than a hundred li, he suddenly thrust the Divine Maiden Furnace backward. A heaven-engulfing divine radiance flooded the entire sky, and the dim battlefield blazed with brilliance in an instant.

From behind came a shrill, blood-curdling shriek that made every scalp crawl. A gloomy, ice-cold chill enveloped every person present — a sensation beyond expression.

In that instant of fire and lightning, Ye Fan glimpsed a figure flash and vanish — it sidestepped the Divine Maiden Furnace and disappeared into the darkness. That brief backward glance which revealed its true face chilled Ye Fan from head to foot.

“What did I just see — a terrifying ghost monkey!” Yan Yixi sucked in a sharp breath.

“Covered all over in red fur, with those eyes — so vicious and malicious. That brief glimpse nearly turned my body into an ice sculpture. Utterly terrifying!” Li Heishui couldn’t help shuddering several times.

Only Ye Fan said nothing. He stared into the darkness and clenched his fists — so forcefully that his knuckles had gone white.

“Brother Monkey, do you have relatives? I clearly saw a red-furred fierce ghost with a thunder god’s beak — and a face that somewhat resembles yours!” Li Tian said.

The monkey nearly swung his great iron staff to crack Li Tian’s skull. His golden-fire eyes shot out divine light, and his expression turned grave and heavy as he gazed into the darkness.

“What manner of creature is that? It seems extremely difficult to handle. Based on my many years of tomb-raiding experience, this is absolutely the kind of tomb master one encounters only once in tens of thousands of years — if not something even more frightening!” Duan De reached his conclusion.

That face covered in red fur was so hideous that it refused to leave Ye Fan’s mind. He had caught a trace of its energy — it resembled his own. It carried the distinctive signature unique to a Wellspring Heavenly Master.

“It is him — a Wellspring Heavenly Master in whose late years the inauspicious signs have manifested!” Ye Fan said gravely.

Everyone’s heart sank. They all knew how the Divine Spirit Valley had been destroyed. A Wellspring Heavenly Master who had manifested the inauspicious signs possessed a dreadful and terrifying power.

“The third generation patriarch is in the Qinling Mountains. The fourth generation patriarch is in the Primordial Forbidden Zone. The fifth generation patriarch died within the Divine Spirit Valley. And this place… is it the first generation patriarch, or the second?” Ye Fan murmured.

The others’ hair stood on end. Just how many years had the first two generation patriarchs been in existence? If they could absorb the essence of heaven and earth and the principles of the Dao, even a pig would have attained sainthood by now.

Most critically, their physical bodies were their own — but their divine will had fallen into a feral stupor, seized by some bizarre and malevolent intent, ferocious and boundless. That was what made them most frightening.

Their immediate impulse now was to flee. Facing an ancestor of the Wellspring Heavenly Master lineage was certain death — not the slightest hope remained.

Yet when they turned back, they found source-energy markings flickering everywhere, stretching on in great connected chains. Even someone of Ye Fan’s formidable skill in source arts would find breaking through them an enormous struggle.

“Then let us move forward and continue deeper — he has already cut off our retreat.” Ye Fan said.

“But what are we to do — is this not a dead end?” Yan Yixi said.

“It’s alright. Patriarch Zhang Lin gave me something — eighty-one great banners left behind by the Undying Celestial Emperor. If we truly have to fight to the death, even several ancestral kings could be suppressed and slain!” Ye Fan said.

Unless absolutely forced to, he was deeply reluctant to expend these precious treasures. After such an immeasurably long span of time, even the banner poles were nearly crumbling — they could be used only one final time.

Now the ancient banners had been sealed by him using nine ancient characters from the Dao Scripture, achieving permanence. Otherwise they would not have been able to persist much longer.

Ye Fan and the group advanced swiftly. Since things had already come to this, they wanted to use the time they had to find Dongfang Ye, rescue him, and then use these array banners when they broke out together.

They pressed on and searched on all sides. Across this vast battlefield they gradually came across dozens of corpses — not dead long ago, every one of them an ancient clan member, every skull cap pried open.

“These are people from the Primordial Lake — not a single weakling. Among them are true imperial bloodline members!” The monkey was deeply shaken.

Ye Fan crouched down and plucked several red hairs from the pried-open skulls — vivid and conspicuous. There was no doubt as to who had done this.

BOOM!

A sound like rolling thunder came from ahead — a far more terrifying battlefield. The malevolent energy there was so thick it could not disperse, and streak after streak of blood-colored lightning was appearing, the momentum awe-inspiring.

“This is the very heart of the battlefield. Dongfang Ye was most likely driven into pursuit all the way in here and has not been able to break free. The area spans around five hundred li!” The monkey said.

After passing through a stretch of pitch-black demonic fog, the way ahead suddenly blazed with radiance — various lights flying, various ancient weapons clashing, various laws flickering.

“What — this is… the weapons of primordial ancestral kings, their laws and principles. Can it be that someone is engaged in a great battle here?!” Everyone was greatly shocked.

The monkey shook his head: “No — these are only killing-intents. They are undying resentment — the battle-will of heroic spirits who fell in battle, made manifest!”

This was a terrifying battlefield. All manner of ancient weapons, all manner of divine radiance — all manifestations of laws and principles — surged and crisscrossed in every direction, never going out.

“The laws and principles that primordial ancestral kings once unleashed in battle gathered the essence of heaven and earth and cycled without ceasing, persisting to this day, transforming this place into an eternal, undying killing ground. To enter is to have little hope of survival!”

“Celestial Eye!”

Ye Fan called out in a low voice. Divine light shot from both eyes, sharp as lightning, peering through hundreds of li as he tried to see through to the heart of this terrible killing ground — but the various laws and principles quickly blocked his sight, impossible to penetrate.

BANG!

He stamped hard on one corner of the ground, and a source-energy marking rapidly extended from beneath his feet, advancing into the distant depths of the battlefield. Ye Fan closed his eyes. A long while passed, then he suddenly opened them: “Dongfang Ye is alive. I sensed his Wolf Fang holy weapon — it is that weapon that has protected his dharma body!”

Suddenly, from behind came a terrifying energy — ice-cold and bone-piercing, like ten thousand steel needles driving into every spine at once.

Not far away, a creature covered head to toe in red fur appeared, letting out a low hiss. It extended one terrifying red-furred claw — reaching forward one moment, then withdrawing it the next — seemingly caught in hesitation.

Ye Fan held the Divine Maiden Furnace aloft and was ready to strike at any moment. Every one of the group wore a solemn expression. They were now face to face with it at last — a Wellspring Heavenly Master who had manifested the inauspicious signs, of boundless and dreadful power.

“It’s weeping!” Li Tian said in shock.

“I… do not wish to kill you.” The voice was aged and hoarse, as though straining with every effort to control itself. It was trembling, its entire body of red fur quivering, its frame swaying.

On its face — covered in red fur — tear drops were rolling continuously. The fierce glare in its eyes had faded, and in this moment a sliver of clarity seemed to have emerged. With great difficulty it forced out the words: “You… are also on the verge of becoming a Wellspring Heavenly Master. We are… of the same kind. I do not wish to kill you…”

Its words came broken and disjointed, impossible to string together in a single breath. The fierce light in its eyes surfaced intermittently — it could not fully master itself, and it trembled without ceasing.

“Its magical tools are of recent make — it is no being from the remote ancient era. Look at the implements on its hands.” Duan De was sharp-eyed and said so in a low voice.

“Indeed — could this be someone from the Wellspring King’s lineage? The founding ancestor of that clan was one step away from becoming a Wellspring Heavenly Master in his late years. Several years ago the inauspicious signs appeared and he vanished. The clan invited a top disciple of the Divine Calculator to conduct a deductive reading, and the result brought calamity down upon that disciple as well.” Ye Fan connected all of this in an instant.

“That is I…” The red-furred creature ahead heard his murmured words and immediately became greatly agitated. A trace of clarity appeared in its eyes, and the fierce light was suppressed considerably.

“I… was brought here by the fourth generation Wellspring Heavenly Master!” It forced out this complete sentence with great effort.

“What?!” Ye Fan was greatly shocked. The fourth generation patriarch had hidden himself within the Primordial Forbidden Zone in his late years, yet the inauspicious signs had still manifested and he had vanished without a trace. Back then, in that land “where extremes give rise to their opposites,” Ye Fan had seen his relics.

“He commanded me to guard this place… to escort the ghost soldiers on their passage… to ensure it proceeds without error.” The red-furred creature spoke with difficulty.

“What — the ghost soldiers’ borrowing of the road is connected to you? And where is the fourth generation Wellspring Heavenly Master now?” Ye Fan, Duan De, and the rest were all deeply shaken.

“Even a Sage may not necessarily be his match if he appears…” The red-furred creature said with labored effort, then seemed to begin struggling within itself once more: “I do not wish to kill you. We are of the same kind — yet I am going into the stupor again.”

“Senior, please maintain your clarity — you can absolutely recover!” Ye Fan cried out loudly, his voice reverberating like a bell, shaking all who heard it.

“A warning for you… the domain of the Wellspring Heavenly Master is fraught with inauspicious signs… do not tread there lightly… they are almost here… flee quickly!” The words sent a chill through all who heard them. Who was coming? Every one of them was struck with shock and alarm.