Chapter 14
Chapter 14: Divine Statue Dust-Cloaked · Sacred Light Utterly Dispersed · The Hidden Hand Behind It All · Neither God Nor Ghost
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite's voice drifted through the manor in a hollow, meandering echo.
"You are but a minor demon—you could never comprehend what drives those ancient monsters."
She sat upon her stone seat, as though savoring the lingering scent of mortal life still clinging to the air.
She recounted for Jiang Linxian the origins of the old one atop Seven Absolute Mountain, her tone flat and unhurried, as though relaying some inconsequential piece of gossip.
"It is said that Seven Absolute Mountain was formed from 7 stone fragments left behind when the Goddess Nüwa patched the heavens—whether true, no one can say. As for the others, they are presumably shells once worn by the mountain god. The old man, however, was nothing more than a wretched soul who lost his footing and tumbled to his death. Among the piles of bones beneath the cliff, his was simply one more."
She paused. A flash of cold derision passed through her slit pupils.
"Yet fortune smiled on him. The underworld runners never came to claim him. His soul drifted about, muddled and aimless—and so became a ready-made vessel."
"Seized—by the mountain god?" Jiang Linxian seized upon the word.
"Occupied. A puppet."
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite corrected him, her tone dropping to something cold and flat.
"That is no properly appointed mountain god. It is the first of Seven Absolute Mountain's line—the most ancient of the lot…one who should have faded long ago when the incense offerings ceased and its divine consciousness dissolved."
"Yet it refused. Clinging to one last thread of connection to the mountain's veins, and driven by years of accumulated resentment, it had stubbornly persisted—twisting into a land-bound malevolent spirit. Then, as chance would have it, a fresh shade tumbled right into its territory…"
And so: neither god nor ghost.
A righteous deity that had once been charged with guarding mountain and river—stripped of the restraint that incense offerings imposed, bereft of any superior to answer to—had, following that festering resentment and its barest instincts, taken to devouring living souls and seizing corpses as vessels, just as any malevolent ghost would.
It walked in the guise of that old woman, while inside it was nothing but years of mountain-accumulated yin filth and madness.
"The City God of this place has long since vanished."
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite named this crucial point, and even her tone carried a barely perceptible weight and bewilderment.
Precisely when, or why, or by whose hand—no one could say.
It was as though, overnight, the City God temples throughout the land—those that should have maintained the order between the living and the dead—had simply emptied.
Divine statues cloaked in dust. Sacred light entirely dispersed.
Since then, every sprite and wild ghost within hundreds of li had truly become an untended feral thing.
"The strong prey upon the weak, devouring one another to advance in cultivation—and even…usurping the divine thrones themselves."
"That man from Seven Absolute Mountain…" Jiang Linxian thought of their earlier encounter.
"Hmph. That is the clearest proof yet that the laws governing this land have warped," the Yellow Butterfly Sprite said with a cold laugh.
"A spiritual mountain holds spiritual force. Long steeped in the essence of sun and moon, with no righteous god to guide or tend it, that spiritual energy underwent a mutation—and birthed 7 distinct humanoid manifestations from within itself, each possessing one facet of divine ability. Call them mountain sprites if you like; they are more akin to freaks of nature, spontaneously conceived."
"Elder Sister had to expend considerable effort to capture them all—and yet, who could have foreseen that a mountain god lurked behind it all."
Jiang Linxian quietly absorbed everything—the underworld, the City God, the mountain god…these divine titles that, in all the legends he had ever heard, had once stood for order, protection, and justice.
Now, hearing them spoken aloud, each was draped in a strange and ominous shadow.
The underworld seemed to have grown lax in claiming souls. The City God had vanished without explanation. The mountain god had fallen into wickedness…
The entire divine order governing this realm seemed to have developed a vast, pitch-black void.
A chill swept through him—but almost at once, a twisted sense of relief followed.
At least he had long since ceased to be human.
In a world like this, being human meant teetering on the edge of ruin with every passing day.
And dying would likely bring no peace either.
His soul might yet become raw material for some aged mountain monster to patch together a new body.
By the time their conversation ended, they had returned to Yellow Butterfly Manor.
The atmosphere within was plainly different from Golden Butterfly Manor—the yin energy heavier, the demonic miasma denser. The minor demons moved in orderly formation, radiating a far sharper killing aura.
Thanks to the Yellow Butterfly Sprite's favor, Jiang Linxian retained his rank as captain, his authority now even broader.
The former Toad Captain, meanwhile, stood sullen and dejected somewhere amid a cluster of minor demons, stripped of every shred of command.
The reason was simple: power.
Under Yellow Butterfly Manor's banner stood not only a thousand-year great demon, but also the 7 named figures known collectively as the "3 Demons and 4 Fiends"—all of them great demons with over 500 years of cultivation, their demon arts formidable beyond comparison. Golden Butterfly Manor was no match at all.
Even the Bat Demon and the Centipede Sprite he had dealt with before were now visibly among their ranks—clearly having made the shrewd decision to defect to the stronger faction after the upheaval at Golden Butterfly Manor.
Only the Toad Captain, despite his hundred years of cultivation, had ground out those years through nothing but endurance. Talent had never been his gift. In such company, his standing had naturally collapsed.
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All 3 toad sprites were now under Jiang Linxian's command.
Dull as they were, they had the virtue of obedience.
Patrol, hauling, surveillance—once those trivial duties were distributed among them, the time left to himself multiplied considerably.
Deep within the cave dwelling, he had claimed a cool, secluded stone chamber for himself, and sank into cultivation.
In this perilous place—rich in spiritual energy, yet chaotic and impure—his progress moved faster than he had anticipated.
Demonic energy flowed through his meridians, steadily eroding some formless boundary.
100 years of cultivation is the dividing line for plant sprites and stone minor demons alike.
Cross it, and one's form and spirit stabilize; one can at last draw upon a fraction of heaven and earth's true force, rather than relying solely on instinct and innate gifts.
He estimated that, at this pace, a breakthrough was imminent.
The greater part of it, of course, still depended on the Dragon Pearl—otherwise his pace could have been even swifter.
Golden Butterfly Manor had been enough to sustain him for a decade or more.
Yellow Butterfly Manor was stronger, its foundations deeper, with a thousand-year great demon presiding over it—impregnable by any measure, or so it seemed.
Jiang Linxian's original estimate had been that this place could afford him at least 20 or 30 years of relative stability—enough time to breach the 100-year threshold and unearth more of the region's hidden secrets.
Yet the upheaval came without a single warning, as violent as a mountain collapse.
Not even 3 years.
A thunderous rumbling and shaking erupted simultaneously from every mountain range, every inch of earth.
The stone chamber lurched violently.
Dust and debris rained down in cascades. From outside came the deafening roar of battle cries, agonized screams, and the shattering crack of collapsing rock.
And then—7 light pillars of different colors, each blazing with equal ferocity, smashed through the restriction seals and walls at the cave dwelling's entrance!
The 7 humanoid manifestations of Seven Absolute Mountain had stormed in—together.
They were no longer in the scattered, isolated state they had been in when Golden Butterfly Sprite had lured and captured them. They had formed some kind of profound battle formation.
Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet—7-colored radiance swirled and interlocked, transforming into a raging, unstoppable torrent of spiritual force.
Before this torrent, the minor demons of Yellow Butterfly Manor were torn apart and ground to dust like dry grass.
Jiang Linxian heard the Yellow Butterfly Sprite's shrill, furious shriek—then an even more terrifying eruption of demonic energy.
Evidently, the Yellow Butterfly Sprite and the manor's demons had moved to engage, tangling in combat with the 7.
Light flared wildly. Thunderous blasts rang out without cease. The whole of Yellow Butterfly Manor shook like an earthquake, with cave after cave collapsing inward.
The intensity of the battle surpassed all imagination.
Jiang Linxian forcibly suppressed the demonic energy churning within him—disrupted mid-cultivation—and charged out of the stone chamber.
He saw the main cave hall already reduced to wreckage, demon corpses strewn everywhere.
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite had partially shed her original form, unleashing clouds of poison mist. The manor's demons each called upon their own arts…
In the end, they were all great demons who had amassed close to a thousand years of cultivation. Combined with the Yellow Butterfly Sprite's magic treasures, they gradually divided and suppressed the rampaging 7 brothers.
After a grueling battle at tremendous cost.
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite brought forth her cauldron.
The 7 brothers—gravely wounded and utterly spent—were drawn into the cauldron one by one!
The cauldron lid slammed shut with a thunderous clang. From within came dull crashes and the sound of scorching, the 7-colored radiance flickering on the cauldron's surface—desperate, but unable to break free.
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite's face had gone ash-white, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth—yet she wore the savage grin of a victor as she ignited her demonic fire, intent on refining those 7 primal essences.
The final victor appeared to be the Yellow Butterfly Sprite.
Then, without warning, everything changed once more.
The cauldron's trembling abruptly ceased. The 7-colored radiance across its surface, as though soaked through by ink, rapidly dimmed and turned black.
A force combining the scent of incense offerings with the thick rot of death descended, soundless and unbidden.
The shadows of the cave writhed and stretched like living things, pooling and converging into a single point.
A hunched silhouette walked slowly out of the deepest darkness.
It was the old woman seized by the mountain god.
On its face was not a trace of the dull blankness or terror that belonged to any human being—only the cold, ravenous, divine indifference of something gazing down upon insects.
"My thanks, Butterfly Sprite…"
The mountain god's voice was a rasping, low rumble, yet it reverberated through the deepest recesses of every surviving demon's consciousness—carrying the grating quality of stone grinding against stone.
"For gathering these scattered mountain souls for this god…and for providing the elixir that contained the Seven Hearts."
By this point, the Yellow Butterfly Sprite had already grasped the truth.
"So that was it. The Seven-Heart Pill's violent spiritual force needed to be neutralized—Elder Sister was a piece of your scheme all along. Your aim, from the very beginning, was us?"
The mountain god said nothing.
It merely extended a withered hand, and from a distance reached toward the cauldron.
The cauldron shuddered violently, releasing a groan under the strain.
The demonic fire the Yellow Butterfly Sprite had called up was extinguished in an instant, replaced by a dark, smoldering black flame capable of burning away all spiritual nature.
The cauldron seemed to become its property outright. Inside, the 7 brothers' auras were being rapidly refined and distilled—drawn down into their purest form, 7 threads of radiant essence.
The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite had coveted Seven Absolute Mountain's power—yet she had not known that Seven Absolute Mountain's origins were extraordinary, far beyond what a few days or years could accomplish.
This mountain god had schemed for no one knew how long.
It was the single most critical step toward restoring—and even surpassing—its former strength!
The Yellow Butterfly Sprite's complexion collapsed. She lunged to wrest control of the cauldron—but it was like a mayfly trying to shake a great tree.
The mountain god merely glanced at her with languid contempt. The surrounding rock seemed to take on life, twisting and coiling around her, as the power of the earth veins transformed into invisible chains, holding her fast.
Refined in moments.
1 yellow and 1 golden demon core were thrown into the cauldron by the mountain god.
But it found that far from enough—as though it had long anticipated this.
The mountain god fed demon core after demon core into the cauldron, until even the remaining great demons and minor fiends within the manor who had cultivated for 100 years or more were reduced to fuel.
Jiang Linxian understood. It was very different from what his past-life accumulated wisdom had led him to envision—perhaps there were similarities, yet far more brutal.
No wonder Seven Absolute Mountain had so few demons and monsters left. It turned out they had all been converted into resources for this mountain god.
Jiang Linxian, too, found no escape—he was seized directly and thrown into the alchemy furnace.
The mountain god seemed to have gone utterly mad……