Chapter 376: Manifestation
"The corpse-burning ground..."
Shang Wunian stared at the drifting bone ash and murmured softly.
An elder from the Jinyu lineage beside him chuckled darkly.
"What, Fellow Daoist Shang, were you really planning to invite one back to worship?"
Shang Wunian didn’t deny it, nodding lightly.
"That was indeed my intention before coming. I thought there might be a suitable one, but now it seems impossible."
He let out a breath and said slowly,
"This is the final resting place of an entire clan. With such a heavy weight of destiny, who could possibly pry someone out?"
"Gentlemen, please begin."
The elders of the Jinyu lineage moved off at his word, their disciples and followers trailing behind. They began to survey the surroundings, burying items for their work.
Bai Mo couldn’t make out their methods, so he turned to Yuan Chu and asked,
"What’s so special about this corpse-burning ground?"
Judging by the scattered state of the surrounding bones, the area had clearly been searched once before the four of them arrived.
Yuan Chu scanned the area and spotted an acquaintance.
"Hold on, I’ll go ask..."
He wasn’t gone for long. Upon his return, he said,
"This is the final resting place for a clan. After those giants die, they must all come to this place to have their bodies cremated."
"Junior Martial Uncle Shang and the others probably know some secret, or perhaps they’re about to use some special technique..."
Perhaps sensing that today was different, the drifting bone ash began to stir restlessly as the Jinyu lineage busied themselves.
BOOM!
The ash gathered, faintly coalescing into the skeleton of a giant. Its hollow eye sockets stared at the crowd for a few breaths before collapsing and scattering again.
This cycle repeated over and over, a breathtaking phenomenon.
A stir went through the disciples, but seeing that their leading elders remained unfazed, they managed to suppress their own unease.
’Just as Junior Martial Uncle Shang said, this clan’s destiny was only enough to peel off that one giant who attacked Mi Mountain and sustain its immortal state. That was its limit.’
’Any further action would be nothing but a foolish dream.’
Gong Gui still remembered Shang Wunian’s words from before they set out.
Night fell in the blink of an eye. The disciples of the Jinyu lineage, now clear on the plan, began burying the Red Ropes beneath the bones. Not one of them dared to let their focus waver.
Shang Wunian waved his red robes and gave the order.
"Offer sacrifices to the heroic spirits!"
Receiving the command, the disciples immediately sprang into action.
When Bai Mo saw them take out the three sacrificial animals, he understood.
He followed the others, setting out the offerings and lighting all the joss ingots and incense candles.
The light from the burning sacrificial paper traveled far.
Bai Mo had spent the last few nights in this land of bones, and every time, he had witnessed the dangers lurking just beyond the firelight.
Tonight, however, was different. The ritual alone had frightened away those unseen killers.
It was a sleepless night. The disciples followed the ritual procedures, worshipping for half the night.
Just before dawn, in the darkest hour, a disciple suddenly leaped out and shouted,
"Junior Brothers, you have all searched this land of bones for several days. I trust you have witnessed the dangers here."
"To say nothing of the living creatures, there are also things condensed from the dense death qi that seeps from the ground at night. They are exceedingly dangerous."
"In a moment, if you can’t hold on, fall back to my position!"
Upon hearing this, the disciples’ faces changed slightly, and they began to whisper among themselves.
"What are they about to do?"
An elder from the Jinyu lineage heard the disciples’ murmurs and let out a strange laugh.
"What are they doing!?"
"They’ve accepted our incense and offerings. How could they not return the favor?"
As soon as his voice fell, the Jinyu lineage disciples had already pulled taut the buried Red Ropes, readying themselves.
Shang Wunian held three long sticks of incense and chanted in a loud voice:
"The Divine Dao Mountain of the Xuandao Sect and the Jinyu lineage offer this pious sacrifice."
"We are willing to offer a century of worship to relieve the heroic spirits of their solitude. We pray you will descend and bestow your divine will..."
It was the moment heaven and earth met, when yin and yang rotated. As Shang Wunian spoke, the Jinyu disciples also let out a low shout.
They pulled hard, and the Red Ropes were drawn taut.
The Red Ropes crisscrossed the field, forming a net.
"HEH!"
"Turn the heavens and earth upside down!!"
As the net rose, the minds of the disciples on the field grew hazy. Then, an explosion seemed to rock their minds, as if heaven and earth had been transformed.
Black and white were inverted, and the scene before their eyes changed with it.
"But... shouldn’t it be getting light out?"
It should have been sunrise, the time of great light, but the disciples felt it grow even darker, as if night had returned.
The long incense in Shang Wunian’s hand burned, its smoke drifting. Still, no spirit seemed willing to accept his offering, but the deed was well and truly done.
The tension on his face eased slightly.
"We’ve borrowed their lingering thoughts to manifest certain things. Whether you gain anything from it depends on your own luck. Go."
With a wave of his sleeve, the ground rumbled and split open. Dust flew as a fissure, sloping downward, appeared, its depths bottomless.
Startled creatures within scrambled out from the fissure in a panic.
There were clusters of leech-like things, some insects, and the large, humanoid rats that Bai Mo had seen before.
CLANG!
A disciple drew his saber. A flash of light, and one of the humanoid rats froze for an instant before splitting in two from top to bottom, its halves falling to either side.
Such a large wound produced very little blood. Inside, their flesh was a dusty gray and almost completely solid.
They were quite hefty.
The disciple who killed it strode into the fissure, a contingent of other disciples following him.
Bai Mo and his three companions, their cultivation being weaker, took the opportunity to follow after the main group.
However, the space below the fissure was surprisingly large, growing more open the farther they went.
The main group soon dispersed.
Bai Mo moved cautiously, sticking close to the wall.
Suddenly, the hand he was using to steady himself against the wall paused. He had touched something.
"Wait!"
"What is this?"
Gong Gui, standing nearby, quickly brought a torch over, clearly illuminating the object on the wall.
"It looks like wood?"
Yuan Chu stepped forward and threw two quick punches. They landed on the wall with a loud CRACK, sending wood chips flying.
"Why is a wooden wall embedded in the earth!?"
The group shook their heads. It seemed the things manifested from the giants’ lingering thoughts weren’t all reliable.
ROAR!!
Bai Mo was about to say something when he heard a hoarse, bestial roar and a vicious gust of wind rushed at them.
Xiong Xin spun around abruptly, throwing his arms up in a block and reflexively tilting his neck back.
BANG!
A striped Tiger Demon pounced, its claws landing right on Xiong Xin’s blocking arms. Its savage jaws came dangerously close to tearing out Xiong Xin’s throat.
With almost no hesitation, Yuan Chu darted forward. His long arm cracked like a whip as he struck the Tiger Demon’s lower jaw in a move resembling a monkey offering a peach.
CRACK!
Its open maw was slammed shut, spattering a spray of blood.
Bai Mo seized the opportunity, flicking his hand to send several rainbow-colored Pills flying out.
POOF POOF POOF...
The multicolored smoke sent Xiong Xin and Yuan Chu scrambling back in alarm.
The Tiger Demon bore the brunt of it. The fumes muddled its mind, but the intense pain wracking its body shocked it back to awareness.
It instinctively tried to leap away, but it slammed into the Pill Furnace with a CLANG and fell back down...
In the eyes of Yuan Chu and the others, the Demon Beast’s fur began to corrode and perforate.
It seemed to grow more and more dazed until, before their very eyes, it melted into a pile of white bones.
Bai Mo let out a sigh of relief. ’I was worried these Pills wouldn’t be useful.’
Xiong Xin was horrified. Seeing how casually Bai Mo used such items every time, he was even more astonished.
"Junior Brother, how many of those Pills did you prepare!?"
"Not many. In terms of rank, these Pills are almost Tier Three. The cost to make them is too high."
Bai Mo recalled that he had only prepared half a small bucket of these unnamed Pills, and they had cost him a fortune.
"We’ve made a commotion. Let’s go. Why are things like this down here anyway?"
"Luckily, we can still handle it..."
The four of them muttered amongst themselves as they hurried away, sticking to the foot of the wall.