Chapter 498: The Origin of the Evil Spirit, Once Unleashed, Impossible to Contain! Human Traces! The Three-Headed, Six-Armed Monster!
The incident at Liu Family Village had a huge impact. Even the wandering Daoist who came to exorcise spirits had died, leaving the villagers in a state of panic.
The village elders sent someone to summon a specialist corpse carrier, a tradesman who handles the bodies of those who have died tragic or unjust deaths, whose lingering resentment cannot dissipate naturally.
But what happened next was horrifying: the corpse carrier was found to have gouged out his own eyes, bleeding to death. This incident quickly alarmed the Dongyang County authorities and drew the attention of many exorcists.
At first, to some high-level monks and Daoists, this seemed like a simple haunting or a case of jiangshi causing trouble. However, as more and more cultivators died in Dongyang County, the situation escalated.
A large portion of the county was covered by a strange formation , which caused anyone entering it, ordinary people or cultivators alike, to lose their sense of direction. According to some cultivators, the formation was originally meant to cover the entire county, but for unknown reasons, only a portion of it was active.
The formation severely restricted cultivators, though ordinary people or wandering martial artists weren’t as affected. Even so, the ghostly disorientation within the formation was enough to confuse them completely.
The evil spirit itself was extremely sinister. It could possess cultivators and continually switch bodies, and in a short time, it had already killed many practitioners. What was worse, the spirit could control the corpses of these cultivators, replicating some of their abilities, which was a terrifying prospect.
If the Spirit-Refining Formation fully absorbed the villagers, it would almost certainly spread outward through the cultivators, potentially turning all of Dongyang County into a ghostly domain. Left unchecked, the spirit could give rise to unspeakably horrifying demons.
They had witnessed a case where an old Daoist seemed controlled; the old man’s magical abilities remained intact, and he appeared to have fused with the spirit to a high degree. It was unclear whether the spirit had finally possessed this Daoist or if there was another reason.
Xiao Ce, Ding Rou, and the others were trapped in Dongyang County by this bizarre formation. Fortunately, they encountered Master Yuanjue, the elderly monk in white robes, whose profound Buddhist cultivation and powerful sacred artifact protected them, saving several surviving cultivators.