Chapter 352: Yinshan Village

The red lanterns hang on the low wall of the tomb, shaken by the hot, humid breeze blowing from inside, and the bright red light shifts back and forth with the lanterns on the damp walls, reflecting shadows of varying heights on the walls like a shadow play.

The shadows move stiffly and dully, reaching out to each other as if they were talking, emitting the kind of distant, indistinct words and footsteps Bai Liu has just heard, shifting position with the light as they make their way into the main chamber.

On either side of the entrance to the main chamber, illuminated by lanterns, stand two respectful, bending shadows, one on the left and one on the right, seemingly greeting guests. The dark eyes of these two shadows are empty and move around the shadowed face as if they are surveying the people, or shadows, at the entrance.

A crack opened slowly at the shadow's lips, and the eerie, sharp voice came out of the wall again.

"We have two guests to congratulate us, please enter the main hall!"

But with so many shadows on the walls, the tomb is empty, with only shadows of red light shifting, shadows that keep changing shape and moving inwards, becoming more and more visible on the walls.

The two welcoming shadows at the entrance did not move after two proddings, and Bai Liu's crescent-shaped eyes turned upward and downward, and the mouth that had been laughing was gone, leaving only the two red holes of light staring at Bai Liu.

The shadow's feet, which had been standing on the wall, sagged strangely by half, bending strangely to the ground, getting closer and closer to where Bai Liu was standing, and it urged, in a shrill voice, a third time.

"There are two guests, please come in."

Bai Liu lowered his eyes and stepped inside, followed closely by Mu Sicheng.

The two shadows guarding the entrance, with their hands tucked in and half bowed, rolled their eyes to watch Bai Liu enter the tomb, and a huge arc slowly split where his mouth had been.

"Your guest is here, the guest of honour welcomes you!"

As soon as Bai Liu enters the tomb, the shadows on either side of the tomb's path stop moving in and their noisy chatter stops, and the shadows stand still, staring at Bai Liu and Mu Sicheng in silence with their red-lit eyes.

These shadows, of varying sizes and shapes, range from a woman with her hair in a bun holding a little girl with double braids, to a hunchbacked old man with a walking stick, to a middle-aged man in a short, beaten waistcoat, all standing in the wall without a word, staring at Bai Liu as he slowly walks towards the main chamber.

Mu Sicheng's skin tingled as he watched, and he approached Bai Liu and asked in a lowered voice, "What are these shadows? Didn't you say that only the living have shadows in the underworld?"

"The living can shine a shadow in the underworld, but the underworld is not the only place where the living can shine a shadow." Bai Liu heads into the main chamber with his eyes unblinking.

"The shadow is a kind of image shaped by light printed on a physical object after the three souls and seven spirits of a person have gathered their forms, the essence of the shadow is the same as what shines out of us in a mirror, so both folk and Taoist have the saying that ghosts do not have shadows and ghosts cannot be printed in mirrors because the three souls and seven spirits of ghosts are incomplete."

"There is form without shadow, for the soul, and shadow without form, for the spirit."

Bai Liu swept the shadows on the wall with his remaining light: "These shadows should be the spirits of those who died but were trapped here for eternity in the village of Yinshan."

Mu Sicheng looked around at these shadows and winced: "...... So these shadows are just prana-ized, nothing more damaging than the spirit-ized martyred bridge ghost zombies or whatever out there, right?"

Bai Liu retracted: "The Evil Art of Maoshan describes, [The soul of man is good but the spirit is evil, the spirit of man is spiritual but the spirit is foolish ...... If the soul is there, then it is a person; if the spirit is gone, then it is not a person."

"The world moves corpses, but only those who have the Way can control them. (Note 1)"

Mu Sicheng swallowed hard, "What does ...... mean by that?"

Bai Liu simply explains, "meaning the soul is good and the spirit is evil, the spirit is spiritual and the spirit is foolish."

"With the soul present, this ghost can still be called something that has a human existence, while once the soul is completely dissipated, this ghost has not even a bit of humanity left, and the most severe ghosts in this world are prana-formed, and only those with a high level of Daoism can sanction the prana."

Mu Sicheng couldn't help but spit out, "No way! Just those souped-up martyred bridge ghosts and zombies out there are still kind and humane?!"

Bai Liu replied calmly, "Compared to Pura, indeed."

The red light of the lanterns in the tomb passage became more and more intense, and at some point Mu Sicheng noticed that the shadows on either side began to move slowly, their eyes illuminated by the red light staring at Bai Liu without turning, their feet walking at an ethereal pace.

The shadows' mouths split into red slits of varying sizes and whispered against each other, speaking in a very muffled voice, as if they were listening to their next-door neighbours whispering through a wall, secretive and raucous.

Mu Sicheng couldn't hear what they were saying at all, but it definitely wasn't anything good, because the way the shadows looked at them gave Mu Sicheng a lingering sense of malice.

Just as Mu Sicheng was looking at the shadows with a chill on the back of his neck, he frowned and asked, "These shadows, are they getting shorter and shorter?"

Bai Liu pulls Mu Sicheng in so that Mu Sicheng moves to his direct back.

"Watch your step." Bai Liu cautioned lightly, "These prana are trapped in the wall as shadows, none of them are attacking us now, they shouldn't be able to break away from the wall and attack us actively, but their shadows can touch our shadows."

Mu Sicheng subconsciously looked down and was horrified to find that somehow the feet of the shadows had slowly slid down the wall to the floor and were getting closer and closer to their shadows.

No wonder he just looked at these shadows getting shorter and shorter!!!

The shadows on the wall seemed to know that they had been spotted approaching the plot and cracked a smile in unison, with almost identical smiling red mouths appearing on different shadows of men, women and children at the same time, accompanied by different voices of giggles coming out of the wall.

Mu Sicheng was so frightened that he immediately started walking in a straight line behind Bai Liu, trying to keep his shadow centred as far away from the prana as possible.

Bai Liu squinted at Mu Sicheng's shadow on the ground, so faint that it was barely discernible.

The absence of a shadow means that Mu Sicheng is now close to separating his soul from his body, which is why he cannot see a shadow.

Whereas the Mu Sicheng on this side has a human nature but no shadow, then the Mu Sicheng on this side is spiritified, so what remains in the body of the Mu Sicheng is, self-evidently, naturally the prana.

Pura is inhumane, only vicious.

Things get slightly more problematic, as things like prana can only be subdued by the righteous Taoist techniques, but Bai Liu these have no righteous methods, only evil ones.

We'll just have to take a step forward and see what happens.

Bai Liu walks to the end of the tomb passage and pushes open a narrow, faded, red double wooden door.

The shadows above the wall looked at Bai Liu with the kind of salivating gaze that makes one's scalp tingle as they entered the wooden door with mutual compliments and big smiles.

Bai Liu also leads Mu Sicheng through the wooden door.

Once inside the wooden door, the scene of the tomb, which had been low, was suddenly much brighter. The height of the tomb roof was several times higher than before, and it looked like it had to be as high as two or three storeys, and the main chamber was decorated in imitation of the main hall of the old mansion, with red and white candles and lanterns lit everywhere, so that it could almost be described as brightly lit.

The shadows wandered in and out of the walls, which were painted with scenes of feasting guests, in perfect harmony with the sound of the shadows talking, laughing and playing, but of course, if they weren't staring straight at Bai Liu, he would have blessed the feast more sincerely.

Directly opposite the wooden door are placed in some sort of pattern seven Eight Immortal Tables, which are thickly covered in dust, but on which one can vaguely see the Eight Immortal Tables with their Qi Men and Bagua patterns, the legs of which are nailed to the ground with golden nails and cannot be moved.

Instead of tables, chairs and benches, a circle around the Eight Immortals' Table is filled with coffins standing upright, all of which have been opened, leaving only an empty coffin box with coffin lids stacked randomly on the ground, with red threads wrapped around the coffins.

The interior of the coffin was so badly decayed that water was still dripping down it, and a bronze mirror was set at the head, similar to the bridal coffin Bai Liu had seen earlier at the temple.

Bai Liu stepped forward and marched around the coffins, squatting down and carefully rubbing the red threads on the lids: "There's not much ash on the breaks, they've just been ripped off, the bodies inside must not have gotten very far."

Then Bai Liu stood up and he walked around the coffins one by one, counting softly under his breath, "1, 2 ......33."

"There are only 33 empty coffins." Bai Liu looked around, "Sixteen less."

Mu Sicheng stood at a distance, he was creeped out by the coffins and didn't want to go near them at all: "How do you know there are 16 missing?"

"This should be a formation made with seven as the extreme number." Bai Liu pointed to the seven Eight Immortal Tables, "The zombies that the paper people chase away, the martyred bridge ghosts on the bridge, the coffins we guard in the temple are all seven, according to this pattern, each Eight Immortal Table here should also correspond to seven coffins."

"You can also tell from the ash on the ground." Bai Liu gestures to Mu Sicheng to look at the ground, "The ash on these areas is not heavy and there are traces of dragging, so they should have originally held coffins as well."

"These 16 coffins should have been carried out by the same ghosts we met on the way."

Bai Liu pondered, "But these ghosts were originally formed because of the tomb owner, they should also only listen to the tomb owner's orders alone, and this formation should also have been set up by the tomb owner a hundred years ago."

"Why would this tomb owner want these ghosts to move these bridal coffins out of the tomb after a hundred years, destroying the formation he had painstakingly laid out a hundred years ago?"

Bai Liu lowered his eyes and rubbed the dust on his hands, "Obviously, he is only one step away from gathering Yin Qi and training himself into a supreme Yin corpse to come out of the world."