Chapter 1

Huanglong Mountain, located in the Central Continent, was said to be haunted.

The story began in the villages and towns at the foot of the mountain, starting with an old man who went up to chop firewood. He didn't even manage to cut a single log, fleeing back to the village in a panic and hiding for two days before daring to speak of the ghost he claimed to have seen that day.

The ghost was said to be a fierce female ghost in red!

He described her as wearing a red robe, with half her face mangled, revealing bare white bone. In her hand, she held a paper umbrella, and she met his gaze. In that instant, he was so terrified that his soul nearly flew from his body, and he turned and fled down the mountain.

The ghost story spread like wildfire, from ten to a hundred, then a thousand, reaching neighboring towns and even the capital city. By the time it was told, some embellishments had been added, claiming the old woodcutter had actually encountered a zombie—a green-faced, fanged creature with long, black nails, roaming the forest to drink human blood and devour human flesh.

The incident caused widespread panic. Some Taoist priests, eager to gain fame, ventured up the mountain, but were driven back by poisonous insects and thick mountain fog deep within the forest, never even catching sight of the fierce ghost.

Seeing this, the Lord of Liuchuan City realized that only cultivators could handle the matter. He immediately sent a letter to the Qingyin Sect, but had yet to receive a response.

Huanglong Mountain, once the site of the Eight Desolations Country, is said to have been buried under a cataclysm three hundred years ago. Earthquakes shook the land, mountains collapsed, and countless lives were lost, their souls forever entombed within this desolate peak. For centuries, the mountain has been haunted by malevolent spirits, claiming lives with relentless frequency.

Later, Ji Shuangyue, the foremost figure in the Cultivation World, purified the land and guided the lost souls to peace, breathing new life into the desolate mountain and transforming it into a place where villagers below could earn their living.

At this very moment, a woman in a crimson wedding gown stands beneath a tree in Huanglong Mountain, holding a paper umbrella. Her dark hair cascades down her back, her eyes full of both tender emotion and bewitching allure. Her crimson lips, sharply defined, curve into a seductive half-smile, and a single raised eyebrow can convey a thousand charms. A monkey in the branches above, holding a fruit, stares at her intently, so entranced that it doesn't even notice when the fruit slips from its grasp.

The sight of such a bewitching woman in wedding attire in the wild, desolate mountains is eerie and unsettling. She stands before a Mourning Hall, its walls overgrown with moss and plastered with yellow talismans, examining it. Though called a Mourning Hall, the structure has long since crumbled into ruins. Moss blankets the walls, and tree roots intertwine across them, as if writing the complex stories of the past.

Inside, coffins lay askew, their lids scattered across the floor. Half-dissolved bones lay scattered on the coffin planks and the ground. The incense burner had fallen, its contents spilled across the floor. A chilling wind swept through, sending shivers down the woman's spine.

If not for the nearly decomposed plaque, on which the words "Mourning Hall" were barely visible, she would never have recognized this place as a Mourning Hall.

Yellow talismans were plastered densely across the walls. Some were tattered beyond recognition, leaving only half a sheet clinging to the wall, while others remained intact, as if to contain some ferocious beast trapped within.

Ghostly figures flickered in the shadows, and the air was heavy with ghostly energy—it was clear that something formidable was sealed here...

"This place feels somewhat familiar..."

The woman stepped forward and gently lifted a yellow talisman with her fingertips, tilting her head to examine it. This talisman, crafted by a Talisman Cultivator, had endured for centuries without decay. Even after a hundred years, the patterns on it remained recognizable... a Ghost-Suppressing Talisman.

She murmured softly, "With this level of skill... only Old Bai and I could have made such a thing..."

Her gaze fell on the bottom-left corner of the yellow talisman, where a small star was drawn. Huh? Isn't this the talisman I drew myself? Only she would do something so silly, marking her work as her own.

What is this place? Have I been here before?

"Hey..."

At that moment, a wisp of smoke spiraled out of the paper umbrella, coalescing into a female ghost with a transparent upper body and a lower body like swirling mist. The ghost glanced at the Mourning Hall before her. "These talismans are powerful. It feels like many years have passed, yet their magic still lingers. I feel dizzy just being near them."

Of course they're powerful! They were drawn by me, Ji Shuangyue! But... why would a ghost cultivator feel dizzy?

The woman before her was Ji Shuangyue herself. She should have undergone Tribulation Transcendence and Ascension a century ago, but a "major accident" during the tribulation had shattered her mental state, nearly killing her with Heavenly Thunder. Using all her magical artifacts to protect herself, her soul had finally escaped and, in her panic, entered a skeleton, where she slept for nearly a hundred years.

To this day, she couldn't understand why that "major accident" had occurred.

"Speaking of which, who is so immoral as to trap all the spirits on this mountain here? Don't they even bother to guide them to the afterlife?"

Ji Shuangyue felt that the silence was more deafening than any roar, because the immoral person responsible was none other than herself. She cultivated the Path of Ruthlessness, where emotions never guided her actions; only the resolution of the problem mattered.

As Old Bai put it, she was heartless, seemingly compassionate yet utterly devoid of warmth, with no emotion lingering on her.

Take the spirits of this entire mountain, for instance. In her previous mindset, Ji Shuangyue would have simply trapped them here, believing that would solve the matter. She would never have considered performing a proper mass for the dead. She cultivated sword and talismans, not the Path of Compassion; such matters should be left to the cultivators of the Cinian Nunnery.

At the time, she hadn't felt she'd done anything wrong. The problem was solved, the spirits no longer troubled the living, and what happened to them trapped here was none of her concern. But now, Ji Shuangyue realized how cruel her actions had been. A century of imprisonment, like a caged beast—that taste... she now understood.

A heavy feeling settled in her chest. What was this feeling? Sadness?

"Hey, what are you thinking about? Want to rest here today? I can't get in, you know!"

The female ghost circled Ji Shuangyue, shaking her head repeatedly and saying, "Don't even think about it."

Ji Shuangyue stepped back, her face etched with worry as she gazed at the tattered yellow talismans. "I don't want to come in for shelter," she said. "I can feel these talismans are about to fail."

Ghosts, too, require offerings. The spirits sealed in this place by Ji Shuangyue for over a century had become like hungry ghosts. If released, they would likely devour her Demon Body in an instant.

Ji Shuangyue had been drawn here by this power. With her depleted spiritual energy and weakened spiritual sense, she had initially mistaken it for the aura of a rare treasure. Only now did she realize it was the spiritual energy she had once imbued in these yellow talismans that had called to her.

Looking at the yellow talismans with a troubled expression, she inwardly mused: Oh, talismans... Your master is no longer the Ji Shuangyue of old. Forget suppressing ghosts, I can barely walk out of this mountain now.

The female ghost shivered, her voice trembling with panic. "They're about to fail?! Then what are you still doing here? Run!"

The word "run" was not in Ji Shuangyue's vocabulary. Hearing the suggestion filled her with instinctive shame. But as the old saying goes, "A wise woman knows when to bend."

Run!

Ji Shuangyue's physical body was destroyed by the Heavenly Thunder. Her life-bound magical artifact, the Qi Tian Sword, along with other renowned magical artifacts of the Cultivation World, were all shattered to smithereens. Only a wisp of her soul managed to escape, defying the heavens.

This was likely the most formidable Heavenly Tribulation in centuries. Having deceived the Heavenly Dao since the beginning of her cultivation, she accepted this thunderous punishment.

Now she was an anomaly living in defiance of the Heavenly Dao, a dead person in its eyes—an anomaly it sought to eradicate. If she hadn't burrowed into the skeleton to forge a Demon Body and used her remaining cultivation to seal her soul's aura, she would have been struck down by Heavenly Thunder the moment she stepped out of the Ancient Tomb.

Ji Shuangyue and the female ghost fled the Mourning Hall on foot. The mountain path was treacherous, and she was still unfamiliar with this new body. Predictably, she stumbled and fell, her face slamming onto a sharp rock. A patch of skin beneath her eye was torn open, revealing gleaming white bone.

"Ouch! My face!"

Ji Shuangyue clutched her injured face. Though she had endured countless agonies in her past life, this new body made her unable to bear the pain. She felt a surge of helplessness, wanting to weep.

Seeing Ji Shuangyue still whimpering, the female ghost urged, "Run! It's not the first time this has happened. It'll grow back in a bit!"

Ji Shuangyue thought about it and agreed. The last time half her face was mangled and a woodcutter saw her, he was lucky not to have a heart attack. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she stood up and continued fleeing the Mourning Hall, praying her talismans would hold out.

Huanglong Mountain was treacherous and shrouded in mist, making it easy to get lost. After emerging from the Ancient Tomb three days ago, the two of them—a demon and a ghost—still hadn't found their way out.

The towering fir trees all looked the same. Even after marking their path, they kept circling back to the same spot, which was deeply peculiar. Ji Shuangyue suspected a disruption in the magnetic field. After running for some time with the female ghost, she had no idea where they were. She was simply too exhausted to run any further.

By now, the flesh on Ji Shuangyue's face had fully regenerated, restoring her bewitching beauty. But she was panting heavily, suddenly envying her companion, who, being a ghost, felt neither fatigue nor breathlessness.

Ji Shuangyue's soul had burrowed into a skeleton within the Ancient Tomb, using the essence of the sun and moon, along with the ghost qi from her companion, to cultivate the bones into a demonic form. The ghost's name was Fan Li. All she remembered was that she had once been a cultivator, but she had forgotten why she entered the Ancient Tomb or why she had died there.

Having been tainted by the malevolent energy of the Ancient Tomb and trapped by its formations, her soul was unable to enter the cycle of reincarnation. In a daze, she became a ghost cultivator. However, due to the tomb's limited conditions, her cultivation remained low, making it difficult for her to manifest a physical form.

As for Ji Shuangyue, she too struggled to define her identity. She had cultivated her bone body into a demon, then borrowed Fan Li's ghost energy to develop some cultivation. Being both a demon cultivator and a ghost cultivator, even someone as knowledgeable as her would be confused.

Only after they had fled did Fan Li realize, "Oh no, it seems we're the only two living people left in these mountains... Pah, pah, pah! Since we're the only ones with any cultivation, won't those ghosts come straight for us?"

Of course, there were other minor spirits and monsters in the mountains, but Fan Li could sense a lingering, fierce sword energy that deterred even those with some cultivation. Perhaps only their level of cultivation would appeal to the taste of those restless spirits.

If that's the case, after all their desperate running, haven't they just moved the grave?

Setting aside the matter of cultivation, what Ji Shuangyue had claimed as her own was no ordinary skeleton. In the Cultivation World, it was a bone of charm, emitting a peculiar fragrance—a perfect furnace cauldron. Not only was it alluring, but it also served as a beacon for evil spirits.

Ji Shuangyue's heart sank. Could it be that I can escape the Heavenly Dao, but not the ghosts I sealed myself?

Is this the karmic cycle my master once spoke of? The Great Dao cycles through, and the consequences of past actions must be borne even in a new body. Truly, the Heavenly Dao cycles through all, and Heaven spares no one.

In her panic, Ji Shuangyue quickly made a decision: "We must hide back in the Ancient Tomb. Its restrictions will keep the ghosts out."

That was the tomb of the last emperor of the Eight Desolations Country, protected not only by numerous traps but also by defensive formations from the Cultivation World. Logically, her soul shouldn't have been able to enter, yet somehow she had blundered in—a truly bizarre twist of fate.

"No way, we just got out and we have to go back already?"

If ghosts could weep, Fan Li would be in tears right now.

Just as Ji Shuangyue was about to try and persuade her, a cold, fetid wind swept through, carrying the stench of decay. A pair of withered, icy hands coiled around her neck, sending a chilling sensation up her spine. Her hair stood on end, and even Fan Li froze in shock.

A long, crimson tongue snaked out and brushed against Ji Shuangyue's cheek, its tip curling to leave a sticky trail of blood.

Ji Shuangyue's pupils constricted as she stared in terror at the long, red tongue.

Through the damp, tangled hair obscuring her face, a dry, rasping female voice hissed: "You smell so sweet... I wonder what you taste like?"