TFOD Chapter 10

On the other side, Lan Sizhui and the others, having found nothing at the burial mounds, had already moved to the Heavenly Maiden Shrine to look for clues.

In the Dafan Mountain, besides the ancestral graves of the Fo Jiao Town residents, there was also a Heavenly Maiden Shrine. The object of worship inside was neither Buddha nor Guanyin, but a “Dancing Heavenly Maiden.”

Several hundred years ago, a hunter from Fo Jiao Town entered the deep mountains and discovered a strange stone in a grotto. It was nearly ten feet tall, naturally formed, and remarkably similar to a human figure, with all limbs and in a dancing posture. Even more wondrously, the facial features on the stone figure’s head were vaguely discernible, depicting a smiling woman.

The residents of Fo Jiao Town were greatly amazed, believing it to be a divine stone that had absorbed the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. They spontaneously created many legends. One claimed that an immortal lord was in secret love with the Nine Heavens Mysterious Maiden and carved a stone statue in her likeness to ease his longing. When the Mysterious Maiden discovered it, she was enraged, and the unfinished statue was abandoned. Another said that the Jade Emperor had a beloved daughter who died young, and the Emperor’s longing for his daughter condensed into this statue. The stories were diverse and astonishing. These legends, passed down by word of mouth, had convinced even the locals themselves. Thus, someone transformed the grotto into a shrine, the stone platform into a divine seat, and venerated the statue as the “Dancing Heavenly Maiden,” offering incense and worship year-round.

The interior of the grotto was spacious, like a two-courtyard temple, with the Heavenly Maiden statue standing in the center. At first glance, it indeed looked remarkably like a person, even with a graceful waistline. Looking closer, it appeared rough, but that a naturally formed object could resemble a person to such an extent was enough to amaze.

Lan Jingyi held the wind compass high and low, but the needle remained unmoved. On the offering table were messy, burnt-out candles and a thick layer of incense ash. The fruit plates emitted a sweet, rotten smell. The people of the Gusu Lan Sect all had a bit of a habit for cleanliness; he fanned the air in front of his nose and said, “I heard the locals say that wishes made at this Heavenly Maiden Shrine were very effective, how did it become so dilapidated? Couldn’t they get some people to clean it up?”

Lan Sizhui said, “There have been seven people who have lost their souls consecutively, and it’s rumored that it’s because thunder struck a fierce entity out of the Fo Jiao Town ancestral graves. Who would dare come up the mountain now? With the incense gone, naturally no one will clean it.”

A disdainful voice echoed from outside the grotto, “A piece of broken stone, after being declared a god by some unknown people, dares to receive people’s incense and worship!”

Jin Ling entered with his hands behind his back. The silencing spell’s duration was never long; his mouth was already functional again. However, the moment it opened, no good words came out. He glanced at the Heavenly Maiden statue and snorted, “These villagers, instead of striving for improvement when they face trouble, they burn incense, worship Buddha, and seek the help of gods and ghosts all day long. There are billions of people in the world; the gods and Buddhas can hardly take care of themselves, how could they possibly manage them? Besides, it’s just a nameless, wild god. If it’s so effective, then I’ll make a wish now; I want the thing eating souls in this Dafan Mountain to appear before me right now, can it do it?”

A group of cultivators from small families followed him in, immediately echoing his words with laughter. The originally quiet shrine suddenly became noisy and cramped with the influx of people. Lan Sizhui secretly shook his head, turning to casually glance around. He caught sight of the Heavenly Maiden’s face. The vaguely discernible features seemed to form a compassionate smile.

However, he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity with that smile, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

Where exactly had he seen it?

Lan Sizhui felt that this must be very important, and he subconsciously approached the altar, wanting to take a closer look at the Heavenly Maiden’s face. Just then, someone bumped into him.

A cultivator who had been standing behind him suddenly fell down silently. Everyone was shocked and immediately became wary. Jin Ling asked vigilantly, “What happened to him?”

Lan Sizhui, holding his sword, leaned over to check. The cultivator’s breathing was fine; it was as if he had suddenly fallen asleep, but no matter how much he patted or called out to him, he wouldn’t wake up. He stood up and said, “He seems to be…”

Before he could finish, the originally dim grotto suddenly lit up, the entire space filled with red light, as if a waterfall of blood was pouring down the walls. The candles on the offering table and in the corners of the grotto all began to burn spontaneously.

With several ‘zheng’ sounds, the people in the grotto drew their swords or held up talismans. Just then, a figure suddenly burst into the shrine, holding a gourd of medicinal wine. He splashed the wine all over the Heavenly Maiden statue, and the grotto was immediately filled with a strong, choking smell of alcohol. He then used a talisman to draw a line in the air and tossed it onto the statue. Instantly, a raging fire erupted on the altar, illuminating the grotto as if it were broad daylight.

Wei Wuxian had used up everything he had found in the Qiankun pouch, threw away the pouch, and shouted, “Everyone get out! Be careful, the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden is inside!”

Someone yelled, “The Heavenly Maiden’s pose has changed!”

Just now, the statue’s arms were clearly raised, one arm pointed directly to the sky, one foot lifted, displaying a graceful posture. But now, amidst the crimson-yellow flames, it had lowered its arms and feet. It was absolutely true, it wasn’t an illusion!

The next moment, the statue raised a foot again—stepping out of the flames!

Wei Wuxian shouted, “Run, run, run! Don’t cut it! It’s useless!”

Most of the cultivators ignored him; they had finally found the soul-eating monster they had been searching for, why would they let it go! However, so many swords, spears, talismans, and various magic weapons were used, but they couldn’t stop the statue by even a single step. It was almost ten feet tall, and when it moved, it was like a giant, exuding immense pressure. It lifted two cultivators in front of its face, and its stone mouth seemed to open slightly. The swords in the two cultivators’ hands fell to the ground with a ‘clang’. Their heads drooped, indicating that their souls had also been sucked away.

With all attacks completely ineffective, the others finally listened to Wei Wuxian, swarming out and scattering in all directions. With so many people in chaos, Wei Wuxian became more and more frantic to find Jin Ling, riding his donkey, running around, searching and entered a bamboo forest. Turning around, he bumped into the Lan Sect juniors who were catching up. Wei Wuxian called out to them, “Kids!”

Lan Jingyi said, “Who are your kids! Do you even know who we are? Did you think that just by washing your face, you could act like an elder?!”

Wei Wuxian said, “Alright, alright. Brothers. Send a signal to call your… that… Hanguang-Jun!”

The juniors nodded repeatedly, turning to leave. After a moment, Lan Sizhui said, “The signal fireworks… they were all used up that night at the Mo Family Manor.”

Wei Wuxian was shocked: “You didn’t replenish them later?!”

This signal firework was not used once in eight hundred years. Lan Sizhui said shamefully, “We forgot.”

Wei Wuxian threatened, “You can forget that too?! If Hanguang-Jun finds out, you’ll be in trouble!”

Lan Jingyi’s face turned ashen: “It’s over, we’re going to be punished to death by Hanguang-Jun this time…”

Wei Wuxian: “Punishment. You deserve it! If you aren’t punished, you won’t remember.”

Lan Sizhui: “Young Master Mo, Young Master Mo! How did you know that what was sucking souls wasn’t a soul-eating entity or a soul-eating beast, but that Heavenly Maiden statue?”

Wei Wuxian searched for Jin Ling’s figure as he ran, “How did I know? I saw it.”

Lan Jingyi also caught up, flanking him left and right as they ran: “Saw what? We saw a lot too.”

“Saw it, and then what? What’s near the graves?”

“What would there be? Dead souls.”

“Right, dead souls. So it’s definitely not a soul-eating beast or a soul-eating entity. It’s obvious, if it were either of those two, with so many dead souls floating around there, wouldn’t it eat them? It wouldn’t not eat them.”

This time, more than one person asked: “Why?”

“I tell you Gusu Lan Sect…” Wei Wuxian really couldn’t hold back: “Instead of teaching so much tedious and long-winded nonsense about Immortal Sect etiquette and the family history of cultivation clans that you have to memorize, why not teach something more practical? What’s so hard to understand about this. Dead souls are much easier to absorb than living souls. A living person’s physical body is a barrier. To eat a living soul, you have to break through that barrier. It’s like…” He glanced at the panting, running, eye-rolling donkey, “It’s like having an apple in front of you and another apple in a locked box, which would you choose to eat? Of course, the one in front of you. This thing only eats living souls, and it has a way to eat them. It’s very picky, and it’s very powerful.”

Lan Jingyi was shocked: “So that’s how it is? It sounds very logical! Wait, so you’re really not crazy!”

Lan Sizhui explained as he ran, “We all thought that the soul loss was caused by the landslide and the coffin being struck by lightning. Naturally, we thought it was a soul-eating entity.”

Wei Wuxian said, “Wrong.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The order is wrong, the cause and effect are wrong. I ask you, between the landslide and the soul-eating event, which came first, which is the cause and which is the effect?”

Lan Sizhui answered without hesitation: “The landslide came first, the soul-eating came after. The former is the cause, the latter is the effect.”

Wei Wuxian said: “Completely wrong. It was the soul-eating that came first, the landslide came after. Soul-eating is the cause, the landslide is the effect! The night of the landslide, there was a sudden downpour and a lightning strike, which hit a coffin, remember that. The first person to lose their soul, that lazy man was trapped in the mountain overnight, and within a few days, he got married.”

Lan Jingyi said: “What’s wrong with that?”

Wei Wuxian said, “Everything is wrong! A lazy, good-for-nothing bum, where did he get the money to get married and throw such a grand celebration?”

The young men were speechless. It was no wonder, the Gusu Lan Sect was originally a family that did not need to consider the issue of wealth. Wei Wuxian continued, “Have you seen all the dead souls drifting around Dafan Mountain? There was an old man who was killed by a blow to the head, and his shroud was very well made, and the materials were of a high quality. Wearing such a gorgeous shroud, his coffin could not have been empty; there would definitely have been some burial objects placed inside. The coffin that was split open by a lightning strike was most likely his, and the people who collected the remains later did not discover any burial items, they must have all been taken by that lazy man. Only then can his sudden wealth be explained. That lazy man suddenly became prosperous and got married the night after the landslide; something unusual must have happened that night. That night, it was raining heavily, and he was sheltering from the rain in the mountains. What place on Dafan Mountain could shelter from the rain? The Heavenly Maiden Shrine. And if a common person goes to a shrine, there’s one thing they’re bound to do.”

Lan Sizhui said, “Make a wish?”

“Correct. For example, wishing him to have good luck, get rich, and have money to get married, something like that. The Heavenly Maiden granted his wish, brought down a lightning strike, and split open the grave, letting him see the treasures inside the coffin. And as his wish was fulfilled, as a price, the Heavenly Maiden descended on his wedding night and sucked away his soul!”

Lan Jingyi: “You guessed that, right?”

Wei Wuxian: “I guessed it. But if you guess based on this, everything can be explained.”

Lan Sizhui: “How do you explain the case of Miss A-Yan?”

Wei Wuxian: “Good question. You should have asked this before going up the mountain. A-Yan was just engaged during that period of time. For all newly engaged girls, they will all have the same wish.”

Lan Jingyi was confused: “What wish?”

Wei Wuxian said: “It’s nothing more than, ‘I hope my husband will love and cherish me in this lifetime, and only love me alone’, or something like that.”

The young men were confused: “Can such a wish really be fulfilled…”

Wei Wuxian spread out his hands: “It’s simple. As long as her husband’s ‘lifetime’ ends immediately, won’t it mean that he ‘only loved one person in his life’?”

Lan Jingyi suddenly understood, and exclaimed excitedly, “Oh, oh! So, so, so, after Miss A-Yan was engaged, her husband was killed by jackals in the mountains the next day, because it’s very likely that A-Yan went to the Heavenly Maiden Shrine to make a wish the day before!”

Wei Wuxian seized the opportunity, “Whether it was jackals or something else that killed him, it’s hard to say. There’s another special thing about A-Yan: why is her soul the only one among all that has returned? What’s different about her compared to others? The different thing is that she had a relative who lost their soul. Or to put it another way, a relative replaced her! Zheng the blacksmith is A-Yan’s father, a father who loved his daughter. Seeing that his daughter had lost her soul, with no cure or any other solution, what could he do?”

This time, Lan Sizhui caught on quickly, “—He could only place his last hope on the heavens. So, he also went to the Heavenly Maiden Shrine and made a wish, wishing that ‘my daughter A-Yan’s soul can be found and returned’!”

Wei Wuxian praised, “That’s why A-Yan’s soul was the only one that returned. And it’s also the reason why the third soul loss victim, Zheng the blacksmith, lost his soul. And although A-Yan’s soul was spat out, it was inevitably damaged. After her soul returned, she began to uncontrollably imitate the dancing and even the smile of the Heavenly Maiden statue.”

The commonality among these few people who lost their souls was that they had likely made a wish before the Heavenly Maiden statue. The price for their wish coming true was their soul.

This Heavenly Maiden statue was originally just an ordinary stone, that happened to look like a person. It received worship for hundreds of years for no particular reason, and that’s how it gained magical powers. However, it was greedy and unfulfilled. It actually wanted to speed up the enhancement of its power through the method of absorbing souls. The souls that it absorbed through the exchange of wishes, were equal to souls voluntarily offered by those who made the wishes. It was a fair exchange, a situation where people got what they asked for. It seemed reasonable and just, which is why the wind compass needle wouldn’t move. The summoning flag couldn’t summon it, and swords and talismans were all ineffective. It was because the thing in Dafan Mountain was not a demon or ghost at all, it was a god! It was a wild god that was cultivated by hundreds of years of incense and worship. Using tools to deal with evil spirits to deal with it was equivalent to fighting fire with fire!

Lan Jingyi shouted, “Wait! But just now in the shrine, there was someone whose soul was also sucked away, and we didn’t hear him make a wish!”

Wei Wuxian’s heart jumped, and he stopped abruptly: “In the shrine, someone had their soul sucked away? Tell me the situation from just now, word for word.”

Lan Sizhui then clearly and quickly recounted the events. When he heard Jin Ling’s sentence, “If it’s so effective, then I’ll make a wish now; I want the thing eating souls in this Dafan Mountain to appear before me right now, can it do it?” Wei Wuxian said, “Isn’t that making a wish? That’s making a wish!”

The others echoed Jin Ling, and it was assumed that they all made the same wish. And the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden was right in front of them at the time, so the wish was already fulfilled. Next, it would be time to collect the price!

Suddenly, the donkey stopped, and ran in the opposite direction. Wei Wuxian was caught off guard and thrown off again. He desperately grabbed the reins, and heard a “crunch, crunch,” “huru huru” chewing sound coming from the bushes in front. A tall, enormous figure was crouched among the bushes, its massive head moving back and forth against the abdomen of a person on the ground. Hearing the noise, it suddenly raised its head and met their gazes.

This soul-eating Heavenly Maiden’s features were originally blurry, with just a general outline of eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. But after sucking the souls of several cultivators in one go, it had developed clear facial features. It was a woman with a smiling face, with lots of fresh blood dripping from the corners of her mouth, carrying a torn arm in its mouth, chewing it as it ate.

Everyone immediately followed the donkey, turning to flee.

Lan Sizhui broke down, “This isn’t right! The Yi Ling Patriarch said that higher-level soul eaters eat souls, and lower-level ones eat flesh!”

Wei Wuxian said helplessly, “Why are you believing what he said? He himself does everything terribly! No rule is unchanging; just think of it like an infant. When they don’t have teeth, they can only drink gruel and broth. Once they grow up, they would naturally want to use their teeth to eat meat. Her power has increased greatly now; she naturally wants to have a taste!”

The soul-eating Heavenly Maiden stood up from the ground. She was tall and big, moving her hands and feet wildly. She seemed very excited and joyful. Suddenly, an arrow came whistling, hitting her forehead. The arrowhead pierced through her skull.

Hearing the sound of the bowstring, Wei Wuxian looked around and saw Jin Ling standing on a high slope not far away. He had already nocked the second arrow, pulled the string taut, and released another skull-piercing shot. The force was so strong that the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden staggered back a few steps.

Lan Sizhui shouted, “Young Master Jin! Release the signal on your body!”

Jin Ling turned a deaf ear to him, determined to take down the monster. With a stern face, he nocked three arrows at once. After being hit by two arrows head-on, the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden was still not angry. She still had a smile on her face, and she lunged toward Jin Ling. Although she was walking and dancing at the same time, her speed was terrifying. She instantly closed half the distance. A few cultivators flashed out from the side, entangled with her, and slowed her down. Jin Ling’s arrows were all hits, and he kept shooting. He seemed determined to first shoot all of his arrows, then engage in close-quarters combat with the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden. His hand was quite steady, and his shots were accurate, but unfortunately, all the immortal sect magical weapons were useless against her!

Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji were waiting for news in Fo Jiao Town. Who knew when they would notice the abnormality and catch up. Fire needs water to extinguish it, and immortal sect magical weapons wouldn’t work, so he would use demonic tricks!

Wei Wuxian pulled out the sword from Lan Sizhui’s waist, cut off a section of thin bamboo, and skillfully crafted a flute. He put it to his lips, took a deep breath. The sharp sound of the flute was like a resonating arrow, piercing the night sky, and shooting up into the clouds.

He should not have done this unless absolutely necessary. But as things were now, he didn’t care what he summoned as long as the killing intent was strong enough and fierce enough to tear this soul-eating Heavenly Maiden to pieces!

Lan Sizhui was completely stunned, while Lan Jingyi covered his ears and said, “It’s already this time, why are you still playing the flute?! It’s horribly out of tune!”

Three or four of the cultivators mixing it up with the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden had their souls sucked away. Jin Ling pulled out his sword, less than two zhang away from the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden. His heart was pounding wildly, and his blood was boiling in his brain, “If I can’t cut off her head with this sword, then I’ll die here–so be it!”

Just then, in the mountain forests of Dafan Mountain, a clanging sound began to rise.

Clang, clang, clang, clang. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes stopping, sometimes loud. It echoed in the quiet mountain forest. It sounded like chains clashing and metal dragging on the ground. It was getting closer and louder.

For some unknown reason, the sound gave people an extremely uneasy sense of threat. Even the soul-eating Heavenly Maiden stopped dancing, raised her arms, and stared blankly at the dark depths from where the sound came.

Wei Wuxian put away his flute and stared intently at the source.

Although the ominous premonition in his heart was growing stronger and stronger, since it was willing to answer his call, then at least it was something that would listen to him.

The sound came to an abrupt stop, and a figure emerged from the darkness.

After seeing the figure, after seeing the face, the faces of several cultivators twisted.

Even when facing a Heavenly Maiden statue that could suck their souls away at any time, this group of people did not retreat, nor did they show fear. However, the voices they cried out now were full of unconcealed terror.

“…’Ghost General,’ it’s ‘Ghost General,’ it’s Wen Ning!”

The title “Ghost General”, like the Yi Ling Patriarch, was infamous and known to all. Usually, the two appeared together.

The word only represented one individual. It was Wen Ning, the fierce corpse who had been the number one henchman under the Yi Ling Patriarch Wei Ying, fanning the flames, stirring up trouble, helping evildoers, turning the world upside down, and should have long been reduced to ashes!