Chapter 51: The Entrance to the Blood Coffin (Part One)

Moonlight spilled across the earth.

I stood beside Xiyue, able to sense the cool, tranquil aura emanating from her. The earlier battle had clearly drained her, and now, even as she walked, ribbons of moonlight coiled around her like silken bands.

“How reckless.”

Master Wuwang snorted coldly, raising his hand and striking down at Zhao Wen with his palm.

At this moment, Wuwang was no longer the same person he’d been yesterday. He had already suffered grave injuries the day before, and must have been drawn here by the earlier burst of Buddhist light—unaware that this would become his demise, transforming him into a vessel for the ancient corpse-burier.

A thunderous boom sounded as Zhao Wen staggered back several steps, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. The talismans that had spun ceaselessly around his body now scattered, falling to the ground as a heap of yellow fragments.

Just then, a sword light flashed past me, hurtling directly toward Wuwang’s head. He could barely resist its force, for it was Xiyue who had unleashed it. As the sword of Transformation swept forth, even the surrounding space seemed on the verge of transcendence. For a moment, I felt a devout radiance descend, enveloping Wuwang.

Sensing the overwhelming spiritual pressure of the sword, Wuwang instantly retreated, his form blurring as he rode the currents of dark energy and soared into the sky.

“Just you wait,” his chilling voice echoed through the void, sending a shiver down my spine. “Once I fully merge with this body and attain the form of a corpse-ghost, I’ll tear you all to pieces!”

“Withdraw.”

Xiyue stepped forward, and with a wave of her hand, the radiant sword was instantly drawn back into her body. Its brilliance faded, and Xiyue herself staggered.

I hurried to support her, asking softly, “Xiyue, are you all right?”

She shook her head gently. “The seal within my body keeps restraining my power. Each time I use my magic, I feel its limitations.”

After a deep, steadying breath, she gradually regained her composure.

“Xiaodong, let’s focus on finding the entrance for now.”

Zhao Wen also took a few deep breaths; that palm strike had injured him badly, but thankfully his internal organs were unharmed—he was merely exhausted.

Xiyue nodded in agreement.

As we made our way toward the dormitory building, Zhao Wen recounted the events of his past few years.

After seeing our class off, he had suffered an accident and ended up in the hospital. There, he had a long, dreamlike vision: he entered a cave and met an old man in white who taught him the arts of Yin and Yang, telling him that guarding the “Po” character was his true, lifelong mission. In that dream, Zhao Wen witnessed many hidden things, even encountering the current leader of the Evil Spirit Sect—a thousand-year-old spirit serpent in human guise, Li Yunsheng.

It was months before Zhao Wen awoke from the dream—a recovery that the doctors called miraculous. From then on, he became somewhat eccentric, and found he could see things invisible to others: wandering souls, monsters, demonic energy. Even more incredibly, following the dream’s guidance, he actually found the cave. Though the white-robed Daoist wasn’t there, Zhao Wen easily retrieved the broken “Po” character as if he’d done it before.

He spent a year studying the character and practicing the myriad magical arts he’d learned in his dream.

A year later, he returned to Chengdu and met Li Yunsheng, who was then gravely wounded and beset by minor monsters, on the verge of being slain and having his thousand-year essence taken. Zhao Wen, witnessing the injustice, intervened and saved him, even using a spiritual elixir from the cave to heal his wounds. Afterward, the man and the monster formed the Evil Spirit Sect together.

Li Yunsheng had sensed that a great ancient treasury would soon appear in Chengdu, and Zhao Wen, skilled in geomancy and divination, had calculated as much himself. But, as he and Li Yunsheng were treasure-hunting in the Yin Mountain range, they couldn’t return in time, leaving a few useless underlings behind to watch over the place and dig around.

“So, you’re saying there really is an ancient Buddhist relic beneath this dormitory?” I blurted out.

Li Yunsheng shook his head slowly. “No. I believe it’s the tomb of an ancient Buddha—one of extremely high status among the enlightened. My calculations are based on the balance of Yin and Yang, but Li Yunsheng’s method is an ancient secret called Fate Wheel Divination. He can deduce a person’s past and present lives. When I used my own method to divine this place, I found a Buddhist bead, but when I used his secret art to investigate it, I was nearly destroyed by the sheer majesty of the power protecting it.”

A chill ran through me. I remembered what Chen Chuyi had told me: those skilled in divination belong to the “five obstacles and three lacks”—specifically, the lack of fate. It doesn’t mean a short lifespan in the usual sense, but rather that using Yin-Yang divination consumes one’s life. And once you possess such an ability, you are compelled to use it, for it is your destiny.

Chen Chuyi once coughed up blood and lost three years of his life in a single divination. I hadn’t understood then, but later he explained why. He himself was one of those lacking fate, appearing old before his time as a result of constantly consuming his own life. Zhao Fifteen once said that Chen Chuyi could die at any moment, though they have ways to “borrow life”—really just tricks to cheat fate.

Now, hearing Zhao Wen admit to being almost destroyed by backlash during his calculations, I realized what he had tried to divine was something of utmost significance to heaven and earth, shielded by countless ancient spells. And considering it was a Buddhist bead, and what Zhao Wen had vaguely divined, it must be truly terrifying.

Staring at the girls’ dormitory shrouded in ghostly mist, I found myself truly believing Zhao Wen’s words. This must have been the tomb of a supremely exalted ancient Buddha!