Ji Ling pressed his fingers to the coffin: “Liu Renjing had Daoist priests of considerable cultivation by his side. This coffin contains a fingernail-sized piece of Fusang wood. I can resonate with the Fusang wood and reconstruct the scene from back then.”
He closed his eyes slightly as crimson-gold light surged from his fingertips. The flames converged and solidified, projecting the long-ago scene within the tomb chamber.
Forty-nine days after Liu Renjing’s death—the Day of the Returning Soul.
According to folk belief, a dead person’s soul lingered near the body, awaiting the underworld’s escort.
On that day, a remnant soul drifted out from the coffin. With a half-grown beard and dark circles under his eyes, the emperor’s body had been hollowed out by wine, lust, and wealth; even his soul was gaunt and withered.
A dozen lantern-bearing maids stood with heads bowed on both sides, their faces indistinct. Liu Renjing glanced at them and looked away.
He was used to such scenes. The palace always kept beautiful women—not just to satisfy his urges and attend to his daily needs, but also to serve as ornaments and utensils. For instance, the famous “beauty spittoon” in the history books: using beautiful women as spittoons. Such ordinary servitude was beneath his notice.
Dazedly, he floated out of the coffin and sat on its lid, then extended a foot: “Put Zhen’s socks on.”
The foot had been trapped in leather boots for years; one could almost see the grime in the toenails.
The lantern maid set down her lantern, knelt beside the coffin, and reached out.
Liu Renjing waited a long time. Nothing happened. He wiggled his toes: “The socks?”
The kneeling maid slowly raised her head.
She was no bright-eyed beauty, but a vengeful ghost with bulging eyes, swollen purple skin, and black-green suppurating sores!
And behind her, countless lantern maids turned their heads, all with pale, swollen, ghastly ghost faces.
These maids, forced into burial sacrifice, had all become vengeful ghosts!
Liu Renjing froze for a moment, then flew into a rage: “What are you staring at Zhen for?”
Even now, he didn’t believe that these lowly women, whose lives he could end with a casual word, could do anything to an emperor as exalted as himself.
The maids converged in layers, surrounding the coffin, blood-red eyes fixed on the newborn soul, extending black, pointed nails.
Liu Renjing retreated stiffly, bluffing: “Zhen is the Son of Heaven, mandated by Heaven! Zhen’s life is a hundred times more precious than yours! What is the meaning of this? Are you rebelling against Heaven?”
The female ghosts showed him with their actions exactly what they wanted.
Wailing shrilly, the wronged ghosts pounced, enveloping Liu Renjing. They raked his soul with their sharp nails, tearing him apart strip by strip, as easily as shredding paper.
Amid Liu Renjing’s screams, the scene outlined in dark-gold flame gradually faded.
Ji Ling waved his hand, drawing the flames back into the guqin, then turned to the Goddess: “Ladies, at the time, you were still vengeful ghosts with no memories of that period. Liu Renjing has been utterly destroyed, body and soul.”
The Goddess fell silent. She sat down slowly, resuming her dignified, elegant appearance, and murmured: “I remember now.”
“We did kill him. We dragged his remains out of the coffin, wrecked his tomb chamber, and gave away all his grave goods.”
Ji Ling sighed: “You gave away the grave goods. I imagine that’s the origin of the Goddess legend.”
The legend of Goddess Peak came from an age of war and famine. Legend said that when desperate people passed by Goddess Peak, a Goddess whose face couldn’t be seen would give away her own rings and jewelry. But this so-called Goddess was the tomb’s vengeful ghosts, and the hairpins they gave were Liu Renjing’s grave goods.
Gradually, the ghosts helped more and more people, and the locals built a temple here on their own, with thriving incense. As worshippers multiplied, faith gathered. Those hideous ghosts gradually transformed into the kind, gentle Lady Goddess in the people’s hearts. And so the vengeful ghosts became deities, serving as wild gods on this mountain.
Everyone sighed at the tale.
Liu Renjing, an emperor in life, had spent enormous manpower to build this grand tomb. Gold-painted, silver-engraved coffins, brightly painted vermilion walls, hundreds of lives buried with him—all for the wish of ascending to heaven after death. In the end, he died beneath the claws of a hundred ghosts, his soul scattered. And those poor maids, so miserable in life, became by a twist of fate the deity Liu Renjing had spent his whole life failing to become.
The lantern maidens looked at one another, none expecting such an ending.
So the brutal tyrant they’d hated for hundreds upon hundreds of years had died long ago.
The Goddess paused a moment, then lifted her skirt and bowed to Wang Chengxuan: “I frightened you, Little Friend. That was my fault. From now on, should you have any request within my power, the Goddess Temple shall grant it.”
Wang Chengxuan repeatedly said he didn’t dare.
With the misunderstanding resolved, his long-weak knees finally stiffened, and he straightened up against the wall.
The Goddess turned to Ji Ling: “Thank you for telling us the truth. May I ask your name?”
Anyone who could so easily repel a goddess with a century of cultivation was clearly no ordinary mortal, but a figure of importance.
Ji Ling didn’t hide it. He nodded slightly: “My surname is Ji, my given name Ling.”
Behind him came the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.
Wang Chengxuan’s freshly stiffened knees went weak again, and he thudded to the floor.
If he’d previously harbored the delusion that Ji Ling might be some successor or disciple, now he could be nearly certain: this noble young man before him was the company’s fringe R card, the bottom of the popularity charts, the card-pool tumor that made every player weep and wail—Ji Ling!
Wang Chengxuan wanted to cry but had no tears. He’d just wanted to hire a couple of pretty young men to drink with, chatting from romance to philosophy. How had he ended up renting an ancestor as a drinking companion?!
What kind of luck was this!
On the other side, the Goddess was briefly stunned, then bowed to Ji Ling: “So it is the Immortal Lord.”
Most deities had only localized influence; the Goddess, for instance, was known only in Jingnan City. Figures like Ji Ling, who were named in the myths themselves, were truly extraordinary.
She felt a lingering dread: “I had heard you could wield True Solar Fire, but I never imagined it was this powerful. Had you not said anything, I might have thought Lord Fusang himself had come.”
Ji Ling shook his head: “I wouldn’t dare compare myself to Lord Fusang.”
After hearing Ji Ling’s name, the Goddess hesitated, repeatedly seeming about to speak. Ji Ling asked: “Milady, is there something you wish to say?”
The Goddess said: “Indeed, I have an impertinent request.”
With a sweep of her wide sleeve, the coffin in the center of the chamber lifted an inch off the ground, then slid three meters to the right.
Where the coffin had been, there was now a bottomless pit.
Ji Ling’s brow furrowed instantly. That vague sense of foreboding from before returned. Staring at the pit, he couldn’t help but think of the man in the water mirror—that noble figure bound by thorns, suspended over a dark pool, imprisoned beneath the earth.
The Goddess said: “Over a hundred years ago, a band of tomb robbers came here and blasted open the floor with cannons. I thought, it’s Liu Renjing’s tomb anyway—let them blast it. So I didn’t bother with them. Who knew their cannon fire would tear open a deep pit?”
“The whole gang went down, and not one came back up. My sisters and I went down to investigate and found them dead in the cave. And from deep within the cave emanated a terrifying aura. We were all afraid, so we didn’t go any further.”
These girls were deities formed from vengeful ghosts. If something frightened them, whatever lay underground was surely horrifying beyond measure.
Ji Ling asked: “You want me to go down and take a look?”
The Goddess said: “You are one of the highest-cultivated deities in the world. Aside from the Three Primordial Venerables, none can surpass you. What we sisters flee from must be easy for you.”
Ji Ling smiled bitterly, thinking: That’s overestimating me.
He had once been truly strong, but a deity’s power depended not only on cultivation but also on faith. Times had changed; seas had turned to mulberry fields. Few mortals knew Ji Ling’s name anymore, and his strength had diminished greatly.
After a moment’s thought, Ji Ling said: “Tell you what—wait for me to call someone.”
He raised a hand slightly. Dew on the plants at the tomb entrance condensed, rose as mist, and floated before him, forming a water mirror.
Ji Ling: “Bai Ze, are you there? Asleep?”
No answer.
Ji Ling: “Bai Ze, are you there? Asleep?”
A furious face appeared in the water mirror.
The refined, elegant man appeared with mussed hair and heavy dark circles betraying his lack of sleep. He put on his glasses and glared at Ji Ling: “It’s the middle of the night. What do you want?”
Ji Ling: “Come down a tomb with me.”
Bai Ze: “?”
“You wake me in the middle of the night to rob someone’s ancestral grave?”
Ji Ling was speechless: “No.”
He quickly explained the situation. Mentioning the man whose face was indistinct yet dark and dreadful, he said slowly: “Jingnan is a metropolis of over ten million people. With an unknown evil lurking beneath such a city, we’d best get to the bottom of it.”
This was indeed one of a deity’s duties.
Bai Ze was silent a moment. “Coming.”
Twenty minutes later, a battered shared bicycle appeared on the temple’s tourist path.
Bai Ze rode all the way to the tomb entrance. Spotting Wang Chengxuan, he nodded politely: “Boss Wang, a pleasure.”
His bearing was refined and scholarly; were it not for the orange-yellow bike beneath him, one might take him for an academic attending a conference.
Wang Chengxuan stared at him, dumbfounded: “Professor Bai?”
Bai Ze, under the alias Bai Huan, was a professor of archaeology at Jingnan University, specializing in Shang and Zhou archaeology. When making the game, Wang Chengxuan had once hired Bai Ze as a short-term consultant.
Bai Ze squeezed the brakes; the shared bike squeaked to a stop. He got off, shook hands with Wang Chengxuan, and said courteously: “My main career is being a professor at Jingnan University; being your consultant is a side job; and being a divine beast is my lifelong vocation. No need to panic, Boss Wang.”
Wang Chengxuan: “…”
How could he not panic!
He’d hired a little idol to drink with him—the little idol was an ancient immortal deity. He’d hired a consultant—the consultant was also an ancient immortal deity. What kind of goddamn shit luck was this?!
Wang Chengxuan racked his brain, carefully recalling whether he’d offended either great god and how to make amends.
In the meantime, Bai Ze had already walked into the tomb chamber.
He was an archaeologist, completely at home in imperial tombs. Glancing at the murals, he muttered from professional habit:
“Liu Renjing’s tomb—corner pillars, bracket arches, straight-lattice windows, typical Southern Dynasties style. These murals are the ones I made rubbings of for the museum back in the day. Dyes ground from cinnabar and lapis lazuli are extremely stable; they haven’t oxidized or faded in a thousand years…”
“Wait—why is there an extra hole here?”
Bai Ze stopped, fixed his gaze on the pit, and slowly frowned.
Ji Ling said: “There’s an ominous presence in the pit. Very strong.”
Bai Ze stared into the pit, brows knit: “So deep, so heavy, with such murderous aura—it’s no ordinary being. It reminds me of someone best left unmentioned.”
Ji Ling looked at him questioningly. He’d been in seclusion for ages and indeed wasn’t as familiar with antiquity as Bai Ze.
“No. Impossible.” Before Ji Ling could respond, Bai Ze shook his head, denying his own thought: “It can’t be him. Thousands of years ago, Lord Fusang slew him and issued a divine decree proclaiming it to the world. He’s long since dead, body and dao dissolved. It can’t be false.”
Ji Ling asked: “Who?”
Bai Ze said in a low voice: “Abyss Lord Changming.”
