Chapter 1001: Phoenix Carriage and Flower Sedan as Coffin

The Blood Sea, surging with giant waves!

The Blood Tai Sui rushing out from the six large vats in the underground palace was like opening an endless sea of blood, drowning the human world.

This underground palace, only a few dozen zhang square, encompassed heaven and earth, infinite and boundless.

Ku Geng, whose reality had been stolen and transformed into a paper doll, was already nearly insane.

The path he cultivated was the extremely niche and rare Smoke Cultivation of the myriad realms, considered a branch of Incense Cultivation; he consumed vapors and exhaled mists, dreamlike and illusory. Now, however, he spat out countless smoke vapors from his mouth, some concealing firelight, sparks igniting towering flames, others containing metal qi, falling with countless sword hilts amidst the smoke, hacking and killing.

Still others were like ancient cold darkness, freezing everything they touched.

Various Dao powers were hidden within, and as he spat out a mouthful of his life-bound smoke, they transformed into countless calamities and Dao wounds branded upon that paper doll.

Yet, a mere paper doll, a mere thin sheet of paper, caused countless flesh-and-blood bodies to fall, countless corpses, piling up like mountains, blood flowing into a sea...

That paper doll was not destroyed, but instead split into countless corpses, making this world increasingly real.

Daoist Daoist Tongshen's pupils constricted. With a wave of his hand, countless paper coins flew up and fell, burning in mid-air, thereby establishing a mysterious connection with those countless corpses.

In just an instant, Daoist Daoist Tongshen felt a wisp of his own reality stolen away by that mysterious connection.

"Enough! Ku Geng, haven't you realized yet? What you were struck by just now was an illusion; it is only now that your reality is truly being stolen!"

Daoist Daoist Tongshen dropped a copper coin into Ku Geng's hand. That boundless rage and ignorance-born resentment were 'bought away' by that copper coin, instantly clearing Ku Geng's mind.

Only then did he suddenly realize that his divine abilities and spells had already become brands upon those countless corpses.

Beside him, General Jiuyou looked as if he had been frightened silly, trembling uncontrollably, muttering: "No, these aren't real..."

Fan Cun looked at the figures before him, now transformed into countless people—tattered old men, infants ignorant of the world, children with hair in topknots, village matrons, and delicate women.

Every corpse falling from the paper doll now had a face, and the paper doll was densely covered in names and stories.

General Jiuyou and the grave robbers he brought were completely unable to move before this mountain of corpses and sea of blood!

And they, the Samsara travelers, seemed as if they would become part of the 'history' inscribed by those bones if any external force were applied.

Fan Cun muttered: "What segment of history is buried here, exactly?"

General Jiuyou didn't even have the strength to raise his hand, nearly kneeling on the ground, his eyes full of fear: "Ghost Grave, Ghost Grave... The ghosts within the grave, how can we face them?"

Daoist Daoist Tongshen answered blankly: "I know what secret histories are buried in the three great Ghost Graves!"

"Those are the three most painful and terrifying segments of history during the dynastic changes of this realm, representing the invasion and slaughter by foreign tribes—the various realities buried and hidden beneath the official history!"

"The three great Ghost Graves bury not only the small figures who left traces in the three official histories, but also three dynasties and the millions of nameless commoners behind them!"

"This thing cannot be killed!"

"The more you kill, the more real that segment of history becomes! Because the essence of that secret history is disaster and slaughter!"

Seeing those increasingly real bones, seeing the disasters becoming clearer in the sea of blood, even Daoist Daoist Tongshen, a notable figure in the demonic path, could not help but feel secretly terrified.

Their slaughter, their atrocities, were helping the secret history sealed in this grave become more real.

Moreover, with the degree of reality they possessed as Samsara travelers, once they were completely refined by the secret history in the grave, they might be able to directly bring this history back to the present!

Daoist Daoist Tongshen already knew why those dynasties had to build these Ghost Graves...

Out of the need for rule, they had to erase their atrocities and slaughter from history, but erased history is hidden history; once it becomes secret history, this history is alive, constantly changing.

They feared their atrocities being known, but also did not want the fruits of their atrocities to be extinguished.

So they set the results as 'official history' and buried the 'secret history' of their atrocities here.

Using official history to suppress secret history...

Thus came the three great Ghost Graves.

The owners of the Ghost Graves were all figures listed in official history, even key links in history.

Their corpses naturally carried the power of official history, but what was truly buried within were those countless bones that had no record in history, had once truly existed, but could no longer be proven!

Ku Geng had completely stopped, but he had already transformed into a paper doll, becoming a part of the secret history.

He raised his head, his stiff face looking like paper, looking at the crowd, his hoarse voice like tearing paper coming from his throat: "Why? Why don't you act?"

Endless corpses and countless paper dolls stood up bit by bit, walking toward them.

Ku Geng also stared at them from among them, muttering: "I... I have also become a part of this history. Hahaha, have my actions also become history? Do I live in the past? Do I exist? Or do I not exist?"

Cold sweat covered Fan Cun's back; the impression of Ku Geng in his memory was rapidly fading.

He could no longer remember his appearance, and even what he had done had become blurred.

Fan Cun even suspected that throughout the myriad realms and the land of Samsara, everything related to Ku Geng was disappearing!

As a Samsara traveler, all of Ku Geng's existence, reality, weight, the karma with many Samsara worlds, and even the wisp of connection to the Lord of Samsara, had likely become 'hidden,' displaced into this world, its reality thoroughly smelted.

"There is even the brand of the Lord of Samsara in this! Can this wisp of connection actually be refined too?"

"No, this world is also part of the land of Samsara; the connection to the Lord of Samsara was not refined, but transferred! Transferred into the connection between this world and the Lord of Samsara. Is this how the Lord of Samsara continuously invests Samsara travelers to refine this world?"

Fan Cun trembled in his heart.

Watching those countless paper dolls walking toward them, Fan Cun looked at the crowd behind him in terror, whispering: "What should we do?"

"All slaughter and violent acts must not be committed, otherwise we will be refined by this secret history," Daoist Daoist Tongshen said solemnly.

"Doesn't that mean we can't do anything?" Yang Qin cursed: "Damn it! Even if we don't do anything, we've seen it, we know it, we've been affected by it, and we will still be slowly refined by the secret history, becoming a part of it. Now we can't do anything, and we can't do nothing—like a mouse in a bellows, blocked at both ends! Tell me, what should we do?"

General Jiuyou looked at that mountain of corpses and sea of blood, saying fearfully: "There are only two ways now!"

The crowd's eyes lit up: "There's a way? And two of them?"

"One is to secretly submit to a higher secret; as long as we walk deeper into the secret history, to a place 'before' the time of this secret history, its influence will naturally dissipate."

The crowd was stunned, and someone cursed: "What kind of method is this? Fighting poison with poison?"

"There are two other Ghost Graves next door, their time is even earlier, also one after another, representing two segments of slaughter..." General Jiuyou said blankly.

Daoist Daoist Tongshen nodded slightly: "This may not be a method, but it treats the symptoms, not the root cause. The further you go, the more dangerous it is, and the harder it is to return. Let's talk about the other method first!"

"The other method is what those who built this grave did..." General Jiuyou looked back at the copper coffin beside him.

Daoist Daoist Tongshen instantly understood: "Use official history to suppress secret history!"

"For the current plan..." General Jiuyou prayed silently before the copper coffin: "Only open the coffin!"

"Wait?" Yang Qin reached out to block: "Don't you think something is wrong? Those paper dolls were able to come alive initially—wasn't that the work of the grave owner buried here, the Longevity Saint Realm? Now he triggers the secret history, putting us in a desperate situation, and the only way to survive is to open the coffin—this is clearly a scheme!"

Daoist Daoist Tongshen sighed helplessly: "Do we have a choice?"

Yang Qin was silent, looking back at the copper coffin placed on the green stone table. The copper coffin was heavy and thick, as if someone had been buried alive inside. The patterns on the copper coffin were two intertwined, yin-qi-filled large trees; no matter how one looked at it, it was ominous.

"Opening the coffin is easy to say, but after opening it, how do we deal with what's inside? Better think it through first!"

Yang Qin dropped only this sentence and stepped aside.

General Jiuyou stared at the copper coffin, sighing: "Grave robbers walk between the yin and yang realms, traveling between the past and the present, relying on the contracts and rules between the living and the dead. Now, what we can rely on is nothing more than this! Let's perform some sacrificial rituals and see if we can get the grave owner to let us leave."

"Let me think, if the owner of this grave is truly that Eunuch Cheng'en, we can only use the Heaven-Patching Yang-Cultivating Sacrifice, or invite the Remnant Person Sacrifice. Either we patch something for him, or we follow suit and remove something, to satisfy the conditions of the transaction and let us leave safely."

As soon as the words fell, all the men here couldn't help but clench their legs.

Yang Qin swallowed, his voice trembling: "Let's talk about the Heaven-Patching Yang-Cultivating Sacrifice first!"

General Jiuyou looked dissatisfied: "If the Heaven-Patching Yang-Cultivating Sacrifice were so easy, do you think I would mention the next one? We are all men; if there were a choice, no one would want to!"

He took out a rusty little knife and sighed: "Ever since I knew we were coming to this Eunuch's Grave, I had already prepared!"

"This is the 'Life-Scraping Knife' I invited at great cost from the Imperial Palace, passed down for hundreds of years. I don't know how many men's power has been lost under this knife, and even the eunuch buried here might not have been a remnant under this very knife in the past." General Jiuyou looked at the countless paper dolls gradually approaching and handed over the knife: "You are guests, time is running out! You go first..."

Yang Qin looked at the little knife, his buttocks clenched like a vise, squeezing words through his teeth: "Heaven-Patching Yang-Cultivating Sacrifice! Speak!"

General Jiuyou looked ashen: "No matter what kind of Heaven-Patching Yang-Cultivating Sacrifice, one must find the eunuch's original 'thing'! Usually, when a eunuch is buried, for the sake of his ancestors, to be a complete man, he would have that treasure buried with him. Finding that treasure is the basis for performing the Heaven-Patching Yang-Cultivating Sacrifice. But this eunuch died in a war and was buried in a hurry, destined never to be a complete man!"

Yang Qin now also looked ashen: "Since that's the case, why did you mention the Heaven-Patching Yang-Cultivating Sacrifice?"

General Jiuyou looked up and sighed: "That this method fails is Heaven's will, not that my ancestor's inheritance is lacking..."

While speaking, the Life-Scraping Knife in his hand was gently taken away by someone.

General Jiuyou's eyes widened, about to look back to see who had such great courage, but saw Daoist Daoist Tongshen rolling his eyes at them, throwing the Life-Scraping Knife away, and taking a stack of paper money from his bosom.

Fan Cun seemed to remember something, his dim eyes suddenly brightening.

"My Daoist arts are tied to the word 'money'; all rituals, contracts, and worldly rules are no greater than a transaction where money and goods are settled." Daoist Daoist Tongshen sighed slightly, and the 'Iron-Mouthed Direct Judgment' banner in his hand had changed to the four large characters 'Money Can Connect with Gods'.

"Therefore, Money Can Connect with Gods!"

The paper money in his hand was thrown out, scattering and falling.

Paper money is also a key point of the Paper Doll Dao. Real paper money is either burned by family members, using the connection of blood ties to turn worldly longing into underworld money that communicates between life and death. Or it is offered by temples, turning incense-fire wishes into underworld money. Both have the wonder of pacifying ghosts and communicating between life and death.

But the paper money in Daoist Daoist Tongshen's hand was the manifestation of his 'Dao of Connecting with Gods,' only revealing the merit and morality he had in the land of Samsara.

Borrowing the 'money' of the myriad realms of Samsara can connect with all ghosts and gods.

Leveraging the Dao of Connecting with Gods, driving ghosts and gods like a Samsara decree!

Scattering such a handful of paper money meant three thousand merits vanished without a trace.

Even with Daoist Daoist Tongshen's family fortune from dozens of Samsaras, he couldn't help but feel a pang of heart pain. One must know that he wiped out the entire Profound Heaven Sect, and it only cost six hundred morality points, and he even earned a sum from Miaokong. This single scattering was one-six-hundredth of the Profound Heaven Sect!

"If you take my money, you must do things for me!"

Daoist Daoist Tongshen used a secret method to turn the 'affinity' brought by the paper money into a decree, branding it on his arm. As long as he issued an order with this, he could leverage the laws and drive ghosts and gods. Even a first-rank great god of the world could not violate the rules engraved in the divine register; it was also a ghost-god alliance valid throughout the myriad realms.

This alliance was second only to the Daoist Sect's driving of ghosts and gods, inherited from the three Daoist Ancestors' Orthodox Alliance!

Daoist Daoist Tongshen's confidence soared, his hand forming a sword seal, pointing at the copper coffin: "Open the coffin!"

General Jiuyou and the grave robbers on his left and right looked at each other, brought the golden rooster and black dog, had people lift them up toward the coffin, and he and several skilled hands began to unlock the Zi-Wu Heavenly Mystery Lock on the copper coffin.

The copper coffin, cast entirely from evil-suppressing magic copper, was extremely heavy, and the two intertwined large trees cast upon it were exceptionally strange.

Originally, Daoist Daoist Tongshen thought this was borrowing the Buddhist Sect's Withered-Prosperous Bodhi Tree to suppress what was inside, but looking closely, it didn't seem to be the case at all...

With a click, the lock core snapped, and the Zi-Wu Heavenly Mystery Lock, containing the Dao of the Strange Gate and Hidden Armor, was opened by General Jiuyou. The copper coffin slowly slid open, revealing a wooden coffin wrapped in countless red silks. Just looking at the shape of the wooden coffin, General Jiuyou's face turned pale.

The Samsara travelers also didn't expect that inside it was all decked out in red and colorful, not looking like a coffin for burial at all, but rather like...

"This is simply a flower sedan!" Yang Qin said blankly.

The shape of the wooden coffin was indeed like a flower sedan, slightly shorter than the copper coffin. Four long wooden poles for carrying reached the four corners of the copper coffin. Besides the red and colorful silks and the dragon-and-phoenix-carved coffin body, there were four eunuchs cast into bronze statues placed at the four corners, like sedan carriers.

Two palace maids, alive and integrated into silver, knelt before the coffin, like attendants accompanying the sedan.

Yang Qin, having recovered, grabbed General Jiuyou's collar, wanting to drag him over alive...

Just looking at that coffin, one knew that this copper coffin could not possibly be burying Wang Cheng'en!

General Jiuyou shouted guiltily: "I told you not to be in a hurry! Look... in a hurry again..."

"You bastard!" Yang Qin had already raised his fist.

Just at this moment, a creak came from the wooden coffin, or rather, the flower sedan, like the sound of wood rubbing when a sedan is carried and shakes up and down.

Countless tassels on the flower sedan began to shake, and the layers of curtains embroidered with auspicious patterns seemed to be pushed aside by an invisible hand.

The red cloth moved slightly, and only then could one see that those curtains were all mandalas of gods and Buddhas from the Snow Mountain Esoteric Sect. On the layered curtains were gods and Buddhas filling the sky, countless thangkas, and on the festive red cloth, the solemn treasures were displayed. Just the Buddhas sitting on lotus flowers numbered nine...

The gold-traced carved figures, including palace attendants, dragon-and-phoenix patterns, immortal children, all had auspicious meanings, but at this moment, they all appeared strange and terrifying.

The golden round-carved dragons and phoenixes, carp and cranes, lilies and ruyi, peonies and magpies, all exuded a silent sorrow. Looking closely, the eyes of the carvings were all drooping, all looking toward the ground.

The layered and complex pavilions on the top of the sedan were gorgeously out of place in this gloomy and desolate grave.

Like a phoenix carriage, but the strange wooden coffin that was both coffin and sedan, amidst the confusion of funeral rites and weddings, fully displayed a silent terror.

None of the grave robbers brought by General Jiuyou dared to move. Having dug graves for so long, having excavated so many tombs, none could compare to this level of strangeness.

"Underworld... Underworld marriage?"

Someone said with a trembling voice.

General Jiuyou glared at him and scolded: "Underworld marriages are all random acts by country folk who don't understand the rites. This is a Ghost Grave burying an old dynasty. Is the Gan Dynasty crazy enough to think this place isn't strange enough? Holding an underworld marriage here!"

"Lift it!" Daoist Daoist Tongshen pointed at the shaking curtains.

General Jiuyou's eyes subconsciously looked at a golden hook for lifting curtains in the coffin, his face showing difficulty. Daoist Daoist Tongshen watched as the layers of red curtains were lifted one by one, becoming increasingly nervous, the paper money in his hand scattering continuously. The yellow and white paper money thrown into mid-air all turned into red paper as it fell.

On his forearm, the decree was deeply embedded in the flesh, as if someone were constantly cutting the skin with a knife, branding in gold thread.

A complex talisman was gradually forming.

But Daoist Daoist Tongshen's arm was also becoming increasingly heavy, as if pressed by a giant rock of ten thousand jun, unable to be lifted at all.

"The thing inside is not a ghost or god!"

Daoist Daoist Tongshen dragged his left arm and said solemnly: "Lift it!" ===== CHAPTER 1002 =====