Chapter 971

The followers of Xuanzhen Sect waved their cloaks, wrapping and flicking them like walls, pushing people aside.

They forcibly carved a path through the crowd.

Wu Bonu walked barefoot, draped in a robe embroidered with countless talismans; within a zhang in every direction around him, no one dared approach.

Beneath the black robe, blood flowed.

The blood dripped steadily onto his feet, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints…

Step by step, he ascended the Jintang Bridge.

As he set foot on the first stone step, a woman in white stepped out from the city gate behind the line of footprints, murky water streaming down her clothes onto the ground.

The woman bowed her head, her wet black hair covering her face.

Her features were invisible.

The moment her rear foot left the gate, another bare, slender foot stepped out after her, following her exact footprints.

It was another woman, holding a lotus lantern, her long hair still draped over her face, her features unseen.

Then came the third, the fourth.

Behind them, one woman after another stepped forward, each following the footprints of the one ahead—but without exception, all trod upon Wu Bonu’s bloody footprints, step by step, ascending the bridge.

This time, no one needed the front-line Xuanzhen disciples to drive them aside; the crowd willingly parted to make way.

White gauze, white cloth, white lotuses.

Dozens of women, their heads bound with white headbands and clad in white robes, followed Wu Bonu step by step; the water dripping from their bodies had soaked the entire path, muddying even the bloody footprints.

Yet miraculously, each woman stepped precisely in the footsteps of the one before her, and the foremost woman stepped only upon Wu Bonu’s bloody prints.

The foremost woman carried a pale, ghastly lantern.

The eighteen behind her held individual white lotus river lamps…

This scene, no matter how poor one’s memory, recalled the recent Red Building Ghost Ship incident.

An emaciated old man in the crowd trembled slightly, hunched beside a stone pillar at the bridge’s entrance; as the lead woman passed him, she seemed to pause—barely perceptibly.

But the woman did not turn her head.

“Holy Mother protect us…” the old man whispered, voice trembling.

Dozens of women in white robes stretched from the city gate all the way to the Jintang Bridge; those behind held eerie white lanterns, moving in absolute silence.

Even now, corpses floated like boats and sank like forests across the Haihe River, forming a dark river of the netherworld—the Three Paths.

Yet as each woman passed before the onlookers, everyone felt those corpses were insignificant.

Even if the corpses were terrifying, they were still in the river.

The lifers' lives mattered, but not as much as one's own!

Cui Er stepped away, muttering: “All taboos lifted, do not blame me unless summoned!”

“All taboos lifted, do not blame me unless summoned!”

The dozens of white-robed women had vanished into the distance, yet the icy chill that swept over them was even more chilling.

Then came an unusually tall figure, roughly three adult men tall, wrapped entirely in a wide-brimmed hat and layers of cloth.

One after another, figures clad in straw capes, wreathed in faint white mist, seemed ethereal, as if not of this world!

They moved slowly, step by step, with sluggish deliberation, stepping out of the city gate.

Even the old Daoist priest of Tianhou Palace turned his back, covering his face.

On the Jintang Bridge and both riverbanks, tens of thousands stood utterly silent…

The red ropes tied to the bridge grew still; wherever Wu Bonu stepped, the ropes turned black.

The floating corpses beside the bridge sank one by one.

Where Wu Bonu’s footsteps passed, the corpses floating on the river lost their buoyancy, sinking one by one into the water.

It was noon, yet the heavens and earth were dark, colored neither like dawn nor dusk.

Cui Er glanced sideways at Wu Bonu’s footprints…

In a voice barely louder than a mosquito’s buzz, he asked the old priest beside him: “Senior brother, are these floating corpses in the Haihe River also a Xuanzhen Sect technique—using dead bodies to cross the river and plant stakes?”

“I don’t think so!” the senior brother replied earnestly. “Don’t you see that evil entity on the river’s surface is frozen in place?”

“And ‘dead-body passage’ means living and dead share the same path—using corpses to blur yin and yang, revealing ghostly troops to mortals, thereby completing a ritual.”

“But that Xuanzhen Sect official… the one who blocked the red boat at the Three Forks River, right? His footsteps aren’t borrowing the living’s path—they are walking the Yellow Springs Road itself. Xiao Cui, don’t speak further! Ghost troops passing—none of us dare provoke them. Even the Xuanzhen Sect Master, who severed the ghost troops’ path and subdued the Nine-Eyed Fire Ghoul, now must send them on their way.”

After this exchange, both men fell silent as the towering figure approached.

On all four city gates of Zhigucheng, a bloodied palm print remained; now, one by one, figures pressed their hands against those prints and stepped forth from another world, the prints revealing a sliver of their true forms in this realm.

Zhigucheng had become a ghost city; living people who passed those palm prints reverted to their monstrous, demonic forms.

At the Three Forks River crossing, before the floating toll bridge, white lanterns glowed again beneath the river; small boats, inverted in the water, now carried loads of white lanterns and docked at the wharf.

On the wharf, a single bloody footprint stood out starkly.

The ghostly soldiers, pole in hand, stepped onto that bloody footprint from their boats.

The moment their feet touched ground, the boats dissolved into straw capes draped over their bodies; the entire load of white lanterns became the forms beneath the capes, one by one, stepping ashore, passing through the North City Gate, entering Zhigucheng.

At the moment they entered the city, vast hordes of refugees surged inside…

Large-scale refugee influxes were common in Zhigucheng, but usually confined outside the walls; with soldiers escorting them in, no one dared interfere.

A curious man asked: “Brother, fleeing disaster?”

The refugees’ faces were dusty, their brows heavy with suffering—but that suffering had eased considerably.

He turned to the shopkeeper, surprised someone had spoken to him, then smiled faintly in Hedong dialect: “We came from the Grand Canal side. The authorities banned us from using canal water—we ran out of food, out of grain. We gathered some seeds and hit the road.”

The woman beside him, holding a child—likely his wife—lowered her head shyly.

The shopkeeper blinked in surprise. “Shandong? That was back in April. How’d you only get here now? Lucky you—wife and child still intact…”

With that, he bowed his head and returned to his business.

As he worked, his entire body shuddered.

He finally realized what felt wrong.

This refugee column seemed endless—men, women, children, elderly—all present, their clothes clean, their appearances healthy…

Crows perched atop the Drum Tower, gazing down at the endless, indistinguishable throng passing through Zhigucheng.

Their beady eyes burned with emerald flames.

Standing beside the golden bell on the Drum Tower, Chang Yan watched the dense crowd pass and sighed: “Wu Bonu has good fortune. Of the eight talismans, only his ‘Eighteen Nihil Hells, Naihe Path’ can traverse yin and yang, ordering the netherworld. One day, he may be the one among us with the brightest future.”

The crow tucked its head beneath its wing, preening its feathers.

“The Sect Master’s mercy does not wish us to raise this world, transform yin into yang, and let all who died before or during salvation remain truly dead!”

“That’s why Wu Bonu opens the Yellow Springs Road—to temporarily house these souls until we raise this world, then revive them all together…”

“The Sect Master sees only this world. When seven ascend the divine thrones and five pillars uphold the world, he looks down—no one matters to him, only the pillars. Who sits upon the thrones? He doesn’t care.”

“And what the Sect Master cares for—that is what I care for…” the crow’s gaze turned cold, its voice distant. “So I don’t care who sits on the throne. As long as the Sect Master’s great work succeeds, even if we sink into the abyss, vanish into mud—it’s acceptable.”

With that, the crow flapped its wings and flew into the darkened sky.

After Wu Bonu crossed the Jintang Bridge, the corpses on the Haihe River had vanished entirely; the eighteen body-retrievers floated helplessly on the water, bewildered.

The yellow-robed, multi-armed ghostly entity also froze, like a statue.

But Wu Bonu paused at last, turning to face the yellow-robed specter. He extended his hand; a palm print slowly emerged on the robe. Then, with a single tug, the entire robe rolled up and wrapped around him, becoming a long yellow robe.

Two hands emerged from within the robe, gripping his shoulders.

Hands—dozens, hundreds—clutched his ribs, chest, arms, legs, like armor.

But as the yellow robe wrapped tighter, all those hands were swallowed within.

Far away, in the cathedral, the Original Sin Bishop stood upon the altar, countless arms fanning behind him like a screen; his expression was calm, yet unnervingly silent. Had anyone circled to his side, they would have seen his body merging into the wall behind the altar.

As if being pulled into another world…

A boy from the choir, holding a silver chalice, glanced over accidentally—the chalice slipped from his grasp.

“Bishop!”

“It’s fine. The ritual still holds me. The power and mystery of the Immaculate Conception is immense. Though they seek to drag me back to death, this world strangely accepts me. The Son’s descent is the Holy Mother’s will—see, the whole world embraces me.”

“Even this Eastern ritual, nearing the Ascension tier, cannot fully drag me into death.”

The Original Sin Bishop looked weary.

He took a breath, then continued: “But the depth of the Eastern continent exceeds my expectations. The Xuanzhen heretics are performing a terrifying ritual across this city—and across the entire Eastern continent.”

“They are carving a path for souls, determining their final destination…”

“The ritual’s power is immense. The Son’s descent ceremony has been suppressed, halted. They even seek to drag me into death.”

The Original Sin Bishop sighed: “We underestimated the East.”

The crow flew past the cathedral, letting out a cold snort below.

“Foreign devils, we cannot make the dead die again—but when this world ascends and is reborn, you will die for certain!”