Chapter 228: Responding from the Nine Heavens, the Thunderclap Universalization

Lu Yuan sheathed his sword and walked to Lin Zhaoxuan.

He crouched down and placed his hand on Lin Zhaoxuan’s wrist pulse.

The pulse was chaotic, like the sound of horseshoes scattered by wind on a snowy night.

Blood surged upward, magical power exhausted, meridians scorched.

If suppressed a moment later, it would have likely damaged his foundation.

Lu Yuan took a Clear-Heart Pulse-Calming Talisman from his bag, pressed it onto Lin Zhaoxuan’s brain center acupoint, then dabbed a bit of cinnabar on his brow.

“Close your eyes.”

“Guard your spirit.”

Lin Zhaoxuan froze momentarily, then obeyed out of instinct.

He touched once at Lin Zhaoxuan’s brow center, once at the throat, once at the middle of the chest, and once at the qihai.

He muttered softly:

“Great Supreme Platform Star, respond without pause.”

“Expel demons, bind specters, protect life and body.”

“Wisdom bright and pure, the mind and spirit at peace.”

“Three Souls remain whole, the soul shall not be lost.”

As the Mind-Cleansing Mantra fell, the abnormal blood-red flush on Lin Zhaoxuan’s face slowly receded a bit.

His breathing finally steadied somewhat.

Song Qinghe watched Lu Yuan cautiously.

“Thank you, Dao-friend Lu.”

Lu Yuan did not look up, he said lightly:

“Don’t thank me yet.”

“The Blood-Fire Pill’s backlash won’t be suppressed so easily. After leaving Wildman Ditch, you must rest for at least three months. No altar ascension, no thunder techniques, and do not use that Thunderclap Token again.”

Lin Zhaoxuan opened his eyes, voice weak:

“Three months?”

Zhou Heng on the side gritted his teeth in pain but couldn’t help snorting a laugh.

“Serves you right.”

Lu Yuan then looked at Zhou Heng’s shoulder.

Although the bone knife had been removed, the wound edges were blackened, clearly tainted by Yin Malevolence.

Lu Yuan said to Wang Cheng’an:

“Cheng’an, pull the Yin out.”

Wang Cheng’an nodded, took out glutinous rice, cinnabar and mugwort floss, and pressed them around Zhou Heng’s wound.

Just as Zhou Heng was about to grit his teeth and endure it, Xu Erxiao shoved a dry biscuit into his mouth.

“Bite down.”

Zhou Heng blinked in surprise.

In the next moment, Wang Cheng’an pushed the glutinous rice into the wound.

“Sizzle!”

Black gas bubbled up.

Zhou Heng’s pain nearly made his eyes bulge; luckily the biscuit in his mouth prevented him from screaming out.

Xu Erxiao patted his shoulder.

“Hold on, tough guy from beyond the Great Wall, this little pain’s nothing.”

Zhou Heng mumbled a curse through the biscuit, unclear who it was directed at.

Song Qinghe, who had been holding back tears, couldn’t help but smile a little despite herself.

The atmosphere loosened slightly.

But Lu Yuan did not relax.

He stood and looked toward the old willow at the valley’s center.

The opera stage had already collapsed, the eight lanterns were extinguished, the evil-puppet spectators and the Hundred Bones shadow soldiers had scattered halfway to dissipation.

Yet that willow tree still loomed in the darkness.

The evil eye on its trunk blinked slowly.

Each blink rolled the surrounding Yin energy into greater agitation.

It did not immediately attack.

It seemed to be waiting for something.

Or rather, it was gathering strength again.

Lu Yuan knew clearly the thing they had just destroyed was only the “Opera Offering.”

It was a component of the supply structure sustaining the Wildman Ditch’s malevolent deity.

The real root lay beneath that willow tree.

And with the stage destroyed, that willow would inevitably be thoroughly enraged.

What came next would be the true master.

Lin Zhaoxuan also looked at the willow, speaking weakly:

“Dao-friend Lu.”

“This thing... isn’t finished?”

Lu Yuan nodded.

“The show is dispersed.”

“But the deity has not left.”

He glanced back at Lin Zhaoxuan.

This time there was far less suspicion in his eyes.

“Earlier I suspected you were from an evil path.”

Lin Zhaoxuan was startled.

Zhou Heng and Song Qinghe both looked up at the same time.

Lu Yuan’s expression was calm, no concealment.

“You arrived too conveniently, you spoke rashly.”

“And you carried this ancestral thunder department relic.”

“I had to be cautious.”

Lin Zhaoxuan pondered for a moment, then actually smiled.

“I would have been cautious too.”

Zhou Heng grinned:

“I told you, senior brother, your habit of charging straight into evil things will have people thinking you an idiot sooner or later.”

Song Qinghe whispered:

“Not sooner or later, now.”

Lin Zhaoxuan was a bit embarrassed by their remarks, coughed, which tugged at his injury and made his face even paler.

Lu Yuan looked at him, then abruptly asked:

“Why exactly did you come to Wildman Ditch?”

Lin Zhaoxuan fell silent for a moment.

This time he didn’t answer with the simple line about “hearing of an evil cult.”

He lowered his head and looked at the cracked Thunderclap Token in his hand, saying softly:

“Half a month ago, we met a dying old guide outside Fengtian City in a ruined temple.”

“He was from a mountain-running ginseng gang. Their group of twelve went into the mountains, and only he crawled out.”

“He said at night people sing opera in Wildman Ditch, and by day they bury people. Under the willow there is something that eats incense offerings.”

“He also said he saw people in opera robes dragging living people onto the stage.”

“Our master hated things that nurture evil and harm people while he was alive.”

“So we came.”

Lu Yuan asked:

“All based on an old guide’s words?”

Lin Zhaoxuan lifted his head, his gaze earnest.

“Before he died, he grabbed my sleeve and said some of his brothers were still in the ditch, no one collected their bodies, no one performed funerary rites.”

“He begged that if I was a Daoist, I should go take a look.”

“I promised.”

Lu Yuan fell silent.

In these times beyond the Great Wall, banditry, military chaos, famine and evil cults could all take lives.

A dying mountain guide’s last request might mean little to many people.

But for someone like Lin Zhaoxuan, a promise was a Daoist karmic duty.

Lu Yuan suddenly felt his earlier caution, while not wrong, had slightly underestimated these three young Daoists.

Their cultivation was not high, their sight shallow. They couldn’t even understand the supply structure.

But their intent was truly righteous.

Righteous to the point of foolishness.

And rare.

Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze and looked again at the willow tree.

“Then let’s resolve this karmic matter together.”

Lin Zhaoxuan tried to stand.

Song Qinghe quickly restrained him.

“You still want to move?”

Lin Zhaoxuan anxiously:

“I still...”

Before he could finish, Lu Yuan cut him off directly:

“You can’t.”

“If you use thunder techniques again, you will be incapacitated before the willow needs to act.”

Lin Zhaoxuan opened his mouth.

Lu Yuan pointed toward the rear of the ritual altar.

“You sit in the Kan position and protect the Thunderclap Token, no more actions.”

“Zhou Heng, your shoulder is injured, fall back.”

“Song Qinghe, your talisman work is steady, stay and help Cheng’an guard the incense.”

After speaking, Lu Yuan looked at Xu Erxiao and Wang Cheng’an.

“Erxiao, open the box.”

“Cheng’an, reorganize the altar.”

Xu Erxiao brightened.

“Brother Lu, are we going to use the real things now?”

Lu Yuan stared at the willow’s increasingly vengeful evil eye and slowly exhaled.

“The opera has dispersed.”

“Next, we cut the tree down.”

Xu Erxiao’s eyelids twitched at that and he immediately turned to open the heavy wooden box.

When the lid lifted, inside were neatly stacked piles of Yellow Talismans, a cinnabar ink block, lightning-struck jujube wood nails, a black donkey’s hoof, strings of copper coins, and a small wooden casket wrapped in red cloth.

The casket was not large, but sealed with two Yellow Talismans, the heads stamped with the character for “Calm,” clearly Lu Yuan’s bottom-of-the-box item.

Wang Cheng’an did not delay; he secured the yellow cloth corners, smoothed the incense ash ring that the Yin wind had scattered, then dipped his fingertip in cinnabar and carefully repainted the half-missing arc of the Taiji Two-Poles line on the altar’s edge.

As he drew, he murmured the stabilizing talisman chant:

“Heaven round, earth square, laws of nine.”

“Calm the altar, suppress the malevolence, protect my ritual ground.”

“Incense unbroken, talismans unchanged.”

“Urgently, urgently, as by the law’s command.”

With the chant, the three-broken true-subduing incense in the censer steadied and stood upright again, its smoke rising straight instead of being twisted by the evil wind.

Lu Yuan walked to the front of the altar, drew seven Yellow Talismans from the stack Xu Erxiao handed him, and pressed them between his fingers in order.

He did not immediately draw the talisman script; first he glanced once at the old willow in the valley center.

Now the willow was no longer simply a “tree.”

The evil eye on the trunk opened and closed like breathing.

Each blink sent subtle ripples through the black soil around its roots, as if something beneath was stirring awake.

Lu Yuan’s light dimmed.

“It’s going to unroot.”

Lin Zhaoxuan sat in the Kan position, forcing himself to lift his head.

“Unroot?”

Lu Yuan didn’t turn back, simply said:

“Evil wood raising malevolence fears the ground energy under its roots being disrupted most of all.”

“If it’s not panicking, it means it wants to borrow the remnants to restore itself.”

“If it panics, it plans to dig up the resentful malevolence beneath.”

“When that happens, it won’t be the tree killing people, it’ll be the deathly qi of the entire ditch.”

Song Qinghe’s face turned pale, she whispered:

“What do we do now?”

Lu Yuan rubbed the seven Yellow Talismans in his palm; cinnabar veins immediately shimmered faintly red.

With a flick of his wrist, the talismans spread like flower petals in midair, then he pressed them with his fingers one by one.

“First restrain.”

“Then force.”

“Finally, break the root.”

Having said that, he stepped out the Seven-Star Steps, moving one foot after the other, each step landing on the yin-yang fish eyes painted on the yellow cloth of the altar.

With every step he chanted softly:

“Left foot treads the cosmic stem, right foot suppresses malevolence.”

“Seven stars illuminate the path, a hundred ghosts avoid.”

“Left assistance, right support, front calls, rear escorts.”

“Heavenly stems and earthly evils, heed my command.”

This was the orthodox stepping of opening a Dou formation.

When Lu Yuan reached the southeast corner of the altar, he suddenly stopped, slapping one Yellow Talisman onto a lightning-struck jujube wood nail with a crisp clap.

The talisman’s paper barely touched the nail before the nail trembled, cinnabar veins crawling down along the wood grain as if a red thread burrowed into the earth.

Then he placed talismans on the east, south, west and north corners in succession.

With the four talismans set, the faint golden aura over the altar linked into a sheet like a translucent net, making the entire ritual area more secure.

Only then did Lu Yuan turn, raise his ritual sword.

“Cheng’an, ring the bell.”

Wang Cheng’an immediately shook the bell. The copper bell chimed with three slow beats, the rhythm extremely deliberate.

Lu Yuan used the bell’s momentum to launch his motion: right hand forming a seal, left hand holding the sword, shouting:

“There are Three Pure Ones in heaven, Five Sacred Mountains on earth.”

“There are malevolence in mountains and specters in waters.”

“Today we summon true law, bind its forms!”

“Rescue!”

With the final word “Rescue,” he flicked the sword tip and the seven Yellow Talismans flew out in the Big Dipper formation, streaking straight toward the old willow in the valley.

Before the talismans reached it, the tree moved.

The old willow seemed to sense something, its trunk shuddered violently, its drooping willow branches bristled upright like rows of black hair snapping upward.

“Crack! Crack! Crack!”

Three talismans were shattered midair by the snapping branches, turning into a few sparks.

Two others were swept aside by a gust of Yin wind, veered half a foot off course, and fell into the black mist where they quickly vanished without a sound.

But two talismans managed to stick squarely to the soil at the sides of the willow’s roots.

“Boom!”

A muffled thud came from the ground.

As if something below had wrenched.

Lu Yuan’s eyes brightened.

“There’s an opening.”

He immediately raised his left hand, pointed at his brow, wielded the ritual sword across his chest with his right, and recited another soul-binding chant in a low voice:

“Soul return to the underworld, the spirit guard the gloom’s gate.”

“Leave no trace in life, leave no shadow in death.”

“If there is impurity, come with my talismans.”

“Urgently, urgently, as by the law’s command!”

As the chant fell, the two Yellow Talismans at the tree roots suddenly lit up, and two strands of black-red malevolent qi were forced up from the ground by the talisman light.

When the malevolence surfaced, it condensed into two twisted human faces.

One was an old man’s face, full of wrinkles, mouth opened unnaturally wide.

The other resembled a woman in opera robes, half her face painted, her eye sockets hollow, a long tongue lolling down.

Lin Zhaoxuan’s pupils contracted sharply.

“Are these... the Yin souls the tree swallowed?”

Lu Yuan nodded.

“Not just one or two.”

“What it tends under the roots are probably those who lost their lives in this ditch over the years.”

“The tree boiled the people’s malevolence, household qi, and opera offerings into one pot to nurture this evil temper.”

Zhou Heng gritted his teeth, forcing down the shoulder pain:

“So it’s being forced out now?”

Lu Yuan held the ritual sword before his palm, the blade trembling lightly.

“Yes.”

“But not enough yet.”

“Binding the souls only drags the filth into the open. What’s truly lethal is the malevolent cavity under its roots.”

As he spoke, he abruptly turned to Lin Zhaoxuan.

“Can your Thunderclap Token still borrow a mouthful of thunder qi?”

Lin Zhaoxuan’s fingers trembled slightly as he looked down at the cracked ancient token in his hand.

“It can.”

“But only once.”

Lu Yuan nodded.

“That will do.”

He immediately stepped aside from the front center of the altar but kept his feet moving, continuing to hold the four directional qi points with Yu Steps.

“Lin Zhaoxuan, sit firm in the Kan position.”

“Zhou Heng, hold the Peach Wood Sword and guard the Gen opening.”

“Song Qinghe, take three cold talismans and press the tree’s eye.”

“Three of you obey orders, do not act rashly.”

Lin Zhaoxuan forced himself to stand, Zhou Heng dragged his injured shoulder as he moved to the east.

Song Qinghe drew three cold talismans with blue borders from her talisman pouch, flicked them with her fingertips and stuck them to the outer edge of the ritual altar.

She chanted urgently:

“North Dipper’s profound Yin, frost descend upon demonic forms.”

“Ice seal the ghost road, snow lock away fiend traces.”

“Urgently, urgently, as by the law’s command!”

When the cold talismans brightened, the valley’s Yin wind was frozen for a moment, and the willow’s evil eye blinked half a beat slower.

In that instant, Lu Yuan whipped his sword and scratched a heavy cinnabar talisman onto the compass.

“Ro Heaven Rescue Order, fix it!”

The compass needle rang with a metallic note and pointed to a leakage spot under the willow’s roots on the southeast side.

Lu Yuan then slammed his palm heavily on the black cloth pouch.

The spirit-sealing casket he had earlier stored within the pouch trembled lightly and released a mountain-like, weighty gold-white aura.

Lu Yuan used that qi to speak, his voice like metal-on-stone:

“Heaven and earth boundless, universe borrow the law.”

“Calm the malevolence, seal the spirits, draw the evil back in place.”

“Before is the fierce gate, behind is the orthodox altar.”

“Left the Azure Dragon, right the White Tiger.”

“I invoke the Ancestor to rescue, bind you out of your cavity!”

His words fell, the sword tip pointed at the ground, and he suddenly halted.

“Break!”

At that moment, Lin Zhaoxuan also acted.

He formed the “Thunder Bureau Combined Fighting Seal” with both hands, held the Thunderclap Token upright at his chest, and shouted in a deep voice:

“Responding from the Nine Heavens, the thunderclap universalization.”

“Ancestor of thunder above, disciple Lin Zhaoxuan.”

“Borrowing thunder to open the way, shake the malevolence, break the Yin—”

“Go!”