Chapter 231: Now, we can truly say we've entered the ditch!

There was still a thin thread of nighttime chill lingering by the fire.

But as the sun slowly climbed toward the center of the sky, that cold seemed pressed down by some invisible weight.

It dispersed extremely slowly, which only made everyone more uneasy.

After Lu Yuan finished saying the four words "depart at noon," he fell silent, bowed his head, tore open the rations in his hand, and chewed slowly.

It looked like he was conserving spirit, and also like he was replaying the route they were about to take in his mind.

The three with Lin Zhaoxuan, however, obviously could not calm down.

Zhou Heng kept glancing up toward the ditch entrance, his finger unconsciously rubbing back and forth on his sword hilt.

Song Qinghe tucked the Tai Chi Seal to Suppress Evil Plate close to her body, then smoothed several Yellow Talismans one by one with light movements, as if afraid of disturbing anything.

Lin Zhaoxuan was the quietest; he merely closed his eyes and regulated his breath. His chest rose and fell more steadily than before, but the heavy worry pressed between his brows had not dissipated at all.

One stomped out the remaining embers from last night, and the other rehung the water gourd at his waist, both with noticeably tense expressions.

When the sun finally shone on the top of the old willow, Lu Yuan stood up and brushed the crumbs from his palms.

"Move out."

He spat the word out, concise and decisive.

The others immediately packed and re-formed their line, heading deeper into Wildman Ditch.

Only when they stepped out of the willow's shadow did they truly sense the wrongness of the ditch.

When they'd rested under the tree earlier, it had simply felt heavy with yin energy and cold wind.

But once they started inward, the surroundings seemed to shift from "desolate" to outright "evil."

The soil beneath their feet was black, as if soaked for years in blood, or as if too many bones had been worked into it. It had no give underfoot.

Instead it had a strange slight rebound, as though something under the earth was pushing up against the soles of their feet in pulses.

The cliff faces on either side were no longer ordinary rock; they were streaked with mottled red marks.

Those marks were not bright, but looked like old cloth repeatedly stained by blood, smoke, and incense ash, a dull dark red clinging thinly to crevices, shrubs, and dead branches.

When the wind blew, they made a barely audible rustle.

Only when they drew nearer did everyone realize those were not natural growths at all, but strips of faded red cloth.

Some were tied to trees, some wound around rock corners, some half buried in the mud with only edges showing.

The wind made them flutter slightly, like mouths that hadn't quite closed.

"What are these..." Zhou Heng muttered under his breath, his voice very low but strained.

Wang Cheng'an swallowed and stared at the cloth strips, his expression souring.

"They look... like soul-summoning banners, but not really."

Lu Yuan did not look back, just said matter-of-factly:

"Not soul-summoning banners."

"They're suppression cloths."

"Unfortunately, they can hold for a time, but not forever."

He said this and pointed to a crooked, dead tree on the left.

Everyone followed his gaze and involuntarily paused.

That tree was wrapped in red cloth as well.

The strips had blackened and become brittle, but were still tightly bound around the trunk in circles, as if someone had once used all their strength to bind some invisible evil thing there.

The bark was carved into deep scars, revealing gray-white wood beneath, like bone.

Even creepier, there was a broken clay bowl set beneath the tree.

The bowl held no water, only a little moldy, brownish residue that looked like incense ash or congealed blood.

Lu Yuan glanced at it, did not stop walking, and quietly added:

"This ditch used to be treated like a place of offerings, I'm afraid."

"Red cloth isn't for celebration; it's used to press something down."

"But after so many years of pressing, it didn't hold; it only brewed the yin energy stronger."

At those words, the air seemed to thicken another degree.

They pressed on. The deeper they went, the more red cloth appeared.

Some strips hung very high, strung between two trees and waving like a translucent net in the wind.

Others formed deep and shallow blood-colored knots tangled among vines, as if someone had woven countless red nets in this ravine to trap something here.

But oddly, the red cloth grew paler and weaker the further inward they went.

Not far along the path, several wooden stakes stood.

They varied in height, black as pitch, their surfaces pitted with rusted nails.

Each stake had a small piece of red cloth tied to its top; the cloth's corners drooped, shredded by mountain winds.

What made people's blood run cold was that the soil around the stakes had been repeatedly turned over, as if people had been buried and then dug up again and again.

Song Qinghe fell slightly behind, her face noticeably paler, and whispered:

"This doesn't look like a normal mountain path."

"More like... like a road built to send offerings inward."

Lin Zhaoxuan's expression darkened at her words. He did not speak, but placed his palm slowly on the Thunderclap Token.

It was nearly noon.

By right, noon was when yang qi was most robust; even in a yin-heavy mountain, there should be some suppressive force.

But in Wildman Ditch the sunlight seemed swallowed at the mouth of the ravine, leaving only a pale, weak light on the ground.

It did not warm anything; instead it made the red cloth appear redder, darker, like old blood just fished from water.

The wind died.

When it stopped, the silence became unnaturally absolute—so quiet they could hear every footstep, the sound of fabric brushing dry grass,

and even faint, indistinct "light sounds" coming from deeper inside.

It sounded like someone dragging something far off.

It sounded like someone breathing shallowly.

Zhou Heng abruptly halted, a chill running down his spine, and couldn't help whispering hoarsely:

"Lu... Lu Daoist... do you hear that?"

Lu Yuan had already raised his hand to signal the group to stop.

He stood at the front, his gaze like a blade, and slowly scanned the mouth of the ravine half-hidden behind the red cloth.

There, beside the narrow stone path, stood a broken stone wall.

The wall was plastered with Yellow Talismans layered so densely it was impossible to count the years. The talisman paper had blackened and gone brittle; edges curled.

Some hung half-off in the wind like faces pasted to stone.

In the center of the wall hung a large piece of severely faded red cloth.

That red cloth was the strangest of all.

While the other cloths were only dull red, this one was unnaturally fresh, as if dyed recently.

On its surface were little dark blotches that looked like tears, and as it swayed in the wind they seemed to trickle, as if blood were slowly seeping out.

Lu Yuan stared at that strip of cloth for two breaths, then squinted.

"Don't look."

His voice was very low.

But the moment he spoke, the red cloth was suddenly yanked inward from something and flipped over with a sharp sound.

Beyond the cloth, there was nothing but emptiness.

Yet on the empty wall's surface was a faint, fine row of scratches, as if someone had clawed into it with nails.

They slanted and twisted, forming a few characters no one could read fully.

When the wind blew, the grooves seemed to hold leftover yin energy like a living thing, quivering a little.

Zhou Heng's scalp tingled and he almost cursed aloud.

Song Qinghe's breathing quickened; her hand was already on the Seal to Suppress Evil Plate against her chest.

Lin Zhaoxuan's gaze sharpened and thunder qi nearly spilled from his fingertips.

Lu Yuan did not immediately touch the stone wall.

He stood where he was and scanned down from the claw marks, his brow sinking piece by piece.

"Those aren't letters."

he said lowly.

"They're marks made in a scramble for help."

Hearing that, the group collectively tightened.

Lu Yuan stepped forward two slow paces; the black soil under his feet made a light crunch, like stepping on something half dry and half soft.

The red cloth at the base of the wall lifted slightly in the breeze, revealing more dark, mottled marks behind.

It wasn't a complete wall.

It looked more like a hastily built barrier to hold back evil: stones tossed together, gaps stuffed with talisman ash, cinnabar, peach wood shavings.

There were many yellow papers darkened by blood and damp.

Leaning at the foot of the wall was a skeleton.

The bones lay half buried in dead leaves, still wearing a tattered fragment of a Daoist robe. The cloud patterns on the sleeve had faded to gray-black, but the collar edge still showed the Daoist cut.

Two ribs in the chest were broken, the left arm bent at an unnatural angle, as if something had snapped it.

Most striking was the skeleton's right hand.

The fingers were tightly curled, and stuck between the joints was a little bronze bell blackened with rust.

The bell was cracked and its clapper gone; scattered around it were tiny copper fragments—clearly parts of a small device used to capture souls or lead evil.

Zhou Heng froze and his Adam's apple bobbed.

"A Daoist... someone from the Daoist sect..."

Lin Zhaoxuan said nothing, but stared at the severed arm; his eyes deepened with gravity.

Lu Yuan squatted down. He did not touch the bones but shifted some mud aside and uncovered a broken wooden handle.

The handle was wrapped with cinnabar thread, now brittle from burning, its end still clinging to a bit of charred thunder pattern.

"Thunder wood handle."

Lu Yuan glanced at it and said calmly,

"Used for lightning charms, for breaking yin barriers."

He looked leftward and saw a long sword lying there.

Its scabbard had rotted away, leaving a blackened throat. The blade was plunged into the earth at an angle; the exposed back of the sword was pitted with countless tiny notches, as if something had gnawed at it again and again.

Nearby lay a few torn talismans, their cores ripped to shreds. Faint, crooked thunder script could still be seen on the paper.

Zhou Heng exhaled sharply.

"This is... they fought a hard battle."

Lu Yuan nodded, stood, and the beam of his presence moved forward.

The further they went, the more human bones there were.

Not just a scatter here and there, but along the mountain path on both sides, every dozen paces or so revealed remains.

Some bones leaned in stone crevices, with torn formation flags beneath them, the Big Dipper talisman on the flag dissolved into a sticky smear by blood.

Some were half-kneeling, hands still in the gestures of mudras, a broken coin jammed between metacarpals.

One was even more gruesome: ripped nearly in half at the waist, the spine turned outward, and five deep claw marks across the chest—

as if a ghostly beast had leapt in close to kill, giving no time for protective combative qi to fully expand.

Further down the stone slope lay a pile of burned debris.

Lu Yuan examined it and recognized a collapsed talisman lamp.

The lamp ribs had fallen in and the oil long gone; only singed talisman paper clung to the iron frame, black as clumps of burned souls.

"They came here, and not just once."

Lu Yuan said slowly. "The traces up ahead go back at least ten years."

"Some were trapped to die, some died fighting, some were chased down while retreating."

Lu Yuan nudged aside a broken stone with his foot and uncovered a damaged Eight Trigrams mirror beneath.

The mirror surface had long since split, fractures radiating from center to edge, but the cinnabar talisman on the back had not yet wholly faded.

A small tuft of black hair hung from the mirror's rim—whose hair, no one knew; it had long since hardened and become brittle.

Song Qinghe looked at the broken mirror and her eyes reddened.

"They... tried to seal this place."

"Yes."

Lu Yuan's voice was steady but carried a chill.

"They didn't come to scout. They came to patch formations and subdue evil."

He pointed at the torn cloth strips, broken stelae, sword tassels, and lamp ribs scattered underfoot and to both sides.

"Look at these pieces. This was clearly a combined effort by several Daoist practitioners, wandering cultivators, even folk exorcists who patched together a scheme."

"Someone set up blocking formations ahead, others planted suppression stakes further back, leading-fire talismans were laid on the ground, and protector talismans pasted on the stone wall."

"They tried with everything."

"But even with all that effort they couldn't pin down whatever's inside."

At those words, everyone fell silent.

The wind rose again at some unknown time, stirring the faded red cloth and producing a fine, restless rustle like countless mourning breaths.

Lin Zhaoxuan crouched slowly and picked up from beside a skeleton a half-shattered jade tablet.

Only a damaged "Xuan" character remained on the tablet; its edge was stained a dark brown smear that looked like blood or mud.

He stared at it for a long time before croaking out:

"This is a Daoist altar-sealing token."

Zhou Heng's face completely changed, his lips moving but no sound coming out.

Lu Yuan glanced at Lin Zhaoxuan, then picked up a broken staff head from the ground.

The head was made of peach wood with thunder sand embedded within; now half of it had been gnawed away.

The break's splinters curled, and from the fracture came a very cold, extremely yin aura.

"This wasn't done by an ordinary evil thing."

Lu Yuan said slowly.

"To finish off altar seals, shatter mirrors, break swords like this—what's under there can't be suppressed by brute force."

"It knows how to wear people down, how to lure them, how to grind human strength bit by bit."

He tossed the broken staff back to the earth, and for the first time his expression showed real weightiness.

"Also, the many old scars in this ditch show the previous people were utterly defeated."

"They didn't retreat; they died here."

At the sound of his words, another faint noise came from the end of the stone path ahead.

Like wind stirring something.

Like something rolling over among that heap of bones and red cloth.

At that noise, whether Wang Cheng'an, Xu Erxiao, or Lin Zhaoxuan, each tensed and looked toward the path's end.

Their hands all found their ritual tools.

Only Lu Yuan showed little outward reaction; he simply stared at the end of the stone way and drew a deep breath.

Now, only now, could it truly be said they were entering the ditch.