Chapter 232: Crossing-Gully Malevolence?

Lu Yuan did not rush forward immediately.

He stood in place and first raised a hand, signaling everyone to hold still.

Only then did he slowly crouch down, placing the broken peach-wood staff tip into his palm, his fingertip gently rubbing the fracture.

The moment he touched it, Lu Yuan’s expression grew even darker.

“It wasn’t bitten off.”

he said in a low voice.

“It was worn through.”

Zhou Heng froze for a moment. “Worn through?”

Lu Yuan did not look up, but his gaze seemed to pierce through the stone path and fall deeper into the valley.

“This staff tip had thunder-sand embedded in it, which should be most detrimental to yin-evil.”

“But now the thunder-sand is scattered, yet the wooden core didn’t shatter, which means it wasn’t broken by a single hard strike, it was continuously consumed over time.”

“To reach this level, it’s not a simple haunting. It must be the layout of this place itself.”

Lu Yuan paused slightly as if he were retracing the thread in his mind.

“Look at this gully: red cloth, soul-suppressing stakes, talisman walls, hundred bones, broken artifacts...it seems messy, but they all point to one thing.”

“This isn’t simply burying a Malevolent Deity.”

“Someone set up a long-term array here to feed, suppress, and transform Yin Malevolence.”

“In other words, Wildman Ditch isn’t just haunted by something; the whole ditch has been forged into a giant furnace.”

At those words, the faces of the people behind him changed.

“A...furnace?”

Wang Cheng’an’s voice tightened.

Lu Yuan nodded.

“A soul-forging furnace, or rather, a half-formed yin furnace.”

“When people die here, their souls cannot dissipate, and when malevolence enters here, it cannot leave.”

“Over time, this place mixes the living’s qi, the dead’s grudges, and the mountain’s earth veins, and eventually breeds something extremely hard to deal with.”

Song Qinghe felt her fingertips grow cold and could not help whispering:

“So the red cloth and the soul-suppressing stakes are compressing the furnace?”

“Compressing some, locking some, feeding some.”

Lu Yuan spoke calmly, but the words sent chills down their spines.

“They compress the overflowed malevolence, lock the souls that died here, and feed the main thing nurtured under the supply-ground.”

“What you saw earlier as the old willow tree is only an outer opening.”

“The real furnace heart is not on the tree, not at the mountain mouth, but deeper in the earth veins.”

As he spoke, Lu Yuan stood up and looked ahead again.

After that soft sound, the end of the stone path fell back into silent stillness,

but this silence was not clean. It felt like an invisible layer slowly pressed against their ears, making even their breathing heavy.

No one asked further; they simply gripped their ritual tools tighter.

Lu Yuan stepped forward, deliberately avoiding the scattered talismans and broken bones at his feet.

After only about twenty paces, the terrain suddenly shifted, and a wide clearing opened up beside the stone path.

In the center of the clearing stood a huge stone.

The stone was about one and a half persons high, irregular in shape, looking from afar like a chunk of rock peeled off the mountain.

But up close, it became clear it was not a natural standing stone.

All four faces of the rock had been worked by hands.

The cut marks were deep, as if repeatedly processed by axes, hammers, or chisels, the surface covered densely with carved lines.

Those lines were not decoration but talismanic routes.

From afar they looked chaotic; up close one could discern structures of ancient seal characters for “mountain,” “seal,” “suppress,” and “restriction.”

Nine black iron nails were driven into the front of the stone.

Each nail was darkly rusted, but the heads had not completely corroded; under sunlight they reflected an abnormal dull-red sheen.

At the foot of the huge stone lay a ring of broken porcelain bowls.

The bowls faced inward, their bottoms filled with paper ash, bone powder, cinnabar, and some unidentifiable colored fragments, as if someone had made offerings here for a very long time.

Between the porcelain bowls, blackened red threads had been stretched, their ends all pointing toward the center of the stone.

At the sight of it, everyone instinctively stopped in their tracks.

“What is this?” Zhou Heng could not help asking.

Song Qinghe frowned as well.

“It looks like a stele, but it’s not.”

Lin Zhaoxuan stared at the stone for a while and then his expression suddenly shifted.

“There is a restriction on it.”

Only Lu Yuan remained silent.

He circled half the stone, his gaze growing colder, and finally stopped at its back.

There, in an inconspicuous groove, lay a weathered whitish beast bone pressed beside it.

The bone was long and thin, like a wolf bone or a fox leg bone. The middle had been bored with a hole, and a faded copper coin was stuffed into it.

Lu Yuan reached out and hovered his hand over the groove, as if sensing residual breath.

After a moment, he nodded with a look of sudden comprehension.

“I see.”

Xu Erxiao blinked. “Brother Lu, what did you find?”

Lu Yuan said:

“This is a Soul-Suppressing Stone, no, a half-suppress, half-lock ‘Tethering Soul Stone.’”

Everyone’s eyes confirmed it.

Lu Yuan continued:

“A true Soul-Suppressing Stone is used to pin down the dead’s soul so it doesn’t wander; you usually find them in graves, mass burial grounds, or formation eyes that seal away evil.”

“But this one is different.”

“The surface is engraved with soul-suppressing patterns, but beneath it is a soul-locking nail structure: nine nails driven into the heart, porcelain encircling it on four sides, and red thread leading the path.”

“That shows it does not merely suppress; it nails the souls to this land, forcing them to circle the stone.”

“After circling long enough, the soul’s nature is worn away, the grudges disperse, and what remains is the most easily commanded yin essence.”

Song Qinghe’s face drained of color as she heard this.

“You mean... it forges souls?”

“Yes.”

Lu Yuan nodded.

“Not by directly using living people—that would be too obvious and blow the array.”

“They slowly grind down the souls of those who died in this ditch into Yin Malevolence; the malevolence is then absorbed by the supply-ground and fed to whatever lies deeper.”

He knocked twice on the stone’s face; the sound was muffled.

“Listen, there’s an echo inside this stone, but it’s not an empty echo—it’s a suppressed resonance.”

“Below, they probably placed many things.”

Zhou Heng’s face went ashen.

“What do these people...want?”

Lu Yuan replied coldly:

“Of course they want to raise a Malevolent Deity, to borrow divine power, to make what shouldn’t live come to life.”

“These layouts fear the yang fire above all, so they put up red cloth, talisman walls, and soul-suppressing stakes to deliberately make the mountain path a half-yin, half-yang gully.”

“On the surface it looks like they’re suppressing evil, but in reality they’re nurturing it.”

“The longer they suppress, the riper what’s below becomes.”

The thought made everyone’s skin crawl.

At that moment, the bushes beside the stone suddenly stirred.

Everyone tensed; Zhou Heng had already slashed his sword across.

But after the motion, what emerged from the shadow was not a ghostly figure, but a tree.

A very strange poplar.

The tree was not tall, but its trunk was abnormally thick, the main stem exhibiting a bluish-white color, as if waterlogged or the bark had been scraped away revealing bone-like hues.

The bark peeled in layers, exposing a complex network of intersecting lines inside, so dense they resembled countless mouths stacked together.

The strangest thing was the leaves.

Even at midday, while the surrounding trees were bare, this poplar still bore a sparse few dozen leaves.

The leaves were not green but gray-white, their edges slightly curled, and they trembled even without wind.

They looked like thin sheets of paper hung on the branches.

Beneath the trunk, three short wooden stakes were nailed in, connected by red thread, with several small copper bells hanging between them.

The bells did not ring, yet when the group approached, they seemed to draw inward slightly, as if suppressed by something.

Song Qinghe murmured:

“This tree...is wrong.”

Lu Yuan stared at the poplar, and for the first time his eyes showed real disgust.

“Of course it’s wrong.”

“This is a Yin Poplar.”

“Or rather, a poplar made into a ‘soul-summoning poplar.’”

“Poplars are of the wood element and have a yin, soft nature; they easily gather yin, especially old or withered ones which love to attract wandering souls and scattered spirits.”

“But this tree has been tampered with; it’s more than just gathering yin.”

He pointed at the roots.

“Look at the soil around the roots.”

They bent to look and saw the earth around the roots was noticeably wetter and glossier than elsewhere, threaded with wisps of white fibers.

Like ash, like hair.

Under the roots lay several pieces of broken bone, ground thin — clearly not a natural burial.

Lu Yuan said:

“This poplar is not here to block wind or to mark the place.”

“It is here to lure souls.”

“Poplar leaves are thin and branches light; when the wind moves they make sound, making people hear things they shouldn’t.”

“In old times some places planted poplars by mass graves or river bends to absorb solitary souls and lure lost ghosts so they wouldn’t wander.”

“But this one was not simply planted.”

“There are bones pressed beneath it, bells hung on its branches, and soul-suppressing thread wound around its trunk.”

“This is turning a living tree into a soul-summoning banner.”

Zhou Heng shuddered.

“So its purpose here is...”

Lu Yuan looked up at the treetop and said slowly:

“It pulls scattered soul-qi back onto this path.”

“In other words, those who died in this gully, whether their souls escaped a little or not, will be partially drawn back by this tree.”

“With it, the yin souls do not disperse; with it, the path is never clean.”

He paused, his voice colder.

“This is not just a tree.”

“It’s a signpost, a hook, and the cage used before feeding.”

As he finished, the poplar’s branch trembled.

A single gray-white leaf slowly drifted down.

The instant the leaf touched the ground, the copper bells at its side lightly chimed in unison.

A clear “ding.”

The sound was small, yet like a faint distant bell, piercing every ear.

Zhou Heng’s body jolted and he stumbled back half a step.

Song Qinghe immediately pressed her Tai Chi Seal to Suppress Evil Plate to the ground, as if fearing something would take the chance to emerge.

Lu Yuan’s gaze, however, had already passed the poplar and settled on the farther end of the stone path beyond the tree.

He knew the real trouble was still ahead.

This poplar was merely the second “facade” arranged in Wildman Ditch.

It told anyone who came after that someone had set a layout here and people had died.

But more importantly, it warned living people who dared proceed: once you enter this path, don’t expect to come out whole.

At that moment the stone path ahead fell unnaturally silent.

Not because the wind ceased, but as if even the wind had been pressed down by something.

They stood before the Yin Poplar, no one daring to make the first move.

Although the small copper bells were not being blown by anything, the instant the gray-white leaf landed they trembled again and emitted a series of faint, teeth-chatter-like sounds.

“Ding, ding...”

The sound was soft but alarmingly distinct.

Zhou Heng’s spine tightened and he swore under his breath.

“This thing can still ring?”

Lu Yuan did not answer. He raised a hand, signaling everyone to soften their breathing.

He looked at the leaf that had just fallen, his expression growing heavier.

“It’s not the leaf making the sound.”

Lu Yuan said.

“It’s receiving something.”

Song Qinghe confirmed in a whisper:

“Receiving what?”

Lu Yuan did not answer immediately. He looked at the poplar crown, then down at the ground beneath its roots and the broken bones.

Finally his gaze fell on the patch of gray soil pressed under the tree’s shadow at their feet.

From that gray soil, a faint wisp of white vapor slowly rose.

Like smoke, like mist.

If one didn’t look closely, it was almost invisible.

But Lu Yuan saw it clearly.

“It’s coming.”

At first no one understood what he meant.

Then, in the next breath, a light “clack” came from behind the soul stone by the path.

Like some wooden object being slowly pushed from a distance.

Immediately a scent wafted through the air.

Not blood, not decay.

But a cold fragrance.

Like the ash left after burning paper offerings, mingled with new cotton, white wax, and wood soaked in cold water.

The instant that smell reached them, Zhou Heng’s face changed.

“A funeral smell...”

Wang Cheng’an’s throat went dry.

“Where is a funeral?”

Lu Yuan raised his eyes and looked deeper down the stone path, saying lightly:

“It’s not where;”

“they’re coming for it.”

No sooner had he spoken than a smear of white began to appear from the farther end of the stone path, where red cloth and dead branches covered much of the way.

The white was not sunlight, nor mist.

It was a glaring sheet of white cloth.

Someone was carrying it.

Two figures, one after the other.

The one in front wore a half-worn short blue jacket, a white cloth sash tied around his waist, and a white cap. He walked with his shoulders lifting and dropping but made no sound on his feet.

The person behind was stranger, seeming wrapped inside a long white banner.

Only the corner of the cloth dragged on the ground and a pale wrist, white as water-soaked bone, was visible.

Most chilling of all, they were carrying a small paper-wrapped coffin.

The coffin was only half a person high, covered in white paper, but a ring of red flowers was tied around its rim.

The red was garish and icy at once, together making the chest tighten.

Zhou Heng took an instinctive step back, his voice altered.

“This, this isn’t...”

“White Malevolence.” Song Qinghe almost spit the words out, her face drained of blood.

“A funeral white malevolence.”

Lu Yuan’s eyes were icy as steel.

“Not ordinary white malevolence.”

“Crossing-gully ones.”

“In regions beyond the Great Wall, the mountains are high and the roads dangerous, the yin is heavy. In old times, some careful families would hire mortuary escorts to clear the road ahead so the coffin’s qi wouldn’t disturb the mountain mouth and awaken something below.”

“But once a funeral escort takes the wrong path, or the white banner is carried into forbidden places, the malevolence won’t follow the living road; it will take the yin road.”

Lu Yuan paused and lowered his voice further:

“That is called a crossing-gully malevolence.”

“Living people avoid it; the dead follow it.”

Crossing-gully malevolence?

Everyone stared at Lu Yuan, stunned, silently asking: what is that?!