Chapter 78: A Song That Breaks Souls, The Whole Hall’s Ghosts Shed Tears!

Celestial Master He Xun now had a head full of question marks.

No way!

What… why are both of them angry all of a sudden?!

Because… of what I said just now??

No… weren’t my words supposed to be a good thing?!

When he is crowned Celestial Master for the fifth time and his reputation reaches its peak, he can completely remodel Tianlong Temple’s image.

Invite his lineage’s founding ancestor and his master back in, enshrine them forever!

After all, the entire Tianlong Temple, top to bottom, is full of He Xun’s disciples and descendants.

The only obstacles left are a few elders inside the temple and those once scattered outside.

What the heck is going on?

Is…

Is it that they think what I did was too petty?

That shouldn’t be the case!

Back in the day, all the rotten things Tianlong Temple did—I endured them for thirty years and now I’m changing the temple’s face.

Isn’t that something to cheer about?

Besides, this isn’t a new issue; I’ve mentioned it countless times over these thirty years.

Yet those two never got angry before…

Why the sudden mood now?!

Is… it because I was a bit too smug just now, disrespectful??

Uh…

Not really…

As for the ancestral master, who can say, but my master definitely wasn’t the kind to care about this stuff…

Don’t forget my master died long ago, and I never saw him get angry like this.

When my master was still alive, I even peed on his wine gourd and he didn’t blow up like this.

No!!

What on earth happened!!

Meanwhile, in Fengtian’s old district.

The altar was reset. Lu Yuan lit three sticks of incense and respectfully stuck them into the censer, once more inviting the ancestral master.

The thin azure smoke now rose straight up, without interruption.

After finishing, Lu Yuan turned and looked at the two great beauties waiting quietly in the cold wind.

“Aunt Qin, Aunt Qiao’er, you both should go back first.”

“I need to dispel this nurturing malevolence site tonight.”

Having finished the ritual, Lu Yuan glanced at the two great aunts waiting nearby.

“Look at how you’re dressed, and you still don’t mind the cold!”

Lu Yuan eyed their upper bodies wrapped in luxurious fox-fur cloaks.

Below, their plump, long, beautiful legs were dazzlingly pale in the night, as if they weren’t wearing pants at all.

At Lu Yuan’s remark, the two women shot him a coquettish glare, but said nothing more.

They were flirtatious, provocative, yet only around Lu Yuan.

If Xu Erxiao, Wang Cheng’an, and Song Zonghu weren’t nearby, the two might immediately say a few lascivious, enticing things.

But with people present, they were respectable ladies from proper wealthy families and couldn’t actually act out.

The two grande aunts only said in soft voices:

“It’s so late, let’s come back tomorrow?”

“Aren’t you afraid someone will take it?”

Aunt Qin even raised a cunning jade hand with showy purple nail polish and pointed toward Song Zonghu not far off.

“Let my brother send someone to watch it, don’t let anyone in, that’s all.”

“Rest tonight, come back tomorrow.”

Song Zonghu beside them: “…”

Something about these words felt odd…

Lu Yuan shook his head and said:

“Tomorrow has its own matters. Today’s matters should be handled today. It won’t take long, at most a little over an hour. No need to go back and forth.”

As he spoke, Lu Yuan looked in the direction Aunt Qin had pointed, toward Song Zonghu.

In all the time he’d known Aunt Qin, this was the first time seeing her brother; he’d only heard about him from his sister’s stories before.

The middle-aged man now looked awkward, standing by the military truck and forcing a smile toward Lu Yuan.

If Lu Yuan were honest, he felt awkward too.

His relationship with Aunt Qin could be considered set in stone!

There’s no escape!

Lu Yuan would absolutely not push this great aunt away.

Surely Aunt Qin must have mentioned this to Song Zonghu a few times?

Who wouldn’t be embarrassed—Lu Yuan was only a little younger.

But now wasn’t the time for such thoughts.

Lu Yuan’s face turned unusually serious as he cupped his hands to Song Zonghu.

“By rights, this burden shouldn’t be yours to carry, but I really have an urgent matter now.”

“If your superiors blame you, could you cover for me for a little over a month? After the Celestial Master Grand Ceremony finishes, I’ll remember this favor for life.”

Hearing Lu Yuan, Song Zonghu blinked, then scratched his head awkwardly and grinned in a naive way:

“In Fengtian City… I don’t have many people above me…”

“Across the border, there are a few people, but they’re very busy. They wouldn’t bother me over a small issue like this.”

“You flatter me, Daoist. Back in midsummer, you saved my sister’s life; this is nothing.”

Lu Yuan was a bit surprised at Song Zonghu’s words.

Whoa~

So capable?

Lu Yuan had never pried into Aunt Qin’s family situation; he only saw hints in her idle talk and actions.

But how influential Aunt Qin’s family really was, Lu Yuan didn’t know.

After all, he never intended to latch onto Aunt Qin’s influence, so why ask?

As soon as Song Zonghu finished, Aunt Qin glared and snapped:

“What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”

“That’s exactly it!!”

“If not for my obedient nephew, do you think you’d have come back from Heilongjiang to see me?!”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Song Zonghu nodded repeatedly under his sister’s pressure.

“So Daoist, please don’t be polite. This small matter is nothing!”

Then he hurried off like he was fleeing contagion:

“Well, my regiment has urgent business. I’ll go first!”

“This squad of soldiers will stay to watch for you. After you finish, let them return to their unit!”

Before his words finished, Song Zonghu had opened the truck door, leapt in, started the engine, and drove off without looking back.

Too damn awkward!

Run like hell.

Of course, what really bothered Song Zonghu wasn’t the embarrassment so much as his sister’s behavior.

By the gods!!

At thirty-three years old, he’d never seen that tigress act like this before!!

And what kind of noisy display was that she made just now?!

That affected, contrived tone—was that really his sister?

When she used the feather-duster to swing at him as a child, she never did it this way!

Thinking about how his sister spoke to Lu Yuan just now made Song Zonghu shiver.

Goosebumps rose all over.

Damn!

So disgusting!!

Song Zonghu thought Lu Yuan was a great man, able to endure even his sister’s act without retching…

Anyway, Song Zonghu felt that staying another second would make him vomit from his sister’s antics.

…

Song Zonghu left, leaving only a squad of soldiers carrying outdated rifles and the two seductive grande aunts.

Lu Yuan watched the truck disappear around the corner and blinked.

That guy ran so fast; what about these two aunts?

But then he thought: this is Fengtian City, not an empty stretch—plenty of transport to get home.

He turned to the two grande aunts and urged:

“Don’t just stand here, head back quickly—you look frozen.”

Their long, fair, plump legs had already started to tremble since alighting.

But the two answered stubbornly:

“No way. Either you immediately come home with us, or we’ll start a fire nearby and wait for you.”

“You said it would only take an hour, right? We’ll just wait!”

“If we go home, we won’t be able to sit still anyway—it’ll be worse!”

Seeing their insistence, Lu Yuan decided: fine!

He’d be quick.

He had already scanned the site with the system Vanquish Demons and Exorcise Evil and found no powerful evil spirit. Speed it up!

Lu Yuan picked up his wooden sword again and looked at Xu Erxiao and Wang Cheng’an, who were already prepared.

“Let’s go!”

“Begin!”

The blue cloth curtain into the opera troupe’s backstage hung heavy as if soaked.

Lu Yuan lifted one corner.

The fabric made no ordinary rustling sound.

The noise was fine and viscous, sinking into the ear and turning into countless hushed whispers pressed against a face.

Beyond the curtain lay a corridor that seemed bottomless.

The faint light at the entrance only lit three steps underfoot.

A musty odor hit them first.

First, a heavy mildew smell from layers of accumulated dust and damp.

Then a sour, stale cosmetic scent invaded the nose—not fresh osmanthus oil, but expired rouge mixed with sweat’s grease.

Finally, a faint iron-tinged fishy stench, thin but rude, stabbed up to the crown of the head.

Both sides of the corridor were nailed with dense wooden racks.

Hanging on them were all kinds of stage costumes.

On the left, dan-role garments: plain pleated blue gowns, colorful hua-dan jackets and pants, the soft props of knife-and-horse dan.

On the right, sheng-role garments: martial sheng’s stiff chest piece and embroidered dragon robe, old sheng’s official robes, young sheng’s literary pleats.

Each costume was propped just so, water sleeves drooped, hems slightly flared, armor plates reflecting cold glints in the darkness.

But their postures were too creepy.

A crimson dragon robe’s left sleeve was slightly raised, frozen in a “hand-adjusting-sash” pose.

A water-sleeve’s fingertip curled as if holding an orchid-finger gesture.

A martial sheng’s four-rod banner was lifted back as if just finishing a turn, about to win thunderous applause.

Weapons on the floor added more menace.

A wooden “Green Dragon Crescent Blade” leaned against the wall, its blade piercing a dan-role face mask.

The mask was Yang Guifei’s heavy makeup; gold powder at the brow had flaked off. The blade entered through the right eye and exited the back of the head.

Two riding whips were tightly entangled in a sailor’s knot, the red tassels matted into a tangled mess.

At the corridor’s end leaned a waist-high pearwood-framed bronze mirror.

The frame carved entwined peonies, but the mirror surface was split from top to bottom by a jagged serrated crack.

The gap’s widest place could fit a finger.

The crack’s edges were dark red, like dried blood crusts.

On closer look, viscous liquid slowly seeped from the fissure, trickling down the mirror face.

Xu Erxiao stepped forward and lightly touched a floral dan cape nearest him with the peach-wood Yin-probing Ruler.

On the ruler’s twenty-four solar term scale, “Jingzhe,” “Bailu,” and “Shuangjiang” all glowed a ghostly green.

“There are three different ‘stage souls’ attached to this costume.”

Lu Yuan’s pupils contracted. He didn’t touch the garments but scanned the costumes of varied postures.

“Jingzhe is the nervousness of a debut,” he said. “Bailu is the loneliness of peak fame. Shuangjiang… is the sorrow of the final curtain.”

His voice cooled.

“The Wang family’s thoughts are poisonous!”

“They didn’t just raise a primary malevolence; they trapped the lingering grudges of performers who once played tragedies here, those who suffered humiliation, even those who died horribly, into these costumes with secret techniques.”

“Making those lonely ghosts and wandering spirits forever play supporting roles for that primary malevolence!”

Lu Yuan stepped to the cracked bronze mirror and stood sideways, avoiding direct gaze.

In their line, cracked mirrors hook souls.

He produced a small porcelain bottle, popped the cork, and tilted it.

A scarlet viscous liquid trickled slowly. It was a dispelling-puncture potion made from three-year rooster comb blood mixed with cinnabar and mugwort juice from the Dragon Boat noon, a concoction to break malevolence.

The blood-red fluid slid along the mirror frame’s peony carving, and at the fissure an abnormal phenomenon occurred.

Against expectation, the liquid didn’t run down the mirror. An invisible force drew it into the crack, vanishing without a trace.

At the same time the mirror emitted a faint sigh.

The sound was half-cry, half-laugh, the tail dragged out long and then blurred into a snatch of theatre verse:

“…living in this world… is like a spring dream…”

Lu Yuan: “?”

Like what?

“The mirror links yin and yang. Once this mirror cracked, it became a breach between the two realms.”

He stepped back one pace. His sleeve had unknowingly absorbed the mirror’s leaking yin energy; a thin frost had condensed on its fabric.

“The main entity should be in the stage’s interlayer.”

Lu Yuan turned to the center of the stage and said in a low voice, “Wang Cheng’an, find the mechanism.”

The three split up to investigate.

The narrow backstage was full of rotting costume trunks, broken dressing tables, and shattered paint jars.

Xu Erxiao checked the ground, Wang Cheng’an tapped walls, and Lu Yuan watched the beams and columns.

Fifteen minutes later, Xu Erxiao squatted at the “Nine-Dragon Mouth” in the stage center.

In the pear-garden argot, this was the protagonist’s entrance center point.

He tapped the floor with the Yin-probing Ruler; the echo was hollow and dull, different from anywhere else.

Below was hollow.

Prying the floor took effort.

The boards were sealed with a sticky black substance. Wang Cheng’an used a bronze dagger to carefully scrape it away; the iron-rust stench instantly intensified severalfold.

The moment the board was lifted, a rush of yin wind exploded from below!

The wind carried a sweet, cloying blood smell mixed with old silk and camphor’s rotten scent, making one almost vomit.

The interlayer space was narrow, only enough for a person to lie flat.

Inside lay a stage costume, still and quiet.

Its scarlet base embroidered with gold thread forming a spreading phoenix—officially a Guifei robe, but far more extravagant than any ordinary robe.

Three inches above the robe hung a palm-sized rhombus mirror.

The mirror faced down, aligned with the darkest spot of the bloodstain on the chest.

Strangely, the mirror reflected not the robe but a blurred female side profile.

She faced the mirror, combing, slowly smoothing waist-length hair with a wooden comb, stroke after stroke.

“Blood robe locks the soul, mirror image nurtures malevolence.”

Lu Yuan’s eyes sharpened. He declared:

“This is Mirror-Cloth Twin Malevolence.”

“The robe carries the resentment lodged in the flesh; the mirror gathers the soul’s fixation.”

“Breaking one will cause the other to instantly go berserk. To thoroughly resolve it, both must be dealt with simultaneously.”

He paused and scanned Xu Erxiao and Wang Cheng’an.

“Also, we need a ‘trigger.’”

“We need someone to draw that thing out of the mirror and robe, to temporarily separate them.”

…

At the hour of the rat, everything.

The moon hid behind cloud.

Chunhua Garden, inside and out, had no light, plunged into heavy blackness.

In the dead silence of the theater, not a single insect chirped.

Lu Yuan had changed into his outfit.

A plain white arrowed robe, crisp and upright.

No makeup marked his face, only a dot of cinnabar at the brow, a blood-red point.

This was a simplified rite to open the heavenly eye and also a beacon.

In the dark, it would tell that thing he was present.

Lu Yuan wasn’t a stage singer.

As a kid he never lingered over the blathering channels on TV.

But after crossing over and traveling with the old man through wild places, whenever they encountered a small troupe, the old man watched with great interest.

Lu Yuan accompanied him and gradually got into it too.

After all, there wasn’t much else to do these days.

He didn’t look back and stepped onto the stage.

Nine oil lamps on both sides of the stage had long since been lit.

The oil was tung oil mixed with rosin and mugwort dust; the flames burned steady and clear.

In this windless night, nine tongues of flame shot straight up, lighting the stage brightly.

At center stage stood an old incense table.

On it was a palm-high wooden statue of the pear-garden ancestor Tang Minghuang.

In front of the statue were three offerings:

A fresh peach, to ward off evil.

Three pieces of cake, offerings to the spirit.

A bowl of water, to purify the stage.

“Strike the gong.”

Lu Yuan nodded at Xu Erxiao by the side.

Xu Erxiao flicked his wrist.

“Dong—!”

The first gong stroke rang, a clear metallic tone exploding in the empty yard, the aftersound dragging and lingering.

“Dong—!”

The second stroke.

Lu Yuan walked slowly to the stage center, bowed to the empty audience seats and to that presence in the unseen, cupped his hands and made a deep bow.

He recited the lines aloud, each word distinct.

“Past makeup and paint, today’s cause and effect.”

“When the song begins, grievances are told.”

“All the lamps and candles in the hall shine for you,”

“When this segment ends, you shall cross the underworld river!”

The moment the last syllable fell, the nine lamp flames on stage surged upward by half a foot!

The fire’s color shifted from warm yellow to a cold, ghostly cyan.

From backstage, the corridor sealed by nets emitted a clear female sob.

That cry had been suppressed for decades, so bitter it had become thick as ink, finally finding a crack to vent.

Lu Yuan began.

His voice was not smooth, slightly raw, but each word came steady as if bearing a weight.

“The island moon first turns and soars,”

“See the jade rabbit, the jade rabbit early rises…”

This was the classic intro to The Drunken Concubine.

When he sang “the moon first turns and soars,” the backstage sobbing stopped.

When he sang “that moon leaves the island,” the air between the stage beams began to warp and congeal.

A pale blue female phantasm slowly formed.

She wore the full Guifei costume, hair ornaments, crimson dragon robe, cloud shoulders, jade belt, her figure voluptuous.

Her face was blurred, except for a pair of eyes startlingly clear.

Those eyes brimmed with decades-steeped obsession and hatred.

She was the dan who died here years ago—Xiao Xiangyu.

She floated midair, staring dreamily at Lu Yuan on stage, her fingers subconsciously marking the rhythm with light taps.

Lu Yuan continued; his timbre shifted into the “drunken” segment.

Xiao Xiangyu’s phantasm shuddered violently.

Two thick lines of blood tears slipped from her eye sockets.

This was no illusion.

Blood-tears hit the wooden stage with soft “tap, tap” sounds.

Each drop burned a thumb-sized char mark into the board, thin curls of azure smoke rising.

Sudden abnormality!

In the audience seats below, spots that had once been dilapidated were now filled with dense phantoms.

The front row wore long robes and buttoned jackets with melon hats.

The middle row were short-uniformed petty vendors.

The rear even included a few old-style uniformed soldiers.

All were “opera-fan lonely ghosts” attracted long-term by the site’s malevolent energy.

Now they lifted their heads in unison, eyes glowing an eerie green, swaying rhythmically to Lu Yuan’s lines in rapt fascination.

Some clapped empty hands.

Some opened black hollows for silent cheers.

A few greedily stretched necks, sniffing at the azure smoke rising from the blood-tear burns.

Xu Erxiao pounded the pacifying wood block.

“Dong! Dong! Dong!”

Three muffled thuds, like rolling thunder, made the phantoms’ forms warp as if reflection on water struck by stones.

But in just three breaths, the phantoms reformed, even more numerous.

They crawled from seat seams, clambered onto aisles, clung to windowsills.

Lu Yuan’s heart sank; he had to speed up.

He sang the core “lying-fish” move.

This is the full-play climax of The Drunken Concubine: the concubine bends to smell the flower, posture at the height of seductiveness and sorrow.

It was Xiao Xiangyu’s signature move—the final action she rehearsed when murdered.

At the instant Lu Yuan bent, Xiao Xiangyu’s phantasm suddenly fell!

No sound, no flash.

She silently attached to Lu Yuan’s back like a feather, her translucent form overlapping his.

Bone-deep cold shot through Lu Yuan!

Every pore tightened, limbs froze and numbed instantly.

Countless voices exploded in his ears—men and women, old and young, wailing and crying.

The clearest was a young woman’s whisper, full of endless venom and sorrow.

“Yang Yuhuan… your life is so bitter…”

“Your Majesty… Third Lord… why do you not come…”

“That cup of poisoned wine… so hot… so hot! My throat… burns through…”

“The mirror… why am I still smiling in the mirror…”

“The robe is so heavy… the blood soaks through… the gold thread digs into my flesh…”

The malevolent echoes resonated!

They were using Lu Yuan’s voice, body, and senses to relive the old hatred of being tortured and slaughtered!

Lu Yuan gritted his teeth. His tongue tasted of rust.

True Qi in his body surged; a scorching warm current rose from his dantian to fiercely protect the last sliver of clarity in his heart vein and spirit platform.

He held the lying-fish posture and sang the final lines.

His voice was hoarse now, which made the sorrow sound even deeper.

“Life in this world is like a spring dream…”

“Let us open our hearts and drink a few cups…”

As the trembling final note fell, Xiao Xiangyu’s phantasm floated off him.

She stood on the stage, blood-tears ceased, and the thick ink-like hatred in her eyes finally softened a bit.

She looked around dazed, as if waking from a nightmare spanning decades, not knowing the day or place.

Now!

Wang Cheng’an moved from the audience!

As Lu Yuan sang the last line, he had slipped into the stage interlayer like a civet.

Wearing special gold-thread gloves layered with gold leaf, cinnabar, and realgar in the palms, he grabbed the blood-stained Guifei robe.

The moment it left the floor, the robe writhed like a living thing!

Wang Cheng’an’s veins burst, he clutched it tight, reciting cleansing incantations; the robe’s thrashing eased a little.

At the same time, Xu Erxiao acted!

He tore off the thick velvet soaked in three-year rooster blood for seven days and nights and sun-dried forty-nine high-noon times.

Like a starving tiger pouncing, he wrapped the cracked bronze mirror completely with the cloth!

“Wuu—!!!”

A shriek burst from the mirror, ear-piercing—the sound of a thousand glass shards shattering!

Black, bloody stench gushed from the mirror’s crack, instantly soaking the velvet.

The yang energy on the rooster-blood cloth battled the mirror’s yin malevolence with fierce clashes.

A barrage of “popping” explosions locked all filth inside the cloth without a drop leaking!

Lu Yuan stepped down fast, his stride unsteady; aftereffects of malevolence possession made him shiver.

He took the still-quivering blood robe from Wang Cheng’an and moved to the courtyard center.

There stood an incense firewood arranged in a proper eight-trigram “Li” formation, the fire position facing south.

He spread the robe flat on the wood pile; its scarlet was painfully vivid in the night.

From his chest he took a brand-new small round bronze mirror, its back engraved with the ancient seal script for “Break Illusions Return to Truth.”

Holding the mirror in his left hand toward the robe, his right hand lit a fire tinder.

“Old dusted clothes of the mortal world, be purified by karmic fire.”

His voice was low but crystal clear in the silent night.

“Mirror flowers and watery moons, all return to empty clarity.”

He dropped the tinder.

“Burn!”

“Boom—!”

Flames surged skyward!

The blood robe writhed like a dying snake in the flames, spewing two clots of viscous black vapor.

The black vapor stretched and twisted into two lamenting phoenix shapes.

But the golden tally runes rising in the fire wrapped them tightly, dragging them back into the flames and consuming them!

As the blood burned it hissed oddly; smoke coalesced in the air into a fuzzy Peking opera face.

Yang Guifei’s drunk makeup, cheek rouge vivid as blood.

By the fire, the new bronze mirror in Lu Yuan’s hand changed its scene.

First shown were the dancing flames.

Then the flames cleared to reveal, in the mirror, a young woman with an ancient coiffure and delicate features.

She wore a plain pale-blue robe rather than the ornate Guifei gown.

Her face had no heavy makeup—only clean brows and eyes.

She looked at Lu Yuan with a faint smile.

In that smile were release, gratitude, and a touch of bashfulness.

She smoothed her robe, bowed in a standard ten-thousand-reverence salute.

After the bow she straightened and gradually faded.

The mirror returned to normal, reflecting only the dancing fire and Lu Yuan’s somewhat pale face.

On stage, Xiao Xiangyu’s phantasm had nearly become transparent.

Like dew in morning light, she was fragile.

She took a last look at the theater that had trapped her for decades—the peeling pillars, the faded embroidered curtains, the empty seats.

Then she turned toward the sunrise direction and slightly nodded.

Her form broke into countless blue light specks, as fine as dust, bright as stars.

They drifted on the night breeze, thinning until they dissolved into the black sky with no trace left.

The audience phantoms rose.

The melon-hatted elder bowed.

The short-clothed handyman clasped his fists in salute.

The uniformed ruffian awkwardly gave a military salute.

One by one their forms faded into pale ink washes.

The last to vanish was a little child with a top-knot braids in the front row.

He even turned back and waved hard at the now-empty stage before hopping and disappearing into the dark.

The seating returned to empty.

Only the broken chairs creaked softly in the night wind.

…

Phew~

Having finished it all, Lu Yuan couldn’t help but let out a long ragged breath.

Finally done.

He rubbed his waist—singing that long drama had twisted it.

He glanced at Xu Erxiao and Wang Cheng’an, who were already tidying things up, and felt pleased.

These two were getting more competent.

Soon they’d be able to lead a team on their own.

Lu Yuan then pulled an old brass pocket watch from his pocket and opened it.

Holy crap!

It was already two in the morning!

Those two grande aunts—wouldn’t they have frozen into popsicles out there?!