Chapter 125: The Internal Strife of Yore

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We watched as Grandpa approached the stone coffin. Fatty had fought it before, and to be honest, the encounter had been perilous beyond words. The Corpse King of the Luo River inside it had always been regarded as a river god. Yet before Grandpa, the stone coffin was extraordinarily calm. Grandpa abandoned the boat and leaped onto the coffin. Then he simply sat there, and from beginning to end, the coffin did not move.

Grandpa remained seated as the stone coffin slowly sank into the water, his figure disappearing with it little by little. At that moment, the bloody hue in the full moon overhead gradually faded. The waters of the Luo River, which had just receded, began rising once more. Before long, the water reached our ankles and swallowed the entire altar.

Uncle Zhu pulled over the boat Grandpa had been sitting in and hauled Big Brother and me aboard. Then he rowed us back to the surface. Once we emerged, the villagers who had been celebrating moments earlier merely stared at us in silence. Old Liu, meanwhile, led Tang Renjie and the others away with a gloomy expression. Chen Dongfang and Li Qing had already rowed into the river to retrieve the Demonic Overlord, whose attempted sacrifice on the raft had failed.

As soon as we reached shore, my mother threw herself into my arms. Han Xue’s eyes were red as well. I patted my mother’s back and said, “Mom, it’s all right now. Everything’s all right.”

A walked over to us. He glanced at Big Brother and me before saying, “Actually, this turned out just as Sixth Master expected. The old man has become the greatest Corpse King in the Luo River. With him down there, anyone who wants to descend and covet what lies beneath will have a difficult time.”

“He isn’t a Corpse King. He’s alive.” I looked at A.

A nodded and smiled. “That’s true.”

Fatty was staring at me in bewilderment. “That’s it? It’s over already? Fatty’s Pure Yang Formation hasn’t even been put to use!”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Isn’t it better that you didn’t have to use it?”

Then I turned and looked behind me. The surface of the river had gradually returned to its former stillness. The secrets of the Twelve Ghost Caves had once again been buried beneath the water. From this day onward, the caves would no longer be home to tens of thousands of resentful spirits. Instead, they would shelter my grandfather, a man of the Ghost Path.

Amid the crowd, I caught sight of Chen Shitou. The man who had sacrificed even himself to the Yellow River Corpse King had unquestionably sparked an absurd farce. I had intended to call Little Wang and have them come arrest him, since he was, after all, responsible for Third Grandpa’s death. But at that moment, I no longer had the strength to concern myself with him.

We returned home. After the knot in Big Brother’s heart had finally loosened, this was the first time he had been willing to enter the house and sit down. Even so, he seemed unable to emerge from the matter of Grandpa. His entire expression was vacant and dazed.

It was already the middle of the night. The villagers, exhausted after staying awake all night, had gone home. A and Chen Dongfang had not come with us. That left only Han Xue, Big Brother, Uncle Zhu, Fatty, my mother, and me. In a sense, we were the team that remained.

This time, when Uncle Zhu returned, he was no longer as helpless as before. Perhaps now that everything that was meant to happen—and everything that was not—had happened, he no longer had any reason to hold back.

Fatty asked him, “Weren’t you taken away by Tang Renjie? How did you get out?”

“It was Uncle Ye,” Uncle Zhu replied.

Fatty nodded. If Grandpa had intervened to rescue him, Tang Renjie naturally could not have stopped him.

The burns Uncle Zhu had suffered the last time had left him covered in scars. After pouring tea for all of us, he said, “Now that matters have come this far, there is no longer any need for me to conceal certain things about the Twelve Ghost Caves from you.”

“That’s more like it,” Fatty said. “I realized ages ago that you knew everything. You should have told us long ago!”

Uncle Zhu smiled. “In truth, I don’t know much. The Old Master of the Chen family—Chen Dongfang’s grandfather—once told me the other half of the secret behind the Dragon Head Stele. It concerned the feud between the Chen and Ye families. You probably know the story already. Fudi Ravine was originally where the Ye family had lived for generations. Chen Jinzhi, an ancestor of the Chen family, nearly slaughtered the entire Ye clan before seizing this place for himself.”

I nodded. “I heard that from Big Brother. That’s exactly what happened.”

Uncle Zhu shook his head. “That is how it appears on the surface, but it isn’t the truth. The Chen family once possessed an ancient book written by Chen Jinzhi. It did indeed say that he had exterminated the Ye family in order to seize the fortune that belonged to them in Fudi Ravine. But Ye Zi, have you ever considered this? Your Ye family had been practitioners of the Ghost Path for generations. Why would you have needed to summon Chen Jinzhi to deal with the Corpse King in the Twelve Ghost Caves?”

“The Ye family were already practitioners of the Ghost Path back then?” I asked in shock. If that was true, then the entire story could be overturned.

“Not all of them. Although the Ghost Path has never had many inheritors, its traditions are usually passed down within families. Only one person inherits them in each generation. Unlike other clans, the practitioner of the Ghost Path within a family does not necessarily have to be its head. He might even be a servant. Such a person is responsible for preserving the family’s entire Ghost Path lineage and chooses the individual most suited to cultivating its secret arts to whom the knowledge will be passed.

“The Ye family was like that. Their presence in Fudi Ravine was, in truth, merely to guard the Twelve Ghost Caves. The arrival of the Chen family, and Chen Jinzhi’s slaughter of the Ye clan, was actually the result of an internal conflict within the Ghost Path. Chen Jinzhi himself was a practitioner of the Ghost Path. That is why you will find that your Third Grandpa also knew certain spells.”

“An internal conflict?” I asked, frowning. My head felt as though it were spinning.

“You could call it a minor disturbance. It was suppressed very quickly. After the Ghost King of the Ghost Path vanished in those days, a number of its inheritors joined forces, hoping to seize the treasures of the Ghost Path. In the end, several great Ghost Path families used the Ghost King’s written decree to crush the rebellion.

“Chen Jinzhi was one of the rebels. After members of the Chen family’s ruling line—the direct descendants of Chen Jinzhi—died, they would be carried away by paper men, paper horses, and stone coffins. Their souls would sink into the darkness of an endless night. That was the Ghost Path’s punishment for those traitors.

“That is the other half of the secret behind the Dragon Head Stele that the Old Master of the Chen family told me.”

“What exactly is the Ghost Path? Why do traces of it appear everywhere?” I asked. I was genuinely beginning to wonder. It would be one thing if such a sect had existed in ancient times, but why were people still talking about the Ghost Path now?

“I don’t know. You should ask Fatty. He knows more about it than anyone.”

Uncle Zhu turned to Fatty.

Fatty scratched his head. “That’s all you know? Fatty thought you had some explosive revelation. So after all that, you were just trying to get information out of me!”

“Go on, Fatty,” I said. “When all is said and done, you’re the one with the most secrets. Tell us.”

Fatty lit a cigarette and sighed. “I definitely can’t tell you everything in detail right now. Let me put it this way. After the end of the Qing dynasty, the emperor was gone. In the past, when one imperial star fell, another would rise. In plain terms, it meant that when one flower bloomed, another would wither. That was what people called the succession of dynasties.

“But at that time, the celestial omens were shrouded in chaos. The imperial star of the Qing had fallen, yet no new imperial star rose in its place. How could the realm function without an emperor? Still, not a single cultivator in the world could see the direction the future would take. Even my own sect was unable to deduce the shape of things to come.

“After the Qing dynasty, the foreign powers first carved up the country, and then the warlords fought among themselves. The common people suffered terribly. After years of warfare, the celestial patterns gradually began to reveal a few clues. Later, when the Japanese invaded, everything became even clearer.

“At that time, my sect chose to support the southern side, while the Ghost Path, which had never involved itself in political struggles, chose to support the other side. You’ve seen the result yourselves. In that contest, my sect lost by a single move. I won’t say anything more, but from this alone, you should understand how powerful the Ghost Path is.”

Fatty’s explanation may or may not have made sense to the others, but remembering what he had told me before, I understood the general outline. I asked curiously, “Then what happened afterward? Why does your sect seem so powerful now, while the Ghost Path—no matter how formidable you claim it is—appears to me like nothing more than a private organization?”

“They were too rigid,” Fatty replied. “Some people wanted the treasures of the Ghost Path, but the Ghost Path refused to surrender them, so they broke apart. The Ghost Path could dominate in the age of cold weapons, but the world is no longer the same. The times have changed, and many things have changed with them.”

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