Dragon Mountain Temple of the Forsaken Tombs 19: The Resentful Spirits

At dawn, Li Xintian had already left Shuimen County, carrying a small bundle on his back, a wooden gourd at his waist, traveling light on his journey.

At the Li residence.

“Madam, our Tian’er left as soon as the day broke,” Li Qizong informed Chen Shuxia upon receiving the news.

“Husband…” As soon as Chen Shuxia heard Li Xintian’s name, she covered her face and began to weep.

“All right, that rascal! How dare he make you cry, madam? When he comes back, if he hasn’t brought home a daughter-in-law, I’ll break his legs myself and make him settle down and start a family,” Li Qizong slapped the table and put on a stern face.

“What!” Chen Shuxia’s voice rose louder than his, “You think you can lay a finger on my precious son? Have you lost your mind?”

Li Qizong shrank back, chuckled awkwardly, and said, “Madam, don’t be angry, don’t be angry. I’ll go check on Yun’er and see if that boy is awake yet.” With that, he made a hasty exit—Li Shangyun was still sleeping soundly, poor lad.

Only after Li Qizong left did Chen Shuxia’s tears give way to a smile. She wiped the corners of her eyes. She, too, was putting on a show—deep down, all she wished for was Li Xintian’s safety.

Li Xintian soon grew impatient with the slow pace of walking. By late morning, he had covered half the day’s journey and found himself drawing near a village of the Chen family.

“Excuse me, elder, is there a place here where I can buy a horse?” Li Xintian asked as he entered the Chen family village. He encountered an elderly man, straw hat on his head, carrying branches of a lychee tree across his shoulders. There were bloodstains on the old man’s chest. Li Xintian assumed the old man had injured himself while chopping the branches, so he offered him five copper coins.

The old man said nothing, simply pointed ahead and walked off without accepting the money.

Li Xintian glanced in the direction indicated and, when he turned back, the old man was already gone.

As he walked, Li Xintian felt an eerie chill about the Chen family village, though he could not say precisely what was amiss. All the houses flanking the road were tightly shut, even though it was broad daylight, nearly noon.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed Li Xintian and pulled him aside.

He turned to see a man dressed like a beggar, who pressed a finger to his lips in a gesture for silence and pointed outside.

Li Xintian glimpsed a fleeting figure—a resentful female ghost, her face twisted in hatred, drifting to the very spot where he had stood moments before. She continued floating forward without pause. Had the beggar not yanked him aside, she would have drawn perilously close. The encounter startled Li Xintian, but it was the beggar’s sudden action that gave him the greater fright.

Though Li Xintian possessed upright, righteous energy and was well-versed in martial arts, he was not invulnerable. At best, malevolent spirits could not approach him too closely.

“You’re from outside the village?” the beggar asked once the vengeful spirit had drifted away.

“Yes, I came to the village hoping to buy a horse,” Li Xintian replied. “My name is Li Xintian, courtesy name Zhixian. May I ask your name, and thank you for your help just now?”

“No need,” the beggar said, turning to Li Xintian. “This place is dangerous. You’d best leave at once. There’s scarcely anyone left—most were killed by her.”

As he finished speaking, blood trickled from the beggar’s mouth. The vengeful spirit had returned, her hand thrust through the beggar’s back, clutching a still-beating heart. The beggar looked down in despair at his chest, feeling life ebbing away.

The spirit withdrew her hand. The beggar collapsed, and she crushed the heart in her grasp, greedily drinking its blood.

Li Xintian watched as a life was snuffed out in an instant. He drew his brush, infused it with righteous energy, and wrote the character for "sword." At once, dozens of sword-shaped manifestations of pure energy hurtled toward the vengeful spirit.

She shrieked, her eyes blood-red, but did not flee. Others had tried to exorcise her before, only to become fuel for her power—none could vanquish her. By now, nearly the entire village had fallen to her wrath, save for the one person she could not yet let go: her grandmother.

The swords pierced her spectral form. A terrible scream echoed through the Chen family village as she gradually dissolved into white mist, which drifted skyward, leaving only a pool of blood on the ground.

Li Xintian drew a deep breath. In a world teeming with gods and ghosts, human life was cheap indeed.

“Young man, what a tragedy…” An old woman, leaning heavily on her stick and already halfway to her grave, approached Li Xintian and spoke.

“Grandmother, why do you say so?” Li Xintian asked, seeing that she had little time left in this world.

The old servant recounted the tale: the vengeful spirit Li Xintian had just destroyed was her granddaughter—a young woman famed for her beauty in the Chen family village. Many had sought her hand, but the local scholar-official had set his sights on her, seeking to make her his concubine. The old woman’s granddaughter refused, and so the official abducted and violated her.

The two lived alone, the granddaughter and grandmother. When they sought help from the village chief and neighbors, they were met with slander and abuse. The villagers turned the truth upside down, accusing the young woman of seducing the official and labeling her immoral.

They even echoed the official’s words, saying that had he not suppressed the matter, reported it to the authorities, she would have been imprisoned and flogged. In ancient times, a woman’s virtue was lost the moment she entered prison, subject to further humiliation from jailers and criminals alike.

Despairing of justice, with neither money nor influence to press charges, the old woman’s granddaughter was driven to her death by the villagers’ cruelty and became a vengeful spirit. Her first act of revenge was directed at the scholar-official, who died a grisly death. Next, she turned on all who had aided him, young and old alike. Only her grandmother, whom she could not bear to harm, remained.

The beggar had been spared until the end, for he had not been involved, but by then, her rage had become mindless and indiscriminate. Only one voice remained in her heart: her beloved grandmother.

When the old servant finished her story, she did not linger. She returned to her house, lay down in her coffin, and prepared to join her granddaughter. Thus, the entire village was ruined by those who had smothered their own consciences.

Li Xintian surveyed the Chen family village and found no survivors. He set fire to the place, his heart heavy. Had he not come seeking a horse, he would never have witnessed such cruelty. In a world like this, reason had no place.

Had Li Xintian not arrived, the village would have become a den of ghosts, for the vengeful spirit’s only remaining memory—her grandmother—had little time left. In the end, her killing would have grown even more frenzied.

He could well imagine the despair and helplessness shared by the grandmother and granddaughter in their final days. “May they find each other in another world,” Li Xintian murmured, shielding his eyes from the blinding sun as he walked away from the ruins.

Behind him, if one looked closely, they could see the old servant and her granddaughter reunited at last, smiles upon their faces as they waved farewell to Li Xintian, as if in gratitude.