Chapter 30: Evil Reaps What It Sows

Throughout the process of cornering Zhang Dadao, Xie Sui had maintained constant contact with the Shijiao monks.

Only after they had exhausted nearly all of Zhang Dadao’s trump cards did Xie Sui enter the Yin-Yang Gap. He then had Liu Wuyong carry a talisman to find Zhang Dadao and lure him into the gap, completing the plan to catch a turtle in a jar¹.

Looking at the black-robed Daoist before him, the fury Xie Sui had suppressed in his heart for so long finally found an outlet.

At the thought of the children who had suffered through years of agonizing illness because of his use of Life-Swapping Talismans, and the souls of those children who could not escape their karmic burdens even in death, tormented by resentment…

Xie Sui looked at Zhang Dadao with a faint smile, the icy killing intent in his eyes completely undisguised.

Now was the time for vengeance, the moment for every grievance to be settled.

Because the entrance to the Yin-Yang Gap had been opened within the Tulou², the void of the gap shifted once again according to the changes in the physical environment.

This time, there was no paper-offering street like the one near Bihu Park, nor was there the void darkness and projections of Ghost Soldiers from the Hall of the Ten Yama Kings³ at Shikong Temple. Instead, there was only a mirror-like, blood-red space.

Several figures hovered in mid-air. Below them was a Tulou lit with red lanterns, and above them was an identical, inverted Tulou. The building hanging from the sky felt as if it could fall at any moment, creating an incredibly oppressive atmosphere.

The bloody light emitted by the red lanterns was the only source of light in this space. Caught between the two massive architectural complexes, the people looked as small as ants.

Xie Sui and Zhang Dadao stood between the two buildings, facing each other.

It was only now that Zhang Dadao managed to recover from the complex emotions brought on by Liu Wuyong’s betrayal.

Although he didn’t know why the prey he was hunting had appeared in the Yin-Yang Gap, or why this prey harbored such intense malice toward him…

None of that mattered.

What mattered was that damned traitor, Liu Wuyong!

Zhang Dadao was nearly losing his mind with rage over Liu Wuyong’s betrayal.

Even though Xie Sui appeared extremely dangerous, Zhang Dadao’s focus was not on him. Facing the murderous Xie Sui, he neither defended nor fled; instead, he directly triggered the Death Curse on Liu Wuyong.

No matter what danger he faced next, he had to kill that traitor Liu Wuyong first! He truly loathed this double-crosser who had wasted his trust.

However, after triggering the Death Curse, Zhang Dadao did not see the scene he expected.

He clearly sensed the curse being activated, yet Liu Wuyong showed no signs of pain. Instead, an unfamiliar, blood-colored talisman emerged on Liu Wuyong’s chest, shielding him from behind in a protective stance.

Sensing the aura emanating from that blood-colored talisman, Zhang Dadao froze. He instinctively looked at Xie Sui and let out an incredulous roar. “It’s you?! You’re the one who made this traitor turn on me? We are strangers with no grievances between us, why are you targeting me like this?” By the end, there was even a hint of grievance in his voice.

Xie Sui had no desire to waste words with this man, nor did he intend to give Zhang Dadao an explanation so he could die with understanding.

He only wanted Zhang Dadao dead.

The terrifying aura radiating from Xie Sui’s body climbed steadily, instantly silencing Zhang Dadao, who had wanted to say more.

Zhang Dadao bit his teeth, a hideous look of rage appearing on his face. “Don’t think that just because I’ve lost my ghosts and talismans, I’m at your mercy. You want to treat me like a pushover? You’d better check if you have the weight to pull it off.”

As his voice fell, red patterns slowly emerged on Zhang Dadao’s face. The red of these patterns was not a vibrant crimson, but a purplish-black, dark red that radiated an ominous aura.

Zhang Dadao was truly pushed to the brink. Radiating a desperate ruthlessness, he used his final trump card: he activated the Death Curses he had planted on all of his subordinates.

The Death Curse could do more than just control the life and death of others; it could also drain their life force to replenish the user, healing all wounds and providing a short-term empowerment.

Upon using this technique, Zhang Dadao became a living talisman. His body became impervious to fire and water, and he was immune to any sinister harm. Even the most ferocious vengeful ghost would have its soul shattered upon touching him.

This sorcery was based on the Death Curse, and its effects were similar to the Vajra Body Strengthening Technique of Shijiao, though its requirements were far bloodier than the Shijiao arts.

The price of using this technique was that everyone Zhang Dadao had branded with a Death Curse would die. This was power obtained by squeezing the life out of others.

Using this move meant Zhang Dadao was abandoning the entire foundation he had built over many years. Even if he managed to escape, he would have no subordinates left to use; everything would have to start from scratch.

Zhang Dadao’s eyes were bloodshot, filled with nothing but hatred. The moment the dark red patterns covered all of his exposed skin, he lunged at Xie Sui with a speed invisible to the naked eye, his muscular arm piercing directly through Xie Sui’s chest.

Before a triumphant sneer could fully form, Zhang Dadao suddenly realized that the chest he had pierced was merely an illusion.

Xie Sui had disappeared into this blood-red Yin-Yang Gap at some unknown moment.

As Zhang Dadao looked around in confusion, the inverted Tulou hanging in the sky suddenly vibrated slightly.

He instinctively looked up, and there, in the center of the hanging building’s courtyard, he saw a pair of massive, tightly closed eyes.

As Zhang Dadao stared at them, the giant eyes suddenly snapped open, revealing blood-colored Double Pupils.

The sudden appearance of those massive eyes felt like a terrifying monster from another dimension peering into this world. Before these eyes, Zhang Dadao was smaller than a speck of dust. It felt as though that terrifying existence could crush him as easily as flicking a finger.

Zhang Dadao stared blankly at the massive blood-colored Double Pupils, seemingly forgetting where he was and what he was supposed to do.

The blood flowing within those giant eyes seemed to condense all the malice and resentment of the world. It was like a massive vortex, and any soul burdened with sin would find itself uncontrollably drawn into its depths.

The Blood-colored Double Pupils blinked softly. In the sky, the inverted tulou trembled once more. Countless cracks spiderwebbed across the ochre earthen walls, and blood gushed from the fissures like spring water, instantly staining the entire structure crimson.

Zhang Dadao’s eyes were dyed red along with it.

Bloody tears streamed from his eyes, yet he remained staring fixedly at the sky. He was completely unable to look away, and he didn’t dare to.

While Xie Sui was unilaterally beating Zhang Dadao, Liu Wuyong hadn’t been idle either.

With immense professional dedication, he had pulled a small camera affixed with talismans from his backpack. Using extremely professional camera movements, he began filming within the Yin-Yang Gap.

As a qualified video platform blogger, one had to possess eyes that could discover material anytime and anywhere. A grand spectacle like this, where heaven and earth served as a mirror, was not to be missed.

Trying to recreate such a scene with special effects would certainly cost a fortune. Looking at it from another perspective, if he captured it now, it was essentially picking up free money.

Last time in the Yin-Yang Gap of the Ten Kings of Hell Hall at Shikong Temple, Liu Wuyong had failed to record anything because he hadn’t brought a camera. He couldn’t let it slip away again.

While his former boss and current boss were locked in a “deeply emotional gaze” and remained motionless, Liu Wuyong busily took low-angle and high-angle shots, capturing this Yin-Yang Gap from every possible perspective.

What made Liu Wuyong stop was the dull thud of a heavy object hitting the ground.

Liu Wuyong turned his head to look. He saw Zhang Dadao’s body lying on the ground, bleeding from all seven orifices, devoid of any life force. His soul floated blankly above the corpse, seemingly having lost all consciousness.

Xie Sui closed his eyes, waiting a moment before walking over to Zhang Dadao’s soul.

Looking at the vacant spirit, Xie Sui frowned. “Something’s not right…”

The Blood-colored Double Pupils appeared in Xie Sui’s eyes once more. He casually picked up the soul of a child and brushed his fingertip across the translucent form. A strand of black resentment detached from the soul, coiling around his pale fingertip.

Xie Sui waved the finger wreathed in resentment next to Zhang Dadao’s soul, but the resentment on his fingertip showed no reaction.

“It doesn’t match.”

Seeing this, Xie Sui simply released all the little ghosts within his body.

Forty-nine transparent, short figures stood obediently in a row before Xie Sui. Following his instructions, they walked up to Zhang Dadao’s soul one by one.

There were only eight child souls whose karmic hindrances could be transferred back to Zhang Dadao. The sins and resentment on the other souls did not belong to Zhang Dadao.

Xie Sui knew that many children had died because of Life-Swapping Talismans. It was impossible for Zhang Dadao to have done it all alone. Even if Zhang Dadao were a man-eating ogre who killed every single day, he couldn’t have accumulated sins and resentment on this scale.

However, when he had searched Zhang Dadao’s memories earlier, he hadn’t found any other evil cultivators using Life-Swapping Talismans. A portion of Zhang Dadao’s memory was blurred and indistinct, as if someone had deliberately obscured it.

Xie Sui sighed softly. Forget it, he would deal with the matters related to Zhang Dadao first.

He extracted all the karmic hindrances from those eight children and threw them all onto Zhang Dadao’s soul.

Miasma as thick as ink instantly stained Zhang Dadao’s soul black. Then, without Xie Sui needing to do anything else, an exceptionally cold aura suddenly erupted within this blood-colored space.

A pitch-black rift, seemingly originating from the abyss, opened in front of Zhang Dadao’s soul. Countless tentacles formed from gathered Yin Qi surged out of the rift like hunting pythons, biting firmly onto Zhang Dadao’s soul and dragging it into the deepest darkness.

Xie Sui watched everything unfold with indifference.

He wondered how many centuries these sins would keep that fellow Zhang Dadao rolling in the frying pans of the Eighteen Levels of Hell⁴.

After settling Zhang Dadao, Xie Sui and Liu Wuyong left the Yin-Yang Gap and returned to reality.

The moment they returned, the first thing they saw were eighteen martial monks from Shikong Temple standing in a neat row nearby. Each of them held several ghost creatures in their hands, looking as though they had reaped a bountiful harvest.

The incident in Xiangcheng had finally come to a close.

With Zhang Dadao dead, the forces under him had been almost entirely wiped out by Xuanmen. At this critical juncture, no evil cultivator would be foolish enough to jump out and become a target.

The children at the orphanage were safe for the time being. After handling the remaining matters in Xiangcheng, Xie Sui took Liu Wuyong and Xiao Wu back to Zhaoping City.

It had been a week since Xie Sui reported Daoist Kunyang. He still had thirty thousand yuan in bounty money and five thousand yuan in bravery rewards waiting at the Zhaoping City Inspectorate Bureau.

Furthermore, Xie Sui needed to return to his rented house to take another eight little ghosts from the ash urns and place them in his body.

After those eight little ghosts had cleared all the karmic hindrances from their souls in the Yin-Yang Gap, they had gone directly from there to the underworld to be reincarnated. Xie Sui now had eight empty spaces in his body.

Over the past few days, the merit from those little ghosts successfully reincarnating had been continuously gathering on Xie Sui, helping him repair his body, which had deteriorated due to the Shiduo Hariti.

Liu Wuyong, who had followed Xie Sui back to Zhaoping City, also rented a house in the urban village to serve as their temporary studio. To save money, Liu Wuyong and Xiao Wu both slept and edited videos in this house.

Their previous studio had been Zhang Dadao’s property, and it had likely been seized by Xuanmen and the Law Enforcement Team by now. Fearing he would be treated as Zhang Dadao’s accomplice, Liu Wuyong didn’t dare return there casually. Fortunately, he usually carried his filming equipment and computer with him, so he wouldn’t have to start from zero.

After collecting his reward from the Inspectorate Bureau, Xie Sui stopped by the house Liu Wuyong had rented as he passed by.

The house they rented was similar to Xie Sui’s home, with almost no natural light, but the advantage was that the rent was exceptionally cheap.

Before the room was even cleaned, Liu Wuyong was already hunched over a desk made of stacked cardboard boxes, diligently editing a video.

In the past, he had been working for a boss. Even if he posted more videos, he only earned two thousand yuan a month, so Liu Wuyong would procrastinate as much as possible and wasn’t proactive about filming at all.

But things were different now. The “Horror Old Liu” account belonged entirely to him. The more he filmed, the more he earned; if he didn’t film, he earned nothing. Liu Wuyong was now full of drive, wanting to upload another video as soon as possible.

The room was not large. Xie Sui took a look around but didn’t see Xiao Wu. “Old Liu, where’s Xiao Wu?”

Seeing that it was Xie Sui who had entered, Liu Wuyong went back to burying his head in video editing. “He went out to buy food. Boss, did you come over because you need something from us?”

Xie Sui replied, “Yeah, I’m planning to do a livestream in a couple of days. I might need your help.” There was still a month before that supernatural exploration variety show started filming. He couldn’t just sit around doing nothing for a whole month and exhaust his savings.

Liu Wuyong’s spirits lifted. “We’re thinking along the same lines! I’ve been editing videos these past few days. Boss, just wait a bit. Let me post the videos first before you start the livestream. I’ll use the videos to drive traffic to your channel.”

“Sure, no rush, take your time. I still need to train Yawu-po a bit. At the very least, I need to make it behave in front of the camera.”

The material Xie Sui had prepared for the next livestream was the Yawu-po he had caught in Xiangcheng not long ago – the hyena-shaped urban legend that had been clinging to Zhang Shengrui’s back and had a penchant for eating children.

Yawu-po was neither a ghost nor a spirit; it was more like a monster condensed from human negative emotions. This was Xie Sui’s first time dealing with one. To make it obedient in front of a livestream camera, Xie Sui needed to break it in first.

“Don’t go to all that trouble. Boss, you should just livestream yourself training the dog. That’s exactly what audiences love to see these days,” Liu Wuyong said without looking up from his computer.

Something felt a bit off…

Xie Sui really wanted to say that it wasn’t a dog, but a Yawu-po… Forget it. Judging by its appearance, a Yawu-po really wasn’t that different from a dog. It was just a slightly more ferocious-looking one.

“But…” Xie Sui’s voice was a bit hesitant. “But if I don’t train it beforehand, the Yawu-po might cause some kind of accident during the stream. If the stream crashes and burns…”

“Boss, you don’t understand. What we want is an accident. We want it to go off the rails.” Liu Wuyong finished the task at hand and turned his chair around to face Xie Sui.

Liu Wuyong spoke with the tone of an experienced veteran. “With your strength, Boss, you can easily suppress that Yawu-po. As long as no one dies, a livestream accident isn’t really an accident. Even if people report us for using ghosts in a livestream, we can just insist it’s special effects. As long as nothing actually happens, they won’t find any evidence.”

He looked very experienced. No doubt his [Horror Old Liu] account had been reported many times for its supernatural videos over the years.

“Think about it, Boss. Livestreams need ‘entertainment value’ to keep an audience. If it’s just a well-trained dog performing tricks, what’s the point? People who want to see animals up close can go to the zoo, and those who want to see animal tricks can go to the circus. Why would they have to watch your livestream?”

When it came to his area of expertise, Liu Wuyong clearly became more talkative.

“The selling point of your livestream is ‘supernatural occurrences.’ Audiences have a sense of curiosity. As long as we push that selling point to the extreme, we don’t have to worry about losing viewers.”

Liu Wuyong gave Xie Sui a reliable thumbs-up. “Anyway, Boss, wait for me to warm up the crowd for you. The video I filmed in the Yin-Yang Gap is almost finished. Check it later to see if there’s anything that can’t be broadcast. If it’s fine, I’ll post it tomorrow. My million followers weren’t gained by posting low-quality content. I’ll definitely make sure your next livestream is a massive hit the moment it starts.”

Translator’s Notes