Chapter 093: Each Has Its Own Way, Yet All Roads Lead to the Same End

Buddhism has its own way of delivering the dead, and Daoism has its own methods.

As for us from Wild Maoshan, we have a method that belongs only to us.

Since we were already at the cemetery, finding tools was fairly easy.

Take coffin nails, for example. These days everyone mostly uses urns, so coffin nails are no longer needed and have mostly been left lying around.

When Song Zhong saw how certain I sounded, he told me to see how I was going to talk my way out of it later, and warned me not to come begging him for help if I ended up haunted by wronged spirits that night.

Song Zhong was hoping to see me make a fool of myself, so when I said I needed to prepare some tools, he was more than happy to help.

Of course, I paid for it all myself.

I bought two mountains of gold and silver, meaning paper ingots, ghost money, and incense candles. I also got quite a lot of burial clothes and spirit houses. Most importantly, I had Song Zhong get me forty-nine coffin nails.

I roughly estimated the distance, using the large boulder in the hollow as the center, and drove forty-nine coffin nails into the ground to form a huge circle.

Then I took red thread stained with rooster’s blood and tied every coffin nail together.

The paper ingots, ghost money, incense candles, burial clothes, and spirit houses were scattered by me to every corner inside that circle.

Seeing me set everything up, Song Zhong stood off to the side, watching with obvious disdain. “Hmph! So all you’re doing is buying these things and burning them for the dead, and you call that delivering souls?”

I ignored him. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and I could not handle soul release with the same effortless ease as Yu Nie.

What I was doing was called the Soul-Delivering Rebirth Formation. It required offerings, an altar, and a soul-guiding incantation.

Taking a deep breath, I looked at the sky as it gradually darkened and knew I had to move faster.

I spread a yellow cloth over the boulder, took a blank ancestral tablet from my backpack, and then took out a blank talisman. After biting open my finger, I wrote the four characters for the True Lord of the Three Mao Peaks in blood.

In front of it, I placed the ritual tablet and an incense burner, with seven sticks of soul-guiding incense planted inside.

When I was done, I stretched and clapped my hands.

All the while, Song Zhong had been standing nearby watching without offering to lend a hand.

“Hmph! Just putting on an act and playing sorcery!”

There was no point saying more in response to Song Zhong’s doubts.

I looked at him, thought it over for a moment, then took a talisman from my pocket and held it between two fingers as I walked up to him.

“What... what are you doing!”

I did not answer. Instead, my fingertip trembled, and the talisman instantly burst into a ball of talisman fire. I caught the flame and slapped it into the center of Song Zhong’s brow.

“By command!”

Song Zhong’s eyes flew wide, and he instinctively took a few steps back. He reached up and touched his forehead, only to find that nothing had happened.

At that moment I took a cigarette from the pack in my pocket, put one in my mouth, and lit it with a lighter.

“I’m helping you open your sight so you can see the people you want to help in a moment.”

Song Zhong gave a contemptuous snort. “Hmph! I don’t need your help! I can see them myself!”

I could only smile and shake my head helplessly. How could an ordinary person possibly see ghosts?

The ghosts he saw were not real. They were merely the forms taken by nameless wandering spirits, shaped according to what Song Zhong imagined in his heart.

Since I had already opened his sight, I paid him no more mind and sat cross-legged in front of the makeshift altar, smoking quietly.

Minute by minute, the moon climbed higher, and the cold wind blew through in gusts that seemed to seep straight into the bones.

It was already nearing summer. By all rights, this should have been the season when insects, rats, and other creatures on the mountain were at their most active, yet not even the chirping of a single bug could be heard here.

“You’re really going all out. No wonder a little brat like you managed to fool an old fox like Song Baoguo!”

I glanced at Song Zhong, who was still talking nonsense from the side, and after lighting the seven sticks of soul-guiding incense on the altar, I tossed the lighter to him.

“Do me a favor. When I tell you to light them later, help me set fire to all those paper ingots, incense candles, ghost money, spirit houses, and burial clothes.”

I was not asking for his opinion. I had already said it.

Song Zhong caught the lighter and was just about to speak when he saw me press my palms together and rapidly change hand seals.

“There is no thought in life, no form in death; all is but a wisp of smoke scattered through the mortal dust. Yin returns to the earth, yang returns to all things, with no attachments, no burdens, only a bowl of bitter soup by the bridge.”

“Wandering souls have no place to return. When cause and effect take root in the earth, I, Jiang Huai, disciple of Wild Maoshan, now touch the chain of cause and effect and use my own self to deliver these solitary souls. I respectfully invite the Three Mao True Lord to open the altar and bestow the method. Swiftly, as the law decrees!”

The words had barely fallen when I spread my hands, and two talismans appeared in my palms at once.

“Open! Open! Open!”

Talisman fire ignited at my fingertips, and with both hands I flicked the flames outward in front of me.

The two flames struck the red thread that linked the coffin nails, and the thread immediately burst into flames.

At first glance, Song Zhong and I looked as though we were standing inside a ring of fire.

“Pah! Child’s play. You must be from some acrobat troupe!”

I could not understand how Song Zhong managed to connect me with an acrobat troupe.

But very soon, the disdain in his eyes slowly widened.

Because the color of the fire ring surrounding us began to change.

The scarlet flames gradually turned a ghostly green, and the heat that had been making the place feel oppressive vanished in an instant. Instead, standing within that green fire ring, one felt a chill that rose from the very depths of the heart.

A gust of阴风 swept past, and I shuddered all over. Looking up, I saw dozens of figures drifting in from all directions.

I could not make out their faces. They moved quickly, yet with a stiff, wooden quality.

In the blink of an eye, they were standing at Song Zhong’s side and mine.

By the eerie green firelight, I could now see their faces clearly.

Some were covered in festering boils, while black maggots writhed across others’ features.

Some had even lost the entire lower half of their faces, as though something had gnawed them away, leaving behind rows of jagged bite marks.

I was all right, but when I looked at Song Zhong, though he made no big movements, his slightly trembling hands and the cold sweat beading on his forehead had already betrayed him.

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