Chapter Fifty-Seven: Return

"Gone, vanished!"
Instinctively, I gazed into the void. The rift that the Underworld General had torn open was already gone without a trace. The place where the City of Wrongful Death once stood had become a stretch of yellow sand. If not for the Sin-Washing River still flowing behind me, I would have doubted whether we had been transported to another realm altogether.

"Yang, Lu Li!"
Only then did I remember my two brothers. Nearby, struggling out of a mound of sand, Lu Li and Wang Feiyang emerged, and upon seeing the scene before them, they were stunned into silence.

"What… what happened here?"
I took a deep breath and explained, "The old man Di Yi, to ensure the secret of the Underworld Emperor's Seal in my possession would never spread, used the power of the Yellow Spring Curse to forcibly tear open a fissure in the void and sucked the entire City of Wrongful Death into it!"

That was how I understood the situation. Though everything sounded utterly unbelievable, the facts before us left no room for denial.

For a moment, the three of us were quiet, staring at the spot where the city had vanished in a daze.

In my mind, images shifted constantly—my father, the Masked Marquis, the old Di Yi, that monkey, and even the pipa-playing woman we met at the city's entrance. Wang Biling's shadow also lingered in my thoughts, refusing to depart.

I never imagined that this journey to the City of Wrongful Death would bring such heart-stopping events. Wang Feiyang and Lu Li wore expressions much like mine, as if the strangeness was almost beyond comprehension.

Just then, the Sin-Washing River behind us suddenly surged with monstrous waves, and our faces changed.

"We need to leave at once. This space is collapsing. With an entire city swallowed by a spatial fissure, the Underworld cannot possibly be unaware. We must go—if the Underworld sends their soldiers to investigate, we cannot let them see us."

With those words, we leapt into the Sin-Washing River, retracing our path, emerging from the round iron gate beneath the eastern reservoir.

As I crawled out, the seven blood coffins and that round iron gate behind me visibly cracked, splintering into countless pieces.

The City of Wrongful Death had vanished, and the gateway to it disappeared as well. Now, among the one hundred and eight cities of wrongful death in the Underworld, only one hundred and seven remained.

Once the gate was gone, the spatial barrier beneath the reservoir shattered instantly, and water above poured down like a spring flood.

We held our breath and swam upward. Breaking the surface, the night was clear, the moon and stars sparse, and the silence around us was heavy with an eerie atmosphere.

I scanned the surroundings, but the little boat of the Daoist woman was nowhere in the center of the reservoir. While I searched for her, I spotted her drifting along the reservoir dam, dressed in a red turtleneck sweater and tight flared jeans.

Though everyone I'd met within the City of Wrongful Death had been ghosts, I hadn't felt the least bit afraid. Yet now, seeing the Daoist woman floating over the dam, my heart suddenly clenched.

It was just as the old saying goes: rarity is precious. Ghosts themselves are not terrifying; what matters is the time and place they appear.

On such a moonlit night, with unnatural silence all around, a female ghost drifting over the dam in what people called Dead Village—anyone who saw it would feel their skin crawl.

The Daoist woman had already spotted us in the center of the reservoir. She froze in place, her blood-red eyes fixed on us, and the half-ruined face—destroyed by Lu Li's talisman—twisted into a chilling smile.

"You're back. Did you bring the treasure?"
Her shrill, piercing voice echoed in my ears. None of us replied; instead, we swam quickly toward the shore.

Once ashore, my fear eased slightly. I nodded at the Daoist woman and said, "The treasure you wanted is the Underworld Emperor's Seal left by the Dark Prince, isn't it?"

She grinned with delight and stretched out her hand. "Give it to me."

"Where's my grandfather?" I looked about warily, finding no sign of him, and my heart tightened. "If you dare harm him, I'll destroy the Underworld Emperor's Seal right now."

She looked at me with a half-smile, as if she didn't believe I could destroy the seal. I sneered. "Do you really think I'm a fool? If I managed to acquire the seal from the City of Wrongful Death, do you think I'd hand it over without absolute certainty?"

I stared at her coldly. "Do you want to gamble? Bet whether I can destroy the seal?"

The Daoist woman laughed. "Boy, I know you wouldn't dare destroy it, and I'm no fool. Before you returned, I wouldn't have harmed your grandfather. My only goal is the seal, not your lives."

She pointed toward a patch of bamboo nearby. My grandfather was suspended from one of the giant stalks.

He was barely alive, his blood already dried. I couldn't even tell if he was dead or alive.

"Grandfather!"

I shouted and rushed toward him, but the Daoist woman swiftly blocked our path. "Hand over the seal."

Without hesitation, I threw the now-useless Underworld Emperor's Seal into her hands. She seemed to have a way to test its authenticity. As she took it, black veins crawled over her skin, and these veins, like vines, seeped out and wrapped the entire seal.

At first, I felt uneasy, but as I watched her expression grow more ecstatic, the stone in my heart finally fell. It seemed Di Yi hadn't deceived me: with her abilities, she could never realize that the seal was just a lump of scrap metal.

"Now can we go?"

She ignored me, clutching the seal and laughing madly. I rushed to my grandfather and freed him from the bamboo.

Fortunately, he still had a breath left. But remembering that he was actually using the body of the bus uncle, my anxiety eased somewhat.

"Grandfather, quickly stop the soul-borrowing technique. You've been cursed by the heavenly laws in the Yellow Spring Book, and this bus driver's body can't hold out much longer. Pull your soul out, and I'll find a way to send you to reincarnation in the Underworld!"

He managed a faint smile. "Having used the soul-borrowing technique, I can no longer enter reincarnation. Now, I can't separate my soul from this body."

Alarmed, I asked why. "If you remain in this body, your own three souls and seven spirits could be harmed."

My grandfather grew agitated. "Wu Dao, did you find a way to deal with the Daoist woman?"

"Yes," I nodded firmly.

He glanced at his watch. "There's little time. Quick—destroy her!"

I didn't know why he was suddenly so urgent, but I trusted his reasons. Turning to the Daoist woman, who was now nearly delirious with excitement over the seal, I bit hard into my fingertip.

"Yellow Spring Curse, whether you can eradicate this vengeful ghost, it all depends on you now!"

I pressed my hands together, forming the incantation, and with my bleeding fingertip, drew the totem of the Yellow Spring Curse in the air: "Endless Yellow Spring, boundless dark magic, eight wild prohibitions, five elements to slaughter the immortals!"