# 364
**Chapter 364: Shattered Fengdu**
"Ghosts?" Li Deyang frowned, clearly skeptical. "What ghosts?"
Baili Pangpang, monocle perched on his nose, lips trembling, pointed all around them.
"That tree over there—there’s a female ghost peeking out, staring at us…
And, Li… Uncle Li… on your back… there’s a little boy with no eyes hanging…"
Li Deyang’s burly frame convulsed; his face went paper-white. He slapped wildly at his shoulders, trying to knock the filth away.
"Any more?" he asked frantically.
"He… he’s climbed onto your head… he’s yanking your hair!!"
"…"
Li Deyang’s eyes bulged. He scrubbed his scalp desperately. Black strands turned silvery-white and drifted down; in moments his hair was half gone.
Cao Yuan’s brows knitted. He snatched the prayer beads from Baili Pangpang’s hand and began chanting over Li Deyang.
Li Deyang felt his scalp lighten, a boundless relief flooding him; the hair finally stopped falling, though several silver threads now threaded the black.
Cao Yuan exhaled, turned—and found Baili Pangpang glaring.
"So, Old Cao, still insisting you’re no monk?"
Cao Yuan: …
"I just recited a sutra the Golden Cicada Master taught me," he shrugged. "When I can’t control the Black King inside me, that passage steadies my mind."
"Didn’t you say ghosts normally avoid the living?" An Qingyu asked, puzzled.
Cao Yuan hesitated. "They shouldn’t… Could the yin energy here be so thick the spirits have gone berserk?"
Baili Pangpang patted his shoulder. "Old Cao, your cultivation’s still lacking!"
"…" Cao Yuan rolled his eyes. "You can see them—what happened when I chanted?"
Baili Pangpang thought. "When you held the beads and chanted, golden dots appeared on the little ghost clinging to Uncle Li. He turned translucent and vanished…"
Cao Yuan lowered his head, pondering.
Just then Baili Pangpang’s face changed; he half-stepped back.
"Bad news, though…"
"What?"
"After you finished, the two ghosts watching us… both floated right up to your face."
Cao Yuan froze; the temperature plummeted, biting cold gnawing at his bones. He paled, beads already spinning in renewed chant.
When the chill finally dispersed, he relaxed, mouth parched.
"Gone?" he rasped.
Baili Pangpang’s expression turned even stranger. "Well… those two are gone, but down that street a dozen more are charging straight at us…"
Cao Yuan’s face whitened; the back of his neck prickled. "RUN!!"
Without another word the four bolted in the opposite direction.
Running, Li Deyang asked, "Why flee? Can’t you chant ’em to death?"
"Not kill—send them off!" Cao Yuan groaned. "The sutra uses one’s cultivation to ferry lost souls to the Pure Land—dream destination for wandering ghosts…"
"Sounds good," An Qingyu said.
"But I lack the depth, and I’m burdened with heavy karma. Keep at it and karmic fire will burn me alive!" Cao Yuan sighed. "If my master were here, with a snap he’d ferry them all…"
"See?" Baili Pangpang chimed in. "Old Cao, your cultivation’s still lacking!"
Cao Yuan: …
"Any way to destroy them?" An Qingyu frowned.
"Ghosts are formless—just special magnetic fields. Besides my Black King’s Annihilation Slash’s bale-fire, your attacks are useless. But if I unleash the Black King without Lin Qiye here… can you hold me down?" Cao Yuan glanced back.
Baili Pangpang pondered. "Let’s stick to running!"
"Agreed!"
"…"
……
"Fengdu? The legendary underworld?" Lin Qiye stared at the two characters, astonished.
A native of Great Xia, he’d grown up on tales of Yama’s palace, the Bridge of Helplessness, Grandma Meng’s soup, the Yellow Springs… all born of the ghost city Fengdu.
He never expected the bronze colossus’ gate to open into that very place.
Yet this… looked nothing like the legends.
Where was the bridge? The Yellow Springs? Yama’s palace? Even without those, it shouldn’t be this ruined and desolate.
The Fengdu of lore was a vast northern ghost kingdom: mountains two-thousand-six-hundred li high, circumference thirty-thousand li, palaces of gods and ghosts. This was merely a crumbling town.
He couldn’t help asking, "Was it always like this?"
Words quickly scrawled across the paper money.
—No. Long ago Fengdu was a death-realm belonging solely to the ghost world, immense in scope. Then, one day, the ghost gods vanished, and the Great Emperor of Fengdu disappeared. Fortunately, Fengdu’s laws of death operate automatically; no presiding deity required, so all seemed well.
Much later, four bizarre-looking gods burst in, shattered Fengdu into five fragments, each carrying one away. Only the smallest piece remains—this place.
Lin Qiye’s face darkened.
The Great Emperor of Fengdu, sovereign of the underworld in Daoist canon, a Supreme God who could stand against the Jade Emperor himself…
From what he now knew, Lin Qiye could guess what had happened.
A century ago, the gods of Great Xia vanished; the Emperor of Fengdu and his ghost deities with them. Bereft of gods, Fengdu was seized by foreign deities who tore away the largest fragments.
He asked, "Who were the four that stole the pieces?"
A line of tiny black script appeared:
—The four outer gods called themselves "Osiris," "Hades," "Yama," and… "Satan."