The Path to Immortality Begins with the Life-Extending Lamp

Chapter 25: When time comes, heaven and earth all work together

“The dragons and snakes in the tomb have always been able to recognize their masters and are good at observing auras. Perhaps it was you, the libationer, who disturbed it and made it want to recognize its master.”

"I've heard that there's also a Dragon Tamer in the East Sea, who has a dragon that recognizes him as its master and can travel 80,000 miles on his dragon. Why don't you take this ghost dragon with you too!"

Old Zhao was quite knowledgeable and could tell that the dragon in the tomb had been frightened by Li Qing and had become attached to him.

These tomb beasts, hidden from the light of day for years, are utterly pure. Anyone they show affection to is someone they genuinely like.

Besides, you're not incapable of suppressing evil spirits; you've already dismembered all the ghosts, so why would you be afraid of this tiny half-dragon?
Even so, Zhao Laodao and the others did not dare to speak so frankly.

But that serpentine beast was always like that; they'd sneak away for a short while, and it would suddenly appear and block their path; they'd barely slipped a few miles before it blocked their way again. This constant harassment meant they'd covered less than ten miles in half a day!

Why is this necessary?

Li Qing was not at all pleased with his advice, which was easy for him to give without considering the consequences.

Do you think many people would dare to carry such a terrifying python around?

Just as the stalemate was at hand, the Dragon Commander, Bai Du, suddenly spoke up.

“Li Jijiu, Heaven has five chariots, people choose chariots, and chariots also choose people.”

"It seems this ghost dragon has also encountered some destiny. Since a spirit beast has chosen its master, why not follow the example of the ancient sages and leave behind a beautiful story of dragon-taming in the Western Wilderness?"

"Has the Red Bean Academy in Jiangnan also had many precedents of taming dragons and snakes?"

These words struck a chord deep within Li Qing's heart.

After a moment of contemplation, he gently took out the jade disc from his sleeve. The jade disc was made of what appeared to be mutton fat, but it had unknown inscriptions on it.

Upon seeing the jade disc, the six-crowned dragon clearly grew bolder. It poked out its head, which was large enough to swallow an armored soldier whole, flicked its tongue, and secretly licked the jade disc before quickly retracting it.

Okay, Li Qing finally realized that Dan Qiu really did seem like someone who had never seen the world.

My mind raced, trying to recall the concept of "riding dragons and snakes," which had been briefly mentioned in the Five Chariots of the Imperial Academy...

The soldiers of the Dragon Banner were experiencing an interlude, making their way north to Nanchong County, where they were to deliver the spoils of the last two carts before returning to the mountains or their hometowns.

That group of fierce warriors who had followed him to the southeast of the Western Wilderness ten days earlier suffered a great calamity!
The appearance of the demon mother that day shook the land for miles around, causing the two oldest tombs in the eastern and southern branches of Western Mang to crack and tremble. The coffins and ghostly dragons lost their courage, and the old graves and corpses scattered and fled...

Li Qing and his group encountered the Danqiu, while the group of fierce warriors ran into the terrifying Yin Corpse that was running away haphazardly.

The corpse buried beneath the tomb resembled an old man in burial clothes. The old corpse was buried, but its bones were incorruptible, and its skin was deathly pale, as if it were a corpse floating in water. It was actually a spirit from the underworld. Its skin was intact, and its appearance was like that of a living person. Its hair and nails continued to grow, and they were shiny and oily.

The Yin Corpse has always been the most terrifying of all corpse transformations.

It eats people, truly eats people, and goes even further with that!
The old corpse had a deathly pale complexion, smooth as frost, with hair hanging to the ground and fingers as sharp as blades, but its eyes could not be opened no matter what, as if it were an ancient person in a deep sleep.

This entire team of tiger and bear warriors chased and killed that Yin Corpse for three days. They witnessed it flee into the earth when it encountered soil, flee into the water when it fell in, and exhale corpse gas. Even among them, two of the tiger and bear beasts became its food!

It took three days and three nights of fierce fighting, until many warriors were exhausted and paid a heavy price, before they managed to separate the corpse by rolling logs, stop its corpse-escape technique, dismember it with long spears, behead it with broadswords, and then use charcoal to build a platform and burn it for ten days and ten nights before finally destroying the old corpse.

"Damn it, who said the outer perimeter of the Corpse Cave was easier?"

"They've even raised these 'Shadow Corpses'! They can burrow into the earth when they see soil, and they can burrow into the water when they fall in, disappearing without a trace. I almost tore them in half with one claw! Bah!"

He and his troop of soldiers, including ten fierce warriors riding tigers and bears, suffered three deaths and two injuries, and the auxiliary soldiers' armor was also damaged.

I haven't even seen a trace of my war merits... What bad luck!

For days they had been fighting the Yin Corpse, from the southeast of Western Mang to the north of Western Mang. When they turned back, the great fire had long been extinguished. The sight of corpses and haze in the chaotic burial mountains made them even more terrified.

They dared not linger any longer, and the many fierce warriors, carrying the two wounded men, headed north towards Nanchong County!

With tigers and bears leading the way, armored cavalry surrounding the ramparts, and several sorcerers following behind, they moved like the wind, raising dust as they roared for dozens of miles southwest.

Until they were about twenty miles from the outskirts of Nanchong County.

This elite force of warriors encountered a mysterious Taoist priest.

Some distance from the prosperous countryside, a young man in a tunic pointed to a paper lantern and leaned listlessly against a withered tree—an old peach tree that had long since lost all its flowers and leaves.

Even more terrifying was that on that old tree, a six-crowned giant dragon, entirely crimson, was winding and coiling around most of the peach tree's branches!
Those cold, vertical pupils were almost the size of incense burners; with each flick of its tongue, the golden pupils scrutinized the tiger-and-bear armored soldiers.

Fortunately, this old tree was large enough to support that weight on both sides.

"This is the Southern Chong realm. May I ask why you are here, venerable Daoist? Where do you come from, and where are you going?"

Among the soldiers, the leader who rode the bear removed his armor and asked the young Taoist disciple in the tree a question.

Nanchong County is the first line of defense for Tiannan Prefecture. The local clans have two branches: the Ghost and the God. The county has a garrison of one battalion of soldiers and one general, Zishi, the Southern General.

In such a remote and important border town, it is extremely rare to see cultivators from other places.

Such mysterious and ethereal Daoist cultivators, who do not wear robes with a distinct Tiannan style, are most likely from the Tiannan Temple.

"Oh?"

Li Qing was resting here when he learned that the giant dragon had caused him considerable trouble. He had no means to subdue it, so how could he allow such a monstrous creature to enter the county?
They were waiting in the countryside for the Dragon Banner soldiers to file the spoils of war, including the results of burning mountains and destroying ridges, at the Southern Chong Military Command before setting off for Tiannan Prefecture to settle their military orders and rewards.

Unexpectedly, they encountered such a formidable force at this moment. "They came from the Western Wilderness and headed towards Lin Yuan Mountain."

The young man shook his head slightly and gave only a brief reply.

However, upon hearing the words "Linyuan Mountain," the leader of the group of warriors immediately adopted a self-assured demeanor, glanced at the giant dragon resembling Danzhu without making a sound, bowed respectfully, and then turned and left without asking any further questions.

The Tiannan Temple, which suppressed the southwest region for over two hundred years, can be summed up in just these three characters...

After one month.

In Tiannan Prefecture, the Military Governor's Office handed over the half-year-long order to the Qing army to exterminate the corpses. The entire Longjieya Army Department could barely be considered to have achieved a great success, with the task of eliminating a branch ridge as the unit.

However, the governor's mansion did not have many rare and precious materials. There was only one thing that moved Li Qing: the Golden Ganoderma from the "Ba Kingdom" in Western Shu!

A year ago, he obtained a golden mushroom like this, which greatly benefits the cultivation of Qi.

So they used all their merits to exchange for four golden mushrooms the size of palm fans.

Afterwards, he carefully selected a place and re-refined the two paper figures!

This paper figure is not the same as the one before.

Li Qing's hands are covered in yin blood, the blood of hungry ghosts with big bellies, bruised infant ghosts, and ghosts who died unjustly...

There are also two pieces of skin peeled off the skulls of starving ghosts and hanged ghosts!

The mixed ghost blood presented an astonishing black and red color.

Li Qing used the still trembling, pale ghost skin as if it were human skin paper, constantly refining it with ghost blood and yin ink, and using tattooing techniques to carve out totem-like symbols and talismans, combining it with many spirit papers. The ghost skin covered the face, and the yin blood permeated the patterns. Looking at it again, it turned out to be two "faceless people".

Two white-robed paper figures, each over seven feet tall, were covered in a dense network of dark red tattooed bloodlines within their paper garments, resembling a spiderweb. These lines seemed to undulate slightly with the spiritual energy within, revealing a powerful and terrifying bloodline. Only the topmost figure possessed a deathly pale face, devoid of features, mouth, or orifices…

The faceless man on the left, who was half an inch shorter, had a pair of bruised ghost hands that were completely out of place with his seven-foot paper body. They were drooping and narrow, almost vertical from his paper sleeves to the ground, and the blood lines on his bruised ghost hands were extremely incongruous.

These were the only remaining, intact ghost claws of that ghost infant!
Clad in plain clothes, facing the twilight; blood threads bind the bones, but not the soul!

You can paint a thousand faces, but it's hard to find even a single flaw in a beauty filter.

This is no longer an ordinary paper vessel; it is a more advanced paper deity, sacrificed with real evil spirits, the power of which even Li Qing himself does not know.

But at least, it won't be like that paper figure from that day, torn to shreds with a single hand, rendering that important paper artifact—the Yin Paper Sedan Chair—unusable...

As Li Qing gazed at the setting sun outside the window, the approaching late autumn and the chill of autumn intensified her urge to return to the mountains.

The changes in the past six months include: the initial formation of the life lamp, the surge of true qi, the chance encounter with a Taoist priest offering a method, glimpsing the true appearance of the corpse cave, and the appearance of this ghostly dragon in the courtyard...

As the saying goes, when the time is right, heaven and earth lend their strength.

The six-month journey through the Corpse Cave, while not particularly exciting, finally gave him the confidence and knowledge to step into this strange and bizarre world!

The door was suddenly pushed open. Old Zhao, who was protecting his granddaughter and leaning against the side of the corridor, warily watching the coiled ghost dragon, was startled by the noise and turned to look at the side room.

The room was dark and gloomy as no candles were lit yet. Li Qing was hidden in the darkness, with only half of his body illuminated by the dim sunlight. Behind him were three invisible shadows of different heights, level with his shoulders, creating a sense of yin and yang.

In that instant, even the old Taoist Zhao was in a daze, as if the four man-eating ghosts were in the dimly lit room!

"Is your grandson going to become a disciple of Lin Yuan Mountain?"

"Then don't let her learn those witchcraft techniques from you. She is born with a bright and intelligent spirit; don't harm that spirit..."

"From then on, every June, the outer courtyard of Lin Yuan would open its gates wide. What was her name?"

The young man slowly emerged from the darkness, and without any attempt at subtlety or evasion, directly asked the old Taoist priest about his grandson's name.

"Zhao...Zhao Wan'er!"

Old Zhao was startled, but without much hesitation, he immediately took his granddaughter in his arms.

Wasn't his offering of the Dharma and his keeping of the Taoist disciples of the Upper Temple in seclusion in his own residence all for this promise?
However, when the two old Taoists looked up again, they saw that the two paper figures had already ridden the huge paper sedan chair, with strings of copper coins hanging down the dark curtain and the old bell swaying faintly. They slowly passed through the courtyard wall, and the vermilion six-crowned ghost dragon was also left with only a huge red tail, which swiftly slipped away.

"I remember!"

“But in Lin Yuan, I can’t be her support; she can only rely on herself.”

As for Li Qing's last words, the old Taoist certainly didn't dare to hope for anything. That person was probably already a mid-to-high level Qi Refining expert, and finding a powerful backer like that wasn't so easy.
"Grandpa, has that big snake left? This was given to me by a ghost sister..."

The little girl at his knees tugged at the old Taoist's sleeve, but her next words terrified him so much that his face turned deathly pale, and he instinctively flipped a compass into his palm.

Looking down, the old Taoist priest saw the tattered parchment clutched in his grandson's little hand, on which rows of large characters were awkwardly etched...

Unorthodox ritual implements, the foul path - Black Coffin Nail!
Old Zhao breathed a sigh of relief, feeling both amused and annoyed, but he couldn't bear to hurt the little girl, so he pretended to pat her lightly.

"Little girl, where did this ghost sister come from, speaking so recklessly?"

"It was just a paper figure."

Having entered a corpse cave, ridden a ferocious wolf, seen a giant dragon, escaped ghostly calamities, and pinched paper figures, how could a child with such opportunities not be a future seed on the path to immortality?
(End of this chapter)