The Path to Immortality Begins with the Life-Extending Lamp

Chapter 50 This is Youtian

Weighing the options, I prioritize my mother!
The Cui clan of Qishan, a great lineage of the underworld for six thousand years, rose to power and perished. Only the last branch of their bloodline fled to the southern lands, where it also died out two hundred years ago.

The last bloodline of the Cui family, after death and rebirth, will forever fall into the realm of ghosts. Even if they do not enter the upper stream of the Northern Yin, they will only be a kind of fierce ghost.

Even so, with the karmic ties to the Netherworld, this vengeful ghost, though still only at the Purple Mansion and Day Travel realms, is almost capable of contending with the Yin Gods through its "curved" power...

Because of her great power in the underworld, she is called the Ghost Mother!
This Taoist priest from the Lingnan White Bone Path came in pursuit of the Painted Skin Ghost of the Night Wandering Realm, but accidentally captured the mysterious Yin aura in the Yin and Yang of the mountain.

The purest and most potent Yin energy must be a top-tier ghost, perhaps even capable of helping him break through to the Yin God realm! After searching all the way, they finally cornered the vengeful ghost in Liuhuang Prefecture.

However, the current situation made him feel that it was getting out of control.

As dusk fell from the dark sky, it seemed as if the lingering resentment of the Underworld Sect had not been quelled. When the Ghost Mother descended to earth, a 33-zhang-tall fierce ghost appeared and roamed the human world. Hundreds of ghost phantoms surrounded the city, affecting many markets in the southwest of Liuhuang City, and nearly half of the city was swept away.

It was a dark world, and the mansions, pavilions, and everything that existed that were affected by that dark and ghostly realm were instantly covered with a layer of dark cloak.

Wherever they went, no one survived!

The path of ghosts is a great omen of misfortune!
In the sky above the clouds, it seemed as if ghostly soldiers and demons were galloping, banners obscuring the sky, clashing weapons, and the howls of vengeful spirits echoing for miles. Soul-reaping ghosts dragged their chains, swiftly pursuing the city outwards…

The statue of the Ghost Mother was thirty-three feet tall, and she gently cradled the young man in her palms. His dragon bones were injured, his face was as pale as paper, and blood kept oozing from his mouth and nose.

My lord, you're not looking good anymore! Do you still want this old face?
She seemed to be asking Li Qing a question, but this time, a very long time passed without any response. The Ghost Mother stood there, unsure of what to do.

After a long while, the Ghost Mother seemed to remember something and looked up at the clouds.

That face, devoid of any expression, was half grotesque skeleton and half radiant jade-like skin; its left eye seemed to sparkle like a star, while its right eye was an empty socket.

At this glance, contradictions intertwined, life and death flowed in a cycle, making the ghostly Taoist in the clouds shudder with fear.

This time, he finally saw how the vengeful ghost attacked him. Its empty ghostly eyes stared at him, and everything began to distort. If he had been a moment later and met the ghost's gaze directly, he would have been twisted into a pile of minced meat!
That is the Dharma meaning called "Chaos and Distortion".

With one hand, the Ghost Daoist lifted the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, and the dark clouds that stretched for miles instantly expanded, enveloping the ghostly phantoms that had sprung from the ghost realm. Then, with a burst of Ghost Daoist magic, they were all annihilated.

Looking again at the Netherworld Ghostly Realm that had been chasing them from Liuhuang City, it was slowly sinking into the Netherworld. The enormous image of the Ghost Mother seemed to be slowly melting, turning into Netherworld nectar and disappearing into the ground.

The demon mother descended from the bottom up into the underworld, until her hands, clasped together in front of her chest, and the figure within them slowly sank, and the terrifying, twisted ghost realm also disappeared at the same time.

In Liuhuang City, the Prefectural Governor of the Lan Clan, the Pavilion Master of the Hanlin Academy, and the Prefect who held sway over the region were all filled with rage.

In that brief moment of chaos, over ten thousand people perished with the appearance of that vengeful ghost. The great ghost did retreat, but the aura of the Lingnan White Bone Path above was unmistakable.

The White Bone Taoist of Lingnan Road and Lingnan Prefecture is suspected of causing a ghostly calamity in Tiannan Prefecture.

"Ha, I've often heard that the Taoist priests of Lingnan are all mad dogs, and today I've seen it for myself."

The pavilion master in the Hanlin Pavilion glanced around the pavilion and, seeing that there was no major damage, felt a little relieved, but the look in his eyes turned cold.

Did the White Bone Demon Taoist truly fail to recognize the primordial Qi within that young Taoist disciple? The answer is naturally no.

What about Tiannan Temple?
I merely saw a great demon rampaging through the world and used the Ten Thousand Souls Treasure Banner to subdue the evil spirit. I even thought that the Taoist disciples of your Tiannan Temple died at the hands of that evil spirit.
The Taoist priest bared his teeth, enduring the pain in his right arm, and was furious as he watched the vengeful ghost disappear in an instant.

"Damn it, how could it get away?"

They came specifically for the mysterious Yin ghost, but who would have thought this fiend would be so ferocious?
He broke through his Soul-Destroying Divine Light and blocked the hundred-mile-long cloud of resentment, yet he still relied on the Ghost Realm and disappeared without a trace. If he really let him escape, this trip would have been a complete disaster, wouldn't it be a huge loss?

Sensing the rapidly rising aura of the Purple Mansion in the city below, the Ghost Daoist knew that these good-for-nothings were coming to cause trouble. His eyes darted around, and he immediately decided that leaving was the best option.

With his left hand, he transformed into a palm blade and slashed at his right shoulder. The right arm, tainted by the curse of the Ghost Mother, instantly fell from the clouds, turning into twisted and annihilated Yin energy.

The Taoist priest casually gestured towards the dark clouds, and instantly the Five Ghosts Transported a cluster of soul essences from the clouds. He pressed it onto the right shoulder, and with a snap, a new arm was attached.

This is a Taoist who has reached the pinnacle of the Purple Mansion Foundation Building path, and may at any time generate Dharma intent and achieve the position of Yin God Venerable.

Even the twelve sects of the Southern Kingdom could not completely restrain him.

Even if all else fails, he could simply take his fortune and head to the North Sea. Someone like him, even in that land of demons, would still be a guest of honor among the demons, enjoying endless pleasure from witches and sorceresses!
The Ghost Taoist hastily wiped the sunken old face, waved the Soul Banner, gathered up the hundred-mile-long dark clouds, and rode the Soul-Destroying Divine Light to flee to the southwest.

But the moment he moved, the old, dark green straw rope that had been hanging around his neck immediately retracted, just a second later!
"I was just a moment away from being decapitated. How dare you! You are a demon!"

Ghost Taoist's face was gloomy. Soul-destroying divine light covered his entire palm. He grabbed the hanging ghost rope and yanked it, snapping it in two.

Ignoring the several Purple Mansion figures below, the Taoist snorted coldly, his immense magical power descending like the heavens, forcefully attempting to refine the straw rope.

The sudden change.

The straw rope, adrift and helpless, dissolved into a dark, gloomy light, until a terrifying, chaotic, and twisted aura crept up along with the Taoist's attack.

Click click click...

As soon as the two Purple Mansion cultivators from Liuhuang Prefecture ascended to the clouds, before they could even stand firmly, they were so frightened that they retreated hastily. The strange magical intent instantly invaded, twisting the entire cloud into a terrifying vortex.

"Edict!"

A muffled command rang out from within the vortex of clouds. It was then that the Ghost Taoist had used some kind of substitution technique to summon five ghosts to take his life, and in a flash, he escaped from the vortex.

That ghost was extremely ferocious!
The vengeful ghost's demonic aura, its ghostly ropes, its gaze, its curses... every move it made carried a strong sense of distortion, as if it were about to twist the head of a living being and separate its flesh from its bones.

Ghost Daoist frowned, annoyed by the great ghost who had yet to reveal his true form and the two Zifu from Liuhuangzhou causing trouble. Perhaps the best course of action would be to flee.

An idea came to mind, and with a flick of the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, a beam of black light shot into the sky and fled southwest.

Once they escaped and weren't caught in the act, naturally there would be no way to verify what happened here.

This isn't the first time he's done something like this!
However, in the next instant, a ghostly hand suddenly stretched out from the dark sky. The pair of white jade ghostly hands looked perfect and flawless, making people unconsciously want to hold them and play with them. However, wherever the ghostly hand touched, even the void was distorted.

The ghostly hand shattered the barrier between the Netherworld and the mortal realm, striking the Taoist priest on the back. Immediately afterward, a raging and twisting intent erupted, and the terrifying power seemed to forcibly distort and deform even the clouds several meters high.

This is the true form of that vengeful ghost!
"Ah! Ben..." Before the ghostly Taoist could even process a thought, an even more terrifying surge of magical intent erupted, completely annihilating the three souls within.

A few breaths later, everything quickly returned to calm. The Soul-Destroying Divine Light, which was fleeing into the distance, was swallowed up by the Netherworld Vortex. Only a head with sunken eye sockets, extremely gloomy, but with its eyes wide open, remained in the incredulous state it had before death, falling from the clouds and landing in the ruins outside the western suburbs of Liuhuang...

In Liuhuang Prefecture, the officials looked grim, their faces filled with resentment as they watched the departing ghostly light recede into the distance. However, the headless ghosts and soul-reaping demons brought about by the ghostly calamity continued to wreak havoc throughout the prefecture. None of them were willing to be the first to step forward!
The group's expressions shifted for a long time before they finally chose to return to the city and eliminate the many spawning evil spirits.

Within the demonic mountain in the southwest, an aura immediately soared into the sky. In just over ten breaths, the hundred-mile-long sky above Liuhuang Prefecture collapsed instantly, and an old crane fell from the boundless blue sky.

The indescribable feeling of being watched swept over hundreds of miles in an instant, and the hundreds of thousands of people felt as if the might of heaven was sweeping over them from three feet above their heads.

The spirit travels a hundred miles in an instant. In the blink of an eye, the white-haired old man landed in the southwest of Liuhuang Prefecture, looked down at the severed head on the ground, and praised it expressionlessly.

"You've really made something of yourself, Lingnan White Bone Path..."

However, in the darkness of fate...

I don't know how many years have passed.

When Li Qing opened her eyes again, she was already in an antique-style room.

As soon as Li Qing opened his eyes, he found himself in an extremely unfamiliar room, where he was lying on a canopy bed made of gold-embroidered phoenix silk.

The bed is entirely covered with a railing and screen made of gold silk and wood, carved with dragons and phoenixes, and intricately decorated with orchids and licorice. There are also corridors in front and behind, making it an extremely luxurious and wonderful place to live.

What's terrifying is that on Feng Yao's luxurious bed, which even kings and nobles could hardly afford, there were white mourning cloths hanging everywhere, and even the cloth covering Li Qing's chest was a mourning cloth...

"Huh? I'm dead?"

How is this possible? I don't even know how I died!

Li Qing was filled with disbelief. He forced himself to sit up and felt a sharp pain along his spine. Before he could figure out what was going on...

The sight to his side made his eyelids twitch!
A woman in a crimson dress sat before the Phoenix Pavilion, seemingly gazing at herself in a bronze mirror with a troubled expression.

That's... Miss Cui...

Li Qing's heart skipped a beat. Sure enough, this was the underworld. Then she felt deflated. Had she died too hastily?

With her right hand resting on the balustrade of the canopy, Li Qing straightened up and slowly left the canopy bed. Since things had come to this, she could only accept this identity.

Seeing that Cui Xiaoniang seemed to be struggling with the mirror, Li Qing couldn't help but feel curious.

The most fleeting things in life are youthful beauty and fallen flowers!

Not many women in this world can calmly face the aging of their appearance, the falling of flowers from trees, but is it still the same even after death and becoming a ghost?
Thinking to himself that he was now a male ghost, Li Qing was no longer so scary, and he slowly approached the side of the Cui family's young lady.

suddenly!

The ghost mother turned her head, her long black hair hanging down to her waist, which was quite frightening.

However, upon seeing the face of the Ghost Mother, Li Qing felt a sudden tightness in his chest, and in that instant, he seemed to hear his own heartbeat again.

How could that be? She's not Bai Gu Yu Yan...

Yes, that painted-skin ghost?
A sudden realization dawned on Li Qing's mind!

No wonder! No wonder the Ghost Mother was so agitated that day, directly pulling out the Fuli White Bone to invade the mortal world. Was the vengeful ghost in Liuhuang City actually the Painted Skin Ghost?

Li Qing carefully examined the face of the young lady from the Cui family. Her willow-leaf eyebrows were like ink paintings, her red lips were like dew, and her face was like frost. She had a natural beauty.

However, her hair was disheveled, as if it hadn't been combed in a long time. Upon closer inspection, one would find that the Ghost Mother actually looked like a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl, quite delicate and petite, but the makeup on the right half of her face was slightly more sharp, which was somewhat out of place with her overall appearance.

That's half a painted mask!

Moreover, she is a vengeful ghost, missing two of her three souls and having long since lost her seven spirits. Such a ghost, unlike the spirits and deities of the Northern Underworld, is incapable of developing intelligence.

Even though she seemed to hold onto the same obsession with beauty that women had during her lifetime, she still didn't know where to begin.

Those empty eyes looked at Li Qing without uttering a word, but Li Qing seemed to sense that she was asking for help.
"Do you need my help?"

Li Qing endured the faint stinging pain from the dragon bone spine as she moved, her face showing only pain. She quickly immersed herself in the identity of the ghostly young master, picked up the wooden comb on the algae table, gently pressed the Cui family's young lady into the chair, and began to comb her hair.

However, Li Qing knew little about women's attire, so she could only force herself to wear a simple girlish bun.

There weren't many ornaments on the algae stand, and many of them were already rusted and unusable. After searching for a long time, I finally found a wooden hairpin that was still usable.

Seeing that the demon mother was sitting obediently and letting him do as he pleased, Li Qing rummaged through the alcove again, found a box of cosmetics, and then applied the cosmetics to the young lady of the Cui family, aligning her eyebrows with the lead...

After working for about half an hour, the young lady from the Cui family finally finished her makeup.

Sure enough, it was the face of a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl, with delicate features and bright red lips, but her eyes were somewhat empty and dazed, which was pretty much what was rumored in the Cui family.

The Cui family had always been a prominent clan. After their decline, some of their descendants settled in Jiangnan. The Cui family in Jiangnan followed the same path as the Cui family of Qishan: fathers were implicated, sons died, the nest was overturned, and the whole family was ruined. The sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl was left with nothing but emptiness. On the day she received the death notices from her father and brothers, she dismissed the servants, set a great fire, and hanged herself with a white silk ribbon...

Li Qing sighed, as if she had let go of some of her resentment and gained more empathy!
The Ghost Mother remained seated before the bronze mirror, staring blankly at it on the wall. Perhaps she was moved by the sight, or perhaps she felt nothing at all. In any case, she ignored Li Qing and left him to his own devices.

Ok.

Li Qing then shifted her gaze away from her and began to explore the room.

The east wing was spotless, seemingly unchanged from hundreds of years ago, with a dragon-head incense burner, a nanmu desk, and a wall covered with a screen depicting twenty-eight ladies, all exuding luxury.

Stepping out of the room, one is greeted by a surrounding covered walkway; is this some unfamiliar mansion? The courtyard isn't very large…

Before Li Qing could make any further moves, several streaks of crimson light fell down, illuminating the entire courtyard in a fiery red. The fire landed on the yellow tiles in the courtyard and suddenly exploded, startling Li Qing.

Shaking his head to look again, he saw that the already dark sky was now filled with shattered gaps, as if it had been cracked by some terrifying force.

Fire rain and icicles fell from the sky from time to time, creating a scene of widespread disaster. It's hard to know how the people or ghosts here managed to get out.
Before she had taken two steps, Li Qing was immediately startled by the bloody corpse on the ground. It was a headless corpse twisted into a pulp, wrapped in a black robe, lying in the courtyard, with a seven-foot black banner lying beside it, and even the blood was fresh.

"Huh? How come there's a corpse here? Was it killed by the ghost... Sister Cui?"

This place is definitely the underworld. Legend has it that after the fall of the previous dynasty, the Northern Yin Youtian, which worshipped all kinds of ghosts and gods, was shattered in the war, which corresponds to this broken sky!

But who exactly is this corpse? Li Qing had no idea what had happened during the time he was unconscious.
(End of this chapter)