I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

In Huai'an County, the morning slowly descends through a lingering, thin mist.

The streets were filled with the sounds of people and carts again, but the thick layer of ashes from last night's paper money left outside the gate of that secluded courtyard was still a shocking sight.

The nine-person team left Zhou Aman at home to take care of his mother, while the rest of the team headed towards the Demon Suppression Division branch office in the west of the city under the pretext of "replacing travel permits for out-of-state caravans and inquiring whether stolen goods could be reported to the authorities."

Along the way, the people of Huai'an County avoided them as if they were avoiding a plague.

An old man selling breakfast couldn't bear to watch any longer and whispered a word of advice: "Outsider, don't go that way. You can't even go near that place during the day; it'll shorten your lifespan."

The further west you go in the city, the more deserted the streets become. Eventually, you can't even hear the wind or the barking of dogs.

The outline of the Huai'an County branch of the Demon Suppression Bureau appeared in the morning mist.

The stone steps in front of the gate were overgrown with weeds that were half a person tall. The "Demon Suppression Division" plaque, which should have been imposing, was now hanging crookedly under the eaves, as if it might fall down at any moment.

Despite it being daytime, the place exuded a chilling, deathly stillness.

Lin Xiaolu narrowed her eyes slightly, looking at the towering old trees on both sides of the government office. The branches and leaves of those trees looked lush and extremely dense, but in her perception, those trees had no trace of life, as if they were just plant shells forcibly propped up by death energy.

"There are no guards." Han Zhao gestured.

Meng Changlu stepped forward and carefully examined the two intersecting, blackened seals on the gate.

"It's not an ordinary seal posted by the county government; it's a self-sealed seal from within the Demon Suppression Division," Meng Changlu said in a very low voice, pointing to the blurred ancient seal script on the seal. "It says... 'Seal the name, not the body; upon seeing the words, depart immediately.'"

The name is sealed, but the body is not.

These seven words exude a profound sense of despair and eeriness. It's as if what's sealed behind the door isn't some specific monster's corpse, but rather an unspeakable concept.

"I'll do it."

Lu Yan stepped forward and slid several fine, low-level energy-suppressing needles from his sleeve. Following the wood grain along the door crack, he carefully inserted the needles, bypassing the restrictive loops on the seal, and gently pried open the latch.

At the same time, Fang Bai picked up a low-level illusion talisman, which spontaneously combusted at his fingertips, turning into a very thin mist that blocked all possible views from the street corner.

"Squeak—"

The heavy wooden door was pushed open a crack wide enough for a person to squeeze through, and nine people filed in like ghosts.

The scene inside the Kongya (a government office) instantly came into view.

This is not an ordinary abandoned government office at all, but rather a disaster site that was hastily sealed off.

The courtyard's blue brick floor was covered with dried, ink-like black footprints, densely intertwined. The doors of the side rooms were wide open, the desks piled high with moldy and rotten documents, and several standard demon-suppressing swords, split in the middle, even hung on the walls.

The further you go into the back room, the heavier the oppressive, chilly atmosphere becomes.

"These trees..."

Lin Xiaolu walked to a huge old locust tree in the courtyard and gently peeled off a piece of bark with her finger. Beneath the bark, where the wood should have been white, thick, black liquid was seeping out. "The bark is still alive, but the heartwood has long been completely rotten from being soaked in this stagnant water."

Upon reaching the back hall, everyone abruptly stopped in their tracks.

On the walls of the back hall, hundreds of wooden memorial tablets were densely packed together.

Strangely, every memorial tablet was blank. The places where names should have been engraved had been brutally scraped away with a knife using some extremely violent method. It wasn't just smearing with ink; the wood fibers were scraped through, leaving deep, bone-revealing knife marks.

It was as if the name itself carried some kind of fatal curse.

Xie Wujiu stood on the flank of the group, his brows furrowed.

A flicker of discomfort crossed his pale face as he glanced down at the back of his hand. The paper doll he had been using to disguise himself was now covered in a fine layer of water droplets.

"Extremely heavy Yin energy pollution." Xie Wujiu's voice was dry. "Although these memorial tablets have no words, you can hear very faint women's cries coming from inside as soon as you get close."

"Go to the archives." Han Zhao remained absolutely calm.

Meng Changlu found a pile of scattered case files in a half-collapsed side room.

He quickly flipped through the moldy papers, his pupils slightly contracting.

"Captain, this file contains records of a large number of serial disappearances that occurred in Huai'an County three years ago," Meng Changlu said in a low voice. "But what's strange is that the names of all the victims have been dug out of the files with a knife."

He carefully selected the most tattered page and, by the dim light filtering through the window, tried to decipher the remaining fragments of text:

"...the shrine outside the city...knocking on the door at midnight..."

"...Do not recognize the name... Cry for the Goddess..."

"...Set up a sealed formation... Commander Lu..."

"...The Demon Suppression Division of Qingzhou issues an urgent order: Abandon Huai'an, protect the prefectural city..."

Just then, Lu Yan, who had been squatting on the ground inspecting the gaps between the blue bricks, suddenly gasped.

"This branch office is itself a large-scale formation."

Holding a low-level array plate, Lu Yan cautiously walked around the gaps between the floor tiles: "The concept behind this array is extremely unfamiliar. Its base isn't spirit stones or magical artifacts, but rather... household registers, ancestral tablets, the names of ordinary people, and even the official seal and badge of the Demon Suppression Bureau!"

"This isn't a defensive formation, nor is it a killing formation." Lu Yan raised his head, a hint of awe in his eyes. "This is the 'Name Sealing Formation.' Back then, the Demon Suppression Division stationed here attempted to use the entire county's household registration and official fortune as chains to completely erase the name of that thing called 'Crying Goddess' from the karma of Huai'an County!"

"As long as no one in the world knows her name anymore, and no one records her name on paper, she can no longer be called upon, can no longer be worshipped, and can no longer respond to anyone."

"But they failed," Han Zhao added coldly, looking at the black footprints scattered on the ground.

"Yes, it failed." Lu Yan pointed to a sunken shrine in the center of the hall. "The array's core is missing. It may have been deliberately removed, or the Demon Suppression Division may have taken the official seal, which served as the core suppressing object, with them when they withdrew. With the array broken, those erased names have become nourishment for its spread."

Lu Yan took out a sheet of rubbing paper and began to trace the array patterns on the edges with extreme caution. He dared not inject any spiritual power to activate it, but simply recorded this strange idea of ​​using "names" as chains.

Just as Lu Yan was halfway through making the rubbing.

"Tick-tock".

A crisp, clear sound of water dripping rang out in the deathly silent back room.

Everyone turned around abruptly.

On the back wall, a blank memorial tablet with its edges already scratched was suddenly oozing thick, black liquid.

Immediately afterwards, the chilling sound of a woman sobbing that had sent shivers down my spine last night came from the wooden sign.

But this time, it did not imitate Zhou Aman's mother, nor did it call out their real names.

From within the wooden sign came an extremely ethereal and eerie voice, as if calling out names:

"Female doctor... accountant... nurse..."

Everyone broke out in a cold sweat instantly.

The Night Cry Rules have already memorized their fabricated local identities in this city! Although it hasn't yet managed to find their true souls and names, this is already an extremely dangerous test on the edge of the rules.

"Withdraw!" Han Zhao gave the order to retreat without any hesitation.

Fang Bai flicked a pre-drawn "fake name talisman" from his sleeve and stuck it directly onto a rotten pillar. The talisman, bearing the name of a non-existent false identity, instantly ignited, forcibly diverting the lock of the blank memorial tablet for a moment.

Xie Wujiu slid forward, pressing the Yin Si seal in his hand hard against the spreading black water from a distance.

With a "hiss," the black water was forcibly forced back into the wooden plaque, but Xie Wujiu's already damaged paper doll hand was now even more soaked in yin energy, and rotten fragments began to appear on the edges.

The squad retreated from the government office as quickly as the tide receded.

Just as Xu Chenzhou passed by the dilapidated screen, he suddenly caught a glimpse of a dark object stuck in a crack in the wall.

He reacted quickly and used the scabbard to pull it out.

It was a tattered waist token of the Demon Suppression Bureau. On the back of the token was engraved half a name, soaked in black blood: "Lu..."

This is very likely the "Hundred-Household Officer Lu" that Meng Changlu saw in the case file, who was responsible for setting up this sealing formation back then.

On the front of this waist tag, someone had dipped their finger in blood and written a sentence in utter despair:

"She is not a name."

Xu Chenzhou stuffed the waist token into his pocket and rushed out of the empty government office with the group. The gate was silently closed behind them.

……

Back on the safe streets, the sunlight fell on everyone again, but it couldn't dispel the chill in their hearts.

Lu Yan leaned against the corner of the alley and quickly sent out a very brief intelligence report via the boundary marker:

[The empty yamen is the site of a sealing formation. The Demon Suppression Division once used names, household registrations, and ancestral tablets as the foundation to seal the Weeping Goddess. The formation failed. Keyword discovered: She is not a name.]

Earth, Kyoto.

When Wang Mingyuan saw this intelligence report, he jumped up from his chair.

"Using names as a chain of rules..." Wang Mingyuan muttered to himself. He vaguely sensed that the underlying logic of this so-called First Realm was inextricably linked to "name, cause and effect, and identity".

Meanwhile, on the distant summit of Kunlun.

Gu Qing, who had been meditating with his eyes closed, received this brief message from the cross-border beacon.

He didn't speak, but the dark gold vertical line between his brows lit up slightly for a moment.

In the unknown multidimensional sea of ​​rules, the boundary marker nailed deep within the depleted earth veins of the Great Yu Dynasty revealed a faint ray of light, silently recording the underlying logic of the "Sealing Name Array" copied by Lu Yan.

At this moment, Gu Qing had completely grasped a part of the operating mechanism of the First World Consciousness.

The core criteria for this world's "firewall" that identifies outsiders and repels higher-dimensional forces are "name, place of origin, soul, and causal attribution."

Since the Demon Suppression Bureau can use names to seal away evil spirits, then Earth could also use the same rules to forge a perfect "Heaven and Earth Register" to completely deceive the world's rejection.

This will be the key to a future massive invasion.