I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

Before the sun had completely set, the sound of bolts being bolted echoed through the streets of Huai'an County. Behind each tightly closed wooden door lay the deepest fear of the city's inhabitants for the approaching night.

The atmosphere in the dilapidated courtyard rented by the team was equally oppressive.

On the earthen kang (heated brick bed) in the inner room.

Lin Xiaolu carefully lifted Xie Wujiu's sleeve, her brows furrowed. The hand Xie Wujiu had used to disguise the paper doll's avatar was now completely charred black, and the edges were even beginning to peel off fragments resembling rotten tree bark.

"The Yin laws in the Demon Suppression Office are too corrupted."

Lin Xiaolu took out some ashes from the medicine box, mixed them with a little mugwort, and very carefully infused them with a trace of Yi wood vitality. Then she carefully applied them to Xie Wujiu's injured palm.

"This Dharma body can withstand at most two more impacts from the Yin Law level." Xie Wujiu ignored the injury on his hand, his dark eyes fixed on the floor of the main room, his voice dry, "Tonight, that thing will definitely come."

Zhou's mother, who was unconscious beside her, seemed to sense the approaching chill, and her withered lips began to murmur unconsciously again:

"Don't call her...don't open the door..."

It wasn't completely dark yet.

There were no lights in the main room, only a very dim oil lamp in the corner, with most of the light source blocked by a broken tile. In the dim light, the shadows of the nine people were stretched very long.

Han Zhao sat at a worn wooden table, his fingers lightly tapping the surface as he conducted a final review before the battle.

"Meng Changlu, go through the clues again."

"Crying for the Goddess, the Shrine for Sending Off Children, Recognizing Names, the Formation of Conferring Names, Hundred-Household Commander Lu, she is not just a name."

Meng Changlu opened the notebook and, by the dim light, read out the vocabulary he had brought from the empty office that day.

"By combining the files in the archives with names removed and the broken name-sealing array, we can confirm one thing: the source of the 'Night Crying Case' is this 'Crying Goddess,' and its core power is 'names.' The Demon Suppression Division tried to erase its name back then, but failed. Instead, it used these nameless memorial tablets and household registers to create a spreading network."

Lu Yan laid out the carefully copied outline of the Sealing Array on the table.

"Although this formation is dilapidated, its underlying logic still exists. Since it uses 'names' as chains, we might as well use these chains in reverse." Lu Yan's finger traced a corner of the formation diagram. "We need a 'bait name'."

"A false identity that exists within the rules of this world, but in reality has no real soul to which it belongs." Fang Bai immediately understood what Lu Yan meant.

"My fake name tag can fool it for a while, but if it only has a single tag, once it realizes it's an empty shell, it will immediately launch a fierce counterattack."

Han Zhao's eyes remained sharp even in the dim light: "So, our tactics tonight are: defense, baiting, and recording. Fang Bai and Lu Yan will work together, using fake name talismans combined with this half of the name-sealing array fragment to construct a temporary 'fake register.' Xie Wujiu will be responsible for injecting a trace of disguised soul energy into this fake register."

"Lin Xiaolu, Tang Qinghe, protect Zhou's mother's life. Xu Chenzhou, do not draw your sword unless in a fatal crisis. Luo Qi, prepare to seal the rule fluctuations when it manifests."

Han Zhao tapped the table one last time, his voice as cold as ice: "Remember, tonight we don't seek to kill it, we only seek to find out its details."

……

After the last rays of sunlight were completely swallowed up.

Huai'an County, which resembled a dilapidated county town during the day, had at this moment transformed into a deathly silent graveyard.

A cold gust of wind swept past the thin wooden door of the small courtyard.

"Waaah...waaah..."

From the empty room next door, the faint sound of a woman sobbing, just like yesterday, could be heard first.

But tonight, the crying didn't stop at a single tone; it began to ferment and overlap eerily. It sounded like the cries of a dozen or more different women, the sobs of children, and the lamentations of the elderly, all lumped together in an extremely awkward way, making one's scalp tingle and one's heart pound with unease.

The crying echoed in the empty house for a while, and then, just like last night, it began to approach the gate of the courtyard where they were.

"Female doctor..."

"accountant……"

"Guards..."

The voice outside the door had a nauseating, sticky quality. It didn't call out Lin Xiaolu and the others' real names, but only their disguised identities that had been exposed in Huai'an County.

This proves that as long as they do not actively reveal their true identities, the underlying rules of this world will still treat them as ordinary local passersby.

Han Zhao gestured expressionlessly: Silence.

Receiving no response, the crying outside the door became increasingly agitated and aggressive.

It seems to be trying to piece together a more specific name from the causal traces they left during the day, attempting to pinpoint the people inside the house with a more precise "name".

"The female doctor who saved lives..."

"The accounting office where people write..."

"A guard with a sword..."

"A paper...person..."

When it uttered the words "paper man," Xie Wujiu, who had been standing behind the door, suddenly shuddered! His paper doll disguise made a very faint "ripping" sound in the darkness.

It realized he wasn't alive!

Xie Wujiu endured the excruciating pain, like being scraped by needles, from the depths of his soul, clenching his teeth tightly without uttering a sound or making any move to retaliate.

Inside the room, Zhou Aman was huddled up in fear, his eyes fixed on the doorway, his lips turning purple. Lin Xiaolu pressed down on his shoulder, a faint medicinal scent soothing his tense nerves.

"Tap, tap, tap."

The familiar three knocks rang out again.

This time, instead of the piercing cries from outside the door, came an extremely weak voice filled with utter despair:

"Ah Man... Mother can't breathe... Open the door and let Mother in..."

Zhou Aman's body jerked violently. He looked at his mother, who was sleeping soundly on the earthen bed, and then at the thin wooden door. His brain was on the verge of collapse under the extreme fear and that eerie pull.

Lin Xiaolu reacted quickly, inserting a silver needle with extreme precision into the Shen Ting acupoint between his eyebrows.

"Hearing something doesn't mean it's true." Lin Xiaolu's voice was extremely calm, like a bucket of ice water poured over Zhou Aman's head.

The courtyard gate was not open.

But on the blue brick floor of the inner room, that familiar string of wet footprints reappeared.

The trail of footprints still started from the edge of Zhou's mother's bed, step by step, carrying that foul-smelling, blackish filth, extending towards the courtyard gate.

Lin Xiaolu and Tang Qinghe immediately stepped forward, protecting Zhou's mother's lungs from both sides. Without any fancy moves, the two simply used the most basic medical techniques and a very small amount of Yi Wood vitality to build a defensive line within Zhou's mother's body, firmly suppressing the Yin Sha that was trying to resonate with the outside world.

Lu Yan, holding a low-level array plate, squatted on the ground and quickly recorded the direction of the footprints.

"The footprints still point to the Demon Suppression Bureau's Office," Lu Yan said in a low voice. "It's trying to forcefully open this node."

"Throw the bait," Han Zhao coldly ordered.

Fang Bai pulled out three specially made yellow papers from his pocket, bit his fingertip, and quickly wrote down a common local name on them: "Li Shi Nu from Huai'an".

Lu Yan immediately spread the half-printed fragment of the name-sealing array on the ground, and Fang Bai placed three fake name talismans on the three "air vents" of the fragment, temporarily constructing an extremely rudimentary but barely valid "fake register" at the level of rules.

Despite the excruciating pain from the damage to his Dharma body, Xie Wujiu gently pressed the Yin Si seal in his hand onto the soul position of one of the fake name talismans.

A faint trace of the underworld gave this pseudonym a "shadow like a living person".

The moment the pseudonym was completed.

The voice outside the door, calling "Aman," suddenly paused.

Then, as if finding new prey in the darkness, the crying abruptly changed direction, lingering at the crack of the door, and calling out in utter despair:

"Miss Li... Lady Li... Open the door..."

It was truly misled by this "name registration"!

The moment after the Crying Goddess locked onto the pseudonym.

Through the crack in the courtyard gate, a stream of black water, as thick as ink, slowly seeped in. The black water crossed the threshold, wriggled and gathered on the bluestone slab, and finally slowly solidified into half a woman's face.

But this face is chilling.

It is constantly changing.

One second, it looked like Zhou Aman's mother; the next second, it turned into the appearance of the long-dead widow Wang next door; and in the next instant, its features began to twist and recombine rapidly, turning into the faces of countless women, some familiar and some not.

Finally, the face froze into an extremely horrifying image—no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Only a blank outline, covered with long, wet, black hair, and emanating layer upon layer of mournful cries from that blank space.

Corresponding to the blood-written words on the Demon Suppression Bureau's waist token from earlier that day: "She is not a name."

She is an incense-burning evil spirit pieced together from countless swallowed names and countless desperate cries.

Xu Chenzhou's hand, gripping the sword, bulged with veins as he desperately resisted the urge to draw it. Han Zhao, still coldly staring at the half-faced blankness that shifted, gestured: Record!

The low-spiritual-pressure magical artifacts in Lu Yan and Luo Qi's hands operated rapidly, recording every single fluctuation of the rules when this "partial true form" manifested.

Just then, Xie Wujiu suddenly moved.

He gently placed a soul-binding order stamped with the seal of the underworld onto the edge of the pool of black water.

The instant the paper touched the black water, Xie Wujiu's paper figure arm emitted a "hiss" sound and instantly exploded into a cloud of black ash.

Despite the backlash from these rules, he managed to extract a wisp of "name trace" from the black water, a hundred times finer than a strand of hair, and sealed it tightly within the command paper.

That was a small fragment of identity belonging to this world, which was swallowed by the Weeping Goddess.

However, at the very moment that trace of his name was intercepted and sealed into the order paper.

The nine people in the courtyard all shuddered.

They clearly felt an extremely subtle yet incredibly shocking change taking place within their bodies.

The invisible "boundary repulsion force" that had been pressing down on their souls ever since they crossed over into another realm, as if it wanted to crush the living, suddenly loosened a little!

This loosening was extremely small and only temporary, but for them it was as significant as the creation of the world.

"The rejection has lessened." A sharp glint flashed in Lu Yan's eyes as he instantly grasped the underlying logic.

"The Weeping Goddess is not a normal evil spirit in this world."

Lin Xiaolu stared at the sealed document bearing her name's mark, her breathing quickening. "She was like a piece of rotting flesh within the rules of this world's register of names. By tearing away a part of her contamination, we're essentially cleaning the lesions from this world!"

The world's consciousness sensed our "goodwill," which is why it opened a crack in the rules for us!

A chilling strategic flame instantly ignited in Han Zhao's icy gaze.

If that's the case...

Therefore, the extermination or suppression of such rule-based anomalies is not merely for the sake of chivalry, but rather the most crucial path to weaken the boundary repulsion and gradually pry open the first boundary's firewall!

Just as everyone realized what was happening, the fake name tag in the center of the courtyard suddenly burned to ashes.

The half-blank face outside the door realized it had been deceived and immediately descended into extreme madness.

The piercing cries suddenly rose in pitch, and countless voices overlapped outside the courtyard walls, roaring and whispering:

"You're not from Huai'an..."

"You have no citizenship..."

"Where...did you come from...?"

It is frantically probing, trying to get past that thin layer of disguise and directly touch their essence as outsiders on Earth.

In that critical moment, Lin Xiaolu did not hesitate at all. She pulled out the dark golden new leaf that she had brought back from the mountain god temple during the day and pressed it heavily on the headboard of Zhou's mother's bed.

The leaf, nurtured by the boundary marker, flashed with an extremely faint yet supremely powerful dark golden light the moment it came into contact with the Yin energy.

The aura vanished in a flash.

But the weeping woman outside the door, who was frantically pursuing him, seemed to have suddenly crashed into an insurmountable wall of bronze and iron in the darkness, letting out an extremely short scream.

The black water in the crack of the door evaporated instantly, and the whispers outside the door stopped abruptly.

……

The long night finally passed in the silence before dawn.

When the first rooster crowed in Huai'an County, a thick layer of ash from paper money was left outside the courtyard gate, and a wet woman's handprint appeared on the threshold.

They have obtained a key that could change the entire strategic landscape.

In the corner, Lu Yan turned the low-spiritual-pressure band to its maximum and sent out the most important, yet so far, piece of extremely concise intelligence to the lunar far side marker:

[Successfully intercepted the name mark. The realm suppression has weakened slightly. Speculation: Clearing the flaws in this realm's rules can reduce world rejection.]

Morning light streamed through the window, illuminating Han Zhao's face, which was as hard as rock. He looked at the soul-binding order paper on the table, which sealed the "Name Mark," and slowly drew the old iron sword from his waist.

He turned his head, looked at his teammates who were covered in wounds but whose eyes shone brightly, and spoke in a deep, powerful voice:

"Brothers, we are not here to rid Huai'an County of a scourge."

"We are forging a path for the Earth, for the three hundred, three thousand, or even the entire army behind us, in this world."