With virtue

Time flew by, and it was already evening.

Zhao Yunshu walked along a country path with a straw doll slung across his waist.

This straw figure is Jiu Yan; her birth date and name are even written on it.

Yes, after Jiu Yan made her choice, Zhao Yunshu found some wild grass by the roadside, made a straw effigy, and then performed a ritual to summon Jiu Yan's soul to the straw effigy. He then wrote a seal on it with cinnabar, so that she could never come out again.

The original purpose of this straw doll soul-summoning ritual was to help frightened children who had lost their souls to regain their senses.

When his master taught him, he said that a child's soul is unstable and easily leaves the body when frightened. He used a straw figure to perform a ritual to summon the soul back and then slowly place it back into the body.

However, since the straw figure can summon souls, it can also trap them. He drew a seal on the straw figure with cinnabar, locking Jiu Yan's soul firmly inside. This female ghost could not escape even if she had wings.

The true essence of magic lies in its versatility. Develop your own functions based on different effects, and don't be bound by the original usage. That's what it means to truly master magic.

This was also something that Master taught Zhao Yunshu.

But then they saw that the young Taoist priest had a straw figure slung over his waist, and others were following behind him.

Behind the Taoist priest, a huge crowd of 'people' stood in a long line.

There were men and women, young and old, all with deathly pale faces, their feet half-suspended, with only one toe touching the ground, floating behind him. There were at least forty or fifty of them. They didn't speak or make a sound, but just followed quietly. The line stretched very long, from one end of the road all the way into the darkness in the distance. If an unsuspecting passerby were to see them, they would probably be scared half to death on the spot!

A vast expanse of dozens of dead souls!

These spirits included both men and women, most of them dressed in rags, with miserable faces. Some were missing arms, some had broken legs, some had a large hole in their chest, and some had only a layer of skin connecting their necks to their heads. They were the innocent people who had been killed by Jiu Yan and her gang in the deserted village in the past six months.

After their deaths, their souls were trapped in the village, unable to be reborn, suffering torment every day until they were completely numb.

Zhao Yunshu was not skilled in the art of deliverance and could not possibly set up an altar and perform rituals on the spot. So he simply gathered them together, tore a piece of cloth from his Taoist robe, made a soul-summoning banner, tied it to a random tree branch by the roadside, and wrote a soul-summoning incantation on the banner with cinnabar.

The poor old Taoist robe was already tattered from the fighting these past few days, and now Zhao Yunshu had torn off a piece, turning it into a short-sleeved shirt that almost reached his knees.

At this moment, the surrounding night was dark and desolate. It was a dark and windy night with thick clouds. The dirt road in the countryside was pitch black. Only the little Taoist priest had a little light, which he lit with fire magic to illuminate the way.

The road wound its way forward, with withered grass growing lushly along its sides. Occasionally, the barking of wild dogs drifted from afar, making the night seem even more desolate and lonely.

The young Taoist priest held the soul-summoning banner in one hand and made a hand seal with the other, chanting incantations as he walked: "Between heaven and earth, yin and yang correspond. I, by the command of the Supreme Lord Laozi, summon the departed souls. Come quickly and obey my command without delay!"

Each time he recited the mantra, the tattered banner in his hand would trace an arc in the air, the cinnabar runes faintly glowing in the moonlight, and the dozens of souls behind him would step forward in unison, silently following him.

Since ghosts cannot see the road, they easily wander around and get lost. The soul-summoning banner serves as a guide, allowing them to follow the young Taoist priest closely.

From afar, one could see a figure holding a banner in front, with eerie and ghostly figures moving slowly in the pitch-black night, creating an indescribable sense of strangeness and grandeur.

Occasionally, farmers returning home at night would see this spectacle from afar and be so frightened that they would scramble and hide under the ridges of the fields, thinking it was a ghostly procession and not daring to look at it for long.

However, the young Taoist priest noticed something else.

Every few steps, countless lost souls, drawn by the talismans on the banner, would emerge from the roadside bushes and join the procession.

After walking along a stretch of desolate road and passing through several ruins, small groups of wandering ghosts, moved by the talismans on the banners, would emerge from nowhere and silently trail at the end of the procession.

Most of them had indistinct faces and thin figures. After walking for a while, Zhao Yunshu got too lazy to count them anymore. He looked back and saw a dark mass behind him, at least eighty or ninety people, forming a long queue that meandered under the moonlight, which was quite a spectacular sight.

This soul-summoning banner was hastily made from rags and branches, and its power is far inferior to that of the proper ritual implements on the altar. Logically speaking, it shouldn't have been able to attract so many ghosts, but the world is just too corrupt.

From the late Tang Dynasty to the present, war has ravaged the land year after year, with more dead than alive. The desolate wilderness is filled with wandering souls, their families all wiped out. The government no longer holds any religious ceremonies to help them pass on. They can't find their way or their way out, and can only wander aimlessly in the wilderness, wasting away year after year.

Tonight, someone suddenly raised a banner to summon the souls and chanted a spell to summon them, like a lone lamp lit in the darkness. The lost souls flocked to the banner like moths.

They neither spoke nor made a fuss, but simply followed quietly, their forms withered and emaciated. Some carried infants who had long since turned to bones in their arms, some couples supported each other as they drifted along, and some old men hunched over, stopping to catch their breath after every step.

Although ghosts don't need to breathe, they were too tired in life and couldn't change this habit after death.

The young Taoist priest couldn't bear to drive them away. After all, whether he brought forty or ninety, it was all the same. There was no rule about how many ghosts could enter the City God Temple at once, so he might as well follow them.

But without realizing it, I slowed down a little.

We walked step by step toward the City God Temple.

All around was silent; even the wild dogs had stopped barking. Only the rustling of the night wind through the grass and the Taoist's intermittent chanting echoed across the empty plain.

He chanted incantations as he walked, until his mouth became dry. He took a sip from his water pouch at his waist to moisten his throat and continued chanting.

I walked for most of the night, my legs were sore, and my voice was hoarse from chanting.

At the second quarter of the hour of Chou (1-3 AM), when the moon was already setting in the west, Zhao Yunshu, holding the tattered soul-summoning banner, finally arrived at the City God Temple.

A large, dark mass of ghosts followed behind them. As they walked, the number of ghosts behind them gradually increased from the initial few dozen to one hundred and twenty or thirty!

Many of them were still new; judging by their attire, they were refugees who had come to Dingzhou from all directions to escape the disaster in recent days.

These people collapsed by the roadside before even reaching the city gate. Their souls had nowhere to go and were wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. Tonight, upon hearing the incantation of the soul-summoning banner, they were like drowning people grabbing a piece of driftwood, floating out one after another and silently joining this procession of the dead.

The outline of a temple could be faintly seen in the darkness ahead.

The temple is located on a low slope west of Dingzhou City. Only when you get close can you see that there is a memorial archway in front of the temple gate, with the three large characters "City God Temple" engraved on it. The characters are solemn and profound.

Two stone lions crouched on either side of the gate, their eyes wide open and their manes bushy. Despite the erosion of wind and rain, they still looked majestic, as if they were watching the uninvited guests intently.

The gate was already somewhat mottled, and above the lintel hung a plaque with gold characters on a black background, which read "Impartial Judgment".

On the east and west sides, there is a pair of carved wooden couplets:

The first line of the couplet reads: "In this mortal world, whether you do good or evil is entirely up to you."

The second line reads: "Throughout history, who has ever escaped the clutches of the underworld?"