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“I have another name. A thousand years ago, Huajisi called me ‘the Great Celestial Master Zhong Yi’.”
As soon as Yin Ren finished speaking, everyone at the table turned to look at Fu Xingchuan.
Fu Xingchuan had just finished roasting some pork belly and had his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. He was suddenly washed over by eight pairs of eyes, and he almost choked.
However, with his exceptional mental strength, Fu Xingchuan managed to eat the meat and keep his expression calm.
At this moment, he only needed to show that he knew the truth. Fu Xingchuan didn’t say much; he just used his stainless steel tongs to grab another piece of meat and calmly roast it.
The four people around him were silent.
They seemed frozen, not screaming or questioning, but their gazes all scattered at the same time…
Before Lu Xiaohe entered Shian, “Zhong Yi” was just a supporting character in most folk stories about the supernatural, roughly equivalent to King Yama in ordinary underworld stories—a majestic “powerful ceiling” used primarily to punish evil and promote good before the end of the story. Such characters typically had a high appearance rate but were poorly described.
She still remembered the first time she flipped through the <The Book of Exorcism> written by Zhong Yi.
Under the dim light of the old desk lamp, the old book emitted a peculiar odor of aged paper. It was from the batch printed when Shian was established, and it was now considered a half cultural relic.
An encyclopedia of metaphysics.
Strangely enough, Lu Xiaohe could always tell which cases were provided by Zhong Yi and which were added by later generations. In Zhong Yi’s approach, there was a kind of natural and unpolished “directness”. Compared to the endless theories of the aristocratic families in the metaphysical world, the cases and solutions given by Zhong Yi exuded a strange wildness, completely devoid of the fixed thinking of that era.
‘If Zhong Yi hadn’t pursued research in metaphysics, he might have become a decent scholar,’ Lu Xiaohe thought to herself.
However, in his neither long nor brief life, Zhong Yi had only left with one or two “touchpoints”.
For Ge Tingting, those dense touchpoints faintly connected to form a line…
The young girl still remembered when she first contracted her “deaf-mute” disease, her grandmother took her to seek medical help everywhere. When the hospital couldn’t cure her, the old woman took her to see “diviners” and “half-immortals”.
From her village to a nearby “big village”, the old woman spent all her savings but was unable to cure her granddaughter.
In retrospect, those so-called diviners and half-immortals were all frauds, just eyeing the old woman’s money. Ge Tingting had seen countless flashy “exorcism rituals”, but the most memorable thing for the young girl was the statues of the gods in their homes.
The statues were all similar, depicting a well-built man with a leopard’s head and fierce eyes. The statue’s eyeballs protruded, and the black ink dots of the pupils looked down with a strong sense of oppression.
She knew that it was Zhong Yi.
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Because almost every household in the village had his portrait. Among the various matching prints, such as “Door God”, “God of Wealth”, and “Stove God”, her parents pointed to each one and made her recognize them one by one.
“This smiling one is the God of Wealth. He’ll help our family become rich and live a good life… This fierce one is Celestial Master Zhong. He can ward off evil and protect us from bad people…” Her mother pointed to the highly saturated print and teased her daughter with a smile.
‘He’s a god,’ Ge Tingting thought.
So many people believed in him, and every household had his portrait, so he must be a very powerful god.
But this god looked fierce and scary.
That god started from the incomplete print in her house, walked to the altar in the neighboring village, passed by the books in Shian, and finally arrived at the ancient ancestral hall of the Fu family.
It was a rumor that was close at hand.
But for Huang Jin, who had once roamed in the gray area, “Zhong Yi” wasn’t just a rumor close by.
He thought that Yin Ren would confess his identity as an evil, and if possible, this guy would introduce his own kind, so that he could understand and be afraid. There were thousands of evil creatures in the world, and this guy couldn’t possibly be an Evil Spirit, right?
Huang Jin was very confident that he was the calmest person in the room. He firmly believed that the “resurrection” of Zhong Chengshuo was done by the hands of Yin Ren. As long as Yin Ren explained what type of evil he was, he could complete the last puzzle piece in his mind.
From now on, he no longer had to face a life like “100,000 Whys” every day when he got up.
…But the identity that Yin Ren spoke out was a far cry from the concept of an “evil”.
Huang Jin was no stranger to “Zhong Yi”.
In the corner of his basement, there was still an exquisite wooden carving of Zhong Yi. It was his mother’s relic, and all the Nightwalkers’ homes had similar things—compared to Shian, which was well-equipped and had a better guarantee of personal safety, the Nightwalkers were doing blood-licking work. If they weren’t careful, evil beings would kill them.
When his mother went out to sell spirit weapons, she would always offer one or two sweet fruits or rough incense to the Zhong Yi wooden carving at home. She never explained these things to him, but after entering the world of metaphysics, Huang Jin learned about it whether he wanted to or not.
On a rainy night, Huang Jin once drank at a small restaurant. It was three in the morning, and he was the only customer in the shop.
He watched as the boss glanced at the time and took out a Zhong Yi statue from the wooden cabinet, devoutly placing several pieces of sweet cake on it.
“Nightwalker?” Huang Jin finished his drink and tapped the bottom of the bottle on the table.
“You too?” The elderly boss, in his sixties or seventies, smiled. “As soon as you came in, I could tell that the items you’re carrying are pretty good.”
Huang Jin took a glance at the bag full of spirit weapons beside him and snorted.
“Do you also worship that thing?”
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Huang Jin usually didn’t like to talk too much with strangers. Perhaps it was because of the alcohol tonight, or perhaps because he was in a daze, he saw his mother’s thin figure bowing respectfully in front of the small statue.
“Praying for peace and good luck. Ordinary people worship Guan Yu and the God of Wealth. We worship Celestial Master Zhong. That’s a good match.”
Hearing Huang Jin’s harsh tone, the old man wasn’t annoyed. He took out half a bottle of white wine and sat down opposite Huang Jin, still looking at the portrait of Zhong Yi.
“There’s a legend in my family that an ancestor was a young disciple of Zhong Yi. He was a great Celestial Master who sealed six Evil Spirits, and our family’s unique skills were all learned from him.”
The old man said this half-jokingly.
“How could anyone seal six Evil Spirits alone?” Huang Jin laughed drunkenly. “There must have been many helpers at that time, and finally he emerged as the hero… Aren’t all those stories of gods and immortals like this throughout history? That Zhong Yi is probably only at the same level as Fu Xingchuan back then, still just a mortal.”
His mother used to worship Zhong Yi every day, but what was her ending?
He had seen too many people carrying spirit weapons with Zhong Yi carved on them, and he had also seen too many tragic endings. This deity had woven a dark web in his life.
It was just finding a place of comfort, seeking peace of mind. If there really were gods and immortals in this world, why could they only encounter evil creatures and suffer, but not encounter gods and ascend to immortality?
Huang Jin opened another bottle of beer for himself.
The old man looked at Huang Jin steadily and suddenly laughed, “You young people…”
He gently put down the small cup filled with white wine.
Ding.
Countless darkness climbed up the walls in an instant. The menus, advertising posters, and payment codes on the wall were all covered, leaving only a flat black without any depth of field. In the next moment, countless eyes of people of different sizes opened in the darkness, no different in size from real human eyes.
Looking only at the positions of those eyes, this blackness looked more like a collection of countless shadowy figures.
Those eyes turned and looked at Huang Jin from all directions in unison.
A group of ghosts.
This was an extremely powerful and never-before-seen method of manipulating ghosts. Although there was no hostility in those gazes, the sense of oppression still collapsed like an avalanche. Huang Jin half sobered up from the alcohol in an instant and quickly sat straight up in his chair.
As long as the old man gave the command, he wouldn’t even have any bone residue left.
However, the old man just smiled at him and tapped his cup. Those ghostly shadows seeped into the walls like water stains and quickly disappeared.
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“This is what the Great Celestial Master taught at the time. It is said that he came up with this technique just to teach children how to count.”
Huang Jin: “…”
Indeed, it was convenient to use the eyes of ghosts, which could open and close, to do simple calculations, but this Great Celestial Master’s thought process was really abnormal. Wouldn’t children be traumatized by this?
“My ancestor always made mistakes in their calculations, so they were taught this technique… It’s not something ordinary people can easily come up with. You young people always say that you can’t see the immortals but have forgotten even the most basic supernatural stories.”
The old man shook his glass of white wine, and the baijiu gave off a pungent smell.
Huang Jin: “Please tell me more.”
The old man sighed softly. “When an evil is worshiped by humans, it becomes a household deity. When a monster is bestowed a title by the heavens, it becomes a god. Are the so-called immortals in your mouth really just simple immortals?”
Huang Jin suddenly felt a cold sweat on the back of his head. Even though he was rebellious, he knew that the old man’s words were considered blasphemy among the Nightwalkers.
This was clearly saying that “immortals” were also a type of “evil”.
However, the old man stopped there, taking a sip of his wine and plucking a peanut from Huang Jin’s dish.
“So, that technique from earlier isn’t something an ordinary person can come up with. What a shame. If my ancestor had worked a bit harder, maybe they could have become the second Fu family.”
Huang Jin never imagined that the old man’s blasphemous words from years ago would actually be proven true.
The Great Celestial Master Zhong Yi was really an evil.
…And his thought process was really, truly abnormal!
Huang Jin’s face turned pale as he looked at Fu Tianyi. His own mental state was on the verge of collapsing, and he needed someone who was even worse off than him to stabilize it—the Fu family was known for being followers of the Great Celestial Master Zhong Yi. They had always worshiped him as a legitimate “god”, and Fu Tianyi had a particularly strong sense of belonging to the Fu family.
Of all the people present, he was probably the most miserable.
As expected, Fu Tianyi was already suffocating. He had turned purple, and his lips were trembling. His gaze shifted from Yin Ren to Fu Xingchuan, who was taking advantage of the opportunity to barbecue.
“I told you that it was at your own risk.” Perhaps out of pity for his collapsing nephew, Fu Xingchuan stuffed a particularly juicy piece of meat into his mouth and spoke in a serious tone. “Tianyi, you insisted on coming here, and I can’t do anything about it.”
Lu Xiaohe was the first to breathe a sigh of relief. “No wonder you asked us to make a wish.”
It seemed like her wish was going to come true.
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Ge Tingting pondered for a moment. “Yin Ren is really powerful.”
Fu Tianyi made a bird-like whimpering sound, his eyes moving from the two women to Huang Jin, but in Huang Jin’s eyes, he saw a strange and benevolent expression.
At that moment, he wanted to run away.
“This is, cough, cough, just a prank, right?!” Fu Tianyi forced himself to perk up. “Yin Ge, the Great Celestial Master doesn’t like to be made fun of.”
The more he spoke, the more he felt he was making sense.
“Hahaha, I knew it. Why would he suddenly reveal his identity? There was no need for it!”
Zhong Chengshuo: “But it is necessary.”
He had been feeling a bit at a loss due to being constantly fed food by Yin Ren, but in the past, it had been a small matter that he didn’t care about. At this moment, he felt like he had to do something.
A flesh puppet could speak, so Zhong Chengshuo lowered his voice and explained seriously.
“Because the next task will be facing Shian’s Evil Spirit. He said it so you all can truly feel at ease.”
Fu Tianyi felt a tingling sensation deep in his brain. He felt like the voices around him were getting farther away.
Help!
…….
Shian Campus, underground.
The huge Evil Spirit floating underground was still asleep, but its only conscious part—the black dog—was jumping around in the vast artificial scenery, bringing back sticks to the small owner, played by a robot. Its round eyes were full of brilliance, and its tail was wagging wildly.
But the next moment, its tail suddenly drooped.
Crack. The black dog bit off the stick. It bounded to the small owner in three or four steps, lowered its body, and made a low growling sound in its throat.
After threatening the air for a few minutes, it let out a piercing howl.
The body of the Evil Spirit floating in mid-air visibly twitched a few times.
The author has something to say:
The Evil Spirit dog of Shian is barking!
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“I have another name. A thousand years ago, Huajisi called me ‘the Great Celestial Master Zhong Yi’.”
As soon as Yin Ren finished speaking, everyone at the table turned to look at Fu Xingchuan.
Fu Xingchuan had just finished roasting some pork belly and had his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. He was suddenly washed over by eight pairs of eyes, and he almost choked.
However, with his exceptional mental strength, Fu Xingchuan managed to eat the meat and keep his expression calm.
At this moment, he only needed to show that he knew the truth. Fu Xingchuan didn’t say much; he just used his stainless steel tongs to grab another piece of meat and calmly roast it.
The four people around him were silent.
They seemed frozen, not screaming or questioning, but their gazes all scattered at the same time…
Before Lu Xiaohe entered Shian, “Zhong Yi” was just a supporting character in most folk stories about the supernatural, roughly equivalent to King Yama in ordinary underworld stories—a majestic “powerful ceiling” used primarily to punish evil and promote good before the end of the story. Such characters typically had a high appearance rate but were poorly described.
She still remembered the first time she flipped through the <The Book of Exorcism> written by Zhong Yi.
Under the dim light of the old desk lamp, the old book emitted a peculiar odor of aged paper. It was from the batch printed when Shian was established, and it was now considered a half cultural relic.
An encyclopedia of metaphysics.
Strangely enough, Lu Xiaohe could always tell which cases were provided by Zhong Yi and which were added by later generations. In Zhong Yi’s approach, there was a kind of natural and unpolished “directness”. Compared to the endless theories of the aristocratic families in the metaphysical world, the cases and solutions given by Zhong Yi exuded a strange wildness, completely devoid of the fixed thinking of that era.
‘If Zhong Yi hadn’t pursued research in metaphysics, he might have become a decent scholar,’ Lu Xiaohe thought to herself.
However, in his neither long nor brief life, Zhong Yi had only left with one or two “touchpoints”.
For Ge Tingting, those dense touchpoints faintly connected to form a line…
The young girl still remembered when she first contracted her “deaf-mute” disease, her grandmother took her to seek medical help everywhere. When the hospital couldn’t cure her, the old woman took her to see “diviners” and “half-immortals”.
From her village to a nearby “big village”, the old woman spent all her savings but was unable to cure her granddaughter.
In retrospect, those so-called diviners and half-immortals were all frauds, just eyeing the old woman’s money. Ge Tingting had seen countless flashy “exorcism rituals”, but the most memorable thing for the young girl was the statues of the gods in their homes.
The statues were all similar, depicting a well-built man with a leopard’s head and fierce eyes. The statue’s eyeballs protruded, and the black ink dots of the pupils looked down with a strong sense of oppression.
She knew that it was Zhong Yi.
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Because almost every household in the village had his portrait. Among the various matching prints, such as “Door God”, “God of Wealth”, and “Stove God”, her parents pointed to each one and made her recognize them one by one.
“This smiling one is the God of Wealth. He’ll help our family become rich and live a good life… This fierce one is Celestial Master Zhong. He can ward off evil and protect us from bad people…” Her mother pointed to the highly saturated print and teased her daughter with a smile.
‘He’s a god,’ Ge Tingting thought.
So many people believed in him, and every household had his portrait, so he must be a very powerful god.
But this god looked fierce and scary.
That god started from the incomplete print in her house, walked to the altar in the neighboring village, passed by the books in Shian, and finally arrived at the ancient ancestral hall of the Fu family.
It was a rumor that was close at hand.
But for Huang Jin, who had once roamed in the gray area, “Zhong Yi” wasn’t just a rumor close by.
He thought that Yin Ren would confess his identity as an evil, and if possible, this guy would introduce his own kind, so that he could understand and be afraid. There were thousands of evil creatures in the world, and this guy couldn’t possibly be an Evil Spirit, right?
Huang Jin was very confident that he was the calmest person in the room. He firmly believed that the “resurrection” of Zhong Chengshuo was done by the hands of Yin Ren. As long as Yin Ren explained what type of evil he was, he could complete the last puzzle piece in his mind.
From now on, he no longer had to face a life like “100,000 Whys” every day when he got up.
…But the identity that Yin Ren spoke out was a far cry from the concept of an “evil”.
Huang Jin was no stranger to “Zhong Yi”.
In the corner of his basement, there was still an exquisite wooden carving of Zhong Yi. It was his mother’s relic, and all the Nightwalkers’ homes had similar things—compared to Shian, which was well-equipped and had a better guarantee of personal safety, the Nightwalkers were doing blood-licking work. If they weren’t careful, evil beings would kill them.
When his mother went out to sell spirit weapons, she would always offer one or two sweet fruits or rough incense to the Zhong Yi wooden carving at home. She never explained these things to him, but after entering the world of metaphysics, Huang Jin learned about it whether he wanted to or not.
On a rainy night, Huang Jin once drank at a small restaurant. It was three in the morning, and he was the only customer in the shop.
He watched as the boss glanced at the time and took out a Zhong Yi statue from the wooden cabinet, devoutly placing several pieces of sweet cake on it.
“Nightwalker?” Huang Jin finished his drink and tapped the bottom of the bottle on the table.
“You too?” The elderly boss, in his sixties or seventies, smiled. “As soon as you came in, I could tell that the items you’re carrying are pretty good.”
Huang Jin took a glance at the bag full of spirit weapons beside him and snorted.
“Do you also worship that thing?”
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Huang Jin usually didn’t like to talk too much with strangers. Perhaps it was because of the alcohol tonight, or perhaps because he was in a daze, he saw his mother’s thin figure bowing respectfully in front of the small statue.
“Praying for peace and good luck. Ordinary people worship Guan Yu and the God of Wealth. We worship Celestial Master Zhong. That’s a good match.”
Hearing Huang Jin’s harsh tone, the old man wasn’t annoyed. He took out half a bottle of white wine and sat down opposite Huang Jin, still looking at the portrait of Zhong Yi.
“There’s a legend in my family that an ancestor was a young disciple of Zhong Yi. He was a great Celestial Master who sealed six Evil Spirits, and our family’s unique skills were all learned from him.”
The old man said this half-jokingly.
“How could anyone seal six Evil Spirits alone?” Huang Jin laughed drunkenly. “There must have been many helpers at that time, and finally he emerged as the hero… Aren’t all those stories of gods and immortals like this throughout history? That Zhong Yi is probably only at the same level as Fu Xingchuan back then, still just a mortal.”
His mother used to worship Zhong Yi every day, but what was her ending?
He had seen too many people carrying spirit weapons with Zhong Yi carved on them, and he had also seen too many tragic endings. This deity had woven a dark web in his life.
It was just finding a place of comfort, seeking peace of mind. If there really were gods and immortals in this world, why could they only encounter evil creatures and suffer, but not encounter gods and ascend to immortality?
Huang Jin opened another bottle of beer for himself.
The old man looked at Huang Jin steadily and suddenly laughed, “You young people…”
He gently put down the small cup filled with white wine.
Ding.
Countless darkness climbed up the walls in an instant. The menus, advertising posters, and payment codes on the wall were all covered, leaving only a flat black without any depth of field. In the next moment, countless eyes of people of different sizes opened in the darkness, no different in size from real human eyes.
Looking only at the positions of those eyes, this blackness looked more like a collection of countless shadowy figures.
Those eyes turned and looked at Huang Jin from all directions in unison.
A group of ghosts.
This was an extremely powerful and never-before-seen method of manipulating ghosts. Although there was no hostility in those gazes, the sense of oppression still collapsed like an avalanche. Huang Jin half sobered up from the alcohol in an instant and quickly sat straight up in his chair.
As long as the old man gave the command, he wouldn’t even have any bone residue left.
However, the old man just smiled at him and tapped his cup. Those ghostly shadows seeped into the walls like water stains and quickly disappeared.
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“This is what the Great Celestial Master taught at the time. It is said that he came up with this technique just to teach children how to count.”
Huang Jin: “…”
Indeed, it was convenient to use the eyes of ghosts, which could open and close, to do simple calculations, but this Great Celestial Master’s thought process was really abnormal. Wouldn’t children be traumatized by this?
“My ancestor always made mistakes in their calculations, so they were taught this technique… It’s not something ordinary people can easily come up with. You young people always say that you can’t see the immortals but have forgotten even the most basic supernatural stories.”
The old man shook his glass of white wine, and the baijiu gave off a pungent smell.
Huang Jin: “Please tell me more.”
The old man sighed softly. “When an evil is worshiped by humans, it becomes a household deity. When a monster is bestowed a title by the heavens, it becomes a god. Are the so-called immortals in your mouth really just simple immortals?”
Huang Jin suddenly felt a cold sweat on the back of his head. Even though he was rebellious, he knew that the old man’s words were considered blasphemy among the Nightwalkers.
This was clearly saying that “immortals” were also a type of “evil”.
However, the old man stopped there, taking a sip of his wine and plucking a peanut from Huang Jin’s dish.
“So, that technique from earlier isn’t something an ordinary person can come up with. What a shame. If my ancestor had worked a bit harder, maybe they could have become the second Fu family.”
Huang Jin never imagined that the old man’s blasphemous words from years ago would actually be proven true.
The Great Celestial Master Zhong Yi was really an evil.
…And his thought process was really, truly abnormal!
Huang Jin’s face turned pale as he looked at Fu Tianyi. His own mental state was on the verge of collapsing, and he needed someone who was even worse off than him to stabilize it—the Fu family was known for being followers of the Great Celestial Master Zhong Yi. They had always worshiped him as a legitimate “god”, and Fu Tianyi had a particularly strong sense of belonging to the Fu family.
Of all the people present, he was probably the most miserable.
As expected, Fu Tianyi was already suffocating. He had turned purple, and his lips were trembling. His gaze shifted from Yin Ren to Fu Xingchuan, who was taking advantage of the opportunity to barbecue.
“I told you that it was at your own risk.” Perhaps out of pity for his collapsing nephew, Fu Xingchuan stuffed a particularly juicy piece of meat into his mouth and spoke in a serious tone. “Tianyi, you insisted on coming here, and I can’t do anything about it.”
Lu Xiaohe was the first to breathe a sigh of relief. “No wonder you asked us to make a wish.”
It seemed like her wish was going to come true.
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Ge Tingting pondered for a moment. “Yin Ren is really powerful.”
Fu Tianyi made a bird-like whimpering sound, his eyes moving from the two women to Huang Jin, but in Huang Jin’s eyes, he saw a strange and benevolent expression.
At that moment, he wanted to run away.
“This is, cough, cough, just a prank, right?!” Fu Tianyi forced himself to perk up. “Yin Ge, the Great Celestial Master doesn’t like to be made fun of.”
The more he spoke, the more he felt he was making sense.
“Hahaha, I knew it. Why would he suddenly reveal his identity? There was no need for it!”
Zhong Chengshuo: “But it is necessary.”
He had been feeling a bit at a loss due to being constantly fed food by Yin Ren, but in the past, it had been a small matter that he didn’t care about. At this moment, he felt like he had to do something.
A flesh puppet could speak, so Zhong Chengshuo lowered his voice and explained seriously.
“Because the next task will be facing Shian’s Evil Spirit. He said it so you all can truly feel at ease.”
Fu Tianyi felt a tingling sensation deep in his brain. He felt like the voices around him were getting farther away.
Help!
…….
Shian Campus, underground.
The huge Evil Spirit floating underground was still asleep, but its only conscious part—the black dog—was jumping around in the vast artificial scenery, bringing back sticks to the small owner, played by a robot. Its round eyes were full of brilliance, and its tail was wagging wildly.
But the next moment, its tail suddenly drooped.
Crack. The black dog bit off the stick. It bounded to the small owner in three or four steps, lowered its body, and made a low growling sound in its throat.
After threatening the air for a few minutes, it let out a piercing howl.
The body of the Evil Spirit floating in mid-air visibly twitched a few times.
The author has something to say:
The Evil Spirit dog of Shian is barking!
