Chapter 135

Chapter 135
Chapter 135 The Soul Guiding Lamp
Ye Shaoyang’s answer stunned Xiao Ma . “But don’t spirits not have real bodies? How can it eat corpses?”
Ye Shaoyang explained, “The Corpse-eating Spirit differs from the mortal world’s spirits . In the beginning, the mortal world’s spirits could only cultivate with something abstract, like Qi, essence, and energy . For example, corpse Qi or evil Qi . But the Corpse-eating Spirit comes from the underworld . It’s rare in the mortal world . The Corpse-eating Spirit cultivates by eating various types of corpses when it’s in the underworld . So it eats corpses for cultivation when they are in the mortal world too .
“Normally, evil sorcerers summon the Corpse-eating Spirit to the mortal world . The evil sorcerers lure the spirit with corpses and use it . The spirit won’t actively hurt people . However, if someone provokes it, it’s not easy to deal with . ”
“Is it possible that the Gu master summoned the Corpse-eating Spirit?” asked Xiao Ma .
“Very likely,” replied Ye Shaoyang, not hiding his thoughts . “The village head mentioned that the first case of a corpse being eaten was about two years ago . The Gu master built the house at Jiuyin Mountain three years ago . It’s possible that he released the Corpse-eating Spirit not long after he built the house . ”
Xiao Ma asked, “What advantage does he gain after releasing the Corpse-eating Spirit?”
Ye Shaoyang’s face turned serious . He looked around before he said, “I carefully studied the area when we entered this village . There’s a formation trapping the hateful Qi within a range of two miles . It seems the existence of this formation is to satisfy the cultivation of the Corpse-eating Spirit .
“But have you realized the problem? There are not many villagers in this village, and the deaths are very few . The Corpse-eating Spirit even dug up and ate the corpses in ancestral graves . It seems to crave corpses to eat, but it still stays here and never leaves to another place to find more corpses . Do you know the reason?”
Xiao Ma shook his head . “It doesn’t go to other places to find corpses, and it doesn’t kill people either . ”
Ye Shaoyang said, “The reason it doesn’t kill is because of the Underworld Agreement . According to this agreement, it can’t actively kill people, but this doesn’t mean it can't kill . As for the other problem, it never leaves the village as it can’t escape from the formation .
“This formation appears to help the Corpse-eating Spirit find food and cultivate . In fact, this formation is using it to trap the souls of those corpses and continuously producing hateful Qi . The person who set up this formation wants an extremely strong hateful Qi to fulfill his plan . ”
Xiao Ma’s jaw slowly dropped . “What’s the plan?”
Ye Shaoyang said, “This village is one of the four places labeled on the map . Adding the central location, Madam Chee’s Temple makes five formations . The formations link with each other . The combination of these five formations will become Five Spirits Moving Mountain Formation . ”
“Five Spirits Moving Mountain Formation… . ” Xiao Ma repeated the name . He suddenly realized something and asked, “Do you mean there are five spirits and the Corpse-eating Spirit is one of them?” Seeing Ye Shaoyang nod at his question, he hurriedly asked again, “What are the other four spirits?”
“I have no idea . First, we have to kill the Corpse-eating Spirit and break the formation here . ” As Ye Shaoyang finished speaking, he grabbed the air above his head and pulled back . A middle-aged man appeared struggling for help in his hand .
“You’ve got the nerve to wander on top of my head . ” Ye Shaoyang knew the middle-aged man was a spirit with grievances in the village and wouldn’t know much about the Corpse-eating Spirit . He exorcised the man with a talisman paper . Then he told Xiao Ma, “We need to exorcise all the spirits with grievances before we deal with the Corpse-eating Spirit . It will become problematic if the Corpse-eating Spirit controls the aggrieved spirits . You’ll need to handle this issue . ”
“Me?” Xiao Ma was stunned . “You must be joking!”
“Listen, the exorcised spirit was a newly dead spirit . It didn’t know much about the rules . Other spirits are afraid of me . They all hide before I can reach them, so I doubt I can capture all of them by myself in a night . I’ll make a Soul Guiding Lamp for you . You’ll light it and walk across the main road of the village . The spirits will automatically follow you . You need to walk around the entire village . Eventually, you will guide them into the Soul Guiding Path, which I’ll make . Then they will enter the Netherworld Council by themselves . ”
Xiao Ma looked at Ye Shaoyang with puzzlement . “Be honest . Is there any danger in doing this?”
Ye Shaoyang rolled his eyes . “Not much danger . Just, some spirits might look scary . But I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that since you’ve seen so many scary and disturbing spirits . You should have some immunity to them . ”
Xiao Ma rolled his eyes . “Won’t you feel hungry even if you eat every day? Oh well, I’ll try my best . Where will you be at that time?”
“I’ll be far away, chasing the spirits that are not attracted by the Soul Guiding Lamp to the Soul Guiding Path . ”
Ye Shaoyang then called Xiao Ma to the graveyard . The villagers who attended the funeral had left . Ye Shaoyang found a suitable location and stuck a dozen or so purple flags in pairs into the ground . The flags formed a backwards S-shaped path . At the end of the path, he placed an incense burner, three bundles of three color joss sticks, and two red candles .
The three color joss sticks would show the start of the path and the red glow from the candles would guide the spirits on their way .
After setting this up, Ye Shaoyang took out his cinnabar pen and drew various patterns of Daoist incantations on dozens of talisman paper . Then he glued the talisman papers on the ground in front of the incense burner according to the Bagua positions . The patterns were too abstract for Xiao Ma to understand, so he asked, “What’s the name of this incantation?”
“Incantation of Wind and Thunder . The four Yang trigrams will be the wind while the four Yin trigrams will be the thunder . This incantation can forcefully exorcise unwilling spirits . ”
Then Ye Shaoyang started to make the Soul Guiding Lamp . Xiao Ma initially thought the lamp would be the same as the one he saw on a television show – a man holding a lantern, walking around to find spirits . To his surprise, Ye Shaoyang just wrote on three talisman papers and stuck them on the top of his head and on each of his shoulders and recited a chant . “I’ve lighted the Soul Guiding Lamp . You can start your journey . ”
Xiao Ma looked at Ye Shaoyang with hesitation in his eyes . “Where is the lamp?”
“Your three mortal lamps are the Soul Guiding Lamp . Spirits are the same as the moths . They tend to move toward bright things . Since I’ve illuminated your three mortal lamps, the spirits will come to you once they see you,”
Xiao Ma shuddered . Now he understood he was the so-called Soul Guiding Lamp . At once, he felt worried . “Little Ye, what if the spirits choke me?”
“The spirits can’t hurt you while your mortal lamps are lighted . They can only frighten you . Because most of them have strong hateful Qi, they will refuse to go to the Netherworld Council . They will try to disturb you in various ways to force you to retreat . Remember, you must bear with them and never look back . If you turn your head, your breathing might just blow out your shoulders’ mortal lamps, and the spirits will be able to possess you .
“When the spirits realize they can’t force you to retreat, they will obediently follow you . I’ll give you a spirit summoning bell . You need to ring it along the journey so that the spirits will follow you . That’s all . You can start your journey now . Don’t walk too fast or too slow . Make a big loop and come back here to enter the Soul Guiding Path!”
Ye Shaoyang shoved a spirit summoning bell into Xiao Ma’s hand . He pushed Xiao Ma’s from behind and watched Xiao Ma walk across the village . Then he dived into the bushes and waved his Peach Wood Sword in the air . More and more white figures came out from the wet bushes . They involuntarily flew toward Xiao Ma when they saw the Soul Guiding Lamp and heard the sound of the spirit summoning bell .