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.
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