Main Text, Chapter 85: The Giant Chaser

A thunderous roar rolled out as the alloy wall slowly parted, one lock after another slipping from view, until a tunnel ten meters across opened before everyone’s eyes.

At the same moment, countless signals flared to life within the chamber. Looking closely, they were talismans carved into the alloy itself.

“The Demon-Suppressing Grand Formation of the Heavenly Gate,” Chang Shun said coolly. “One of the most powerful formations in all of China. No matter how fierce the yin energy is, it cannot affect the people within it. Duration: ten minutes.”

“The entire institute lies within the Heavenly Gate Demon-Suppressing Formation. Did you think a single alloy wall could block thirty million units of yin energy? The reason you were influenced, but not crushed to the point where you could not stand, is that the grand formation is in constant operation. And here is its eye.”

Before his words had even faded, a curtain of pitch-black wind burst forth with overwhelming force.

The final alloy wall slid away as well, revealing a blinding gold within.

“Yin energy becoming wind...” Su Feng stared in shock at the scene around them. Their clothing, their camouflage uniforms, and Chang Shun’s white lab coat were all whipped straight backward, as though they stood at the eye of a typhoon.

“Yin energy becoming tangible... is this the ghost king of thirty million units of yin energy?” Qin Ye also drew a sharp breath, staring fixedly at the opening.

Yet beneath that gold, there was nothing.

The gold was not light, but substance. It was as though a film of gold and diamond had been inlaid over the mouth of the cave.

“This is... the ghost king?” Lin Han asked in disbelief. The existence formed from thirty million units of yin energy was merely a stretch of gold?

Whoosh... The ghostly wind gradually subsided, and the temperature all around dropped rapidly. Chang Shun said gravely, “I said before, this is only a part of it. What its true form is, no one knows. No one dares to dig into the rock beside it. If the existence of thirty million units of yin energy were ever to awaken... the consequences would be unimaginable!”

“The world behind it is blocked by layer upon layer of yin energy. No instrument can enter at all. It has been decades. The researchers have already changed over three batches, yet there has still been no progress, and it has never moved even once. The Special Investigation Division once used death-row prisoners for experiments. The moment they touched the gold, all of them were instantly dried into human husks, and the three lamps were extinguished at once... wait... this is...”

As he spoke, the gold suddenly twitched.

Dead silence.

Sudden, utter dead silence.

According to Chang Shun, that “Kuafu,” which had not moved even once in decades, had just now... moved.

Everyone, Qin Ye included, thought they had seen wrongly. Yet the next second, a deafening boom sounded from behind the stone wall. Swaths of gold rippled past like flowing water, their patterns clearly visible, and in the end... one strand of hair, about a meter long, was carried down.

Still no one spoke. Every pair of eyes widened in stunned disbelief, and instinctively they all took defensive stances. As for Chang Shun, his face flushed red in an instant, and both hands trembled.

It moved... It moved!

That strongest aggregate of yin energy in history... had actually moved!

Sss... In the silence as the six of them held their breath, that snow-white strand of hair drifted gently to the ground. Then, from the alloy floor beneath, there came a heaven-shaking crash, as though the bone of some colossal dragon had fallen to earth. A crack thinner than a strand of hair, yet unfathomably deep, appeared on the floor!

No— it was the entire institute that trembled violently!

At that moment, all the personnel stationed above were stunned.

Rumble... The old nursing home was the first to shake like an earthquake had struck. Great slabs of plaster fell away, and cracks spread everywhere. Then, with a thunderous crash, the five-story building collapsed at once.

Below, that shock fully jolted Chang Shun awake. He came to himself with a jolt and rushed out like a madman, shouting, “Quick! Immediately summon all cultivators in Baoan City! Dr. Chen, Dr. Ji, Dr. Zhao, and my research team—bring the instruments to Kuafu’s chamber at once! Even if we have to dig three feet into the earth, we must find that strand of hair!”

“Captain Lu!!” he roared at the top of his lungs, his eyes bloodshot. A soldier wearing camouflage, with one bar and three stars on his shoulder, immediately stepped forward. “At your command.”

“Seal off the site! No one is allowed in or out! Kill anyone who violates the order on the spot! Notify Vice Chief Prosecutor Zhou and have him come at once! This is an emergency!”

He gave no thought whatsoever to Qin Ye and the others. The entire institute sprang into action at once. One instrument after another, mounted on extendable arms, was immediately aimed at the cavern where Kuafu lay; indicator lights came on in succession, and countless data streams jumped across the large screens.

Soon, a man in a white coat led the five of them into separate, empty rooms, said nothing, and hurried away.

The doors closed. Nothing could be seen, only the nonstop sound of footsteps outside. In the room, Qin Ye’s gaze flickered for a long time before he finally said in a low voice, “A scale.”

He used the statement as fact.

Just before, when the thing inside had moved, they had all clearly seen traces of scales sweeping past from within the cave.

What had blocked the entrance was a single scale of that being!

Arsaces did not float out. Even the way she spoke was pensive, both hands braced on her knees, interlaced beneath her nose, covering her mouth.

There were surveillance cameras everywhere here.

“A scale.” Arsaces’ voice was incomparably grave. “This absolutely belongs to something from the Underworld... Thirty million units of yin energy have already reached the level of a Yama! What exactly is it? I know this color very well, but I just cannot recall it!”

“What did you do just now?” She suddenly stopped and asked Qin Ye in a deep voice. “I have a feeling that its movement was related to you. Beside this thing, even I can feel the yin energy boiling. But I did nothing at all, so it can only have been you.”

Qin Ye did not answer.

He had indeed moved just now.

On a sudden whim, he had wanted to see whether his Underworld Envoy certificate could exert pressure on that thing. Yet the instant his hand touched his chest, the other side moved.

More than that, he had heard a sound.

“Roar...” It was a cry of agony, not merely a shout. He was certain it was agony. For one brief instant, it felt as though their awareness had connected, and he clearly sensed the other’s pain.

Not sealed.

Not asleep.

But... gravely wounded!

That thing did not move because it was absorbing yin energy to heal its injuries. Whatever humans did, it knew perfectly well!

“Zhulong?”

“No.” Arsaces was utterly certain. “Lord Zhulong also left. Meng Po should have told you. I saw it with my own eyes beneath the rift, as Lord Ksitigarbha took it away and ascended. It does have that sort of spiritual aura, but it is absolutely not that old fellow!”

Qin Ye nodded, his brow tightly furrowed. He no longer wondered what it was. Instead, he was thinking... why had the thing sent that awareness to him?

It was not accidental. For a creature wounded so badly it could not even move, there was only one possibility: when Ksitigarbha attained Buddhahood, it had struggled with all its strength and survived. It had stood motionless for decades like a stone statue; one could imagine what price it had to pay simply to move once. In that state, could it casually send a burst of awareness to him?

Twenty minutes passed before he shook his head in frustration.

He could not make sense of it.

“But the Underworld... it really was strong back then...”

The Ten Yama Kings were all beings of thirty million units of yin energy. Add Zhulong and Kuafu, and there were twelve in total... as well as nearly a hundred local lords, thousands of magistrates, and uncountable yin emissaries... Could something like that really be rebuilt by me?

He murmured the words. Arsaces heard him and bumped lightly against the inside of his pocket. “No need to be discouraged. The power of the Underworld was accumulated over thousands of years; you do not even count as having begun yet. Right now, shouldn’t you be thinking about how to begin?”

Qin Ye froze, then gave a wry smile.

If things followed the original plan, then he would have to enter the institute’s inner depths, break through the stone wall, and reach the side of that ghost king that could not even move, then build the Underworld above it.

That was virtually an impossible task!

Not to mention that the actual situation might differ from the speculation, that it might not be merely gravely wounded and perhaps near death, but very possibly still awake. And considering the severity of the lockdown at this institute, and the degree of importance they placed on Kuafu, could he even get in?

“Let’s change the location,” he sighed. “This simply isn’t feasible... Baoan City is huge. There are deep mountains here, and there is Bota Lake, the fifth-largest freshwater lake in China. Why must it be here?”

Arsaces said calmly, “Do you think I had you build the Underworld beneath the Cultivation Academy merely for safety? Or that I had you come down here simply to see what lay below and earn merit points?”

Probably also with the thought of killing me along the way... Qin Ye blinked, and before he could say it, Arsaces continued, “That is only one aspect. More importantly, you must first understand what the Underworld actually is.”

“First, you must understand that it is an infinite space, comparable to all of China. It does not exist in the present world, yet it must have a central entrance in the present world. That is the point where yin and yang connect. Without it, wandering souls cannot enter.”

Qin Ye frowned. “The Underworld’s Yin Office vanished long ago. Wasn’t the mortal realm flooded by the Three Gorges Dam? Yet don’t the three great ghost festivals of the yin spirits still let them in all the same?”

He had seen it the first time he crossed into the yin side.

“Who said it vanished? The ruins are ruins, but the Yin Office of Fengdu still exists! It is only that, at most, this influence has another fifty years before it fades into nothing.”

“And its projection in the mortal realm... heh heh heh, boy, if you have time, go deep into the waters beneath the Three Gorges and take a look at the former Ghost City of Fengdu. Every night, tens of thousands of wandering spirits drift there from all over the country, ghostly flames by the myriad, lingering on all sides. It is merely submerged, yet it still exists.”

“The place beneath Huida University is only your yin-yang entrance, a gateway for guiding wandering spirits.”

“Second, where does the Underworld’s yin energy come from?” She took a deep breath and said solemnly, “The Yellow Springs!”

“Once the fragments of the Yama Seal are fully assembled, the Yellow Springs will flow westward, which is why I said before that the day the Yama Seal is reassembled will be the day the Underworld reopens. However, it is not as though the Underworld cannot be established without the Yellow Springs.”

Qin Ye coughed lightly. “That’s not what you said last time...”

Arsaces’ domineering aura flared fully to life as she barked, “Last time was last time! If I told you everything at once, could your brain even remember it? Did you think about the reader’s feelings if there are too many information points all at once? Listen quietly, you trash who knows nothing about the Underworld!”

I endure this!

“I told you before that the Underworld is a machine, and the Yellow Springs are its motive force. Let me revise that: yin energy is its essential motive force. The Yellow Springs are merely a vessel that carries endless yin energy. But now...”

Qin Ye suddenly understood and cut in, “You went to great lengths to have me come down and see what is beneath, strongly urging me to take on this task, all to let its yin energy support the Underworld’s operation?”

“Although that is true... I still feel like there is something wrong with your wording...” Arsaces rolled her eyes at Qin Ye from inside the orb and then continued, “That’s right. Thirty million units of yin energy are powerful, very powerful, but compared with the former Underworld, it is only a drop in the bucket. To the current you, who is starting from nothing, it is aid in time of snow! Relying on Kuafu’s yin energy, and continuously exchanging for soul stones from the mortal realm, you really may be able to open up the Underworld’s old domain again!”

“Do not belittle yourself. Why did Meng Po seek you out? I have said it too: you are the person with the greatest hope of accomplishing this grand task right now! No one could be more suited than you!”