"Xu Bingzheng's plan has failed."
Observing with his spiritual sense, Wang Ping confirmed this once again. Thanks to Lin Sheng's resolution, the baleful resentment still fell far short of what was needed to give birth to a fiend.
Yet as long as the arrangements here remained unbroken, the Lin family residence would forever remain a haunted house. In time, if more people strayed inside, found no way out, and ended up trapped within to die harboring grievances, the accumulated baleful resentment would still run the risk of birthing a fiend.
If he wanted to resolve this once and for all, he had to break the residence's arrangement.
"Sorcery, is it?"
Wang Ping glanced around, his spiritual sense finally settling on Lin Sheng's corpse. "That's it. The core of the entire residence, the convergence point of all the baleful resentment."
To restore everything to normal, the only way was to completely destroy Lin Sheng's corpse, for the baleful resentment here had all arisen because of him.
"Still... that won't be easy."
Wang Ping's brows knitted slightly. The baleful resentment swirling around Lin Sheng fostered a fiend while simultaneously acting as a crucial barrier protecting his flesh.
A mere paper double could not breach this barrier.
'Should I have my true body come?'
Wang Ping shook his head. Baleful resentment was not something physical; he was not optimistic about what martial arts could achieve against it. Presumably, only dharmic arts would be effective.
'Yet my cultivation is too low.'
Of the four cultivation traits of the first tier of the Tribulation Crossing realm, he had only mastered spiritual awareness and the flawless true body. Cosmic circuit breathing still had no lead.
Manifesting dharmas by borrowing qi was even further out of reach.
Thus, even if he cast Soul Seizing, it would most likely fail to sway the baleful resentment within the residence, let alone destroy the corpse sheltered beneath it...
"...Hm?"
The next second, Wang Ping looked down at Lin Sheng's corpse right before him, then turned to glance at the sheathed swallow-tail saber that had previously served as a door latch.
Wang Ping had reviewed the dossier on Lin Sheng before coming here, and it contained a record of this very swallow-tail saber. The Lin family had served as constables in Longxing County for generations. Their ancestor was said to have once been a lay disciple of Shenlong Temple, and this saber had been gifted to him by a warrior monk of the temple, bearing the name Chizheng—Upholding Rectitude.
Lin Sheng must have used it earlier to carve the words inside the room.
Judging by the carvings, this was unquestionably a treasured blade forged of superb materials, capable of slicing through iron like mud... Thinking of this, Wang Ping tentatively reached out his hand toward it.
'Classic of Great Peace!'
In an instant, the swallow-tail saber vanished from Wang Ping's grasp. Within the Mortuary, that towering tome turned to a brand-new page.
The fourth scripture scroll!
"...Heaven's will."
Wang Ping sighed in wonder. Turning back toward the corpse in the center of the room, he rested a hand lightly on Lin Sheng's shoulder and silently chanted in his heart:
'Classic of Great Peace, settle the score.'
The next second, a peerless, majestic might descended from the depths of the void. Disregarding the barrier of baleful resentment, it swept Lin Sheng's corpse away, vanishing from the spot in an instant.
Immediately following, Wang Ping's consciousness sank into the Mortuary. His gaze fell upon the towering tome, watching faint glimmers of light burst forth across the newly born scroll.
Scene after scene surfaced in succession.
In the visions, he saw a valiant youth brandishing sabers and spears within a spacious courtyard. From his features, it was none other than Lin Sheng in his younger years.
Under the scorching midday heat, he practiced until drenched in sweat, yet his spirits remained as high as ever.
Behind him stood a dignified middle-aged man—presumably his father—who offered pointers from time to time, correcting Lin Sheng's form.
Only after a long while did the middle-aged man say in a deep voice:
"That's enough. Take a rest."
Before the words had even faded, Lin Sheng plopped down onto the ground. Panting for breath, he looked up at the man in eager anticipation. "Dad, can I touch it now?"
"You silly boy." The middle-aged man did not know whether to laugh or cry. He reached down to unbuckle the saber at his waist and tossed it into Lin Sheng's arms. "Take it. Be careful with it. This was passed down from your great-grandfather. It has an edge keen enough to sever a hair blown against it, sharp enough to slice iron like mud. It is a common weapon of the highest grade."
"Thank you, Dad!" Lin Sheng hugged the saber, overjoyed.
The middle-aged man's mood for conversation was piqued, and he continued, "Back then, your great-grandfather brought this treasured blade out from the Buddhist sect's Shenlong Temple.
"Very few lay disciples in those days were ever bestowed such a blade.
"Your great-grandfather's martial arts were actually unworthy of it, yet his master believed he possessed an upright nature and a heart that upheld rectitude.
"Only then did he make an exception to bestow it upon him.
"That is why this saber bears the name Chizheng—to remind whoever wields it to always uphold rectitude and defend justice, unwavering to the end."
"I know this!" The young Lin Sheng raised his hand at once, bubbling with excitement. "That's our Lin family's ancestral motto! I saw those words in the ancestral hall!"
"Indeed."
The middle-aged man nodded slightly. "This blade and the ancestral motto have been passed down this way ever since. Unfortunately, my martial arts are mediocre, and our line possesses no inheritance of inner strength.
"Otherwise, with the craftsmanship and materials of Chizheng, far from being a mere common weapon, it could easily have become a sharp weapon, or even reached further to become a renowned treasure."
At this point, the middle-aged man let out a wistful sigh. Seeing this, Lin Sheng thumped his chest immediately and declared loudly, "Don't worry, Dad! From now on, I will practice martial arts diligently, become the greatest constable in the county seat, bring glory to Chizheng's name, and turn it into a renowned treasure!"
"Then I shall look forward to it with bated breath."
The man chuckled and ruffled Lin Sheng's hair before leading him indoors. Father and son walked side by side, and the scene froze right there.
The next second, the visions shifted.
It was an ancestral hall. Another memorial tablet had been added to the altar, and Lin Sheng, dressed in mourning garb with the saber belted at his waist, kowtowed heavily before it.
His father had died in the line of duty.
The cause was a bandit suppression campaign: the various county yamen of Changle Commandery had joined forces to eliminate the commandery's greatest bandit chief, only to be outmaneuvered and suffer a crushing defeat.
According to the rules of the county yamen, Lin Sheng naturally stepped into his father's post, being enrolled as a constable, while also taking up the ancestral blade, Chizheng.
Back then, he was determined never to fail the ancestral motto of upholding rectitude and defending justice.
Yet reality struck him with a heavy blow.
"Slaughtering innocent villagers outside the city to claim military merits... Human life is of paramount importance, and you call this a minor matter?"
"You seem to be mistaken about something."
In the vision, Wang Ping saw the burning Qian Village, and Chen Haoyan standing before Lin Sheng:
"When we say human life is of paramount importance, we mean the people living inside the county seat—the powerful clans, the scholars. As for the common folk outside the city walls... do they even count as human?"
Ideals and reality clashed violently in that moment.
After several days of agony, Lin Sheng chose to resist. He attempted to report over his superior's head, informing Magistrate Xu Bingzheng of Chief Constable Chen Haoyan's deeds.
...The outcome went without saying.
Investigation, suspension, confinement at home. In just a few short months, the fledgling youth experienced dizzying ups and downs, seeing the true face of Longxing County with absolute clarity.
Thus, he could not help but question:
"Was Father... like this too?"
He had only been a constable for a few months and had already witnessed so much filth. His father had served for over a decade—how much had he seen, or even done?
Could the ancestral motto of upholding rectitude be nothing more than empty nonsense?
Right at that moment, Xu Bingzheng arrived.
Following that was everything Wang Ping had investigated: Lin Sheng had been cursed with sorcery, turned into a breeding ground for a fiend, struggling amid starvation and cannibalism.
"Benefactor, you don't have to torture yourself like this."
Li An's voice drifted from the vision.
"I am not torturing myself."
This was the first time Wang Ping truly heard Lin Sheng's voice—frail, youthful, and pitched low with endured agony. "I am merely persevering.
"What happened with Pang Yue can no longer be undone.
"Yet you can still be saved. Though you took a life, the blame does not lie with you, but with the one who orchestrated all of this. You should strive to live on."
"But we can't get out."
Li An's voice carried the edge of a breakdown. "The food will run out eventually, and death is only a matter of time. If that's the case, why not do something to find some relief?"
Seeing this scene, Wang Ping understood completely. The reality indeed deviated somewhat from Li An's account. Perhaps Li An truly despised the fraudster Pang Yue, but he might not have genuinely had the courage to kill. His act of taking a life had been more of a reckless surrender to despair after realizing he was trapped in a dead end.
This was precisely the outcome Xu Bingzheng had aimed to bring about.
And at this moment, what Li An truly wanted to ask, what he truly wanted to say, was not those fractured words of despair, but a simpler, purer question:
Why persevere?
What reason was there to hold the line and refuse to give up on oneself, even when trapped in total desperation?
"There is no why."
In the vision, Lin Sheng replied softly:
"I am a constable of Longxing County. Having donned this official uniform, if even I cannot uphold the principles of public justice under heaven, who else will?"
Even though he said this, the grievous mistake had already been forged. He had merely averted the worst possible outcome, yet had failed to prevent any of it from the very start.
*Uphold rectitude, defend justice... I'm sorry, Father. I have let you down...*
At this point, the vision shattered with a crash.
Wang Ping collected his thoughts and stood before the fourth scripture scroll. Every stroke of the writing upon it looked carved by knife and ax, identical to Lin Sheng's hand.
*Scroll Four: Courage of the Noble Gentleman*
*Where justice lies, one does not bend to power nor covet profit. Though the entire realm be offered, one does not shift one's gaze; prizing life yet upholding righteousness without bending—this is the courage of the noble gentleman!*
The effect of this scroll was very pure.
"Only when my actions accord with the principle of upholding rectitude and defending justice can I employ this scripture scroll.
"And once the scroll is activated, aside from a decisive fatal blow, no injury can impede my actions or degrade my condition."
What counted as a decisive fatal blow?
In the judgment of Courage of the Noble Gentleman, it was having one's head shattered—in other words, unless his head was blown apart, he could not be killed.
And he would remain in peak condition throughout!
The next second, the world spun.
Wang Ping's consciousness returned from the Mortuary. Almost simultaneously, having lost the core that was Lin Sheng's corpse, the baleful resentment within the residence disintegrated.
Sunlight pierced through the dark clouds, spilling into the courtyard.
*Boom!*
The haunted residence shattered accordingly.
...
With the retreat of the baleful resentment, the tightly shut Lin family residence lost its supernatural aura, and the talisman seals plastered upon its doors peeled off and fell to the ground.
Wang Ping walked out of the residence, with Li An following behind him. Unaccustomed to the sun he had not seen in so long, Li An instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes, only to realize what he was doing the next instant. He quickly withdrew his hand, soaking in the sunlight to his heart's content, and by the time he came to his senses, tears were already streaming down his face.
"Live well."
Seeing this, Wang Ping patted his shoulder. "No matter what, your life was saved by Lin Sheng at the cost of his own. Living on is the best repayment you can offer him."
"I understand." Li An choked out a nod.
Yet looking at Li An, who was emaciated and sallow but otherwise unharmed, Wang Ping suddenly frowned, a question springing to mind:
"Wait... what did you eat all this time?"
The people in the other rooms had all been eaten by Lin Sheng, and the residence had no other grain stores. In that case, even if Li An wasn't killed, he should have starved to death!
For an instant, Wang Ping's instincts flared in alarm.
Yet faced with his inquiry, Li An showed nothing abnormal, instead looking equally puzzled. "I don't know. I asked Benefactor as well.
"But he never told me.
"Even though I didn't eat anything, I inexplicably had energy and didn't feel hungry... Maybe I'm just tough to kill, or maybe I was used to starving in the past?"
How could that be?
Wang Ping shook his head and looked back once more at the Lin family residence. With the baleful resentment gone, his spiritual sense could gradually discern the subtleties at work.
'Flesh and blood as the core, strength and weakness as the hierarchy.'
'The strong may consume the flesh and blood of the weak at will to strengthen their physique, and with the passage of time, this consumption can even take place across distance.'
At this moment, Wang Ping saw the sheer malice in Xu Bingzheng's scheming, and disgust rose uncontrollably on his face. After all, under such rules, if Lin Sheng had harbored even a momentary thought of cannibalism at the final juncture, he could have effortlessly devoured Li An's flesh across distance and fallen irredeemably into darkness.
'Fortunately, Lin Sheng seemed to have discovered this as well.'
'That was why he locked himself in the room and broke his own limbs... Right, he crippled his own martial arts, knocking himself down from his position as the stronger party in the hierarchy!'
After that, the "stronger party" in the residence became Li An.
'And each time Li An felt hungry and thought of Lin Sheng's prior cannibalism, conceiving a similar impulse, he would unwittingly devour Lin Sheng's flesh and blood across distance!'
This was the real reason Li An had survived.
Because without Li An's knowledge, Lin Sheng had allowed his own flesh and blood to be taken apart and fed to him bit by bit, enabling him to survive without food or water!
"...So that was it."
After a moment of silence, Wang Ping waved his hand and looked at Li An. "I didn't expect you to endure so well. In that case, go have a good meal once you get back."
Lin Sheng had taken this secret to his grave without ever speaking it.
If so, Wang Ping naturally would not pry or speak out of turn. There was no need to burden Li An—who had escaped with his life through sheer fortune—with such a crushing weight.
'Then again, so this is Dashun's sorcery?'
Wang Ping's heart was filled with disdain.
Compared to the dharmic arts of the immortal sects, Dashun's sorcery might possess supernatural power, but its methods were practically primitive and savage—drinking blood and devouring raw flesh—and terribly inefficient to boot.
To take the simplest example: though both consumed humans, his Life-Stealing Thief was far more elegant. Not a drop of blood was shed from start to finish, and it even came with the special effects of immortal light.
Immediately after, Wang Ping had the paper double escort Li An home.
Meanwhile, inside the county yamen, Wang Ping's true body opened his eyes and exhaled a long breath. Between inhalation and exhalation, a full thirteen military arts harmonized into complete mastery.
The Thirteen Taipo Horizontal Training Hard Qi Art!
Feeling the vajra divine strength surging within him and seeing A Promise Worth a Thousand Gold reignited within the Mortuary, a look of satisfaction appeared on Wang Ping's face.
"Finally paid off!"
My max-loan talent is back!
"The boost the flawless true body gives to martial arts cultivation speed is even higher than I imagined. Using a trait meant for immortal cultivation to practice martial arts really is a dimensional strike."
Wang Ping took stock of himself while calculating in his heart.
Of the three goals he had previously set, he had now accomplished two.
Yet the anticipated crisis of life and death had still not materialized, leading him to wonder if he had been spooked by shadows and overly cautious before.
"I haven't got a clue."
At the thought, Wang Ping could not help reaching up to scratch his head—and immediately, the hand reaching above his neck grabbed empty air, feeling nothing at all.
"...Ah?"
In an instant, the world spun.
His vision plummeted violently from high above and plunged into darkness. Wang Ping's thoughts ground to a sudden halt, leaving only the reverberating thud of a heavy object hitting the floor echoing in his ears:
*Thud!*
Chapter 57