The darkness was not merely an absence of light; it was a physical weight, a suffocating miasma of ghostly fog that clung to the ruins of Tianshi Mountain. Then, the fire came.
It wasn't the flickering orange of a campfire, but a rolling, torrential blaze of Yang Fire—the essence of pure, masculine vitality. It erupted like a dormant volcano suddenly remembering its wrath, scorching the oppressive shadows and casting long, dancing silhouettes against the broken stone of the mountainside.
In a dilapidated hall perched precariously on a cliff edge, an old Taoist priest coughed, his body convulsing as he expelled thick, black blood. He was a ruin of a man, his robes reduced to tattered rags, his flesh mangled and weeping dark ichor. Around him lay a dozen others, warriors and mystics from various factions, all broken, all bleeding that same corrupted black fluid.
"Is there any point?" a fellow survivor asked, his voice a hollow rattle. He leaned against a crumbling pillar, a miserable smile playing on his lips. "Resistance only drags us deeper into the mud. Priest Linghu, your stubbornness has doomed Tianshi Mountain. After today, this place will be nothing more than a memory."
Priest Linghu wiped his mouth, his eyes burning with a defiance that belied his injuries. "Disappear? Do you think submission would have saved us? This chance for transcendence—this break from the mortal coil—isn't reserved for us Spirit Removers. The Evil Gods, the Dead Domains, the Ferocious Monsters… they all hunger for it." He spat another mouthful of corruption onto the floor. "If I hadn't detonated the Sacred Artifact, would they have shown us mercy? As they slaughter all living beings to feed their power, would they have paused to spare us?"
"But you were too impulsive," another Taoist whispered, despair etching deep lines into his face. "You shouldn't have provoked that Evil God directly. Perhaps… perhaps it would have let us flee. Now, we are locked in a stalemate that can only end in our annihilation."
Linghu laughed, a dry, mocking sound. "Heh. Relying on the mercy of an Evil God? Since when does the hope of the Tianshi lineage rest on the pity of monsters? If they were capable of compassion, we wouldn't call them Evil Gods."
Boom!
The conversation died as a shockwave of heat rolled up the mountain. Below, in the small town shrouded in mist, the Yang Fire intensified. Even through the spectral fog, the golden radiance was blinding.
The survivors dragged themselves to the shattered windows, shock replacing their pain.
"That intensity…" one muttered. "How can such pure Yang energy exist in this dying world?"
"It's not a Sacred Artifact," another observed, squinting against the glare. "There's no fluctuation of spiritual power or Yin energy. It feels… raw. Primal."
"We have to move," someone urged. "Maybe it's a Night Watchman. Maybe help has finally arrived."
Hope, a dangerous and fragile thing, spurred them into motion. Despite the black blood dripping from their wounds, they stumbled out of the hall, rushing down toward the source of the flame.
Priest Linghu followed, his heart pounding against his ribs. He felt a tremor of recognition in that terrifying heat. It felt familiar. But the thought was impossible. It couldn't be him. That man's Yang energy was formidable, yes, but this? This was like standing next to a sun.
Suppressing his agony, Linghu forced his legs to move, descending into the fog.
Down in the gloom of the town's streets, Jiang Dao watched the interface in his mind's eye flicker, registering six new modification chances. He was ready to leave, to turn his back on this cursed place, when he felt the fire raging behind him.
He frowned. In the current climate, with Evil Gods stirring from their slumber, drawing attention to himself was a tactical error.
He raised a hand, his palm open.
The laws of physics seemed to bend. The frantic, roaring Yang Fire obeyed his silent command, swirling into a vortex that poured into his palm. The heat, enough to melt stone, surged into his meridians, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. The street plunged back into shadows, save for the faint, sickly glow of the fog.
"Let's go," Jiang Dao said, his voice flat.
He turned and moved with a speed that blurred his outline, heading deeper into the town. Taoist Qingsong, a man whose nerves were currently held together by sheer willpower, scrambled to keep up.
Jiang Dao remained silent, his gaze dissecting every shadow, every broken window. He was hunting. Qingsong wanted to ask—wanted to scream, really—, but he swallowed his words. He had learned that with Jiang Dao, silence was safer.
After navigating seven or eight winding intersections, Jiang Dao stopped abruptly. He looked up at the entrance of an old academy.
"Brother Jiang," Qingsong panted, coming to a halt. "Is this… is this your target?"
Jiang Dao looked at him, genuine confusion in his eyes. "What do you mean by 'target'? They are people. Living, breathing humans. My own kind. Should I not save them?"
Qingsong felt a chill that had nothing to do with the fog. Your kind? He looked at the hulking, monstrously powerful figure before him. Since when did humanity qualify as your kind? If we were as terrifying as you, we wouldn't be on the brink of extinction.
"Right, right. Of course," Qingsong stammered.
Jiang Dao ignored him, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized the academy. "Something's wrong."
The subtle sense of wrongness he had felt upon entering the town had condensed here, becoming a heavy, visceral pressure. He didn't bother with the latch; he kicked the main gate. The wood exploded inward, revealing a courtyard where a gloomy wind whipped scraps of paper into miniature tornadoes.
They swept into the main hall.
Inside, the sight was unnerving. Thirty, perhaps forty children lay prone on the floor, alongside an elderly teacher. They were motionless. Their skin was the color of parchment, drained of all blood, yet the faint rise and fall of their chests proved they were alive. It was a tableau of the dead, breathing.
Jiang Dao reached down to check a child's pulse, but his hand froze mid-air. His expression hardened.
Behind him, a shadow had detached itself from the darkness of the doorway. It was a silhouette of rotting robes and malice, radiating a stench of ancient decay.
"If I were you," a voice rasped, sounding like grinding stones, "I wouldn't touch them."
Jiang Dao stood slowly. He turned, his face a mask of indifference, to face the entity blocking their exit.
"Oh. Another evil spirit," Jiang Dao noted dryly. The creature was shriveled, its skin pitch-black, its eyes sunken pits glowing with a necrotic green light. It looked like a corpse that had clawed its way out of a grave after a century of waiting. "Tell me, why can't I touch them?"
"There is no 'why'," the shadow hissed. "I don't care what you are—monster, Spirit Remover, or anomaly. No one touches this harvest. Violate this rule, and your fate will be too horrific to describe."
"Is that so?" Jiang Dao tilted his head. "But I insist on touching them. And judging by your panic, quite a few people are sleeping here."
"Are you seeking your own death?" The green fire in the spirit's eyes flared.
Jiang Dao sneered. It was a small, dismissive sound, but it snapped the spirit's control.
Whoosh!
The entity blurred, vanishing from sight. The temperature in the room plummeted. The air filled with the shrieks of a thousand vengeful ghosts, a sonic assault designed to shatter the mind. A pitch-black claw, dripping with necrotic energy, materialized from the ether, aiming straight for Jiang Dao's face.
Jiang Dao didn't even blink. He didn't use magic. He didn't summon fire.
He just slapped.
His hand, a mass of muscle and hardened callous, moved with the speed of a striking cobra and the weight of a freight train. It connected with the spirit's face with a sound that defied description—a wet, cracking thunderclap that distorted the air pressure in the room.
Smack!
The force was astronomical. Hundreds of tons of kinetic energy are transferred instantly.
The evil spirit didn't just fly; it was launched. Its body pirouetted seven or eight times in mid-air, spraying a fountain of black blood, before it smashed through the brick wall and impacted the courtyard dirt outside.
"Not weak," Jiang Dao mused, stepping through the hole in the wall. "You survived that?"
He walked into the courtyard, his presence expanding, a heavy gravitational pressure that made the air mournful. He looked down at the broken thing in the dirt.
"Can you tell me why I can't touch this place?" he asked, his voice terrifyingly calm.
The evil spirit trembled violently. The slap had spun its head around multiple times; its neck was a twisted ruin, its cheekbone pulverized, black ichor gushing from the wreckage of its face. It couldn't bring itself to meet Jiang Dao's eyes. The fear it felt was primal.
When it remained silent, Jiang Dao sighed. He reached down, his hand large enough to encompass the creature's entire skull. His fingers, hard as divine iron, dug into the bone. He lifted the spirit effortlessly into the air.
Extreme Yang Divine Fire began to leak from his fingertips, not as a blast, but as thin, surgical needles of heat, drilling down through the creature's skull.
"Ahhh!"
The scream was unearthly. Smoke poured from the spirit's eyes and mouth as it was cooked from the inside out. Yet, through the agonizing torture, until it finally dissolved into drifting ash, it never spoke a word.
Taoist Qingsong stared at the pile of ash, his face pale. "I don't think it wanted to speak, Brother Jiang. I think it couldn't. An evil spirit like that acts as a proxy. There is a more terrifying existence pulling the strings. If it spoke, its fate would have been a hundred times worse than what you just did."
Jiang Dao frowned, wiping ash from his hand. "You might be right." He looked back at the sleeping children. "Does the Taoist priest know what afflicts them?"
"It looks like faith absorption," Qingsong muttered, his mind racing. "But that makes no sense. The Evil God on Tianshi Mountain is locked in combat with the Old Celestial Master. It shouldn't have the bandwidth to harvest faith from the town. Unless..."
"Unless there is a second Evil God," Jiang Dao finished the thought.
The realization hung in the air. The subtle wrongness, the heaviness in the town—it all pointed to a fresh awakening.
"Can we wake them?"
"Not if a god has their souls," Qingsong said helplessly. "Unless you kill the god, they sleep forever."
"What if we move them?" Jiang Dao asked. "Physically remove them from the god's domain?"
"I... I don't know."
Jiang Dao nodded. "Then we try."
He exhaled a breath of steam. A distortion field, visible as shimmering waves in the air, expanded from his body. It was a manifestation of pure will and physical force. Gently, impossibly, invisible hands lifted the thirty children and the teacher, suspending them in the air around him.
"I'm taking them," Jiang Dao announced, walking toward the back of the academy to find more.
Qingsong watched him, mouth agape. The man was walking into the heart of darkness, carrying a floating orphanage. What is he?
Deep underground, in a space where geometry failed, and shadows breathed, the presence stirred.
It was massive, a towering duality. One side of its face was twisted in absolute malice; the other shone with serene, terrifying mercy.
The Evil Face snapped its eyes open. "The flow has weakened. The rats are dead. Someone is stealing our offerings."
The Merciful Face remained silent, hands weaving complex seals. It raised a single finger, pointing upward. The darkness coalesced into a mirror, displaying the scene above.
It showed Jiang Dao, calm and implacable, marching through the streets with hundreds of floating, sleeping bodies trailing in his wake like balloons.
"Damn it," the Evil Face hissed, the temperature in the cavern dropping. "Who is this mortal? How dare he disrupt the ritual!"
The Merciful Face did not answer. It pointed again, creating a second mirror. This one showed the outskirts of the town.
Standing there, immobile as a statue, was a figure in a tattered black robe and a felt hat. She held a copper gong and a hammer. A black token hung at her waist. Her hair was withered white, and she radiated an aura of absolute death.
"The Night Watchman," the Evil Face growled. "She's waiting."
"Let it go," the Merciful Face spoke, its voice a harmonious chord. "Let the intruder take the offerings. We are only at seventy percent form. If we manifest now to fight him, the Night Watchman will intervene. It is better to wait and fully manifest than to dissipate in a premature battle."
The Evil Face glared at the image of the Night Watchman, teeth grinding in frustration, but it subsided.
Above ground, Jiang Dao was now a moving caravan of one. Hundreds of bodies floated in his distortion field. Taoist Qingsong followed, physically carrying three more people, struggling to keep pace.
"Brother Jiang," Qingsong gasped, looking back. "No attack? My guess about the second Evil God... was I wrong?"
"Maybe," Jiang Dao said, though he doubted it. "Can you find the mountain from here?"
"The town has shifted," Qingsong admitted, looking at the alien architecture looming in the fog. "I need to find a landmark."
They pressed on. The fog roiled, revealing buildings that shouldn't exist—temples of bone, towers of wet pulsating stone. But the bones of the town remained.
"There!" Qingsong pointed to a tavern. "Behind that building used to be the mountain path. Now it's blocked."
A massive, moss-covered wall, black and ominous, severed the road. It pulsed with a dark mist.
"I'll clear it," Jiang Dao said.
He stepped forward and stomped.
Boom!
A shockwave of Extreme Yang Fire erupted from his foot, tearing through the earth like a plow. It slammed into the black wall, obliterating it in a shower of masonry and shadow. Behind the destruction lay a stone staircase, disappearing upward into the mist.
"That's the path to Tianshi Mountain," Qingsong confirmed.
They ascended. The atmosphere grew heavier with every step. The buildings here were ruins of a recent war, shattered and leaking Yin energy. The stairs themselves were corrupted—pitted, uneven, and in some places, covered in patches of thick, white hair that swayed in the windless air.
Jiang Dao walked over them, his footsteps sizzling as his internal fire burned the corruption away.
Finally, they reached the summit. The Tianshi Divine Hall, once a beacon of spiritual authority, stood broken. Its roof had collapsed; its doors were splintered.
"The Divine Water should be inside," Qingsong whispered, terrified. "But... is the Evil God in there?"
Jiang Dao's eyes, burning with focus, pierced the gloom of the hall.
"No," he murmured. "Not the Evil God."
He saw a figure sitting cross-legged in the center of the devastation. Thin, frail, barely more than a skeleton in robes. A green oil lamp flickered beside him, its flame weak and sputtering—a perfect metaphor for the life of the man sitting there.
"It's the Celestial Master," Jiang Dao said, cracking his neck.
He walked in, the force field of sleeping villagers waiting outside. Qingsong followed, trembling.
As they approached, the true horror of the figure became clear.
The Old Celestial Master sat motionless. But he was not whole. It was as if a line had been drawn down the center of his body. The left half was human, radiating a faint, dying warmth. The right half was pitch black, rotting, shrouded in a dense fog of death and Yin energy.
A low, murmuring sound filled the hall—a lullaby of madness.
It really is the Evil God, Jiang Dao realized. Sealed inside the man.
Slowly, the Old Celestial Master raised his head.
His eyes were a nightmare of duality. One was gentle, clear, and human. The other was a void of black sclera and malicious intent.
His lips moved, the voice raspy and strained, fighting for every syllable.
"I didn't expect... a living person to dare break into this place." The Master paused, the black half of his face twitching. "Little brother... could you lend me a little blood?"
Jiang Dao stopped. He stared at the bisected entity before him.
"Lend blood?" Jiang Dao asked, his voice echoing in the ruined hall. "How exactly do you intend to borrow it? And tell me, Senior... are you human, or are you a ghost?"