ATEG Chapter 140

Celestial gods hold dominion over the Dao; so long as the Dao suffers no loss, celestial gods do not fall.

Shetu had dreamed of a celestial god falling. If a celestial god falls, the Dao must have a flaw. If the dream was real, it proved that Changyang was perhaps right.

Changyang had long searched for the flaw in the Dao without success. Shetu’s dream was an excellent breakthrough, yet he did not rush to press her with questions. Instead, he paused for a barely perceptible instant, and in that instant his expression was one of something close to wistful sorrow.

“And?” he asked only after that instant had passed.

“What else do you know.” No further explanation was needed; Shetu already understood.

Changyang knew something more that they did not — which was why he had been so certain the Dao was flawed, and why he had shown no surprise at Shetu having dreamed.

The Yellow Springs flowed in silence through the Underworld, offering the dead a quiet, weighty shelter, then guiding death onward toward new life. Changyang answered nothing. He only watched the nine Yellow Springs, observing the flow of each one all at once.

They flowed from one place to another, yet every point flowed simultaneously. Unlike the rivers of the mortal world, the Yellow Springs had no origin and no end, for the place through which they flowed was the insubstantial Underworld. They carried all beings from death to life, yet from the very moment of birth, all beings ceaselessly walk toward death — when beings are “living,” they are also endlessly “dying.” Life and death are one body; yin and yang give rise to each other: this is the cycle of reincarnation. Because in truth they are and always have been one, the Yellow Springs have no beginning and no end.

He did not need to answer at all. Shetu had already seen something in the way he watched the nine Yellow Springs — not the answer she sought, but enough to let her lay her questions to rest.

“I dreamed of many, many extinctions,” Shetu said.

“I know,” Changyang sighed.

……

“We’re here,” Li Quan said suddenly.

Ahead of the Yellow Springs, obscuring mist roiled strangely; where the mist held sway, the Underworld was solidifying from void into substance. Deep within the mist, two dim yellow lanterns glowed.

Bi Dongdi had come to a halt. After walking that stretch of Yellow Springs, the strange and dangerous state he had been in was greatly diminished; if you did not look carefully, he appeared no different from any ordinary living being.

Li Quan clapped him on the shoulder, and Bi Dongdi suddenly transformed into a tall, imposing man, the faint, uncanny aura about him hidden away as well.

“Go on in,” Li Quan said.

“Right,” Bi Dongdi answered, and took two steps forward — then noticed that Li Quan had stayed where he was.

“Senior, aren’t you coming?” he asked carefully.

Li Quan smiled. “You go in and draw them into releasing the vengeful souls.”

Li Quan had already smashed one Yellow Springs Inn. News traveled slowly through the Underworld, and Hundun did not dare enter the Underworld in person; the others had not yet learned exactly what had happened. But the disappearance of one inn and the sealing of one Yellow Spring — that much they could still sense. The two of them going in together would inevitably put those inside on guard.

Bi Dongdi had already worked it out. He possessed the ability to commune with the Underworld, which made him enormously attractive to the people inside these Yellow Springs Inns. If only he went in, greed would drive those people to lower their guard — and besides, they did not believe there was any real risk in setting the vengeful souls from the Yellow Springs Inn loose.

To put it plainly, he was here to serve as bait.

But… could he hold out inside this Yellow Springs Inn long enough for them to set the vengeful souls loose…?

Bi Dongdi felt deeply uncertain. The last time he had been caught in a Yellow Springs Inn, he hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the innkeeper — a few staff had been enough to deal with him, and the days that followed were too wretched to look back on.

He glanced at Li Quan beside him, steeled himself, and walked into the obscuring mist.

With this senior here, he probably… wouldn’t end up too badly off.

A moment later, the air inside the Yellow Springs Inn suddenly shifted. Bi Dongdi came scrambling and tumbling out through the inn’s front door. “Senior — Senior, save me!”

He had wanted to tread carefully and avoid danger, but he could not very well take a room there, and the staff inside would inevitably try to detain him — conflict was bound to arise, and that was what would draw the innkeeper into releasing the vengeful ghosts. Given that, what was the point of holding back?

So Bi Dongdi simply walked in and upended the tables. He started brawling with the serving boy first. The serving boy was no easy opponent either, but whatever he threw at Bi Dongdi slid right off him, like something thrown at an oiled porcelain plate — it could find no purchase at all.

This was a technique Li Quan had applied to Bi Dongdi, though Bi Dongdi had not noticed it until now.

Having this to rely on, what was there to fear? Time to settle some scores!

Bi Dongdi fought the serving boy, then fought the accountant, then charged into the kitchen and dragged the cook out to join in, all while shouting for that turtle-in-its-shell innkeeper to hurry up and come out and take his beating!

The innkeeper came out — and the vengeful ghosts came out with him. The vengeful ghosts gnawed away at the protective technique on Bi Dongdi’s body.

Bi Dongdi scrambled and fled in a sorry state; fortunately, his layered spells were thick enough that he got out before the vengeful ghosts had chewed all the way through his power.

Behind him trailed a long string of vengeful ghosts, like bees chasing after a bear.

Li Quan smiled. Behind Bi Dongdi, the Yellow Springs Inn collapsed without a sound, falling into the Yellow Springs and dissolving into scattered specks of pale blue light, carried by the Yellow Springs off toward the other shore of reincarnation.

“Did you enjoy that?” Li Quan smiled at Bi Dongdi.

Bi Dongdi still had the fierce, violent energy of smashing up the shop on him, and let out a couple of gleeful laughs. He had been seized by one of the other Yellow Springs Inns and worked like a beast of burden, brought to the very edge of sinking into a state as degraded as the aberrations — how could he have had no resentment? He had simply suppressed it by force, knowing how terrifying what lay behind the Yellow Springs Inns truly was.

“Let’s go — on to smashing the next inn!”

……

Dong!

A vast and surging toll of a bell rang out at the mouth of Wudi Gorge, and the mist — thick as congee-gruel — rippled with the sound.

A wild mouse rooted about in the undergrowth, undisturbed. A gray weasel concealed itself in the withered grass, its gleaming black eyes fixed on the mouse.

Dong! The thick mist surged like ocean waves — one tide receding as another rolled in.

At the edge of the tide, the gray weasel darted out with swift agility, its sharp teeth closing on the mouse’s throat. It snatched up the mouse and was gone in an instant, as though it had neither heard the great bell’s toll nor seen the mist stir at all.

This bell was not one any mortal creature could hear; unable to hear it, they could not see the mist change either. The region shrouded in that thick mist was, to them, forever forbidden ground.

Wudi Gorge was a rift gorge — open to the sky above, so that when the sun crossed its zenith, sunlight still reached the gorge floor. Yet the mouth of the gorge was like the entrance to a great mountain cave: two great peaks, split apart and then pressing their tops together left and right, had left only a long horizontal cleft at the base, opening into the mountain gorge’s depths.

Another bell toll rang out; the ocean-surge mist retreated into the mountain gorge, and through it the silhouette of a gate tower dimly emerged. The gate tower was built into the cave mouth itself, set flush into the cliff face. An armored figure could be seen gripping a bell striker, pushing it hard into a great, deep-toned bell.

Dong——

After seven bell tolls, the thick mist at the gorge mouth had dispersed, leaving the entire long cave open — only a thin, damp mist remained inside. This was yin-fog formed from an excess of yin energy, and ghost cultivators loved such environments most of all. Behind the mountain gorge’s cave mouth, however, the mist as thick as congee still held its ground.

Within the thin yin-fog of the cave, layer upon layer of pavilions and terraces gradually came into view, along with stall after stall of vendors; on the streets moved armored figures on patrol, and beside their stalls stood stallkeepers craning their necks on watch…

Outside the thin mist, the many cultivators who had each concealed themselves warily appeared one by one.

Seven bell tolls, once a month — at the mouth of Wudi Gorge, the Ghost Market opened.

Those who came to the Ghost Market to trade were not only ghost cultivators. Making no distinction between righteous and wicked — whether immortal, demon, ghost, or god — the Ghost Market received all who came.

The Five Declines of Heaven and Man would descend upon ghost cultivators too, though because ghost cultivators lacked a living creature’s physical body, their declines differed somewhat from those that came upon cultivators who were still living.

Living cultivators had five declines; ghost cultivators had only three: dissolution of the ghost body, diminishment of magical power, and instability of the Dao-heart.

For this reason, certain special magical treasures refined by ghost cultivators were quite effective at blocking the first two declines in living cultivators. As long as the decline had not yet progressed to the third stage, blocking the first two could greatly hinder its further development.

But such treasures each had their own different drawbacks, and were difficult to refine besides; some required materials that were extremely particular, extremely rare, and hard to obtain.

Take one kind of magical treasure known as the “ghost robe” — once worn, the first two declines would no longer cling to the body. But if this treasure were worn for too long, one’s own physical body might fuse together with the ghost robe, leaving the cultivator as nothing but a soul sheltering inside it — no different from death. Unless one harbored a powerful attachment to the mortal world, one could never remove the ghost robe again — to take it off was to be drawn by the Yellow Springs into the cycle of reincarnation.

Even with all these drawbacks — even being so hard to obtain — under the threat of the Five Declines of Heaven and Man, countless cultivators still came to the Ghost Market seeking such treasures.

The Ghost Market opened once a month and did not sell such treasures outright; but within the Ghost Market there were ghost cultivators capable of refining them, and cultivators could bring their own materials and commission a ghost cultivator inside the market to do the refining.

Through the dim yin-fog, two great iron-black gates slowly dissolved into thick black streams that flowed away and then solidified into a road leading to the Ghost Market.

The many cultivators walked along this road toward the Ghost Market’s entrance. They had not all come purely for treasure to ward off calamity — the ghost cultivators of Wudi Gorge had other things to attract them as well.

Nu Xu was likewise walking forward, though her goal was not the Ghost Market.

At the top of the cliff, jagged rocks jutted like the teeth of a dog. Thin soil gave no cover; not a blade of grass grew. A desolate, still death-aura shrouded this place. The interlocking crags jutted like the dorsal spines of a fish, trailing downward and plunging into the thick mist of Wudi Gorge, splitting open a quiet, deep, and profound path. On the largest of those rocks — a great stone angled toward the sky — three proud, unruly characters had been carved:

‘Inverted Heavenly Ladder’

Legend had it that those who made it through the Inverted Heavenly Ladder could see through the great terror that lay between life and death, and find peace of mind — thereafter never losing their memories through the cycle of reincarnation, and even being able to choose the body they would be reborn into. But these were only rumors; after all, in all the world, only Xi Chen’an had ever made it through the Inverted Heavenly Ladder and into the Wudi Cave.

The entrance to this legendary Inverted Heavenly Ladder lay at the very top of the Ghost Market. The Inverted Heavenly Ladder possessed a strange force that could not be sealed off; but the three great characters outside the entrance gave off a heavy, oppressive authority that forbade flight through the air here.

To ascend the Inverted Heavenly Ladder, one had first to make it through the Ghost Market. Xi Chen’an’s temperament was such that even if the Ladder itself couldn’t be blocked, he had no desire to let people go straight for it unchallenged.

The cultivators arriving here entered the Ghost Market one by one through the gate-tower. The great ghost standing guard atop the gate tower had eyes like bronze bells and a gaze like lightning, scrutinizing each person who came through for any aberration in disguise.

Nu Xu was the last. The great ghost’s gaze fell on her; she stopped at the threshold, and suddenly raised her head — her eyes met the great ghost’s.

The great ghost let out a startled cry and involuntarily stepped back two paces.

Nu Xu launched forward with a step, her toes touching the ground, and was at the top of the gate tower in an instant; another touch of her toe on the gate tower’s railing, and she was about to go straight up to the clifftop.

At that very moment, two other armored great ghosts at the top of the gate tower made their move without hesitation. Two long spears shot out like darting serpents, crossing and twisting toward Nu Xu’s legs, and they roared:

“Who dares try to force their way up the Inverted Heavenly Ladder?!”