Chapter 585: An Unexpectedly Interrupted Targeted Soul Summoning

After spending nearly an hour, Lu Yibei successfully purchased the materials and items needed for the targeted soul-summoning from the customers at Moyue Pifeng.

Just as she stepped out of the bar, ready to head to the meeting place she had agreed upon with Lin Nian, she felt a sudden palpitation, a slight warmth spreading through her eyes.

Lu Yibei, “……”

Why this ominous premonition…

This is definitely not a good sign!

Could it be that this targeted soul-summoning hides some danger I’m unaware of?

Frowning, Lu Yibei quietly fished out her Fortune Deity Coin for a divination. Her frown deepened.

The targeted soul-summoning isn’t dangerous? Strange. What’s causing this feeling then?

Could it be because of Zhang Huainan? Has that old bastard somehow figured out I lied to him?

This place is no longer safe. I need to try and get the fragment of the Pure Lotus Sword from Huá Sāng later. If that doesn’t work, I’m getting out of here fast.

Lu Yibei clutched her copper coin, her gaze uncertain, her heart filled with anxiety.

Though the fragment of the Pure Lotus Sword is important, my own life is worth more!

————

Shizhou City, Yongjie Municipal Waste Treatment Plant.

After parting ways with Lu Yibei, Lin Nian, worried about her grandfather’s safety, went home and sent her mobility-impaired grandfather to a trusted person’s place. Only then did she bring her Third Grandpa’s body here.

Shizhou City was teeming with psychics. Even though disciples from the Great Pure Palace maintained order, conflicts among psychics were inevitable in private.

Conflict meant death.

The corpses of those psychics who died unnaturally, often grotesquely twisted or terrifyingly contorted, were incredibly troublesome to process through normal funeral channels. Thus, their bodies were usually sent here.

Since the nights had grown longer, the workforce at this municipal waste treatment plant had been cut to the bone. Besides a deaf old man, only a mute boy and a girl with vision so poor she was practically blind remained.

It seemed that for this line of work, one absolutely had to be a psychic with defects in eyes, ears, or mouth.

Perhaps this ensured loose lips were less likely.

On average, four or five psychic corpses were sent here every week. As long as you paid the trio enough, they would provide a space and the necessary tools for body disposal, letting you handle it yourself.

Of course, for bodies certain clients found inconvenient to dispose of personally, they could handle the task for a fee. Their methods were remarkably professional.

Even corpses warped by Spirit Patterns, rendered unnaturally hard and difficult to burn, were easily dealt with by them. However, hiring their help required extra payment!

There were never truly impenetrable walls in this world, just as the deaf old man was Lin Nian’s informant.

Perhaps precisely because of their long-standing, close dealings, when she delivered her Third Grandpa and explained her purpose, the old man smiled guilelessly and personally helped her process the corpse.

Meticulously, he peeled away the elaborate costume almost fused with flesh and blood, ensuring the integrity of both body and costume. Then, he built a pyre, doused it with pine oil, and handed the torch to Lin Nian.

“Whoosh—!”

Lin Nian tossed the torch onto the pyre. The flames flickered weakly for a moment before roaring to life, hungrily engulfing the old man holding his exquisite costume within the woodpile.

Watching this, she turned away, gently wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes.

Just then, a girl in a matching black tracksuit, her long chestnut hair flowing loose, sauntered in from outside the garbage dump.

“Oh? Here you are? What are you roasting? Smells pretty good. A little scallion and cumin would make it smell even better, though!”

Hearing “Gu Qianqian’s” words ring out beside her, seeing “Gu Qianqian” approach from nearby, Lin Nian froze. She spun around just in time to see her go *slurp* and swallow a mouthful of saliva.

Seeing this, Lin Nian’s face turned pale. She rushed forward, arms outstretched to block “Gu Qianqian’s” advance.

“N-No! You can’t! That’s my Third Grandpa!”

Lu Yibei, “???”

Who wants to eat your Third Grandpa?!

Seriously, is this joke never going to end?

Has any of you ever actually seen Gu Qianqian eat someone?

Just as she was complaining internally, the mute boy trotted over and slipped a note into her hand.

The note read: 【Honorable Bloody Witch, we can provide long-term supplies of aged psychics. If interested, let’s talk.】

Lu Yibei, “……”

————

Lin Nian firmly kept “Gu Qianqian” twenty meters away from the pyre until her Third Grandpa’s body and the costume were completely cremated and placed in the urn. Only then did she relax, leading Lu Yibei to a corner of the waste plant to begin the soul-summoning.

They set up the incense table bought earlier, placed the nether candle into the censer filled with Nether Soil, and arranged a few small bowls to hold the sacrifices.

The sacrifices were pieces of fresh meat. Unable to find a Five-Offering Stone on the return trip to Moyue Pifeng, Lu Yibei had substituted with meat from five different animals.

After arranging the items on the incense table, Lu Yibei raised the suona to her lips. At the end of the melody, she lit the ritual incense, the nether candle, and offered a bowl of aged wine.

Why is she so practiced at this? How many times has she done this before… Lin Nian wondered silently as she watched.

Seeing this scene, Lin Nian began to suspect that “Gu Qianqian” previously performed soul-summoning rituals on her victims after devouring psychics and hauntings, extracting their secrets and wringing out every last drop of value.

If that were true, Gu Qianqian is a truly wicked person, utterly irredeemable!

After giving Lin Nian a brief instruction, Lu Yibei took out the metal lighter she’d looted from the sturdy man. She stepped before the incense table, raised the lighter with both hands, closed her eyes, and spread her psychic energy fluctuation outward, enveloping the table. Silently, she began chanting the incantation.

“Youth accepts its season, the bright sun reveals its glory, the spring air surges forth, all things suddenly thrive. The dark frost moves everywhere, souls have no place to flee. Return, O departed soul! Do not go to distant places. Return, O soul! Go not east or west, nor south or north…”

As the incantation was chanted, a silver-gray mist gradually spread.

Lu Yibei’s psychic consciousness threads vanished into the void, beginning the search for the sturdy man’s fragmented soul.

Then…

Silence descended without warning. Plunged into complete darkness, Lu Yibei vaguely sensed her psychic energy brushed by some distant entity.

With her extensive experience in targeted soul-summoning, she instantly recognized this as the sign she had found the sturdy man’s residual soul. Immediately, she softly called out his name, obtained from his documents.

“Return, O soul! Liang Jiuyuan!”

Liang Jiuyuan—that was the name Lu Yibei had read on the sturdy man’s identification.

As the words fell, she waited for Liang Jiuyuan’s residual soul to take the bait, just like dozens of times before. But in the next moment, something completely unexpected happened.

Suddenly, she felt an intense pulling force from the other end of her psychic consciousness threads.

If previous soul-summonings were like fishing, this one felt like hooking a Great White Shark. Letting go was the only option; otherwise, the end result would be being dragged into the turbulent sea and torn apart by the shark’s teeth.

That didn’t make sense!

That guy wasn’t that strong earlier!

Could it be… Liang Jiuyuan wasn’t his real name?

Lu Yibei considered this, preparing to interrupt the targeted soul-summoning ritual. Just then, a fierce burning pain erupted in her eyes. Something sharply stimulated her nerves, screaming of unprecedented danger.

Immediately following, a cryptic sentence flashed in her ears.

“I have a wondrous item here that can solve many problems for you. If you find it appealing, I can sell it to you cheaply. Would you like to take a look?”

She’d heard this somewhere before…

Wait! Weren’t those the exact words that shady character in Moyue Pifeng said to me earlier?

Could it be that Liang Jiuyuan got his ring blade from him? Lu Yibei wondered.

The next moment, a deafening roar exploded in her ears, cutting off her thoughts.

The sound was like countless old, heavy machines grinding away, producing a tremendous noise. She didn’t open her eyes, yet a vision unfolded before her, accompanied by the roar.

She saw a massive structure, built in some unknown location, surrounded by total blackness. Molten iron glowed with an orange-red light, flowing around metallic frameworks resembling the skeletal remains of colossal beasts. Countless assembly lines whirred ceaselessly. On rows of ice-cold hooks hung innumerable people.

They seemed horribly alive, struggling ceaselessly, wailing in despair. Pathetic, like souls stripped bare, their ugly forms beneath notice. They moved along the assembly line into the gigantic metallic structure, their screams fading into the distance, finally being swallowed by the roar of steel.

Anxious and uncertain, Lu Yibei watched the scene unfold; her gaze followed the assembly line deeper into the heart of the metallic structure. Then she saw it—a monstrously huge “infant.”

It seemed to be the core sustaining the entire colossal structure’s operation.

Calling it an infant was merely the feeling that welled up inside Lu Yibei upon seeing it, a sense of some being about to be born into the world. In reality, it was just a mass of chaotic colors so dazzling it defied description.

These colors weren’t simply glowing; they writhed like a viscous, living gel, constantly outlining the contours of various objects.

The light emitted an unsettling aura, an unmistakable feeling that a terrible calamity was brewing, about to descend.

The “infant” lay quietly in a cradle cast from cold metal. Then, as if sensing something, it suddenly opened its eyes and cast its gaze her way.

Immediately after, she heard the “infant’s” laughter.

Crisp, merry laughter, hoarse, cold laughter, manic, roaring laughter—mingled with pleasure and grief—pounded into her head through her ears like a sledgehammer, striking her soul directly.

Under this assault, Lu Yibei’s psychic consciousness threads instantly shattered into pieces.

The targeted soul-summoning spell formation was disrupted. The items on the incense table were crushed by an invisible force. With a thunderous boom, they exploded into fragments, scattering in all directions.

A wave of weakness washed over her. Lu Yibei’s body went limp, and she collapsed onto the ground.

“……”

What the hell was that thing? A haunting? Did it imprison Liang Jiuyuan’s soul?

No, it felt more like it was… devouring souls?

Damn it! Didn’t the earlier coin divination say it wasn’t dangerous? And then it shows me something like that…

Her head throbbing with pain, Lu Yibei stared blankly at the wreckage on the floor.

In the silence, it suddenly dawned on her—she might have stumbled upon something incredibly significant, something immensely troublesome, something she was utterly incapable of handling.

Maybe… I should report this discovery to the Dark Emperor?

Though she was terrified of getting too involved with Zhang Huainan, she was even more afraid of that “infant” she’d just seen awakening and descending upon the world…

As if fighting fire with fire, a terrible entity naturally required a terrible entity to deal with.