Cataclysm Chapter 17: A Skeleton Under Clothing 10; Five Thunder Combination Talisman

Chapter 17: A Skeleton Under Clothing 10; Five Thunder Combination Talisman

Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations 

Editor: Addis

 

Chen Yang and Du Shuo drove to Miyun ghost house, and on the way, Chen Yang said, “Will Kou Xuanling be able to deal with Fang Wenwen alone? Ghost arts have been lost for many years, and its techniques are very vicious and sly. I’m afraid he won’t be able to handle it.”

Fang Wenwen’s younger brother was injured by Mao Xiaoli’s five thunder talisman. So, she had most likely estimated that Feng Yuan had hired Tianshis. She must take action tonight. Feng Yuan and Wei Changping would go to Fang Wenwen’s villa, while Ge Qing and Ma Qiqi would stay in the villa.

Kou Xuanling would have to deal with Fang Wenwen and her brother alone, and Mao Xiaoli was in charge of protecting the two girls in the villa. Fang Wenwen was a Ghost arts practitioner so she would send ghosts to kill Ge Qing and Ma Qiqi and peel their skins off.

Protecting them would be left to Mao Xiaoli but she should be able to handle it with her talents. As far as Fang Wenwen was concerned, a Wu that could arrange the Fire Array of Karma was definitely by no means a good person.

Du Shuo said, “He began killing evil spirits with his faction when he was just fifteen years old. When he was twenty, he received an employment invitation from headquarters. Although he is stubborn in some aspects, you don’t have to worry about his ability in catching ghosts.”

Chen Yang commented, “I thought you would stay at the villa.”

After all, Chen Yang was also a practitioner of Ghost arts. Suppressing ghosts, controlling ghosts and killing ghosts were all his specialties as a Ghost arts practitioner. He could single handedly deal with the demons hidden in the Miyun Ghost House.

“For three years, including this job, I’ve only taken three jobs.”

Chen Yang was silent, and after a long time, his voice was heavy and persuasive, “You can’t get promoted if you do bad things ¹.”

“……” Sometimes the emperor felt that he couldn’t have a good chat with his little wife. He sighed helplessly in his heart, “I didn’t intend to take this job either, but I thought since you just started working, I should take the job too.”

“Just saying, but…” Chen Yang’s expression read ‘I knew it’, “the headquarters is full of talented Tianshis, while the branch office has only four employees. Even if you want to give us poverty alleviation, you can’t just give 10 million yuan away to the branch office.”

Very unconvincingly, he laughed like a cat as he said 10 million.

Chen Yang tugged Du Shuo’s sleeve, his eyes squinted slightly from happiness, his pupils looked like there was a puddle of honey inside, “No one can beat my husband.”

Du Shuo held out a free arm to rub Chen Yang’s neck lovingly, “Mn.”

“But,” Chen Yang said with a serious expression, “if a person always benefits from doing nothing and eating all day long without merits, said person will eventually be laid off. No boss nor subordinates like a person who does not pull his own weight.”

Du Shuo’s hand rubbing Chen Yang stopped, he silently took back his hand, then took out a bottle of canned juice from the storage box in the car, handing it to him. “Have some juice.” 

Persuasion should be limited, otherwise it would be counterproductive. Chen Yang knew this very well. He opened the juice and put a straw into it. He took a big sip of the juice and the fruit pieces inside. The sweet taste made his whole mood better, “Do you want some too?”

Du Shuo shook his head and rejected the offer.

Chen Yang finished the juice and reached for the storage box. Just now, he saw that there were chocolates and candies in it, and he was peeking at Du Shuo from the corner of his eye. Chen Yang grabbed a bunch of candies from the box and was about to pull his hand back.

He heard Du Shuo say coldly, “Only three a day.”

Chen Yang paused for a moment and let go of some of the candies as if nothing happened. There were five left in his hand, “I don’t have cavities any more.”

People who loved sweets and didn’t have much self-control would generally get cavities. When the tooth breaks, it was so painful that one’s eyes became watery. Chen Yang’s cavities were caused by eating too many sweets behind Du Shuo’s back. After he had to go fix a tooth once, Du Shuo limited his sweet food consumption.

“Either you put all of it back, and not have any for today, or you only keep three.”

Chen Yang clicked his tongue and put two into his pocket. He peeled one open and placed it in his mouth. After the matter was solved, he would open the other two and eat them to celebrate.

When they arrived at Laotun town, it was already dark. Chen Yang looked down at his watch. It was about six o’clock right now. The car continued forward according to the navigation, and the further in they went, the less people were there. The people in the town knew from the direction their car was heading, that they were here to explore the ghost house, they were quite used to it already.

“The gods are only feet away, always watching you. Yet, you don’t respect humans but respect ghosts and spirits.” ²

Chen Yang seemed to have felt something and turned to look back. The noisy town was soon far behind them, he no longer saw houses nor people. The car broke down on the way there. Fortunately, they could already see the ghost house, which was half-hidden in the vast ancient locust trees. The sun has not set yet, but not far away, the ghost house was immersed in pure darkness.

Even from a distance, one would feel desolate and afraid, grabbing their hearts just from looking at it, making people feel scared to even breathe.

“What a strong Yin aura.”

Du Shuo got out of the car, went to Chen Yang, and put his hand on Chen Yang’s shoulder. When Chen Yang turned his head to Du Shuo, the latter leaned down to land a kiss on his lips. After licking and kissing, he moved away, “It’s too sweet. I will switch to another brand next time.”

Chen Yang admonished, “We are in broad daylight, you should control yourself.”

Du Shuo looked back, and his eyes were dim, “I need to control myself from eating candy?”

It was not clear whether the candy he said was really candy or a human.

Chen Yang pressed his fist against his lips and coughed softly, “You’re still playing this when we’ve been married for years…” Though he was nagging with dislike, the corner of his lips could not help lifting up.

The ghost house was a villa, with three stories and a yard. The yard was full of old locust trees, which were thick with branches and leaves, and the branches made the trees look like human beings, ferocious and terrifying. The closer they got, the more Yin aura they felt, and the temperature dropped a lot.

The air was so quiet, there weren’t even the sounds of insects. It was a standard ghost house.

Chen Yang pushed open the iron door. The lock on the door was just for decoration. The iron gate squeaked, which was very clear in the quiet environment. When he lifted his foot and stepped in, the crows outside suddenly let out coarse sounds. Chen Yang looked up and saw a murder of crows ³coming out of the old locust trees and flying into the distance. Under the background of the pale sky and the gloomy villa, there was an ominous mood.

“The decline of Ghost arts and the prevalence of Tianshi Taoism were not only due to the strict requirements of practicing Ghost arts, but also that the Ghost arts practitioners could not control their own greed.” Even Tianshis couldn’t control themselves from using Taoism and ghosts to make profits for themselves. So Ghost arts practitioners could do it even less, for Ghost arts come with a very powerful ability in controlling ghosts, much stronger than Tianshi’s. During the era when Ghost arts was a common thing, it was also popular to raise ghosts.

After feeding ghosts, they would be more and more dependent on ghosts, then become more and more greedy, and would easily go astray. In the end, it was not the right path, eventually it would hurt one’s integrity as a human being. Just like Fang Wenwen, who was once a highly respected Wu in the old Bashu area (around nowadays, Sichuan Province), but now she had too much blood on her hands.

Chen Yang said, “By the way, today is the third day. You haven’t told me the third hint yet.”

Du Shuo, “A skeleton under clothing.”

Chen Yang was stunned for a moment, and suddenly realized, “I kept wondering what kind of animal became a JingGuai. It was so ferocious and intelligent at the same time. So it’s a skeleton.” 

Skeletons were human bones left behind after death and were human beings before they died. After death, by coincidences, they became Jingguais. They feed on human flesh and blood to enrich their own flesh, and they retain their wisdom in life.

It was recorded in the book, ‘Youyang Zazu’ that during the Tang Dynasty, Jiang Chugong visited the Zen temple. During the banquet, he saw a beautiful lady who never showed her hands. Someone pulled open her clothes, but found a white skeleton underneath. It turned out that the white bones had somehow become a JingGuai, and it mixed into the banquet to absorb human essence by eating human flesh and blood, all to enrich their own flesh. The book ‘Taiping Guangji’ also recorded that a little girl was performing in the market. Her linen clothes were torn off, and underneath was a white skeleton. ⁴

Skeletons could be cultivated into JingGuais since ancient times, and the skeletons that had become JingGuais liked to mix into the crowd and suck blood essence. Usually their facial features and limbs were as plump as normal people, but in fact under their clothes was just a skeleton.

Chen Yang stopped and suddenly turned back, “You cheated?”

Du Shuo said that he would lead Chen Yang to the answer with a hint every day to guess the origin of the JingGuai. Now he directly told him the origin himself, so it couldn’t be regarded as Chen Yang’s win.

In other words, Chen Yang lost.

“Ghosts are scammers.” Du Shuo said, “This is me personally teaching you a lesson.”

Chen Yang was angry, “You are just stingy on giving the reward!”

Du Shuo replied, “The reward won’t be gone, but half of it will be deducted.” Half was better than none.

“What’s the reward?”

Du Shuo was just about to open his mouth when he looked ahead and saw an ancient locust tree, a tumor about the size of a human head was growing on it. The tumor’s peel slowly split open and facial features were slowly emerging, it looked particularly terrifying.

Chen Yang took off the red string tied on his wrist, he held one end with each hand and whipped the tumor on the tree with it, directly breaking down the whole locust tree, the tumor was also smashed along with it. With the scream, the tree collapsed, revealing the white bones under the tree roots and some still fresh corpses.

There was also some hair, teeth and broken clothes underneath. Obviously those were from the humans eaten by this ancient locust tree. When Chen Yang saw the corpses, he whipped the soul of the ghost locust into smithereens without any thought. For a moment, the wind in the ancient locust forest was desolate and became even more terrifying. It seemed that the other evil incarnates inside were aware of the danger.

“Want to flee?”

The whole ancient locust forest was full of Yin aura, showing that many innocent passersby were brutally killed. Chen Yang beat their souls into pieces. His steps were light, as he accurately found all the locust trees with ghosts in it, pasted a talisman on each one.

As soon as he stepped on the ground again, he turned around and raised his hand, he chanted, “…Under the command of the ghost emperor, kill the evil and kill the essence… Kill all calamities, ghosts and evil gods with Wulei, forbid their actions, as urgently as the law commands.” 

All the Five Thunder talisman played their respective roles well, and blew up the locust trees with wandering ghosts attached into pieces. At the destruction of the trees, the wild ghosts were also blown to ashes, as the ghosts were scared of godly thunders. Chen Yang’s five thunder combination talismans was one step further in its power compared to the normal five thunder talisman. 

Du Shuo walked to him slowly, “Have you improved the Five Thunder talisman?”

“I’ve seen Mao Xiaoli use it a few times, and it works very well. I thought it would be even better to have a large-scale thunderstorm raining down.”

“Under the command of the ghost emperor?”

“After all, I practice Ghost arts. I’m afraid it would not be appropriate to call for the Taoist Zushiye.”

“Why didn’t you call for the emperor of Fengdu?” As if a mere ghost emperor was more powerful than himself.

Chen Yang explained, “You shouldn’t kill a chicken with an electric saw.”

Du Shuo’s mood quickly got better for some reason. 

They stood at the door of the villa. Before they did anything, the door opened on its own. It was dark inside, like the inside of a man-eating beast’s mouth.

Chen Yang asked, “Challenging us?” 

Such arrogance.

They walked in side by side, the door slammed behind them. The dark villa was suddenly lit up by a blue-green ghost fire, illuminating the old spider webs furnishing the inside of the hall. The door was facing the stairs directly, on which hung a huge portrait.

There were four people in the portrait, and their faces were gloomy.

“Welcome… guests.” Hearing the coarse voice, Chen Yang turned his head and looked at them. Three evil incarnates were staring at them, they were nothing but skeletons except for their heads and limbs, they sat on the sofa on the left side of the hall.

On the table was a corpse with the skull, hair and teeth, its limbs were exposed, bones were protruding from the blooded flesh, next to the corpse was a backpack and a camera. The remains most likely belonged to a traveler who came to explore the ghost house, but ended up eaten instead. 

The younger one must be the Fang’s eldest son. He stood up and said, “Tianshi’s meat should be different from ordinary people’s.”

Chen Yang put out his red string and whipped the evil incarnate in front of him almost to pieces, “You speak too much.” 

The three demons’ expressions changed, they took off their human skins and what remained were skeletons. One of the incarnates’ bones were almost red. When Chen Yang’s red string landed on it, only a faint indent was inflicted, almost like he was whipping at steel. 

“…The five Ghost emperors, the seventy-two divisional ministers. Heed my orders, reveal your true form. Heed my orders, seize the evil. As urgently as the BeiYin XuanTian Fengdu Emperor’s decrees.” 

 

The author has something to say:

The mantra for summoning Fengdu Fu servitors: Heed my orders, reveal your true form. Heed my orders, seize the evil. As urgently as the BeiYin XuanTian Fengdu Emperor’s decrees.

(聞吾正令，立降真身。從吾所使，急捉邪精。急急如北陰玄天酆都大帝律令。Upon hearing my order, immediately descend to your true form. From what I command, quickly capture the evil spirit. Urgent as the decree of the Lord of Hell, the Great Emperor of the North Dark Heaven.)

‘Youyang Zazu’ is a novel compilation of ghosts and weird phenomenons, it was written in the Tang Dynasty. Truth be told, the imagination of the ancient people are far richer than the modern people. There are one to two stories that even I felt scared reading.

 

 

 

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