At this point, Xiao Sanda couldn't say a single word. His face was flushed a dark reddish-purple, and the veins on his forehead were bulging. Tao Heru's face was almost pressed against his, their eyes locked—truly, a confrontation of four eyes.
Tao Heru stared straight into Xiao Sanda's eyes and said word by word, "It's all for the Heavenly Principle Diagram. Back then, the Religious Affairs Committee was like this. Now you're no different. Do you think that if I die, you'll be able to get the Heavenly Principle Diagram?!"
Xiao Sanda's face remained flushed purple. He wanted to speak, but not a single word came out.
Tao Heru had one hand clamped around Xiao Sanda's neck. Just a little more force and he could snap it. If I hadn't seen Xiao Sanda alive for a while longer at the bottom of that riverbed decades later, I would've sworn this was where he died.
Tao Heru leaned close to Xiao Sanda's ear and whispered, "The Heavenly Principle Diagram is inside this Nanshan Cemetery. If you want it, come find it again after you're dead."
As he finished speaking, a sharp gleam flashed in Tao Heru's eyes, and he was about to apply force when suddenly a gust of evil wind whooshed past his ear. Tao Heru turned around—Xiao Heshang was already swinging a tombstone at him.
There was no time to dodge. With a thud, the tombstone landed squarely on Tao Heru's head. Xiao Heshang had used every ounce of strength he had. The tombstone shattered into five or six pieces, and Tao Heru was sent crashing to the ground. His grip loosened, and Xiao Sanda slumped to the ground.
Before Tao Heru could even register what had happened, Gao Liang charged in with a second tombstone. His motion mirrored Xiao Heshang's exactly. Another thud, and Tao Heru was knocked flat on his back.
"Cough! Cough! Cough!" Xiao Sanda clambered up, bent over and coughing violently—he must've damaged his trachea. Without a word, Gao Liang and Xiao Heshang each grabbed one of his arms and bolted for the cemetery's exit. Within moments, they were a hundred meters away.
At that moment, Tao Heru wobbled to his feet. Watching the trio flee, he let out a cold laugh and began muttering an incantation in a harsh, guttural language. With each syllable, the air around him grew colder and colder. Centered on Tao Heru, a deep chill spread outward.
Halfway through the incantation, Tao Heru abruptly stopped. His eyes locked onto an urn that had suddenly appeared at his feet—a funerary urn, left behind by the very people who had just attacked him with tombstones. A faint sulfuric smell rose from it, along with a wisp of green smoke.
A sudden chill ran down Tao Heru's spine. An ominous premonition surged up from within.
There was no time to react.
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted from within the urn. A blazing fireball surged forth, engulfing Tao Heru in an instant.
The blast was devastating. The fireball, wreathed in thick black smoke, swallowed him whole. The shockwave knocked Xiao Sanda, Gao Liang, and Xiao Heshang several meters off their feet—even though they were two to three hundred meters away. The entire area where Tao Heru had stood was now a sea of fire.
Heart pounding, Xiao Heshang turned to glare at Gao Liang and yelled, "Fat Gao! Was that really necessary?! How much explosive did you use? You think you're making a nuke?! Next time you bring something like that, you carry it yourself!"
Gao Liang ignored him. He didn't seem satisfied with the explosion's effect. Staring at the inferno before them, he muttered to himself, "Something's missing… where's the mushroom cloud?"
Xiao Sanda, eyes locked on the fire that had swallowed Tao Heru, was in a daze. Then, suddenly, he did something shocking—he leapt to his feet and bolted straight for the flames.
Gao Liang and Xiao Heshang were stunned. They quickly tackled him to the ground, holding him back with all their strength.
At first, they thought maybe Tao Heru had cast some spell on him. But judging by Xiao Sanda's expression, his eyes were clear—not the gaze of someone possessed by an evil spirit.
"You trying to die, Xiao Sanda?! Even if you've had enough of life, you don't have to die with Tao Heru!" Xiao Heshang roared at him.
Xiao Sanda didn't seem to hear. He kept struggling forward. Furious, Xiao Heshang slapped him across the face—smack! The blow seemed to wake him up. He stared blankly at Xiao Heshang for a moment, panting heavily. Only then did he regain some semblance of composure.
I could sense the overwhelming frustration inside Xiao Sanda—it was the kind of fury that comes from having something in your grasp torn away at the last second.
"Xiao Sanda, you—" Xiao Heshang was still fuming and about to speak when he suddenly fell silent.
The air, which had just moments ago been scorched by the fireball, abruptly turned frigid. The temperature plummeted by at least ten degrees. A thin layer of frost began to creep over the ground.
Xiao Heshang shivered uncontrollably, teeth chattering. "W-What's… going… on…?"
Gao Liang's face had also gone pale. Sensing that something had changed, Xiao Heshang followed Gao Liang's gaze—and what he saw made his blood run cold.
The inferno had been snuffed out in eerie silence.
In its place stood a man—completely naked, staring at them with a blank, lifeless expression.
The fire had burned away every stitch of clothing from the man's body. Not just his clothes—every strand of hair was gone too. His scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, every bit of body hair had been scorched clean off. And yet, even in this state, there was no mistaking him.
It was Tao Heru—the very same Tao Heru who should have been incinerated moments ago.
The moment they saw him, both Xiao Heshang and Gao Liang turned and ran without hesitation. Xiao Sanda hesitated for only a fraction of a second before gritting his teeth and dashing after them.
Tao Heru didn't move. He just stood there, coldly watching them flee.
Just as the trio was about to escape the cemetery, dozens of ghastly pale hands suddenly shot up from the ground. Gao Liang and Xiao Heshang were caught off guard. The hands grabbed their ankles and yanked them down, tripping them hard.
More hands burst from the soil around them—dozens of them—pinning the two to the ground.
Xiao Sanda, following close behind, saw what was happening. Gritting his teeth, he bit down on his own tongue, drawing blood. He spat a mouthful of tongue blood mixed with saliva directly at the ghostly hands holding the others.
The blood hit with a hiss like acid. Wisps of white smoke rose from the pale hands, and their grip loosened slightly. Gao Liang and Xiao Heshang seized the chance and broke free.
The three didn't dare delay and continued sprinting toward the edge of the cemetery, with Xiao Heshang leading the way. Just as they were about to make it out of the cemetery's boundary, Xiao Heshang suddenly fell to the ground with a heavy thud. The fall wasn't light—he lay still for a few seconds before slowly getting back up.
"There's a wall formed by Yin energy ahead! We can't get out," Xiao Heshang said with a distressed expression.
Xiao Sanda had already reached the spot where Xiao Heshang had fallen. He reached out and swiped through the air. As expected, the moment his hand extended forward, it was blocked by an invisible wall—just like the one they had encountered in the underground chamber of the Qilin Medical College.
"What now?" Xiao Heshang asked, looking at Gao Liang and Xiao Sanda.
Before Gao Liang and Xiao Sanda could say anything, the voice of that man echoed throughout the cemetery:
"What now? I'll tell you what now. The three of you stay right here. I'll rip your souls out one by one and turn you into my puppets."
The speaker was none other than Tao Heru. Though his mouth didn't move, his voice reverberated through the entire cemetery.
Tao Heru slowly walked toward them. He wasn't moving fast, and his naked, skin-clad-but-hairless appearance would have looked comical under different circumstances—but none of the three felt the slightest urge to laugh.
Still, this wasn't the first time Xiao Sanda and the others had faced this kind of situation. Though it seemed tense, they didn't panic. As Tao Heru approached, the three of them simultaneously darted off in three different directions. It was as if they had rehearsed it countless times—they bit their fingertips almost in unison and smeared the blood onto tombstones or burial mounds as they passed each grave.
Seeing the three of them scatter, Tao Heru paused, glancing at their shifting positions. They had no intention of breaking the wall. Though their seemingly random behavior was clearly deliberate, Tao Heru couldn't decipher what Xiao Sanda and the others were up to.
Aside from the dozens of meters around Tao Heru and the spot where the fire had broken out earlier, the three of them had basically run through the entire cemetery. At first, Tao Heru only watched coldly and made no moves. The Ghost Path Sect was built upon blood. Although the earlier fire hadn't visibly injured him, the intense heat had evaporated a significant amount of his internal blood. Tao Heru had sustained real damage to his vital energy.
Uncertain whether Xiao Sanda still had a deadly trick up his sleeve, Tao Heru advanced cautiously. What he didn't expect was to be caught in a "straw pole poking a wolf" scenario—where probing too much only led to more chaos.
Watching the trio run back and forth, Tao Heru grew increasingly uneasy. Finally, he snorted coldly and said, "You done with your monkey show? Is it time to pass around the hat and collect money?"
He swept his gaze across all three, finally resting on Xiao Sanda's face.
"What is it you want? Money? Or the Heavenly Principle Diagram?"
Xiao Heshang and Gao Liang showed no reaction, but when Xiao Sanda heard the words Heavenly Principle Diagram, his pupils visibly contracted.
Xiao Heshang, however, didn't care. He sneered at Tao Heru and said, "You've got the guts to give, and we've got the guts to take!"
While he spoke, no one noticed Gao Liang's frown deepening as he watched Xiao Sanda closely.
"Good! I'll give it to you. Let's see if you dare take it," Tao Heru said, casting a meaningful glance at Xiao Sanda.
Then he turned away without any concern about being attacked from behind and headed straight back to the grave where he had been hiding. From the burial mound, he dug out a leather pouch.
As soon as Xiao Sanda laid eyes on the leather pouch in Tao Heru's hands, his heart pounded wildly, and his feet moved on their own—he actually began walking toward Tao Heru involuntarily.
Fortunately, Gao Liang was prepared. He stepped in quickly and pulled Xiao Sanda back.
"Look closely. He's toying with you!"
Sure enough, Tao Heru didn't pull out anything resembling a scroll. Instead, he turned the pouch upside down and dumped out a pile of mixed weeds and tangled threads.
Xiao Heshang snorted, "You call this pile of grass the Heavenly Principle Diagram? You think we're blind?"
Tao Heru glanced up at him without replying and then bent down to arrange the weeds into a strange formation. Afterward, he took a deep breath and blew forcefully onto the pile.
Perhaps the weeds had been treated with phosphorus—because as soon as he blew, the pile whooshed into flames.
But it wasn't just fire. From within the burning heap, a thick smoke billowed out—thick to an alarming degree. The pitch-black smoke shot straight into the sky and, oddly enough, didn't dissipate. Instead, it gathered and expanded, forming a massive black cloud over the cemetery. The cloud blocked out the sunlight above Nanshan Cemetery. Outside, it was bright and sunny, but within the cemetery, it felt like night had suddenly fallen.
Tao Heru looked up at the black cloud and said, "You wanted the Heavenly Principle Diagram? I already told you—it's here. You can die and become ghosts, then search for it at your leisure."
With that, he began chanting a string of strange, guttural syllables.
As the incantation ended, a thunderous rumble echoed through the cemetery. The graves began to tremble violently, and the soil atop the mounds started to loosen. Earth gushed outward from underground, and one by one, the dead began crawling out from their tombs.
It was clear these corpses had been specially preserved. Their skin and flesh had waxed over, and although they'd been dead for a long time, there was no sign of rot. They looked almost exactly as they had when alive—which somehow made them even more terrifying.
In the blink of an eye, the entire Nanshan Cemetery was filled with these freshly unearthed undead.
Seeing them, Tao Heru's face lit up with a flush, like he had laid eyes on a peerless beauty. Grinning, he said to the three, "Now you understand why I chose to hide here? To others, a cemetery is hell—but to the Ghost Path Sect, it's paradise."
Yet when he saw that Xiao Sanda, Gao Liang, and Xiao Heshang's faces remained completely expressionless, Tao Heru was momentarily surprised.
Was it that their mental strength was just that strong—or had they been scared stiff and become incapable of reacting?
Just as he was puzzling over it, Xiao Heshang spoke.
"So, all your family came out to say hi. What exactly do you want?"
Tao Heru frowned and snapped, "In such a rush to reincarnate, are you? Fine, I'll oblige."
He raised his left index finger and pointed at Xiao Heshang—but nothing happened. The undead remained standing blankly in place.
Now it was Tao Heru's turn to be dumbfounded. That shouldn't be possible. This had never happened before.
The Ghost Command Ritual was a signature spell of the Ghost Path Sect. As one of the sect's three high priests, Tao Heru might not match Yang Xiao, but he shouldn't be incapable of activating such a basic spell.
He tried several more incantations, each time aiming at Xiao Heshang—still, no effect.
Xiao Heshang finally lost patience.
"Are you done yet? Want to go check your manual and see where you messed up?"