Yellow Skinned Taoist Master

Chapter 111: Thou May Become a Yin God

Chen Huangpi was at his wit's end.

He never imagined that these Yin Gods forging more Yin Gods—millions of them—would ultimately be waiting for some "Yellow Heaven" to bestow its blessing.

Yellow Heaven has not yet been born. The Dao Lord has not arrived.

So the petition was denied.

Denied was one thing, but then there was a "next."

"I'm working on it, I'm working on it!"

Chen Huangpi felt the Yin Gods' urging gazes boring into him, his scalp tingling. He shouted, "I really am working on it! Stop pressuring me!"

He truly was already working on it.

He swung the crane-beak pickaxe so fast it blurred into afterimages.

The Yin earth dissolved into soft, mushy clay.In three quick strokes, he slapped together a crude clay figure.

Then all that remained was to write the netherworld script and insert a Soul-Restoring Jade.

Such was the method of forging Yin Gods in the Yellow Springs and Yin Lands.

Chen Huangpi yelled, "Give me a brush! I'll write it!"

Every Yin God around him held out a brush.

Chen Huangpi snatched one at random and was about to begin inscribing the clay figure.

But then he paused.

"A Gui, how do you write 'Yellow Heaven' in netherworld script again..."

"Contract Master..."

The Life-reaping Ghost said bitterly, "Every being born from the Yellow Springs and Yin Lands naturally commands the netherworld script from the moment of birth. But if you're asking me how to teach you to write it, I wouldn't even know where to begin—and even if I taught you, you wouldn't be able to write it."

Before the Heaven and Earth Mutation.

The Yellow Springs and Yin Lands had been connected to the mortal world.

Immortals who had taken an interest in netherworld script had tried learning it. They could memorize the meanings of the characters perfectly well, yet none could reproduce them in writing.

Even those who had reincarnated as beings of the Yellow Springs and Yin Lands and thereby gained the ability to write the script.

The moment they reincarnated back.

They could no longer write a single character.

Because the netherworld script was bound by a certain rule.

Just as the sun was yang and the moon was yin.

These were simply rules.

But by now, the Yin Gods' gazes were turning distinctly unfriendly.

Anxious. Angry.

Chen Huangpi said with a pained expression, "A Gui, write a character in my mind and let me try copying it."

The Life-reaping Ghost naturally wouldn't refuse such a request.

It immediately inscribed the two characters for "Yellow Heaven" inside Chen Huangpi's mind.

They were black, crooked and meandering, like ghost-scribbled talismans.

Chen Huangpi tried to replicate them.

But no matter what he did, the strokes refused to come out right.

'And here I was calling myself an avid reader of all books. Turns out I'm just someone who forgets how to write the moment he picks up a brush.'

Chen Huangpi glanced at the Yin Gods.

Their gazes had grown even more hostile.

"How about... you take the brush and write it yourself?"

Chen Huangpi tentatively offered the brush, but the Yin God didn't take it. It merely stared at him with increasingly glacial eyes.

"Chen Huangpi, stop dawdling and just write something—anything."

The Brass Oil Lamp cried, "It's not like the blessing is going to work anyway! What are you afraid of?!"

"Fine. Here goes nothing."

With that, Chen Huangpi gritted his teeth and began writing on the clay figure with reckless determination.

The brush held no ink.

Yet wherever it touched, characters appeared.

These weren't netherworld script.

Nor were they the flower-bird-fish-insect characters inscribed on Chen Huangpi's body.

They were perfectly ordinary characters.

Line after line flowed across the figure's surface.

Then Chen Huangpi took out the Soul-Restoring Jade—now gnawed down to half a fist—and was about to place the whole thing into the clay figure, but he hesitated.

'They only used a fingernail-sized sliver to make a Yin God. I worked hard for this piece—I can't just waste it all...'

Crunch...

Chen Huangpi bit off a huge chunk.

He chewed a few hasty times and swallowed it whole.

Inside his mind, the Six Yin Gods—already stuffed to bursting—took in this final massive bite and went completely still, as though they'd eaten themselves to death.

What remained was only finger-sized.

But Chen Huangpi didn't take another bite.

Because the Yin Gods' gazes had turned furious, as though they were disgusted by his behavior.

He dropped the remaining Soul-Restoring Jade into the clay figure.

Immediately, the figure began to change.

Cold, sinister energy seeped out of it.

But even after the figure stood up and transformed into a Yin God, the characters written across its body refused to fade.

Moreover, this Yin God wasn't tall.

Its body wasn't long and slender either.

And to be honest, Chen Huangpi had been boasting—the clay figure he'd sculpted had completely crooked features, uglier than anything the other Yin Gods had made. It possessed not a shred of divine solemnity; instead, it radiated an absurd, grotesque aura.

The worst part was.

The Yin God's crooked appearance was bad enough.

But Chen Huangpi's handwriting was equally crooked.

He'd always written on paper before—this was his first time writing on a clay figure.

Since the characters refused to disappear, the Yin God was covered head to toe in hideous scrawl.

He'd even run out of space toward the end.

The serial number—Nine Million, Nine Hundred and Eighty-One Thousand, Four Hundred and Twenty-Four—ended up plastered across the Yin God's forehead.

"Well..."

Chen Huangpi looked helplessly at the other Yin Gods.

Their gazes were strange.

Indescribably strange.

Their eyes darted back and forth between Chen Huangpi and this even more bizarre specimen of their kind.

This time, the Yin God closest to Chen Huangpi couldn't stand it any longer.

It strode up to him.

Then it extended one hand, held it level with Chen Huangpi's head, and slid it across to its own body, maintaining the same height.

Then it lowered its hand to its knee.

These Yin Gods were extremely tall.

Chen Huangpi was just a boy—reaching their knees was already respectable for his height.

But what this gesture implied.

Made Chen Huangpi's heart leap.

"Have these stupid-dog Yin Gods finally realized you're not one of them?"

The Brass Oil Lamp's tone was inscrutable.

The Yin God then placed its other hand atop the bizarre Yin God that Chen Huangpi had created. This strange Yin God wasn't tall either.

It stood only about half a body-length taller than Chen Huangpi.

The Yin God compared its two hands.

One at its knee. The other at its thigh.

Its gaze filled with utter bewilderment.

However, the bizarre Yin God that Chen Huangpi had created didn't seem to care at all.

It walked straight up to Chen Huangpi and stretched out both hands, as if asking for something.

"I don't have any. Huang Twenty-four, go ask them."

Chen Huangpi shook his head. He knew that this Yin God he'd created—serial number abbreviated to Huang Twenty-four—wanted a bamboo hat and a black robe.

But he only had one hat himself.

He didn't even have a black robe. Where was he supposed to get one?

Despite its ugly, grotesque appearance, Huang Twenty-four was remarkably obedient to Chen Huangpi.

Chen Huangpi told it to go ask the other Yin Gods.

And it genuinely walked up to another Yin God and extended its hands.

But the Yin Gods had all fallen into a strange, bewildered daze and paid no attention to this specimen that looked even less like one of them than Chen Huangpi did.

Huang Twenty-four stood there, lost.

The Brass Oil Lamp said darkly, "Silly child—they won't give it to you, so take it by force! And you call yourself Chen Huangpi's creation. You haven't inherited a single one of his best qualities!"

At those words.

Huang Twenty-four cocked its head thoughtfully and nodded.

Then its body swelled explosively, the crooked characters covering its frame radiating an extraordinarily eerie aura.

In the blink of an eye—right before the Brass Oil Lamp's disbelieving gaze—it shot up to a full half-body taller than the other Yin Gods. Then it grabbed the nearest one and drove a fist into its chest. Without a moment's pause, it ripped the hat off its head and the black robe from its body.

Hat on. Robe on.

Huang Twenty-four shrank back down to the same height as the other Yin Gods.

Its grotesque, ugly form was instantly hidden from view.

Then Huang Twenty-four stood before Chen Huangpi, staring at him in silence.

That gaze was pure and earnest. And blazing with fervor.

It gave Chen Huangpi goosebumps all over. "What are you staring at me for? Go stand before the golden gate and complete the ritual..."

Hearing this, Huang Twenty-four nodded.

Then it walked toward the golden gate.

The Brass Oil Lamp exclaimed in surprise, "Chen Huangpi, does Huang Twenty-four think you're its father or something? It's so obedient."

"Nonsense."

Chen Huangpi said, "Master says I'm very handsome. But that thing is hideous. I don't have such an ugly child. Besides, we share no blood relation. I won't be handing over the Pure Immortal Temple to it, nor the Great Qian, nor the Yellow Springs and Yin Lands."

"Whoa! The golden gate is glowing again!"

The golden gate blazed once more with brilliant golden light.

It bathed Huang Twenty-four entirely in gold, making it gleam and shimmer.

And that cold, mechanical voice spoke once again.

Every Yin God listened intently.

"Dao Calendar Year Seventeen Thousand, Four Hundred. Today, one Yin God petitions Yellow Heaven for consecration. However, Yellow Heaven has not yet been born, and the Dao Lord has not arrived. Therefore..."

"Therefore..."

"Therefore..."

The voice repeated "therefore" three times.

As if it had jammed—as if it simply could not produce the final words: "the petition is denied."

Therefore, therefore, therefore...

Countless repetitions of "therefore" echoed from the golden gate.

The Yin Gods stood about in confusion, but Huang Twenty-four continued to kneel and pray.

Because Chen Huangpi hadn't told it to stop.

The Yin Gods glanced at one another in bewilderment, then converged around Huang Twenty-four.

But none of them noticed.

That short little Yin God—the one who'd been snacking on Soul-Restoring Jade as though it were food—had vanished without a trace.

Chen Huangpi crept away on tiptoe.

Every motion was delicate, cautious.

By the end, he'd broken into a quiet jog.

Only two hours remained before nightfall.

If he didn't leave now, he never would.

"Golden Horn, where's that path you mentioned?"

Chen Huangpi called out to the Golden Horn in his mind.

As for the other volume of the Soul-Hooking Manual inside the Yama Hall—he no longer had the luxury of pursuing it.

The Yama Hall was gone entirely.

Getting back to the mortal realm and waking his master—that was all that mattered.

But the Golden Horn replied, "Yellow-Skin Dad, I can only sense that the path to the mortal realm is somewhere nearby. But with golden light everywhere right now, my spiritual perception is being disrupted. I can't pinpoint it. All I know is that you seem to be getting farther and farther away from it."

"Farther and farther?"

Chen Huangpi turned and looked behind him.

All he could see were the Yin Gods clustered before the golden gate.

"Please don't tell me the path back to the mortal world is inside that gate."

The words had barely left Chen Huangpi's mouth.

When suddenly...

The golden light in every direction vanished in an instant.

From within the golden gate, the cold, mechanical voice had gone silent. Only the echoes of "therefore, therefore, therefore" continued to reverberate through the air.

The word grew fainter and fainter.

Until it could no longer be heard at all.

Only then did the voice speak again.

But this time, it was no longer cold and mechanical. Instead, it had become icy and sinister.

"Dao Calendar Year Seventeen Thousand, Four Hundred. Today, one Yin God petitions Yellow Heaven for consecration. Although Yellow Heaven has not yet been born and the Dao Lord has not arrived, the qualifications are met. Therefore—the petition is approved!"

The moment the voice fell, the golden gate was instantly consumed by sickly green patina, its prior dignified splendor obliterated.

In its place surged a ghostly, sinister energy—eerie beyond measure.

Inside the gate, darkness reigned absolute.

One by one, pallid hands reached out from the blackness, gripping the doorframe with a death-grip.

The gate had become a ghost gate.

And behind it.

Through that darkness, one could just barely make out the shape of a vast hall.

Chen Huangpi said hoarsely, "The Yama Hall. Behind this ghost gate—it's the Yama Hall. Just like the Old Temple."

The Brass Oil Lamp said in a trembling voice, "And that voice—Chen Huangpi, doesn't it sound like mine to you?"

As the words settled, an ancient oil lamp emerged from the ghost gate before Chen Huangpi's disbelieving eyes—encrusted in green patina, burning with ghostly netherworld fire.

It was the spitting image of the Brass Oil Lamp's true form.

The Nine Nether God Lantern spoke, its voice cold and absolute. "I am the Nine Nether God Lantern. Thou may become a Yin God."