Yellow Skinned Taoist Master

Chapter 88-89: Consider It a Tribute to You

Boom!

The fog-like dust was blasted apart by the Magic Tree's branches.

This single slash had drained an unfathomable amount of power from the Magic Tree — enough to instantly execute any Disaster.

Even though the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva was a Calamity—

It should have been bisected.

But the blade cut only air.

More precisely — the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva had fled.

The dust it had spewed was never meant to blind Chen Huangpi or set up some finishing move.

It was cover for its escape!

The instant the dust appeared—The limbless Bodhisattva had already shot toward the bottom of the pit.

Its power was certainly bizarre.

But if it could actually counter the black smoke, counter Chen Huangpi, would it have ended up this pathetic?

The so-called "wish-granting" had simply transferred the black smoke onto whichever unlucky evil spirit had previously made a wish with it.

There were plenty of evil spirits in this God-Burying Mound.

But not every single one had made a wish. A trick like that might work once — it couldn't work forever.

"Whoever wants to kill Chen Huangpi can be my guest!"

...

The pit was deep.

But even the deepest pit had a bottom.

This was an enormous space.

Every thirty meters, a bronze oil lamp was placed.

Evil spirits stood beneath the lamps, staring uneasily toward the front.

There, two evil spirits were dying.

One had black smoke suddenly erupting from its body, hissing with corrosion, and in the blink of an eye it was consumed entirely.

The other was covered in cracks, its body crumbling apart like a shattered porcelain vase, chunks of flesh sloughing away.

Both deaths were bizarre.

And sudden.

The evil spirits were at a loss.

Because that black smoke was unmistakably the Great King Yellow Skin's power.

Why was it killing evil spirits?

Was it hungry?

Suddenly, one evil spirit stared at the black smoke and spoke up. "Could the Great King Yellow Skin be coming to rescue us?"

At that, the evil spirits erupted into excitement.

"Wonderful! The Great King Yellow Skin is saving us!"

"Sure, it eats evil spirits and it's savage, but it's a good evil spirit!"

"The Yellow Peril — it's the bad one!"

"Right! Rotten to the core! A liar!"

"The As-You-Wish Bodhisattva too — also bad!"

The evil spirits loathed the Yellow Peril.

They had been promised great fortunes inside the God-Burying Mound, a chance for every evil spirit to become a Disaster.

But where were the fortunes?

The moment the Yellow Peril entered the mound, it vanished to who-knew-where.

Luckily, they encountered the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva, who promised to fulfill their wish to become Disasters. But then it dumped them straight into this giant pit.

At first, the evil spirits had been overjoyed, thinking they had found a benefactor.

Only after arriving at the bottom of the pit did they discover the Bodhisattva was even worse.

Just then, an evil spirit shrieked in terror, "Another one is going out!"

The others turned to look. A bronze oil lamp's flame was flickering, swaying as if caught in a breeze.

The next instant—

The lamp went dark.

Immediately, a swathe of darkness cascaded outward.

Several evil spirits, unable to dodge in time, were engulfed by the blackness.

Then, from within the darkness, screams erupted.

"AAAHHH!"

"Statues — statues everywhere!"

Within the darkness, crunching and grinding sounds rang out without pause.

As if countless divine statues were crushing the evil spirits and swallowing them alive.

Then—

One by one, divine statues emerged from the darkness — some damaged, some grotesquely misshapen — pushing their heads out just as the tomb guardian beast had done.

"Ha ha ha ha!"

"I've become a Disaster!"

"Come in — hurry, come in!"

There weren't many statues — only thirty-odd, corresponding to the evil spirits swallowed each time a lamp went out.

"It's a lie! It's all a lie!"

A shadow-like evil spirit shouted, "Everyone — don't go in! If you do, those statues will devour you! They become Disasters, yes, but you'll just be food!"

"The shadow evil spirit is right."

"I'm not going in. I don't want to be a Disaster anymore."

Just as humans felt fear—

Evil spirits feared death too.

They may not have been the brightest, but that didn't mean they wanted to die.

The shadow evil spirit breathed a sigh of relief.

"Uncle Yang, do you think we can still get out of here?"

This was none other than Wang Mingdao, sole son of that "lapdog" Grand Tutor Wang Taiyu and Left Guard Attendant.

Like Chen Huangpi, Wang Mingdao had disguised himself as an evil spirit and infiltrated the God-Burying Mound.

But since entering—

First the tomb guardian beast devoured people, then came the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva, and now they were trapped in this bottomless pit.

Wang Mingdao was filled with regret.

If he had known, he would have just stayed outside the mound. Why had he risked coming in?

But there was no going back.

The shadow evil spirit — Uncle Yang — answered in his mind, 'We should be able to get out. The question is whether the ones who leave will still be us.'

Wang Mingdao was a Nascent Soul cultivator, but he had ordinary mortal eyes — he couldn't perceive just how perilous this pit truly was.

Uncle Yang, however, was an evil spirit.

Its body was shadow itself. Every corner of this pit — lit or unlit — was laid bare before it.

The instant they had appeared at the bottom—

Uncle Yang had seen what lurked in the darkness. Countless ruined divine statues, stretching beyond the limits of sight.

This truly was the God-Burying Mound — a graveyard for gods.

Only, those gods had long since transformed into evil gods — savage beyond measure.

Fortunately, the light from the bronze oil lamps seemed to restrain them.

Without those lamps, every evil spirit here — Wang Mingdao included — would have perished long ago.

But—

Both Uncle Yang and Wang Mingdao knew full well: the bronze oil lamps wouldn't hold the evil gods at bay much longer.

A dozen or more had already been snuffed out. Death was only a matter of time.

The worst part was that the lamps went out with no discernible pattern.

Even standing beneath the lamp at the very center was no guarantee of safety — the darkness could swallow it at any moment.

Nowhere was safe.

"If only we could get up from here."

Wang Mingdao gave a bitter laugh and looked upward.

The pit was deep — impossibly deep — with no visible top. But it spiraled upward, and every thirty meters along the wall hung a bronze oil lamp.

At first glance, it looked like the inside of a tower.

Only this tower suppressed everything within it — flight and aerial escape were completely impossible.

"Wait—"

Wang Mingdao's eyes went wide. "Uncle Yang, something's falling toward us."

"The As-You-Wish Bodhisattva!"

"It's been reduced to a human stick? And its body is covered in sword wounds?"

"Something is hunting it?"

And it wasn't just Wang Mingdao and Uncle Yang.

The other evil spirits also spotted the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva plunging toward them.

Except — the Bodhisattva wasn't falling.

It had been beaten down!

"The Great King Yellow Skin! It's the Great King Yellow Skin!"

"It really did come to save us!"

The evil spirits were as overjoyed as if they'd just seen family.

But their Great King Yellow Skin—

Chen Huangpi — hadn't even noticed them.

"Sever!"

Chen Huangpi had eyes only for the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva. Under the black smoke's influence, his body had swelled to enormous proportions.

Twice as tall as before, at least.

The dead branch in his hand had grown proportionally thicker. If not for its razor-sharp tip, it would have looked like a pillar.

A massive arc of sword qi descended from above.

The As-You-Wish Bodhisattva's upper half was cleaved clean off.

"As I wish — no smoke shall touch me, my divine body eternal!"

The As-You-Wish Bodhisattva screamed in terror.

Below, two more evil spirits met the same fate as before — consumed by black smoke, shattered by phantom blades.

"So that's how it works!"

The Brass Oil Lamp said, "Those evil spirits must have made wishes with it. That's how it redirects the effects!"

Hearing this—

Chen Huangpi still said nothing.

His eyes burned crimson, as though he had lost himself entirely.

The Brass Oil Lamp asked anxiously, 'Chen Huangpi, can you hear me?'

"I can hear you. I'm fine."

Chen Huangpi's voice was cold as frost. "It's the Liver Temple influencing me. Once the Bodhisattva is dead, I'll go back to normal."

The Second Master had told him: the Five Viscera were also the Five Poisons, and each could amplify certain emotions.

The Kidney Temple made his mood unstable, prone to melancholy and sentimentality.

The Liver Temple's effect was more direct — when liver-fire ran hot, it blazed beyond all restraint, refusing to stop until the goal was achieved.

As for the warnings about becoming dim-witted in mild cases or going insane in severe ones, or even possibly splitting into five personalities fighting for control—

Chen Huangpi didn't think that was inevitable.

Because this state felt absolutely magnificent.

He looked down at the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva.

Nothing remained but one head and a stub of torso — pitiful beyond description.

It had crashed to the bottom of the pit. Ignoring the evil spirits around it, it bellowed into the darkness, "Supreme God Guangmu! I brought you here! I ask for no wish in return — just hold Chen Huangpi back for a single moment and give me a chance to breathe!"

"Supreme God Guangmu! Save me!"

At those words—

A tremendous rumbling erupted from within the darkness.

Like tectonic plates shifting.

Then two arms — vertical eyes growing from each palm — pushed out of the blackness.

It was the mutated divine statue.

The "Supreme God Guangmu" of the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva's screams.

The instant the Life-reaping Ghost saw the mutated divine statue, every bone in its body ached.

It said urgently, "Master — it seems even more terrifying than before!"

"And more lucid..."

As it spoke—

The mutated divine statue stepped fully out of the darkness.

Unlike before, its already enormous body had swelled to more than double its previous size.

Crunch, crunch, crunch...

The maw on its chest was chewing on a divine statue. The statue was still alive, pleading desperately, "Supreme God Guangmu, mercy — please spare—"

Crack.

Before it could finish, the mutated divine statue bit its head to powder, chewed a few times, and swallowed.

Every evil spirit quaked with terror.

The evil gods wanted to eat them, and the mutated divine statue ate evil gods.

Didn't that make them its food too?

"Supreme God Guangmu, you've recovered thirty percent of your divine power!"

The As-You-Wish Bodhisattva's eyes lit up. It scrambled toward the statue, fawning, "The only pity is that there aren't many consecrated gods in this tomb — mostly rejects. Otherwise, you would surely have reclaimed your former glory!"

The mutated divine statue cast a cold glance at the Bodhisattva.

That single look filled the As-You-Wish Bodhisattva with a terrible premonition.

"Supreme God Guangmu..."

The As-You-Wish Bodhisattva tried to pull back.

But the next instant—

From the gaping maw on the mutated divine statue's chest, a beam of Nine-Colored Soul-Scattering Divine Light lashed out.

It swept across the Bodhisattva.

Its eyes went blank and vacant on the spot.

Then the mutated divine statue opened its enormous jaws to swallow it whole.

Chen Huangpi saw this and erupted in fury. "Don't eat it — let me make the kill!"

At his words—

The mutated divine statue suddenly froze. Then it turned a deeply complicated gaze on Chen Huangpi.

In those eyes — resentment, frustration, bitterness.

But in the end, all of it dissolved into resignation.

The Big-Headed Evil Spirit crawled out of its mouth and stammered, "Great King Yellow Skin, the Great and Terrible Evil God says — go ahead. Consider it a tribute to you."