Yellow Skinned Taoist Master

Chapter 103: The Great Sun Falls Into the Yellow Spring

The Yin Lands stretched vast and boundless.

Chen Huangpi rode Golden Horn, racing toward Mount Luopo.

The mountain was a thousand li away.

But Golden Horn was fast. In half a two-hour period, they would arrive.

There would be time to spare before nightfall, and he would be back in the mortal world.

Just then, the Soul-Hooking Manual gave off an aura of icy cold.

"Master, I can't make sense of it. I truly can't."

The Life-reaping Ghost couldn't help but speak up. "When I last lived in the Underworld Yellow Spring, I rode the Ferryman's raft several times. But this time, it moved so fast it was unrecognizable."

"I saw the old coot's bamboo pole blur into afterimages."

"That Ferryman seemed terrified of you, Master.""Obviously."

The Brass Oil Lamp, hanging from Golden Horn's head, interjected. "That old creature clearly saw through Chen Huangpi's background. Once it realized what it was dealing with, its earlier arrogance vanished in a heartbeat."

"Then what did it mean when it called me a part of the Underworld Yellow Spring?"

Chen Huangpi frowned. The remark kept gnawing at him.

He was born from an egg.

What could he possibly have to do with the Underworld Yellow Spring?

The Brass Oil Lamp mused, "Chen Huangpi, before you started cultivating, your skin was very yellow. And the Yellow Spring is also yellow."

Then it pointed at the dark ground beneath them.

"The Yin Lands are black."

"And those flower-bird-fish-insect characters on your body happen to be gold and black."

"So?"

"Gold and yellow are practically the same. Gold is yellow, yellow is gold."

The Brass Oil Lamp ventured a bold conjecture. "Perhaps you were birthed by the Underworld Yellow Spring. The Yellow Spring is your mother, the Yin Lands are your father!"

Hearing this absurd theory.

Chen Huangpi scoffed. "Then do my dear parents have any inheritance to give me?"

The Life-reaping Ghost said flatly, "Master, the Yellow Spring and Yin Lands aren't living beings. There's no inheritance to speak of."

"Besides, don't listen to Huang Er's wild guesses. You truly weren't born from the Underworld Yellow Spring."

"That's right — the Yin Emperor was."

Golden Horn wagged its head. "Creatures like us are born with memories of that being imprinted in our minds. The Yin Emperor walked out from the very origins of the Yellow Spring and the Yin Lands, reigning supreme over all. It is the true sovereign."

"I see. So the Yin Emperor is essentially the emperor of this realm. Is it still alive?"

"Huangpi Dad, I don't know..."

Golden Horn shook its head. "Before I left the Underworld Yellow Spring, I could still sense its presence. But now that I'm back, I feel nothing at all. Maybe it left. After all, the Yellow Spring and Yin Lands are falling apart."

"It didn't leave. It simply died."

The Life-reaping Ghost dropped the words like ice.

Chen Huangpi was deeply puzzled. "Can a being that powerful actually die?"

The Brass Oil Lamp was alive and well.

Yi Qingzhou, too — though he had become an evil spirit, in a certain sense he was still alive.

The Deity of Broad Sight was the same.

If the Yin Emperor ruled over the entire Underworld Yellow Spring, surely it couldn't be weaker than a Daoist from the Pure Immortal Temple or a consecrated deity?

"The Yin Emperor truly is dead."

The Life-reaping Ghost's voice drifted like a specter. "I saw it with my own eyes. Otherwise, why would I have fled to the mortal world?"

It was different from Golden Horn and Silver Horn.

The twins had left at the very beginning of the Heaven and Earth Mutation, when the Guanzhu's Daoists came digging for yellow mud. They had eagerly volunteered to go guard a gate for the newcomers.

The Life-reaping Ghost had arrived in the mortal world much later.

Though the gap between them seemed short.

One day above was one year below.

By the time the gap was calculated, it was tens of thousands of years after Golden Horn's departure that the Life-reaping Ghost finally left with the Soul-Hooking Manual.

Now, returning to its old haunt, the Underworld Yellow Spring bore no resemblance to what it once was.

The more the Life-reaping Ghost dwelt on it, the heavier its melancholy grew. It let out a long sigh. "The Yin Emperor ruled over all four directions. It established the Eighteen Levels of Hell. There were the Ten Halls of Yama, and the patriarch of my Yellow Spring Nether Race served as the Yama of the Ninth Hall. I was merely a petty clerk who managed the Soul-Hooking Manual within the Yama Hall."

The Ten Yama Kings of the Underworld Yellow Spring weren't like the mortal world's legends.

Here, "Yama" was simply a title — a position.

"Wait."

Chen Huangpi interjected. "A Gui, if the patriarch of the Yellow Spring Nether Race was the Yama of the Ninth Hall, and you were the clerk managing the Soul-Hooking Manual — are you the Yama's son?"

"What kind of talk is that, Master?!"

The Life-reaping Ghost bristled. "I earned my place in the Yama Hall through merit. I was selected step by step, on the strength of my own ability and talent."

"Then what was your relationship with the Yama?"

"A trivial blood connection, nothing worth mentioning."

The Life-reaping Ghost said wistfully. "Besides, that Yama died alongside the Yin Emperor. There's no point dredging up old history."

The moment those words left its mouth.

Chen Huangpi understood perfectly — the Life-reaping Ghost was definitely the Yama's child.

He thought to himself, 'A Gui really is shameless. At the peak of its power, it couldn't even beat the Magic Tree. Where does it get off claiming talent and merit? It obviously got in through connections.'

'Good thing I, as its master, don't rely on connections. Otherwise my reputation would be dragged through the mud.'

That was what he thought.

What he said was, "A Gui, how did this Yama — the one who shares only a 'trivial blood connection' with you — die with the Yin Emperor? You managed to escape to the mortal world. Couldn't the Yama have done the same?"

"The Soul-Hooking Manual can only have one Life-reaping Ghost."

"I'm sorry..."

Chen Huangpi quickly said. "A Gui, I didn't know. I didn't mean to pry."

"It's all right. The Yama and I truly weren't father and son." The Life-reaping Ghost laughed softly. "Besides, its mind wasn't right. When that sun fell into the Underworld Yellow Spring, the Yin Emperor tried to stop it — and that was understandable. But the Yama insisted on following. It said the Yin Emperor had treated it so well that if it meant dying together, so be it. Honestly, it was just as laughable as those mortals and their talk of loyalty to their lord."

"The Yin Emperor never asked it to come along. It threw itself into death of its own accord."

"And in the end, it plunged right into that sun alongside the Yin Emperor."

"To this day, I still think there was something wrong with its head."

After saying this, the Life-reaping Ghost fell utterly silent, as though all passion had drained from it.

Golden Horn, too, said nothing.

It lifted its head and gazed upward, seeing only the dim, sallow sky.

The Underworld Yellow Spring had no sun.

No moon, either.

During the day, the sky was perpetually this murky yellow. At night, it turned bleak and frigid, heavy with a spectral chill.

If a sun had truly fallen into this realm.

It must have been an event of unimaginable horror.

Horrifying enough that the Yin Emperor, leading the Yama Kings to intercept it, perished — plunging into the sun itself.

Not even ashes would have remained.

But wait — if a sun had fallen into the Underworld Yellow Spring, where had it gone? There was no trace of it.

Chen Huangpi was also pondering this enigma of the mysterious extra sun.

He asked the Brass Oil Lamp, "Yi Qingzhou was an immortal. He could freeze time. Presumably, plucking stars and seizing moons would be within his power too. For a being as mighty as the Yin Emperor, how could a single sun have killed it?"

The Ferryman alone had struck Chen Huangpi as terrifyingly powerful.

The Yin Emperor ruled the entire Underworld Yellow Spring. Surely it wasn't helpless against a mere sun?

The Brass Oil Lamp shook its head. "Chen Huangpi, you don't understand. The sun represents day. It represents yang. The alternation of sun and moon, the interplay of yin and yang — these are the rules of heaven and earth, not ordinary celestial bodies."

"After the Heaven and Earth Mutation, did the sun and moon disappear?"

"No. They're still hanging in the sky."

"A sun falling into the Underworld Yellow Spring means something went wrong with the rules of heaven and earth. The Yin Emperor wasn't helpless against a sun. It was helpless against the rules of heaven and earth."

"Then what about Master?"

Chen Huangpi asked. "Chen Huang said Master was Near-Dao. Couldn't Master do it?"

"The Guanzhu certainly could."

The Brass Oil Lamp said. "If even the Guanzhu couldn't, then no one in existence could."

Chen Huangpi might have believed the Guanzhu was omnipotent in a general, abstract sense.

But the Brass Oil Lamp was different.

It had actually seen the Guanzhu act — during the time Chen Huangpi had been unconscious, when the strange phenomenon of sun and moon appearing simultaneously had manifested over the Hundred Thousand Mountains.

The Guanzhu had said that the Heaven and Earth Mutation involved a concept of Yin Extreme and Yang Extreme.

Six days and six nights of day-night chaos constituted the Yin Extreme. The Yang Extreme would last nine days and nine nights.

The Yin Extreme was ordained by heaven. The Guanzhu hadn't wanted to interfere. But the Yang Extreme — that was a different matter entirely.

Therefore, the rules of heaven and earth were surely no great obstacle for the Guanzhu.

Listening to the Brass Oil Lamp.

A thought suddenly sparked in Chen Huangpi's mind.

He quickly whispered into his mind, "Huang Er, tell me privately — aside from Master, is there anyone else who could alter the rules of heaven and earth?"

"No. Not that I know of."

The Brass Oil Lamp asked, puzzled. "Chen Huangpi, why are you asking? Don't tell me you suspect the Guanzhu threw that sun into the Underworld Yellow Spring."

"I was just curious."

Of course Chen Huangpi didn't believe his own master would do such a thing.

The Pure Immortal Temple was the righteous path. They cultivated toward immortality.

If Master had actually hurled a sun into the Underworld Yellow Spring, that would make him a great demon lord.

And that would make himself a minor demon lord.

"Master and I are both good people. We wouldn't do something like that."

"Crude logic, but sound. Besides, the Underworld Yellow Spring doesn't have a sun or a moon. The mortal world's sun and moon are right where they've always been. Where would an extra sun even come from? It must have been spawned by the Heaven and Earth Mutation. So the Yin Emperor and the Yama Kings were simply the unlucky ones."

The Brass Oil Lamp offered another hypothesis.

And right then.

Chen Huangpi suddenly spotted a towering black mountain.

It was immense, its peak seeming to touch the very ceiling of the Underworld Yellow Spring's sky.

And unfathomably massive.

Golden Horn remained silent, but its speed didn't drop. If anything, it accelerated.

Soon, the black mountain consumed the entirety of Chen Huangpi's vision.

"Huangpi Dad, this is Mount Luopo."

"Good, let's climb up and get the Soul-Restoring Jade right now!"

Chen Huangpi's heart pounded with excitement. The mountain was tall, sure, but it had to end somewhere.

Less than half a two-hour period had elapsed so far.

They still had seven and a half periods before nightfall.

Grab the jade, then leave the Underworld Yellow Spring. Plenty of time.

"Wait — something about this mountain is off."

The Brass Oil Lamp was suddenly gripped by a deep unease. "Chen Huangpi, A Gui, Golden Horn — do you feel it?"

Chen Huangpi's expression darkened. "I do. This mountain feels... alive."

Golden Horn said, "I can hear its heartbeat. Beating hard — like drums and gongs hammering away. Wait... why is my heart pounding along with it? I don't even have a physical body. Where is the heartbeat coming from..."

The Life-reaping Ghost said, "Stop. Something is wrong with this Mount Luopo."