Chapter 246: That Sword of Yours Is Not Originally Yours

The ritual spirit’s foot had not yet truly landed when the entire stone path seemed to “seat” itself first.

It was not a quake, but a sinking.

Like an old well buried in frozen earth, compressed all at once by an invisible weight.

The white lines of the salt array, which had been fairly distinct, were instantly pressed down by half a finger’s width.

Ashes from the incense were whipped up by a cold underwind and then fell back, clinging to the ground, while the nearby lamps all bowed their flames as if an unseen hand had pressed them down.

The instant Lu Yuan lunged forward, the world before him turned into overwhelming blackness.

It was not black mist or mere shadow, but the “seat-annihilation” that exploded up from beneath the ritual spirit’s foot—the spread of seat-cloth, bone tally, red cord, paper ash, and old ledger pages in a single instant.

Once it gained momentum, it was like a funeral mat flipped up from the earth, made to envelop people.

Anyone trapped inside the seat, if their mind wavered even a little, would immediately be marked as an “upper-seat guest.” To free themselves, they would first have to tear their soul off the seat.

“Back!”

Lu Yuan barked, taking two urgent Yu Steps. His right shoulder dipped; the short blade was already reverse-gripped beneath his left palm.

The coin-embossed spine of the blade flashed crimson, barely cleaving a half-foot gap in the shadow seat before him.

Almost at the same time, Zhou Heng slashed across with his sword. The blade did not run straight; instead it skimmed the seat-annihilation’s edge and slantedly flicked, a returning-edge strike.

This was the rare “edge-trimming” move from the Old Sword Sect.

It did not aim to wound ghosts, only to trim their edge aura.

Where the sword light passed, the black seat was indeed split open.

But the slit had barely formed when countless thin black threads grew back out from beneath the ritual spirit’s foot like spider silk, sewing the gap shut.

“Useless!”

Zhou Heng said in a low voice, his wrist already buzzing with numbness.

The ritual spirit stood on the altar aperture. Its stature was not tall, yet it was like an increasingly weighty bottomless tomb.

It slowly raised its hand and spread its five fingers outward.

Lu Yuan felt his soles tighten, as if cold, shadowy ropes bound his calves and yanked him forward.

The pull was fierce—if he hadn’t been prepared, he would have been dragged into the densest loop of the seat-annihilation.

“Lu Dao-fa!”

Song Qinghe cried out, her sealing plate nearly slipping from her hands.

She quickly rotated the plate’s center; the Yin-Yang Fish folded back three times, the plate’s surface emitting a cold sheen that spread on the ground like a layer of frost.

It forcibly pressed down the ring of seat-annihilation at Lu Yuan’s feet. But the ritual spirit merely tilted its head slightly, and the shadowy amusement in its eyes deepened.

“Nice plate.”

It said calmly,

“Only your plate borrows heaven-light to shine on ghosts.”

“My seat borrows a hundred names to press.”

“You can suppress it for a moment, but you cannot suppress a whole altar.”

Before the words finished, the paper banners on both sides of the stone path suddenly shuddered in unison.

The white paper faces on the banners seemed to come alive; they half-crawled out from the banners, their necks elongated, mouths torn wide at the corners, revealing rings of black teeth like inked signatures.

They were not single evil puppets, but an entire strip of “seat-phantoms” awakened at once by the ritual spirit.

Lin Zhaoxuan coughed up blood; the Thunderclap Token gave a shrill light chime in his palm.

He knew that if he delayed further, the thunder intent on his side would be reversed by the ritual spirit’s methods, so he bit his teeth and flung his right arm.

The Thunderclap Token slammed out a rigid “Thunder Stamp” before his chest as he roared:

“Thunder does not obey sky, thunder obeys method!”

“Method rejects yin, and yin retreats itself!”

“I take blood as lead, the token as the gate!”

“Thunder Ancestor’s true light, fall!”

As he shouted “fall,” a blue-white thunder line leapt from the token’s sigil, straight for the ritual spirit’s brow aperture.

But the ritual spirit did not dodge. It simply extended two fingers and pinched gently.

“Szzzt—”

The thunder line was snipped between its fingers, shredded into innumerable sparks that scattered on the ground and then, in reverse, drilled back into the edge of the salt array.

In the next instant, the salt grains cracked and burst into tiny electric sparks across dozens of spots, becoming dozens of reverse electric burns.

Lin Zhaoxuan made a muffled sound and ashened.

“It can eat thunder.”

His voice tightened.

“It even twists thunder back into the array!”

The ritual spirit slightly lifted its eyes, inspecting them like a cluster of struggling wicks.

“Your methods are all borrowed.”

“You can’t compare borrowed tools to an altar I’ve been fed for a hundred years.”

As it spoke, it slowly raised the other hand, pressing the index and middle fingers together and lightly pointing down.

With that point, the ground felt as if pricked by an invisible nail, driven straight through.

Lu Yuan felt the ring of ancestral fire beneath his feet jerk, as if a shadow nail crawled along the fire pattern toward the center.

“It’s nailing my fire ring!”

Lu Yuan’s gaze snapped hard. He abruptly retreated half a step, slapped his palms together, and chanted swiftly:

“Fire is not your name, the nail is not your root!”

“Ancestral fire above, not sunk by shadow nails!”

“Rise fire, return fire, spin fire, illuminate fire!”

“Urgently, urgently, as by the law’s command!”

He spoke four rapid formulas while flipping his palms; the fire pattern on the ground spun up violently,

forming a tiny red wheel that forced the shadow nail to burn back half an inch.

But the ritual spirit merely gave a faint “hmm.”

Its brow aperture cracked slightly, and the lamp at the far end of the stone path drifted forward half a foot. The tiny little hand inside the lamp snapped open.

Its five fingers folded, as if pointing distantly toward Lu Yuan’s brow center.

A chill ran through Lu Yuan’s heart and he turned his head—still half a beat too slow. A filament of the lamp’s intent brushed past the tail of his left eyebrow, as thin and cold as an ice needle, and pierced the back of his head.

He heard a humming in his brain and nearly saw a very brief illusion:

A black seat, red lamps, a hundred Nameless Guests, all sitting neatly along a long shadow seat.

He himself appeared placed in front as an offering bowl—what the bowl contained was not soup, but a mouthful of his own soul qi.

“Don’t look at that lamp!”

Song Qinghe cried, her voice frantic.

“That lamp hooks the spirit!”

Lu Yuan bit his tongue hard; the metallic taste exploded in his mouth and his awareness cleared by half.

He knew the ritual spirit had moved beyond mere pressure; it was starting to press with all four doors—name, lamp, seat, eye—bit by bit.

If it struck him with all of those a few more times, forget breaking the altar; the group would likely be dragged into the shadow seat on the spot and never get up again.

Yet at the most dangerous instant, the ritual spirit suddenly stopped.

It ceased urging the seat-annihilation, ceased pressing thunder, ceased using the lamp’s light. Instead it slowly bowed its head and looked at its own altar aperture.

In those hollow eyes, a hairline crack appeared.

Lu Yuan’s pupils sharply contracted.

“So that’s it.”

He murmured,

“It isn’t flawless after all.”

“What flaw?” Zhou Heng asked immediately.

A glint of cold light flared in Lu Yuan’s eyes. “The ritual spirit rises from seats and offerings; it most fears the suspension of offerings.”

“It can devour methods, reverse thunder, suppress life, but its true root is not the outer shells. It’s the ‘receiving-offering qi’ inside its altar aperture.”

“Once its altar aperture is without offerings, it has to show its bottom.”

Lin Zhaoxuan drew a breath.

“But how do you cut off offerings?”

“This whole road is its offering altar.”

Lu Yuan did not answer; he only stared at the ritual spirit while another layer of thought raced through his mind.

A ritual spirit’s worst trait isn’t killing, but “supplanting.”

It is not a single fiend, but a cultivated “position.”

If someone offers, someone sits.

If someone sits, someone offers.

Now it sits at the center of the seat. To cut off its offerings, you must first make it lose the “seat it can occupy.”

The cruelest methods in the world never attack the evil thing directly, but dismantle the “name-position” upon which it depends.

Lu Yuan inhaled deeply, suddenly raised his hand, sheathed the short blade, and pulled from his breast a bundle of yellow paper talismans folded extremely neatly.

There were seven talismans, folded not in one line but in a “seven-fold, no head showing” offering-alter fold.

The moment the talisman papers appeared, the ritual spirit’s brow aperture trembled slightly.

It recognized them.

“You intend to open the altar and change position?”

For the first time, genuine coldness crept into the ritual spirit’s voice.

Lu Yuan did not reply. He tossed the seven yellow talismans one by one into a Big Dipper formation and intoned softly:

“Big Dipper’s seven primes, bind evil and fix names.”

“First, Shaking Light, sever your lamp root.”

“Second, Opening Yang, cut your seat vein.”

“Third, Jade Scale, shatter your altar heart.”

“Fourth, Heavenly Balance, lock your name ledger.”

“Fifth, Heavenly Mechanism, rescue your shadow’s return.”

“Sixth, Heavenly Jade, seal your receiving-offering.”

“Seventh, Heavenly Pivot, turn you to the abyss!”

“Big Dipper rises, the method gate opens!”

“Urgently, urgently, as by the law’s command!”

The seven talismans did not surge straight at the ritual spirit. Instead, they fell around it, forming a tiny heavenly-dipper array.

The ritual spirit’s brow aperture flared, the seat-annihilation under its feet burst in size, trying to tear the formation apart.

Lu Yuan’s gaze went cold; his hands formed a new joint seal.

Left hand made the “Ancestor Invitation Seal,” right hand the “Seat Severing Formula.”

Palms crossed, thumbs curled inward, index and middle fingers pressed together like a blade, the other two fingers hidden, palms facing inward.

It was as if an invisible ritual sword was being drawn from his chest.

He chanted softly:

“The ancestral fire has not been extinguished, the sect has not perished.”

“The altar can be overturned, the seat can be severed, the name can be dispersed, the lamp can be broken.”

“I borrow one mouthful of prenatal true qi and one strand of postnatal thunder-heart.”

“When the sword rises, it cares not for old grudges; when it falls, it severs the evil root!”

“The sword’s name need not reveal; the sword’s intent is formed first.”

“The sword formed not to kill, but to break positions!”

“Open!”

At the final syllable, a clear, cold sword tone rang out from the far end of the stone path, as if a millennia-old cold iron were suddenly unsheathed in a snowy mountain, its chill making the heart shrink.

Before anyone could react, a thin white line of light lengthened between Lu Yuan’s palms, becoming like a longsword that had dropped from nothingness.

Its blade was straight and narrow, blue-white with faint gold veins, its spine carrying a hint of thunder intent, its edge condensed from ancestral fire—cold yet burning, righteous yet murderous.

Lin Zhaoxuan could not help but exclaim,

“This is...”

Lu Yuan did not answer. His expression dark, he shouted:

“Today I borrow it to sever this altar!”

The cold in the ritual spirit’s eyes instantly changed to shock, then exploded into unprecedented rage.

It finally lost calm. A blood-red hairline split open the brow aperture; countless paper pages, seat cloths, bone tallies, and lamp-phantoms beneath it were all sucked into the crack.

It became, in a moment, a dark altar that had turned its face outward, spewing towering black gas from within.

“Any true device can break me?”

“You living ones who borrow fire, borrow thunder, borrow swords!”

“Today I will seat you all along with me!”

As those words fell, the lamps above the stone path inverted and hung down; pale white, blue-black, gray-yellow flames rolled together.

Countless seat-phantoms crawled out simultaneously from walls, floors, altar cavities, and the bottoms of coffins—like hundreds of silent hands reaching for the ritual sword in Lu Yuan’s grip.

Lu Yuan did not flinch. He gripped the sword with both hands, his Yu Steps stamping, shouting loudly:

“The sword bears three lights, vanquish demons and exorcise evil!”

“Sever your name, break your seat, shatter your altar!”

“Ancestral masters guard the front, thunder-fire hunts behind!”

“When the sword rises like a dragon, it does not turn back!”

He slammed the sword horizontally. Sword light flashed like a lightning tear in snow, cutting through the advancing seat-phantoms.

But the cut did not buy them a breath; instead the phantoms swarmed like an upturned hornet nest.

The ritual spirit’s brow aperture suddenly opened wide; the blood-red fissure spat a reeking black gas.

The gas contained innumerable tiny paper scraps, bone ash, lamp oil, and torn ledger pages.

Like a burning shadow river, it forced open where the sword light had cleared and then folded midair, flooding back.

“Retreat!”

Lu Yuan only managed one word before his shoulder bowed.

Not a weight, but a seating.

Something invisible had suddenly sat on his shoulders and back, pressing his spine cold; his entire arm went numb.

Zhou Heng reacted fast, sweeping his sword back to pry the oppressive force off him.

But the blade had only been halfway through when a strand of seat-phantom wrapped around the blade’s spine like old vine, dulling seven-tenths of its force.

Zhou Heng’s face changed; he twisted his footing and retreated using the momentum, the sword tip buzzing unevenly.

“It’s using positions to press people!”

Lin Zhaoxuan shouted.

Before he finished, the ritual spirit’s withered hand in the air lightly pressed down.

At that press, the half-exposed white-faced evil shadows on the banners around the stone path peeled off.

Like boneless paper figures, they slowly slid toward everyone’s feet from all directions.

The cinnabar names on their paper faces began to seep black. The seepage grew heavier and heavier until they became living recognition slips that targeted people’s shadows.

Song Qinghe shot the sealing plate forward. The Yin-Yang Fish spun like a whirl, cold light forming a circular ground barrier that barely stopped the paper phantoms from seeping in.

Her face, however, had gone deathly pale; her lips trembled.

“Lu Dao-zhang...”

She almost ground her teeth to say,

“This thing isn’t attacking us; it’s changing our order of positions... the positive pole in my plate has been twisted by it!”

Lu Yuan heard clearly, and his heart sank deeper.

The ritual spirit was no longer merely attacking; it was “remaking the altar.”

Every time it raised its hand, sat down in pressure, or opened its eyes, it was converting the stone path from a place livable by the living into its own seat.

If it truly transformed the whole road into shadow seats, the group wouldn’t even be able to stand, let alone fight back.

He suppressed the shadow pressure on his shoulders, struck three more consecutive rotations of Yu Steps, raised the ritual sword sideways, and chanted rapidly:

“Heaven has a heavenly seat, earth has an earthly seat.”

“People have human seats, ghosts have ghost seats.”

“Seats must not cross divisions; divisions must not disorder seats.”

“Now the evil slips scramble the ranks; I borrow the ancestral master’s true gaving qi to crush your misposition and force you to return to the root!”

“Invoke the Seat Seal, rise!”

Left fingers flipped the seal; thumb pressed the base of the ring finger, middle and index finger raised together, other two fingers drawn inward like a nail and a ruler.

The ritual sword in his right hand hung across his chest. The blade trembled slightly, and half an inch of the golden veins on the blade brightened.

When that half-inch of gold lit, the shadows beneath everyone’s feet that had begun to skew were forcibly drawn back toward their proper alignment.

A flash of bloodlight flared in the ritual spirit’s eyes.

“That sword of yours is not originally yours.”

It said slowly.

Lu Yuan did not answer. He grit his teeth and took another step, screaming:

“Whether it’s mine or not, it’s enough to cut you!”

Then the ritual sword thrust forward, the point aimed straight for the ritual spirit’s brow aperture.

This strike was both an outright assault and a probe.

But the ritual spirit didn’t dodge; instead it bowed its head, offering its aperture to meet the sword tip.

At the moment before the blade touched, the sword emitted a thin, high-pitched quiver, like something being ripped out of the blade.

Lu Yuan’s heart jolted; he realized with sudden dread what was happening.

“It’s stealing the sword intent!”

Sure enough, the aperture on the ritual spirit’s brow—like a black well—started swallowing the golden ancestral-fire gleam from the sword tip, mouthful by mouthful.

The sword’s light, which had been bright, quickly dimmed; even the thin gold veins on the spine began to gray.

“Withdraw the sword!”

Zhou Heng shouted.

But he was half a beat too late.

The ritual spirit raised its hand and, impossible as it seemed, pinched the very tip of the sword from thin air.