Chapter 1636 - 1483: Yin Yang Inn 39
Chapter 1636: Chapter 1483: Yin Yang Inn 39
This race, which worships battle and has a penchant for bloodshed, makes its offerings to the Taotie in extremely brutal and bloody ways, and these violent offerings have given rise to a ferocious beast, known as Taotie.
This Taotie always considered itself the Ancient Divine Beast Taotie, its appearance indistinguishable from the Taotie, but its aura was different. Born from bloodshed, it was ferocious and brutal, feeding on humans and having devoured countless people before.
Later, the Taotie wreaked havoc in Qionghua State, and it took nearly a hundred cultivators from Qionghua State to suppress it beneath one of the spirit veins.
Recently, for unknown reasons, this suppressed Taotie broke out from its seal and started causing chaos in Qionghua State once more.
Coinciding with this, the Underworld was preoccupied with other matters, and Taotie was not something ordinary Ghost Messengers could handle, so the task of capturing Taotie was handed over to Shuangshuang and Li Yu.
Because this excursion involved facing the fierce beast Taotie and was extremely dangerous, Shuangshuang did not let the eager Feng Lin follow and set off quickly with Li Yu towards Qionghua State.
Qionghua State has always been a symbol of prosperity; it is wealthy and peaceful, with a pleasant climate, attracting scholars and literati who love visiting this place for sightseeing and composing poems.
When Shuangshuang and Li Yu arrived at Qionghua State, they did not see its former prosperity. Due to the chaos caused by the fierce beast Taotie, everyone in Qionghua State was in fear.
The shops had long closed one after another, and the few that remained open were filled with trepidation, with owners and staff standing vigil at the doors, ready to shut them at the slightest disturbance.
Shuangshuang and Li Yu headed straight for the place rumored to be ravaged by the Taotie, a once prosperous city that had now fallen into decay.
A massive breach had been torn in the tall city walls, inside the city, houses had collapsed, pedestrians had vanished, and not a single household remained.
Standing at the city gates, Shuangshuang raised her hand, summoning strands of dark aura that gathered from within the city, gradually forming a black sphere in her palm.
This was the malignant aura left behind by the Taotie’s rampage. If this malign aura is not eradicated, the city cannot be re-inhabited by the living, as anyone who moves in would surely die abruptly.
After Shuangshuang purged all the malignant aura, her palm emitted a rich golden light that enveloped the sphere of malignant aura.
With a clenched fist, Shuangshuang dissipated the sphere enveloped in golden light into nothingness within her hand.
Meanwhile, Li Yu looked up at the sky, where vengeful spirits wailed, the souls of humans devoured by the Taotie.
These vengeful spirits were bound to the places where they perished, unable to find release, and could only endure the torment of the blazing sun, causing them to emit desperate howls of agony from the sun’s scorching pain.
Li Yu formed a hand seal, summoning a wisp of dark cloud to cover these spirits, sparing them further torment from the sun’s relentless blaze.
Shuangshuang casually cast a spell, fixing the summoned dark cloud in place, and then performed another spell to open the Gate of the Yellow Springs, sending these vengeful spirits to the Underworld.
Though the Gate of the Yellow Springs is customarily not opened outside of the Yin Yang Inn, special circumstances warranted special actions, as these spirits were bound and unable to leave.
Shuangshuang didn’t have the time to individually release these spirits from their bindings, so summoning the Gate of the Yellow Springs on-site was the only solution. The skull guardians on the gate could sever the spirits’ bindings.
This time, there were no patterns on the Gate of the Yellow Springs that Shuangshuang opened, as this was merely the gate to the Underworld, not the gate to Hell.
The two skulls on the gate were white, not the previous blood-red. As soon as the Gate of the Yellow Springs appeared, the two massive white skulls leaped down.
The two white skulls that had jumped down had long lock chains appear out of thin air in their hands, with a long curved sword connected to the tops of the chains.
The white skulls swung the chains in their hands, and the curved swords at the ends of the chains swept beneath the vengeful spirits, slicing through something invisible binding them.
With the binding severed, the vengeful spirits in the sky fell to the ground one after the other, then queued to enter the Gate of the Yellow Springs. In a moment, all the vengeful spirits had passed through the gate.
Seeing all the spirits had entered the Yellow Springs, the two white skulls jumped back onto the gate, and quickly, the Gate of the Yellow Springs closed and disappeared.
After sending off the group of spirits, Shuangshuang and Li Yu continued to pursue the Taotie’s trail, coming across two more villages slaughtered by the beast.
The Taotie moved swiftly; while the places it slaughtered left behind strong malignant aura, its own aura was well hidden, making it extremely difficult to track.
To ensure this Taotie would not harm more people, Shuangshuang and Li Yu barely rested as they scrambled to trace its traces.
With relentless pursuit, Shuangshuang and Li Yu eventually caught up with the Taotie at the edge of the Wei River in northern Qionghua State, while it was drinking water.
This Taotie was immense, squatting there to drink water, appearing as large as a small hill. Upon seeing Shuangshuang and Li Yu, the Taotie stood up immediately.
This creature indeed looked exactly like the Taotie; however, the Taotie, as one of the nine sons of the Dragon, an Ancient Divine Beast, was born of the Ancestor Dragon, possessing boundless power, capable of devouring all things, and delighting in consuming all demonic and evil spirits.
Since the Taotie could devour everything in the world, all its mana rested in its mouth, resolving all enemies by consuming them.
This method of combat was somewhat bloody and crude, thus the mortal common people often associated the Taotie with evil monsters.
The tribe offering worship to the Taotie believed it to be bloodthirsty and warlike, hence revered it as their tribal divine beast, eventually giving rise to a brutal beast like the Taotie.
This Taotie, formed from the malice of humans, should have been formless and ever-changing, but because the tribe offering it worship treated it as the Taotie, it transformed itself into the guise of a Taotie.
The tribe that worshipped the Taotie reaped no benefits either, as the bloodthirsty Taotie, upon gaining spiritual wisdom and desiring to consume life, massacred the tribe that had worshipped it first.
Afterward, the Taotie went on a path of slaughter, until it was eventually subdued in Qionghua State, where it finally came to a halt.
The seal set up by those cultivators not only imprisoned the Taotie but also served to erode its power.
Their intention was to have the Taotie sealed for a few thousand years, until its power was depleted.
Without power, it would naturally die, but unexpectedly, after three thousand years, this Taotie still had enough strength to break through the seal and wreak havoc in the mortal world once again.
The real divine beast Taotie was not combative; although humans got one thing right, the Taotie’s greatest passion was eating, loving everything delicious.