Quick Travel to the Clouds

Chapter 468 Ghost Catcher 29

Liu Qingyan's eyes suddenly turned painful and cold: "I will personally cut off those filth that are clinging to me!"

Yun Chu stopped what she was doing and slowly turned around. Her eyes were calm as they swept across Liu Qingyan's frail yet remarkably determined face, across the scarlet dot on her forehead, and finally settled on the deep, unquenchable desire in her eyes, mingled with resentment and fear.

The mountain wind seemed to stagnate for a moment, with only a few fallen leaves swirling down.

"Liu Qingyan." Yun Chu's voice was still cold, but it reached Liu Qingyan's ears clearly. "Your spiritual perception has indeed been awakened, a blessing in disguise. Your bones are pure Yin in all four pillars, which is one in ten thousand."

A glimmer of hope lit up in Liu Qingyan's eyes.

But Yun Chu's tone suddenly turned cold, with an unquestionable penetrating power, like ice piercing the soul: "But your heart is now filled with the murderous anger of revenge, not the integrity of protection."

"Your aura is mixed. The bloody, foul energy you acquired when the Ghost King possessed you has penetrated deep into your vital essence and hasn't been completely eliminated. You're like a dormant poisonous snake. You haven't even extinguished your own 'evil', so how can you possibly slay the evil?"

Yun Chu shook his head slightly, brushed his sleeves, and turned away, no longer looking at her: "The Tao is not a butcher's knife, and it cannot be used for personal hatred. Your path is not here. Let go of your obsession, take care of your body, and return to the world of fireworks, only then can you have a good end."

As soon as he finished speaking, Yun Chu's figure disappeared through the small door leading to the depths of the Taoist temple, as if he had never stopped.

Only Liu Qingyan was left kneeling on the spot, feeling as if she had been hit hard and her whole body was cold.

Yun Chu's last words were like a heavy hammer, shattering the shell of hope that she had worked so hard to build up, leaving behind only a chill that penetrated deep into her bones and a despair that was almost suffocating.

The power lay ahead, the path was clear, yet she... was being ruthlessly blocked from the door? Simply because of the "ghost" within her heart? Was that lingering ghost bound to haunt her forever?!

My vision was blurred, I didn’t know if it was because of the wind and sand, or the surging emotions.

But when she lowered her head and her eyes fell on the stone pottery cup beside the stone steps, her movements paused.

The clear tea in the cup had not been finished yet, and the water surface was like a mirror, clearly reflecting her pale, haggard, yet twisted and hideous face - those eyes, burning with hatred and unwillingness, with residual gloom, looked very much like... the pair of inhuman blood-red eyes in the mirror that had once been occupied by the Ghost King in the depths of her memory!

An indescribable chill instantly crept up her spine from her tailbone, causing her teeth to chatter slightly. So... that's how it was! Yun Chu saw it clearly! Sure enough, the evil spirits of "resentment" and "fear" still lingered in her heart!

Liu Qingyan dug her hands into the rough cracks of the ground, unaware of the blood oozing from her broken nails. The utter shame, the profound fear, and the even more intense desire to survive after being exposed, violently collided and burned in her chest!

"Forget? No... Impossible..."

A hoarse, low voice came out of her throat, carrying the smell of blood and a hint of strange paranoia:

"The blood evil has not been cleansed... then I will wash it away! The inner demon is hard to get rid of... then I will kill it! Taoist priest... you watch..."

Her eyes suddenly raised, looking across the empty mountain road in the direction where Yun Chu disappeared. All the panic and weakness in her eyes seemed to be burned away by this cruel reality, leaving only an almost solidified determination with a bloody smell.

The distorted reflection in that cup of tea was deeply imprinted in her soul.

The biting cold outside Qixiaju and the distorted reflection in the cup were like an icy cone that had not melted for thousands of years, deeply piercing Liu Qingyan's heart.

Despair receded like the tide, leaving behind not docility but a determination that was forged into a harder state.

She staggered to her feet, without looking at the closed door again, but stared deeply at the cup of leftover tea beside the stone steps, as if she wanted to imprint that clarity into the depths of her soul.

Then she turned around, dragging her body, which felt as heavy as lead, and walked away step by step with determination.

Yun Chu's words were both a sharp blade and a beacon. "The blood evil has not yet been cleansed," "The heart is filled with resentment," "The evil has not yet been broken"... Every word struck the anvil of her soul. She understood that the path to power is not an easy one. The first thing to be slain is not the external evil, but the demon within, the filth within.

The prosperity of City B has nothing to do with her.

With vague memories and a desperate determination, Liu Qingyan began to trek through the hidden corners of the city. She was no longer looking for a lofty "master", but for any method that might help her "cleanse herself" and "eliminate filth".

The process is a hundred times more difficult than imagined.

Liu Qingyan looked for other heavenly masters.

Some were quacks, and seeing her haggard appearance and disordered breath, they simply avoided her;

Some who had some experience tried to help, but they found that the blood evil in her life essence was extremely stubborn and inextricably entangled with her vitality. It was extremely risky to expel it forcibly, so most of them shook their heads and sighed, advising her to let go of her obsession and follow her destiny.

Repeated disappointments failed to knock Liu Qingyan down, but instead made her realize that this path was a dead end.

Liu Qingyan thought of the "roots bones" that Yun Chu mentioned, and recalled the tragic experience of having her spiritual perception squeezed by the Ghost King when she was on the verge of death.

Since external forces are unreliable, one can only rely on oneself, on this "spiritual perception" that was forcibly torn apart by a blessing in disguise, and on this body itself that still has a glimmer of hope.

Liu Qingyan rented a dark and damp hut of less than ten square meters in the back alley of an old and almost forgotten City God Temple.

Liu Qingyan used the little money she had left to buy the coarsest cinnabar, yellow paper, and some hearsay about the "Blood Purification Curse" and "Qi Induction Method".

Without a master, she is her only guide.

Clearing away the blood evil is like scraping the bone to cure the poison.

Every day, she forced herself to put aside all distracting thoughts and guide her own spiritual energy, which was as weak as a candle in the wind, to flush, cleanse and burn the cold and foul air that was rooted deep in her blood.

Pain was a constant companion, sometimes a chill from the very bone marrow that made her teeth chatter;

Sometimes, there was a sudden burning sensation, as if countless tiny needles were running around in her blood vessels, causing her to curl up on the ground in pain, her clothes soaked with cold sweat. The red tentacles in her dreams became clearer and clearer, entwining her will, whispering despair and tempting hatred.

But every time, when her mental defenses were about to collapse, the cold candlelight in the corner of the City God Temple, or the terrifying reflection in the clear cup of tea that flashed through her mind, would wake her up like thunder.

She bit her tongue, fighting the pain, and under the dim light, she scribbled the crooked "Purification Talisman" over and over again on the cheap yellow paper. The discarded talisman paper piled up like a small mountain, and her fingers were red and swollen from the cinnabar.

She no longer thought about "revenge" because that goal was too ambitious and too likely to breed resentment.

She had only one thought: to survive and be clean! To remove everything that did not belong to her from her body and soul, bit by bit, and wash it clean!

The years passed in a silent and tragic battle. The dead branches outside the window sprouted new buds, then turned from fresh green to withered yellow, and then covered with snow again, repeating this cycle for countless years.