Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Substitute Longevity Effigy

Following Qian Dahai’s dying instructions, Lu Chenyuan searched for an inconspicuous lotus leaf motif on the body of the vase. Extending his index finger, he applied the secret technique of three light presses and one heavy, channeling his inner strength as he pressed down slowly and steadily.

He then bit his finger, letting a drop of blood fall into the vase. As a strange black streak flashed across the porcelain, a nearly inaudible click came from the back wall behind the counter, and a hidden compartment slid open.

Everyone’s heart skipped a beat. They exchanged glances before their eyes returned, unified, to the secret compartment.

Inside it was deep and lightless, but within sat a small wooden doll, barely a foot tall. Its features were childlike, eerily lifelike.

Lu Chenyuan drew a deep breath and reached in, lifting the doll out.

Just then, the doll’s eyes—which had been mere painted decorations—seemed to come alive, rolling with a fluid motion. Two pitch-dark pupils fixed their gaze on him, unblinking.

A chill swept through Lu Chenyuan’s heart, freezing his limbs in an instant. The monster that had lain dormant within him for so long instantly surged, nearly breaking free of its cage; he almost dropped the ghastly thing.

It was only now that he understood: the faint, strange laughter of a little girl he’d heard in the inn that day—at once innocent and eerie—must have originated from this object.

The others crowded closer. The doll, carved from some gloomy timber steeped for unknown years in corpse-water, was laced with the powdered bones of countless unjustly slain souls. It exuded a miasma of malignant resentment that would not disperse.

At first glance, its face uncannily resembled the little beggar whom Qian Dahai had chased away that day—seven or eight parts alike.

Lu Chenyuan thought, “Shopkeeper Qian said seeing the little beggar was like seeing his own granddaughter. This face must have been carved in her likeness.”

Yet the doll’s expression held a sickly innocence that made the skin crawl.

But if one looked closely enough, focusing the eyes, one could faintly make out, beneath the seemingly smooth “skin,” innumerable warped faces drifting and sinking within.

And the hair on its head was not ordinary string but real human hair: black, glossy, adding to its indescribable horror.

Shangguan Chuci furrowed her elegant brows. “What is this thing?” she asked.

At this moment Han Lin and the others returned from their search. The instant Han Lin saw the doll, his face changed dramatically. He stepped forward, voice grave:

“Could this be the ‘Lifespan-Substitute Doll’ recorded in the ancient texts?”

Seeing the others’ confusion, he explained:

“I once read about it in the records of the Demon Suppression Office. Such a wicked art requires constant sacrifices of living people. Their ‘vital essence’ and ‘terror at the moment of death’ must be extracted together, then fed to the doll using secret ritual diagrams.”

“When the doll is complete, it only needs to remain by its owner’s side for a night. The next day, the doll vanishes and the person is saved, their fate reversed. Raising the dead or regrowing flesh and bone is not out of reach.”

Lu Chenyuan recalled Qian Dahai’s last words and his confession in the hall that day, murmuring, “Shopkeeper Qian had a gravely ill granddaughter. This doll... must have been prepared for her.”

Han Lin sighed. “Then there’s no mistake. The real hair on the doll must be hers.”

Shangguan Chuci drew a sharp breath. “Then those guests who vanished from the inn—was it Qian Dahai who took them, using them as sacrifices for this doll?”

Lu Chenyuan shook his head. “Not necessarily. Earlier today, I followed those evil cultivators and saw with my own eyes a middle-aged scholar being taken to feed another Lamp Keeper as blood food.”

Shangguan Chuci’s shock deepened. “There’s even more to this?”

Han Lin gazed at the doll. “The resentment on this doll is overwhelming; its features so lifelike, it has already developed a sinister awareness. The texts say that with each new sacrifice, its face grows more alive, its features ever more resembling its master—”

He was interrupted as Shen Guizhou, who had been silent, suddenly stepped forward.

“No.”

No one knew when, but a new presence had materialized behind them.

Shen Guizhou’s brow was deeply furrowed as he stared at the doll with unprecedented gravity.

“This thing... is not so simple,” he said, shaking his head. “A regular Lifespan Doll is evil enough, but it lacks this world-shaking malice. This is more like another, long-lost forbidden artifact described in the ancient texts—one used to summon a ‘Fallen God’: a Calamity Sacrifice Doll!”

Lu Chenyuan’s heart jolted. He blurted out, “Fallen God?”

Shen Guizhou spoke slowly. “Young Master Lu, you have seen for yourself the fate of a cultivator’s Dao collapse, and know well how monstrous a mindless beast becomes, far surpassing their former selves in power. But have you ever wondered: if one who fell was a master of great attainment, what then?”

Lu Chenyuan’s heart pounded. He looked up, eyes full of shock and doubt.

Of course. He had only seen a fire-wielding cultivator’s collapse, and it was already so horrific. If it were a great master whose power rivaled creation itself—if they lost control, what would that be like?

Han Lin, once of the Demon Suppression Office, was well-versed in such matters. He added, “Master Shen is right. Low-level cultivators who fall and become monsters—we call them Aberrations. Fierce, but within human capacity to subdue. But when a high-level cultivator collapses, no one can withstand it. We call that a Calamity.”

“For this reason, Her Majesty the Empress herself established a classification: the Four Calamities—Turbidity, Abyss, Ruin, and Void.”

He paused, sweeping his gaze over them all, his tone growing heavier.

“From the Watchful Wave stage onward, a cultivator’s collapse brings the ‘Turbid Calamity’ upon the land. But what Master Shen just mentioned—the ‘Fallen God’—is the third, the ‘Ruin Calamity’!”

“Such a being, once unleashed, possesses a power to destroy the world, rivaling even those of the legendary Ninth Heaven’s Seekers of the Dao!”

A stunned silence fell.

Lu Chenyuan’s heart pounded wildly. Only now did he comprehend how terrifying the words “Fallen God” truly were.

A single wooden doll was tangled in a world-shattering ritual. Qian Dahai, striving only to save his granddaughter, had unwittingly become a pawn in someone else’s end-of-days scheme.

His thoughts raced: “Has a ‘Fallen God’ ever come to this world? If so, how did our ancestors suppress and destroy it?”

Just as he was about to ask, Shangguan Chuci’s brows knitted, a grave light flickering in her eyes. She suddenly asked, “Everyone, how long has it been since Qian Dahai breathed his last?”

Han Lin thought for a moment. “About the time it takes to burn two sticks of incense.”

Lu Chenyuan’s heart dropped. His face changed.

He had witnessed the Demon Suppression Office’s ruthless efficiency—even with ordinary incidents, they responded at once. Now, with such a catastrophic crime occurring in this inn, it should have been surrounded by now. Why was there still no sign of any movement?

Xiahou Pan, ever the hotheaded one, sensed something was wrong. He looked around, puzzled. “Where are the Demon Suppression officers? Why aren’t they here yet? Have they all gone outside for a lazy stroll?”

He had barely finished when a flash of blood-red light filled their vision, a stench of blood hitting their faces.

Xiahou Pan’s broad head flew high into the air, his face still frozen in astonishment and indignation as a fountain of blood erupted from his neck.

His headless body swayed twice, then crashed to the ground.

Everyone gasped in horror.

Glancing up, they saw that at some point, a figure had appeared, suspended silently from the second-floor corridor.

The man wore a dark Daoist robe, his hair sparse and features ugly, appearing perhaps in his thirties. He sat cross-legged, hovering in the air, his eyes gazing down at those below as if looking at ants.

Beside him, a monster with a human head and serpent’s body extended halfway out, its jaws brimming with fine fangs clamped around Xiahou Pan’s lifeless head.

The man’s lips curled into a chilling smile as he answered Xiahou Pan’s last question:

“Because they will not come.”

Lu Chenyuan’s pupils shrank to pinpoints, his entire body turning to ice.

He recognized both the figure and the monster.

It was the same demon sorcerer, who had devoured humans alive at the abandoned docks earlier.

“Master Li!”