Chapter 46 What Do You Want to Do

Zongzheng offered a flattering, nervous smile and said, "No, of course not. How could I ever dare to play tricks with my own life?"

Even as Zongzheng was speaking, I caught sight of a figure. Like a gecko, it crawled down the stone wall upside down, head first, moving in absolute silence. It stopped right above Zongzheng's head.

Keeping my eyes fixed on Zongzheng, I asked, "Are you certain there is nothing wrong with this incense? Do you dare swear to it?"

While I was talking to Zongzheng, my gaze was actually locked on the ghost hovering directly above him.

The entity seemed to realize it was being watched, and it raised its head with a cold, mocking sneer.

I watched with stark clarity as its neck folded backward toward its spine, forcibly pressing the back of its head flat against its back. Its long hair, which had originally hung down toward the ground, swept upward in an instant to completely cover its face.

From my angle, I could only see one bloodless, half-hidden cheek; it was impossible to even tell whether the entity was male or female.

Could this be a "Mountain Crawler"?

In the Northeast region, both "Mountain Crawlers" and "Tree Crawlers" are types of malevolent spirits. People who live near the mountains avoid walking beneath the base of cliffs at night or standing under trees, all to guard against these "Mountain Crawlers."

To put it simply, a "Mountain Crawler" is the vengeful ghost of someone who died from a fall while climbing a mountain or a tree. Much like hanged ghosts, they seek out substitutes to drag down, with the only difference being that they descend from behind, grab a person's hair, and hurl them down from a high place.

If someone happens to plunge to their death in a particular spot every once in a while, it usually means a "Mountain Crawler" resides there.

Oblivious to the fact that I was staring right behind him, Zongzheng was still busy trying to explain himself. "I swear..."

Before Zongzheng could even finish lifting his hand, the ghost clinging to his head grabbed him firmly by the back collar of his shirt. Hoisting him up, the entity scrambled rapidly back toward the cliff ledge.

"Little Third Master, save me!" Though Zongzheng screamed and thrashed his legs wildly in midair, he could not break free from the ghostly grip and was hauled straight up into the heights.

I spun around, grabbed the crevices in the rock face, and gave chase at top speed.

Scouts rarely carried bulky tools; they usually relied on whatever materials were readily available on the spot. When no tools were accessible, one had to depend entirely on personal physical conditioning to handle difficulties, so freehand rock climbing was simply second nature to me.

Though the ghost dragging Zongzheng moved at an astonishing speed, I remained right on its heels. Just as we neared the vicinity of the White Dragon Mouth, the ghost suddenly leaped forward into the opening, followed immediately by Zongzheng's agonizing shrieks.

I watched with my own eyes as a human figure plummeted past me, hitting the ground head-first with a resounding crash.

When I looked down, all that met my eyes was a horribly mangled corpse and a pool of blood spreading across the ground.

Hastily picking up my pace, I leaped from the base of the cliff right into the White Dragon Mouth.

Viewed from the outside, the dragon's maw was roughly three to four meters high. Once inside, however, the passage leading into the belly of the mountain narrowed until it was only wide enough for a single person to crawl through on hands and knees.

In truth, leaving aside the golden toad outside the White Dragon Cliff and treating the place merely as an ordinary geomantic vein, the narrowness of a dragon's throat was a completely normal phenomenon.

To bury someone within the White Dragon Cliff required no grand construction or extensive remodeling, nor did the terrain permit large-scale operations. As long as a coffin could be forced into the White Dragon Cliff, that was enough.

According to the flow of the dragon vein, the main difficulty of burying someone here lay entirely in getting the coffin into the dragon's throat. Once the coffin was inside, installing a few pulleys at the bottom to push it forward would allow it to slide smoothly along the mountain's contour into the depths of the cliff's interior, thereby laying the deceased to rest in peace.

There was no need to set up any mechanical traps inside the dragon's throat. Anyone attempting grave robbery who managed to enter the dragon's throat would find it difficult even to turn around; whatever came at them from the opposite direction would spell a fatal threat to tomb raiders!

I scanned the cave once before discovering some dry grass and several skeletal remains near the dragon's throat. It appeared that others had indeed entered the White Dragon Cliff before, only to become yet more restless souls trapped inside the dragon's maw.

Hesitating for a moment, I grabbed a handful of dry grass, twisted it into a ball roughly the size of a fist, ignited it with a fire starter, and tossed it into the dragon's throat.

The burning grass ball rolled automatically deeper into the cave. Before long, the flames on the grass ball were abruptly extinguished, and I felt a chilling gust of wind blow out from the cave's interior.

Something was indeed hiding inside the cave; the grass ball I had thrown in had startled it.

Yet, though I kept watch at the cave entrance for quite some time, no movement came from within. I ultimately retreated back to the vicinity of the human bones.

I tried several times in succession to summon the souls of the bones' owners, but to no avail; it seemed these people had long since had their souls scattered to the winds within this cave.

Turning my head to glance outside, I saw that the clash between the Black Tiger Fiend and the White Dragon had grown increasingly fierce. The churning waters of the pool blotted out the sky and sun, and I could no longer make out Ye Huan's figure—the only thing visible was the Black Tiger roaring against the wind.

I could not wait any longer. If this continued, Ye Huan would likely fail to withstand the crushing pressure of the Black Tiger Fiend.

The reason I had brought Ye Huan along to test the White Dragon Cliff was, on one hand, to capture Zongzheng and force him to reveal the whereabouts of the Mountain Dog, but on the other hand, I also coveted the secret burial trove hidden within the White Dragon Cliff.

Ever since I met Ye Huan and his grandfather, I had gained a deeper understanding of the Thirteen Ghost Gates. The four of us—young and old alike—could run amok in the provincial capital, but when pitted against the Thirteen Ghost Gates, we were merely lambs waiting to be slaughtered.

Someone as formidable as Old Man Ye readily admitted he was no match for the top figures of the Thirteen Ghost Gates, let alone Ye Huan and myself.

Cultivation in the mystic arts allowed for no leaps without fortuitous encounters, and such encounters almost invariably lay within secret realms.

I was determined to seize the secret burial trove of the White Dragon Cliff.

However, if claiming that fortuitous encounter meant sacrificing Ye Huan, I would rather abandon the secret burial entirely.

Roughly estimating the time, I quickly picked out several skulls from the human bones on the ground and arranged them into an array formation right in front of the cave entrance. Drawing blood by slicing my finger, I dripped it into the skulls' crown apertures and chanted in a low voice: "With blood as a guide, trace grievances and summon souls. If wronged spirits come not, I invoke your true spirits. Let this single thought reach you, and look upon your grievances."

Though some ghosts have already had their souls scattered, their lingering resentment occasionally remains in the world under fortuitous circumstances. Places like the interior of the White Dragon Cliff—devoid of sunlight year-round and free from overly intense spiritual fluctuations—are precisely the most likely locations for the grievances of ghosts to persist.

The technique of invoking true spirits from the *Scout's Codex* relied on using the resentment of ghosts to witness the causes of their deaths. If the resentment of those spirits had also dissipated, I truly would have had no choice but to crawl into the cave all by myself.

Even as I was in the middle of invoking the ghosts' resentment, Zongzheng—who had supposedly "plunged to his death" beneath the White Dragon Cliff just moments earlier—had silently circled around to Ye Huan's side.

The moment Little Sprout caught sight of Zongzheng, she was so startled that she tightened her grip on her dagger. "What... what are you trying to do?"

With a cold sneer, Zongzheng flicked his hand outward, sending Little Sprout and her dagger flying off to the side. Rushing forward in a few strides, he drew out a mystic talisman and slapped it straight toward the top of Ye Huan's head.

Before the talisman could make contact, however, the wooden blade in Ye Huan's hand reversed direction, its tip moving swiftly from bottom to top to press firmly against the underside of Zongzheng's chin.

Before Zongzheng could even react, Ye Huan's cold voice rang out: "What is your intention?"