Bewitchment
...
"Bang—"
The door was pushed open again by something invisible.
Yingshi was still worried about Shuangjian, so right now, even her fear did not seem fully focused.
She had waited long enough in the silence. Tonight felt several times longer than last night. Now that the anomaly had finally descended, she surprisingly felt a sense of relief, as if thinking, "It's finally here."
She peeked outside but did not see the figure of the old monk carrying a lantern, nor was there a second letter fluttering onto her forehead.
It was baffling. The door was wide open, yet nothing happened. Nothing came looking for her, and she could not hear any suspicious movements.
The nighttime courtyard was dead silent. There was no moonlight, only a faint, thin glimmer seeping from an unknown source, barely outlining the massive silhouette of the giant Buddha... Eh? Wait! That was not a giant Buddha at all!
Yingshi rubbed her eyes and leaned against the doorframe to look over, feeling utterly dumbfounded.
What now stood in the center of the courtyard... was clearly a monster!
The lowered head of the Buddha had actually turned into a green-faced, fanged demonic skull!
And this was only the smallest change in the whole entity. Aside from the head, the statue's entire silhouette and frozen posture had also drastically changed, shattering all mercy and solemnity. Not a trace of the Buddha could be seen anymore. Yet, it was not the intentionally sculpted fierce look of a glaring Vajra; rather, it looked very much like the evil deity statues she had seen in certain modern religious horror movies. Malice rushed at her face—without a doubt, this was the symbol of an evil ghost.
Was it like this last night too? After nightfall, did the Buddha statue turn into an evil ghost on its own?
Or had something special happened tonight, causing the statue to change and catalyzing the manifestation of "evil"?
The eye sockets of the giant evil ghost statue were two deep, sunken black holes, seemingly burning with a ghostly fire that captured souls.
Even from this far away, Yingshi felt as if she had been locked onto.
But strangely, she could not feel afraid because of this. Instead, as if summoned, she faintly wanted to go over and make a "pilgrimage."
Seeing that her toes had unconsciously pointed toward the outside of the door, and her center of gravity was leaning forward with her legs seemingly about to walk out disobediently, Yingshi hurriedly punched herself in the base of her thigh, barely suppressing that wave of fascination.
Could it be that because she, as a member of the evil ghost faction, had not caused any sabotage to the craftsmen during the day, she was now going to be judged by the boss?
There were some mysterious and profound rules at night. She did not want to be dizzily eliminated like those missing disciples just because she stepped out without authorization!
Yingshi gritted her teeth to resist the instinct that urged her to approach. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the doorframe, but she suddenly realized that this kind of resistance actually held little value.
Ultimately, the Infernal Temple was a test topic for the second round of the Tiangang Martial Gathering.
Looking at it with an exam-taking mindset, she could realize that standing still and not going out right now could not test her character or abilities; it could only test whether her grip strength was strong enough...
So, her current persistence must be on the wrong track, right?
Yingshi suddenly remembered the meaningful words the old monk had said: The day is the seven days belonging to the craftsmen, and the night is the seven nights belonging to the wandering souls.
Perhaps she could move around at night, because wandering souls, in addition to causing sabotage, also needed to offer sacrifices to the evil ghost to help it break the cauldron!
With a shift in her thoughts, the fingers gripping the doorframe unconsciously loosened their grip. As if pushed by something, she stumbled into the courtyard.
"..."
Following that push, Yingshi half-squatted in place and held her breath, waiting. One second, two seconds, half a minute passed... It seemed that really nothing was wrong?
She could not help but exhale and turned her head to look at the next room belonging to Shuangjian. The door was tightly shut, dim and lightless, just like every other room around it, exuding the same still silence.
Only she had walked out.
Either she had once again fallen into a special chosen field; or the wandering souls also needed to meet the evil ghost one by one, just like the craftsmen... Why did it feel exactly like being called to the teacher's office one by one?
Yingshi inevitably felt a bit scared. She carefully raised her eyes to look back at the evil ghost statue—
Eh?
Why did it change again?!
The evil ghost's appearance was actually softening and fluctuating like dough. One moment it turned into a terrifying shape with a green face, fangs, and bulging eyes, and the next moment it turned into the shape of a Buddha with long eyebrows, large ears, and spiral hair knots. But finally, it paused on an exceptionally beautiful human figure!
Half of the figure's face was shrouded in a dense mist, but the silhouette of its body and facial features was already atmospheric enough. It was like some giant anime figure famous for its beauty had broken through the dimensional wall and descended here. It was strikingly handsome, yet quite incongruous... Most importantly, it looked especially familiar!
Why did it look so much like Shuangjian dressed as a painter!
Yingshi was completely dumbfounded. Her first reaction was to suspect that all of this was her own hallucination. She had fallen for a type of illusion where whatever you see is the person in your heart, so she actually imagined the evil ghost statue as Shuangjian.
Or perhaps, this was simply the evil ghost's ability, transforming into the appearance of someone close to her to lure her into willingly walking over and sacrificing something.
—It could not possibly be that Shuangjian had turned into the evil ghost, right?!
Yingshi fell into a strange state of chaos and involuntarily walked under the stone statue suspected to be Shuangjian.
She stared up blankly, unconsciously reaching out to touch the hem of the figure's clothes... It felt like cheap fabric.
Shouldn't it be cold stone?
"..."
Yingshi jolted awake and met Shuangjian's calm eyes. She was currently gripping the corner of his clothes with her hand. There was no three- or four-meter-high stone statue in front of her at all, and she was no longer standing in the original courtyard. Instead, she was in a strange, enclosed space. The surroundings were a chaotic and hazy black. There was clearly no light source, yet a gradient halo radiated from the center, much like the candlelight of a lantern.
This scene reminded Yingshi of a Domain, but the difference was that the pitch-blackness of a Domain was boundless and vast, like an elusive universe. This current space, however, brought a sense of confinement. It seemed very narrow, impossible to associate with the universe, and more like some kind of prison.
"...Shuangjian?" Yingshi's breath paused for a moment. She did not let go and even pulled Shuangjian's clothes tighter, her eyes widening in excitement. "Why did you come out too?!"
She clearly knew that the person in front of her was Shuangjian, not her hallucination. The blood pact inside her body, though suppressed, was still in effect and served as the best proof. The moment they met, it brought a physiological sense of security, helping her effectively distinguish the boundary between reality and illusion.
"Where is this?!" Yingshi looked around in fear, leaning closer to Shuangjian. "It's so dark..."
"..."
Shuangjian hesitated to speak.
"Why aren't you saying anything?" Yingshi nervously squeezed his hand. "Have we been eliminated?"
She had long guessed that Shuangjian was not in the same camp as her. As an artisan, his movements should have been restricted at night, yet right now, he had appeared in the same enclosed space with her.
As expected, Shuangjian swapping rooms with her had brought disaster upon him; the old monk must have gone in to persecute him...
"He didn't," Shuangjian said in a low voice.
He squeezed Yingshi's hand in return, as if responding to her movement, and spoke carefully, "Right now, we are inside the stone statue."
"What do you mean?" Yingshi frowned. "Is being locked in a stone statue the punishment for breaking the rules? I accidentally stepped out of my room at night... Oh right, speaking of which, it was very strange. I actually saw the giant Buddha turn into the appearance of an evil spirit, and then the evil spirit turned into you! Bewitched by that illusion, I unknowingly walked all the way here, and then I met you!"
After saying this, she couldn't help but cover her mouth, incredibly surprised by the fact that she wasn't subjected to any communication restrictions and could speak freely.
"...That was not an illusion."
"Huh?"
"I killed the sweeping monk." Shuangjian's eyelashes lowered as he delivered this earth-shattering news in a calm tone. "Therefore, I became the suppressed evil spirit that took his place."
"...What?"
Yingshi was certain that if she were living in a cartoon, her eyes would have already turned into black spirals symbolizing dizziness.
"Wandering souls are summoned by evil spirits at night... That is why you came," Shuangjian continued.
Yingshi was completely at a loss for words, only able to widen her eyes silently in shock: "..."
"...I will send you back."
Shuangjian pursed his lips, feeling a little uneasy.
He hadn't actively summoned Yingshi. The moment the incident occurred, he too had to first figure out the situation.
It must be the blood pact.
The existence of the blood pact caused the mechanism to mistakenly believe he urgently needed to see Yingshi, who was a wandering soul, and thus drew her over to see him—that had to be it.
"Wait!" Yingshi grabbed Shuangjian's arm. Her head felt like it was going to explode as she hurriedly asked, "How can you be so calm? Tell me bit by bit first, what's this about killing the sweeping monk?!"
"After nightfall, he came looking for me," Shuangjian said. "I noticed his flaw, so I attempted to eliminate him."
After the lantern fell to the ground, the old monk revealed an incomparably crazed evil spirit visage.
The candlelight caught the corner of his robe and quickly engulfed the entire room. The scene looked terrifying, but the old monk, no longer seen as a symbol of "authority," was incredibly frail.
Shuangjian easily grabbed his neck and, without even exerting much force, snapped it.
He knew this action would definitely bring about some consequences, and he precisely wanted to see those consequences.
His actions never stemmed from rashness or impulse. After all, earlier on, he had already probed into some things—that wall shattering at the boundary between day and night was enough to prove that the mechanism eliminating disciples in the Infernal Temple was never their violation of the rules. In fact, the very existence of the rules themselves was questionable.
But he truly hadn't expected the result to be like this—after killing the old monk of the night, he became the evil spirit.
That feeling was very profound. At the beginning of the state, he also experienced a moment of trance. The old monk split into an evil spirit and a Buddha, seeming to fight him for the sovereignty of his consciousness.
But defeating it was too easy. Having already experienced two reincarnations, Han Shuangjian was unlikely to hit a wall here. He had fought against the true "rules" for long enough. At this moment, it was as if the Victorious Fighting Buddha had returned to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit; crushing the old monk's residual will was as natural, simple, and logical as crushing an ant.
And so, he replaced the old monk just like that, becoming the evil spirit suppressed beneath the Buddha statue.
And even more naturally, simply, and logically, he "bewitched" Yingshi into coming here.
"..."
Yingshi's brows were locked tightly together, staring unblinkingly at Shuangjian.
She shouldn't have been able to understand such a complicated situation; being completely clueless would have been right. But in that moment, as if an angel had kissed her forehead, a flash of inspiration hit her.
First, she remembered the words the old monk had said: Can good and evil coexist? Does a boundary exist between good and evil?
Second, because of the keywords "good and evil," she remembered a pinned long review in the comment section of the book "I See Frost and Snow."
Yingshi had read the book in a hurry back then, so she didn't really have the time to read long reviews, but
Chunri
That review was always pinned at the top. As long as one clicked into the comment section, they could see it, so every time she could read its title—"A Brief Analysis of the Deep Worldview Behind the Surface: Good and Evil Must Be Balanced; When Evil is Eliminated, a Greater Evil Will Definitely Be Born."
As well as the opening paragraph of the long review: "Those who truly believe Goddess Changyi died from difficult childbirth have never understood this book. Her death was an earth-shattering overt plot, an active sacrifice made to balance good and evil and allow the world to stably continue..."
Goddess Changyi was Shuangjian's biological mother, the deceased wife of the Nether Demon Lord.
In the plot, she "seemingly" died giving birth to the male lead, and her death directly formed the irreconcilable conflict between the male lead and his biological father.
This was a typical conspiracy-theory-driven reading comprehension that elevated the book "I See Frost and Snow" to a height it did not belong to.
But it was also inexplicably convincing, because the situation described in the title could be verified in the plot—before the Nether Demon Lord became the chief of the Burning Heaven Scorched Earth, he was once the sword path leader of the Guiyuan Sword Sect, the number one person in the righteous path.
The book didn't write why he fell into demonic cultivation, nor did it write how Goddess Changyi, as the holy, righteous, and inviolable symbol of the Immortal Alliance, could have become dao companions with him and given birth to Shuangjian as a half-blood.
This gave this highly imaginative reader plenty of room to fill in the blanks: The goddess had never given herself to the demon head out of love from the very beginning, let alone died from so-called difficult childbirth. That completely didn't match her combat power!
Her death was an active choice, meant to balance the good and evil in this world.
Shuangjian's birth and existence inherently represented a kind of balance, and the hatred between him and the Nether Demon Lord almost destined him to the path of patricide—the goddess chose to punish evil in such a way, circumventing the logical chain of "thereby birthing a greater evil," and returning true peace to the world.
It sounded a bit far-fetched, but quite a few people were bluffed by it, and many agreed with this post, otherwise it wouldn't have been pushed to the hottest spot.
It was just unknown how this analytical reader felt later when Jing Fengliu gave the story a rushed and terrible ending; whether they wished they could delete the long review and replace it with two thousand words of cursing.
Yingshi was now highly suspicious. Could it be that because "I See Frost and Snow" left too many plot holes, the transmigration god had mixed in the settings from the long review to complete the overall worldview before letting her transmigrate into the book? Otherwise, why would she feel that the core of this Infernal Temple right now was so similar to the theme of that long review?
Thinking in reverse from the perspective of "what kind of test would the Tiangang Martial Gathering come up with," she felt even more that there was no "competition core" better at testing the disciples' temperaments than one involving the core of the world and the concepts of good and evil.
"Shuangjian," she could not help but murmur softly. "By approaching this like a test question, I think I know how to clear this trial at Wujian Temple..."
Shuangjian fixed his gaze upon her, listening intently.
"It is to achieve a true balance between good and evil." Yingshi's lips trembled slightly, her expression turning incredibly serious. "The old monk was a Buddha by day and a ghost by night. You destroyed the old monk in his evil ghost form, and thus became an even greater evil. Now, to restore the balance, we need to put forward someone to act as your counterpart and help them achieve Buddhahood..."
