The Invincible Female Ghost Is A Bit Of A Hopeless Romantic Chapter 244: We Need to Change the Name!!

When his final syllable fell, the copper coin set into the spine of the short blade rang out with a clear "zheng," emitting an extrely thin streak of golden-red light.

That light was neither fire nor thunder, but like the very first sliver of dawn on a winter snowfield—fine, precise.

The golden-red beam shot straight at the southeastern altar brick mouth.

The old altar brick, upon eting that light, began to show each of its carved sigils blanching as if steam had risen over them.

The seat master could no longer stay seated.

It sprang up violently; the two bony hands under the coffin pressed, and the entire shrunken coffin shook.

Paper ash, cinnabar, the remnants of incense offerings around the coffin board all flipped upward in an instant.

A massive surge of Yin force lifted from the coffin bottom, as if trying to forcibly shove Lu Yuan’s light back.

"It’s trying to crush the altar heart!" Lin Zhaoxuan shouted.

"Block it!" Lu Yuan barked.

"Don't let it touch the brick mouth!"

Zhou Heng and Lin Zhaoxuan moved almost simultaneously.

Zhou Heng's sword cut in a slanted arc, severing three black threads sprayed from the sleeve; the swordflowers spread and perfectly sealed the half-foot in front of the coffin.

Lin Zhaoxuan thrust the Thunderclap Token suddenly upright against his chest and chanted rapidly:

"Thunder in the sky, fire on the earth; sky fire shall not fall into the household."

"With thunder's voice I bind you, I lock the yin altar's qi."

"Lock your left, lock your right, lock your front, lock your back, no passage from four directions, a hundred malevolences shall not penetrate!!"

"Poof!"

The Thunderclap Token shuddered, its azure-day thunder pattern splitting into four fine threads that nailed toward the four corners of the coffin.

After four light "pops," the coffin body actually sank slightly under those pins; its rising montum stopped.

Song Qinghe did not dare delay either. She thrust the sealing plate up with both hands; the Yin-Yang Fish at the plate’s center reversed three tis, and its cold glow pressed down on that page of old altar brick.

"Dao-friend Lu!" Her voice trembled.

"I can't hold the plate much longer!"

Lu Yuan growled low:

"Enough!"

Lu Yuan knew this was the most critical instant for "flipping the altar."

He again produced the "Invite Ancestors Seal" with his left hand; the short blade hugged his palm, and his incantation suddenly slowed.

It beca heavy, steady, extended—like an old temple gatekeeper’s low-voiced rites when opening a threshold:

"The ancestors stand upon the altar, the fire burns under the lamp!!"

"If the altar is true, the fire will naturally shine!!"

"If the altar is crooked, the fire will turn back!!"

"Today I borrow the ancestral fire to illuminate the old altar bones!"

"Flip the altar, do not flip the person; to flip a person is to flip the shadow!"

"If the shadow is willing to retreat, life will be preserved!!"

"Ancestor fire, arise!"

He did not shout that last word; instead, it was delivered like a deep exhalation from the lungs.

In that instant, the short blade's scabbard emitted a clear tallic "zheng."

It sounded as though a rusty nail long asleep had finally been pushed free by this ancestral fire.

Imdiately, three faint gold-red motifs surfaced simultaneously at Lu Yuan’s waist, along his shoulders, and at his brow—

marks like the "altar-protecting fire seals" borne only by those who had once received altar rites.

The seat master saw those three gold-red points and, for the first ti, its expression flickered with near-anger.

"You actually... have taken the old altar rite?" it cried.

Lu Yuan's light chilled; he did not answer and slamd the scabbard down to the ground.

"Boom!"

The old brick at the southeastern altar mouth, under that ancestral fire, finally flipped entirely.

Beneath the brick there was no household, no treasure—only an extrely deep, pitch-black altar pit.

Inside the pit were densely stuck countless tiny copper nails, paper talismans, red cords, ash-bone talismans, and even several infant skull pendants blackened with age.

Once that pit was exposed, the shadow behind the seat master seed to be cut off halfway.

Lu Yuan's eyes sharpened; he said quietly:

"So that's it."

"It isn't the coffin alone forming the evil; it's nourished by this altar pit."

"This altar pit is its root!"

Song Qinghe couldn't help a sharp inhalation. Her voice changed:

"Those... those are zhenwu?"

Lu Yuan's tone chilled like frost:

"They are zhenwu."

"But not to suppress evil— they suppress souls."

"Those nails, talismans, cords, bones are all used to pin down nad souls."

"It borrows the old altar, presses old souls, and fosters a new seat."

"This is not rely a seat-borrowing thod, it's..."

He stopped, pronouncing four words almost one by one:

"Refine seat into sacrifice."

When those four words dropped, even Zhou Heng’s face changed.

Old folk sayings from beyond the Great Wall warned: if soone used living seats, dead nas, old altar bones, and incense offerings layer upon layer to feed, they would not be simple malicious spirits. They refined the seat surface into a sacrificial altar, nurturing a "ritual spirit" that could accept offerings under borrowed nas.

Such things do more than harm people; they siphon earthly offerings to feed the underworld, and over ti beco a major local calamity.

At that mont the seat master slowly raised a hand and, for the first ti, stopped looking at Lu Yuan; it looked down toward the altar pit as if confirming whether its root still existed.

Its voice suddenly carried a strange, exhausted tone, like soone who had a root taken from beneath their old floorboards.

"You flipped my altar bone," it said.

"That forces to show my root."

"But even if you expose it, what then?"

It smiled lightly, the sound like old tiles knocking in the wind.

"I have already beco a seat spirit."

"As long as the altar stands, I stand."

"If the altar breaks, I may not necessarily die."

"If you want to kill , you must first kill all the nas, lamps, shadows, seats, and registers along this whole road."

"But can you manage that in ti?"

No sooner had its words fallen than a muffled "dong" ca from deep inside the pit beneath the coffin, as if sothing extrely heavy had been struck from within.

In the next breath, the entire stone passage trembled.

The vibration was slight but deep, as if transmitted straight up from the earth's depths.

Salt arrays, ash, plate light, paper banners, and lamp flas under everyone's feet wavered slightly in that tremor.

Song Qinghe's face went instantly deathly pale:

"There is sothing under it!"

Lu Yuan's eyes flashed like lightning; an instinctive thought crossed his mind:

"What is pressed below the altar pit is not anything else but the second altar."

There was more than one altar on this stone passage.

The upper Yin altar they had exposed was the seat surface; beneath it lay the true buried altar root.

In other words, this seat master before them was only a shell propped up by the upper seat altar.

Below lay an older, deeper, darker altar root, continuously supplying it with life.

"We're in trouble."

Lu Yuan finally said low:

"This ti we've hit a double-alter coupling."

Zhou Heng's brows knitted into a tight knot:

"Double-alter coupling?"

Lu Yuan spoke rapidly:

"It ans the upper seat and the buried altar are linked."

"The upper altar provides offerings to a person; the lower altar fosters veneration."

"The upper one looks like the master, but in truth it is fed by the lower altar’s heart."

"If you strike one layer, the lower one will replenish another."

Lin Zhaoxuan drew in a breath:

"Then it never ends?"

Lu Yuan's gaze turned terrifyingly cold:

"There is an end."

"Only if we flip open the mouth of the lower altar as well."

No sooner had he finished than the seat master moved.

It did not lunge at Lu Yuan, nor did it reach for Song Qinghe. Instead, it gave a sudden flick of its sleeve.

The soul-binding black thread that Zhou Heng and Lin Zhaoxuan had jointly suppressed leapt from the sleeve like a handful of living snakes, hurling straight for the newly exposed southeastern altar pit.

"It wants to seal the lower altar mouth!" Lu Yuan shouted.

Zhou Heng drew his sword at once, but the black thread did not tangle with him; like a snake on the ground, it twisted past the blade.

Song Qinghe's wrist trembled; the platelight nearly skewed.

"Don't panic." Lu Yuan said low:

"The more frantic it is, the more it proves the lower altar fears light."

He quickly scanned everyone, his voice dropping to a resolute whisper:

"Now follow my orders."

"Zhou Heng, sever the Northwest paper-banner foot."

"Lin Zhaoxuan, stop striking lamps; change to nailing the altar thread."

"Miss Song, plate center on the altar pit—find the second ring of sealing clay for the lower altar mouth."

"Cheng'an, Erxiao, you two—spread salt along the four corners of the brick I just flipped."

"Rember, the salt must be laid in a 'well' character pattern."

"Well mouth facing the lower altar; the grid must be unbroken."

Both of them nodded frantically, almost using hands and feet to comply.

Lu Yuan no longer hesitated. He slipped the short blade into his bosom and with both hands flipped his fingers into an intricate string of hand seals.

Left thumb pressed at the base of the ring finger, index and middle finger held upright together.

The little finger lightly twitched outward. Right hand: thumb hooked over the middle finger, index curled inward like a hook, the other two fingers hidden in the palm.

As if cradling a tiny invisible bronze bell.

This was the Daoist "Altar-Breaking Earth-Opening Technique," a rare and seldom-seen art.

As he ford the seals he murmured:

"The earth has earth gates, the gate has gate nails."

"An altar has altar couplings, couplings have coupling tendons."

"The upper altar may be flipped; the lower altar may be opened."

"I borrow the ancestral fire's single line of clarity to reveal my altar bone, to illuminate my altar root."

"If the altar root is alive, first find its gate; when the gate opens three inches, the Yin path will not persist!"

"Urgently, urgently, as by the law's command!"

At the final phrase, his hands suddenly split toward the ground.

The motion wasn't outward nor forward but aid at prying up a small patch of the pale gray sealing clay at the altar pit's edge.

"Crack—"

They heard a sharp peeling sound like old skin coming loose. A small patch of the pit's edge clay was indeed forcibly lifted.

But the mont that small piece of sealing clay was pried up, an even older, heavier, darker qi burst up from below with a "puf."

That qi's ergence even made the seat master shudder.

The blue-white sparks in its eye sockets jumped wildly for the first ti.

"Damn." Lu Yuan's heart tightened:

"The thing below has awakened!"

At just that mont, from the darkness at the far end of the stone way ca a very light, very slow, very rhythmic knocking.

Dong.

Like soone underground knocking on a deeper coffin, one blow at a ti.

As the knocking began, the wind inside the stone passage changed.

What had been the inward-sucking chill of a closing altar gate now felt as if soone beneath the earth had turned an old well cover.

Yin qi pressed up in layers, bringing with it wet cold of mud and the fetid scent of old offerings, creeping slowly along the altar pit's rim.

Grains of salt on the ground trembled as if they were a startled swarm of white insects.

Lu Yuan's face fell to its lowest.

He could tell this was not a re household stirring, not a ghost crawling, nor ordinary malevolence rising.

It was the being inside the second altar knocking out the path by rhythm.

Old rites from beyond the Great Wall feared not a ghost that made noise but a ghost with rhythm!

Rhythm ant it recognized the altar mouth, understood the gate rules, knew when to erge and when to settle.

"Don't look at the ground." Lu Yuan shouted urgently.

"That's bait."

Zhou Heng, who had been ready to lower his head and locate the sound, snapped his gaze back and planted his sword horizontally across his chest, not shifting a single inch.

Lin Zhaoxuan was quicker, retracting the Thunderclap Token and pressing it along his inner forearm so its thunder pattern lay against skin, preventing that rhythmic Yin from echoing through the pattern.

But Wang Cheng'an and Xu Erxiao did not have that steadiness.

Their hands shook as they sprinkled salt at the four corners; at the three knocks the salt sacks nearly dropped.

Seeing this, Lu Yuan said gravely:

"Keep your heart steady, your hands will be steady."

"Rember, for old altars from beyond the Great Wall, the worst thing is a chaotic human heart."

"When people panic, the altar submits."

His words were brief but his hands did not stop.

He flipped the short blade with his right hand, placing its spine against his left palm; left index and middle fingers together tapped lightly three tis along the blade's ridge.

He dropped his voice and recited a short but iron-hard "Altar-Calming Response Sealing":

"A sound has a source, the source lies at the earth gate."

"If the gate tries to open, I first seal the lips."

"Three points as nails; four directions as tomb."

"Nail your door-knocking tendon, seal your answering soul."

"Urgently, urgently, as by the law's command!"

At the final phrase he stamped his right foot on the ground.

The stamp was not heavy, yet it landed exactly in the rhythm cracks of those three knocks.

The underground "dong dong" faltered; whatever was below seed about to continue but was cut off mid-breath.

Yet in that half-breath, a thin line of faint red slowly rose from the wet cold black mist in the pit's depths.

That red was neither blood nor fla; it looked like cinnabar buried in mud too long, forced out by Yin qi.

Song Qinghe froze upon seeing that red.

"Dao-friend Lu..." Her voice trembled:

"That's... the sealing cinnabar thread."

Lu Yuan's eyes tightened:

"Correct, there's indeed a second sealing mouth down there."

He did not relax; his face grew even grimr.

If it were only a sealing mouth, perhaps manageable. But seeing cinnabar thread indicated that the lower altar was older.

Not only was sothing buried there, soone had personally sealed it.

Few outside the Great Wall both understood the ritual and how to seal, and even fewer knew how to use cinnabar thread to seal a second altar.

That was to suffocate the thing within to death, then use the dead qi to feed it back to life, waiting for a day when it could reopen and beco a major cult.

Lin Zhaoxuan's brow ticked:

"Then what's below that thing is..."

Lu Yuan cut him off:

"More than an object!"

"If I'm not mistaken, it's an altar-heart embryo suppressed for many years."

"It was supposed to die, but soone fed it with incense, blood, nas, and bones layer by layer until it revived."

"Now that we expose the outer altar, we're pressing its air to its throat."

No sooner had he spoken than the knocking resud.

This ti not three blows, but one heavy, then another heavy—like soone finally finding the gate's rhythm and driving knuckles upward with bones.

Dong—

Dong!

Each strike loosened the pale gray sealing clay around the pit's rim further.

The first to slacken was the southeast corner—the spot under the brick Lu Yuan had flipped. A slow trickle of black water seeped out.

The black water did not flow downward; it crawled upward, as if with its own veins, seeping through the brick gaps toward the center of the stone passage.

"Black water!" Wang Cheng'an cried out.

Lu Yuan's gaze hardened; he snapped:

"Don't let it touch the salt!"

"That's not water—it's altar-bottom blood-mud!"

Zhou Heng slashed his sword; the blade's horizontal sweep raised a gust that forced the black water aside by half an inch.

The black water split on the blade's qi, becoming several threads that hissed faintly like small snakes burned by hot iron.

Nevertheless, the knocking from below did not stop; in fact, it accelerated.

The seat master at the coffin front began to slowly close its hollow eye sockets—

not sleeping, not dying, but listening.

It listened to the echo of the lower altar.

With each listen, a faint billow drew along the seam of its black satin robe, as if unseen air were being funneled into its shell.

"Bad." Lu Yuan snapped his head up:

"It's drawing breath from the lower altar!"

Song Qinghe's voice tightened:

"Then what do we do?"

Lu Yuan imdiately:

"Cut off its breathing path."

"The lower altar that can raise it can also push it down."

"As long as the lower altar cannot recognize the upper altar, the two cannot connect their breaths."

Zhou Heng sought confirmation:

"How do we make it fail to recognize?"

Lu Yuan's gaze dropped, hardened, and fixed on the paper-masked figure. He said coldly:

"Change the na!!"