Ghost Buddha

The Nine Nether Venerable no longer had the strength to talk back this time.

Not because he didn’t want to, but because he simply lacked even the energy to speak.

At this moment, he felt as though he had lost all sensation.

Only the pungent, sickly-sweet stench of rotting corpses lingered in his nostrils!

All he could do was shut his eyes tightly, lest the ghosts steal his sanity.

Meanwhile, he silently recited every exorcism mantra he knew, waiting for the two groups to leave…

He had no idea how much time had passed.

Perhaps the mantras had actually worked.

The sounds of suonas and gongs gradually faded into the distance.

The putrid, cloying stench in the air also vanished without a trace.

The Nine Nether Venerable couldn’t help but smirk inwardly, thinking to himself:

‘Thank the heavens for my experience. Even in the face of such an ominous omen, I’ve survived unscathed…’

With that thought, he slowly pried his eyelids open.

Only to find—

Eight white ghosts carrying a coffin and eight red ghosts bearing a palanquin had encircled him, all staring at him with eerily twisted grins!

Their expressions were nothing short of predatory mockery!

They hadn’t left at all…

The fading sounds were an illusion. The vanishing stench was an illusion too!

It was all an act…

Every last bit of it!

All to trick him into opening his eyes!

The Nine Nether Venerable’s scalp prickled, his legs trembling uncontrollably.

He tried to shut his eyes again, but it was already too late.

With a whoosh,

the red and white processions merged into one.

The Nine Nether Venerable was shoved into the black coffin, unable to move a single inch.

He knew exactly what awaited him—

Once these fiends dragged the coffin into the water, he would become a substitute ghost!

“No… NO!!”

The Nine Nether Venerable clawed frantically at the coffin, his nails splintering, blood oozing from his fingertips.

Inside the black coffin, his sanity plummeted at a rate of five points per second!

By now, water had already begun seeping in.

“Items… I still have items!!”

The game items he had dismissed as mere toys not long ago were now his only lifeline.

In a panic, he fumbled out a Grade-3 Exorcism Incense and lit it with a match.

Just before the water submerged his head,

he strained to raise the incense above the water’s surface…

……

“Hah…!!”

The Nine Nether Venerable’s eyes snapped open as he gasped for air.

The moment the water had closed over him, he had truly felt the terror of impending death.

Now, his surroundings were pitch-black, so dark he couldn’t even see his own hand in front of him.

Yet compared to the suffocating confinement of that black coffin, this was infinitely better.

His sanity, after just those few seconds in the Red-and-White Omen Collision, had plummeted to a mere 53 points.

Desperate, he searched for any source of light.

The debilitating effects of low sanity were simply too torturous to endure.

Just then—

Light flickered to life.

Two crimson lanterns, emblazoned with the character for “Double Happiness”, glowed ominously in the darkness.

The Nine Nether Venerable’s heart lurched—something was terribly wrong.

Turning his head, he saw her: a ghostly bride with a pallid, bluish-purple face, her head veiled.

“!!”

He sucked in a sharp breath, instinctively trying to flee.

But he couldn’t move an inch!

Two towering, stiff-faced ghostly groomsmen pinned him down from behind.

Only then did the Nine Nether Venerable realize—

He was clad in black robes that blurred the line between wedding attire and funeral garb!

Two words exploded in his mind—

Ghost Marriage!

“The hour has come!”

A bone-chilling voice echoed from the depths of the dark passageway.

The two ghostly groomsmen forced him forward.

“First bow—to Heaven and Earth!”

The Nine Nether Venerable resisted, straining against their grip, his hands scrambling for items.

But the groomsmen showed no mercy.

They seized his head and slammed it downward toward the abyssal darkness ahead.

“Second bow—to the ancestors!”

The same brutal motion repeated.

“Third bow—to each other!”

The groomsmen wrenched his neck around, forcing him to face the lifeless bride.

The Nine Nether Venerable knew—

Once this bow was complete, his life would be forfeit!

No!

He couldn’t bow!

Sheer panic made him fumble every attempt to retrieve an item.

Just as the groomsmen were about to force his head down for the final bow—

He finally managed to light a second stick of Exorcism Incense!

Under its influence, the two groomsmen lost sight of him, clutching their eyes in agony.

“Scram! All of you, SCRAM!!”

The Nine Nether Venerable swung the incense wildly, though the gesture held no real power.

His eyes were bloodshot, his legs quaking.

The incense only blinded ghosts temporarily, allowing escape—

But it couldn’t harm them.

With the ghost marriage one step from completion, the groomsmen and bride raged through the ancestral hall, searching for him.

Cornered.

The incense in his hand was nearly burnt out.

Terror-stricken, the Nine Nether Venerable turned and fled into the pitch-black passage.

“Hah… hahaha…”

“I’m alive… I’M STILL ALIVE!!”

“I’m not afraid! Not afraid at all!!”

“A mere illusion, nothing more… NOTHING MORE!”

“Why won’t you answer me… Where is everyone!? WHERE!?”

In the endless corridor, the Nine Nether Venerable ranted madly into the darkness.

Because…

The viewers’ comments were gone!

He hadn’t even noticed when they’d vanished…

Those comments were his only tether to the real world.

Even if nine out of ten mocked him, their presence had been a comfort.

Unbeknownst to him,

his livestream was exploding with chatter about the scene.

[Damn, the old man’s got it rough… He doesn’t realize sanity below 30 blocks the comments, does he?]

[30 sanity… Even wandering ghosts would start hunting at this point.]

[Fellow cultivators, ready the incense for the Nine Nether Venerable!]

[Rest in peace!!!]

[Red-and-White Omen into Ghost Marriage… Old Demon Lu is downright inhuman.]

[What if… there’s something even worse waiting?]

[Now that you mention it… these are just eerie events. The real “ghost” hasn’t shown up yet…]

[Wait, what exactly did they bow to earlier?]

……

Stumbling through the dark passage, the Nine Nether Venerable finally spotted a sliver of light ahead after what felt like an eternity.

In his extreme terror, light was his only solace.

Like a madman, he clawed his way out of the tunnel.

But what greeted him was a statue.

A black Ghost Buddha.

To the livestream audience, the statue stood no taller than two meters—ordinary by all accounts.

But in the Nine Nether Venerable’s eyes,

the Ghost Buddha loomed with overwhelming majesty, its oppressive aura suffocating him!

The hollow sockets beneath its eyelids suddenly split open, revealing crimson pupils as its lips curled into a grotesque smile.

In the next instant—

Visions of a thousand gruesome deaths flooded the Nine Nether Venerable’s mind, each more horrific than the last.

Blood, flesh, screams…

Countless nightmarish illusions flashed before his eyes.

Until finally—

He saw himself, trembling as he knelt before the Ghost Buddha, humble as an ant.

At this moment, Nine Nether Venerable finally understood why the two ghostly brutes had forced him to bow in this direction earlier…

Worship heaven and earth?

This Ghost Buddha was the heaven and earth of this place!

It—

was the true abomination they sought!

Just as Nine Nether Venerable’s mind teetered on the brink of collapse,

an ethereal yet profoundly sinister voice echoed from the Ghost Buddha’s maw:

“Since you behold the future…”

“Why do you not kneel?”