Chapter 139 Finding Friends

"Clap your hands, find a friend. Find a good friend, where is my good friend? Where is spring the most beautiful? The swallow says, Amitabha..."

"One good friend!" A lunatic of a monk picked up a plaque lying on the ground.

"Two good friends!" He pushed open the door of a coffin shop.

"Three good friends!" He grabbed a paper figurine from the side and pulled it into his embrace.

"Four good friends!" He hauled the soul-calling banner from the coffin shop out with him.

"Five good friends!" A coffin rose up straight behind him.

"Everyone come together to find friends, how many good friends are there?"

All the paper figurines in the coffin shop followed closely behind him. Clearly, that shop was minuscule, yet the paper figurines walking out of it filled the entire imperial capital.

Soon, the desolate imperial capital grew bustling.

The empty streets were jammed yet eerily quiet, for these paper figurines could emit no sound whatsoever.

That coffin seemed to be manipulated by someone; as the monk walked forward while clapping, it too hopped along behind him to the rhythm of the monk's steps.

One man, one coffin, and a street full of paper figurines existed in harmonious accord.

"Found so many good friends! Hahaha." The monk leaped high into the air joyfully on the spot, the coffin standing quietly behind him like a silent shadow.

"Where is spring? Spring is in the eyes of little children." The monk ran and laughed at the same time. He pulled out the paper figurine he had tucked in his arms, stared into its eyes, and muttered to himself, "Not there, not in your eyes, not in your eyes..."

He inspected the paper figurines one by one. Not knowing how long he had searched, he finally grew tired, whining and humming as he dragged himself before the coffin. "It's you, it must be your eyes, right?"

The coffin did not move, and neither did the monk. The man and the coffin gazed at each other for a moment before the monk suddenly smiled.

"Spring has arrived, the swallows come, the swallows come. One swallow, two swallows... A thousand swallows, a thousand swallows, it's a thousand swallows!"

As if recalling something, he began to run wildly. The coffin followed closely behind, and the paper figurines followed as well. Finally, he arrived beneath the gates of the imperial city...

The monk was a mad monk; laughing and crying alternately, he actually began to kowtow before the wide-open palace gates.

"Kowtow! Kowtow! You must kowtow just like me!"

The paper figurines tilted their heads, stared at the monk for a moment, silently accepted this suggestion, and dropped to their knees as well.

Rustling sounds spread throughout the entire imperial capital. They looked like the most pious believers of this imperial city, kowtow-worshipping the emperor they once served.

"Done kowtowing, get up nicely, let's all go inside to play!"

The monk ran inside. What he did not know was that amidst the procession, a few sneaky paper figurines had also knelt down.

These few paper figurines were clearly recent additions; their skin tone remained a normal white, unlike the paper figurines from the coffin shop, which had turned a slight yellowish hue due to dampness.

"Grand Uncle-Master, that is the Sorrow-Joy Buddha," Qiao Yu communicated mentally, using his esoteric technique to inform Shan Hongxing.

The moment his voice fell, he noticed several paper figurines beside him stopped moving. Startled, he had no choice but to pretend to stop as well.

Fortunately, those few paper figurines merely glanced at him a few more times before catching up with the main army. Many of the subsequent paper figurines cast glances his way; those gazes were exceedingly strange. Clearly, they were paper figurines, yet Qiao Yu constantly felt as though real people were watching him.

"Third Rank," Shan Hongxing murmured.

A single paper figurine possessed third-rank strength.

Had it been in the past, he would never have believed it. For a profound master to possess their own avatar was a perfectly acceptable concept.

However, if a profound master's avatar consisted of frail, wind-battered paper figurines, most people would consider that person insane.

Yet the profound master who had just paused was indeed of the third rank, and as numerous paper figurines passed by them afterward, Shan Hongxing detected faint, lingering auras of profound masters from all of them—as if they were not paper figurines at all, but living beings of flesh and blood.

Moreover, before them lay an entire city of paper figurines.

"Grand Uncle-Master!" Qiao Yu breathed heavily. Only after seeing Shan Hongxing nod did he dare to speak. "Just now, that paper figurine seemed to have noticed me."

"Indeed!" For some reason, a mischievous impulse arose within him. "It noticed me, too."

Qiao Yu: "..."

"Can we please not joke around right now?" Blue Yezhou rarely showed disrespect to his elders, but this place was far too bizarre, and he was terrified!

Some people's courage paradoxically swells when they are frightened, leading them to do unexpected things.

"Remember to copy the Heart Sutra when we return. Your mental fortitude needs tempering."

"Master..." Confronted by his master's unquestionable gaze, Blue Yezhou nodded helplessly. "Fine, fine, whatever Master says is right; I'll do it. But what are we supposed to do right now?! We've seen that monk; he's completely unhinged..."

"He is worthy of the title of Buddha, and he truly possesses a karmic affinity with Buddhism. The name was not chosen in vain."

"Grand Uncle-Master, let's hurry up and find the others!" Yuan Qingling's breathing was erratic at the moment. He dared even less to act alone; what exactly was happening within this bizarre domain remained entirely unknown to them.

The sound of thunder persisted. Even compared to the outside world, the thunderclouds here appeared much thicker, as though pressing right against the heavens.

The moment they entered, they had tracked in that direction, only for a mad monk to lead a massive army of paper figurines onto the street. With no other choice, they could only disguise themselves as paper figurines.

"I truly hope they are all safe right now, and I hope this horde of paper figurines is going to drag people out rather than slaughter them," Yuan Qingling muttered to himself.

"There's a crow right beside you; be careful of jinxing it!"

Yuan Qingling: "..."

Lu Feiyu: "Blue Yezhou! Shut your mouth if you don't know how to speak! Who has the mood to listen to your jokes right now?"

"Wasn't I just trying to liven up the atmosphere? You guys don't know how to cooperate at all..." Blue Yezhou mumbled, then suddenly widened his eyes. For in the sky appeared a person who had turned to ashes and whom he would still recognize instantly—that person was precisely one of the individuals they were searching for.

"Yang Wennan! Good heavens! What happened to him? Is he turning into a fiend? Why are his hair strands dripping with blood?"

Before Blue Yezhou could finish speaking, he received a sharp knuckle-knock on the head from Lu Feiyu: "Ignorant."

"The Soul Clan?" Shan Hongxing stared in disbelief at the mark between the brows of the figure in the sky.

He was merely a young man of over three hundred years of age. The last branch of the Soul Clan had hidden deep within the snow plains, yet they had been exterminated during the liquidation of the great war between gods and demons ten thousand years ago. Records regarding the Soul Clan were something he had only ever seen in ancient texts.

Crimson hair, double pupils, a lunar disc between the brows, and snow-white skin.

It matched Yang Wennan's current state remarkably well. "This child... exactly what has he experienced..."

"Grand Uncle-Master, I beg you to save my Senior Brother's life." Yuan Qingling was the most knowledgeable among Wen Jingē's disciples, and naturally reacted faster than any other disciple to what had transpired.

Today's demon race, much like the soul race of the past, was reviled by all.

If anyone were to discover that Myriad fathom Peak had not only harbored a demon lord and accepted the lowest-tier demon race as disciples, but now also sheltered a descendant of the soul race, his master would likely die a death without an intact corpse.

"Naturally."