Chapter Two: Counter-Spells and Spirit Coins of the Mountain Ghost

Wang Cheng’s face was deathly pale. He glanced around, but saw nothing.

“All these years, I’ve studied diligently, striving for scholarly honors, so that my family might one day be officially accepted by the court. Many in the Five Peaks Banner have told me, ‘Ignorance is bliss.’

In this world, countless secrets bring disaster if you merely think to seek them, especially because of the taboo: ‘What you cannot forget, will echo back to you.’ Those of the Water Division are in the gravest danger.

I haven’t learned much of my family’s water-divining arts, only some basic knowledge.

Still, I know that the titles ‘Lord’ and ‘Elder’ used to send off the King’s Ship aren’t for any particular ghost or deity, but refer to a whole tradition of sea gods. Along the coast, hundreds of Lords and Elders have been worshipped for centuries, at least three or four hundred with names and histories. Plague spirits, epidemic ghosts, fierce generals, renowned ministers—of every origin. Their common thread: most served as Water Division officials in life.

But the real trouble lies in that word: ‘but.’ Even if only one Lord or Elder is chosen each year to patrol for heaven, now only a few dozen still enjoy worship; the attrition rate is nearly ninety percent!”

Wang Cheng didn’t know if his father, now the King of the Eastern Sea, transformed into a deity, could suppress the evil in a whole province. But as the heir escorting the King’s Ship, he was painfully aware of his own limits.

“Who am I, really?

I haven’t even fully established this mortal body, let alone received official registration. I don’t need to wait for the evil spirits to drag me off to fill the sea’s eye; just two or three malicious ghosts crossing my path would leave me shriveled and dead.

Without unexpected luck, I’m doomed!”

His mind raced, desperate to find a way to save himself from this impossible predicament.

But the river’s denizens were no longer willing to wait.

Whoosh—

A foul, chill wind swept through the night, sneaking under Wang Cheng’s collar, threatening to freeze his very marrow.

The candle flames upon the incense table before him shrank under invisible pressure, dwindling to mere pinpricks of light. They turned an oily green, then sputtered and burst one after another.

Wang Cheng saw clearly: a wet footprint appeared on the deck beside the ship’s rail.

“Not good, they’ve boarded the ship!”

Soon, the footprints multiplied across the deck.

All around him, the paper-crafted attendants and soldiers began to creak, their bodies jerking as they turned to stare at him.

Their features, carefully painted by the Paper Artisan of the Earth Division, now blurred under the rising humidity. Filthy water dripped down their cheeks, making their faces ever more abstract and nightmarish.

Wang Cheng’s scalp tingled with terror.

He kept in mind the taboo for facing evil spirits: “If your courage falters, half your life is lost.” Yet even as he forced himself to glare back, his heart pounded like a drum.

He didn’t need to look; he knew his three spiritual fires were flickering, close to extinction.

But the true danger was only beginning.

More and more spirits boarded the ship. The consecrated paper figures trembled violently, as if locked in fierce battles within.

Once all the paper bodies were occupied, the stronger spirits pushed out the weaker, forcing them to seek other vessels.

The rest crowded together on the deck, piling up like a tide surging toward Wang Cheng.

He was only flesh and blood, unable to discern the spirits’ forms, but the cold intensified, his breath now visible as white mist.

“Huff... huff... I can’t move!”

To be honest, from the moment he knew he’d been chosen for the King’s Ship, he’d desperately wanted to jump into the river and flee.

But the magistrates of Wu Prefecture and Min Prefecture, masters of eliminating threats to the root, had left no loophole for him.

The King of the Sea was ambushed and killed. Wang Cheng, though spared immediate death, was utterly powerless.

On the incense table before him, beside the offerings, lay a cutout of yellow hemp paper shaped like a person, inscribed in cinnabar with his birth date and time. A peach wood paperweight pressed it down.

It read: “Heaven’s power, earth’s power, and divine power—fixed as Mount Tai. If you refuse my command, you shall fall into the Shadow Mountains.”

This was the classic Lu Ban curse ritual, known as the “Mount Tai Thousand-Pound Anchor,” a specialty of the Earth Division’s Carpenter.

Now, Wang Cheng was like a monkey trapped beneath the Five-Finger Mountain—only his head could move; the rest of his body was utterly paralyzed.

As the evil spirits drew near, he could see, in the dim green candlelight, the twisted faces of ghosts pressing at the edges.

The ship was so steeped in evil that even his shadow upon the deck began to writhe and claw.

A wet, icy hand suddenly gripped his calf. Wang Cheng’s body went numb.

He looked down and nearly vomited on the spot.

It was the drowned ghost of a river drifter, its body swollen and horrific from untold days in the water. Its eyes, eaten away by fish and shrimp, burned only with boundless rage.

If not for the ritual constraints imposed by the King’s Ship, a mere touch would have dragged Wang Cheng into the depths, making him another tragic river corpse.

Even if it couldn’t pull him under, prolonged contact would drain his essence, luck, and the three fires of life, leaving him an empty shell.

Just as despair overwhelmed him—

“Bold devil!”

A thunderous shout rang out. Ahead, the great Royal Banner on the King’s Ship was raised high by a figure.

Buzz—

The entire Nine Dragons River shook. On Wang Cheng’s ship, seventy percent of the ghosts and spirits were shaken loose, screaming as they were pulled toward the lead ship.

The once sinking sailboat began to rise again.

At the same time, a flash of bright blade swept before Wang Cheng, severing the rotten hand with a single stroke.

Recognizing the rescuer, Wang Cheng exclaimed in joy:

“Uncle!”

A dozen fierce warriors in black broke through the evil wind, forming a ring around him with drawn blades. At their head was Wang Duo, third-ranked in the previous generation of the Water-Divining Wang family.

The rest were the elite temple soldiers, the Five Peaks Select, under Wang Zheng’s command.

But no one spoke to him. They simply wielded their blades, holding back the tide of spirits.

Wang Cheng quickly realized—these men had died alongside his father during the ambush.

His joy faded.

They were now little different from the ghosts, sustained only by a trace of incense from Wang Zheng, the new Lord.

Many bore horrific wounds—cuts, arrow holes, and bullet marks.

Death strips humanity, leaving only the deepest regrets. Now, these Five Peaks Select remembered only their last wish: to protect father and son.

“Ah!”

In the fierce melee, one soldier at the edge stumbled, and a swarm of spirits dragged him away, tearing him to pieces.

Wang Cheng’s eyes reddened.

He knew them all intimately.

The first dragged off was He Qi, his father’s trusted guard, always reliable and unsmiling, who often sparred with him. Three days ago, He Qi had taken a bullet for him—otherwise, Wang Cheng would already be dead.

And He Qi was only the beginning.

These newly dead, weakened Five Peaks Select faced enemies tenfold their number, and soon fell one by one before Wang Cheng’s eyes.

Chen Peng, of the Nine Surnames Fishing Boat, always generous to fellow fishermen, though poor himself...

Zhang Cheng, handsome and shy, newly wed thanks to his father’s matchmaking...

Liu Sanjin, hair already white, seasoned sailor and respected by the younger water-diviners...

Yet even as they suffered heavy losses, not one retreated. The flames of their resolve burned ever hotter.

No doubt about it.

Whether the father ahead, holding the Royal Banner to draw the spirits, or these loyal Five Peaks Select—all were ready to stake their lives to win Wang Cheng a slim chance at survival.

And this, perhaps, was the true reason the authorities spared him.

He was trapped by the Mount Tai Thousand-Pound Anchor, while the King of the Sea and his warriors were bound by Wang Cheng himself, compelled to send off the King’s Ship.

With most spirits drawn away and fewer supporters, the King’s Ship beneath Wang Zheng began to sink faster, dragged by the spirits toward the sea’s eye—almost certainly doomed.

“Damn it! Even if all these brothers die for me, do I have a ten or twenty percent chance of survival?

We all have just one life—how could I sit by and let others die for me?”

Creak... creak...

Wang Cheng’s joints crackled, veins bulging as he struggled to stand.

The peach wood paperweight trembled slightly, but never released him. The harder he struggled, the heavier the weight pressed down.

In the end, the veins on the back of his hand were about to burst, yet the paperweight never moved.

Some ghostly Five Peaks Select tried to help, but could not touch the cursed object.

Even the King of the Sea himself would be powerless—the power of ‘Mount Tai’ bound not only Wang Cheng, but these newly born spirits as well.

The officials had left no loophole.

Perhaps it was mere illusion, but Wang Cheng, mind exhausted and blood rushing, thought he heard mocking laughter emanate from the paperweight.

“Heh heh...”

He guessed that the Lu Ban ritualist on the other end was actively performing the rite, able to sense what happened here through the curse.

That subtle tremor earlier was probably deliberate, intended to enjoy the spectacle of the grass-root heir’s futile struggle.

Though Wang Cheng was not truly sixteen, the rage and murderous intent boiling within made his temples throb, his eyes nearly aflame.

He wished he could devour these treacherous officials alive.

With such extreme emotion, if he became a spirit, he’d surely become a first-class savage demon!

Alas, once consigned to the sea’s eye, all would be over—causality severed more cleanly than the massacre of a whole clan. No matter how furious, it would be nothing but impotent rage.

At that moment, the two King’s Ships, laden with evil spirits, finally sailed through the Nine Dragons estuary and into the vast ocean.

“Hmm?”

Wang Cheng, eyes blood-red, suddenly paused.

He found that as the ship entered the sea and the ocean’s vapor brushed his face, brilliant golden light flared between his brows.

About the size of a copper coin, it bore four ancient seal characters: “Four Seas Treasure.”

“This is... the mountain spirit coin I found in the sea?”

Wang Cheng instantly recognized the ancient coin in his mind.

He had just graduated, working as a shipping agent in a coastal city. He’d drowned on his way to customs, trying to retrieve a mountain spirit coin wedged in the rocks, swept away by a sudden tide.

The mountain spirit coin looked like any copper coin—round outside, square inside, symbolizing heaven and earth, the harmony of yin and yang.

It had two sides: one inscribed, the other plain; the inscribed side was yin, the blank side yang.

When Wang Cheng brought it home, one side bore the characters for Mountain Spirit, Thunder Curse, and ‘Five Peaks Treasure’; the other showed waves, a golden toad, and ‘Four Seas Treasure.’

Now, inexplicably, only the side with ‘Four Seas Treasure’ remained, carved with waves and the golden toad.

The ‘Five Peaks Treasure’ half was gone, as if sliced neatly in two.

Wang Cheng had no time to wonder where the other half was, or if it was connected to his arrival in this world.

Grasping at this last straw, he focused intently on the mountain spirit coin.

Looking through the square hole on the inscribed side, he saw only vague shadows—pavilions, bridges, flowing water—too hazy to discern or touch.

He tried the plain side, and a ring of subtle golden light flashed in his eyes; he saw his own immobilized body.

A noble blue-purple aura swirled around him, and then a flood of information entered his mind, as if from a combination of divination and appraisal arts.

[Curio: Wang Cheng (Chief Water-Diviner of the Eastern Sea, only son of the King of the Sea, born October 15, Water Official’s day of deliverance)

Though called a grass-root prince, he is still heir, blessed with the King of the Sea’s inheritance. Identity in transition...

First-generation descendant of the sea god tradition ‘Lord,’ randomly blessed, favored by the Water Division’s thirty-six official lineages; mastery of their arts will come twice as easily.

Yet fated to be swept into the whirlpool of ‘Cursed Sea and Mountain,’ beset by danger, unfit for destiny.

Fate weight: two taels eight coins—life as a drifting reed, ancestral fortune only in dreams; if not adopted or renamed, must migrate to two or three connections.

Value: fifty thousand incense ritual coins (excellent vessel, curio worth keeping, though with mixed fortune)

Stored, freely tradable.]