The night was cool as water, moonless and windy, the sky thick with oppressive clouds, not a single star visible. A brief gust of wind brushed against the exposed skin, immediately raising goosebumps that refused to subside.

Ji Ping stepped slowly into the Daoist temple. The main door wasn't locked, but the rear courtyard gate was tightly shut.

He hesitated for a moment, then raised his hand to knock. He could have easily kicked the thin wooden door open, but he didn't want to alert anyone just yet.

Before long, the door swung inward, and Wang Hai appeared, rubbing his arms together.

Seeing Ji Ping outside, Wang Hai looked surprised. "Why is it you? Where are the other two? They said they were looking for you."

Ji Ping moved past him without showing any reaction, casually remarking, "Didn't see them. Probably took a wrong turn."

Wang Hai frowned, then asked, "You came back alone? Didn't you say you were going to find that gas station manager surnamed Lu? Did you find him?"

Ji Ping didn't look back. "He's missing. Something likely happened. Is the Old Daoist Priest here?"

Wang Hai followed him in. "He's preparing some sort of ritual ceremony."

Without much explanation from Wang Hai, Ji Ping could already see the backyard was vastly different from before. The formerly empty space now held a long table draped with yellow cloth painted with talismans. Several items rested on the table; Ji Ping glanced over them—they were quite ordinary: a jade Ruyi, a Tianpeng Ruler, a pedestal wood, a Dharma Sword, and several other ritual implements. Two candles, thick as a baby's arm, stood lit on either side of the table. It was clear these weren't ordinary items, as each candle bore golden runes.

A faint, almost imperceptible fragrance permeated the courtyard. Ji Ping found it gave him a headache; he couldn't quite place the scent, something like sandalwood, unsure if it was emanating from the candles.

However, he soon realized the scent was coming from the three sticks of incense held by Zhang Xiaohui on the other side. These incense sticks were as thick as a little finger but a full arm's length long, which startled Ji Ping. It seemed the Old Daoist Priest had quite a few potent props in his possession.

Yet, Ji Ping wasn't overly concerned. As the saying goes: the Dao rises one foot, the demon rises ten. In a sense, Daoists were like the police; they could only enter their working state after an incident occurred. This left them passive in most situations, capable only of solving problems, not preventing them, and certainly unable to gauge the opponent's capabilities or strength beforehand.

Ji Ping had no intention of acting yet. As long as he intervened at the right moment, tonight would pass smoothly. For now, gaining their trust was paramount.

Wang Hai hurried a few steps forward and pressed a simple switch. Suddenly, the courtyard blazed with light. This was likely Wang Hai’s contribution: several electric wires had been strung across the air in the yard, and the bulbs instantly illuminated the space. The backyard could truly be described as brightly lit.

This new view allowed Ji Ping to observe another detail: the strange house sealed by the "Nine Revolving Soul-Suppressing Formation" was now entirely covered in a layer of glutinous rice. The Old Daoist Priest was just moving a vat of glutinous rice out of the side room.

Ji Ping quickly moved over to help him carry it out and place it beside the long table. The Old Daoist Priest caught his breath, then inquired about the others. Ji Ping repeated his earlier account to the Old Daoist Priest.

Upon hearing that Feng Tian and Kuang Feifan were out of contact, the Old Daoist Priest couldn't help but frown, a look of worry crossing his face. Ji Ping reassured him, telling him not to worry, as those two were formidable and unlikely to face mortal danger.

The Old Daoist Priest nodded with resignation. "The situation is a bit troublesome now. Let's begin and try our best to suppress the power emanating from the formation."

"How do we do it?" Ji Ping asked.

The Old Daoist Priest pointed to the long table. "I will be the center. You and Wang Hai stand on either side of me, and Little Zhang behind. If Feng Tian and the others were here, we could set up a proper array, but now we can only try our hardest. Even though Little Zhang is a woman, I can use the burning incense to mask her innate Yin energy for a while."

Ji Ping raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected the three sticks of incense in Zhang Xiaohui’s hands to have such a function. It seemed the Old Daoist Priest had accumulated quite an inventory over the years.

The ritual the Old Daoist Priest intended to perform didn't actually require Ji Ping or Wang Hai to actively participate, nor did it strictly need Zhang Xiaohui, as the three of them were essentially acting as guardians.

However, the setup was clearly not complete. The Old Daoist Priest then arranged the Eight Trigrams on the ground using the candles and lit them one by one. He didn't use an ordinary lighter; instead, he drew the flame from a perpetual lamp kept in the side room—a fire source supposedly captured from sunlight at high noon.

The ceremony the Old Daoist Priest prepared wasn't an elaborate spectacle. He donned his Seven-Star Crown, draped himself in the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Robe, and wore his Cloud-Treading Boots. He instructed Wang Hai and Ji Ping to stand three chi behind him, spaced equally on either side, holding banners topped with decorative canopies. Zhang Xiaohui stood seven chi away on the same line as him. The four stood in a diamond shape, directly facing the windowless, doorless house.

By this time, the long table was fully arranged. In the context of the ritual, this table was called the Jiao Altar, but the Old Daoist Priest only needed part of it, set up exclusively for his own spellcasting. Thus, it held only the items he required: between the two candle stands, an incense burner was placed, beside it an incense tube and a flower vase. Behind these were burning incense, fresh flowers, and lit lamps, followed by a bowl of water without a base (wugen shui) and sacrificial fruit.

There should have been various percussion instruments, but given the limited number of people, the Old Daoist Priest omitted them, sticking only to those few ritual implements.

Ji Ping remained impassive, observing coldly. He wasn't very knowledgeable about such ceremonies, but he knew the opponent the Old Daoist Priest was about to face. The likelihood of suppressing the "Nine Revolving Soul-Suppressing Formation" and everything within it using only these items wasn't high.

He looked up at the sky. The previously thick clouds seemed to be thinning; time was running short. Everything was basically ready; all that was needed was a final push from him, the necessary wind.

He glanced back at Zhang Xiaohui, who was holding the incense, and a thought formed in his mind—this perceived weakness might be exploitable.

Just then, the Old Daoist Priest initiated the spell. He snatched up the Demon-Slaying Peachwood Sword in one hand and flicked his fingers in the other. Instantly, a stone wrapped in yellow paper shot out, striking a corner of the house.

Ji Ping started, his eyes widening, his pupils suddenly contracting. Only then did he notice that the two eaves corners facing them on the house each had a small bronze bell hanging from them. Because he hadn't paid close attention to the house earlier, and the bells' color blended almost perfectly with the eaves, they were virtually invisible in the dim light. Seeing two bells, he presumed there should be one hanging from each of the four corners. Though Ji Ping didn't know the bells' purpose, the Old Daoist Priest's execution was swift and clean, indicating prior preparation. He was slightly worried about the effect of this opening move—whether it would harm whatever was inside the house.

The stone hit the bronze bell with a crisp clang. However, the ringing didn't stop; instead, it became continuous. Even more astonishingly, as one bell sounded, the bell in the opposite corner seemed to be struck as well, emitting a dang-dang sound. This was quickly followed by the third and fourth bells. Once one was struck, the four bronze bells seemed to catch an infection and began to ring in unison.

As all four bells rang out fully, the Old Daoist Priest began chanting incantations, his Dharma Sword tracing one incomprehensible symbol after another in the air. It looked like random scribbling, but upon closer inspection, a pattern was discernible. Each symbol drawn by the sword briefly manifested in the air, as if condensed from mist, and streams of these ephemeral symbols flew toward the house.

If Feng Tian were present, he would surely exclaim, "Drawing talismans across the air!"

Of course, this wasn't an exceptionally profound ability, but few modern mages could perform it. All the talismans the Old Daoist Priest sent out belonged to the "Suppression" character formula, intended to press down the activated "Nine Revolving Soul-Suppressing Formation." The bronze bells, glutinous rice, and the Eight Trigrams formed by candles were all safeguards to prevent the energy discharged by the formation from spilling out of the backyard, which could easily affect the ordinary people in the town.

The moment the first talisman struck the wall of the house and dissolved within it, a plume of deep grey, thick smoke rapidly erupted from the hole where a roof tile had been removed. This didn't look like ordinary smoke; it didn't rise into the sky as smoke typically does. Instead, it seemed to gain form, clinging to the roof and flowing down the wall like a headless serpent, sliding all the way to the ground.

But the ground was covered in glutinous rice. The grey smoke reacted as if encountering its nemesis, darting left and right only on the ground beneath the wall, unable to find a way through the glutinous rice perimeter.

The flesh on Ji Ping's face involuntarily twitched a few times. He was contemplating whether this was the moment to act when the snake-like grey smoke suddenly ceased its movement. Then, as if preparing to strike a living being, the foremost part of the mist coiled and lifted off the ground, resembling the raised head of a poised serpent. Yet, it showed no intent to pounce; it merely continued to rise upward.

Simultaneously, a mass of dark cyan smoke poured out of the hole in the roof, drifting straight toward the grey smoke and merging with it. The two plumes wrapped around each other like twisted rope, spiraling upward. The interweaving smoke was substantial enough to stir the air, and a small vortex gradually formed, showing signs of growing stronger. Not only was the glutinous rice scattered on the ground being blown away by the wind, but even the sound of the corner bells was becoming faintly drowned out by the rising, whooshing sound of the wind.

The Old Daoist Priest's expression hardened. The talismans his sword was drawing in the air immediately changed, and he shouted, "Little Zhang, Soul-Calming Bell!"

As he spoke, Zhang Xiaohui froze for a moment, then suddenly understood with an "Oh," fumbling to unhook a bronze bell from behind her waist and shaking the handle haphazardly.

Accompanied by the sound of the bronze bell, the Old Daoist Priest moved his sword in a dance while treading strange steps around the long table. Faintly red runes materialized in the air beneath the oscillating tip of his sword and flew toward the vortex.

Everyone watched as the talismans vanished into the wind. After the first strike, the movements of the two interwoven smoke plumes instantly stalled. As more talismans hit their mark, the vortex could no longer expand, suggesting it would soon weaken.

Wang Hai had been watching the Old Daoist Priest’s every move with wide eyes. His tense, anxious expression had eased, and seeing a chance for victory, he let out a long sigh of relief, raising a hand to wipe the cold sweat from his face.

Ji Ping, however, frowned deeply. He shot a cold glance at Zhang Xiaohui, a sudden thought flashing through his mind. He cried out "Ouch!" with sudden intensity, stumbling violently forward, crashing straight toward Zhang Xiaohui.