Tianjin, starting with unorthodox methods to achieve immortality

The boat traveled for about twenty more minutes before the dock came into view.

It's called a dock, but it's really just a few crooked cement piles stuck in the water, with a few wooden planks on top of them. The gaps between the planks are big enough to fit a fist.

A muddy road extends from the dock to a few gray tiled houses on the shore.

One of the shops had a wooden sign hanging on its facade, with white background and black characters. Most of the paint had peeled off, but the words "Old Zhou Incense and Candles" could still be barely made out.

Master Long personally steered the Jianglong, keeping it firmly attached to those crooked cement pillars.

A sailor jumped overboard and secured the ship to the sturdiest-looking stake with a rope. He gave it a couple of hard tugs, and the stake wobbled but didn't fall over.

"This is fine."

Master Long turned off the main unit and stepped out of the cockpit. "Master Chen, come with me."

Li Jinrong's expression was still not good, but when he heard that they were going ashore, he insisted on going with them.

He had been cooped up on the ship all day and felt like his bones were about to fall apart. He couldn't have been happier to be able to stand on solid ground now.

Shen Yunjin helped him out of the cabin.

Five people jumped onto the dock.

Master Long walked in front, with Tie Kun following behind him, his left hand unconsciously resting on the holster at his waist.

Li Jinrong walked in the middle, with Shen Yunjin holding his arm.

Chen Mo walked at the back, his sword tucked into his waistband, his steps neither hurried nor slow.

The muddy road was narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and the sides were covered with waist-high wild grass.

As we approached those tiled houses, the wooden signs on the doors swayed slightly in the night breeze.

Master Long raised his hand and knocked on the door.

No one answered.

He knocked three more times, this time with more force.

A coughing sound came from inside the door, and an old voice cursed something inside. It was hard to make out what the curse was, but the tone was very impatient.

The door opened a crack, and a gaunt face peeked out from the gap.

The old man looked to be in his seventies, with sparse, gray hair.

Its eyes are very bright, and its pupils are light brown.

"Who is it?" The old man's voice was hoarse, with a heavy riverside accent.

"It's me, Old Dragon." Old Dragon put his face close to the crack in the door.

The old man glanced at him, his expression unchanged, but he opened the door a little wider.

"You're not dead yet?"

"Thanks to you, I'm still alive." Old Master Long smiled and squeezed through the crack in the door.

Tie Kun and his group followed behind.

The house wasn't big, with two rooms, one inside and one outside.

The outer room was the shop front, with yellow paper and incense sticks stacked on shelves against the wall. In the corner were several paper figures, both male and female, with red faces painted on their faces and blank expressions.

The old man walked behind the counter, glanced at the five people who came in, and his gaze lingered for a moment on the bulging area at Tie Kun's waist.

"Speak, what is it?"

Grandpa Long pulled up a chair and sat down, then recounted everything that had happened on the river.

The old man remained silent until Master Long finished speaking, after which he remained silent for a long time before finally asking, "You mean Jiang Shi?"

"Yes." Master Long nodded.

"That thing is extremely evil."

He looked up at Master Long, then turned his gaze to Chen Mo, lingering there for several breaths.

"What are you transporting on your ship?" the old man suddenly asked.

Master Long's expression changed slightly, but he did not answer.

The old man sneered, "I wouldn't bother asking if you didn't tell me, but I can't help you with this."

"Master Zhou..." Master Long was about to speak when the old man waved his hand to interrupt him.

It's not that I'm not giving you face.

The old man stood up, took a stack of yellow paper from the shelf, and slowly folded it. "This kind of thing, the Jiang Corpse, hasn't appeared in this area for decades."

"It came out, which means there's something on your ship that attracted it. I don't want to die, and I don't want to get into this mess."

Master Long opened his mouth as if to say something, but was stopped by Li Jinrong.

The fat man pulled out a handful of silver notes from his pocket and slammed them onto the counter.

Under the lamplight, the banknotes were scattered on the counter, colorful and of various denominations, totaling at least five or six hundred silver dollars.

The old man's hand, which was folding paper, paused.

"Do me a favor, and whether I succeed or fail, it's all yours."

The room fell silent.

The old man slowly put down the yellow paper in his hand, reached out and spread out the silver notes, looking at them one by one.

The watermark is clear, and the paper is crisp; they are all genuine.

He gathered the banknotes together, neither accepting them nor pushing them back, but simply placing them in the corner of the counter and weighing them down with an inkstone.

"Young man, you are very wealthy." The old man sat back down in his bamboo chair and sighed deeply. "But some things cannot be solved with money."

"That's because we haven't spent enough money." The fat man rubbed his index finger. "Money makes the world go round. If it's not enough, I can add more."

The old man stared at him for several seconds before finally closing his eyes and remaining silent for a long time, as if he were struggling with himself.

"I can only give it a try."

After several seconds, he finally spoke, "If that thing is too fierce, I won't be able to handle it. You'll have to figure it out yourselves. I can't guarantee it will work."

Master Long nodded quickly: "Of course."

The old man stood up, went into the inner room, and didn't come out for quite a while.

At this moment, he changed into a dark blue Taoist robe, which had been washed until it was almost white.

He had a black cloth belt tied around his waist, from which hung a palm-sized bronze mirror and a small cloth bag.

He held a peach wood sword in his right hand, the blade of which was engraved with twisted evil-slaying runes.

He rummaged through the cabinet and found three incense sticks, a stack of talismans, a small jar of yellow wine, and also caught a live black rooster from the backyard and put it in a bamboo cage.

"Let's go."

The old man put the things into a bamboo basket, carried it out the door.

The six people walked back to the dock along the muddy road.

The night breeze blew across the river, carrying the fishy smell of water and the fresh scent of reeds.

The moon had risen, its red light spreading across the river, turning the water into a dark red river of blood.

He led the group to the mudflats near the dock, placed the bamboo baskets aside, and looked up at the sky.

The river breeze was stronger than before, causing his gray hair to flutter in front of his forehead and the hem of his Taoist robe to rustle.

"This is fine."

The old man took things out of the bamboo basket one by one, saying without looking up, "There's not enough space on the boat, it's not spacious enough. It's better on land, it's close to the ground."

He told Master Long to lead the others to retreat to the earthen slope above the dock, at least twenty meters away from here.

The fat man was about to say something when Master Long grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

The group retreated to the top of the slope and stood under a crooked willow tree, watching from a distance.

"You stay." The old man pointed at Chen Mo, who also wanted to leave: "That thing is coming for you, you have to stay here."

"All right."

The shadow beneath Chen Mo's feet silently split open and scattered in all directions. He slowly walked to a position three meters behind the old man and stood still.

He always felt that the old man was a bit unreliable.

Under Chen Mo's watchful gaze, the old man squatted down, inserted three incense sticks into the mud puddle, and lit the incense.

The wisps of smoke rose, but were blown crookedly and irregularly by the river wind.

He then took out the jar of yellow wine from the bamboo basket, removed the mud seal, and poured it around the perimeter.

"The profound origin of Heaven and Earth, the root of all Qi. Through countless eons of cultivation, I will attain my divine powers..."

After doing all this, the old man drew his peach wood sword and held it horizontally in front of him. He made a hand seal with his left hand, holding a piece of yellow paper covered with cinnabar runes between his fingertips, and muttered incantations.

"Throughout the Three Realms, only the Dao is supreme. My body is enveloped in golden light..."

The talisman paper moved automatically without any wind.

The three incense sticks on the mudflat burned extremely quickly, and the smoke, which had been twisting and turning, rose straight up as if pulled by invisible threads, before being dispersed by the river breeze.

Halfway through his recitation, the old man suddenly opened his eyes, bit his tongue, and spat a mouthful of blood mist onto the peach wood sword.

The runes on the sword immediately lit up.

"Lord Laozi, may your command be fulfilled immediately!"

He pointed his sword at the river.

In that instant, the two lanterns hanging on the dock flickered out for a moment and then lit up again.

Long Ye and his companions stood on the earthen slope and subconsciously took a half step back.

.....

By the river, after the old man finished his ritual, he took a kitchen knife from his bamboo basket and pulled the black rooster out of its cage.

The rooster seemed to sense something was wrong and frantically flapped its wings.

The old man remained unmoved, pressed it down on the muddy ground, and slashed the chicken's neck horizontally with the blade.

Chicken blood gushed out.

He carried the chicken, sprinkled the blood evenly on the ground, and drew an arc along the boundary between the river and the mudflat.

Finally, he threw the still-twitching dead chicken into the middle of the river.

The chicken carcass tumbled a few times in mid-air before landing on the water, splashing up a small droplet.

The river breeze has stopped.

The flame inside the lantern no longer flickered.

The water surface became unusually calm, like a black mirror, reflecting the dark red moon in the sky.

A chill crept in from the river.

"They're here."

The old man said something in a hoarse voice.

Chen Mo stood behind him, his sword already half-drawn.

Fog began to rise on the river.

The mist rose from the water, initially just a thin layer, drifting along the surface, but it quickly thickened and became denser, as if something was stirring up the riverbed, bringing out all the yin energy that had accumulated over thousands of years.

The fog was gray and carried an indescribable stench, like the smell of dead fish and rotten shrimp mixed with silt.

The fog grew thicker and thicker, spreading from the river to the shore and soon engulfing the entire dock.

The three incense sticks lit by the old man flickered in the mist, their smoke billowing and swirling close to the ground.

"Heaven and earth are natural, and the impurities disperse..." The old man began chanting the incantation again, his voice much louder than before, but clearly trembling.

The runes on the peach wood sword flickered in and out of the mist, as if they were wrestling with something.

Suddenly, a bubble appeared on the surface of the water.

A large bubble, about half a meter in diameter, rose from the bottom of the water and burst open with a "pop," the splashing water lingering in mid-air for a moment before falling back down.

The old man's expression changed drastically. He took a handful of glutinous rice from his cloth bag with his left hand and threw it onto the river.

The glutinous rice fell onto the water's surface but didn't sink; instead, it floated, each grain turning black as if contaminated by something.

The fog suddenly dissipated.

It was as if something had opened its mouth and sucked back the mist that stretched for dozens of feet in all directions.

The water surface exploded.

Something stood up from the water.

It has no feet; its lower body is a thick mass of black water, connected to the river, making it impossible to distinguish where its body ends and the river begins.

Something stood up from the water.

It has no feet; its lower body is a thick mass of black water, connected to the river, making it impossible to distinguish where its body ends and the river begins.

The upper body was vaguely human-shaped, but the skin was bluish-white, like a corpse that had been soaking in water for a very long time.

Its facial features were indistinct, with only a pair of bright eyes that shone with an eerie dark red color, coldly staring at Chen Mo and the other person on the shore.

The most peculiar thing is that its body is covered with layers of water, which seems to be alive, constantly moving and wriggling on its body, making a "splashing" sound.

Upon seeing this, the old man's face turned pale, and the peach wood sword in his hand fell to the ground with a "thud," as if all his strength had been drained away.

"Damn it, isn't this Jiang the Corpse..."

"This was a water-related evil spirit... but it's already neutralized... it's over..."

When Chen Mo heard those two words, his pupils contracted slightly.

He had never seen a Water Demon, but he had heard of it.

That was something a hundred times more ferocious than the Jiang Shi.

The resentment of those who drowned lingered underwater for decades or even centuries, absorbing the resentment of countless spirits, and slowly grew into a malevolent entity.

The water is its domain; it can easily capsize even an entire boat, let alone a few people.

Chen Mo glanced at the old man, tucked the sword back into his waistband, and instantly retreated.

Before it fully reveals itself, let's run.

But he only had time to take one step.

A giant wave rose from the river surface without any warning, reaching a height of over two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters), like a moving wall of water, crashing towards the dock with immense force.

That's too fast.

It was so fast that Chen Mo didn't even have time to run.

He felt everything go black, and all he could hear was the roar of water. The cold, foul-smelling river water pounded down on him, and he was shoved into the water.

---

On the earthen slope.

As the fog thickened, Long Ye and his companions could see nothing at all, only vaguely discern two lanterns swaying in the fog on the dock.

Later, the thick fog dissipated, and giant waves rose up.

A water wall more than two zhang high rose out of thin air on the river, gleaming with a dark red light under the moonlight.

In the blink of an eye, it landed on the mudflats below.

They moved so fast that they didn't even have time to warn anyone.

Master Long's face turned even more ashen than a dead man's in an instant.

"Water Fiend!" he cried out in alarm. "It's a water fiend! Not a river corpse! Run..."

He pulled everyone back to the highest point quickly.

"boom!"

With a deafening roar like an earthquake, waves splashed three or four meters high, and spray flew onto the earthen slope, hitting several people in the face.

It was icy cold and had a strong, fishy smell.

The dock was gone, and the Jianglong was swept away by the giant wave and pushed to the middle of the river.

The old man and Chen Mo were swallowed up completely by the wall of water.

Li Jinrong knelt on the ground with a "plop," his lips trembling as he couldn't utter a complete sentence.

Shen Yunjin squatted down and hugged him, her own eyes reddening.

"It's over."

Lord Long muttered to himself, his face trembling, "Water evil... This is damn water evil, a thing to neutralize evil. Don't even mention the two of them, even if a whole battalion came, I could drag them all to the bottom of the river..."

Tie Kun stared intently at the river, his face extremely grim.

The water was still churning. The giant wave did not calm down after it crashed down. Instead, it seemed to be stirred up by something, with one whirlpool after another swirling on the surface, bubbling and gurgling.

"Master Long, is there still hope for those two?"

Master Long didn't answer, or rather, he simply didn't know how to answer.