Chapter 166: The Lake of a Thousand Ghosts

Finally… After hearing these words from my master, the sadness in my heart suddenly reached its peak. After all, having a master or not is a completely different concept.

Even if the master is in a spirit state and can’t fight or do anything from now on, as long as he is here, he can also give us great psychological comfort.

This sadness was accompanied by a strong sense of unease. I didn’t know why I was so uneasy. Even if the Grandmaster left, there was no danger. Why should I be uneasy?

My face was pale and I stood next to the boundary stone. Over there, Chengzhen was already excitedly saying, “Grandmaster, why are you leaving us? Aren’t you going to find our master with us? They were your disciples too. They disappeared looking for you. Don’t you…”

Chengzhen was straightforward and outspoken, and I was annoyed by what I heard. I shouted at Chengzhen, “Chengzhen, don’t say anymore. Do you want to be disrespectful to your master?”

Chengzhen, with red eyes, stepped back behind me, but Grandmaster turned and looked at us and said, “If she wants to say something, let her. We Li family members are all natural in our laughter and anger, and we speak the truth, have a true attitude, and our hearts are true! Don’t worry too much about the hierarchy.”

“Grandmaster, since you don’t like rules and are so free and easy, why can’t you be a little more free and easy with us?” Chengyuan couldn’t help but speak up at this moment.

The master said, “I have my own reasons, and I will explain them to you later. But you fought a great battle at the Lake of a Thousand Ghosts. Don’t you want to know what happened?”

Since the Grandmaster said that, I remembered the hint in the video of my master. According to the video, there should be a chance in the Lake of a Thousand Demons. We have been fighting here for so long, but we haven’t seen any chance appear… If we knew about all this, maybe!

Thinking of this, I forced myself to endure the sadness and nodded to the master.

The master didn’t say anything, but looked at the ferryman. The ferryman was already very weak at this point. He leaned against the boundary stone and squinted. Hui Gen was making a fire in front of him. It seemed that he felt the master’s gaze and opened his eyes.

“When Master Hongren was alive, he once said that what can be said has already been let go! What cannot be said is instead a knot in the heart that will never be untied.” The ferryman’s voice was a little weak, and suddenly he spoke these somewhat inexplicable words.

We were silent, and Huigen sat obediently next to the ferryman. The ferryman didn’t look at us, but took a sip of the wine we had asked him for and continued, “Now it’s time to tell you little ones about the past. You are also the ones who helped me to solve my problems. After I have told you everything, my heart will be at peace, and I will leave.”

“Master,” Hui Gen’er whispered. His feelings towards the ferryman were no different from our feelings towards our master.

“Is Huijue okay? From your conversation, I know that Li Chun’er, the little guy from back then, is actually looking for Master Li. According to my apprentice’s personality, he should be the one to go after him. After all, he doesn’t have a monk to protect him.” In response to Hui Gen’er’s call, the ferryman suddenly said that.

“I don’t know if Master is still okay. Because you guessed it right, Grandmaster, Master went with Master Jiang.” Hui Gen’er’s voice became smaller and smaller, and then his eyes turned red.

“As expected, a master is like his disciple. In fact, the relationship between Huijue and Lichun’er is a good analogy for the friendship between me and Ning Zhifeng back then. The only difference is that I have the monk Hongren to protect me, but Huijue doesn’t. What’s more, my disciple has a better eye for people than I do.” At this point, the ferryman took a sip of wine and looked very painful.

We were silent. Their feelings may not have been so strong, but I felt the ferryman’s pain very strongly. After all, my growth trajectory was accompanied not only by my master, but also by the figure of Master Hui. No one knows better than me what their feelings were like. It was a friendship between men that was even closer than brothers, a friendship in which one could entrust one’s life. If this kind of feeling was betrayed, and the two sides became hostile, and one side even had to kill the other, that kind of pain… was like asking me to kill Su Rou and Qin Huai.

So, I suddenly understood the ferryman’s feelings at that time. When faced with the Patriarch’s inquiry, he had never made up his mind and avoided the Patriarch’s gaze.

The ferryman’s voice continued, “Master Hongren was not a person who liked to go out. He spent most of his time studying Buddhism. At that time, I was a martial arts monk, but my heart was restless. I always wanted to travel around the country, see more, be a hero, and enjoy the world! Ning Zhi Feng was my best friend at the time. We had the same aspirations, so we naturally got together. Before I entered the ferry, I spent most of my time with Ning Zhi Feng. We went to many places, encountered many dangers, and had great gains. These experiences made us brothers who were linked by life… Later, even after we each took on disciples, it never changed. As long as we needed each other, we could put down everything in one sentence and accompany each other on adventures.

The ferryman’s words were very simple, but a few words already clearly depicted the friendship and the exciting years of youth at the time.

“We are so good, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any conflicts. In my opinion, traveling is for a chivalrous purpose, for refining the heart in the secular world, and for accumulating merit… But Ning Zhi-feng’s favorite research was the secrets of the circle, as well as the legends of immortals everywhere, and stories of successful cultivation. He traveled to meet various opportunities that would allow him to achieve the Dao. We debated this, but neither of us could convince the other, and in the end, we just stopped talking about it. After all, in my opinion, it is impossible for a cultivator to not seek the Dao and the fruit of cultivation in his life. His thinking is not wrong, as long as he does not do anything that harms the world. Now it seems that I was wrong. At this point, the ferryman’s face showed a hint of bitterness, and he took a big drink.

We all sighed. Yes, it is true to seek the Dao and the fruit of cultivation, but if you focus on it so much that you forget to temper your heart and mind, it is very easy to go astray. Even if you end up becoming a being that goes against the heavens, you will still not be recognized as having achieved the Dao and the fruit of cultivation. Why can’t many cultivators realize this? Or is it that they are too desperate on the path of cultivation and are willing to take more extreme measures to give themselves a chance?

I am still young and cannot understand this state of mind, so I have no way to solve this doubt.

“The Lake of a Thousand Ghosts was our last adventure. After that, he became the new lord of the city here, and I became the ferryman here! I don’t want to go into the details of the process, but in the end, I discovered that Ning Zhi-feng had already been practicing in an extreme way. Many times, my adventures with him were to find something to help him practice! He used high-sounding reasons to deceive me, and the Lake of a Thousand Ghosts was his final step.” The ferryman’s tone changed quickly, but we were confused and didn’t understand what he meant.

The master sighed and added, “The meaning is simple. Taoist cultivation emphasizes the integration of body and spirit, and the ultimate goal is the metaphysical! This is the Taoist way, and to put it more simply, it is the connection between the body and the soul that allows one to attain the Tao! At the very least, it is the accumulation of enough merit in the soul that allows one to receive enough protection and be reborn to cultivate again! But either of these two paths can be called a misty path to immortality, and the difficulty is self-evident.”

At this point, the master paused and said, “Ning Zhi-feng is also a talented person, but what is frightening is that his pursuit of the Dao has reached a point of obsession! He is afraid that life is limited and that he is powerless to attain the Dao, so he simply uses his talents to embark on a crooked path, becoming a person who specializes in the soul. But this is not the kind of righteous cultivation that accumulates merit, but rather the cultivation of light, the practice of light, a single powerful soul, and a complete abandonment of the flesh! He also abandoned the heart of the Tao that a Taoist should have. To put it more clearly, he began to practice evil Taoism thoroughly, and the ferryman unintentionally became an accomplice in his search for various resources.

“If that’s all, it’s fine. A building with an unstable foundation will always collapse, and he will suffer the consequences of his own actions, seeing his life of cultivation turn to water. Even if I was an accomplice, I was only ignorant and not guilty, after all, I didn’t harm the innocent.” The ferryman said that sentence, and then continued, “But why is he willing to do this? So he tricked me into coming to the Lake of a Thousand Demons because he knew that there was a Kunlun soul suppressed here. To be precise, it should be said that there was a Kunlun spiritual power. This kind of power should not be possessed by humans, so it was suppressed here. His final step was to try to merge with the Kunlun soul.

“The ferryman was used in this way, and together with Ning Zhifeng, he destroyed part of the outer great formation, and even destroyed a small part of the great formation of heaven and earth, and then this result was caused…” the master added.

“Yes, if it weren’t for the destruction of a small part of the Heaven and Earth Formation, how could the negative energy here have leaked out? If it weren’t for the destruction of a part of the outer formation, how could the leaked negative energy have spread so far? It’s easy to destroy a formation, but difficult to repair it… Even if the Heaven and Earth Formation could repair itself, it would take time, and in that time he would have had enough time to do many things. Poor him, he lied to me back then, saying that there was an evil presence here that threatened the entire country, and he urged me to come here, but he never imagined that the person next to me was that evil presence. The ferryman sighed.

This is probably the whole story. This is the real reason why the Lake of a Thousand Demons suddenly became turbulent. The great formation was destroyed, and Ning Zhifeng successfully fused with the soul of Kunlun… Although the ferryman’s description was very brief, and even omitted many of the processes from that year, we were able to get the general idea.

“What was his goal?” I couldn’t help but ask. Since Ning Zhifeng had successfully merged with the soul of Kunlun, what was the point of him doing so many things?