Chapter Fifteen: The Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Innate Qi can manipulate spiritual energy, absorb primordial essence, and unleash explosive strength akin to the force of dragons and elephants.

But in the end, Innate Qi is still muscle and flesh; a martial artist struck by a bullet can be injured, a blow to a vital point could still bring instant death.

Yet compared to the bodies of ordinary people, your Innate Qi, tempered and refined, is like steel wire—coiling, winding, contracting, and tensing. Not only does its release carry the power to smash stone to sand, but its strength is like rubber mixed with steel threads.

Lan Yi’s words echoed in Geng Liangchen’s mind.

At the time, Geng Liangchen had just broken through to Spiritual Cultivation. When he instinctively turned his mind’s eye to Lan Yi, what he saw was a furious pool of lightning. The figure that appeared human, Lan Yi, was suffused from head to toe with power enough to incinerate and annihilate all carbon-based life. This terrifying might was tightly bound to him, not a trace leaking out.

It was from that moment on that Geng Liangchen’s loyalty and admiration for Lan Yi far surpassed that for anyone else.

A handgun’s bullet can be taken head-on; rifle rounds must be avoided if aimed at vital points. As for heavy machine guns and artillery—no matter how much rubber and steel wire your body contains, they can still tear you apart.

Without the cultivation of Daoist arts, a martial artist relying solely on muscle cannot match modern weaponry.

Thus, the spirit becomes the martial artist’s true reliance.

When the heavy machine gun set up at the street barricade began to sweep and suppress, Geng Liangchen, hidden in the shadows, could judge the weapon’s arc by the muzzle flashes. Every bullet sliced through the air as if each ripple was a wave in water.

As the rhythmic bursts of the heavy machine gun thundered, the charge of the martial artists—fierce as tigers descending the mountain—was immediately forced to a halt. Bodies once seemingly impervious to blades and bullets were instantly shredded by the heavy rounds, sending up bloody sprays! Two unlucky martial artists caught bullets in their eyes, convulsed, collapsed, and died on the spot.

Shock!

Not only were the martial artists stunned, but the soldiers of Dongyang and the foreign observers were even more astonished.

For flesh to be swept by heavy machine gun fire is not merely to spurt blood; it should be pulverized and broken. Yet these martial artists—their bodies...

“Are these martial artists made of iron under the skin?” Jiaxiulong Er’s scalp tingled.

Then came excitement and elation!

Such a method to strengthen the flesh! If it were used on imperial soldiers, then wouldn’t everyone be invincible on the battlefield, sweeping all before them? The great dream of uniting the East, of surpassing the Westerners, would surely be realized in our lifetime!

The martial artists tried to fight back under the hail of machine gun fire.

But with sandbag entrenchments, well-placed gunlines, and a host of soldiers alternating at the machine gun posts, this was not a situation where a dozen martial artists could simply hurl stones and resolve things.

The Dongyang soldiers were not the useless relics of a decrepit regime.

They could withstand artillery, endure blood and death without breaking, and under the discipline and terror of military law, they gritted their teeth and fought back tirelessly. This kind of defiance of basic survival instinct, this ability to stand their ground and continue firing under threat, belonged only to the finest professional soldiers—few among even the foreign powers possessed such mettle.

The martial artists’ momentum was stifled.

Amid the collapsed and ruined streets, a stalemate took hold.

This group, freshly empowered by Lan Yi, having gained extraordinary strength, were not professional soldiers. Immersed in the thrill of newfound power, in awe of the mysterious might of the Immortal Master Lan Yi, they were fine when the tide was in their favor. But to endure death, to see comrades fall before their eyes—that was something the vast majority simply could not yet withstand.

Boom!!!

The thunder of artillery ripped through the air.

A pillar of fire and dust shot skyward, engulfing several martial artists who had gathered in a small building, their hidden weapons unthrown.

The whole street shook violently.

As the smoke and dust cleared, a three-story building had been leveled. Along with it, several martial artists were obliterated. The rest, their eyes already clouded with fear, lost the fervor and arrogance they’d shown before. They remembered the horror of foreign cannons; with the battle lines wavering, collapse seemed imminent.

“Hmph, artillery, is it?”

At that moment, Geng Liangchen’s voice, low and resonant, suddenly reached every ear.

At the Dongyang army’s machine gun emplacement and the two artillery guns set slightly behind, soldiers were working in concert, loading shells, calibrating the sights. Suddenly, a chill ran down their spines.

In the next instant—

Shrouded by a sinister, resentful cold, the Dongyang soldiers erupted in bloodcurdling, tormented screams! Though to outsiders nothing was visible, these men howled as if haunted, as if thousands of vengeful ghosts were gnawing at their souls!

Fear! Uncontrollable terror spread like wildfire!

Every one of those soldiers attacked by Geng Liangchen’s spirit had killed before, had blood debts on this land.

Now, only they could see it.

Those they had brutally slain—whether for sport or by military order—crawled out from the blind corners of their vision, with rotting, yellowed, vicious teeth, gnawing at their flesh. The horror of being devoured alive—who could bear such dread?

This was Geng Liangchen’s Spiritual Cultivation technique:

Scene of the Hungry Ghosts.

Joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness—these are the powers of the spirit. But above them, hatred, murderous intent, injustice, remorse, and guilt, all these complex emotions are an elevation of spiritual force, built upon those four pillars.

From society’s lowest rung,

Before he became a rickshaw puller in Jinmen, Geng Liangchen was a famine refugee, a child of only six or seven.

In years of great hunger, people ate the flesh of others.

He saw with his own eyes as the starving turned to cannibalism—devouring others, devouring themselves. He himself was almost eaten; bitten several times, he barely escaped from the jaws of the hungry ghosts.

He was afraid—terrified to the core!

That bone-deep, psyche-twisting fear drove him from a mere rickshaw puller to a martial master, and from mastery of Qi to the natural progression toward Spiritual Cultivation, all because of this deep-seated, almost invisible extremity of emotion.

Now—

Geng Liangchen was no longer afraid.

He bundled all his fear together, and thrust it into the mind of every perceivable being, letting them all taste, indistinguishably real or false, that living nightmare—Scene of the Hungry Ghosts!

Within several hundred meters,

With a single sweep of Geng Liangchen’s mind, everyone suffered the gnawing of the Hungry Ghosts.

Imagine it.

On the battlefield, your comrades with guns and cannons, one moment perfectly fine, the next plunging into madness, firing wildly, shells exploding indiscriminately—such chaos is nothing short of a nightmare for an army in the era of modern weapons.

Across the city’s most critical machine gun posts and the artillery batteries, indiscriminate fire erupted.

The gunners were already stationed among the infantry for protection.

Now, chaos reigned.

Jiaxiulong Er, sword drawn and commanding the frontlines, barely had time to regain control before he watched in despair as the crazed machine gunner locked down the trigger, a tongue of flame and bullets sweeping directly across his midsection!

It was all too true: a heavy machine gun, sweeping across the waist, could indeed cut a man cleanly in half.