The Yama Ghosthead Seal was a unique seal art used by the Yaksha to locate and track a target.
Tang Jie had heard of this seal before, but he had not seen it before, so he didn’t even know when he had been imprinted with this seal.
He had made Little Three leave not only because he needed resources, but because he didn’t want Little Three to get swept up in the coming battle. He knew Little Three well, and if he were ever in danger, Little Three would undoubtedly fight to the death.
Although he was a ghost, he had always treated Tang Jie as a father. To him, Tang Jie was his only relative, even if humans and ghosts ultimately had to walk different paths.
There was no way Tang Jie could let him die.
Once Little Three was gone, Tang Jie darkly sighed and began to walk in another direction.
He didn’t dare to return to the Yan River for fear that the seal would expose his route to that Yaksha. The possibilities of this were low, but not low enough to disregard.
Tang Jie just flew along, going forward without regard for where he was actually heading. As he flew, the sense of danger approaching from behind grew stronger and stronger.
It was like something was chasing him down, unwilling to give up.
Soon, a giant black ship appeared in the skies of the Nether Domain.
This ship was made entirely from skulls, each skull bearing an expression of sorrow, or pain, or tragedy, or lament, all the while yowling and screaming. Countless ghosts manned the deck, taking on all kinds of forms and exuding a sinister aura.
The ship had no sails or oars, but wherever it went, countless ghostly hands would reach out from the earth and hold the ship up. These white hands grew out of the ground like stalks of garlic, but they disappeared once the ship had passed.
Tang Jie was startled when he saw this giant black ship. “A Ghost March Ship!”
There were records of this ship in the Yellow Springs Dao Seeking Scripture. It was one of the ships of the Nether Domain, and it was said that a hundred ghosts carried this ship along, capable of carrying the ship over land across vast distances.
These were not everyday tools of transport in the Nether Domain, so that Yaksha must have had some status if he could command one to chase after him.
Atop that ship was a throne of white bone upon which sat that Yaksha from before. Flanking him were two dog-headed ghosts, each wielding a scythe.
Tang Jie knew that these doghead ghosts were Nether Domain ghost emissaries specifically trained in the capturing of living souls.
As ghost emissaries often appeared in the mortal plane to bring back the souls of the living, they were the ghosts that were the most familiar to humans.
The vast lands of the Nether Domain were home to countless ghost cities, the territories they controlled corresponding to the worlds of the mortal plane. Different Nether cities had different ghost emissaries. The Black and White Impermanences were another kind of common ghost emissary. As for these ghost emissaries, they were normally called Nether Attendants.
One Yaksha, two Nether Attendants, and a pile of ghost generals and nobles was an impressive force.
But Tang Jie was nonchalant, and as he and the Yaksha exchanged gazes, sparks seemed to burst between them.
But they were thinking different things.
Upon the Ghost March Ship, Maraju chuckled, “Finally couldn’t run anymore?”
Far off in the distance, Tang Jie muttered, “It wasn’t the Yaksha I saw last time.”
Although all Yaksha looked the same to humans, someone as observant as Tang Jie had noticed the difference. This Yaksha was slightly shorter and a little lacking in aura.
Realizing this, Tang Jie asked, “I have a question I’d like to ask.”
“What?” Maraju said in surprise.
For him to finally catch up to a target he had been chasing for some time only for the target to ask a question left him feeling rather awkward.
Tang Jie said, “How did you manage to get the Yama Ghosthead Seal onto me?”
Maraju froze for a moment, and then he laughed. “Is that what you wanted to know? Do you really think my Infant Seed’s death was solely to transmit a message?”
So it really was that Infant Seed’s fault?
Tang Jie nodded. “Then how do I get rid of it?”
Maraju was once more taken aback. “What did you say?”
Tang Jie indifferently said, “You’ve already caught up to me, so it’s not like you need this seal anymore. What’s the harm in telling me? Or are you not confident that you can catch me with all those ghosts?”
After a brief pause, Maraju erupted in laughter. “I’ve heard that humans are crafty, and it seems that it’s true. An excellent provocation, and this Maraju accepts. You want to remove that ghosthead seal? Simple—find an Infant Seed, kill it, and then bathe yourself in its essence soul. This will remove the seal.”
He had to find an Infant Seed to remove it?
Tang Jie frowned. “It’s rather troublesome.”
Maraju heartily laughed. “Not troublesome at all. Once I seize you, devour your flesh, and drain your vitality, there will be no need to remove the seal, hahahaha!”
He thrust his hand at Tang Jie’s head.
Tang Jie clenched his fist and punched at the air, the energy fist colliding with Maraju’s hand.
Bang! Tang Jie was sent flying.
Maraju’s cultivation was above his, and the Yakshas had always been famous for their powerful physical bodies, so this casual strike actually contained tremendous energy.
After pushing back Tang Jie, Maraju snorted, “You’re nothing much. You can’t even block thirty percent of my power. There’s no need for me to intervene any more than this. The two of you, go and catch him.”
He waved his hand, upon which two ghost generals flew out.
One of these ghost generals flitted around like a wisp, while the other was a bronze zombie with an extremely tough and powerful body.
Upon disembarking, the wisp-like ghost general shrieked, “Arrogant human, hurry and accept your death!”
He turned into a dark cloud and swept toward Tang Jie. Despite being an illusion, it seemed to have real mass, and countless wails could be heard from within, wisps emerging from it to grab Tang Jie’s soul and take it away.
Tang Jie formed a hand sign, and a ray of sunlight was unleashed, causing the wisps to scream and fall back, the dark cloud vanishing as well.
The wisp ghost general then let out a shriek, firing a sonic arrow to pierce Tang Jie’s ear drums.
“RAAA!” Tang Jie roared, imbuing his voice with the power of the Four Nine True Words, shattering the general’s sonic attack and making him shudder.
This ghost general had wanted to get all the glory by taking Tang Jie first, but after his first two attacks had been broken, he knew that he was dealing with a formidable opponent. He angrily cursed, “What is that stupid corpse doing!”
Of course, he was talking about his fellow ghost general.
That zombie said nothing, simply raising his head a little and striding toward Tang Jie. He was deceptively fast, reaching Tang Jie in only a few steps and then punching at Tang Jie.
Tang Jie returned with a punch, and through the impact, Tang Jie sensed that this zombie’s strength was on par with the amount Maraju had used in his palm strike, and Tang Jie was pushed back once more.
The zombie opened his mouth and roared, then he swung his fist again.
Tang Jie didn’t dare to try and meet it this time, swiftly evading and firing off a bolt of sword energy from his finger. The sword energy attempted to penetrate the zombie’s body in a brilliant light, but the bronze zombie’s body had been refined to be almost impervious.
Tang Jie began to dart here and there, firing off several dozen blasts, but the bronze zombie seemed utterly immune, continuing to swing his arms and chase after Tang Jie. There was a putrid odor in the air as he moved, and his fingertips were coated with poison, so Tang Jie had no other choice but to keep retreating.
The wisp general only now arrived, summoning a bone-scraping gale at Tang Jie.
Tang Jie had no choice but to take one of the bronze zombie’s attacks, and the shock sent all of the energy in his body into turmoil.
These two generals were a perfect combination, the evasive one serving as support and the powerful and tough one serving as the attacker, and it gave Tang Jie quite the headache.
The battle entered a stalemate.
On the Ghost March Ship, Maraju shook his head. “I thought he was more formidable than this, so I even came personally, but he’s not that impressive. I really don’t know how he managed to kill Gui Yin’s group.”
Gui Yin was the ghost general that Tang Jie had killed earlier. While he had been a single ghost general, he had also been leading many ghost soldiers, so in terms of strength, his force had been on par with the ghost general pair. Maraju had wanted to see what exactly Tang Jie was capable of, but to his surprise, the two ghost generals were easily pushing him back, so he quickly lost his interest.
Just when he was about to order his generals to go ahead and capture Tang Jie, there was a new development.
The wisp ghost general suddenly yelped and took to the skies, his smoky body starting to melt away like snow. At the same time, Tang Jie chopped his right hand across the neck of the bronze zombie, and there was a brilliant white flash. The bronze zombie swayed, a thin line appearing on his neck.
The line instantly extended across the entirety of his neck, and with a crack, the zombie’s head fell off. The zombie continued charging forward after Tang Jie, but it had lost its sense of direction and could only wander around aimlessly.
But Tang Jie’s complexion had grown a little paler. The two attacks just now had clearly been rather taxing.
The sudden turn left Maraju momentarily startled, but then he erupted in laughter. “Good, good, good! That’s how to make things interesting! Let’s send in a few more!”
Maraju waved his hand, and four more ghost generals charged into the fray.