Ling followed Dax into the musty cellar entrance.

  Inside was only a rusty vertical ladder, wide enough for one person. The deeper they went, the drier and quieter the air became.

  After descending about five or six meters, the view suddenly opened up. This was a space slightly larger than the warehouse above. The walls were no longer cement but carved with neat rows of palm-sized niches. Each niche held an eternal flame, bean-sized fires burning silently in the windless underground, like sleeping eyes.

  But Dax showed no intention of stopping. He simply continued climbing down the ladder in silence.

  Every five to eight meters of descent revealed a similar room, layouts nearly identical, only each space larger than the last—like an inverted pyramid, burying some secret layer by layer.

  Until they reached the seventh level—or was it the eighth? Ling had lost count. The surrounding air now carried an ancient, heavy scent of stone.

  Dax finally stopped, jumping off the last rung onto solid stone flooring.

  "We're here."

  Ling looked up, pupils contracting slightly.

  Before her lay an underground cavern large enough to contain a massive temple.

  Including the courtyard space before the hall, this area was as large as a football field. Yet the ancient two-story wooden hall, its flying eaves just brushing the cavern's rock ceiling, seemed cramped and oppressed.

  No sky, no sunlight. The massive rock formation pressed down like a lid, making this magnificent structure feel suffocating.

  Like an oversized stone coffin, burying a dead temple.

  The surrounding walls had completely petrified, fusing with the building. Ling curiously examined this underground temple. On the mottled pair of great pillars flanking the entrance, she could still make out carved couplets.

  The right pillar read: The myriad people are like water; they bear the gods as water bears a boat.

  The left pillar read: One thought enters the world; sharing its light, sharing its dust.

  The characters were ancient and vigorous, carrying a sense of compassionate Buddhist wisdom—completely at odds with the money-grubbing Earth God temple above.

  Dax looked at those couplets and let out a long sigh, as if expelling a century's worth of stale air from his chest. He said nothing more, just walked on with hands behind his back, like an old farmer inspecting his backyard.

  The main hall was empty—no statues, no offering tables. Grand murals covered the surrounding walls, but years of erosion and underground moisture had caused most to flake away. The heroic deeds of whichever deities had once been depicted were now unrecognizable.

  Who knows how many years this place had been sealed in sunless depths. The only living things seemed to be in the octagonal pool at the hall's center.

  Life still flourished there—a cluster of water lilies blooming with dazzling brilliance, thriving without sunlight. Each lotus flower's heart seemed to hold an invisible wick, pale golden light dancing silently, gently pushing back the surrounding darkness.

  Dax walked to the pool's edge. Without hesitation, he raised his hand and bit his index finger.

  A bright red bead of blood seeped out.

  Instantly, a strange, sweet fragrance filled the air—the scent of pure divine blood. The hungry ghost instincts within Ling awakened, nostrils flaring greedily, throat involuntarily bobbing.

  The next second, Dax dripped the blood directly into the lotus pool.

  "Drip."

  The blood bead fell onto the water's surface without dispersing, sinking to the bottom like a ruby.

  Immediately, the entire pool shimmered with light. Those dim, flickering flames in the lotus hearts blazed to life as if fed premium fuel, becoming golden little light bulbs that illuminated Dax's weary face.

  Ling walked over and sat on the cold stone steps at the pool's edge. She scooped up a handful of water—it was warm.

  She tasted a small sip, brow furrowing:

  "What kind of foolish thing are you doing?"

  "A mere Earth God with such meager divine power—you dare feed Buddha Lotuses with your blood here? These things are bottomless pits when it comes to absorbing spiritual energy. With your pitiful salary and cultivation, you think you're some Golden Immortal cultivating refined tastes?"

  Dax's face was somewhat pale. He sat down weakly against the pool's edge. Looking at those swaying lotuses, his voice trembled slightly with self-mockery:

  "Yeah, it really is pretty stupid."

  Ling watched him quietly, saying nothing. In this space buried deep underground, she had retracted all her thorns.

  Dax caught his breath and pulled a worn leather wine flask from his chest. He uncorked it, took a swig, then passed it to Ling:

  "Here, try my old friend's handiwork. Good stuff you can't get outside—homemade 'Submerged Lotus Brew.'"

  Ling took the flask without disgust and took a sip.

  The liquor entered her throat—first a slight earthiness, then the distinctive sweetness of lotus root, finally transforming into a warm current that settled in her stomach. The aftertaste carried an almost imperceptible bitterness, yet felt incredibly grounding.

  The wine wasn't strong, but it was like an old friend whispering in your ear.

  "Good wine."

  Ling wiped the corner of her mouth. Tasting wine was like reading a person. Whoever could brew this flavor must carry deep stories in their heart.

  "This friend you mention—is he the one the fox talked about? The one you supposedly sold out… what was his name—Li Rein?"

  Dax nodded, eyes somewhat hazy, as if seeing through those lotuses into times long past:

  "Yeah, him. I knew him even before I ascended to godhood."

  "Back then, he was also a fresh young god just entering the mortal realm for training—spirited, with sword-like brows and starry eyes. And I was like Val is now, following behind him like an idiot every day, watching him slay demons and exorcise evil, listening to him preach grand principles."

  Dax laughed bitterly, fingers rubbing the rough stone:

  "But he grew more and more unhappy. Often drank alone, saying things I couldn't understand at the time."

  "Until later, when he'd accumulated enough Merit and was about to reach completion. The higher-ups wanted to promote him to Golden Immortal, to enjoy blessings in the Court. But he firmly refused."

  Dax tapped the edge of the octagonal pool, producing a clear echo:

  "Right here. Where we're sitting now. Back then it was just a heap of wild rocks."

  "He stacked a few small stones and pointed at this plot of land, saying: He was willing to spend his entire existence as a ninth-rank minor god in mortal form, rather than become some lofty transcendent saint in the heavens. To just guard this small corner of the world—that would be enough."

  Ling looked at this grand yet empty underground palace, unable to imagine what it must have looked like back then.

  "So we settled down here." Dax's voice grew soft. "It was really hard at first. Poor mountains, bad waters, hardly anyone around. Until the first mortal came—a famine refugee passing through. She placed a bunch of wildflowers before our pile of stones, then settled down at the foot of the mountain."

  "Gradually there was a second, a third…"

  "Those times were truly difficult. No one to offer incense meant we couldn't build a temple. No temple meant even fewer people to offer incense. No incense meant we had no spare power. We didn't even know if what we were doing was right. Every day we just kept our heads down, using the stupidest methods to clear the Ley Lines, moving rocks by hand to help the crops grow a little better."

  "We even…" Dax laughed, laughing like a child. "The two of us idiot gods actually paid out of our own pockets to make offerings to Longjiang's Dragon King. Begging and pleading, just so this little village of seventeen people could have good weather for their harvests."

  Dax laughed until he choked, waving his hand: "That guy, haha, once even disguised himself as a beautiful young widow to pour wine for the Dragon King. Eventually got caught—the Dragon nearly flooded the whole village in a rage."

  Ling listened in silence. She could imagine those two young gods guarding a pile of stones in the wilderness, running themselves ragged for a few mortals' harvest. Truly foolish.

  "You could say this original village was the source of our power."

  Dax looked at the golden lotus flames in the pool, eyes glistening with tears:

  "Later, whenever we faced hardship, we just had to remember: when we had nothing, those seventeen people still gathered around us and stayed. They came to our pile of stones every day to chat, to share their family's joys and troubles."

  "That made us feel like no obstacle was too great."

  Dax pointed at the pool full of blooming water lilies:

  "Later, after that generation had all grown old and reincarnated elsewhere, we built this lotus pool on the original spot."

  "Each lotus flower holds one of their heart-lamps."

  "We nourish these lotuses with our own cultivation, praying for them daily. Hoping that wherever they reincarnate, whatever they become, they'll have peace and smooth sailing for all their lives to come."

  Dax turned to look at Ling, his gaze utterly sincere:

  "They don't need to suffer through hardships for growth like others. They don't need to become immortals or Buddhas. Just let them live out their lives in simple, foolish joy—safe and sound."

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Ling looked at that pool of golden light. This was two foolish gods' most clumsy, most deeply devoted protection for their first followers.

  In this cultivation world that treated mortals as livestock and cultivators as batteries, there was actually a fool hiding in the depths, using his own blood to nurture the next lives of ordinary people who had long forgotten him.

  Ling raised the wine flask. While Dax had his back turned, she silently toasted his back, then tilted her head and took a long drink of this bitter "Submerged Lotus Brew."

  "What happened after that?" Ling shook the wine flask, pressing further.

  Dax looked at the pool of golden lotuses, eyes dark and unreadable: "After that? After that, he saw something he shouldn't have seen… and then—"

  "Crack…"

  An utterly discordant sound interrupted their conversation.

  "Who's there?!"

  "What was that?!"

  Both turned simultaneously. The sound came from within the rock walls of this underground temple, like something freezing and splitting apart.

  Dax's expression changed. He rushed over and pulled aside an inconspicuous stone mechanism in the corner. With a muffled rumbling, the previously seamless wall revealed a small gap. A bone-piercing cold instantly seeped out, freezing the surrounding air into white frost.

  A hand white as a corpse's, covered in ice crystals, slowly extended from that dark crevice, stiff fingers clawing at the stone wall.

  Dax was horrified: "No! The 'Mystic Ice Coffin' has run out of energy—it's thawing!"

  Ling shoved aside Dax, who was preparing to block the door, and squinted into the gap.

  Inside, Secretary Wang slumped against the narrow stone crevice, hair disheveled, barely breathing. His entire body was covered in half-melted ice, like a dead fish just dragged out of a freezer.

  Dax panicked, continuing to wrench the stone door mechanism, trying to reseal it: "Quick! Help! We have to freeze him again!"

  But Ling pressed down on his hand: "What are you trying to do?"

  "The ice coffin failed! If we don't replenish its spiritual power, he'll freeze to death!" Dax was sweating profusely.

  Ling looked at him coldly: "So what?"

  "Are you insane?" Dax hissed. "If he dies here, the moment his soul lamp goes out, Fourth Master will know immediately! Then none of us can escape!"

  "Escape?"

  Ling scoffed, ignoring Dax's attempts to stop her. She reached directly through the freezing stone gap and grabbed Wang's collar.

  Wang's consciousness was hazy. Sensing someone approaching, he instinctively tried to block them, but Ling mercilessly slapped his hand away. Her fingers hooked, roughly yanking off the necklace with the strange key hanging from Secretary Wang's neck.

  "This—I'm taking it."

  Ling turned and pulled from her Pouch the redwood drawer that had been sawed off with the tabletop, along with that eerie Joker card.

  She arranged them neatly on the stone steps before Dax.

  Then she handed him the body-warm key:

  "You just said we should be honest with each other. Then let's see together what they've been hiding."

  Dax stared incredulously at the items on the ground: "You… this is…"

  "That's right. Out of everything from earlier, this is the real prize." Ling pointed at the drawer. "All moved from Secretary Wang's lair. Val said you don't let them go to places like that. So I'm guessing—you must know something, right?"

  Dax held the key, hand trembling slightly.

  He had a premonition of what was inside. It was the reality he'd always been powerless against, so he could only pretend not to see it, trying to escape. But under Ling's ghost-eyes that seemed to pierce through souls, he had nowhere to run.

  "Click."

  As if possessed, Dax turned the lock.

  The drawer popped open. Inside were only bound booklets.

  Dax opened one. It contained what appeared to be ordinary landscape photographs—mountains, rivers, city skyscrapers.

  But when he ran his rough fingers across the paper surface—

  The texture was nothing like mortal paper. The landscape patterns were raised, like braille, and his fingertips felt faint, rhythmic pulses.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Not like paper at all. More like some kind of living skin.

  He pulled out his phone with trembling hands, opened "Spirit Pattern Translator," and scanned a seemingly ordinary rock vein pattern on the cover. Page after page of text appeared.

  Dax's face instantly darkened.

  He scanned a second booklet, then a third…

  The more Dax read, the tighter his brow furrowed, his breathing shaking. Finally, he simply collapsed onto the ground, the booklets scattering around him. He stared at the pool of golden Buddha lotuses before him, unable to speak for a long time.

  Through Ghost-Eye, Ling also took in all the translated content, fitting in the final puzzle piece. Now she understood.

  She pulled a Seven of Spades from the stack of playing cards, viewed it through the semi-transparent Joker card, then handed it to Dax:

  "With this, plus these booklets—even if Secretary Wang dies here, he can become your tribute to Fourth Master."

  Ling's voice carried devilish temptation:

  "Just say you discovered Secretary Wang embezzling funds, working behind Fourth Master's back, even secretly colluding with his rivals, causing his 'Ten Thousand Souls Mass Salvation Directional Fund' to collapse. So you righteously eliminated the traitor. Using a turncoat's head as a birthday gift—wouldn't that be perfect?"

  "It's time for you to get promoted and rich."

  SLAP!

  Dax swung his hand violently, knocking the card to the ground.

  "I brought you here, told you all this—and you still don't understand? I, Jiang Dax, would rather drown in this lotus pool than become one of them!"

  He stood up furiously, eyes red: "I may be pathetic, but I haven't rotted through! This tribute—whoever wants to offer it can offer it!"

  Then he looked at Wang, barely alive in the stone crevice, and gritted his teeth:

  "Right—what was that stuff you forced down Wang's throat that day? Do you have more? Since he’s still got a pulse, I’m gonna go pour some more into him. As long as I can keep him breathing and seal him back up, I can still stall… Can't give Fourth Master any more leverage over me."

  Dax turned to operate the stone door mechanism.

  "Stall?"

  Ling spoke coldly from behind him:

  "How long are you going to keep pretending you don't see this?"

  Dax's hand rested on the freezing mechanism stone, heavy as a thousand pounds.

  "What good is seeing it?" Dax's voice was hoarse, full of deep powerlessness. "Mortals are like grass—cut down one crop, another grows. Even if I save one today, tomorrow they'll find another. I'm just kicking miserable fate from one person to another."

  "I'm just a minor Earth God. Since I can't change mortals' fates, maybe letting them die early and reincarnate sooner is better than living in suffering…"

  "Bullshit." Ling cut him off without mercy, voice dripping with undisguised contempt: "This is what's most hypocritical about you gods. Packaging 'powerlessness' as 'accepting fate, achieving enlightenment.'"

  She walked behind Dax, her voice like a dull blade stabbing into his heart:

  "You could have made their lives less miserable. Just because you can't change their ultimate fate, you let them fall straight into the eighteenth level of hell? Instead of reaching out to at least let them catch their breath on the first level?"

  "Just to preserve your precious 'lofty integrity,' you let those monsters sit in the positions that belonged to you, preying on the weak. If you can't change any of this, why can't you at least be a butcher with a sharper blade?"

  Dax's body swayed, but he still gritted his teeth, not daring to turn around.

  Seeing this, Ling bent down and grabbed one of the scattered "landscape booklets" from the ground.

  "Didn't you just see it all?"

  Ling rushed in front of Dax, flipping the booklet open with a rustle, shoving it directly in his face so he couldn't look away:

  "Look at this 'mountain peak'! This is clearly the fate chart of the Chen family in unit 603!"

  Ling's finger jabbed hard at those raised patterns, voice sharp:

  "This family emptied six wallets, took on thirty years of debt, just to move out of this man-eating building. And then what? Wang wouldn't let them go! Disguised as a real estate agent, he tricked them into draining their 'settling fortune' and signing this leveraged mortgage!"

  "Pathetically, they thought they'd just signed a normal purchase agreement! Thought they'd gotten a great deal! Then the developer ran off with the money, the project became an unfinished ruin, but the bank still demanded loan payments! Old Chen went to deliver food to pay off the debt—dropped dead on the roadside in a rainstorm! And Secretary Wang? He used that referral fee to buy himself a new spirit-gathering array!"

  "Is this your so-called 'fate'?"

  Ling didn't stop. She grabbed another booklet and slammed it against Dax's chest:

  "And this one! The young couple in 901!"

  "They tried for three years to conceive. Finally got pregnant last year. Then Wang's 'Rejuvenation Technique' practice was slightly off, and he directly intercepted this building's 'life energy'!"

  "So that pregnant woman had a mysterious miscarriage. Her health collapsed, she lost her job, her family fell apart. And in the end? Wang used that intercepted life energy to throw a grand banquet for the inspection officials. The case was closed as 'Ley Lines anomaly,' and he even scammed an extra Ley Lines repair subsidy!"

  Ling was about to flip open a third booklet—

  "ENOUGH!!"

  Dax let out a piercing roar.

  He swung violently, knocking the booklet from Ling's hands. Those "landscape paintings" recording mortals' blood and tears scattered through the air like funeral paper money drifting down.

  After a long moment, he spoke with his back to Ling, voice dry and hoarse:

  "This—is my own business. What are you doing all this for? Don't tell me you're trying to enforce justice for the Dao."

  "Me?" Ling picked up the Seven of Spades from the ground. "Your promotion benefits me too. I'm not like you—I only ever do things for my own pleasure."

  "Since you won't come clean, I have no reason to trust you either." Dax's fists clenched tight. "How I choose is none of your business."

  "I can come clean with you."

  Ling suddenly cut him off, speaking rapidly:

  "But right now, I'm guessing we don't have time for that—"

  Ling grabbed Dax's wrist and forced the Joker card and the Seven of Spades in front of his eyes.

  "See for yourself!"

  Through the Joker card's filter, the Seven of Spades' surface transformed. The previously static pattern became a real-time surveillance feed.

  In the image, a heavily pregnant woman with tear-streaked face stood on the rooftop of a dilapidated building. Wind whipped her hair. Her eyes were hollow. One foot already hung over the edge.

  It was a resident of that pawn building. Unit 901. She had finally conceived again.

  [Cattle_Number: 019 (Pending Replacement)]

  [Status: Cattle #018 overdue (Deceased)]

  [Warning: Executing forced extraction protocol]

  Ling's voice was cold as a blade:

  "That beast used some kind of forbidden technique. While on the brink of death, he's been stealing the fortune and Merit of every resident in that building you've been avoiding—using it as his own 'emergency life support system.' Your ice coffin thawing out of nowhere? Probably his stolen fortune protecting him."

  "If you don't finish him off completely and soon, he'll drain that entire building dry!"

  "Those mortals who lose the protection of their merit lose the internal engine sustaining their lives. All their past grievances and karmic debts will instantly rebound—like a dam bursting, instantly crushing their spirits."

  That pregnant woman wasn't trying to commit suicide. Her "fuel tank" was empty, and despair's momentum was pushing her forward.

  Dax looked at the teetering pregnant woman on the screen and let out a strangled roar.

  He spun around, about to rush out and save her.

  "Stop!"

  Ling snorted coldly, puncturing his fantasy outright:

  "You think running over there now will save her? Or do you just want to perform 'you tried your best' so your conscience can rest easy?"

  Dax's whole body shook violently, as if his deepest scar had been exposed. He froze in place. At this moment, he bitterly regretted bringing this devil down here, regretted why this devil refused to let him go.

  As he fell into another massive internal conflict, Ling—as always—stood at his side, forcibly bending his tightrope of balance:

  "He's already at the end of his rope. Mortals' Merit is a drop in the bucket—it can protect him for a moment, not forever."

  "But if you let him absorb enough from this wave and regain consciousness, who knows what tricks he'll have to drain everyone at once. When that happens, it won't just be one pregnant woman who dies."

  "Kill him."

  Ling's voice was like a verdict:

  "Now."

  Dax's chest heaved violently. His eyes shifted from chaos to something vast and deep.

  Looking at the human-skin papers scattered on the ground, his heart gradually turned cold.

  He slowly bent down, no longer looking at the stone crevice. Instead, he pressed his rough palm heavily against the stone floor beneath his feet—against the land of Longjiang from a thousand years ago.

  The Longjiang embankment used to flood constantly in ancient times. Back then, they had no power to fight nature's forces. They could only watch as the waters buried villages under thick layers of silt, again and again.

  So they spent all their Merit, again and again, rebuilding on the same spot atop the silt. Layer upon layer—beneath the mud lay thousands of years of this land's suffering and rebirth.

  The Earth God never ruled just the thin layer of topsoil. He ruled this heavy history.

  "Hummm—"

  The entire underground space emitted a deep rumble.

  The earth responded to that familiar call, once again activating the power of "Earth Binding." Only this time, the force was countless times stronger than what he'd used in Secretary Wang's barrier.

  This was the weight of the earth itself.

  "Rise."

  Dax growled.

  The ground in the stone crevice suddenly liquefied. Black mud surged up like ancient serpents, instantly coiling around the half-dead Secretary Wang.

  This time, no hesitation, no holding back.

  The mud instantly filled Wang's mouth and nose, wrapped his entire body. Carrying the earth's fury and mercy, it dragged him violently into deeper, darker depths below.

  Not even a scream escaped.

  With a crisp "click," the ground sealed shut. The earth swallowed everything once more.

  The thief who had stolen mortals' fortune ended his life silently in this sunless underground—just like the lowly mortals he had exploited at will.

  At the same moment, the image on the playing card in Ling's hand flickered.

  On the rooftop, the pregnant woman seemed to suddenly wake up. Frightened, she stumbled backward and collapsed on the ground, sobbing.

  Ling looked at Dax with satisfaction, then glanced at the sealed stone wall:

  "So this is the Earth God's true power, isn't it?"

  "The reason you've lived so pathetically isn't because you lack power—it's because you lacked the resolve to use it."

  Dax slowly straightened his body. In an instant, he seemed to have aged ten years, yet also to have shed a thousand-pound burden.

  He didn't respond to Ling's assessment. Instead, he turned his head. Those once-clouded eyes now shone with unusual clarity:

  "I don't know what you're trying to do. I still can't trust you."

  "But if you want to use me—fine."

  Dax pointed at the stack of blood-stained ledgers and playing cards:

  "As long as you help me tear apart the web behind all this. Release these life-and-death contracts. Give those mortals back their freedom."

  "This life of mine, Jiang Dax—it's yours to use."