Under this white light, the old man just glanced back, his face became even more miserable, and he murmured: "So what? It's good to hold on for one more day, it's good..."
Song Yin sighed softly, "Then by then, all the villages you want to stay in will become ghosts like your son, and in the end the villages will be empty, and you will get nothing."
After hearing this, the old man became even more distressed. He looked at Song Yin almost beggingly, "Can you save them?"
Song Yin shook his head: "No, and I will destroy them so that they will no longer harm people. Don't ask why..."
White flames rose in his hands again, and he no longer attacked with his fists. Instead, he threw the white flames at the ghost that had condensed its body. The white flames enveloped it, forcing the ghost to kneel down and struggle continuously in the white flames.
Song Yin glanced at the ghost and continued to say to the old man: "It's just because I am better than you."
"Just because you are stronger than me..."
The old man muttered absentmindedly, then shook his head and smiled bitterly: "Then how are you different from those bandits?"
"Yes, I am no different from those bandits. I impose my own principles on others. Those who go against my principles will be eliminated by me, and only those who follow my principles will prosper."
Song Yin admitted it without any hesitation, and asked again: "Aren't you the same?"
"Yes, I am the same, otherwise why would I keep accepting those dried meats..."
The old man glanced towards the ghosts, then turned back to look at those half-human, half-ghosts who seemed to be frozen in place, like puppets, just staring at this side.
“I’ve suffered.”
The corners of his mouth twitched, and he kowtowed to Song Yin again: "Since the immortals are stronger than me, let's do it."
"good."
Peng!
Song Yin didn't say anything. He clenched his five fingers and the white flames that wrapped around the ghost exploded directly, completely destroying the ghost. In the remaining white flames, as the ghost disappeared, a tall shadow seemed to appear and kowtowed to the village.
"My son..."
The old man's eyes were confused and he reached out his hand subconsciously, but the shadow disappeared in an instant.
This time, the ghost did not condense into shape.
The old man put his hand down tremblingly, and was silent for a while, then asked again: "My immortal, you keep saying that we are evil, but can you always conclude that you are righteous?"
"I have no idea."
Song Yin said honestly: "I said you are an evil path, but you definitely don't think so. You took in human flesh and fed the villagers, essentially to survive. Survival is also the truth of the world. So in your heart, you are the right path, and I am the evil path."
"Similarly, when I kill ghosts, I also want to destroy the non-human and non-ghost creatures in your village so that they will no longer harm people in the future. So in my heart, I am the righteous and you are the evil. But the only thing that is certain is..."
Song Yin looked at the old man with an extremely firm gaze: "The purpose of our Jinxian Sect is to save the world, so I will always save the world. Even if people in the world are like you, and regard me as a bandit or a demon."
The old man looked at Song Yin's burning eyes and smiled: "The immortals are very understanding. I would like to congratulate you in advance. I hope you can always keep this heart and not be like me. I also wanted to protect the village, but ended up making the villagers neither human nor ghost."
"I will keep doing this, and I will make sure that situations like yours disappear from this world," Song Yin said.
The old man closed his eyes, shook his head, and said: "Then I will go ahead..."
As he spoke, his body tilted, and he fell to the ground, gradually disappearing.
As his figure disappeared, the darkness that enveloped the village suddenly disappeared, and the light of the moon and stars poured down from the sky, illuminating the village. However, before the light had completely faded, the village disappeared, taking along all those neither human nor ghost creatures.
There are no buildings, no people, and all that is left are wooden tombstones in the wilderness.
The village turned into a simple cemetery!
Zhang Feixuan and Wang Qizheng widened their eyes and looked around in disbelief.
Zhang Feixuan opened his mouth wide, trembling as he pointed at the tombstones and said, "Master, Brother, this, this, this..."
Song Yin walked forward for a distance and looked towards the direction of the house where they had been before. There was no tombstone there, only a pile of dry bones.
"This den of ghosts was not transformed by his son, but by the old man himself. I saw it when I opened my Dharma eyes."
Is the old man a ghost
Zhang Feixuan and Wang Qizhen were stunned for a moment, and soon Wang Qizhen shouted: "Ah! That old man is nowhere to be seen!"
He remembered that when his senior brother was illuminated by the white light, they all had shadows, except the old man.
“But, Brother… when you eliminated the ghost just now, it clearly turned into a human figure. When you eliminated the mourning ghost, didn’t it also turn into a human figure?” Zhang Feixuan was puzzled.
"It's just a smokescreen."
Song Yin walked towards the dry bones and said, "Ghosts are transformed by obsessions. How can they have any consciousness? They just live according to their obsessions. You can't see it, but I saw it. As soon as the ghost arrived at the village entrance, it knelt down and kowtowed, and then took out a lot of dried meat. I guess his son must have done the same thing before, so I turned into a shadow and kowtowed to eliminate some of his obsessions."
The village was so dark, and what could be seen clearly by the weak candlelight? Only people of the same kind could see it, and Song Yin's own eyes could see everything.
"As for this den of ghosts, whether it was the bandits who broke in and killed everyone, or whether it was really as the father-in-law said, that his son became a bandit to protect the village... I don't know."
It is unknown whether the people in this village starved to death, or whether the old man turned into a ghost after his death and created a den of ghosts that killed them...
"Brother, if you knew it was a ghost, why didn't you kill it immediately? Why waste your breath on this?" Zhang Feixuan asked curiously.
Song Yin walked up to the dry bones, stared at them for a while, and then set his sights on a rotten vine next to it, where there were signs of wild vegetable roots that had rotted away to the point of being almost invisible.
"Yeah, I could have made this monster disappear right away, why did I go to so much trouble... Because I didn't want to."
"Thinking of this ghost cave, when we entered it in the daytime, there were children telling us not to eat meat. Even ghosts have their own rules, let alone humans."
Song Yin said calmly, "When we practice Taoism, we also practice the truth. We need to tell others the truth and let them know what we are doing. But the truth is not something that comes out of thin air. It is gained through experiencing worldly things. For example, how this ghost den was formed and what kind of obsession it has, we need to understand and know all of this. Only in this way can we better understand what we should do, not only to inform the world, but also to enlighten our hearts and prove the Tao."
He stretched out his hand and a hole appeared on the ground. He bent down and carefully lifted the dry bone, put it into the hole, and buried it again. Then he flicked his sleeves again, and a dead tree not far away automatically decomposed, and a wooden tablet flew over.
He stuck the wooden tablet into the mound, then turned around and looked at the two of them:
"Second Junior Brother, I once asked you if the world was bad, and you told me it was OK. But now it seems that it is OK... but not OK."
"The world I see now is too bitter, too sad, and too helpless. Like this dark night, it only blinds people, so we must continue to encourage ourselves. Sooner or later, one day..."
He waved his sleeves again, and countless white flames flew out from his hands and landed on the wooden tablets. The white flames on the wooden tablets were set against the stars in the sky, illuminating the surrounding area brightly.
He put down one hand and stood in the white flame, like the moon in the starlight, but more like the sun in the daytime, the reflected night lost its color, making Zhang Feixuan and Wang Qizhen stare in a daze.
"Night is light."