The coach jolted along the mountain pass. Feng''s veins protruded on his clenched hand, the Five Emperors coins pendant nearly cutting into his wrist bone. Metallic screeches rained from the roof — Lord Grey''s rat swarm was gnawing through the steel plating with diamond-sharp incisors. The blind man suddenly gripped his sword arm: "Three inches southeast!"


    "My final commission was altering fate for a living-burial opera troupe," the blind man rasped, his hollowed sockets turned toward the writhing shadows beyond the window. "They traded seven years of lifespan for my Reverse Bagua Mirror. Then Lord Grey''s whelps took my eyes as interest."


    Peachwood sword met glass as lightning scars tore through the storm-darkened sky. A rat the size of a mastiff clinging to the window exploded into cinders, its smoldering carcass tumbling down the cliff. When the blade lodged into a crevice, residual electricity spiderwebbed across the rocks. The rodent tide shrieked retreat into pines.


    "This won''t survive three strikes." The blind man traced cracks along the retrieved hilt, his rat-tooth talisman glowing crimson. Six-edged fangs hovered midair, pointing southwest: "That troupe''s raising corpses in cursed earth — your celestial fortune breaks their game."


    The mountain road coiled like a shedding serpent into mist. Feng''s boots crunched ritual joss papers as the blind man''s bamboo cane tapped faster. When rot wafted from the valley, they saw it — a stage draped in human-hide drums glistening with adipocere, its lute strings woven from hundreds of greying rat whiskers.


    "Hexagram Ge mutating into Mingyi. Hardship breeds clarity." The blind man seized Feng''s sleeve, his sunglasses reflecting Taotie motifs on stage pillars. "To crack this death trap, sacrifice something bloodstained."


    Feng slammed the Five Emperors coins onto the divination plate. As bronze met trigrams, century-old incense qi erupted in vapors. The blind man''s fingers convulsed: "Such karmic weight... Did you save a city god''s temple in past life?"


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    "Ten thousand yang auras imbue these coins — molten oil to yin filth." Feng watched swirling mists. "Seems we''ve found our key."


    Midnight winds lifted the stage curtain, revealing puppet chests backstage. Feng buried the lightning-struck wood sword beneath props, coins sealing its fractures.


    At third watch, stage candles flared spectral green. Lord Grey''s avatar emerged from a ritual wine vessel, skeletal fingers protruding beneath his rodent-fur robe. When the troupe leader struck the human-skin drum, Feng vaulted onto a pillar, his bootheel kicking over candelabras: "Heavenly flames purge evil! Tianpeng subjugates demons!"


    The peachwood sword hidden in curtains detonated. Lightning remnants fused with ancestral incense erupted from the hilt, coins disintegrating into golden shrapnel. Lord Grey''s rat-tail severed mid-swipe, its stump still crawling with unburned netherworld runes as his form dissolved into sulfurous smoke.


    "City God Temple... shift-change night..." A mute girl crouching in the corner rasped, rat-tooth punctures oozing on her neck. Feng hesitated, then slung her over his shoulder.


    Four white-faced martial performers closed in — their eye sockets housed not pupils, but bronze ritual vessel shards preserved in corpse oil.


    The blind man''s cane struck stone, blood sigils spreading across flagstones: "Kan transforms to Li!" Feng shredded two Yin Breaker talismans, hurling ashes mixed with stage incense: "Yin winds blind eyes! Yang fire erases forms!"


    Incense-ash temporarily veils living senses — the Annals of Folk Mysteries calls this "Ghost-Blinding Countermeasure".


    As martial performers stumbled blinded, stage beams collapsed. Fleeing with the girl through sulfurous winds, Feng glimpsed the troupe leader tearing the drum''s human hide — beneath stretched a child''s face.


    "Paper-Craftsman Chen southward breaks death pacts." The blind man spat blood, cane pointing southwest. "His phantom sedan... cough... fools netherworld guards during shift-change..."


    The girl whimpered like a wounded cub against Feng''s back. Coin fragments in his pocket seared flesh, burns coalescing into an arrow shape — aimed at distant city god temple veiled in sacred smoke.