The Yellow Plague Disperses

“What did you do to me, Chen Huangpi?”
The brass oil lamp shook its canine head in terror, only to find it emitted the bark of a dog.
“That’s not important!”
Chen Huangpi and the brass oil lamp had together mastered the Art of Dog-Taming, their minds now linked as one.
This art was divided into two scrolls.
Chen Huangpi practiced the upper scroll, making him the master.
The brass oil lamp practiced the lower scroll, making it the loyal hound.
Now was not the time for explanations.
The transformation of Chen Huangpi and the brass oil lamp had come so suddenly that even the evil deity, the other four gods, the twelve madams, Granny Tang, and all the cultivators were stunned.
But that moment of shock lasted only an instant.
Though the twelve madams and the three gods did not fully grasp what had happened, they seized the opportunity immediately.
“Now!”
Flying swords, hammers, and geomantic compasses burst forth around the twelve madams.
A wooden temple uprooted itself, hovering above her head.
Wisps and currents of incense smoke streamed out of the temple, splitting three ways and flowing into the three gods.
One god held a bamboo slip, pointing it downward.
The earth heaved up.
The surging muddy flood was blocked.
Another god opened its bloody maw and blew with all its might, raising a wild gale from the flat ground.
In the next instant, the yellow mud torrent was swept back as though a suspended river had reversed its course.
The last god gave a cold snort.
A thunderclap exploded.
The mud puppets under the evil god’s control screamed as they, along with the evil god itself, burst apart.
Yet the evil god, already tainted by the yellow mud, could not be killed.
When it exploded, a vast tide of yellow mud splattered and flew in all directions.
“Mountain god, aid me!”
Granny Tang invoked the spirit, and the staff in her hands, empowered by the mountain god, flew from her grasp and in the blink of an eye became a towering tree that shielded against most of the yellow mud.
But when the mud struck the tree formed by the staff, it was as if molten lava had poured over it; in seconds the entire tree collapsed and was corroded away.
Granny Tang coughed up a mouthful of yellowish blood, her face deathly pale.
At the same time, the fox mountain god possessing her spat out divine blood, which turned to yellow mud before it even struck the ground.
The mud seemed alive.
In the time it takes for a thought, it gathered itself again.
Swathed in yellow mud, the mountain god emerged once more from the mire.
It was unkillable!
Now, the yellow mud was everywhere—wherever it passed became an abyssal hell, a touch would corrupt all.
“It has grown powerful. If it takes the temple, it will become a plague of yellow!”
The gods warned the cultivators.
“Run, flee as far as you can!”
Chen Huangpi heard the warning too.
But he already knew the evil god could not be killed, and did not believe the four gods could protect them.
“Huang Er, heed my command!”
With a leap, Chen Huangpi mounted the yellow dog formed from the brass oil lamp. The latter, unable to complain, roared under the command of the dog-taming art.
The sound was not a mere bark, but laced with an uncanny magic.
“Fire!”
Chen Huangpi and the brass oil lamp were of one mind; he summoned forth the power that originally belonged to the lamp. The energy from his kidneys, usually cycling to forge the temple of essence, was drawn out and poured into the lamp.
The brass oil lamp’s canine body swelled.
Its throat swelled, and with a roar, a jet of yellow fire blasted forth.
The evil god, fixing its gaze on the lamp, shifted its expression and sent a wave of yellow mud surging forward.
But this fire was not a cultivator’s true flame, but the lamp’s own, now fueled by Chen Huangpi’s essence and the power of the dog-taming art, making it even stranger.
At the mere touch of the lamp fire, the yellow mud was instantly solidified, falling to the ground as ordinary dirt.
“Huang Er, give it everything you’ve got!”
Chen Huangpi shouted, draining the last of the essence from his kidneys.
The brass oil lamp, now a giant dog, its eyes burning with golden fire, spewed a torrent of flames at the evil god!
The mud on the evil god’s body solidified in an instant.
A surge of hope swept through the onlookers.
But in the next second, cracks split the solidified clay, and countless streams of yellow mud seeped out.
“This is bad, run!”
Chen Huangpi urged in panic.

Huang Er spewed a flame a man’s width and hundreds of yards long, yet not a single blade of grass or tree was harmed in its path. Instead, it burned a road through the endless, abyssal sea of yellow mud.
In the blink of an eye, man and dog vanished into the darkness.
“Quick, follow him!”
Granny Tang shouted to the few remaining refugees.
The survivors, as if waking from a dream, frantically fled along the dry road burned by the lamp’s fire.
The cultivators brought by the twelve madams did the same.
This was a battle between gods and an evil deity; they were not qualified to intervene.
The twelve madams did not try to stop them, for she could not cross—the evil god’s target was the temple above her head, and would never let her escape.
The three gods looked equally grim.
They had once reached the peak of the nascent soul realm, unable to progress further, and so became gods.
This temple was their sanctuary, their foundation.
It was important, but not irreplaceable.
Starting over would suffice.
But if they dared abandon the temple now, the evil god would seize it immediately, becoming a plague of yellow. They would have no hope of resistance, and if they failed to sever their connection in time, they too would be corrupted.
“Granny Tang!”
The twelve madams gritted their teeth and shouted, “Invite your mountain god into the temple! Live or die, let fate decide!”
The temple above the nascent soul opened its doors at once.
Granny Tang hesitated not in the slightest.
Or rather, her will was the mountain god’s will.
The fox god statue turned into a stream of light and darted into the temple.
Within, the temple was a world of its own. In the great hall where gods were worshipped, the three statues trembled and shifted aside, leaving a space for the mountain god.
There, seated cross-legged, was a cultivator identical to the twelve madams.
Granny Tang was stunned.
She realized this was the true self of the twelve madams—the one outside was merely her nascent soul.
Clearly, the twelve madams too had cultivated to the peak of the nascent soul realm.
The temple shook!
At the instant the god statues settled, wisps of incense smoke surged out.
The mountain god phantom behind Granny Tang opened its mouth wide and inhaled, swallowing a wisp of incense.
The mountain god was revived, if only a little.
The sky was paling, turning ashen white.
Some obscure, unfathomable power was awakening.
All evil would soon be suppressed by this force, even the evil god not yet transformed into a plague of yellow.
This was the only chance!
“Aha!”
“One, two, three, four—trapped like fish in a pot!”
The evil god suddenly grinned, swaying like a scholar reciting poetry.
“What?”
The twelve madams were stunned.
Granny Tang’s heart skipped a beat.
Though only of golden core rank, years of serving the gods had given her a keener spiritual intuition than the purely cultivated twelve madams.
A vision flashed through her mind.
Before dawn, when the evil god had first entered the gods’ domain by riding the earth-dragon, the twelve madams had been splattered with yellow mud and only survived by using a peach figurine as a substitute.
Everyone had assumed the evil god’s methods ended there.
But earlier, when Granny Tang, possessed by the mountain god, had merely resisted the mud’s advance, she’d nearly been corrupted without direct contact.
The twelve madams, however, had been touched by the mud.
Could the peach figurine have truly taken the corruption in her place?
Even as the thought crossed Granny Tang’s mind, the mountain god possessing her screamed in terror.
“Quick, open the temple door and let me out!”
The three gods inside the temple also shrieked in fear.
“Guang Qingzi, open the door now!”
The wooden temple hovering above the twelve madams suddenly contracted, as if sucking in its belly, then rapidly swelled. Doors and windows were stained with yellow.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The doors rattled violently as the four true gods inside went mad, desperate to escape.
The evil god, swathed in mud, grinned maniacally.
Four gods and the temple itself—it wanted them all!
“Once I claim the temple, I’ll become the Yellow Scourge. No longer will I feed on mortal offerings, but on the gods themselves.”
“Wonderful, wonderful!”

The twelve madams’ face turned ashen.
Granny Tang cried anxiously, “Madam, open the temple door!”
“I... I...”
The twelve madams tried repeatedly to open the door, but it did not respond. The temple was no longer under her control, or rather, it was now controlled by the true self turned puppet of the evil god.
The four gods were trapped, with no way out.
A chill of dread settled over Granny Tang and the twelve madams.
The evil god laughed, ignoring the two women, and with a gesture called the temple to itself, slamming it to the ground.
The evil god inhaled deeply, drawing four streams of incense into its mouth and nose like rolling smoke.
“Delicious, truly delicious!”
A loud slurp sounded.
Granny Tang and the twelve madams stared at the evil god. Was it going to devour the four gods?
But the evil god stared blankly behind itself.
The slurping came from the darkness.
At that moment, the sun rose over the horizon, light racing over the land and banishing the shadows.
In the evil god’s mud-filled eyes appeared a figure.
Clad in white Daoist robes, mouth agape with drool staining his chest, he gazed at the evil god as if it were a feast.
“Delicious, truly delicious!”
In Granny Tang’s mind, the mountain god screamed in horror.
“It’s him! That abomination is him!”

Elsewhere.
Chen Huangpi rode the brass oil lamp, now a yellow dog, racing through the twilight forests between night and dawn.
Behind him, the desperate refugees scrambled for survival.
Farther back, a thunderous rumbling echoed, as if a mountain were collapsing.
No, it was not a collapse.
The yellow dragon was stirring.
The earth shook as torrents of yellow mud erupted from the cracks.
Chen Huangpi invoked the Art of Dog-Taming and shouted, “Fire!”
A jet of golden-orange lampfire covered the mud before it could even rise.
The fire of the brass oil lamp was extraordinary.
Wherever the flame touched, the yellow mud solidified.
Then Chen Huangpi commanded Huang Er to spew another tongue of flame, further fortifying the road behind them.
The lampfire could not truly destroy the mud, only temporarily harden it; soon it would revert to its original state.
“Chen Huangpi, forget about them!”
The brass oil lamp barked.
“I’m running low on lamp oil. If you keep wasting it, when the evil god becomes the Yellow Scourge and comes for us, we’re both doomed!”
“I know!”
Chen Huangpi pursed his lips and glanced back at the refugees.
Granny Tang was a kind old soul.
Within the gods’ domain, she had sheltered Chen Huangpi and given him a place to stay.
So he did not mind helping the survivors a little.
“I can’t help you anymore. Run as fast as you can—don’t fall behind.”
With that, Chen Huangpi formed a hand seal and urged Huang Er forward.
The reluctant brass oil lamp widened its eyes, and flames surged within, bathing the area in golden light.
The light covered a vast area.
Those refugees, exhausted from running, found all their fatigue and fear washed away the instant the golden light touched them, their hearts filled instead with strength and gratitude.
“Young lord, thank you for your kindness.”
“I’ll never forget this debt of life!”
Chen Huangpi gave no reply, urging Huang Er to quicken the pace.
For if he helped them any further, even his own conscience might be tainted.
That would not do—not at all.
A gift of rice may earn gratitude, but a sack may breed resentment, and he would end up taking it all back by force.
Chen Huangpi looked up at the sky—it was already dawn. He had not returned to cook the night before; his master must be starving.