The Invincible Female Ghost Is A Bit Of A Hopeless Romantic Chapter 252: Too Late

A cold wind swirled outside the salt circle like it had been sucked by an old well, but it could not penetrate.

Lu Yuan stood at the center of the formation. The ring of white salt under his feet had been forced shining by the seat-annihilation and the thunder intent, like an old rut pressed into snow.

The Town Pass Seven Stars Sword lay across his palm, the fifth and sixth dim stars on the spine of the sword alternately emitting a cold light.

Not as dazzling as dayti heavenly thunder, but with a heavy weight that pressed like a mountain, quietly suppressing a hundred evils.

It was not a light, gimmicky anti-evil tool, but a genuine old sword forged in the outlands’ sand, cold houses, and chaotic malevolence.

The more crucial the mont, the more its silence mattered, the more lethal it seed.

The ritual spirit stood in the formation. Its great black shadow, like an overturned-seat, had been hacked to pieces by the salt circle; the seat’s foot could no longer connect, and the lamp’s light had been forced northward.

Its specialty of “borrowing shadows to swap positions” had been clamped at the vital point by Lu Yuan’s second formation-breaking move.

Although it was not yet completely subdued, it was like a snake nailed at the seven-inch spot—still able to bite, yet its tail no longer obeyed.

A very low laugh ca from its throat, a laugh carrying a sinister fire.

“What stubborn trick.”

“You think…this can pin down?”

Before its words finished, the ritual spirit suddenly spread both arms wide.

All the paper banners along the stone path rustled at once. The banner roots Zhou Heng had pinned down bent of their own accord in a single instant, and the paper faces printed on the banners turned in unison toward Lu Yuan.

The dark dots in their eye sockets trembled together, like innurable dead eyes opening at once.

The gray-white fla in the overturned-seat lamp then swelled violently, and the paper hand inside the wick began to slowly flip its palm.

From between its fingers, thin strands of black silk trailed out as if trying to stitch the living energy from the entire stone path shut, bit by bit.

“It’s going to borrow the hundred faces to reverse the killing!”

Lin Zhaoxuan’s expression changed drastically; he forced down the blood surging at his chest and almost shouted it out.

“We must not let the wick flip its hand. Once it flips, the people beneath the lamp will be registered by na!”

Song Qinghe’s sealing plate had cracked like an old bowl about to fall apart; each tremor along its rim leaked a thread of cold white ash.

She gritted her teeth and pressed the plate down with trembling voice:

“It’s summoning the old altar’s shadows…this isn’t a re counterattack, it wants to pull the previously suppressed seat roots back!”

Lu Yuan’s gaze did not shift at all. He rely joined two fingers on his left hand and stroked along the sword spine.

Then, with his hand turned, he sared the remaining blood from his fingertip on his brow and muttered in a low voice:

“Seven stars press life, a hundred evils retreat form.”

“Heaven gives the way but you won’t take it, you insist on using the seat to return a soul.”

“Then I’ll let you know what it ans to seal the pass.”

These were not idle words but the old closing phrases used by outland Taoists when holding the line.

The Daoist rituals of the hills and fields do not care for ceremony; they rely on borrowing one breath of righteous qi from heaven and earth, an inch of incense from the founders, and a spark from an old tool—only together can such yin-altars be suppressed.

Lu Yuan was not performing theatrics; he was turning himself into the last gate-stake, nailing himself inch by inch into the altar’s heart.

The ritual spirit seed provoked by these words.

It abruptly raised a hand, and black vapor from beneath its sleeve lashed out like a whip toward Lu Yuan’s face.

Before the whip’s shadow reached, the sharp, foul paper-stench struck, as if soone had thrown a sheet soaked in a corpse-well over one’s head.

It aid to blind a person’s seven orifices. Lu Yuan’s feet did not move; the Town Pass Seven Stars Sword only pushed forward slightly.

“Clang—”

A faint tallic chi sounded.

The black vapor whip was actually repelled and bounced back, causing the ritual spirit’s sleeve to tremble and its entire arm to go numb.

It had not expected Lu Yuan to deflect by using the sword’s montum to “send” the blow back.

The Town Pass Seven Stars Sword had never been an ordinary short blade; its spine reined in cold malevolence. Once it gripped the midline, it excelled at borrowing force and rebounding, snapping the opponent’s yin-strike back.

The ritual spirit’s pupils darkened. It finally stopped holding back.

The most yin patch of soil beneath it suddenly split open with a long crack, and from the crevice ca thin, crumbling strips of old red paper.

On the shreds faint remnants of patterns, incense ash imprints, and inked characters could still be seen—like the aged skins and broken bones of an old altar and old seat, sunk and compacted for years.

The instant that thing erged, the temperature across the stone path felt as if dragged into an icehouse.

“The old seat is returning to its roots!”

Wang Cheng'an cried out.

Lu Yuan’s eyes hardened.

This was his greatest fear.

The ritual spirit itself was not the worst of it; what made it terrifying was its ability to gather the old altar’s malice buried beneath the ground—the old seat roots, the leftover paper tokens of the dead—and pull them back together.

In old outland years, white seats, paper banners, and overturned-seat lamps were living rites for sending off the dead, guiding spirits, and suppressing malevolence.

If an evil thing turned them around and used them, they beca the most tenacious of seat-annihilation altars.

That was not a single monstrous thing but an entire old funeral formation, old sacrificial formation, old yin-rite twisted into a blade.

Once it turned up that old seat root, the second formation-breaking would be contaminated.

Lu Yuan could not allow it.

He suddenly thrust the sword up, intoning in a deep voice:

“North Dipper calms the central courtyard, South Dipper guards the Life Gate.”

“Seven stars illuminate the hidden road, thunder and fire sever the yin root.”

“Rise!”

That “Rise” rolled out from his chest directly, carrying a hard force that seed to push against the gate of ghosts.

With his low shout, the sixth star on the Town Pass Seven Stars Sword flared.

A thin line of cold light ran the length of the spine, and it was as if seven stars dotted along the blade, making this desolate road at dusk feel like a crushing midnight of sinking constellations.

As the sword’s intent issued, the salt circle tightened.

Lu Yuan used the salt ring under his feet as a reference and lunged forward half a step.

His right hand’s sword tip slanted and did not slash at the ritual spirit’s body, but struck directly at the cracked black soil.

“Break the earth root!”

He barked.

Where the sword tip landed, the black soil seed pierced by sothing extrely cold and instantly contracted.

The old paper shreds the ritual spirit had pulled up were about to form a wave, but this strike suppressed them, producing a shower of fine popping sounds like ice dumped into hot oil.

The ritual spirit’s expression finally altered.

It stepped back sharply, attempting to swap places.

But Lu Yuan had already seen through this. He pivoted his foot, and the Town Pass Seven Stars Sword followed the motion in a revolving arc, its blade crossing a half-curve that precisely cut off the ritual spirit’s retreat.

“You step back, I nail you one step.”

“You patch one place, I snap another.”

His tone was even, as though discussing the most ordinary thing, yet it tightened everyone’s chests for no reason.

Because it was clear to all that Lu Yuan was not simply dueling; he was fighting the ritual spirit for control of the seat’s montum.

The ritual spirit let out a short, sharp, fierce howl. The overturned-seat lamp at the end of the path swayed wildly.

Its lamp shadow twisted and split into three or four afterimages; each one looked like the lamp being carried in a different direction, making it hard to tell real from false.

The paper faces on the banners moved at once; the faces that had been printed on the banners peeled off the paper one by one and floated in the air.

They ford flattened human contours and surrounded the ritual spirit, slowly closing in.

“Paper-face flying annihilators!”

Song Qinghe’s voice changed with awe and fear.

“It’s releasing all the faces from the banners!”

Old elders from beyond the pass often said that flying paper faces were rely frightening if they never touched the ground.

Once they stuck to a person’s vitality, they would “eat the soul.”

Although that sounded like folk exaggeration, it best illustrated the peril now.

Those paper faces in the air were no longer re decorations but mouths of malice that could directly devour yang qi.

If one attached, a person’s mind would feel as if pasted over with paper—stifled, dazed, hollowed out.

Zhou Heng snapped half a rope free; his wrist bled profusely, but he still gritted his teeth and charged forward, a short blade held across his chest to guard the left empty gate for Lu Yuan.

“Lu Daoist, I’ll hold the left!”

Lin Zhaoxuan summoned a breath, flipped the Thunderclap Token, pressed the bloodstain in his palm against its back, and rapidly chanted:

“Ancestor-thunder has voice, earthly malevolence submit form.”

“Urgently, urgently, as by the law’s command!”

Not a heaven-splitting thunder technique, but enough to stagger the first flying paper faces.

Seeing this, the ritual spirit brought both palms together and began forming a very strange posture at its chest.

The gesture was neither a common Daoist seal nor like the imitation of outland shamans or folk diums.

It resembled a kneading together of so old overturned-seat, soul-raising, and spirit-invoking rite.

As its ten fingers interlaced, it was like invisible seat mats being slowly flipped open.

With the change of its hand signs, the lamp shadows and paper faces fell half a beat into synchronization, as if pulled by the sa breath.

“It’s using its hands to form a formation!”

Lin Zhaoxuan shouted.

“Don’t let it close that formation into a circle!”

Lu Yuan watched the scene and gave a cold chuckle, not a light one but a laugh that chilled to the bone.

“Close it into a circle?”

“That works perfectly.”

Imdiately, Lu Yuan slapped the middle of the sword spine with his left hand, and the Town Pass Seven Stars Sword emitted a clear, long note.

Then he stopped pressing forward; instead, using the sword as a border, he drew a second, extrely thin arc inside the salt circle.

As soon as this arc ford, everyone felt the air under their feet abruptly sink, as if the whole stone way had been bound into a smaller circle.

“An inner-wrapping formation!”

Song Qinghe reacted, her eyes lighting with a hard-to-believe glint.

“He’s taken the ritual spirit’s hand signs into his own…he intends to use its montum to invert its own altar!”

This was the true ruthless move.

The hand motion the ritual spirit had been forming was ant to gather the paper faces, lamp shadows, and old seat roots into an inner ring.

But Lu Yuan, in the instant before its completion, used the Town Pass Seven Stars Sword to draw a smaller inner circle and forced its air entrance inside.

It was like soone opening their mouth to swallow a knife, only to have a deeper clamp seize their throat instead.

The ritual spirit’s pupils shrunk sharply, revealing real shock for the first ti.

“You dare borrow my completion?”

it snarled.

Lu Yuan’s face remained expressionless as he pressed the sword down.

“I will not only borrow your completion.”

“I will also borrow you to return the malice.”

As soon as the words fell, the salt grains along the second small arc began to tremble rapidly, as if invisible gears turned beneath.

Thunder intent slipped along the crevice Lin Zhaoxuan had earlier suppressed and rged with the thin lingering cold light on Song Qinghe’s sealing plate.

Under the ritual spirit’s feet, an extrely fine, hidden, and yin “counter-press mouth” ford.

Once that opening appeared, the ritual spirit’s just-ford hand signs felt stabbed in the back; its breath went chaotic.

The paper faces flying in midair froze in unison, and then two of them flipped over to reveal scorched black marks on their backs.

The paper hand in the overturned-seat lamp suddenly drew back, its knuckles trembling, as if tasting backlash it could not withstand.

The ritual spirit let out a low, hissing roar; black vapor swelled around its body, shaking fragnts loose from the stone path.

But Lu Yuan now left it no ti to breathe.

He laid the Town Pass Seven Stars Sword across his left ribs. His right fingertips quickly traced a streak along the blade’s edge.

Then he pressed the bloodied back of his finger heavily onto his brow and recited each word like hamred iron:

“Heaven has seven stars, earth has nine gates.”

“I borrow the heavenly light, not the yin road.”

“I borrow righteous fire, not wicked incense.”

“Seven stars press the altar, the four directions retreat the seat!”

“Urgently, urgently, as by the law’s command!! Seal!”

As that final word left his mouth, the sixth star on the sword’s spine brightened fully.

A faint star pattern seed to surface along the blade as if the old sword, having recognized its master, finally released the long-deposited power to suppress malice.

In that instant, the cold wind on the whole stone way seed lowered by half a foot.

For the first ti, the ritual spirit’s counterattack was suppressed back by Lu Yuan with unparalleled force.

A thread of astonishnt appeared in its black, deep eyes.

It realized Lu Yuan was not rely relying on a single tool to hold; he was using the whole situation as his craft.

Sword, salt, thunder, sealing plate, banners, lamp—these remnants of others’ power, normally scattered, had been strung into a shrinking chain in his hands.

Each ti it tried to tear sothing open, Lu Yuan expanded that tear into a reverse trap.

The more it lashed out, the more it seed to add a skeleton to Lu Yuan’s formation.

This was not control, but counter-control.

More terrifyingly, the firr Lu Yuan pressed, the deeper his aura sank.

Like a frozen river on an outland winter’s night—surface still, beneath it a cold that could split bone.

The ritual spirit suddenly realized sothing: Lu Yuan’s earlier onslaught was not a reckless head-on clash but a waiting ga for it to reveal its most vicious move.

Let it release the paper faces, let it lift the old seat roots, let it complete its overturned-seat hand signs.

Only then could Lu Yuan borrow its strongest breath and use it to clamp the altar dead.

Thinking this, black vapor surged in the ritual spirit’s eyes, twisting into sothing near-rage.

This guy…

How…how can he have so many tricks!!

Only barely twenty so years old…

At once it threw caution aside and threw its head back, emitting an extrely long, fierce howl.

That howl was wolf-like and not wolf-like, crying yet not crying, like dozens of paper faces all shrieking in the wind.

The surrounding banners flew wildly, the overturned-seat lamps were almost blown off the stone way. The old paper shreds in the black soil all rose, like countless broken bones trying to live again from the ground.

“It’s going all out!”

Zhou Heng shouted.

Lu Yuan, however, stood steady, his breathing barely changing.

He watched the ritual spirit, then slowly extended the Town Pass Seven Stars Sword forward; the tip pointed at the altar heart.

He uttered a very light but very cold word:

“Too late.”

In the next mont, he slamd his palm on the sword’s poml.

“Dong—”

Like an outland outpost bell struck heavily in a snowy night.

The second formation-breaking finally closed completely.

The ritual spirit’s counterattack was forcefully suppressed by Lu Yuan’s even harsher, steadier, and deeper hand.

And the true third round, in that muffled bell-like vibration, quietly drew near.