An ancient Daoist text says: Gather yin, and you become a ghost; gather yang, and you become a god.
Ghosts are all manner of demons and spirits.
The Tang Dynasty was rife with strange and supernatural tales. Legend has it that Wei Zheng, a famous scholar of ancient times, cultivated himself into a half-immortal, suppressing wandering souls and ghosts throughout the land. He compiled the Records of the Spirits, a catalogue of demons and monsters from across the realm that held long-lost divine powers within its pages.
After the Shenlong reforms, during Princess Taiping’s rise to power, strange beings and demons appeared everywhere. He then founded the Office of Yin Crossing and established the post of Night Star Officer, once known as the “Yin Ferryman.”
In a dilapidated old pawnshop, with a dragon-slaying ring-pommel saber at his side, Wei Wuji, a descendant of the Tang Dynasty scholar Wei Zheng, keeps watch over the world of the living and ferries wandering souls across. One cup of clear tea sees him through the mortal world; when he looks back, not a speck of dust remains.
The spirit god ferries souls, the underworld road opens. If the Yellow Springs cannot ferry you, I will.
After the founding of the country, spirits were forbidden from cultivating into monsters. Many lonely ghosts had nowhere to go, and so they nursed deluded resentment just to cling to what little life remained. This is known as “karmic affliction.”
The White Bone Inn, painted-skin demons, souls bound for the Yellow Springs, and lonely graves in the mass-burial grounds: behold the strange and supernatural tales brought to us by the last modern Night Wanderer.
