The explosion’s thunderous roar shattered the lingering echoes in Lu Sheng’s ears. “These are your memories? They were all sealed within this mirror?” he murmured, lowering his sabers as he stepped toward the crazed woman in the distance.
“ROARRR!!”
She lunged at him with feral madness. Her movements were faster than the little girl’s from earlier; the claws on her ten fingers were sharper, stronger—terrifying to anyone else, yet utterly meaningless to Lu Sheng.
He didn’t even spare her a glance. The Blood Web contracted and expanded around him like a living force.
BOOM!!
The searing power of the Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies burst outward. In an instant, the woman who had appeared behind him was blown apart, fragments scattering through the air.
With a swift motion, Lu Sheng flipped his hand and brought his choppers down.
SLASH!
One blade pinned the woman to the ground with ruthless precision. Scalding inner Qi surged from the metal, scorching her body as she screamed in agony, her hands clawing helplessly at the weapon embedded in her.
Lu Sheng stepped forward, his expression steady, and looked down at her. “Do you hate?”
It was the same question he had heard moments ago.
The crazed woman writhed and snarled, reduced to little more than a dying beast. Lu Sheng tightened his grip on the saber hilt.
Then, unexpectedly, her voice softened.
“Lingling… Lingling… mother is here…”
Her wild, rigid body slackened. Beneath her tangled hair, her eyes gradually gentled, searching the empty air as her arms swept around as though embracing someone unseen.
“…Mother is here…” she whispered again and again, her tone distant and tender.
Lu Sheng’s face remained impassive as he pushed inner Qi into the hilt.
PU!
Flames burst from within her, consuming her entirely until nothing remained but a smear of black ash.
As she vanished, the surrounding hay field warped, dimmed, and dissolved. Slowly, the world reformed into the familiar courtyard of the Holy Fame Plaza.
Lu Sheng stood alone at its center, saber in hand, staring quietly at the ash drifting across the ground.
For reasons unknown, the creator of the mirror had given that little girl a sliver of hope. Lu Sheng couldn’t tell whether the intention behind it was kindness or cruelty. What he did know was the sour feeling in his chest—deeply unpleasant and unfamiliar. After slaughtering so many ghosts, this was the first time he had felt something like this.
His final question, and that woman’s quiet response, left his thoughts in disarray.
“My Lord???” Xu Chui emerged from the house, looking baffled. “What do we do with the mirror?” He clearly had no grasp of what had transpired.
Lu Sheng turned his gaze toward him. “Pack it all up and bring it away with us.”
“This… even the shattered pieces?” Xu Chui asked hesitantly.
“All of it.”
“Yes, Sir!”
Lu Sheng remained still in the courtyard for a long while, watching the night gradually give way to dawn. When the first light touched the tiles, Dong Qi tiptoed out from her quarters.
“Esteemed representative!” she greeted, bowing deeply. “If not for you last night, Dong Qi would surely have suffered a terrible fate.”
“Just remember our compensation,” Lu Sheng replied calmly. “We’re going to see that Pharmacist Zhuo Qingyang.”
“Yes.”
By then, Xu Chui had finally gathered up the remnants of the mirror. The pile of broken shards was so large he had to use a cowhide mattress as a makeshift sack to hold everything together.
The three of them made their way toward Zhuo Qingyang’s room.
“Dong dong dong.”
“Dong dong dong!”
Silence answered them.
Lu Sheng glanced at Xu Chui. Understanding the signal, Xu Chui stepped back and stomped hard on the door, blasting it open instantly.
Lu Sheng entered first. Zhuo Qingyang lay motionless on the mattress, his complexion a sickly green.
Lu Sheng strode over, placing two fingers beneath the man’s nose. There was no breath—none at all.
“Dead.” He looked toward Dong Qi, a sudden thought flashing through his mind. He remembered the servant-maids and guards he had seen earlier.
“Why is it so quiet this far into the morning? Go check on your servants.”
Dong Qi stiffened, as though realizing something horrifying. She nodded quickly, her face pale. At Lu Sheng’s order, she whispered a hurried acknowledgment and dashed out of the room in small, frantic steps.
Xu Chui stepped forward to inspect the corpse, his voice low and grim. “The body looks like it died naturally… old age, perhaps. No external wounds, no bleeding, no signs of poison. Could be the work of ghosts.”
Lu Sheng let out a slow breath and was about to respond when Dong Qi’s piercing scream tore through the quiet.
At once, he and Xu Chui spun around and raced toward the source of the cry. They found Dong Qi clinging to a pillar outside one of the side bedrooms, her chest heaving, legs trembling as if she could collapse any moment.
When she saw them, her voice cracked. “Esteemed representative… dead… all dead…”
Lu Sheng stepped past her and entered the nearest open room. A servant-maid lay on the bed, her body already beginning to rot.
Xu Chui darted into another room and shouted in alarm.
Lu Sheng came out and met Xu Chui’s gaze. A somber nod confirmed the same scene awaited inside.
He moved down the corridor and glanced into another room. A corpse lay sprawled across the mattress, and the overwhelming stench of decay hit him like a wave, thick enough to turn the stomach.
“Check the rest of the rooms,” Lu Sheng instructed.
“Yes, Sir!” Xu Chui replied sharply, quickening his steps as he shoved open door after door.
Lu Sheng did the same, moving silently from room to room.
By the time they scanned the many courtyards surrounding the plaza, the grim truth had settled in. Holy Fame Plaza had become a wasteland. Aside from Dong Qi and her personal servant-girl, everyone else was dead. Maggots crawled through most of the corpses—many had clearly been gone for days.
Dong Qi stood pale and trembling, utterly terrified. Nearly a third of the Tea Sect’s upper echelon resided here. And now…
As daylight finally broke, sect members and subordinates arrived in a rush. Under Dong Qi’s pale-faced commands, they entered Holy Fame Plaza, lifting the bodies one by one and carrying them out in grim silence.
People from all over town soon gathered outside the great doors, forming a wide, uneasy circle. One by one, the corpses were carried out, each lifeless body drawing gasps and murmurs from the crowd.
The town’s garrison captain—its highest-ranking official—arrived shortly after with a team of soldiers. As one of the leaders of the nearby Winged Honor Guard and an old acquaintance of the Tea Sect, he had long been accustomed to their yearly silver offerings. Out of obligation and concern, he had come to see the situation for himself.
Dong Qi spoke with him briefly before sending him off. Before he left, she discreetly slipped him several taels of silver for making the trip. Only then did the soldiers withdraw.
Meanwhile, Lu Sheng led Xu Chui to investigate the corpse of Sect Master Dong Shengping.
With the help of one of Dong Qi’s assistants, they soon located the grave on a small hill outside the town. Under Dong Qi’s instructions, workers began digging, eventually lifting the coffin and transporting the corpse into a hastily pitched tent.
Inside the tent, the air was hot and suffocating beneath the sweltering sun.
Lu Sheng stood beside the body, which lay under a white cloth. He lifted one corner carefully, revealing the face.
A deep knife gash split the skull from one side to the other, cutting across the eyes, the bridge of the nose, and the mouth.
It was a brutal, decisive wound.
“This should be the cause of death,” Lu Sheng murmured with a frown. Even without further inspection, he could sense a faint strand of Yin Qi seeping from the gash.
That threadlike Yin Qi was something unique—a residue left only on those personally slain by the supernatural. And it was so weak that Lu Sheng would need to absorb it a hundred times over just to gather enough to raise a single level of a Strength Proficiency martial skill.
Naturally, Lu Sheng had no interest in collecting such meager Yin Qi. The true riches he had gained on this trip were the puppet, the cloth fragment, and the copper mirror stand—those were the real Yin Qi treasures.
“There’s another wound on the abdomen. A stab wound—looks like it came from a dagger,” Xu Chui reported beside him.
Lu Sheng nodded, his gaze returning to the corpse as his thoughts deepened.
‘That mirror… it was the key. It preyed on the little girl Lingling’s hatred, and after she died, it changed—became something else altogether. There’s something wrong with it. No ordinary object could kill a little girl, or so many others, without reason. It definitely has some special function.’
After further examination, Lu Sheng had pieced together a rough picture of what had happened to the Tea Sect’s people, including Sect Master Dong Shengping.
“The sect master was plotted against. We can’t say for certain who the murderer was, but it was most likely that ghost called Lingling,” Lu Sheng said. “As for the rest of the sect’s upper echelon, they were lured in by Pharmacist Zhuo Qingyang. He used the mirror to drain their life force and kill them.”
“Life force can actually be absorbed?” Xu Chui blurted out in shock.
“Life force is the natural energy created by eating, sleeping, and resting,” Lu Sheng explained calmly. “It keeps your heart beating, gives you strength. It lets you walk, speak, laugh. That is life force. Put simply—it’s Yang Qi.”
“Oh…” Xu Chui nodded as understanding finally dawned.
Near the tent’s entrance, Lu Sheng took out the puppet he had recovered. Thick, oppressive Yin Qi poured from it like a coiling mist.
The ghost they encountered had only been at the Single-Vein Level, yet the mirror behind it was shrouded in mysteries far beyond Lu Sheng’s grasp.
“Forget it. We’ll leave the Tea Sect matter here for now. Let’s continue sweeping the other areas,” he instructed.
“Yes. Besides this place, there’s another location nearby requesting assistance. It’s only Spirit Grade, though. Compensation is three hundred taels of silver,” Xu Chui said, flipping through his list.
“Go find Dong Qi to replenish our fodder and water supply. We leave today.” Lu Sheng glanced at the Tea Sect members standing anxiously nearby.
The main purpose of this trip had been to harvest Yin Qi. His Yin-natured inner force skills demanded vast amounts of it, and he still hadn’t made progress in compressing his inner Qi.
‘Maybe I can force an upgrade using Yin Qi,’ he thought suddenly. ‘If my body is strong enough, I might be able to condense inner Qi into liquid form.’
But another thought immediately followed.
‘No… the Yin–Yang imbalance must be resolved first. Once I initiate one skill properly, I can use Yin Qi to forcefully advance this Yin-based inner force. If that works, I could kill two birds with one stone—liquefy my inner Qi and achieve Yin–Yang harmony.’
His pulse quickened.
‘If everything goes smoothly, all I need is to initiate Aquarius Qi, push it far enough, and the results might be astonishing.’
Perhaps the two issues that had hounded him—the imbalance of Yin and Yang, and the martial bottleneck—could be solved together.
Xu Chui hurried off to speak with the Tea Sect guards. Moments later, Dong Qi came rushing over, immediately instructing her men to re-bury her father’s remains.
“Esteemed representative, you’re leaving? May I know if the root of the problem… has been found?” she whispered, slipping a folded note discreetly into Lu Sheng’s hand.
Lu Sheng’s expression didn’t shift as he glanced at it. It was a golden note, the faint character “Hundred” marked on its corner.
One hundred taels of gold—Dong Qi’s private reward, given on top of the official payment to the Crimson Whale Sect.
A hundred taels of gold equaled a thousand taels of silver, the same as a million renminbi in his past life.
‘Indeed, everyone involved in the tea trade is obscenely wealthy,’ Lu Sheng thought. He knew well that it was in remote villages—places far removed from imperial oversight—where fortunes could be amassed far greater than in tightly governed cities. Across the Northern Lands, countless small sects lacked fame but possessed staggering wealth. And that was only one region; who knew how many such forces existed elsewhere?
Tea Sect, in particular, had the Winged Honor Guards as their backing. Among them were Intelligence Agency experts, placing the sect under Taoist Bai Feng’s sphere of influence. With such a shield, their safety rivaled even the trade routes safeguarded by the Crimson Whale Sect.
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