Chapter 77: Pengzhou (4)

The moonlight in Pengzhou at night was actually exceptionally bright, falling onto the ground in a pale white expanse, as if a layer of frosted sugar had been sprinkled. It was just that the lights here were too intense; before the moonlight could even land, it was melted away by the blazing firelight.

Fiery red lanterns hung fully across an entire wall, turning even the ground a rosy red. At first glance, one might think they were walking in a flowing river of blood.

Yuan Xiaozhu pulled her face mask high, keeping her head half-lowered as she merged into the flow of people. From the lantern walls on both sides, the weak sounds of people begging for mercy would transmit from inside the lanterns from time to time. Pitch-black handprints could be seen slapping against the insides—thump, thump, thump—even the despairing wails were weak.

Those were all debtors of the Mirage Sea Assembly. They gambled and sought pleasure in the Mirage, incurred massive debts, and when their assets couldn’t cover their liabilities, they would ultimately be captured by the Master of the Mirage. Their souls would be extracted and locked inside the lanterns to serve as “lantern wicks.”

The time limit was forty-nine days. Day and night, the soul would suffer the agony of being scorched by fierce flames, until their family members scraped together enough wealth to redeem them. If the money wasn’t gathered, on the fiftieth day, their souls would fly away and scatter, perishing completely.

Yuan Xiaozhu had once seen with her own eyes her father turn into flying ash within a lantern. That foolish middle-aged man had begged, wailed, and screamed miserably inside, until in the end, not even dregs remained.

No, what did remain was a debt of three thousand six hundred and seventy-two spiritual pearls, pressing down upon the shoulders of her entire family.

In order to repay the debt, her mother entered the Ghost Market to take on jobs. She was arranged to enter the Fen Feng Plains (Scorching Wind Plains) as a guide, scouting the path for those insatiably greedy treasure hunters, and then she never managed to come out again.

She kept her eyes looking straight ahead, hurrying past that row of lantern walls. She was unwilling to look more, always feeling that one day these crimson lanterns would open their bloody maws, swallow her soul inside as well, and burn her entirely clean.

At the end of the lantern walls was an ivory-colored pavilion so exquisite it didn’t seem like a mortal creation. At night, even its walls emitted a white halo, crystal clear and translucent, exactly like a precious pearl fallen amidst the sea of sand.

The Rakshasa Ghost Market.

The flow of people here was so massive it was terrifying; to say they were rubbing shoulders and bumping heels wouldn’t be an exaggeration. There were ostentatious young masters piled with gold and jade, as well as miserable beggars in ragged clothes, and vicious assassins with blood dripping from their blades. Everyone entered through this single door, without being charged a single cent. Whether they went in to conduct business or seek pleasure was up to them; they just couldn’t break the rules within.

The sole rule was to abide by the contract.

Yuan Xiaozhu opened her hand. An iron token with an evil ghost pattern lay in her palm, soaked wet with sweat.

Looking at the wide-open pavilion doors, she thought of her younger brother, who had been lifted by his collar in someone’s palm like a baby chick amidst the smoke and dust. Gritting her teeth, she charged inside.

Behind the doors, everything was bizarre and motley.

On both sides of the ten-zhang (thirty-meter) wide path were countless pavilions and towers. The rolling yellow sands could no longer be seen. Here, it was as if there were no heaven and earth, only buildings—countless buildings. Above her head, under her feet, and beside her, layer upon layer, just like an exquisitely carved puzzle ball (ghost-work ball).

She sprinted wildly at an extremely fast speed, charging into a pavilion that from the outside looked exceptionally pitch-black and ominous. With a hard shove, she pushed open the main doors, walked to the counter in two or three steps, and slammed that iron token onto the desk with one palm. Like firing a volley from a cannon, she launched her accusations: “There is a problem with the job your place handed out! The intelligence is wrong. Not only were those two cultivators prepared early on, but their cultivation bases are extremely high! Right now, I’ve directly lost two people on my end—you must send someone to help me!”

For some unknown reason, the clerk behind the counter was sweating profusely. His gaze moved downward, landing on the ghost face Yuan Xiaozhu had slapped onto the table. As if he had truly seen an evil ghost, his whole body trembled: “This guest… our humble shop is merely the middleman. If a real problem occurs, we absolutely do not take responsibility! Even if you want to find fault, you have to go find fault with the Path of No Discrimination. It has nothing to do with us.”

Yuan Xiaozhu stared at the clerk somewhat weirdly. Just a few days ago, when she came, this person’s nostrils were pointed at the sky, his words sharp and mean. Why was he so panicked and flustered today, looking terribly cowardly?

Unable to care enough to think too much about it, she bolstered her courage and fiercely slapped the table again. “Then you guys call out the client from the Path of No Discrimination! Handing out a job worth fifty spiritual pearls and providing fake intelligence—this is not how you be an unscrupulous merchant!”

“Transactions in the Rakshasa Ghost Market have always required abiding by the contract. For you to deceive me like this, watch out or I’ll complain to the Market Master and have him catch you all to refine into lantern oil!”

The clerk’s face was deathly pale. He pointed toward the back and said tremblingly: “Then why don’t you go tell him yourself?”

Yuan Xiaozhu froze for a moment.

Only then did she realize something was wrong. Murder-for-hire businesses like this were extremely common in the Rakshasa Ghost Market. Those who could mix in and act as middlemen basically all had some level of power backing them; none of them would reason with ordinary people like her. Normally, if she came recklessly finding fault like this, the shop guards would have long since broken her arms and legs and thrown her out. But today, the shop was terribly quiet.

Besides herself, there wasn’t a single customer, and even that fat, greasy-brained shopkeeper was nowhere to be seen. Staring into the clerk’s eyes, she finally noticed that this skinny young man with a fifth-tier cultivation base had a complexion that was pale tinged with green. Cold sweat had soaked his hair, and the fear in his pair of eyes was almost overflowing.

Her gaze shifted around. Things in the shop were usually kept neat and tidy, but right now in the corner, there were overturned tables, and a dark stain had seeped into the carpet… She smelled a dangerous scent of blood.

Remembering the main doors that had closed when she came in, Yuan Xiaozhu suddenly realized she seemed to be very unlucky, having barged into a place she shouldn’t have barged into.

Killing wasn’t prohibited in the Rakshasa Ghost Market. Yuan Xiaozhu took a step back, her thoughts spinning like lightning. She could no longer care about haggling, finding helpers, or canceling the job to save people. Seeing no movement around her, she glanced at the wide-open doorway, turned her head, and ran.

In this instant, she channeled the spiritual energy of her entire body. Yet she had only managed to take a single step when an extremely light, low cough suddenly came from behind the counter: “What job? Let me see.”

That person’s voice was very gentle, even carrying a few traces of weak feebleness. But against all reason, her entire body stiffened, completely unable to move a single inch. Sweat poured out like syrup, quickly soaking her clothes.

“Don’t make me wait,” the person reminded.

The voice was still gentle, but in a daze, Yuan Xiaozhu detected an extremely chilling, biting killing intent within it.

With trembling hands, she took the job paper out from her chest. Almost unable to hear her own breathing, she cupped that thin piece of paper and approached step by step. Crossing behind the counter, the smell of blood grew thicker. The carpet had drank its fill of liquid, letting out a wet squelch, squelch sound when stepped on.

In the corner, the corpses of the shopkeeper, the guards, and several other clerks were piled together, dying with their eyes wide open. All of their throats had been slit with a single knife strike. The blood on their bodies was still warm, irrigating into the ground, a patch of deep black.

Yuan Xiaozhu walked in front of the drapery behind the counter. A hand with distinctly defined knuckles half-lifted the gossamer curtain and gently took that piece of paper. That hand was overly pale, tinged with a faint green, like the hand of a dead person. The moment it made contact, it was as cold as a corpse.

“Qingyun Academy… fourth-tier… He Tingtong?” the person muttered to himself. “Is it that academy opened by the Xu clan?”

Yuan Xiaozhu had grown up in Pengzhou since childhood and didn’t know that Qingyun Academy was a place. With her head half-lowered, not knowing how to answer, she could only let a pair of hands tremble involuntarily. “I only know that he was sent by the Immortal Alliance. He just got off the spiritual boat yesterday. His cultivation base is approximately seventh… seventh-tier. He doesn’t like to talk much. He also has a follower. The two of them both look like sword cultivators, but… but that follower also knows how to use talismans.”

“Thank you for your hard work,” the person behind the drapery said. “This job is rescinded. You don’t have to carry it out anymore. You may leave.”

The pressure on Yuan Xiaozhu’s body suddenly lightened. Almost instantaneously, she turned around, exhausting every ounce of spiritual energy in her body to dash out from the counter at maximum speed, fly out the main doors, and crawl on the hard ground of the Ghost Market.

Behind her, the main doors closed with a creak, and all the lights were extinguished. She scrambled up and ran, never looking back as she charged up the long stairs, charged out of the Ghost Market, charged past the lantern walls, right until she crashed into someone’s chest. Hearing a familiar miserable yelp, only then did she return to her senses and cry out in shock: “Xiao Qing? You’re still alive?”

Yuan Xiaoqing clutched his nose, which had been bumped until it bled, hunched his back, and grimaced in pain. “Of course I’m alive! That guy surnamed He is full of tricks. He recognized that we were Master’s people, captured me and Grandma to use as threats against Master, scammed food and drinks, and even made me do menial labor!”

Yuan Xiaozhu rushed up and patted her younger brother’s arms and legs all over. Discovering that he was completely whole and unharmed, she finally breathed a sigh of relief. By the time she returned to her senses, her legs were weak, and she practically collapsed onto the ground, unable to speak for a long while.

“Sister, what’s wrong with you? Why do you look like you’ve bumped into a ghost?” Yuan Xiaoqing touched her face. His nose twitched, and as he looked around, he noticed the soles of his sister’s shoes were soaked red with blood. His expression instantly darkened. “Did you run into people from the Mirage? Are they pushing for debt collection again?”

Yuan Xiaozhu shook her head, somewhat drained of strength. She cast a somewhat fearful glance backward, then said in a low voice: “It seemed to be someone from the Path of No Discrimination… His cultivation base is… extremely high.”

“Let’s go back,” Yuan Xiaozhu grabbed her young brother’s fingers. “We need to go inform Master and tell him not to take those two in. They’ve been targeted by something terrifying; I’m afraid it’ll bring disaster to the bystanders.”

He Tingtong squatted on the ground studying the arrays. The array arts in here looked like they hadn’t been activated in a long time; the cinnabar in quite a few places had faded.

Holding a small notebook, he made rubbings of all the array arts, flipping through page by page, his mouth clicking in tsk tsk sounds.

On the only bed in the room, Fu Fengyan was lying flat on his back, spread out in the shape of the character “大” (big). His loose hair was braided into a large single braid resting on top of his head. He was wearing loose sleepwear, his eyes vacant, looking as if he was so hot he was about to melt.

Above He Tingtong’s head, several wind talismans were continuously blowing air, and beside him, he had even used spiritual energy to freeze a bucket of ice. Sitting nearby, even he felt cold, yet Fu Fengyan’s complexion remained swollen red. A slight touch revealed it was burning hot to the hand.

“Are you sick or something?” He Tingtong touched Fu Fengyan’s forehead. “You’re so hot it could almost burn someone to death.”

Fu Fengyan’s expression was listless. He rolled over on the bed, shook his head, and gave a simple explanation: “It’s heart-fire.”

He Tingtong: “What?”

Fu Fengyan opened his hand. He rarely furrowed his brows, but his expression revealed a few traces of endurance. The breath he exhaled was scalding. He grabbed He Tingtong’s sleeve. “Let me hug you. Your body… is very cold.”

He Tingtong touched his own head; it was normal temperature, hardly cold.

He held a skeptical attitude toward Fu Fengyan’s claim; after all, this person looked slow-witted and wooden, but was actually full of tricks. But out of consideration that they were schoolmates, he still extended an arm to let him hug it. After a long while, he let the person wrap around his entire body like vines.

The ice in the room was rapidly melting, and the cold wind blew fiercely against them. He Tingtong lay on the bed; the left side of his body felt cold, but his right side felt like a furnace had been attached to it—two extremes of ice and fire.

He moved, attempting to turn over, but Fu Fengyan hugged him, draped himself over him, and entangled him.

He Tingtong: “…”

He looked at Fu Fengyan, who was like an octopus, and poked his waist. The other party bounced twice, squinted his eyes at him, and started taking off his clothes.

He Tingtong quickly grabbed his clothes. Helplessly lying on top of the person, he flicked his finger and extinguished the lights in the room.

Forget it, just treat it as having an extra mattress pad.