Fu Sang was woken up by the cold wind.
At the bottom of the valley, the night wind howled past, chilling one to the marrow. The “woo” sound of the wind, coupled with the thick yin energy permeating the mountains, sounded exactly like the helpless wailing of resentful souls.
Fu Sang opened his eyes and gazed at the unusually clear night sky. After a long moment, he blinked and slowly pushed himself up from the gravel and dirt.
‘…Where is this?’
He remembered that before losing consciousness, he was in the cave, facing a legendary seventh-rank Crimson Evil. He had passed out because his left eye suddenly erupted in excruciating pain, a pain even worse than being shattered to pieces, and it had taken his consciousness with it.
He thought he was definitely going to die, yet here he was, opening his eyes again.
He felt himself. He was still warm.
He was indeed alive.
But if he was going to wake up, he should have woken up in the cave. Why was he now lying on a pile of gravel?
Fu Sang looked around, and his gaze stopped.
He realized that not only was he lying on a pile of gravel, but so were his backpack, his ghost-blood whip, and even his phone that had slipped from his hand earlier.
At this moment, these items were neatly arranged beside him.
“…” Fu Sang frowned slightly.
It felt like he had seen a ghost.
Then his thoughts paused.
He remembered…he had indeed seen a ghost.
He turned on his phone and glanced at it. 1:37 AM.
Nearly seven hours had passed since he had entered the mountains.
Without much thought, he checked that everything was intact, with nothing missing or added, then shouldered his bag, packed up his things, used his spirit compass to gauge the direction, and headed out of the mountains with his flashlight.
As he walked, he surveyed his surroundings.
This was indeed the place he had jumped down from. It looked like part of the cliff had collapsed later, sending rocks tumbling down and piling up everywhere, forming the scene before him.
As for the cave he had stumbled into earlier, it was nowhere to be seen, nor could it be found.
Why was there a Seven Watch Blood-Crying Prison in the mountains? Why didn’t the Crimson Evil kill him? Why was he inexplicably lying at the bottom of the mountain? Which human or ghost had been kind enough to move him out and leave him here? He didn’t know, and he couldn’t be bothered to investigate.
After all, Fu Sang hadn’t forgotten the purpose of this trip; Qi Changying had indeed died at Buzhou Cliff. That was a solid fact, and he had already seen him with his own eyes. As for everything else, it wasn’t his concern. He would report the matter to the family, collect his bounty, and consider it a profit.
The mountain path was difficult to traverse, and even more so in the dark. Fu Sang walked for over an hour, stumbling with each step.
He knew that there was a village called Hei Mountain Village on the outskirts of Hei Mountain Pass, so he kept using his spirit compass to follow the direction of human qi.
It was inconvenient to go anywhere in the middle of the night, so he had to find a place to spend the night first, and then worry about leaving the mountains when daylight came.
By the time he finally saw the village after walking all the way, it was almost three o’clock.
It was the darkest hour before dawn, and even the roosters hadn’t woken yet. But to Fu Sang’s surprise, many lights were on in Hei Mountain Village. Near the village entrance, a few people seemed to be gathered outside a small, run-down courtyard, arguing loudly.
“Girl, stop making a fuss. Who do you expect to go into the mountains with you at this hour? Haven’t you heard how dangerous Hei Mountain Pass is? Don’t blame me for speaking harshly, but anyone who spends the night in Hei Mountain Pass never comes out alive! I think you’d better wait until daylight and contact the search and rescue team, alright.”
Just as he approached, Fu Sang heard a middle-aged man’s loud and insistent voice.
“Impossible! My friend is no ordinary person, and I have my own way to find him! All I need are two strong men to go in with me and carry someone out. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
The female voice that replied was very familiar.
“No…”
“Ten thousand each! Yes or no?!”
The young woman’s offer cut off the man’s harsh words before he could even finish them.
“That’s still…”
“A hundred thousand each!”
“…Ah, miss.” The man’s tone had clearly softened under the weight of money:
“You’ve really come at a bad time. Something happened in our village tonight. Everyone’s busy dealing with village affairs. All the able-bodied men have gone out. Why don’t you wait a bit, and when they come back, I’ll have someone talk to you, alright?”
Hearing that, a phrase popped into Fu Sang’s mind;
Ah, money really can make the devil turn the mill.
“Move aside.” Snapping back to reality, Fu Sang pushed past the old men who were standing around watching the commotion, and when he looked up, he finally saw the young woman speaking inside.
She had a blunt-cut black bob, with exaggerated black eyeshadow and black lipstick. Who else could it be but Huo Wei?
“San You!”
Huo Wei spotted his face, shrieked, and threw herself at him. Her hands, adorned with long nail extensions and countless rings and bracelets, slapped Fu Sang’s shoulders with loud “pats”:
“Are you a person or a ghost… you’re a person! You really are still alive! It wasn’t for nothing that I rushed here overnight to find you!!”
“So noisy…”
Despite knowing her for so many years, Fu Sang still couldn’t stand Huo Wei’s dramatic voice.
“Oh… miss, so this is your friend? Everything’s fine now, right?”
The man who had been talking to Huo Wei looked Fu Sang over several times with a strange expression.
The excitement was over, the money was gone, and everyone dispersed. As he left, the man muttered, “How strange, this outsider went into the mountains alone in the middle of the night and still came out alive.” Huo Wei pretended not to hear, ignored him, rolled her eyes, and pulled Fu Sang into the side courtyard, slamming the door shut behind them.
Seeing Huo Wei act as naturally as if she were in her own home, Fu Sang was a little surprised but didn’t ask any questions.
He didn’t need to ask, this was clearly the result of throwing money at the problem.
He just shut his mouth and followed Huo Wei into the small house.
It was a very simple brick-and-tile house. A bare incandescent bulb hung from the ceiling, its pull cord still dangling in midair. It took two tugs before it turned on.
As soon as the light came on, the moths and mosquitoes that had been hiding in the darkness all swarmed toward it.
“How did you get here?” Fu Sang tossed his bag onto a dusty chair without any signs of disgust.
He was exhausted from the walk out of the mountains, so he sat down on the bed right after putting his things down.
Huo Wei, on the other hand, circled the room for a while and still couldn’t find a single place to park herself.
“You have the nerve to ask? Do you know how scared I was when I got your message? I thought you’d forgotten to cast the reversal seal before jumping off that cliff this time! But then I thought, that can’t be right… jumping from that height would have turned you into paste long ago, how would you still be alive to say goodbye? So I immediately grabbed a flight and came looking for you…”
Huo Wei’s mouth, once open, never closed. She rattled on and on:
“When I got here, the villagers said there had been an explosion in the mountains, and I knew it had something to do with you! But your phone was completely unreachable, and I was worried! So I asked the villagers for help. But his village is so xenophobic, I had to offer up to ten thousand yuan just to rent this broken, filthy place to drop my luggage and stay. Look at all this dust everywhere, it’s disgusting. I’ve sacrificed so much for your worthless little life, and you were still thinking about leaving me your paltry inheritance, who would want that…”
“Thank you, but next time, don’t bother with such an expense. This worthless life isn’t worth it. If you really want to do something for me, you can exchange it for ghost money and burn it for me.” Fu Sang interrupted her, then added:
“And, can you get to the point?”
“What isn’t the point? Every word I say is the point, okay?! After I got in and prepared my things, I planned to go into the mountains that very night. I planned to find you whether dead or alive. If you were alive, that’s fine. But if you were dead, I couldn’t carry you out by myself, so what was I supposed to do? I needed to hire a couple of men to help with the haul! So I called the village chief and said I needed people. But that village chief kept making excuses, probably trying to scam me. He only gave in when I raised the price to a hundred thousand. And then you suddenly showed up! But what happened to you? You’re completely drenched in yin energy…ugh, you reek of ghosts. At first glance, I thought you’d turned into a ghost! But you’ve always been a bit ghostly anyway, so if you did turn into one, it’d be a fitting end…”
While Hyo Wei babbled on, Fu Sang’s eyes started glazing over and he let out a yawn.
“Zhuge Fu Sang!!” Huo Wei yelled.
“?” Fu Sang’s yawn stopped mid-way, and he raised an eyebrow slightly:
“Don’t call me that.”
“Fine, fine, Fu Sang! You have to tell me… what exactly did you run into in this Hei Mountain Pass that made you think you were going to die and start handing out your inheritance? And where did this ghostly stench all over you come from?”
Huo Wei crossed her arms and stood by the bed, looking Fu Sang up and down.
This guy always looked like a gloomy, half human, half ghost, and after all this chaos, he looked even less human.
His overly long hair was a tangled mess, covered in dust and dirt. His phoenix eyes were usually lifeless, and right now, dark circles hung beneath them. Because he was thin, his jawline was sharp, and his lips looked pale, making the lip ring on the right side of his lower lip stand out even more.
His clothes were also dirty and tattered, with a big rip in the left sleeve…
“Hey, you’re hurt?”
Huo Wei froze and pointed at the bloodstain on Fu Sang’s left arm.
“Oh…”
Fu Sang lowered his eyes, only then remembering that part.
Fu Sang raised his hand, unzipped the collar, and took off his outer jacket.
A stone shard carried by the fierce wind had cut his arm. The wound wasn’t large, but it was quite deep, and half of his arm was stained red with blood.
Fu Sang looked down and tore a strip of fabric from the hem of his loose T-shirt, bit one end with his teeth, and roughly wrapped up the wound.
“You wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t pointed it out? Doesn’t it hurt?” Huo Wei winced at the sight of the wound.
“Not really. I can barely feel it.” Fu Sang’s expression didn’t change.
‘Fair enough. Compared to your hobby of not taking the stairs or the elevator when going downstairs, this little scratch really is nothing.’
Huo Wei silently grumbled to herself, when she suddenly heard Fu Sang say flatly after bandaging himself:
“There’s a Crimson Evil in the mountains.”
“Oh, there’s a crimson…” Huo Wei’s eyes went round, and her voice nearly pierced through the ceiling:
“There’s a crimson what?!!!”
“Crimson Evil.”
Fu Sang repeated, his expression unchanged.
“A c-c-c-c-crimson…” Huo Wei stuttered for a long time:
“Crimson Evil?!”
“Mm.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… my San You baby,”
Huo Wei raised her ten black-nailed fingers as if to cup Fu Sang’s face, but Fu Sang frowned and dodged away in disgust.
“Mommy’s San You baby didn’t fall off the mountain and hit his head, did he? Now he’s talking about a Crimson Evil? Can San You baby even see spirits of the underworld? He didn’t just dream it in a nightmare, did he? Mommy’s heart aches so much…”
“If you don’t want your tongue anymore, you can cut it off and throw it away.” Fu Sang didn’t even look up.
“You’re the one who started talking nonsense first, alright?” Huo Wei rolled her eyes:
“Leave alone whether you can see ghosts or not…even if you could, a Crimson Evil is a seventh-rank spirit! If you saw one, would you still be alive? This Hei Mountain Village is so close to Languozi Cliff, would everyone in this village still be alive? A fifth-rank ghost is enough to make every inch of this mountain barren. What kind of concept is a Crimson Evil?”
“It’s too much trouble to explain.” Fu Sang really couldn’t be bothered to talk, but he knew that if he didn’t explain clearly, Huo Wei would keep pressing him.
That would be even worse.
“At the bottom of Languozi Cliff, there’s a seal left by our ancestors a thousand years ago… the Seven Watch Blood-Crying Prison. It is suppressing the only Crimson Evil in ten thousand years. That Crimson Evil is Qi Changying, the Li dynasty general I was looking for.”
“Wh…” Huo Wei blinked:
“What’s the Seven Watch Blood-Crying Prison?”
“.” Fu Sang paused for a moment.
Huo Wei was different from him. He had no parents, was an orphan raised by his master, and becoming a spirit master had been his only option back then. But Huo Wei was a young lady from a good family; she had only been sent to the sect because she was constantly troubled by unclean things, and her family wanted her to have some means of self-defense. She had neither talent nor interest in this field, so naturally she hadn’t learned much. But Fu Sang hadn’t expected that “not much” included not even knowing the most famous formation legend of the Nether Path’s founding ancestor, the Seven Watch Blood-Crying Prison.
“Read the Qi Yueban chapter of the “Chronicles of The Spirit Master” and the “Zhuge family’s Secret Records”. Go see for yourself.”
“What kind of books can I read in this deep mountain wilderness? Just tell me about it.” Huo Wei had been hoping for a story, but Fu Sang had already pulled back the covers and lay down comfortably. He even shifted over a bit, making room for Huo Wei:
“I’m not obligated to tell bedtime stories.”
Huo Wei punched him on the thigh through the blanket:
“If you won’t tell, give me back that ten thousand yuan for the room!”
Fu Sang, who had just peacefully closed his eyes, immediately snapped them open and smoothly picked up the topic:
“It’s a sealing formation created by the founding ancestor’s direct disciple of the Nether Path, Qi Yueban, and the Zhuge family ancestor, Zhuge Yu. Because it was too fierce, it was lost after being used once. Their purpose in creating it was to suppress the first and only seventh-rank Crimson Evil in history. That seventh-rank Crimson Evil happened to be Qi Changying of the Li dynasty…the very Qi Changying I came here to find. Got it?”
“Oh…” Huo Wei nodded and asked the key question:
“Assuming everything you’re saying is true, then how are you still alive?”
“Don’t know.”
“Qi Changying didn’t kill you?”
“Yeah, what a pity.”
“Why didn’t he kill you?”
“I forgot to leave my number. Next time I see him, I’ll ask him for you.”
“…”
Seeing that Fu Sang’s eyes had closed again, Huo Wei pouted, grabbed his discarded jacket, and laid it on the edge of the bed, finally creating a place to sit.
Then she patted Fu Sang:
“Hey, are you really going to sleep?”
“Pretending to sleep is a profound art. Don’t disturb me, or I’ll go into qi deviation.”
“Get lost.” Huo Wei rolled her eyes.
“I suggest you sleep too,” Fu Sang added.
“Why? This place is so dirty.”
“Because it’s a real waste not to sleep in this luxurious drafty brick-and-tile house that costs ten thousand a night.”
“Look at you, so stingy!”
Huo Wei patted Fu Sang again, excited:
“Don’t sleep yet. Tell me more about that crimson…”
Before she could finish her sentence, Huo Wei suddenly stopped talking.
Without warning, two crisp sounds rang out in the room…
They came from the weeping soul coins at their waists.
When he had been bickering with Huo Wei, Fu Sang hadn’t opened his eyes. When Huo Wei was patting him vigorously, he had nearly fallen asleep. But the moment he heard that sound, he was instantly alert and sat up straight in bed.
Huo Wei saw him turn his face toward her and froze for a moment, then realized he wasn’t looking at her but at the direction of the door.
It was just that her friend always looked ghostly under normal circumstances, and right now, under the dim overhead light, his expressionless face was really quite unsettling. Even though the two of them had grown up bickering like this and had been as close as siblings for years, Huo Wei still occasionally got startled by him out of the blue.
“What, what’s wrong?”
Fu Sang blinked slowly.
Moths and mosquitoes had been circling the bulb overhead all along, making soft tapping sounds, and the bulb occasionally flickered.
Whether by coincidence or not, the light suddenly dimmed for a moment. Fu Sang made a subtle sniffing motion and told her with certainty:
“Someone’s dead.”
