Having not eaten anything since yesterday afternoon, Zhuge Buyi was indeed a bit hungry. The warm aroma wafting from the bowl was quite enticing.
So he finally lowered his head, silently scooped up a spoonful of fish balls, and took a spoonful of the soup.
He didn’t want to admit it, but it was indeed fresh and fragrant.
To be honest, at this point, Zhuge Buyi was genuinely beginning to waver.
Before the fish balls were placed in front of him, he believed Fu Sang was just joking with him, and that the true purpose of their arduous journey was actually for something important.
But now he was genuinely afraid that after they finished this breakfast, Fu Sang would lead him right back the way they came, repeating the whole bus-train-shared-bike-train-bus-plane cycle, and then tell him that he really had only come here to eat a bowl of fish balls, and that all the hardships and suffering along the way were just a little trial and tempering from his martial uncle because he insisted on tagging along. As for whether his brother lived or died, that was his own problem to figure out, it was none of Fu Sang’s business, since it wasn’t his brother, and he’d never said he’d help… something along those lines.
The more Zhuge Buyi thought about it, the more disheartened he became, and even the fish balls in his bowl started tasting bitter.
Until Fu Sang across from him suddenly reached out and tapped his knuckles twice on his side of the table, making two dull sounds.
Zhuge Buyi looked up, bewildered.
Fu Sang’s expression was flat as he raised his hand and held up two fingers:
“Two things.”
“Wh, what?” Zhuge Buyi was taken aback.
“Right now, I’m the only one who knows where your brother is, and the only one who can save him. But I have no reason to take on this trouble. So, if you want to trade information with me, or have me lend a hand with your brother’s problem, you need to do two things. It’s just a matter of whether you’re willing.”
Having teased the kid enough and gotten him some hot food, Fu Sang got down to business.
“What things…?”
Zhuge Buyi considered for a moment, then asked cautiously.
“Nothing that’ll make you a murderer. You just need to say yes or no.” Fu Sang hated indecisive clients, so he had no intention of giving him room to haggle from the start. He pressed him directly into making a choice. A student like this, either still in school or just graduated, had unstable resolve and was easiest to fool.
Sure enough, Zhuge Buyi seemed to fall into immense inner conflict and struggle.
But in the end, his brother’s safety won out in his heart. Caring too much made him lose his head, completely forgetting that his brother had taken a posting from the Mountain Residence, and that if he needed to access the mission details, given his status, he could simply apply through the family directly. The Zhuge family placed great importance on the safety of their main branch disciples. If it was confirmed they were in danger and needed assistance, they would send help at the fastest possible speed. There was no need for him to betray his soul and make this unequal deal with Fu Sang.
In the end, he lost because he was simply naive, lacking experience in navigating the complexities of the real world, which was why he was now sitting at the entrance of a rundown shop in this small county, being conned by Fu Sang.
He gritted his teeth, “Okay. Go ahead.”
Fu Sang’s lips curved up almost imperceptibly.
“One, I want to know all the personal information you have about your family’s Shaosi. As much as possible. Full name, age, who his parents are… anything you know, you tell me.”
“…” Zhuge Buyi didn’t quite understand:
“Why are you asking about the Shaosi?”
Fu Sang raised his eyes coolly: “Am I asking you, or are you asking me?”
“Sorry, I…” Something about the pressure made Zhuge Buyi choke on his words.
“The Shaosi… I don’t really know much either. I only know his surname is Zhuge.”
“Do I look like I enjoy hearing nonsense?” Fu Sang let out a cold snort.
“No, Little Martial Uncle, I really haven’t seen much of the Shaosi. If you want to know about him, you’d probably have to ask the seniors at the Mountain Residence. All I can say is… he’s not old, at most twenty-seven or twenty-eight, very young. I don’t know anything else. Not even what he looks like. I haven’t even heard his voice…”
Before he could finish, Zhuge Buyi suddenly stopped, frowning slightly, as if trying hard to recall something.
Push when you need to push, wait when you need to wait. Balance is the key to a good con. Fu Sang ate his fish balls slowly, showing rare patience.
“Wait, I think I actually do know the Shaosi’s name. If I remember correctly, I saw it two years ago when I was organizing the nameplates for my grandmaster. He should be called…”
Zhuge Buyi blinked, finally digging out a name from memory:
“He should be called, Zhuge Qi.”
“?” Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly: “Which qi?”
“The qi for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”
Fu Sang lowered his eyes in thought for a moment, didn’t press further, and just nodded, “Okay. Got it. Second thing.”
He lifted his gaze, staring coldly into Zhuge Buyi’s eyes. The look in those heterochromatic pupils made Zhuge Buyi swallow nervously, certain that nothing good would come next.
Sure enough, Fu Sang dropped a bombshell, “I need you to make a blood oath to me.”
“…” Zhuge Buyi was stunned, wondering if he’d misheard. “…What???”
“A blood oath. You swear to me that you will not share or hint at anything concerning me with anyone other than those already involved in the matter. If you do, you’ll immediately bleed from your seven orifices, your bowels and stomach will rupture, your soul will shatter completely, and the fragments will become nourishment for my magical artifacts, never to see the light of day again.”
“…”
Zhuge Buyi couldn’t help but take a deep breath.
He genuinely didn’t understand how Fu Sang could always say such terrifying things with a completely calm and expressionless face.
After a moment of deliberation, he cautiously asked, “Is, is that necessary?”
“Is that for you to decide?”
“…”
“Don’t worry,” Fu Sang said, shifting from pressure to reassurance, “As long as you keep your mouth shut and don’t sell me out or stab me in the back, this curse won’t affect you in any way. Your life is still your life.”
He paused, then added, “Actually, I’m a very kind and gentle person. All of this carries a certain karmic burden and risk for me, and yet I’m not even charging you a price…I’m just asking you about one person and hoping you’ll keep my secrets. In exchange, I’ll take over a huge mess, clean up your brother’s disaster, and even save his life. That’s a pretty good deal for you, isn’t it?”
Zhuge Buyi was almost convinced.
He hesitated internally for a moment…just one moment, before nodding.
Before he agreed, he told himself that Fu Sang’s request was simply for him to keep his secrets. How serious could Fu Sang’s secrets be?
He couldn’t even see spirits. At worst, he might be selling magical artifacts, practicing forbidden arts, or leaking Zhuge family intelligence, right?
None of those were particularly serious issues. If it was for his brother’s safety, Zhuge Buyi could afford to sell out his conscience just a little.
He was good at keeping his mouth shut.
So he nodded solemnly and, as Fu Sang wished, made the horrifying blood oath with him.
Now that Fu Sang’s demands had been met, it was time for him to fulfill his promise.
But Fu Sang only said “no rush,” finishing his breakfast at a leisurely pace and wiping his hands with a tissue before speaking, “Their mission location is Mitou Village, about fifty kilometers from this county. Are you done eating? Let’s go.”
“Oh, oh, okay…”
Zhuge Buyi quickly stood up, then realized and asked, “How do you know where they are?”
How did Fu Sang know?
That was a great question.
It was all thanks to Huo Wei’s overflowing desire to share.
Besides Zhuge Buhuo flicking boogers, she’d also shared a lot of useful information with him, including but not limited to the cities and counties they passed along the way to the mission site, and the annoyingly convoluted methods of transfer.
Of course, he wasn’t about to tell Zhuge Buyi any of that, so he just brushed it off with:
“I calculated it.”
He pulled his suitcase away from the delicious fish ball shop, walked straight along the main street, and after three intersections found an abandoned construction site.
There were several cars haphazardly parked there, and many middle-aged men were squatting on the curb, smoking and chatting.
Seeing the two of them approaching with suitcases, the group swarmed over, “Handsome, where to? Anywhere you want, we can leave anytime!”
“Mitou Village.” Fu Sang gave the name.
The first man to rush over tossed his cigarette butt, grinning to reveal a set of yellowed teeth:
“Five hundred for both of you, and we can leave right now!”
“Okay.” Fu Sang didn’t haggle, just nodded in agreement.
Zhuge Buyi stood behind him, looking a bit surprised.
This was the same person who’d ridden a shared bicycle across half the city and sat through a night on a hard seat train just to save taxi fare, but now he was just agreeing to an outrageous fare of five hundred yuan?
This was definitely not simple!
Sure enough, before the thought even faded, Zhuge Buyi heard Fu Sang calmly add, “He’s paying.”
“?”
With that, Fu Sang walked off with the driver to put away the bags, then glanced back at him and invited, “Get in.”
The car carried the stench of years of secondhand smoke, enough to make one dizzy after a while.
Along the way, the driver opened a window, sang along loudly to the golden oldies channel on the radio, and drove them over one mountain after another.
“You two aren’t locals, are you? Mitou Village…what’s there to see in such a remote place? Tell you what, you two pay a bit extra, and I’ll be your local guide, show you some of Yongfu’s hidden gems!”
The driver was very outgoing, and after singing his fill, started trying to get close to them.
Fu Sang didn’t respond, just looked down at the map on his phone and rolled the window down a bit, letting the wind tousle his hair.
The driver didn’t give up, barely watching the road as he gripped the steering wheel and turned his head to look at the two in the back.
“Huh? What do you say, handsome? I’m a born-and-bred Yongfu local…I know the best places!”
Neither a guide nor a local escort was needed, since their trip wasn’t for sightseeing, but Zhuge Buyi didn’t know how to explain that. In fact, he didn’t know how to refuse at all.
He dared not meet the driver’s gaze, afraid of being singled out and pestered, so he discreetly glanced at Fu Sang beside him, hoping he’d say something.
Fu Sang looked a little annoyed.
He turned off his phone and closed his eyes, feeling the scent coming in through the air, then finally spoke coldly,
“Where we go is none of your business.”
“Uh… I was just making a suggestion…” The driver didn’t expect that attitude and awkwardly cleared his throat.
“A suggestion? Are you really offering suggestions, or are you taking me for a sucker? Five hundred isn’t enough? I paid you way over market rate to get me to my destination as fast as possible, not to listen to you voice opinions about my plans. Five hundred yuan, you drive, I ride. Passengers aren’t obligated to chat. So shut up, keep your eyes on the road. I don’t want to have to see your face from the back seat.”
“…” The driver finally fell silent, embarrassed.
As Zhuge Buyi breathed a sigh of relief, his widened eyes looked at Fu Sang with something close to admiration.
Thanks to Fu Sang, the rest of the ride was blissfully quiet.
The driver dropped them off about two kilometers from the entrance to Mitou Village, saying the roads up ahead were mountain paths and cars couldn’t go further. He left them there and turned around to head back.
Fu Sang checked the map, confirmed the direction, put his phone away, and started walking up the mountain road with his suitcase.
Seeing this, Zhuge Buyi hurried to catch up.
The mountain scenery in Yongfu was quite beautiful, but the deeper they went, the heavier Zhuge Buyi’s heart grew.
Because within his field of vision, the surrounding yin energy grew more and more abundant. At first, it was just scattered specks clinging to plants here and there, but further in, the residue energy became denser and denser, to a terrifying degree, even blanketing every branch and leaf in its grayish-black like an unending ashfall.
“The energy here is terrible.”
As Zhuge Buyi was lost in thought, Fu Sang rarely spoke first.
“Yes…” Zhuge Buyi nodded in full agreement.
“What can you see right now?”
“Yin energy, a lot of it. So thick it’s hanging on the trees.”
“What about spirits?”
“Occasionally I can see one or two, but they’re just residual obsessions, not a big problem.”
“Because the big problems are all up ahead.”
Fu Sang suddenly announced some bad news.
“Oh… Hm?” Zhuge Buyi caught on, “How do you know, aren’t you…?” Aren’t you unable to see?
“I can sense it.”
Fu Sang replied flatly.
Hearing this, Zhuge Buyi paused.
Nether path spirit masters mostly relied on their eyes and magical tools and artifacts to confirm the “energy” of a place. If Fu Sang could directly use “sensing” to determine the quality of an area’s energy…
Then he probably understood why the elders had used the word “amazing” to describe his little martial uncle’s talent.
“What does that feeling feel like?” Zhuge Buyi couldn’t help asking.
“Intuition.”
Such a rather abstract description.
So he followed up with a terrible question, “…How direct, specifically?”
“?” Fu Sang glanced at him with a look of someone looking at an idiot, but mercifully demonstrated:
“For example, intuition says that in five seconds, you’ll encounter something not so great after you go around that rock.”
Following his words, Zhuge Buyi looked up at the rock he mentioned.
It was a huge boulder at least three times the height of a person, with mountains on one side and trees on the other, covered in unknown plants as far as the eye could see, with only a narrow dirt road barely wide enough for a tricycle squeezed through the middle.
With a testing mindset, Zhuge Buyi unconsciously quickened his pace, rounded the rock along the dirt path, and took a look.
The next moment, his pupils contracted sharply, and he instinctively reached into his pocket for his magical artifacts and talismans…
Behind the rock was a fierce black-eyed ghost!
The ghost’s form was much more elongated than a human’s, crawling head-down on the rock like a gecko. It had sparse hair and most of its face was destroyed by burns. Its tongue hung down at least ten centimeters, limply plastered against the rock wall.
Upon meeting his gaze, the fierce ghost let out a shrill scream and surged toward him like a hurricane!
“Watch out!!!”
At that moment, Zhuge Buyi forgot that Fu Sang lacked visual connection with underworld spirits, and also forgot that underworld spirits couldn’t actually attack living people who couldn’t see them.
He only instinctively turned to look at Fu Sang, wanting to warn him of the danger so he could react or get away. But he saw Fu Sang standing behind him, and as if having anticipated it all, raised his hand and lazily pointed two fingers in the direction of the fierce ghost.
The next moment, Zhuge Buyi saw Fu Sang’s entire body enveloped in another surge of powerful, dense yin energy so strong it made one’s hair stand on end.
Black smoke spread and condensed into a crimson figure, carrying a terrifying and malevolent aura Zhuge Buyi had never seen. It was beyond anything he could comprehend, rolling forth in the direction Fu Sang pointed.
It was like a storm.
Zhuge Buyi didn’t even have time to react.
He watched helplessly as the red-clad underworld spirit didn’t even lift a hand. Just by approaching, the threatening and murderous yin energy surrounding it ground that at least fourth-rank powerful spirit into ash.
It was the first time in his life he’d seen a spirit turn to ash.
Like a dense fog instantly scattered by the wind, without even a chance to fight back, without even time to show fear, it just dispersed without a trace.
He’d only seen this level of overwhelming dominance in novels when aliens used two-dimensional foils to destroy the solar system. The technical term was “dimensionality reduction attack.”
But this was clearly a fourth-rank Violet Erosion that even the family’s most outstanding spirit masters would struggle facing alone.
While Zhuge Buyi’s soul was flying to the heavens, the red-clad spirit turned its face toward him.
Zhuge Buyi got a clear look at its features.
Mainly, he saw the blood-red rune running from the corner of its forehead all the way down to its jaw on the right side of its face.
Realizing what that rune was, Zhuge Buyi went cold from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. His mind went completely blank, and every bone and flesh screamed two words…
Holy shit?
