The ancestral hall was filled with the strong smell of aged incense, which Fu Sang could smell even from outside.
He was not used to the smell and found it pungent.
He wrinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes, using the dim candlelight inside to look at the person in the ancestral hall.
The person was kneeling directly in front of the bronze bell and the ancestral tablets, dressed entirely in black, with a round cushion beneath his knees. He was wearing a very large muli, and dark gauze hung down from the brim, completely concealing his figure.
***A muli (幕篱, mùlí) is a traditional Chinese form of head covering: a wide-brimmed hat with a veil of gauze hanging around the face and shoulders.
Fu Sang could only vaguely make out from the faint outline of the candlelight that he was a tall, slender young man.
Those who could live in Yunling Mountain Residence were the core of the family, mainly the elders. The next family head had not yet been decided, and even the young main-branch disciples who took turns entering the residence every day had no right to enter the ancestral hall, let alone now, during curfew.
Taking all this into consideration, the identity of the person inside was not difficult to guess.
The only one who meets the age requirement and could freely enter Yunling Mountain Residence, and even the ancestral hall without regard for curfew could only be this generation’s Shaosi, Zhuge Qi.
Fu Sang had always been curious about Zhuge Qi’s identity.
He had asked others about him before, but without exception, they all said that Zhuge Qi was extremely mysterious. He almost never left Yunling Mountain Residence, and no one knew what he looked like or what his temperament was like. Even Zhuge Buyi had only happened to see his name while organizing the roster.
Everyone was curious about him, but no one dared to take actual action to satisfy that curiosity.
Because Zhuge Qi held a very high position in the main branch. He could personally issue mission notices, and he could enter the ancestral hall during curfew. From the looks of it, Zhuge Heng was also quite respectful toward him.
This person’s ability was not bad either. Back then, when the seventh-rank Crimson Evil appeared, news of it quickly spread throughout the Zhuge family. Wasn’t it precisely because this Shaosi deduced the truth through various signs and clues, and generously “made it known” to everyone else, that everyone started to covet his Crimson Evil?
Then as repayment, he should lift this person’s hat and see what kind of identity and appearance was hidden beneath the black gauze.
Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly.
He remembered Qi Changying saying that a thousand years ago, the National Advisor called Qiyueban “uncle.” In other words, the ancestor of the Nether Path, Qiyueban, was actually also a member of the Zhuge family.
And Zhuge Qi…the Zhuge of the Zhuge family, and the Qi of Qiyueban.
Putting everything else aside, just the name alone was intriguing enough.
Thinking of this, Fu Sang was distracted for a moment.
In that brief daze, he noticed that the black gauze around Zhuge Qi inside the ancestral hall seemed to sway slightly.
He had walked around the ancestral hall and confirmed that all the doors and windows were tightly shut. There were no other openings for wind. This meant that what was moving the gauze hanging beneath Zhuge Qi’s muli could not be natural wind.
Sure enough.
The hundreds and thousands of soul-weeping coins in the room gently swayed and began to make sounds. The noise was not particularly loud, but it sounded like the tinkling of fine rain.
Not good.
The next second, Fu Sang saw Zhuge Qi slowly turn his face toward him as though he had sensed something.
At the same time, the layers upon layers of candle flames inside the ancestral hall suddenly swayed violently. The candle flames, accompanied by the faint smoke from the incense, passed through the damaged window paper like water snakes and shot straight toward Fu Sang’s face!
Fu Sang’s pupils contracted slightly. His reaction was extremely fast, and he immediately turned sideways to dodge, raising his hand to summon the ghost-blood whip.
The four remaining blood threads shot out according to his will, twisting around each other and tearing the sparks and wisps of smoke apart.
Those things were light and had little substance, merely giving off an intimidating look. They had not appeared to attack, but to divert his attention.
Realizing this, Fu Sang immediately looked toward the window.
A blank talisman paper flew over with a “pa” and stuck to the damaged part of the window paper. At a speed invisible to the naked eye, it quickly merged with the window paper, patching up the tiny gap.
“?”
This feeling of being silently refused entry for no reason made Fu Sang irritated.
What did they take him for, a person to be led around by the nose?
So he stopped being polite. He raised his foot, and kicked the window apart completely.
With a “crack,” the wooden window frame broke. The shattered carvings on the window pierced through the thin window paper, and the entire window tilted downward, with only one mortise and tenon joint stubbornly hanging onto the frame.
Fu Sang kicked it again, completely shattering the thing and letting it fall to the ground.
He then brushed the wooden splinters off the window frame with his sleeve, then supported himself with his hands and climbed into the ancestral hall.
With his movement, the candle flames swayed again.
Fu Sang raised his eyes and looked toward where Zhuge Qi had been just now.
But the spot was completely empty. There was no one in sight.
There were no strange little rooms or corners in the ancestral hall. Apart from the candles, there was only that huge offering table. Zhuge Qi had nowhere to hide and no exit through which he could escape. The doors and windows of the ancestral hall were still tightly shut, yet he had actually disappeared right before Fu Sang’s eyes.
Fu Sang frowned.
He walked over and kicked away the round cushion Zhuge Qi had been kneeling on. The cushion spun into the air and knocked over a large section of ancestral tablets.
Fu Sang glanced at the cushion’s masterpiece but did not care about it at all. He leisurely wandered around the huge bronze bell, making a full circle as he examined the details around the ancestral hall.
This time, he clearly saw the scroll paintings beneath the soul-weeping coins.
There were three paintings in total. The middle one hung the highest. The person in it wore a blue robe, had sparse hair, and was glaring furiously with his eyes wide open. He was holding a peach-wood sword in his hand. With one hand raised and one foot lifted, his posture was imposing and majestic, making him look like a Door God.
The two paintings on the left and right hung slightly lower. Their styles were roughly the same as the middle one. The person on the left wore a wide black robe with broad sleeves, while the person on the right wore a bright red Li-style official robe representing the first rank.
Judging from the clothing of the people in the paintings and the height at which the portraits hung, it could also be seen that the person in the middle was undoubtedly the founding ancestor of spirit masters. On the left was Qiyueban, the only direct disciple of the founding ancestor under the nether path, and on the right was the ancestor of the Zhuge family, the National Advisor from a thousand years ago, Zhuge Yu.
The three core figures of the Nether Path were all here.
Fu Sang stared at the three paintings for a while, then gave a cryptic smile.
As he turned to leave, he accidentally knocked over the candlestick beside his hand.
The candle fell over, and the flame licked the corner of Zhuge Yu’s portrait, instantly burning the off-white paper black. The flames spread and grew from there, winding along the paper and wrapping around the purely wooden pillars, rapidly covering the entire ancestral hall in firelight.
Fu Sang’s eyes reflected the firelight as he stood there and waited for a while.
The flames burned silently before him. Fu Sang originally thought that Zhuge Qi would emerge from some inconspicuous corner, but he did not.
So, carrying a little regret, he withdrew in time as the fire grew larger, kicked open the door, and openly left the ancestral hall.
The ancestral hall was made entirely of paper and wood, full of fire hazards. Once ignited, it caught fire immediately.
The gradually spreading fire attracted the attention of many people, and the surroundings gradually became chaotic, with people shouting, “Fire!” and “Put out the fire!”
This was probably the liveliest curfew night in the history of the family.
Before too many people arrived, Fu Sang, still carrying the scent of smoke, disappeared into the night.
A fire in the ancestral hall was a major matter. Even curfew had to make way for it. Many people came rushing to the mountain residence, some to put out the fire and others to watch the excitement. Taking advantage of the chaos, Fu Sang climbed into the archive room deep within the mountain residence.
The archive room stored nearly a thousand years of personnel records and records of matters, big and small, from throughout the Zhuge family. It also concealed a precious artifact, the Seven Life Fate Wheel. With such secrets, it was naturally a place even harder to enter than the ancestral hall.
However, the ID card in Fu Sang’s hand happened to belong to the former administrator of the archive room, Zhuge Mingyun. Naturally, he encountered no obstacles when he wanted to enter.
At least there was some firelight inside the ancestral hall, enough to provide a little warmth. Now, all that remained in this archive room was coldness. The window paper was too fragile to withstand much wind, only able to contain the faint scent of paper and ink filling the room.
Noise gradually rose outside the windows, shattering this peaceful night together with the firelight, but Fu Sang simply pretended not to hear it.
He raised his hand and pinched a blood thread of the ghost-blood whip between his fingertips, pulling it downward. The remaining sparks and smoke from earlier all stopped at his fingertips.
There was only a thin layer of ash.
Fu Sang lowered his head and lightly sniffed the smell.
He didn’t have a compass with him, so he could not use it as a medium to cast a spell and search for objects. He could only use the most primitive method, distinguishing and searching through scent.
There were too many different scents in the archive room, so finding something related to a particular person was not easy. Fortunately, the founder of the archive room seemed to be a perfectionist. They had sorted and arranged the records of the inner and outer clans, the main family, and the core members of each generation of the mountain residence into different shelves and compartments. Fu Sang quickly found the cabinet containing the core members of the mountain residence and immediately saw a file among the current generation labeled “Shaosi.”
He reached out and took out the file, then opened it.
Then, he frowned very lightly.
Empty.
The file indeed belonged to “Zhuge Qi,” but apart from his name, everything else like photograph, gender, age, date of birth, parents, life history…was blank.
Fu Sang lowered his eyes and thought for a moment, then closed the boring file and put it back on the shelf. He raised his eyes and continued searching the shelves above.
The scents in this cabinet were very mixed, but he could distinguish that Zhuge Qi’s scent was not limited to this one place.
His gaze moved toward the upper level, where he found the file of the previous generation’s Shaosi.
He opened it.
Name: Zhuge Qi. Everything else was blank as well.
He continued searching the generation before that, and even further back.
Without exception, the files of every generation’s Shaosi were blank, and every generation’s Shaosi was named “Zhuge Qi.”
His information, like the man himself, was covered by a layer of gauze, mysterious and secretive, making even his outline difficult to see.
…So, what exactly was “Zhuge Qi”? A concept, a code name, something every generation’s Shaosi had to rename themselves to in order to follow their predecessors, or were they actually the same person from beginning to end?
Unable to find an answer, Fu Sang tossed the file in his hand aside, no longer interested in looking.
After thinking for a moment, he found Zhuge Mingyun’s file at the bottom of the bookshelf.
Unlike Zhuge Qi’s blank file, Zhuge Mingyun’s file was densely packed with writing as soon as it was opened. Fu Sang quickly scanned through it.
Zhuge Mingyun’s life was ordinary. As the eldest daughter of the family head, she should have been surrounded by glory and enjoyed unrivaled prominence, but unfortunately, her talent was not high. It could even be described as “poor.” Every item on the transcript in her file was marked red.
So in the end, she didn’t choose to become a true Nether Path Spirit Master, but instead retreated to the rear and stayed in this small archive room.
Her husband was from the inner clan of the Zhuge family. He had excellent grades and a handsome appearance, but unfortunately, only a few years after their marriage, he was cursed to death by a high-rank underworld spirit during a mission.
When he died, Zhuge Mingyun had just become pregnant with Zhuge Qianyi.
She never remarried. Instead, she gave birth to Zhuge Qianyi and raised her alone. Fu Sang also knew what happened afterward. Zhuge Qianyi inherited her mother’s ordinary talent, and after reaching adulthood, took over this archive room from her mother.
Zhuge Mingyun and her husband were in a free love relationship, and their relationship seemed to have been very good. The file stated that after her husband died unexpectedly, Zhuge Mingyun was so heartbroken that she nearly miscarried. She spent a long time recuperating before finally managing to keep Qianyi, this child.
It is worth mentioning that Zhuge Mingyun married and gave birth late. She got married at twenty-nine and only became pregnant with Zhuge Qianyi at thirty-two. From the moment she became pregnant, nothing had gone smoothly. She encountered all kinds of troubles along the way and tried all sorts of methods to preserve the pregnancy. It could be said that she had gone through countless hardships before giving birth to this only daughter.
Although Fu Sang himself did not understand emotions, he had met many people and experienced many things over the years while running his shop and receiving clients. His experience told him that under these circumstances, an only daughter like Zhuge Qianyi should have been her mother’s sole hope.
And Zhuge Qianyi had indeed been showered with countless love. She had a cheerful and generous personality, was carefree, clever, and quick-witted, and seemed to have no worries. It did not matter if she could not learn the household chores well. As long as she managed to graduate, she could simply take over the easy job of running the archive room from her mother. If nothing unexpected happened, she could stay in this position until she grew old and would never have to worry about what to do with her life.
So, looking at all this information, Zhuge Mingyun’s previous state and reaction were not normal.
Although Zhuge Mingyun looked like an emotionless puppet, Fu Sang was certain that she was not under any control spell and was completely free.
Everything she did came from her own will, without the slightest interference from external forces.
Her daughter had disappeared, yet she showed no emotional fluctuations. When Fu Sang asked her about Qianyi’s disappearance, she didn’t show any extra reaction either. She was completely unlike a helpless mother whose only daughter had disappeared and whose life or death was even unknown.
This was interesting.
Fu Sang closed the file and tossed it together with the pile of “Zhuge Qi” files beside it.
“…I thought that after looking through something, putting it back where it belongs is the most basic courtesy.”
An old, hoarse voice suddenly rang out in the dark archive room.
Hearing the voice of someone who should not have been here, Fu Sang was not surprised at all.
His expression remained unchanged as he let out a light scoff:
“I didn’t burn down your archive room. You should thank me for my great kindness and mercy.”
Only then did he raise his eyes toward where the voice had come from.
Zhuge Heng had appeared in the darkness at some point. His face was dark, and the expression in his eyes was difficult to make out.
“What are you pretending for? You said you’d let me move around freely, yet you followed me all the way here like a rat. Isn’t it just because you wanted to see what I’d do? What’s there to hide?”
Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly and curled his lips coldly.
“I’ll let you watch.”
