The weather had grown warm, and Qing Ling had also changed into lighter clothing. Around the new year, he had just passed his eighteenth birthday. His plain, wide-sleeved cyan robe, embroidered with bamboo patterns, made him look as handsome and upright as post-rain green bamboo. Though he had grown a bit thin, his stature was not short, though compared to Shang Changheng, who was a full head taller than him, he still appeared somewhat lacking.
Three days had already passed since his return from the yamen, and Magistrate Luo’s side seemed to genuinely not dare make any further moves. A considerable portion of the Qing family’s assets had also been sold off, while some shops that nobody bought were temporarily rented out. Qing Ling, who had always lived a financially constrained life, finally found his purse growing heavy as well, but with his life still clutched in the hands of that evil spirit, Qing Ling could hardly rest easy.
Consequently, he began diligently studying those spell techniques collected by the Qing family, while in his spare time trying to unearth any information concerning the Shang imperial clan of the Zhou dynasty. The former was to ensure he was not completely devoid of the power to defend himself when the evil spirit decided to kill him, while the latter, in Qing Ling’s view, actually held little significance. However, as the saying goes, know your enemy and know yourself, and you will never be defeated in a hundred battles.
He needed to know where this fierce ghost had come from.
Yet the Zhou Ling Emperor frequently appeared in unofficial histories, and apart from his romantic anecdotes, most accounts focused on the tragic fate of this fallen ruler, with even his cause of death varying across texts.
Following the collapse of the Zhou dynasty, the Central Plains fell into great chaos. Foreign tribes launched invasions, natural disasters struck year after year, and warfare raged incessantly. The world was torn apart, with various regional lords rising on all sides. As the final emperor of the Great Zhou dynasty, the Zhou Ling Emperor found himself in a thoroughly humiliating and desperate plight at that time, with no capable ministers to rely upon in his court. In the end, he either died sacrificing himself for the Great Zhou or perished at the hands of the northern Qiang nomadic tribes. In any case, this emperor did not even possess an imperial tomb.
Moreover, within unofficial histories, the evaluation of the Zhou Ling Emperor was predominantly that he was “born at an unfortunate time and accomplished nothing.” Still, these were all judgments passed by later generations. For some reason, while the emperors of the Zhou dynasty were all documented in official history books, this particular Ling Emperor had remarkably few records, to the point that the historical documentation covering his reign was entirely blank.
Even the preceding late emperor seemed to have had certain details deliberately erased; for instance, how many imperial princes there were, and which number son the Zhou Ling Emperor was, were completely unrecorded, leaving only the single sentence: the legitimate son born to the succeeding empress.
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew the window shut. Qing Ling was startled by the noise and raised his head, only to realize that the room had grown significantly darker.
He rubbed his somewhat sore and tired eyes, stood up, walked toward the door, and stepped out beneath the eaves. Only then did he notice that at some unknown point, the sky had filled with gloomy, churning clouds, even though it had been bright and clear right at daybreak.
The four seasons followed an orderly sequence, and weather patterns shifted unpredictably, much like the sudden fortunes and misfortunes in a person’s life.
Within mere moments, flashes of lightning streaked across the clouds, followed closely by the booming of startling thunder amidst the black clouds.
“What are you looking at?” Shang Changheng’s voice rang out from beside him.
He always appeared so inexplicably and abruptly.
Qing Ling was already accustomed to it. He turned his head to glance at Shang Changheng. His form was solid, his dark eyelashes slender, and his high brows swept up into his temples, while his profile was as handsome as if carved from fine jade, save for being excessively pale, which otherwise made him indistinguishable from a living person.
However, his expression at the moment could hardly be considered pleasant. His dark eyes gazed heavily toward the horizon, carrying quite a strong sense of facing a formidable enemy.
“Nothing, just taking a break,” Qing Ling said, then asked, “How much have you remembered?”
“A lot, but it’s very chaotic.” Shang Changheng gazed into the distant horizon where black clouds blotted out the sunlight, signaling that a downpour was about to fall. Within his memories, which were as fragmented as shattered pieces, there were similar scenes: beneath pouring rain lay corpses blanketing mountains and fields, broken halberds and snapped swords, rivers of blood, people wailing, and others roaring, ultimately coalescing into a despairing, pitch-black tableau.
“My soul was trapped within the coffin, and the only thing I remember clearly is that the person who guarded my tomb was the very person who cast a curse to obstruct my reincarnation.” Shang Changheng’s tone was gloomy, venomous, and filled with a hatred as vast as an endless sea. “The Qing family relied on my fortune to eke out a meager existence.”
He stopped abruptly, his expression turning dazed.
Qing Ling pondered for a moment before speaking softly, “A thousand years. The collapse of the Zhou dynasty happened a thousand years ago. You remember your own name, but you don’t remember who you are?”
After a long while, Shang Changheng let out a soft “Mn,” and then murmured almost to himself, “A thousand years.”
Times change, and the world undergoes drastic transformations.
This fierce ghost from a millennium ago remembered his own name and remembered that the Qing family had caused him to be trapped within an ancient tomb. Beyond that, he probably hadn’t recalled much else; otherwise, he should have taken action long ago instead of spending his days cooped up indoors with Qing Ling in this small courtyard.
“What do you plan to do?” Qing Ling asked.
Another crash of thunder descended, making Shang Changheng’s complexion grow even worse. After being dazed for a brief moment, he said, “I will remember eventually. When I remember.”
“Shang Changheng,” Qing Ling said softly, “if, if I help you recover your memories, or… investigate what happened a thousand years ago, can you let me go?”
Shang Changheng let out a scornful laugh. “I am an evil ghost, and your life is grasped in my hands. If I trick you into helping me and then kill you, what can you do about it?”
Qing Ling thought about it before replying, “Then I’ll just consider myself unlucky. Did you agree?”
Yet Shang Changheng fell silent, only speaking after a short while, “You really dare to gamble.”
“I have no choice,” Qing Ling sighed. “Even if there is only a sliver of a chance of survival, I want to take that gamble. Shang Changheng, I will do my best to help you, and you spare my life. How does that sound?”
Shang Changheng finally turned his head to look at him. Just then, a flash of lightning streaked past, casting his pale, handsome face against the light and making it look gloomy and indifferent.
He stated, “You can try.”
To which Qing Ling replied, “Alright.”
He was willing to gamble this once. Judging from Shang Changheng’s actions toward the Qing family, this evil ghost held deep grudges. Even without figuring out the full cause and effect yet, he had simply remembered that the tomb-guarding lineage had cursed him and that it involved some matter of fortune, wiping out the entire Qing family based on the karmic ties he could sense. This showed that the fierce ghost simply could not let go of the matters of his past life.
It was only because he couldn’t remember that he had delayed taking further action, but he undoubtedly still harbored an obsession in the mortal realm.
Qing Ling only hoped to send away this formidable evil ghost as soon as possible. Mortals were bound to die eventually, but even an insignificant ant clings to life; he simply wanted to live.
Another bolt of thunder fell.
Shang Changheng grew visibly irritable. He turned and made to return to his room, but before taking two steps, he turned back, swept Qing Ling up by the waist, and carried him away. The moment they stepped inside, the door closed behind them, and he stood right where he was, holding Qing Ling tightly in his arms.
Naturally, Qing Ling found this inexplicable. Weren’t they talking perfectly well just a moment ago?
Qing Ling was still rather reluctant to engage in bedchamber matters with this fierce ghost. Although there was a certain degree of pleasure to be found in it, his bedpartner happened to be an evil ghost who wanted his life. Because of this single fact alone, Qing Ling would instinctively shrink away out of fear.
“Don’t move,” Shang Changheng’s voice was low and hoarse, as if enduring something. “I just… want to hold you.”
Qing Ling finally sensed that something seemed off with him. Hesitating for a long moment, wanting to ask what was wrong with him, he noticed that the rain outside had begun to fall, accompanied by peals of startling thunder. With lightning flashing and thunder crashing outside the window, Qing Ling seemed to understand something.
The last time they experienced such a thunderstorm was back at Dragon-Slaying Mountain, when heavy fog sealed the mountains and he had nowhere to escape. Yet precisely when that startling thunder fell on that day, Shang Changheng had vanished, and the dense fog had dispersed right along with it, allowing him the opportunity to flee.
“You… are afraid of thunder?” Qing Ling asked quietly.
A heavy, repressed tone marked Shang Changheng’s low reply: “Thunder resembles martial Qi, representing the ultimate Yang energy. Naturally, it restrains Yin entities.”
That made a certain kind of sense. Qing Ling still felt that standing and hugging like this was extremely strange, but sitting and hugging wouldn’t be much better, and as for heading over to the bed… that was altogether too intimate. After turning it over in his mind, he asked softly, “That day on the mountain path, I encountered Ah Yuan’s ghost. He should have been a newly deceased ghost, and Master Miaoyuan said the initial seven-day mourning period hadn’t even passed yet. Why was he able to come out?”
“It’s the principle of a towering tree catching the wind,” Shang Changheng said. “Heavenly thunder doesn’t pay much attention to excessively weak evil entities.”
In other words, because he, an evil ghost forced to linger in the mortal realm for a thousand years, was far too strong, the impact he suffered was correspondingly much greater. Yet Qing Ling still couldn’t understand: if a human’s soul lingered in the mortal world for too long after death, it would inevitably dissipate regardless of whether it could transform into a fierce ghost, whereas Shang Changheng had been sealed away inside a coffin by others for a millennium. It was already a miracle that he hadn’t grown so weak his soul scattered upon emerging, so how could he possibly be strong enough to possess those unfathomable capabilities?
There had to be something special about him.
After being held for quite a while, Qing Ling found Shang Changheng simply too tall; being embraced and held like this was quite uncomfortable, leaving his neck feeling stiff. Finally unable to help himself, Qing Ling murmured, “Can you… change your posture? For instance, sitting down.”
Shang Changheng lowered his gaze, looking at the person in his arms who was staring up at him with an earnest expression. That was his fragile yet beautiful wife, and holding him like this allowed him to feel his vibrant body temperature, the pulsing at the side of his neck, the flowing blood, and even the heartbeat in his chest, he was alive and full of vitality.
It filled him with envy, and drove him mad with jealousy.
An evil ghost was naturally malicious by nature. No matter how much of his rationality Shang Changheng recovered, he remained a millennium-old fierce ghost. He thought with dark and frantic intensity that if he wished, he could effortlessly seize this physical body, come back to life just like the person in his arms, and once again feel the warmth of sunlight and the taste of food.
Yet he was unwilling to do so. His wife was reserved and shy even on the couch, occasionally showing a pitiful, fragile expression due to reluctance, perhaps a cold and stubborn resistance, but the difference wasn’t large. He possessed this body through an entirely different means.
And it wasn’t bad either.
“Shang Changheng.” Qing Ling felt somewhat uneasy under that deep, heavy gaze and spoke up to issue a reminder.
Shang Changheng remained silent, instead picking him up horizontally, walking over to sit back down at the desk where Qing Ling had been sitting earlier, and placing Qing Ling to sit right on his lap. This position happened to align his view directly with the volume of unofficial history Qing Ling had closed before standing up.
So Qing Ling explained, “Official histories don’t record it, so I can only look at this.”
Before the words had even fully left his mouth, a bolt of violent thunder crashed fiercely right in front of the door. The wooden door was scorched black by the strike, though the sparks were quickly extinguished by the pouring rain, causing Qing Ling to shudder involuntarily. The might of heaven and earth was truly terrifying.
Yet the very next bolt of thunder struck right at the doorway again. Qing Ling felt that something was not quite right.
Shang Changheng was already irritable to begin with, and at this his expression turned thoroughly gloomy. He said in a low voice, “Someone is utilizing the timing of the elements to summon thunder.”
Qing Ling was struck with horror, instinctively shrinking back into Shang Changheng’s arms. As a corpse-born infant whose eight characters and ten gods were entirely filled with Yin energy and devoid of even an ounce of Yang fire, would he end up being mistaken for an evil entity by this thunder and blasted to pieces?
The wooden door, which could no longer close tightly due to the strike, slowly drifted open on its own. Looking outward, Qing Ling happened to see the front gate forcefully smashed open, with Miaoyuan, dressed in grey monastic robes, standing right before the threshold and shouting coldly, “Evil spirit, prepare to meet your doom!”