“Have you heard about the ghost haunting this mountain lately?”
The mountain was thick with vegetation, cold and silent. Three figures walked along a forest path, all dressed as hunters.
“I have! It’s a hanged ghost!” said the older of the men.
The young man who had asked looked puzzled. “I heard it was a starved ghost. Doesn’t it eat people?”
Walking at the rear was a boy of fifteen or sixteen, rather delicate-looking, but hunched and timid, clearly terrified. Hearing the two men ahead, he was too frightened to take another step and said in a trembling voice, “Dad, Uncle, let’s just go back…”
Clearly, the older man was the boy’s father. At these words he snapped sharply, “If you’re scared, crawl back home yourself! There’s barely a scrap of food left at home, you’ll be the first to become a starved ghost!”
What should a dead person do after being reborn? If anyone had asked Cen Yuchi this question while he was alive, he would have thought the person was insane and sent him off to reincarnate. So now, dangling temporarily from a tree, he could only laboriously put his long-unused brain to work: What is going on? What am I supposed to be doing now?
As for why he was thinking in this position Cen Yuchi gave a cold sneer. Naturally, it was because the moment he opened his eyes, he was hanging in this godforsaken spot!
Several days passed in a daze, and it wasn’t until he heard voices that Cen Yuchi came back to his senses. Before he could strike a graceful pose, his whole body slammed to the ground with a thud. Forcibly suppressing his discomfort, he finally pushed aside the branches blocking him and crawled out, only for the hunters to flee like madmen at the sight of him, leaving behind only a deer that had long since stopped breathing.
Cen Yuchi immediately made a decision: eat it.
On the spot, he found a few sturdy branches and propped up a frame, piled stones into a circle beneath it, placed firewood in the middle, and used a dagger the hunters had left behind to cut a large chunk of venison to lay on top. Once everything was prepared, Cen Yuchi brushed the dust off himself and admired his masterpiece with satisfaction. Then he flipped his palm over…
And flipped it again…
And again…
And again!
A thin wisp of black smoke drifted out from his fingertip with a puff.
“…”
Is that supposed to be a fart?
Cen Yuchi had already noticed that this body’s cultivation was low, but he hadn’t expected it couldn’t even manage a simple palm flame. He was so furious he wanted to sever this body’s meridians on its owner’s behalf!
After considerable effort, he finally ate and drank his fill, then found a flat spot to lie down for a while and began pondering how he had come to be reborn.
First of all, this was definitely not his original body. Cen Yuchi got up and turned around once. This was the body of a young man in his twenties long limbs, a slender waist, the whole person light and airy yet full of strength. The hair was a pale brown that looked almost malnourished, tied up with a hairband, and the black fitted outfit looked quite sharp, typical attire for a wandering swordsman.
Such a fine young man surely wouldn’t have hanged himself here, and Cen Yuchi couldn’t have just passed by, thought the body looked decent, and borrowed it to return his soul to the world of the living.
At this thought, Cen Yuchi suddenly felt his palms burning hot. He raised his hands before his eyes. They were slender hands, with tapered fingers and well-defined knuckles, the nails neatly trimmed except for a burn scar on the left palm.
Cen Yuchi glanced at the jade pendant at his waist and immediately made a fair guess.
Who knew whose unlucky child it was, but by sheer coincidence they had activated the Jade Chariot. The immortal artifact, protecting its master, forcibly seized the body, swapping its own Divine Sense lodged within the chariot into this body, and using a wisp of remaining Spiritual Power, carried him down to this place. The Jade Chariot, its Spiritual Power exhausted, had turned into an unremarkable lump of jade stone, while that little immortal friend’s soul must have long since been devoured by the Undying Fire, scattered between heaven and earth.
After finishing his investigation, Cen Yuchi began checking the things on his body. His right hand wore a metal bracer, while his left was completely empty. His body seemed light and unencumbered, yet was packed with hidden weapons rather similar to himself. A thin leather strap was slung diagonally across his shoulder; Cen Yuchi knew without much thought that it was a Storage Pouch. With a slight probe, the corners of his mouth curled up.
This person had originally been a gentleman of the rafters, a thief.
This worked out perfectly for Cen Yuchi. In his past life he had been an Artifact Refiner who loved tinkering with all sorts of strange things, so the various tools this petty thief carried might prove useful. Moreover, people of this sort generally kept a low profile and worked in secret, rarely stirring up trouble. Cen Yuchi then felt around his waist and pulled out a small money pouch from beneath the hem of his clothes. The pouch bore a spatial seal; though it looked small, Cen Yuchi weighed it in his hand… What a windfall! If he’d known this brother was so rich, why would he have bothered roasting that deer!
Although the Jade Chariot could recharge in sunlight, Cen Yuchi casually tossed it into his Storage Pouch anyway. He hadn’t yet gotten a clear picture of the situation, so it was best not to expose the Jade Chariot carelessly. He headed down the mountain eastward, moving swiftly with a breath of inner energy held, and it didn’t take much effort at all.
This was a bustling marketplace, with taverns and teahouses, roadside stalls, everything one could want. Cen Yuchi felt it had been ages since he’d experienced such a rich atmosphere of everyday life; everything he saw made him want to take a bite.
After wandering like this for half a day, Cen Yuchi grew tired. He was carrying a bag of pastries and about to find a shop to sit down and have some tea when he suddenly saw a crowd gathered not far ahead, seeming especially noisy. Cen Yuchi’s curiosity was piqued, no matter what, he had to go take a look.
He squeezed through the crowd with great effort, and looking up, saw a makeshift stage ahead where some opera was being performed. It had clearly been going on for a while, and the surrounding crowd was thoroughly engrossed, it must be quite a show. Cen Yuchi loved nothing more than watching a spectacle. He found a good spot, settled in comfortably, and started watching while eating his pastries.
On stage stood many cultivators dressed in various Daoist robes, grouped by sect and school, each cluster creaking and warbling through their lines.
Although the costumes on stage differed greatly from real Daoist robes, Cen Yuchi still recognized a few by their distinctive features, almost all of them were people he’d made enemies with in the past. He vaguely caught words in the lyrics like “monstrous treason” and “crimes towering to the heavens,” as if they were cursing some degenerate of an Immortal Sect, and cursing him most viciously at that.
Before long, there came a thunderous crash. The faces of everyone on stage changed as they all looked toward the same place, and someone cried out in alarm: “That villain has arrived!” At this, the curtains that had been hanging at both sides began to move, drawing together toward the middle and blocking the stage completely from view.
Cen Yuchi knew, the main character was about to make their entrance.
Moments later, the curtains slowly drew open.
Behind the curtain was a man dressed in red robes, hair hanging loose, his face painted deathly pale, crossed by two ferocious scars. Hideous in appearance and wild in manner, he limped as he walked, and now stood hands-behind-his-back at the center of the stage, grinning maliciously.
Cen Yuchi nearly choked to death on the pastry in his mouth, saying in disbelief: “What the hell is that thing?”
It didn’t just look like a ghost, it looked like a vengeful spirit who’d had his wedding crashed, his face ruined, his legs broken, and his corpse dumped on his wedding day! And strangled to death, no less!
Just as Cen Yuchi’s mouth was twitching from the ugliness of it all and the pastry in his hand had suddenly lost all flavor, a kind-hearted person beside him answered his question in an indignant tone.
“This is the fiend who betrayed his master and slaughtered his fellow disciples, who murdered and burned and committed every evil imaginable, before finally being put to death by the united forces of the righteous Immortal Sects, the Jade-Blood Yama, Cen Yuchi!”
Cen Yuchi promptly broke down.
Betraying his master and slaughtering his fellow disciples fine, he’d admit that. Murder and arson and every evil imaginable fine, he’d admit that too. But he did NOT look like this!
From the crowd’s chatter, he gathered he’d only been dead ten years. How had his reputation in the jianghu turned into THIS? Was there not a single acquaintance willing to come out and speak a fair word on his behalf? And that “Yama” title hearing it again after all these years, it was still unbearably tacky.
Cen Yuchi glanced at the figure on stage again from the corner of his eye. Terrifying, hateful, an eyesore! If he’d known such a creature existed back then, he would have slain him without mercy!
The opera on stage was in full swing, and the spectators below were chatting just as animatedly.
“Speaking of which, this Cen Yuchi was rather pitiful, actually. Back when the Withered Leaf Poison Woman Liu Ao went mad and went on a killing spree, the Cen family was implicated and slaughtered to the last, only this youngest son escaped by hiding in a thornbush. He survived, but the scars left on his face ruined his looks.” The speaker was a kindly old man with gentle brows, and when he finished, he stroked his goatee and sighed heavily, as if full of regret.
A dissenting voice immediately rose from the crowd: “Every pitiful person has something hateful about them! Back then, Peak Master Mu Lian of Immortal Feather Peak, mindful of his old fellowship with the head of the Cen family, took Cen Yuchi in as his disciple. But the man repaid kindness with betrayal teaming up with Nan Xunliu, son of his family’s enemy Liu Ao, he set fire to the mountain and defected from the sect. Utterly worse than swine and dogs!”
The crowd nodded in agreement.
Then someone spoke in outrage: “That Nan Xunliu is an even bigger scourge. Back when the righteous sects wiped out Liu Ao, this spawn of evil was left behind, and Peak Master Mu, taking pity on him, brought him back to Immortal Feather Peak as well. Who could have known those two ungrateful wolves were birds of a feather, scheming together hand in glove!”
“Isn’t that the truth! But by all rights, those two should have been blood enemies who could never share the same sky. How did they end up tangled together?”
“What else like attracts like. Neither of them was any good!”
“Thankfully Cen Yuchi has been dead ten years now. No matter how capable he was, he can’t stir up trouble anymore. But that Nan Xunliu is another matter. Sure, he hasn’t caused any disasters in all these years, but as long as he’s alive, he remains a menace.”
“Now that you mention it, I did hear something about that. Nan Xunliu publicly swore never to leave Ten-Zhang Manor, but behind closed doors he’s been researching some dark art that can raise the dead!”
“Nonsense. If he had such an art, wouldn’t he have revived Cen Yuchi long ago? By now the body’s rotted away completely.”
“How could it be impossible? That Withered Leaves Valley is so sinister Nan Xunliu secretly cultivating withered leaf sorcery, who knows what kind of nasty tricks he might pull behind everyone’s backs! And I think you’re just pretending to know what you’re talking about. When Cen Yuchi died, he was burned to nothing but ash, what’s left to rot?”
“All right, all right tell me, have any of you actually seen it yourselves, or did some relative of yours see it? What’s all this arguing for? Are you going to let people watch the show or not?”
“……”
In truth, how could these common folk know anything about the grudges and entanglements within the Immortal Sects? Most of them had only heard a few scraps of gossip, added their own wild speculation, embellished it all into a story, and the more it was told, the more outrageous it became, the more it was made up, the less it resembled anything real.
The noisy voices by his ear gradually faded away. Cen Yuchi lowered his eyes, lost in who knows what thoughts.
Suddenly, a clear, bright voice pierced through his eardrums, as if it had sounded right beside Cen Yuchi’s ear!
“Yuchi!”