Before dawn broke, a thick fog, like a vast and icy gray veil, tightly shrouded this Forgotten abandoned village.
Gu Xuan’s figure slowly rose from behind the crooked dead tree at the village entrance, resembling a stone statue that had lain dormant for ages finally awakening.
He opened his eyes, and in the deepest part of his pupils, a faint, ghostly blue glimmer flashed and vanished, immediately disappearing without a trace.
Last night’s slaughter and Refinement had not exhausted him; instead, they brought an unprecedented sharpness.
He no longer needed to rely on blurry sight and intuition like an ordinary person; at this moment, the entire world appeared completely different in his eyes.
Without the slightest hesitation, he walked directly toward the earthen pit he had discovered the anomaly in last night.
That spot was originally just a small pile of loose soil, unremarkable, but under his newly acquired Yin Air Perception, it shone like a firefly in the dark night, emitting a faint yet viscous, chilling aura.
“Bang!”
Gu Xuan did not bend down; instead, he lifted his right foot and kicked down violently onto the loose soil in a manner that was almost brutal!
Dirt scattered, revealing a pitch-black opening underneath.
It was not a natural cave, but a small underground den that had been artificially dug out and hastily covered up.
A gust of Yin wind, mixed with the earthy stench of soil and the foul odor of decay, rushed out from the den, enough to make an ordinary person vomit on the spot.
Gu Xuan’s expression remained unchanged; he was already accustomed to a smell of death far stronger than this.
He lit a dry twig found in an abandoned house to serve as a makeshift torch and peered down into the hole.
The firelight flickered, illuminating the scene inside the den—it was not a treasure trove at all, but a Random Burial Ground!
The den was not large, yet it was haphazardly piled with at least seven or eight long-dried skeletons, still wearing tattered leather armor and uniforms.
The postures of these skeletons were bizarre; some were curled up, others lay on their backs, but without exception, their chests showed a strange concavity, as if all the organs inside, along with their Soul Essence, had been completely sucked out from the inside out by some force.
In life, they were city guards; in death, they could not even rest in peace. Their Soul Essence was seized, Refined into kin of the Spook Ghost, becoming fodder and claws for a stronger existence.
There was no pity in Gu Xuan’s eyes, only cold scrutiny.
He jumped into the den, enduring the stench, and began to rummage through the pile of bones.
There was nothing valuable left on these corpses, but for him, the most valuable things were not gold or silver, but information.
On the waist of a skeleton pressed at the very bottom, he felt something cold and hard.
He pulled it off and examined it closely under the faint firelight—it was a severely corroded brass waist tag, only half of it remaining, but a few blurred characters could still be made out: “Chen Seven of the Xuzi Camp.”
Xuzi Camp… Chen Qi.
Gu Xuan silently tucked the half Copper Token away into his inner pocket.
This was not just a name; it was a clue.
In this perilous era, a clear identity, even a fabricated one, was far safer than being an unknown vagrant.
More importantly, this proved that these Spook Ghosts did not appear out of thin air; they had a definite source behind them.
Just then, a violent hunger surged like a tide, his stomach cramping wildly, reminding him that he had gone without food for over a day and a night.
He instinctively reached into his chest; there was only half a hard, moldy biscuit left.
He brought the biscuit close to his nose, and the sour, rotten smell made his brow furrow tightly.
He remembered the boy named Little Bean, who was dragged away by a monster darting out from the shadows precisely because he was clutching this biscuit tightly in his hand.
A thought flashed through his mind: perhaps what attracted that Spook Ghost was not just Little Bean’s living aura, but also the residual scent of humanity clinging to this food.
The first Iron Law of surviving in the wilderness: never casually touch anything left behind by the dead, especially food.
It might be contaminated, or it might itself be a deadly lure.
Gu Xuan did not eat the biscuit; instead, he carefully climbed out of the den and found an open space not far away.
He used a sharp Terracotta Plate to dig a shallow pit and buried the half moldy biscuit in it, leaving only a corner exposed.
Having done this, he did not stop there.
He brought his fingers together like a blade and forcefully sliced his fingertip, causing a drop of crimson blood to seep out and drip onto the loose soil covering the buried biscuit.
The scent of blood, to Yin entities, was a fragrance more tempting than any food.
Immediately afterward, he used the Terracotta Plate to scratch shallow, irregular marks around the pit, mimicking the tracks left by a crawling Spook Ghost, and then smeared some corpse dust scraped from the den's skeletons onto the marks.
A perfect trap was thus set.
The bait was the scent of food, the fuse was living blood, and the camouflage was the aura of their own kind.
This triple arrangement was enough to make any low-intelligence Newborn Spook Ghost drop its guard.
Gu Xuan silently retreated, climbing nimbly like a wildcat onto the roof beam of a house that had mostly collapsed.
He crouched down, perfectly concealing his body in the shadows of the broken walls and ruins, merging with the darkness.
He closed his eyes and sank his entire focus into his Yin Air Perception.
The world instantly transformed.
The invisible Yin Energy in the air now manifested in his perception as countless pale gray cold currents, slowly surging in every corner of the abandoned village.
Most of the Yin Energy was scattered aimlessly, but in a few spots, the concentration of Yin Energy was noticeably higher than elsewhere.
One of those spots was in a ground fissure ten steps away from him!
There, an extremely faint yet incredibly pure Yin breath was slowly reviving and condensing.
Like a sprouting seed, a new Spook Ghost was painstakingly drawing strength from some residual Soul Essence fragments, attempting to reform its physical body.
It had not yet fully taken shape; its power was weak, and its movements sluggish.
This was the perfect prey!
Time ticked by, and the surrounding silence seemed capable of devouring everything.
Gu Xuan lay motionless on the roof beam, like a lifeless stone, his breathing long and his heartbeat steady, patiently waiting for the prey to step into the trap itself.
At midnight, a fierce Yin wind suddenly rose.
The broken doors and windows in the village creaked with strange sounds, as if countless wronged souls were whispering.
“Crack…”
The ground fissure suddenly widened, and a thin, pitch-black arm with sharp claws emerged first. Immediately following, a hunched figure struggled out from beneath the earth.
It was a Newborn Spook Ghost that had just taken form; its body was still somewhat ethereal, and its movements carried a stiff sluggishness.
It sniffed around blankly, its cloudy eyes devoid of any spirit, holding only the primal craving for bloodied sustenance.
Soon, it was attracted by the scent mixed with food, fresh blood, and the corpse dust of its own kind.
It let out a low “Hoo-hoo” growl from its throat, dropped onto all fours, and rapidly crawled toward the trap Gu Xuan had set.
Closer, closer!
The Newborn Spook Ghost crawled to the edge of the shallow pit, lowered its head, and greedily sniffed the half moldy biscuit, about to open its mouth, slick with mucus, to swallow it whole—
Now!
Gu Xuan, hidden in the darkness, suddenly opened his eyes, divine light surging in his gaze!
He didn't even move his body; with just a thought, the Demon Suppression Hall deep within his Spirit Sea roared into action!
An invisible yet supremely domineering Devouring Power swept out from between his brows, crossing dozens of feet to precisely envelop the Newborn Spook Ghost!
The Spook Ghost’s movements instantly froze. It seemed to sense ultimate terror, wanting to struggle, wanting to scream, but unable to utter a sound.
Its body was like ice thrown into a furnace, or as if it were suddenly swallowed by an invisible Giant Mouth. Its entire form twisted and stretched violently in the air, finally disappearing with a soft “poof,” leaving no trace behind.
Simultaneously, within Gu Xuan’s Spirit Sea, the Black Water in the center of the Demon Suppression Hall churned more violently, and another wisp of pure Yin Source white energy was injected into it.
The blood-red prompt reappeared:
“Can be Refined: Rotten Bone Specter （ Newborn Body ）.”
“Activate Refinement?”
“Yes!” Gu Xuan made his choice without hesitation.
A chilling power, even purer than before, instantly fed back from the Demon Suppression Hall, flowing like trickling streams into his limbs and bones.
The fatigue from traveling and setting the ambush was swept away, and even the hunger in his stomach lessened slightly.
His physical strength was quietly recovering at an abnormal rate.
In the darkest moment before dawn, Gu Xuan stood in the open ground at the center of the abandoned village, surveying the silent ruins around him.
After two Refinements, the range of his Yin Air Perception had expanded to a hundred zhang in radius.
Within this area, all nodes where Yin Energy gathered appeared clearly in his mind, like bright lamps in the dark night.
Besides the one he had hunted, there were at least three other potential lairs, hiding an unknown number of Spook Ghosts.
He spread his palm; the Terracotta Plate he used as a tool was already marked with a simple map drawn using corpse dust and grime scraped from the Spook Ghost lairs.
He looked at the three red circles marked prominently on the map, a cold arc curving his lips, and muttered to himself, as if declaring his rebirth to this cruel world:
“One Spook Ghost lives by devouring the living; a group of Spook Ghosts lives by forming a lair…”
“And I,” he clenched his fist, feeling the chilling power flowing within him, “live by devouring them!”
He took out the half Copper Token engraved with “Chen Seven of the Xuzi Camp,” rubbed the cold inscription with his fingertip, and then tucked it even more carefully back into his inner pocket.
He raised his head, his gaze piercing through the layers of ruins, looking toward the distant southern horizon.
Lao Shao Chang had once warned him, “There are no cities there, only endless wilderness and death.”
Yet now, that direction was precisely the only place he wanted to go.
Dawn finally tore through the heavy clouds on the horizon, and the first faint ray of morning light spilled onto this dead and silent abandoned village, plating the cold, broken walls with an illusory gold.
Gu Xuan took a deep breath of the dew-chilled air and was about to set off.
However, as soon as he took a step, a tearing pain shot through his left shoulder, as if a dark, chilling current was violently surging through his bones, threatening to freeze them apart.
He let out a muffled groan, fine beads of cold sweat instantly breaking out on his forehead, and his body involuntarily swayed.