The intense pain receded like a tide, leaving behind a weakness and chill that sank deep into the bone marrow.
Gu Xuan leaned against the withered tree trunk, forcing himself upright, his chest heaving violently. Every breath pulled at a tearing pain.
He knew that the previous strike had nearly drained all his spirit and strength for the Demon Suppression Hall. If this body hadn't been tempered through military service and still possessed a solid foundation, he would have already passed out.
Cannot fall.
This thought pierced his mind like a steel needle.
He gritted his teeth, forcefully suppressing the surging blood and qi, closed his eyes, and let his consciousness sink into the depths of his Spirit Sea like a sunken ship.
The familiar dilapidated great hall reappeared.
Unlike before, in the center of the previously empty and silent hall, a pool of Black Water, about one *zhang* square, had materialized out of thin air.
The pool water was murky as ink, so viscous it seemed like uncongealed eternal night. Above the water, a few wisps of white vapor, thin as smoke, slowly swirled, emitting a pure and chilling aura.
That was the most fundamental Yin Energy—the Yin Source—stripped from the Spook Ghost after being completely refined by the Demon Suppression Hall!
Before he could examine it closely, a line of text, crimson as blood, suddenly appeared in his consciousness, carrying an undeniable majesty:
【Refinement complete, Yin Source absorbed.】
【Basic ability unlocked: Yin Air Perception （Faint）.
Can perceive free-floating Yin Energy fluctuations within a ten-*zhang* radius.】
【Memory Fragment acquired ×1.】
The next instant, Gu Xuan felt a stream of icy air rise from the Black Water Pool, instantly surging into every part of his body.
That chill did not make him uncomfortable; instead, it felt like sweet rain falling on parched, cracked earth, nourishing his dried-up meridians and aching muscles as never before.
The sensation of rapid stamina recovery was so real that he almost groaned aloud.
He suddenly opened his eyes, and a faint, dim blue light flashed and vanished in the depths of his pupils.
The world looked different through his eyes.
The ruined village, previously shrouded in morning mist with visibility less than three *chi*, now had clearer outlines.
The dust and moisture invisible to the naked eye in the air seemed to have been filtered through an invisible mesh, allowing him to see further and notice finer movements.
He stood up and stretched his limbs; most of the weakness in his body had faded.
Without a moment's hesitation, he walked directly toward the spot where Little Bean had disappeared the previous night.
The ground, hastily covered with loose soil, was now emitting faint gray wisps of Yin Energy in his sight, which, though weak, were as clear as fireflies in the dark night.
"It is indeed here."
Gu Xuan's gaze turned cold, and without hesitation, he raised his foot and kicked fiercely at the loose soil!
With a crash, dirt scattered, revealing a dark, gaping entrance.
This was not a deep pit, but a cleverly disguised small underground burrow.
A smell mixing the stench of earth with the rot of corpses rushed toward him, so thick it was nauseating.
He held his breath and looked inside, relying on the ability granted by Beginner Night Vision.
Inside the burrow, there was a pile of broken armor and layers upon layers of desiccated skeletons.
A rough count showed at least seven or eight bodies!
Without exception, the chest cavities of these skeletons showed a bizarre indentation, as if their hearts and flesh had been violently scooped out by something.
Their Soul Essences had long been devoured, becoming Nutrient for the Spook Ghost, and they themselves had even degenerated into new Spook Ghosts.
They were once the garrison soldiers of this outpost, who died on the battlefield and should have had their souls return home, but instead met the fate of having their bones desecrated, never to rest in peace.
Gu Xuan silently jumped into the burrow. The cold Yin Energy attacked him like maggots clinging to bone.
He endured the discomfort and began to search through the pile of corpses.
These Spook Ghosts were soldiers in life; perhaps they would leave behind some clues.
Soon, on the waist of a skeleton whose face he could no longer discern, he felt a cold, hard piece of metal.
He took it out, brushed off the dirt, and carefully examined it in the faint light.
It was a broken Copper Token, only half remaining. Faintly inscribed on it in Seal script were a few characters: "Xuzi Camp · Chen Qi."
Xuzi Camp...
Gu Xuan's heart stirred, and he tightly clenched the half-token in his palm.
This was the first concrete clue to an identity he had obtained since arriving in this world.
Whether for uncovering the truth later or for disguise, this was an extremely crucial item.
He tucked the token close to his body, as if the cold touch could keep him more alert.
A strong rumbling sound came from his stomach, and hunger burned his stomach lining like a flame.
He instinctively reached into his bosom and touched the moldy biscuit wrapped in oil paper.
This was the only food he had left.
He took out the biscuit and brought it to his nose to smell it.
A faint smell of mold mixed with the aroma of dry rations entered his nostrils, extremely tempting.
But in the end, he did not open his mouth.
The first Iron Law of surviving in the wilderness: things touched by the dead must never be easily consumed.
Last night, Little Bean was dragged away by a Spook Ghost while clutching this very biscuit.
Perhaps what attracted the Spook Ghost was not Little Bean's flesh and blood, but this food tainted with the scent of the living!
These mindless monsters would instinctively be drawn to anything containing "vitality."
A bold and ruthless plan quickly took shape in his mind.
He rewrapped the biscuit in oil paper, dug a shallow pit not far from the burrow, and carefully buried the biscuit inside, leaving only one corner of the oil paper exposed.
After finishing this, he did not leave. Instead, he drew the dagger at his waist, lightly sliced his fingertip, squeezed out a few drops of crimson blood, and let them drip onto the loose soil where the biscuit was buried.
The sweet, bloody scent mixed with the aroma of the food, emitting a deadly allure in the cold, damp air.
Immediately afterward, he picked up a sharp Terracotta Plate and, centered on the buried biscuit, scratched several shallow, rune-like marks on the surrounding dirt, deliberately mimicking the tracks left by a crawling Spook Ghost.
This was a trap.
The bait was the scent of food and his fresh blood, and the crucial lure was the "companion" aura he fabricated.
He wanted to make any potential lurking Spook Ghosts believe this was a companion's hiding spot for food, thus lowering their guard.
Having set everything up, Gu Xuan quickly retreated. His movements were as agile as a wild cat's, and he silently climbed onto the beam of a half-collapsed house thirty-odd steps away.
He crouched down, perfectly merging his body with the shadows of the broken walls and ruins, suppressing all his aura, like a lifeless, hard stone.
Yin Air Perception, activate!
The entire world was instantly overlaid with a pale gray filter.
The Yin Energy in the air, normally invisible and intangible, now transformed into currents of coldness, dense or sparse, surging slowly within his perception.
His gaze swept over every corner of the ruined village.
Most areas only contained free-floating Yin Energy, thin and chaotic.
But soon, ten steps away, in a fissure covered with cobwebs, he detected a slight disturbance.
There, a mass of Yin Energy several times denser than the surroundings was slowly condensing and writhing, like an ugly embryo being gestated.
—Another Spook Ghost was reforming its body from residual soul fragments!
Gu Xuan's heart pounded forcefully.
The aura of this Newborn Spook Ghost was extremely faint; it clearly had not fully formed, its consciousness was muddled, and its movements sluggish.
This was the perfect prey!
Time ticked by, and the sky grew darker.
When the midnight bell seemed to toll deep within his soul, a bone-chilling gust of Yin wind suddenly swept through the village.
The fissure suddenly split open wider, and the half-formed body of a Newborn Spook Ghost, its shape twisted and its bones not yet fully grown, poked out.
It blindly twitched its nose, its empty eye sockets turning toward the direction of Gu Xuan's trap.
The scent of blood-food made it instinctively excited.
It struggled out of the fissure, dragging long scratches on the ground with its limbs, crawling urgently toward the buried biscuit.
Closer, closer.
It lowered its head, greedily sniffing the aroma from the soil, about to open its toothless jaws to swallow the entire clod of earth along with the food—
At that precise moment, Gu Xuan, hidden on the roof beam, had his eyes blaze with sharp light!
"Suppress!"
He silently commanded, and the Demon Suppression Hall in his Spirit Sea vibrated thunderously!
A formless yet overwhelmingly powerful Devouring Power instantly crossed the thirty-step distance, like an invisible giant net, enveloping the Newborn Spook Ghost with perfect precision!
The Spook Ghost couldn't even manage a proper resistance; its form twisted and disintegrated as if it were ice thrown into boiling oil, letting out a silent shriek, before finally turning into a gray light, forcibly dragged into the void, vanishing from the spot.
Almost simultaneously, in Gu Xuan's Spirit Sea, the Black Water Pool inside the Demon Suppression Hall rippled slightly, and the bloody prompt reappeared:
【Captured: Rotten Bone Specter （Newborn Body）. Can be refined. Start immediately?】
"Yes!" Gu Xuan made his choice without hesitation.
【Refinement commencing...】
A stream of Yin coldness, even purer than before, fed back from the Hall, rapidly circulating throughout his body.
This time, he could clearly feel that this power was not only restoring his stamina but also subtly nourishing his spirit, alleviating the fatigue caused by activating the Demon Suppression Hall.
He slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, stood up, and his gaze was sharp as a torch.
It was now the darkest moment before dawn.
Gu Xuan stood in the center of the ruins, surveying the dead, silent wasteland.
With the help of Yin Air Perception, he had roughly mapped out all the Yin Energy nodes within a hundred-*zhang* radius—besides the one he had just dealt with, there were at least three other potential lairs with similar auras but more concealed.
He spread his palm. On the Terracotta Plate used for drawing marks, he had already sketched a simple map using the residual blood that had dissipated before the Spook Ghost was refined.
Three red dots represented his next target tonight, and the one after that.
He muttered to himself, his voice sounding exceptionally clear and ruthless in the silent night wind:
"One Spook Ghost survives by devouring the living; ten Spook Ghosts cause trouble by grouping together... and I survive by devouring them."
After speaking, he took out the half-token engraved with "Xuzi Camp · Chen Qi" from his bosom, looked at it once more, and then carefully tucked it into his innermost pocket.
Having done all this, he looked up toward the south.
The horizon there was swallowed by thick darkness and mist, obscuring everything.
The old Lao Shao Chang of the outpost had once warned him, "There are no cities there, only endless Huang Yuan and mist."
But now, for Gu Xuan, who had nothing left, a forbidden zone often meant a path to survival.
This ruined village, which buried soldiers and the past, was merely the starting point of his hunting ground.
He turned, no longer looking back at the ruins, his gaze firmly fixed on the south, the direction symbolizing the unknown and danger.
The true wilderness awaited him there.
The path beneath his feet would be forged by him, step by step.
The laws of the Huang Yuan would also be rewritten by his own hands.