Finally, a Person
The man continued speaking into his ear. “Do you want to live?”
“Obviously!” Tang Fei scoffed.
The man gripped both his wrists and looked him straight in the eyes. “Then do as I say.”
His voice was utterly cold, yet there was an undercurrent of gentleness in it.
Tang Fei found himself lost in the man’s gaze. His expression softened. “What do I do?”
The man released his hands, leaned close to his ear, and murmured a few lines of an incantation. Then he straightened and said seriously, “Use the incantation I just taught you to summon your spirit sword. Kill every last one of them.”
“Me?” Tang Fei stared at him in disbelief.
“That’s right.”
“No, no, no. I may have some ability, but killing monsters is a little… difficult…”
But the man gave him no chance to refuse. He seized Tang Fei by the shoulders and hauled him off the bed.
Tang Fei lost his footing and dropped his head against the man’s chest.
A faint, orchid-like fragrance filled his nostrils, making him feel briefly dazed.
“Ready?” the man asked quietly.
Tang Fei came back to himself a little. “I…”
Before he could finish, the man gripped his shoulder and shoved him hard toward the ghostly heads.
As soon as the heads saw Tang Fei coming, they all stuck out their blood-red tongues and licked at his face.
“Hurry, say it!” the man shouted coldly from behind him.
The licking made Tang Fei’s skin crawl. He couldn’t take it anymore, so he recited the incantation the man had taught him and summoned his spirit sword.
The spirit sword flew in from outside and landed in Tang Fei’s hand. A surge of power suddenly coursed through his body.
Thousands upon thousands of rotting heads were swarming toward him.
With no other choice, Tang Fei squeezed his eyes shut and hacked wildly with the rudimentary moves he’d learned.
The heads dodged swiftly, and every swing missed.
The man standing nearby lowered his eyes. His red robes fluttered as he rushed forward, gently wrapped an arm around Tang Fei’s waist, took hold of his hand, and leapt into the air, swinging the spirit sword.
Blue sword energy flashed from the blade and cleaved toward the rotting heads.
Rows of heads fell to the ground, dissolved into pools of blood, and vanished.
Seeing that they’d managed to kill them, Tang Fei was delighted.
But his joy didn’t last long. The heads surrounding them grew larger and larger, and all of them let out terrifying wails.
The man furrowed his brow and murmured another incantation in Tang Fei’s ear. “Quick, say it!”
The warm breath against his ear made Tang Fei’s cheeks burn. Without thinking, he repeated the words.
As the incantation left his lips, the spirit sword in his hand flew into the air and split in two, then four, and so on, multiplying until there were countless blades. They became a rain of swords, plunging toward the rotting heads.
The women’s rotting heads were hacked to pieces. Eyeballs rolled and ears fell as the remains littered the floor, then vanished.
Just as Tang Fei was congratulating himself, the wooden cabinet in the middle of the room began to shake.
The red light dimmed, and moonlight from outside illuminated the dark room.
In the moonlight, the cabinet suddenly cracked open. A long, gray hand with sharply defined knuckles slowly reached through the gap.
The ashen hand snaked toward them like a vine, eerie and horrifying.
Tang Fei tightened his grip on the sword.
The corpse hand stretched farther and farther, slipped past Tang Fei, and lunged at the man.
The man staggered back several steps. Since he was using Tang Fei’s body, he couldn’t use his magic. The sharp corpse fingers were about to gouge out his eyes.
Seeing this, Tang Fei clenched the spirit sword, and it suddenly glowed red. Without a second thought, he rushed forward and slashed at the corpse hand.
A blinding red flash cut the hand in two. It withdrew into the cabinet, which shook violently as a woman let out a piercing, terrifying scream. “Ah!”
A pool of green blood seeped out from beneath the cabinet.
With bloodlust in his eyes, Tang Fei raised his sword and strode toward the cabinet to stab it.
The man hurried over and grabbed his hand. “Wait.”
Tang Fei snapped back to himself and met his gaze. Realizing he’d lost control, he loosened his grip on the sword.
The cabinet shuddered a few more times.
The man stepped forward. Gone was his earlier cool gentleness. He spoke sharply to the woman inside the cabinet. “Tell me. Who are you, and why are you in the Crown Prince’s Palace?”
The woman laughed darkly. “You want to know who I am? When the late emperor was alive, I was the most favored woman in the palace. You youngsters weren’t even born yet!”
After hearing that, Tang Fei thought back. His imperial grandfather had only had one or two favored consorts. Could she be Consort Liu, the one who’d been executed?
Decades ago, Consort Liu’s dance had captivated the capital. She’d been deeply loved by his imperial grandfather, the most favored woman in the palace.
But she’d been vicious, even going so far as to murder the emperor’s descendants. In the end, his grandfather had sent her to the Cold Palace and ordered her execution.
How could someone who’d died be in his bedchamber?
Tang Fei frowned, strode forward with his sword, and pointed it at the cabinet. “I’ve never wronged you. Why are you trying to kill me?”
The cabinet rocked a few times. “You haven’t wronged me, but you’re that man’s grandson. He had me executed over his descendants, so I’ll see to it that he has no descendants at all!”
Tang Fei understood. She was taking it out on him because he was the royal family’s only heir.
“So you hid in this cabinet and kept me sick all these years?” he asked with a cold laugh.
The woman gave a sinister smile but said nothing.
Tang Fei took that as an admission. With his eyes half lowered, he said contemptuously, “What a waste of effort. If you’re so powerful, why not just kill me?”
“You’re right. I did want to kill you outright, but my spiritual power has only recently grown. Otherwise, you’d already be dead!” The woman finished with a cold laugh.
“Fine. Fine.”
Tang Fei turned and gave his sword a flick, a scornful smile tugging at his lips. While the man behind him wasn’t looking, he whipped around and drove the sword through the cabinet, laughing wildly. “In that case, this prince will finish you off!”
The blue light of the sword suddenly turned red, cleaving the cabinet in two.
“Ah!” The woman screamed. The cabinet split in half and collapsed, but there was nothing inside. A face, hands, and feet gradually emerged across its surface, before turning into a wisp of smoke and disappearing.
Tang Fei put away his sword and rubbed his nose, looking disgusted. “Wow. What the hell was that?”
The man glanced at him and replied unhurriedly, “A dead person.”
“A ghost?” Tang Fei asked.
The man shook his head. “A spirit.”
“A spirit?” Tang Fei asked, puzzled.
The man lazily looked up and lit a candle. As he tidied the remains on the floor, he explained, “When people die, their souls leave their bodies. They cross the Naihe Bridge and are reborn. But if their resentment is too great to cross, they linger in the mortal realm and cultivate through their fixation. Once they become spirits, they abandon their human forms and can transform into anything, such as a pig, a dog, or a cat.”
“Consort Liu had been a vengeful ghost for decades, keeping you sick all those years. Recently, she cultivated into a vengeful spirit and transformed into a wooden cabinet. Then, in one fell swoop, she gathered all the resentful female corpses in the palace and formed that wall of heads you saw, hoping to kill you outright.”
Tang Fei raised his sword, looked at the man wearing his face, and asked with a narrowed-eyed smile, “So, are you human or a spirit?”