VL Chapter1

It looked like it was about to rain.

Yan Jiang stopped at the roadside and lifted his gaze. Dusk was approaching, yet the sunset was nowhere to be seen. In its place, dense, sun-obscuring storm clouds hung ever lower overhead, churning and roiling with an ominous air of impending trouble, their oppressive presence weighing heavily on the world below and making it difficult to breathe. The vendors around him all quickened their pace to pack up their belongings; some hoisting goods by hand, others working together to push carts, each hurrying back to their own homes. Only old man Li, who sold oil-paper umbrellas, remained leisurely and at ease, his face creased with a clear smile.

“Scholar Yan, aren’t you heading home yet? It’s about to pour!” The rice cake vendor had also packed up her stall, and as she passed by across the street, she spotted Yan Jiang and called out to him from afar. Yan Jiang withdrew his gaze, turned toward her, and gave a slightly bashful smile. “I’m heading back now; I’m heading back now.”

But the moment the auntie turned her head away, the corners of his mouth instantly drooped. His eyes went blank with exhaustion, and his feet remained numbly rooted to the spot.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid of getting caught in the rain; it was just that he really didn’t want to go home… or rather, he didn’t dare to.

Lightning flashed across the sky, followed by intermittent rumbles of thunder, yet he remained unmoved. Only when the once-bustling market had largely dispersed, with merchants either closing their stalls or lighting their lamps, did Yan Jiang finally pick up his book basket. He held the few scroll paintings that wouldn’t fit inside in his arms and stepped forward, making his way home.

After leaving the market, he followed the main road north. The buildings lining both sides of the street gradually thinned out and fell away behind him. They shifted from shops to tiled-roof houses, then to mud cottages; the bluestone path beneath his feet also turned into a dirt road. The further he moved from the central market, the more the luster faded, exposing the rawest poverty beneath. The scholar trudged onward almost mechanically, leaving Luowang Village through its northern entrance. After rounding a bend, he followed the narrow, winding path that cut through the fields, heading east.

The closer he got home, the heavier his footsteps became.

—From the Luowang Village market to his small cottage at the very end of Aimei Village, he had walked this path countless times, day in and day out. Every clump of earth and every leaf along the way was etched into his memory. The journey took half an hour on foot, neither more nor less. On days with good weather, he would usually arrive home just as the sun was setting.

But that was the past.

The light before his eyes had already begun to fade, and the entrance to the village was visible in the distance. Yan Jiang halted for a moment, lifted his head to gauge the sky, then, after a brief calculation, turned off the road as he usually did. Rather than taking the main road and risking an encounter with other villagers, he followed the muddy track that ran along the earthen slope behind the village, making his way home.

The rumbling, muffled thunder continued without pause, sounding like a massive monster hiding within the clouds, roaring its warnings at mankind.

As he passed a withered tree, a bird perched among its branches suddenly burst into flight. The abrupt flutter of wings gave Yan Jiang such fright that he stumbled backward several steps. His heart pounded wildly, and it took a long while before his breathing finally steadied. For some unknown reason, after he changed direction, the speed at which the sky darkened suddenly accelerated. The faster he walked, the more his heart raced, thumping loudly against his chest and sounding increasingly prominent in the silence of his surroundings.

The rain finally began to fall. It was not particularly heavy, yet each drop was large and weighty. Driven sideways by the wind, the raindrops struck his head and body one after another, carrying a faint sting wherever they landed.

Fortunately, he was almost there. After crossing the stretch of desolate fields, the outline of his ramshackle thatched cottage emerged faintly through the gloom. Yan Jiang reached back to check the book basket on his shoulders and, after confirming that the rain cover was firmly secured, slipped the few painting scrolls into the front of his robes to keep them from getting wet. He quickened into a light jog, his feet sinking into the rain-softened mud. Each step sent muddy droplets splashing up like water, spattering the hem of his white robes with stains.

Patter, patter, patter.

As he pushed forward through the rain, his clothes gradually soaked through and grew heavier by the moment. The brushes, ink, paper, and inkstone inside his book basket jostled with every step, the constant bouncing making his shoulders ache. Gasping for breath, he gradually slowed his pace. Yan Jiang swept a handful of rainwater from his face, but as his peripheral vision took in his surroundings, he suddenly sensed something was wrong.

A bolt of lightning struck from the edge of the sky, a sinister violet flash slicing through the darkness and, for a fleeting instant, turning the world as bright as day. His jog slowed to a fast walk, and finally, he stopped dead in his tracks, completely unable to take another step, allowing the rain to pour down over his head and body.

Yan Jiang looked ahead in disbelief. Across a stretch of barren fields, his small cottage lay crouched in the dimness. Turning around, behind him was the narrow path snaking its way up along the dirt slope with the familiar withered tree standing by the roadside.

He had returned to the exact same spot.

At last, Yan Jiang understood what was happening. The color drained from his face in an instant; his limbs went rigid, and his gaze trembled as he looked up, just in time to see a full moon revealed through a break in the clouds. The moon was a flawless, stark white disc, eerily perfect in its roundness; only to be swallowed again an instant later as the dark clouds swept back over it.

Tonight… was the night of the full moon.

The scholar’s expression shattered in an instant, exposing the most wretched terror. He let out an uncontrollable shriek and suddenly bolted forward, running with all his might.

How could a full moon appear twice in the same month? That was a day when yin energy was at its peak, and the gates of the underworld flung wide open.

The scrolls in his arms kept scattering and dropping as he bolted wildly, but he couldn’t spare a single thought to care. He gasped for breath until his lungs ached sharply, rain blurring his vision and filling his mouth as he ran. Even so, he refused to loosen his grip, clutching tightly onto the last remaining scroll in his hand as if it were his only lifeline, sprinting desperately through the downpour while trying to force his way out of the ghost-wall illusion.

At some unknown point, the surroundings had plunged completely into pitch blackness without a single trace of light. Within the depths of the darkness, a chilling murderous intent slowly thickened and spread. Something seemed to be screaming and weeping all at once, while pairs of bloodthirsty eyes fixed themselves on the fleeing scholar. From time to time, eerie, ghastly laughter rang out as if it could pierce straight through the skull.

The rain didn’t stop, but it inexplicably turned viscous, falling with a foul, metallic stench and staining the scholar’s face with dark red blood marks.

Yan Jiang could feel that something was chasing him from behind. Those footsteps were unhurried yet incredibly distinct, each step crushing down upon his heart. From somewhere in the distance came the faint echo of a soul-reaping bell, its sound indistinct yet haunting. It was impossible to discern whether this was some cruel game of cat and mouse at play, or simply the harbinger of imminent death.

Yan Jiang did not dare to look back, and his feet felt terrifyingly heavy as if countless hands were reaching out from the soil, dragging and pulling him to stop him from fleeing for his life.

Several plumes of black mist swirled around his body. The sound of flapping wings drew close to his ears, and the slight breeze they whipped up brushed against his temple. Yan Jiang, who was already on the verge of a total breakdown, let out a shriek with a trembling voice. His foot suddenly caught on a protruding rock, and his already exhausted body lost its balance. His physical form slammed hard into the mud, rolling and getting covered in filth.

Only then did he realize that what was falling from the sky was no longer raining, but blood, staining the yellow earth with a thin layer of light red. Several black feathers that had appeared out of thin air drifted down, landing beside his hand. The caws of ravens grew louder and louder, rasping through the night sky.

Yan Jiang lay prone in the mud with his whole-body stiff, his mouth open as he gasped silently and heavily. The hand he had used to brace himself when he fell throbbed with a burning pain. His mind was completely blank. He turned his palm over and saw a long, gaping wound, cleanly cut open by the broken edge of the scroll. Fresh blood surged out at an unnatural speed, pooling into a thin stream that ran down his wrist.

Behind him, the ethereal clinking of chains striking a scythe drew closer and closer, becoming clearer by the second. The entities lurking within the darkness had long since been unable to restrain their greed and agitation, waiting only for a command to surge forward. They would tear the human’s flesh and soul apart together, devouring him whole by drinking his blood and chewing his bones until nothing remained.

Yan Jiang noticed that a jade bracelet had inexplicably appeared on his wrist. The jade was white with traces of red; it was blood jade, and it was greedily absorbing his blood. He froze for a moment, as though suddenly roused from a dream, then abruptly sprang up like a madman. Ignoring the mud and the pain, he threw himself toward the black feathers scattered on the ground, grabbing one tightly in his palm. The feather, now smeared with blood and dirt, was clenched in his grip as he broke down into loud, uncontrollable sobs.

That was no ordinary feather; it was his only hope of survival right now.

The death-summoning sounds behind him ceased for a fleeting moment. In that instant, tears dropped onto his wound, while the black feather soaked up the warm, fresh blood in full. Then, it miraculously erupted with a dark red glow.

More ravens suddenly took flight, the sound of their wings beating filling the air. This time it was not just a few, but a whole flock. Emerging from nowhere, they circled and converged into a dense mass before Yan Jiang, their wingbeats whipping up a strong gust that surged through space. More feathers drifted down, each one seemingly carrying heavy, crushing pressure that pressed outward in all directions, suppressing and intimidating the malicious souls that had been encircling the human from every side.

From the swirling cluster of ravens, a black boot stepped forward. Instantly, the flock dispersed in perfect order, parting to clear a path for the newcomer.

Yan Jiang knelt where he was while sobbing in fits and starts. His tensed back relaxed slightly, but he was still trembling. Like a frightened quail, he slowly opened his eyes, his terrified gaze inching upward from the black boot before him. He probably intended to raise his head, but his pace was just too slow, so the other party impatiently reached out, clamped his jaw with the web of his hand, and roughly forced his head up.

Their eyes met, and Shi Xiao’s gloomy, pale face was reflected in Yan Jiang’s eyes.

“Tsk, truly ugly.” His hand was even colder than the rain-soaked, frightened scholar’s; far colder than anything a living person should possess. After only a few glances, he withdrew his hand in disdain. “You’ve caused trouble for this venerable one. Have you thought about the price?”

Yan Jiang’s tears fell even more fiercely. He raised his hand to wipe his face, but forgot that his sleeves were dirty too, making it worse the more he wiped, which caused Shi Xiao’s brows to furrow deeply.

Before he could be kicked away in disgust, he scrambled forward on his knees, prostrating himself flat against the ground. With his injured hand, he clutched the hem of Shi Xiao’s robes, pressing his cheek submissively against the top of the man’s boot.

“Save me… please save me, My Lord…”

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