VL Chapter7

“Forget it, I don’t have time to settle these old scores right now.”

Shi Xiao casually tossed the scroll into Yan Jiang’s arms. Getting out of bed, he brushed directly past Yan Jiang, carrying a chill air with him. His long hair stirred despite the lack of wind, its ends catching the hairband on the headboard and tying the Ghost King’s hair back into a neat ponytail, making him look even more like the general depicted in the painting.

Yan Jiang’s arms shook as he held the scroll. When he scrambled up from the floor, his legs were so weak he could barely stand, stumbling slightly before following behind him out of the bedroom.

Dusk had passed, and night had fallen once more. In the hall renovated by the Ghost King, clear, beautiful pearls were embedded in all four corners. Each was the size of a fist, emitting a cool light in the night that illuminated the entire room as bright as day. The scholar dared not look at or ask any questions, keeping his gaze lowered and remaining silent as he anxiously fretted over all the furniture his parents had left behind.

Little did he know that Shi Xiao, with his back turned to him, was silently sneering.

The wisps of ghost energy he had injected into the human body served not only to track him, but also to sense all of the human’s thoughts and emotions. Shi Xiao had expected to glimpse greed for wealth but hadn’t anticipated that this scholar would be thoroughly and consistently timid from the inside out.

After laughing, his mood became exceedingly pleasant. If someone like Yan Huaizhi, who put profit above all else, knew that his descendant had turned out like this, he wondered if he would be angered enough to rise from the dead.

He sat down at the table and casually picked up a brown paper packet on it. Wrapped inside was an unsightly offcut of white sugar rice cake. At this, Yan Jiang revealed an extremely uneasy expression, shifting half a step back, “My Lord…”

That was the only food he could afford with the last of his remaining silvee, his only meal of the day.

Shi Xiao turned his head at the sound.

Right now, the scholar’s plain face didn’t look quite so annoying anymore; perhaps due to falling ill and being worked to the bone over the past few days, his complexion was somewhat wan and weary. A sudden wave of malicious amusement washed over the Ghost King, wanting to tease this human. He stood up, stopped right in front of him, and asked from above, “Do you know what ghosts eat?”

The human gasped, shrinking back as he shook his head.

“N-No, I don’t.”

“This venerable one has no interest in the pig slop you eat,” Shi Xiao shook his head in mock regret. Leaning close to the scholar, he placed a hand on his stiff shoulder and bent down beside his ear, blowing a cold breath into it as his voice softened into a slow, gentle drawl, “What ghosts eat is… live humans.”

Frightened, Yan Jiang let out a strange yelp and scrambled backward, accidentally stepping on his own hem and nearly tumbling to the ground.

Shi Xiao kindly caught him, “Just kidding. This venerable one doesn’t need to eat.”

Only then did he barely regain his footing.

Yan Jiang had become so skittish that the slightest disturbance frightened him like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bow string. His heart pounded wildly. He wanted to say something but lacked courage when the words reached his lips, swallowing them back down into his stomach. He bit his lip in silence, looking just like an aggrieved daughter-in-law, while the Ghost King played the role of the wicked mother-in-law.

Farming families rest when the sun sets. Not long after nightfall, the cooking smoke in the village slowly dissipated. After finishing their evening meals, households gradually settled down for the night, going to bed one after another. The entire village fell dead quiet, making the cawing of the ravens outside the window sound exceptionally eerie.

Shi Xiao pushed the window open a crack to glance outside. Feeling that the time was right, he put away his playful mood and turned to Yan Jiang, “This venerable one has business outside. Do not leave the house before daybreak.”

Yan Jiang lowered his head and obediently agreed. Hesitating for a moment, he asked, “Will… will My Lord be coming back?”

“Is that for you to ask?”

Shi Xiao swept a slanting glance over, and the scholar instantly became flustered.

“Ah, I—I’m sorry.”

Shi Xiao had no desire to linger any longer. Hastily dropping a sentence, “I will return before daybreak,” he turned crisply and pulled open the door. The last words he heard before leaving was the scholar saying softly behind his back, “Safe travels, My Lord.”

His voice was somewhat stiff, clearly forced politeness. Shi Xiao curled his lips in a smirk, thinking that a bookworm was indeed a bookworm; scared to such an extent, yet lacking even a trace of temper.

Not at all like Yan Huaizhi’s descendant; he wasn’t nearly as hateful.

The raspy caws of the ravens rose and fell intermittent, hidden within the night; serving as Shi Xiao’s additional sets of eyes. Every movement within a radius of dozens of miles fell completely under his surveillance.

Walking to a secluded spot, his tall frame flickered, and his body dissolved into black mist, disappearing on the spot. When he opened his eyes again, he had materialized out of thin air in a deep mountain hundreds of miles away from Aimei Village. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves overhead, casting fragmented speckles of light down below.

Shi Xiao looked up in dissatisfaction. Condensing a cloud of black mist in his palm, he flicked it upward, slicing a rift through the overhead foliage. A shower of delicate leaves rustled down, burned to ash midair by eerie blue ghost flames. This allowed the moonlight to pour into the forest entirely unimpeded, bathing the Ghost King completely within its glow.

The cawing of the ravens ceased abruptly. Shi Xiao knitted his brows, clutched his chest, and spat out a mouthful of black blood. As soon as the blood touched the ground, it burned an ominous shallow pit into the turf.

Gui Feng’s backstab had been meant to kill; he had sustained no light injury. Merely using this fraction of power nearly caused his own ghost energy to backlash against him.

Shi Xiao closed his eyes, suppressing his rage, and found a clean stone surface to sit down and heal his wounds. The human realm was unlike the Ghost Realm, which was constantly filled with gloomy power. He was far too weak now. During the day, he had to hide inside objects to escape the sunlight and the suppressive effect of human vitality, and even his recovery had to wait until the dead of night, when he could use the moonlight to replenish his strength.

He was tragically miserable indeed. But the most miserable part of all was that the ruler of an entire realm had actually been driven into a corner, forced to flee into the human realm to hide from assassins.

The cause was simple enough; it was the most cliche struggle for power. As the youngest and most powerful ruler in the million-year history of the Ghost Realm, Shi Xiao had sat securely atop the Ghost King’s high throne for nearly a thousand years. Over this millennium, countless individuals had sought to usurp his place, and he had always handled them with calm composure. Yet he never expected that this time, he would be betrayed out of nowhere by his own trusted confidant; and with the ancient artifact, the Tengjiao Dagger, no less as well.

As his ghost energy circulated, foul blood seeped from Shi Xiao’s back, staining his black clothes a darker shade. With sweat dampening his temples, he kept his eyes closed, his hands silently forming a magic seal before his chest.

Legend had it that when the Three Realms separated from chaos, the First Ghost Sovereign was fortunate enough to obtain a tiny shard fallen from the Pangu Axe. After tempering it in the hellfires of the Underworld for centuries, he forged it into a short dagger named Tengjiao. The edge of the Tengjiao Dagger was dull and incapable of harming humans or immortals; yet, having absorbed the blood of the First Ghost Sovereign, it could slay ghosts. It was a matchless artifact across the Three Realms and had once been the symbol of power for generations of Ghost Kings. Later, through successive shifts in power in the Underworld, the Tengjiao Dagger vanished completely along with the demise of a certain Ghost King. Countless ages passed, and when it reappeared once more, it was actually in Gui Feng’s hands, running him straight through when he had his guard completely down.

The wound inflicted by the Tengjiao Dagger was exceptionally strange. After several days, it showed not the slightest sign of healing, and it was this very wound that had devoured the better part of Shi Xiao’s strength over the past few days, reducing him to his current state.

Shi Xiao could feel the ghost energy within his body circulating with increasing difficulty. Every time it completed a circuit through his limbs, it would ultimately vanish around the wound. For every ten parts of ghost energy he channeled, less than half a part could actually be used for healing; the rest simply disappeared as if offered up in sacrifice.

Sweatdrops the size of beans slid down his tightly furrowed brow, dripping down the bridge of his nose.

In truth, the words he had spoken to the scholar before leaving were not entirely a joke; he genuinely had trouble suppressing the desire to devour human flesh right now. Relying solely on moonlight for healing, an injury this severe would take several years to fully recover from, even under the most optimistic estimate. However, the souls of the living were immensely beneficial to ghosts; if he replenished himself by feeding, consuming just ten living souls could compress that timeframe down to half a month.

Yet, if he truly did so and disrupted the order of the human realm, it would inevitably alarm and draw the intervention of the Immortal Realm. Though ghosts represented the “evil” aspect among the Three Realms and held no moral constraints, the rules governing the coexistence of the Three Realms still had to be observed…

A raven perched on a branch flew down onto his shoulder. Shi Xiao finished his final cycle of circulating his aura and opened his eyes; to his surprise, dawn was already breaking. He stood up and expressionlessly grabbed the raven, crushing it in his hand. Black mist exploded in an instant, shrouding his entire form within.

By the time it dispersed, his figure had vanished without a trace.

……

The morning sun had not yet broken through the cloud layer, so daylight had not truly arrived. When Shi Xiao returned to the thatched cottage, he saw Yan Jiang curled up on the narrow footstool, breathing smoothly and still fast asleep.

After a night of healing that yielded zero progress, Shi Xiao’s mood was irritable to the extreme. Seeing the human now, he no longer had the lighthearted inclination he felt before leaving. A severe thirst burned in his throat, and the instinct of bloodlust rolled up onto the tip of his tongue. He exhaustedly pressed down on the wound on his abdomen; taking two steps closer, he could even smell the sweet aroma unique to intelligent living beings.

The sleeping human was completely defenceless, not realizing in the slightest that before powers from another realm, he was like a dish of food or a jug of fine wine. Shi Xiao frowned, enduring the hunger in his soul as he nudged him with his toe, asking impatiently, “Why are you sleeping here?”

Yan Jiang was kicked awake and sluggishly propped himself up, his eyes still bleary with sleep. Utterly dazed, he squinted up at the Ghost King, hearing the question without detecting the impatience within it, “There’s nowhere else to sleep…”

The bedroom was small to begin with, now packed to the brim by the bed and wardrobe brought in by the Ghost King, leaving only a narrow passage. There wasn’t even room to set up a floor bed, leaving him with no choice but to sleep on the footstool like a maidservant in a wealthy household.

Only after speaking did he realize the answer sounded terribly like an insinuation of blame. Yan Jiang jolted fully awake. Fortunately, perhaps because the Ghost King couldn’t be bothered with him, he didn’t pursue the matter, merely clicking his tongue before stepping over him to sit on the bed.

“Where was yesterday’s scroll?”

“In the wardrobe…” Yan Jiang hurriedly ran barefoot to retrieve it, holding it up with both hands to present the scroll to Shi Xiao.

As he drew near, the sweet aroma grew even richer in Shi Xiao’s nose. Hands that held a brush were indeed far finer than those that tilled the soil; they were slender, fair, and tender. He suddenly found himself thinking uncontrollably that if he were to chew these hands in his mouth, the flavor would surely be quite good…

His physical state had deteriorated to the point where even the most primitive instinct to devour humans could ride roughshod over his self-control.

Shi Xiao grew utterly irritated, wanting not to catch another glimpse of this human. Without a word, he took the scroll and transformed into a cloud of black mist to possess it. Losing its support, the scroll fell onto the bedding.

Yan Jiang froze for a moment.

Once bitten, twice shy, but the second time was already familiar. After hesitating for a moment, he gently carried the scroll over and placed it at the innermost side of the bedhead, then lowered the bed curtains to block out the light from outside before quietly leaving.

He survived another day.