VL Chapter9

That night, Yan Jiang slept soundly on the grand bed. However, when he slowly woke in the early hours of the next morning, he saw the Ghost King sitting beside the bed and staring at him with half of his face concealed in the shadows, his expression deathly pale except for his lips, which were red as dripping blood, nearly scaring him out of his wits. Ever since then, he clung fearfully to the footstool, refusing to set foot on the bed no matter what.

Perhaps his life was simply cheap after all; Shi Xiao’s rare act of kindness seemed to him like a last meal before the execution block. Shi Xiao naturally had no patience to persuade him further, merely sneering before letting him be.

For several consecutive days thereafter, the human and the ghost coexisted in peace. The only variable was that the soul energy in the scholar’s body did not recover as quickly as Shi Xiao had taken for granted. Whether due to the scholar’s frail health or some other reason, what ought to have been a daily extraction of soul energy was forced into a compromise, reduced to once every two days.

Yan Jiang did not dare to offer even a shred of resistance. Whenever the Ghost King hooked his finger, he could only kneel at his feet with a look of resigned martyrdom, allowing those icy fingertips to touch his brow before familiarizing himself with that sensation of total body weakness.

His perception of soul energy was far more sensitive than that of ordinary people. Where others would merely feel fatigued after losing three-tenths of their soul energy, he invariably fainted for a brief moment each time. To avoid drawing unnecessary attention, Shi Xiao conducted the extractions at night before sleep, allowing the scholar a good night’s rest so he could still go about his day as usual without much disruption.

Occasionally, however, accidents occurred.

Once, Shi Xiao accidentally extracted half a portion more soul energy. The moment he withdrew his fingers; Yan Jiang completely lost the strength to support his body. He slumped limply forward, finding nowhere to catch himself, and ended up resting his head directly against the knees of the man he usually tried so desperately to avoid.

Gold stars danced before Yan Jiang’s eyes. As he caught his breath, his mouth blurted out the question that had plagued his mind for days before his brain could even think, “My Lord, am I going to die?”

His voice lacked even the strength to sound solid, missing its usual fawning and flattery, tinged with a slight nasal tone that made him sound rather aggrieved.

Given Shi Xiao’s usual temperament, he ought to have kicked him away. Yet when spoken that way, the short sentence sounded terribly like he was pouting and pleading for mercy. On the spot, he changed his mind, and a playful impulse suddenly arose within him. He chuckled, “How could this venerable one kill you?”

He pinched the thin flesh of his cheek like one would a child’s, “If we’re going by seniority, you’d even have to call this venerable one Great Granduncle.”

Back when Shi Xiao was still human, he and Yan Jiang’s great ancestor, Yan Huaizhi, were childhood friends who grew up together, often addressing each other as brothers. Had he not ultimately died at Yan Huaizhi’s hands, calling him Great Granduncle would actually be entirely reasonable; though bringing it up now was exceptionally ironic.

Shi Xiao wasn’t truly intending to bring up this relation, merely wanting to see how the scholar would react.

When no response came for a long while, he looked down, only to find the human had already fallen fast asleep while pillowing his head upon his knees.

Shi Xiao patted his cheek, but those weary facial features remained quiet and still. In the end, he lowered the foot he had readied to kick him away, summoning a cloud of ghost mist to set him down gently onto the footstool before turning to head out the door.

In this manner, nearly twenty more days have passed. It was only then that Shi Xiao managed to use the human’s soul energy to patch a thin layer of scab over the surface of his wound. Though still far from fully recovered, his ghost energy finally stopped leaking freely through the wound, quickly replenishing his body once more.

This was the most critical breakthrough; since his ghost energy no longer bled away mysteriously, both his use of spells and his internal healing became exponentially smoother. The most direct result was that he no longer needed to possess the scroll during the daytime, and his physical shell could be maintained to look much more like a living human.

Unaware of what was going on beneath the surface, Yan Jiang simply felt that Shi Xiao’s appearance was gradually becoming less frightening, to the point that even his eyes suddenly glowing red no longer scared him out of his wits. Yet there were also things that troubled him: the Ghost King no longer went out every night. After extracting soul energy every two days, he would merely sit cross-legged in the yard for an hour or two at night before returning indoors. When he slept on the footstool, the Ghost King took the bed, leaving him constantly on edge and uneasy, unable to sleep comfortably.

The shadow cast by that night was something he could never forget in this lifetime. Every night now, he felt a subconscious sense of anxiety; having to share a room with the Ghost King, it would be a miracle if he could sleep peacefully. In the height of summer, he had to cover himself entirely with a blanket just to fall asleep, and he was frequently jolted awake three or four times a night by nightmares before groggily drifting off again.

Truth be told, Yan Jiang had already grown accustomed to this sleep pattern over this period, but it was Shi Xiao’s first time noticing it. As Shi Xiao was circulating his aura by the bedhead in the middle of the night, he was interrupted multiple times by the rustling coming from the footstool. Poking his head out to look, he realized the sleeping human was drenched in sweat as if trapped in a nightmare, twitching every so often as though stepping into thin air. Because the footstool was so narrow, whenever he moved, his knees knocked straight into the edge of the bed, shaking the bed curtains gently.

Shi Xiao could not comprehend it. Rare as it was, he remembered he had left a wisp of ghost energy inside this scholar’s body, so he activated it to peer into the other party’s dreamscape. Within the nightmare, he saw the human fleeing night after night, his sight filled with monsters and demons bearing severed limbs.

—This scholar’s cowardice was even more exaggerated than what he displayed on the surface. No wonder his soul energy recovered so slowly; how could he possibly be getting proper rest when he spent every night trapped in fear and terror within his dreams? It almost made it look as though he, the majestic Sovereign of the Ghost Realm, possessed so petty a mind that he had specifically come to the human realm just to abuse a single mortal.

Shi Xiao felt disdain at first, followed by amusement. Black mist lifted the sleeping Yan Jiang and set him gently on the inner side of the grand bed. Lazily reaching over, he placed his palm against the person’s forehead. Red light flashed in his eyes, and within the nightmare, the scholar quieted down instantly, falling into a deep, dreamless slumber.

The late summer nights remained stiflingly hot, and with the small room lacking ventilation, while Yan Jiang kept himself tightly covered in a blanket, it was not long before sweat beaded across his forehead. By the latter half of the night, he began unconsciously nuzzling closer to the ice-cold Ghost King, only settling down once his forehead pressed against Shi Xiao’s leg, finding relief in the cool temperature.

Shi Xiao glanced down at him and paid it no further mind.

Thus, when Yan Jiang opened his eyes after a rare, full night of peaceful sleep, only to discover that he had spent the entire night pressed against the Ghost King, he was scared out of his wits once again, nearly tumbling off the bed to kowtow and apologize.

The commotion was rather loud. Shi Xiao stopped circulating his aura and slowly opened his eyes, only to see the scholar trying hard to widen his bleary, sleep-filled eyes with a faint crease left by the pillow still lingering on his cheek. Having rested well, the soul fragrance upon his body had grown slightly richer, and his face had recovered its initial fair, delicate appearance; looking much more pleasing to the eye.

In a high mood, he patted that bright red ear, “This venerable one hasn’t mistreated you; is my grand nephew really that terrified?”

Yan Jiang shrank his neck back at the icy touch. The words of apology on the tip of his tongue were scattered, leaving him stammering and unable to utter a coherent response.

A wind had picked up last night, blowing away some of the thatch on the roof and leaving a tiny gap. A beam of morning sun slipped into the bedroom through it, drawing a fine golden line upon the floor.

By this ray of light, Yan Jiang saw the Ghost King smile. It was neither a cold sneer nor a contemptuous scoff; that face lost a bit of its gloominess in the soft night, becoming dazzlingly handsome, revealing a glimpse of the youthful general’s carefree strength in the scroll.

He was also extraordinarily beautiful.

This was the very first time Yan Jiang had looked directly at Shi Xiao’s face, and the first time he had ever seen someone so breathtaking. For a moment, he froze, staring in a daze. It wasn’t until the Ghost King’s thin lips parted, softly asking him, “Is it pleasing to look at?” that he snapped back to his senses. He managed to force a stiff smile that looked worse than crying. Whether out of embarrassment or something else, he scrambled off the bed in a flurry, his pinky finger trembling slightly as he put on his shoes.

Shi Xiao took it all in without calling him out. Reaching out casually, he held up the scroll once more to inspect it closely with a thoughtful expression as if trying to discern Yan Huaizhi’s shadow within it, wondering why that old man could produce a descendant so utterly useless and spineless.

Catching sight of the scholar hurriedly slinging his book basket over his back and preparing to flee the house, Shi Xiao thought for a moment before casually saying, “Return earlier tonight.” After speaking, he closed his eyes on his own to take a short nap, not caring whether the other party had heard him or not.

Today was the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month.

It was precisely one full month since Shi Xiao had left the Ghost Realm and arrived in the Mortal Realm.

It was another night of the full moon.

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