VL Chapter17

Yan Jiang’s thought process was, in fact, not complicated.

Since Miss Lin’s family could come down from the provincial capital to this remote backwater to hide from creditors, then by the same logic, he could escape outward as well. Even if he couldn’t flee beyond the boundaries of Jin County, what if he fled to the provincial capital, or even to the feet of the Emperor himself?

The territory of Great Min was so vast; surely there had to be a place that could offer him refuge. The Ghost King might not truly possess the power to blot out the sky with one hand as he imagined; otherwise, why would he spend all his days dwelling in his shabby little cottage…

The more he thought about it, the more he felt that this might be the right direction.

Without realizing it, he had already walked back to his own front door. Yan Jiang raised his head and carefully scrutinized the shabby thatched cottage he had lived in for over twenty years since birth.

From the outside, it was impossible to imagine the magnificent luxury within, nor would anyone ever know what kind of shameful plaything he was reduced to in the hands of the Ghost King during every night when all was silent.

His fingernails dug into his palms beneath his sleeves. He closed his eyes, only then reaching out to pull open his wooden door.

The luminous pearl in the hall was no ordinary mortal object; its brightness was regulated by ghostly energy, leaving the house enveloped in a dim gloom at this moment.

Yan Jiang hesitated slightly, yet stepped into the room as if marching to his death. His eyes couldn’t adapt to the light shift so quickly. Guided by the setting sun outside, he turned around to pull the door shut, plunging himself completely into total darkness.

Creeeak—

A raven’s harsh, mournful cow cut through the stagnation filling the room.

In the next instant, a faint breeze seemed to flow through the darkness, and the man’s freezing body slammed against him, tightly surrounding Yan Jiang and pressing him against the wooden door.

The impact of human flesh hitting the battered door produced a sudden, dull thud. Yan Jiang’s heart trembled violently alongside it as if foreboding something ominous.

“Ah Fu, you’re back.”

Accompanied by a soft whisper laced with a trace of a smile, the Ghost King’s sticky, clammy kiss pressed against him.

……

Though Brother Lin was fond of chatter, he was dependable when it came to getting things done. Leveraging his business connections for a quick inquiry, he soon found a good buyer for Yan Jiang’s heirloom red jade. The buyer was a wealthy merchant from the county town; a straightforward person who fell in love with the red jade upon seeing it, settling the payment and exchange on the spot.

The amount wasn’t particularly large; after all, given the Yan family’s circumstances, the item they produced couldn’t truly be considered top tier. Still, with frugal spending, it was enough to cover the travel expenses, food, and lodging required for his escape.

This time, Yan Jiang calculated that he must not skimp on carriage costs. He would first make his way to the provincial capital as fast as possible, then decide whether to continue north based on how things turned out.

In truth, he had no confidence in his heart whatsoever.

He had never traveled far from home in his entire life. Everything he knew about the world beyond Jin County was derived entirely from his childhood teacher’s oral accounts or what he had learned from books; all vague, ungrounded impressions. Coupled with how little he knew about the Ghost King, who remained a completely uncertain factor from beginning to end…

Yet this was already the very first time in his timid life that he had reached out toward the outside world to make such a risky, courageous stand. Though interspersed with countless moments of cold feet along the way, every time the sun sank into the western hills, every time he endured another late night being dragged half-dressed into the dark, his craving to escape grew stronger by a degree.

As the days passed, anxieties arose time and again, yet preparations continued in an orderly manner.

Besides silver, there were horses and carriages, dried rations, routes, disguises, and extra clothes. Not daring to purchase them in advance, he could only secretly inquire about the places and etch the details into his mind.

Yan Jiang did not dare to delay for too long.

He could feel the Ghost King’s fervor growing stronger by the day. What began as deep, mouth-to-mouth kisses gradually expanded into claiming territory over his shoulders, neck, and collarbones, growing obsessively fond of leaving red mark after red mark across his skin.

If that level was barely tolerable, then by the time the Ghost King pressed his hard length against his inner thigh through his clothes to rub against him gently, Yan Jiang found it utterly unacceptable.

He still lay submissively and quietly beneath the Ghost King, yet his mind had suffered a complete collapse. The whole of his being was engulfed in despair until, at the very brink of drowning, a bonfire flared up in him like a rebirth from the ashes.

As the ancient texts said: adversity breeds survival.

People truly do grow amid adversity.

On this day, stepping into the morning sun with his book basket on his back, Yan Jiang walked out of his house. Everything was as calm as usual, showing not the slightest hint of anything amiss.

However, just as he was approaching the market, he abruptly changed direction and slipped into the small shop where he regularly purchased paper and ink. When he came back out, the basket on his back was completely empty.

The routine he had rehearsed countless times on his daily walk to his stall went off without a hitch. He didn’t need to buy too many dried rations, just enough to reach the provincial capital would suffice. White garments were far too eye-catching, so he changed directly inside a tailor shop into a plain, light blue-gray outfit. As for the horse and carriage, the most critical element of all, he had long since singled out his target.

Jin County’s famous sweet plums were highly sought after by the wealthy, but they were also extremely perishable. Consequently, fruit transport carts departed from here every single day, loaded with the freshest sweet plums bound for the provincial capital. The drivers were obligated to travel at maximum speed; barring unforeseen circumstances, travelling day and night from Jin County to the provincial capital took a mere eight to ten days.

Since it wasn’t peak season, the driver was naturally delighted to take on an extra passenger and earn a little extra income on the side.

The driver flicked the reins, and the large horse at the front broke into a trot, heading off in the direction of the provincial capital. Yan Jiang held onto the wooden railing at the back of the cart, his body jolting up and down with the carriage’s movement, though the frantic pounding of his heart far exceeded the violence of the ride.

He had truly escaped.

The fruit cart was fitted with a canopy. He huddled in the deepest corner of the cart bed, where crate upon crate of sweet plums concealed his less-than-sturdy frame. Nobody knew he was hiding inside such an utterly ordinary fruit cart as it departed the town, even Brother Lin at the market would only assume he was setting up his stall a little late today.

By the time the sun went down, and the Ghost King discovered that his human pet had not returned home on time, an entire day had already slipped past.

The carriage ground to a halt. Yan Jiang lifted the canopy cloth, only to be met by a sprawling wilderness outside the cart.

“Brother… ah, look at me, a crude man! You educated folks ought to be called ‘Young Master’.” The driver turned back to explain. “This mountain pass is dangerous and tricky to navigate in the pitch black. The few of us will rest at this post station tonight.”

Yan Jiang looked to his left where the driver pointed, and sure enough, there stood a shelter for traders and haulers. Composed of merely three walls and a roof, it was exceedingly rustic yet spacious, allowing haulers to drive their entire carts inside to rest for the night before resuming their journey.

This was an unavoidable stop along the route to the provincial capital. At this moment, several cargo carts were already parked inside in scattered groups. Haulers from various regions claimed their own corners and lit campfires, their warm yellow glow driving away the dark and illuminating the interior of the shelter brightly.

Ever since twilight had begun to fall, Yan Jiang had been trapped in a state of intense, unrelenting anxiety. Seeing how lively and populous the shelter was actually helped settle his nerves; stepping down from the cart, he followed along its side into the shelter and found a corner to settle in.

Sitting directly on the ground in the faint glow of a distant fire, the driver pulled out his dried rations to chew on. Having already eaten on the cart, Yan Jiang simply stood off to the side, looking around discreetly with a tight, constrained posture.

“Young Master, the ground is dirty. If you’re not used to sleeping on it, you can sleep in the cart bed. I don’t have much cargo on this run, so I’ll clear some space for you in a moment.” The driver raised his waterskin to take a hearty swig, giving Yan Jiang a friendly smile.

Yan Jiang quickly cupped his hands to him, “Big Brother, there is no need for such formality. Just call me Xiao Yan.”

“Yan? That’s a rare surname in Jin County.”

“You are a man of wide experience, Bug Brother. My family ancestors were indeed not locals; it was only in my great-grandfather’s generation that we relocated to Jin County.”

“No wonder.” The driver nodded, taking another bite of his flatbread. Just as he was about to say more, his gaze suddenly shifted to something behind Yan Jiang.

“Pardon me, but are you Yan Fusheng of Aimei Village in Jin County?” A gentle question drifted from behind; though sudden, it was by no means alarming.

Yan Jiang turned around. By the faint, hazy light of the distant fire, he discovered a young man of roughly his own age, bowing to him with hands cupped in a refined, scholarly posture.

He returned the bow with hands joined, “That is indeed me. May I ask who you are…?”

Upon hearing his response, the other man beamed with a surprised, delighted smile.

“It really is you, Fusheng! We were classmates who began our schooling together at Luowang Academy back in the day. I am Cai Lide, do you remember me?”

A soft breeze drifted in from outside, causing the firelight to sway gently. The campfire suddenly brightened a notch, illuminating the man’s features with even greater clarity.

Sure enough, a faint sense of familiarity could be traced within his face.

He naturally remembered Cai Lide. He was practically his only childhood classmate with whom he got along. Since both of their parents were illiterate, uneducated folk, “Lide” and “Fusheng” were courtesy names that the master at Luowang Village had graciously bestowed upon them early on. Later, when they turned twelve, Yan Jiang’s family found him a better master in the county town, while Lide happened to move away with his parents, causing the two to lose touch ever since.

Although their features had changed considerably with age, the moment the other party uttered the name “Fusheng,” not a shred of doubt remained in his mind.

A rare look of joyful surprise flashed across Yan Jiang’s face, “Lide? How come you are here?”

“It’s a long story.” Lide let out a sigh. “Though that is precisely what I wanted to ask you as well.”

He hesitated as if holding something back. After glancing left and right, he added, “Fusheng, shall we step aside to catch up on old times?”

The haulers were all unrefined men. Seeing two scholars conversing here in such polite, polished phrasing, they frequently glanced over in curiosity. Yan Jiang looked around as well, then nodded, accepting the proposal.

Cai Lide led the way, and the two walked out of the shelter one after the other, rounding the wall behind it. The firelight from inside the shelter could not reach here, leaving the spot extraordinarily dark.

“Lide, let us stop here, it might be dangerous if we go any further.” Yan Jiang spoke in a timely manner.

He was somewhat afraid, yet too embarrassed to let it show.

Fortunately, the other party had no objections; hearing his words, he stopped in his tracks and turned around. “True enough. In this desolate wilderness, there’s no telling if fierce beasts might be prowling about.”

Yan Jiang nodded, though in his heart he was thinking not of fierce beasts, but of sinister, otherworldly beings.

Cai Lide noticed nothing.

“To tell you the truth, I hope you won’t laugh at me, Fusheng.” He let out a bashful smile and resumed the topic from the shelter. “Back then, my parents made a bit of fortune and moved to the provincial capital with me. Do you still recall?”

“I still have a vague memory of it.”

“After arriving in the provincial capital, however, I always felt the academies there were far too strict. Though their teaching was excellent, it was nowhere near as comfortable as the time I spent with you in the countryside. I barely managed to endure it until I turned nineteen, when my family tried to force me to take the spring imperial examinations. Knowing full well I was not yet qualified and unwilling to comply, I fled the provincial capital under the cover of night. For the past few years, I’ve been traveling and studying elsewhere. Now that I am a few years older, it occurred to me a few days ago that my family must be worried sick, so on this trip, I am finally preparing to return home obediently.”

Yan Jiang was taken aback at first but then chuckled quietly.

“I had no idea you possessed such a free-spirited side.”

“It was merely the recklessness of youth.” Cai Lide waved his hand and dismissed it. “What about you, Fusheng? Why are you here?”

“I, too, am on my way to the provincial capital…”

Flutter, flutter—

The sudden sound of flapping wings startled directly overhead. Abnormally sensitive to this noise, Yan Jiang abruptly cut off his sentence and snapped his head upward.

It turned out to be a bird of modest size, taking flights from somewhere unknown to perch on a branch not far away. In the dim, murky night, it was impossible to discern its exact species clearly.

Yet Yan Jiang’s breath caught in his throat, a surge of pure panic springing up unbidden within his chest.

“Lide, is that a raven?” Lowering his voice, he kept his eyes fixed on where the bird had flown as he asked his former classmate behind him.

“A raven? It should just be an ordinary wild sparrow.”

“Is that so…”

Yan Jiang muttered under his breath; his eyes still fixed on that spot without turning around.

Cai Lide, however, thought nothing of it, “It’s not strange for there to be a few birds around here… You said earlier that you were going to the provincial capital. Why?”

“Mm… in any case, I am the only one left in my family.” Yan Jiang gave the excuse he had prepared in advance, his thoughts somewhat distracted. “Perhaps the provincial capital is more suited for studying.”

“To reside in the provincial capital permanently, never to return to Jin County?”

The bird stretched its wings toward the full moon in the sky with its back to the humans, flapping a couple of times before regaining its balance on the slender branch, causing it to sway gently up and down.

Yan Jiang watched it without moving an inch.

“Not quite… If I can find a place to establish myself, I ought to return once more to invite my late parents’ ancestral tablets to relocate with me.”

The biggest difference between the Ghost King’s ravens and ordinary birds lay in those eerie, demonic red eyes. As Yan Jiang waited for it to turn around, he no longer had the heart to spare any thought for catching up on old times.

“Why didn’t you bring them along on this trip?”

Perhaps because Cai Lide’s persistent questioning was a bit too loud, it startled the bird. It shifted, appearing as if it were about to turn around.

Time seemed to slow down at this very instant.

Yan Jiang’s throat tightened, his eyes refusing to blink even once. He didn’t answer Cai Lide’s question, nor did he have the leeway to notice his companion’s unusually rude insistence.

In such a wilderness, framed by the moonlight, almost all that met the eye was black and white, dark and bright.

So much so that when the raven revealed its pair of eyes flashing with an eerie red light, they stood out as extraordinarily piercing.

In an instant, every drop of blood drained from Yan Jiang’s face.

He took a stiff step backward, bumping right into Cai Lide, who had no time to dodge. Having no time for pleasantries, he reduced his voice to an infinitely small level, so faint it was practically a whisper, “Stop talking for now, let’s hurry back to the shelter.”

“Why go back to the shelter?”

“He found me, I-I…” His throat trembled so violently he could barely form a sentence.

He locked eyes with the raven’s icy red gaze, feeling as though he were pinned to the spot, utterly unable to shift even half an inch.

Yet the person behind him seemed completely oblivious to the danger, remaining still and questioning him from where he stood, “Hmm? What is it?”

Yan Jiang finally realized something was dreadfully wrong.

Cai Lide was never this tall, nor should his body ever feel so cold…

He whipped his head around.

A leisurely smile hung on “Cai Lide’s” face as he leaned close in an intimate posture, allowing Yan Jiang to see his face with terrifying clarity.

Shrouded in a thin layer of black mist, the facial features on that head gradually contorted and melted, suddenly bulging forward in a grotesque manner to transform slowly into a terrifying serpent’s face. Black scales, red eyes, and a long, flickering tongue darted in and out, almost brushing against the human’s nose whenever it extended.

Opening its serpentine mouth, it uttered human speech, “Ah Fu.”

It was that familiar, dense chorus of overlapping voices, pricking the human’s brain with sharp pain and making his vision darken in waves.

In an instant, the serpent face melted once more into a viscous black sludge, red light flashing frantically within it, looking sickeningly like a person’s bloody flesh after having their skin flayed off.

Yan Jiang’s soul let out an endless, bloodcurdling shriek, yet his body couldn’t budge a single inch. He could only watch helplessly as the entity shape-shifted and twisted, re-crystallizing into a raven’s face with red eyes and black feathers; its beak long, sharp, and radiating a sense of threat no less dangerous than the serpent’s tongue.

A bird’s gaze is forever icy and numb, devoid of even a single trace of emotion.

“Why leave all by yourself without taking a single thing with you?”

It suddenly stepped forward, embracing Yan Jiang’s waist with intimate closeness. Its sharp beak scraped across the human’s cheek, leaving behind a red mark.

Yan Jiang felt no pain.

Fear and helpless panic had utterly crushed him; his brain and his muscles alike had entirely ceased function, akin to an herbivore’s instinctually freezing state when pursued by a beast of prey.

Even his vision began to lose its color. He could no longer see the horrifying crow face, nor could he see any other scenery. Before his eyes was only a constant writhing of black mist, interspersed with mysterious blood-red characters.

After a long while, his body, numb from stiffness, was forced forward by an external pressure, leaning against a freezing physique.

The Ghost King lowered his head, having already reverted to a human face and voice.

“With such pathetic courage, why even bother escaping?”

Releasing his ghostly energy, he gathered the human’s soul that was on the verge of scattering to the winds, letting out a cold sneer.

“Had we met just one day later on the full moon, I’m afraid even the Netherworld wouldn’t be able to collect every piece of your soul.”

Yet his movements remained gentle. He patted the back of the scholar’s head, and a sudden surge of black mist erupted. When it cleared, where was there any trace of the two left in this place?

There was only Cai Lide lying sound asleep on the ground, quiet and still.