UCS Chapter 110.2

The goggle-wearing man was a team leader at the National Special Research Institute. His ability, he explained, was the capacity to see the spiritual energy contained within a person’s body, which he used as the basis for selection.

The fourth person was from the Anomaly Management Bureau and was responsible for external liaison. According to him, none of the three were ordinary people even when they were just going about everyday life.

On the helicopter, a door to a whole new world opened for them.

According to the goggle-wearing man, the spiritual energy within all three of them was highly active. It was very likely they could become Spirit Police, and even if not, they could certainly become Anomaly Police.

He had meant this as encouragement. What he did not expect was that the moment they arrived at the ghost city, Zhou Jing suddenly clutched his head and said he was seeing strange lines and numbers. Acutely sensitive to numbers as he was, he began processing them like a human calculator.

They sprinted in the direction Zhou Jing’s calculations pointed, and arrived just in time to see Yun Zhiyi falling into the great pit.

At that moment, Mo Hua felt a surge of heat rise from the soles of his feet. He hoisted Zhou Jing and Sun Jun and moved at a startling speed, but it was still not enough. At the final moment, he hurled the two of them forward like javelins.

They pulled Yun Zhiyi back by the narrowest of margins.

Zhou Jing had not expected that on top of getting motion sick, he would also get Mo Hua-sick. Being launched by Mo Hua once was roughly equivalent to riding a long-distance bus for two hours on a mountain switchback road. He was sick enough to feel like he was dying.

And that was how Mo Hua and Zhou Jing awakened.

Finding three exceptional candidates had already been an unexpected windfall. Finding two more on top of that was something else entirely.

The goggle-wearing man’s delight diminished considerably.

Candidates with spiritual energy were exceptionally rare. Those who could be called Spirit Police material were rarer still. There was definitely something unusual going on here.

He found his gaze drifting involuntarily toward Gao Gusheng.

Gao Gusheng’s file was classified, but at the level of research institute team leader, one could know a little. Something clicked in the goggle-wearing man’s mind. He thought of the countless fierce ghosts throughout the ghost city, and a sense of foreboding rose within him.

“This place is not safe. All of you, get out now!”

Gao Gusheng especially had to leave immediately.

The goggle-wearing man was inwardly groaning, urging everyone to move toward the exit. Right at that moment, Ying Bujie also closed the black vortex, and the souls of over a thousand female ghosts vanished.

Outside, golden light stretched in every direction. The fierce ghosts did not dare approach it and were cowering in corners. The backup forces that had been waiting outside had also arrived. The timing, the terrain, and the people were all aligned. The group was just about to set out when Gao Gusheng suddenly pressed a hand to his chest.

“Dad?”

He looked up. Ying Bujie was already gone.

***

The battle between Gao Shi and the Ghost King was nothing short of a one-sided slaughter.

Gao Shi entering the ghost city was like a blazing sun crashing into a field of snow. No matter how thick the snow, it could only melt instantly before that kind of heat.

By now, the Ghost King’s once-imposing black robes were riddled with tears.

He commanded ghost energy, Yin energy, and spiritual energy alike, and had far more tricks and techniques at his disposal than Gao Shi. But Gao Shi had overwhelming Yang energy on the outside for offence, and the protection of accumulated merit on the inside. Brute force breaks all skill. No matter what technique the Ghost King employed, it was neutralized. In the end he was reduced to fighting with mundane weapons, and Gao Shi’s martial technique was vastly superior. The Ghost King was driven back again and again.

Resentment kindled in the Ghost King’s chest. He was the Ghost King. In life, he had been a ruler among men. In death, he was king over ten thousand ghosts. When had he ever been subjected to such humiliation?

After another attack was neutralized, the Ghost King calculated the timing and attempted to draw on the power of the ritual sacrifice.

Dark ghost energy surged and billowed. Everything it passed over withered. His face bore cracks, yet he was smiling. “Your combat strength is not bad. A pity you are too soft-hearted. And so, what will you do when faced with these souls who died wrongful deaths?”

He intended to summon the ghost souls of the women who had been sacrificed and send these wrongfully killed spirits charging forward.

Gao Shi’s Yang energy was too overwhelming. Ghosts and gods alike could not draw near. Weak ghost souls would be scattered to nothing simply by approaching him. So what would this self-proclaimed righteous mortal do now?

The Ghost King’s smile widened.

A mortal was always just a mortal. A lifetime would never make him an emperor. He did not understand the principle that behind every great general lies a field of bones. He would only lose his own way forward, trapped in hesitation and struggle.

But the Ghost King waited and waited, and no ghost souls came.

Not only did no new ritual power or newly made ghosts appear, even the old ghosts from before had vanished. And furthermore, it seemed that even the ritual site itself had…

The Ghost King’s expression changed. He spat out a mouthful of black blood.

Ghosts do not bleed. What he had expelled was the essence of his own soul power.

Gao Shi let a smile cross his face. “It seems the one who needs to think carefully about what to do next is you.”

Gao Shi had no interest in wasting words. Strike while your enemy is weakened. He exhaled sharply, and the golden light blazing from the long axe surged to a strength it had never reached before.

The Ghost King’s expression shifted drastically. He knew that this strike was one he had absolutely no way to block.

But there was no retreat left behind him. He had no choice but to stake everything on one final gamble. In that split second, a flash of inspiration struck him, and he flung out that gear-shaped object, pouring every last drop of his spiritual energy into it.

The thing erupted in a blaze of light ten thousand zhang high. And what erupted alongside it was a spiritual energy he recognized beyond any doubt.

Ying Bujie?!

Gao Shi stared at the gear, his pupils contracting sharply. The axe blow he had already committed to cleaving forward wrenched itself back by sheer force of will, but a full-strength strike already in motion could not simply be recalled.

Gao Shi spat out a mouthful of blood, his vision going dark in waves. He stumbled forward two steps and closed his hand around the gear.

Where Gao Shi’s blood touched it, the gear gave off a soft silver-white glow.

It was unmistakably Ying Bujie’s presence.

So that was why the old man had said Ying Bujie’s fateful opportunity lay with the Gao family and in the Eastern Mountain Range. The final remnant of Ying Bujie’s living soul had been entrusted to the gear at the Ghost King’s side.

The Ghost King had studied this object for a long time without ever finding the key to it. He had not expected that today of all days, he would witness the gear respond.

He looked at Gao Shi, his expression shifting and unreadable. Slowly he raised his hand, and a sharp longsword materialized in his grip out of thin air.

This one could not be allowed to live.

Sword energy thick with killing intent drove toward Gao Shi. Already wounded by his own redirected strike, Gao Shi had no strength left to dodge. He could only shield the gear and raise the axe to meet the blow through sheer effort.

But how could he possibly hold against it?

With a sharp clang, the axe was knocked flying. The sword drove into Gao Shi’s shoulder.

It was the Ghost King’s first successful blow against Gao Shi.

Viciousness rose in the Ghost King’s eyes. He poured spiritual energy into the sword, and it detonated inside Gao Shi’s body. In his final moment, Gao Shi seized the Ghost King’s arm with his hand, and the exploding spiritual energy blew off half of that arm.

But that was all he had left.

Gao Shi’s vision swam. He slowly fell.

A thousand images flickered through his mind like a lantern spinning in the dark. The gear nestled against his chest was faintly warm. He suddenly remembered how, before they set out, Daoist Ying had asked him if he could bring back an ice cream.

“I want an ice cream. Lemon flavour.”

The Daoist in his fluffy pyjamas, with that perpetually cool expression, had looked unbearably endearing. Gao Shi had very nearly given in.

“No.”

Gao Shi refused with a straight face. He watched the flicker of disappointment in the Daoist’s eyes and could not help the small smile that escaped him. “You have already had thirty-six today. That is too many. I will buy you one when we come back from Dongshan.”

“Pinky promise.”

“Fine. Pinky promise.”

Thinking of Ying Bujie’s solemn expression in that moment, a sudden and sharp regret welled up inside him.

If only he had known. He would have bought the Daoist that ice cream after all.

…

The Ghost King saw Gao Shi lying face-down on the ground without a sound, and a surge of satisfaction rose within him. Yet he was still not at ease. He raised his sword to strike again, when an overwhelming sense of crisis exploded in his chest and sent him hurtling backward.

In the very spot where he had just been standing, a deep fissure had split open in the ground.

A white-robed Daoist had appeared before Gao Shi at some point unknown.

Looking at this white-robed figure, a fear rose from somewhere deep within his very soul, like a suppression written into the blood. Every last thread of Yin energy in him was screaming at him to run, yet all he could do was watch helplessly as the figure sheltered Gao Shi behind him, then drew his sword and drove it through him with a single thrust that shook his soul to its foundations and destroyed a thousand years of cultivation in an instant.

Had Gao Shi been conscious, he would have recognized the figure immediately as Ying Bujie. The expression on his face was terrifying, utterly unlike his usual self, enough to freeze the blood.

“Gao Shi.”

He called Gao Shi’s name. White spiritual energy rose from his palm like a tide and poured into Gao Shi’s chest. The gear Gao Shi had been cradling seemed to answer the call, and sank into Ying Bujie’s body.

In an instant, the sky turned to absolute darkness, then returned to light in the blink of an eye. Birds perched motionless. Beasts lowered their heads. People stopped what they were doing and looked up at the sky without knowing why, as though sensing something in the unseen depths of the world — something that was about to awaken.

An enormous gear rose behind Ying Bujie, vast as the heavens and the earth themselves. The teeth of the gear interlocked. All things shifted. The cycle of all living souls turned within his grasp.

The soul’s clarity, returned to its place.

A thunderbolt split the clear sky, as though Heaven itself had erupted in fury and sought to shatter what should not exist in this world. But when that thunder fell upon the gear, it was ground apart entirely, transmuted into pure spiritual energy that surged into Ying Bujie’s body.

Ying Bujie seemed not to feel it at all. He simply channelled spiritual energy into Gao Shi without pause, repairing his meridians and internal organs, rebuilding his limbs and bones from the ground up, and then waking him.

Time passed in some unknown measure. Only when the thunder finally ceased did Gao Shi open his eyes.

“Daoist Ying? I found it… hm?”

The hand reaching for the gear stilled. Gao Shi raised his head slowly and looked at Ying Bujie. “You have recovered?”

“Yes.”

The Ying Bujie before him seemed no different from before, and yet seemed entirely different in ways that were hard to name. He inexplicably brought to mind the Ying Bujie in the dream, robed in black, and stirred in Gao Shi an inexplicable urge to weep, as though he had waited far too long and had finally been given the dawn.