The ghost constable had never imagined that, after going out to carry out a soul-reaping assignment, he would end up with a tenacious nuisance clinging to him.
“Kid, are you really going to keep following me?” He turned to look at Fang Zhiyi.
Fang Zhiyi nodded. “Big Brother, I really do have something important to do...”
“A living person entering the underworld? Are you tired of living?” the ghost constable barked. He then waved the magical weapon in his hand, sending a violent Yin wind swirling toward Fang Zhiyi.
Fang Zhiyi retreated several steps in a row, but ultimately managed to steady himself.
The ghost constable, however, stared at him in confusion.
“You... You don’t seem like an ordinary mortal.”
Fang Zhiyi chuckled. “I...”
Before he could finish, the ghost constable’s expression suddenly changed.
“By order of the Yama Lord, we are forbidden to interfere unless vengeful ghosts wreak havoc in the mortal world. You were influenced by that ghost and committed a murderous act. The fact that I didn’t take you away was already an act of mercy. But now that I look more closely, you’re clearly some evil spirit that infiltrated the mortal world!”
Fang Zhiyi froze. How could this guy change his attitude so quickly?
But the magical weapon in the ghost constable’s hand had already flown toward him. Fang Zhiyi had no choice but to dodge while pondering the ghost constable’s words.
Unless vengeful ghosts wreaked havoc in the mortal world, the underworld was forbidden to interfere?
No wonder he hadn’t been able to find any vengeful ghosts. It seemed that, in order to keep the Three Realms separate, the gods and ghosts had established quite a few rules.
Seeing him dodge the attack, the ghost constable shouted. The magical weapon, still connected to its chain, actually changed direction in midair and continued hurtling toward Fang Zhiyi.
Just as Fang Zhiyi had nowhere left to dodge, he pulled something from inside his robes.
It was a stack of ghost bills printed from an ink block. The magical weapon came to a firm stop in front of him, less than ten centimeters from his face.
The ghost constable’s eyes were drawn to the ghost money in Fang Zhiyi’s hands. Nearly all the paper money burned for the dead in the mortal world was counterfeit these days. What wasn’t fake consisted of pitifully small denominations. It had been many years since any ghost had seen such large-denomination spirit notes printed with such care.
Fang Zhiyi immediately realized that there was room for negotiation.
Fortunately, when he had gone to livestream at an old residence, he had found an ink block with a strong sense of age. Otherwise, he really would have been at a loss.
“Um, honored Ghost Constable, these are a small token of my respect. Why don’t you take a look...”
Before he could finish, the magical weapon directly swept away the entire stack of spirit notes from Fang Zhiyi’s hand. The ghost constable greedily inhaled the scent of ink from the bills.
“The signature is correct. The seal is correct...”
Fang Zhiyi rubbed his hands together. “So, honored Ghost Constable, in consideration of this money, how about you don’t arrest me?”
The ghost constable shot him a sidelong glance. “The underworld has its own rules!”
Fang Zhiyi cautiously took half a step back.
The ghost constable coughed. “Hmph. I’m in a hurry to report back. Wait here. I’ll come back and arrest you!”
With that, he lifted his leg and walked away.
Little Hei sighed. “Well, looks like the saying holds true everywhere: money can move ghosts and gods.”
Fang Zhiyi watched the ghost constable leave. He opened his mouth, but before he could ask anything, the ghost constable’s voice drifted back.
“You’re nothing more than a solitary soul right now, wandering about here. Sooner or later, you’ll become a wandering ghost. If you want to find someone, head thirty li east. As for whether that brings you fortune or disaster, that’s your own concern.”
The ghost constable led the thirty-odd souls bound in chains into the thick fog, where they disappeared.
Fang Zhiyi let out a long breath.
“Wait... Which way is east?”
He had now entered the underworld. That meant he had already broken through the boundary between the mortal world and the other two realms. But finding Sun Wukong was hardly going to be simple.
With Little Hei’s help, Fang Zhiyi roughly determined the direction and began walking that way, one step sinking deep and the next barely finding purchase.
Miasma filled the entire route. From deep within it came intermittent sounds of bitter weeping. They were wandering souls trapped in this place, souls that had become completely lost.
The farther inward he went, the more dangerous things became. Every now and then, voices would emerge from the miasma, speaking to him. Fang Zhiyi ignored every one of them. He also nimbly dodged the pale arms that suddenly reached out from the fog.
Even so, those things had no intention of letting him go.
The thick miasma trapped Fang Zhiyi as mournful wails rose around him. They were the unwilling cries of the wandering souls.
Fang Zhiyi’s expression darkened. “Damn it. I haven’t even shown my teeth, and you already think I’m easy prey?”
He rolled up his sleeves. If he couldn’t touch ghosts, he truly would have had no way to deal with them. But now he himself was half a ghost. Why should he be afraid of these things?
Besides, he had already muddled through the Journey to the West several times!
“Lord Impermanence, some lesser ghosts have reported that something happened in the woods southwest of the city.”
Black Impermanence remained expressionless. “A group of wandering souls? What trouble could they possibly cause?”
“It’s not the wandering souls. It’s... it’s someone who barged in there. He fought his way from west to east and forcibly scattered quite a few wandering souls! Some of them were driven toward the eastern gate!”
Black Impermanence turned to look at his subordinate. “Who was bold enough to do that?”
“We don’t know. When Ma Mian led people over to investigate, that fellow had already left. It’s just that...”
“What?”
“There was the scent of a living person left at the scene.”
What they meant by a living person was the aura of someone alive.
Black Impermanence frowned. “Nonsense. The underworld has already severed its connection with the mortal world. How could a living person possibly appear here?”
Although he said that, he still rose and hurried over. If this was true, it would be quite troublesome. If the higher-ups held them accountable, none of them would come out of it well.
But when he arrived at the scene, all he saw were the lesser ghosts searching carefully and Ma Mian shaking his head back and forth.
“What happened?” Black Impermanence asked.
“We’re not sure, my lord...” Ma Mian continued shaking his head. “You know what these things are like. They can barely speak properly. All they keep saying is things like ‘It hurts.’ They’re already wandering souls—how would they even know what pain is?”
Black Impermanence looked at one wandering soul whose arms had both been torn off. He picked up one of the withered arms lying beside it, but the instant he took a look, his expression changed.
“This is... demonic aura?”
Ma Mian continued shaking his head. “There’s more than demonic aura, my lord. Look again.”
“There’s immortal aura too? No... ghostly aura, and...” Black Impermanence’s mind filled with question marks.
What in the world was the culprit? Some kind of chimera?
Just then, a lesser ghost came hurrying over.
“Something terrible has happened, my lord! Someone has barged into the city and injured the brothers guarding the gate!”
Black Impermanence dropped the severed arm in his hand. “Let’s go!”
A vast group of ghost constables followed behind him.
The intruder had already been surrounded in the middle of the street. Looking at the layers upon layers of ghost constables around him, Fang Zhiyi felt a headache coming on.
He had originally intended to sneak in, but the aura of a living person on his body was impossible to conceal from these ghosts.
At present, one of his hands held a blade formed from demonic aura, while the other shimmered with golden light. His fingers were clasped into a hand seal—one he had learned back when he was pretending to be Tripitaka.
“Little Hei, do you think I can cause a scene in the underworld the way Sun Wukong did?”
Little Hei shook his head seriously. “Are you dreaming? Never mind the Ten Yama Lords—even the Judges are more than you can afford to provoke. I still haven’t figured out why the power levels in the world of Journey to the West are so terrifying...”
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
rowess are unmatched, commanding a million-strong army! Yet, the Emperor wants to depose him for the sake of a false prince? Hold on, are you throwing me into some female-oriented romance plot? How can I tolerate this? With a grand wave of his hand—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! Slander the Emperor? Very well, all of you shall die! ... The False Prince: "Although I am not the biological son, Father and Mother love me more. The throne should be mine!" The Female Lead: "Qin Xiao, you are the Emperor, and I am a commoner. If you wish to marry me, you must abdicate. Otherwise, you will never have me!" The Empress: "After we divorce, you must give me half the empire!" The Transmigrator Consort: "You worthless Emperor, why should I kneel to you? All men are equal—I advise you to be kind!" The Great General: "The enemy general is my childhood sweetheart. For her sake, I willingly abandon the frontier defenses!" The Retired Emperor: "Although Yu'er was adopted, I prefer him. Qin Xiao, you should abdicate and let him become Emperor!" ... Very well! So this is how you want to play? Facing this twisted world of female-oriented tropes, Qin Xiao grins and raises his hand to unleash—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! I am the Emperor. Why would I bother reasoning with you? Seal the gates! Leave none alive!
