by Feng Yue
Ye Qingxuan stopped and glanced at him before walking straight toward the scene. The other gatekeepers were totally unaware of his arrival, but forced a solemn expression onto their face and saluted Lestrade.
Lestrade paused for a moment, quietly watching the silent Vengeful Spirit beside him. The figure had melted into the mist, making him faintly invisible. It was as if he did not exist at all.
This was good too. He sighed out of relief. This saved him an explanation in case any clues and traces would be found.
When they entered, several others were lifted out with vomit on their pale faces. The people who held them looked bad as well and their legs were a little weak.
“Have they never seen dead people at the scene?” Ye Qingxuan asked quietly.
“That’s not the scene.” Lestrade lowered his eyes. “It’s hell.”
-
“Actually, I won’t laugh at you if you puke.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re expression’s changing. It will be much better to puke it out.”
“Shut up.”
“Holding it in is harmful. You’re going against your nature.”
“I said shut up!”
And so Lola’s voice disappeared.
Ye Qingxuan stood in the middle of the scene, looking around expressionlessly. A few minutes ago, he was still looking down on that bunch of cowardly and weak policemen, but now he had sympathy for them. Who would run into such a hell if it was not their duty?
In short, this place was littered with carnage. If one were to describe the details, one could write tens of thousands of words. Then it would be spread widely amongst the dark enthusiasts and receive critical acclaim. Unfortunately, the people who came here generally lacked appreciation for the arts, and were unaware of the vast business opportunities.
“How many dead are there?” Ye Qingxuan asked, furrowing his brows.
Lestrade, pinching his nose and replied, “The forensic analyst just told me that there are seventeen.”
“Your forensic analyst should go back to school,” Ye Qingxuan said slowly. “There are nineteen of them. One is hanging on the tree, and one is trampled under your feet.”
Hearing this, Lestrade jumped back in fright and looked at his feet.
Ye Qingxuan plucked the baton from his waist, put it into the pool of blood, and lifted piece of skin filled with black scripture. It was new, hot, and exciting.
Seeing the skin with hair dangling on it and blood dripping from it, Lestrade’s face changed. He covered his mouth, ran to the corner, and vomited violently.
Another one had failed.
All in all, the scene was almost like an accident where a wagon carrying dead pigs crashed into a wagon laden with rotten tomatoes. Then, one-hundred and eight cooks came to cut the pork stained with tomato sauce into mince meat, while also leaving some scraps for frying and other tricks. Moreover, there was so much evidence left at the scene.
“It’s none of your business anymore. Report it to the Royal Musician Division.” Ye Qingxuan patted Lestrade’s shoulder. “It is the ritual of Hyakume’s followers.”
Lestrade paused. It seemed that he had not made the connection yet. But when he really understood the meaning of that name, the already-pale face got paler. “Hyakume?”
“Yes.” Ye Qingxuan took his baton and poked it in the eye sockets of the corpse. They were empty with only blood flowing out.
“You see, all the bodies’ eyes have been dug out. These guys gathered here to please their gods by sacrificing mortal lives and pain. It seems that the ceremony was a success.”
Lestrade’s face was ghastly pale. “Wha—what do they want?”
“How would I know?” Ye Qingxuan answered indifferently.
Lola’s chuckle sounded in his ears again. “Little Yezi, you’re really cute when you lie.”
“I let you borrow my eyes, not to just watch the show,” Ye Qingxuan responded coldly. At this moment, the more serious he was, the more easily he would be played by the evil Lola. The best way was to ignore her and change the subject.
“Don’t waste time anymore time. Have you decided?”
253 The Amazing Adventures of the Vengeful Spiri
“Pretty much.” Lola seemed to see into Ye Qingxuan’s mind and chuckled. “Then let’s get to the main event.”
Ye Qingxuan instantly felt dizzy as a strange auditory illusion sounded in his ears and faint numbness spread through his body. This was the phenomenon of an outside force controlling his body.
His vision went dark before it brightened again. There seemed to be moonlight before his eyes.
“How is it? Are my eyes nice to use?” Lola asked.
“They’re okay,” Ye Qingxuan said with mocking indifference. His brows furrowed as he looked around.
Under the gaze of those eyes, layers of distorted music notes appeared on the blood-covered walls, ground, and withered corpses. The notes wriggled like maggots. Having lost control and support, they were gradually fading. One could vaguely see the original large structure—countless black music notes pierced the poor slain men, stringing them together as if on a string, creating a vast ritual.
An extremely strange insignia was carved in the center of the ritual, at the heart of dozens of concentric circles. There seemed to be dozens of sub-eyes in the single giant eye. They wandered and swallowed with chilling eeriness. It was the Eyes Within the Eye.
“It’s true, Lola.” Ye Qingxuan squatted and studied the insignia of Hyakume. “The parliament has gotten together with Hyakume’s believers, and they are starting to think of ways to open the path.”
Lola fell silent. After a long time, she sighed quietly. “No, perhaps…it’s worse than this,” she said. “They have a mark too and had just sent a group of people into Avalon’s Shadow through this ritual.”
“Mark?” At that moment, Ye Qingxuan felt heat in his arms. The blood-colored shell began trembling and shone dimly. A song sounded within the shell. This song seemed to come from thousands of miles away. It wrapped around one’s ears, faint but clear.
“The king and his helpers kidnapped the queen, imprisoning her in dreams…”
“Lola, did you hear the song?”
“What song?” Sensing something wrong, Lola was instantly shocked. “There’s power remaining from the ritual. Be careful, don’t reply to Avalon’s calls.”
“Too late.” Ye Qingxuan looked down and chuckled dryly. “I think this thing is automatic.” In his hands, the blood-colored shell grew hotter. A warped gleam of fire shone faintly, singing by its own accord. The song grew closer and closer, but Lola’s voice was quickly becoming distant. The connection was becoming blurry and broken until he could only hear static.
In the silence, thick fog surged like a tidal wave, swallowing him. He was surrounded in ghastly white. Something seemed to be hidden inside but he could not see clearly.
The fire within the mark grew brighter. It chased away the fog, allowing him to see clearly the river of blood under his feet.
The Blood Path.
Lola had given him the road mark so he could use the nightmares to practice the basics of the School of Mind. It was also an abnormally effective amplification tool. It could magnify the effects of music scores from various schools. But he had not expected to be pulled into this again.
“Huh? What do you mean by ‘again?’” Ye Qingxuan muttered to himself. He could not help his habit of talking sh*t. How unlucky was he to keep getting pulled into this place?!
The thing that the guys at the parliament dreamed of was just unavoidable to him. But there was no way out of this now. The only fortunate thing was that the connection between him and Lola was not completely broken. After all, she had sucked so much blood from him. She could use the mark as a fulcrum when needed to enter coherence, allowing Ye Qingxuan to use some of her strength.
Today was a full moon. Lola was at her strongest.
Someone prepared to enter the Scepter level and was ab
ove the Resonance, Interference, and Distortion level was behind him. He actually felt a little safe.
“I can’t hear what you’re saying but there aren’t any other ways. After all, I’m already here.” Ye Qingxuan sighed. “I’ll go first and then we’ll see if there are any ways to leave. Maybe I can beat them. Just pay attention and help me when needed.” He repeated it four times and Lola seemed to have heard. The static faded gradually and a faint message traveled over.
“Uh, I’ll just take it that you told me to be careful.” Ye Qingxuan shrugged and activated Jiu Xiao Huan Pei. The long-awaited steel black hand snapped out and knocked against the stones under the Blood Path with a heavy and clanging echo.
“Now, let’s start the amazing adventures of the Vengeful Spirit. Uh, there’ll probably be at least eight books if this gets turned into a comic. People would love it.”
He raised the road mark of the Blood Path. Using the sliver of light, he walked down the road. His steps stopped abruptly as he walked. A bubble-shaped glow appeared when he snapped his finger. It illuminated the ruined wall beside him, as well as the extremely smooth crack on it. It looked like the claw mark of some beast, but also like the mark from the full-out effort of a terrifying weapon.
Ye Qingxuan walked forward emotionlessly. He reached out to touch the crack and could not feel any other cracks. It felt entirely natural, as if it had always existed on this wall, had been planned since the beginning, and had existed on the blueprint.
But it was not—It had been clawed out by bare hands.
If Ye Qingxuan had not remembered incorrectly, someone he knew had this talent.
“The Ripper?” he muttered. “When did she get together with the Parliament?”
This was undoubtedly bad news. Raising his guard, he continued on the Blood Path. In the end, the fog thinned, revealing faint blue moonlight that fell onto his shoulders.
It was the Blue Moon
The moonlight that represented catastrophe and destruction shone on the youth as well as the silhouette of the fierce city in the distance. Under the moonlight, the city that pierced into the sky slept in darkness. It emanated with eeriness. The rusted iron gates of the black city opened, and a rotting scent blew in with the wind.
Everything, from the organization to the details, had the same contours as Avalon. It was as if he had instantly traveled millenniums and witnessed the city immersed in death and disaster.
“Yo!” Ye Qingxuan stared at the dark city before him and waved. “We meet again! How’ve you been?”
No reply.
Under the moon, the black shadow of a giant bird suddenly rose out of the darkness. It swept across the moon and hovered in the air. The silhouette looked like an oddly shaped moth. It screamed in the air and fell back into the darkness.
The Blue Moon hung high in the sky. The moonlight in Ye Qingxuan’s eyes brightened a bit as well. Using the light, he could see the ripples of aether on the strange bird even from a distance away. The ripples were strong and aggressive; it had a faint wildness that could spread out at any time and tear apart any living thing. The air around it was slightly distorted.
The aether’s strength forcefully distorted reality, upending everything. Otherwise, how could the bird fly with these strange wings? Ye Qingxuan did not know what it was, but if it was under the Resonance level, it would definitely die if it tried anything.
“I haven’t even entered yet and they’re already trying to scare me off?” Ye Qingxuan murmured, stopping before the entrance.
He gazed at the darkness within. The city felt too strange to him, as if it was a living thing that had opened its mouth greedily, waiting for anyone to enter so it would swallow all life into its stomach.
Anyone with some common sense would reconsider if they wanted to go in and die, but no matter how Ye Qingxuan thought about it, he still felt unsatisfied. If the parliament could go in, why couldn’t he?
What a joke!
Chuckling, the youth rested his cane on his shoulder. Humming, he stepped into the moonlight and Blood Path, and entered the gates. A bell rang from the deepest part of the dark city as if welcoming the guest, as if it was crying, as if it was pleading.
-
There was only temporary darkness in the city’s tunnel, but Ye Qingxuan involuntarily let out a sigh of relief when he re-entered the moonlight. The darkness was too sticky and slightly suffocating. Walking in it was uncomfortable, like walking in a quagmire; however, the strange road after the city gates was not any better.
The Blue Moon hung high in the sky. The buildings on either side of the street were dilapidated and sad. Though they managed to retain their original form, they were definitely ruins. Corpses were littered all over. Ye Qingxuan could vaguely see a destroyed stand and the frame of a carriage.
It was as if all living things had disappeared in an instant and left the city behind to decay for a millennium. But in his memory, Avalon was still bustling in the daytime. Comparing the two, one instantly felt dazed and unsure as to which was real.
In comparison, the corpse hanging before Ye Qingxuan felt friendlier.
Yes, a corpse. It was clear it had not been dead for long. It should still be warm if Ye Qingxuan touched it.
Under the cold moonlight, the corpse with a red robe hung on the wall from a rusted chain, swinging in the breeze. The withered arm seemed to be waving at the latecomer.
The Eyes Within the Eye—Hyakume’s insignia—on his chest had been torn apart. All that remained was a charred mess. He swung in the wind during this endless night. The lower jaw under his lowered neck swung as well with the song in the wind.
The voice sang quietly, “The king and his helpers kidnapped the queen, imprisoning her in dreams. We have power and the sea so which direction should we wander? Oh ho, millions of pairs of hands raise the sails high. Pull, the thieves and beggars, we’ll have eternal life…”
Receive eternal life in death.
254 Black Zone
The song rode the cold wind but instantly disappeared, giving Ye Qingxuan the chills.
The guy hanging on the tree was clearly sent by the parliament. Before coming, he was definitely like a tiger and could take on ten enemies at the same time. Now, he had become a corpse for some reason and hung from the tree like a ragged doll.
All his blood had run dry and flowed into the Blood Path. His corpse was dry as a matchstick. Ye Qingxuan looked at the ‘matchstick’ and the ‘matchstick’ looked back at him. He looked and looked, and a sticky tear rolled out of the dried out eyes.
“Save me, save me,” the mouth without a jaw stammered. He begged with a muffled voice, “Please help—no, kill—kill me…”
He was still alive?
The moment he spoke, his withered body suddenly swelled as if dozens of rats were scuttling within him and chewing something. It swelled larger and larger. In the end, something ate the last bit of his flesh and broke through!
Boom! There was a muffled sound. Ye Qingxuan quickly retreated but he still felt his vision going black. Then he felt something pounce at him.
With no time to think, he raised his hand. A complex music note appeared out of thin air. Instantly, hundreds of notes were flattened and were complete at the same time. They formed a music score and shot forward.
The melody overlapped, transforming into a hoarse murmur that announced gravely, “Do not turn the three realms into ashes!”
The darkness was torn apart by the wild electric light. The electricity shot out like a flood. Heat surged, swallowing the thing coming toward him and that corpse. Ye Qingxuan did not dare to hold back during this moment. He used his strongest weapon at once—Indrah’s Eye.
After the sublimation ritual, his power had finally reached the lowest threshold and no longer needed to use his blood to activate the Eye; however, it was harder.
Indrah’s Eye was the best at destruction. Even if there was a third level musician clad in full armor and shield, he would still be destroyed. Soon, the
moonlight in Ye Qingxuan’s eye brightened again, breaking through the darkness.
The hanging corpse had fallen onto the ground in pieces. The weird thing that had jumped out of its stomach rolled on the ground, already charred.
It looked like a child, but it had four long and thin limbs. Its burnt face was like a beast. As it writhed on the ground, its burnt body cracked open and something dust-like floated out of it. The dust melted into the wind.
Soon, it stopped moving. It fossilized and then broke apart, turning into powder. The powder disappeared quickly as well. All that remained was its skeleton and the stunned Ye Qingxuan.
He soon snapped out of it. After pondering, he took two coins out of his pocket and hurled them toward the deep end of the street. The coins flew through the air and landed with a crisp ding.
After the small sound, Ye Qingxuan saw the dust around the coin rise up for no reason, converge, and swallow the coin like a living thing. The dust scattered quickly but the coin had already lost all luster. It had been eroded into scrap metal. Then, it broke into a few grains of sand without anyone touching it, and rolled into the darkness with the wind.
Ye Qingxuan was covered in cold sweat. This truly was a black zone. The so-called black zone was actually a general term for the Dark World on the map. The safe zones for living were white zones, unstable areas were yellow, and dangerous areas were red. The black zone was the area of death.
In actuality, not even the Dark World had many places that could truly be called a black zone. In a black zone, the aether had already mutated and was uncontrollable. It had eroded the environment, turning it into unreliable and abnormal territory.
Any sound could create unpredictable reactions and consequences. It was like causing an avalanche by coughing on a snowy mountain but worse. To a human, it was an entirely different world. Just like now…
According to Ye Qingxuan’s guess, any outside interference could lead it to be eroded and assimilated by Avalon’s Shadow. In other words, it would become one with Avalon’s Shadow.