Obtaining the Mundane Object, Ghost in the Stone

The morning sun rose.

Though it was clearly early spring, Peibai City had grown ever colder and damper.

The marketplace teemed with people. By the time Yang He left the yamen, the sky was already faintly bright, so he simply found a noodle stall, sat down, and observed the situation.

"I hope that with the Inner Elixir Art, Head Constable Sun can live a few more months."

A carriage was parked against a wall a hundred meters from Yang He.

Every so often, he could see the coachman sitting inside, taking intermittent puffs from his dry pipe.

Yang He was not the slightest bit flustered.

The Pupil Ghost excelled at controlling yin energy, and his body bore no injuries whatsoever. Even at close range, the coachman might not notice him.

"Once I advance to the Hungry Ghost stage, you'll be the first to die."

"Sir, your clear-broth noodles~~"

The vendor brought over the noodles. Chopped scallions floated in the pale soy-sauce-colored broth.

Yang He frowned slightly and endured the nausea. The clear-broth noodles carried an overpowering fishy stench. More accurately, everything in the marketplace smelled fishy.

"Ah, it won't do not to eat."

Yang He did not want to reveal anything unusual, so he gritted his teeth, picked up the noodles, and wolfed them down.

Though he had not slept all night, he did not feel tired in the least. It was clear that his constitution had begun to surpass that of an ordinary human. From now on, he would likely only be able to meditate in place of sleep.

Meow~~

Hearing the meow, Yang He swept a glance at the century-old Treasure Fish from the corner of his eye.

The merchant association had already surrounded the century-old Treasure Fish with white cloth, though its outline was still visible. The fish corpse had long since been carved up clean.

Now, all that remained were gleaming white bones and a giant fish stomach over four meters long.

More than a dozen martial artists stood guard over it.

The difficulty of obtaining the mundane object lay in doing so without alerting anyone.

Yang He had vaguely formed a plan. He had used the black cat to test the coachman's reaction, and from the looks of it, the coachman was not paying attention to the outside world at all.

"The marketplace is a jumble of fish and dragons, and the coachman has also housed a hungry ghost. Could it be to make hunting for food more convenient?"

Yang He waited patiently, putting on the air of an old acquaintance as he chatted with a vendor selling fake antiques. He displayed an actor's professionalism with perfect ease.

By noon.

Just as Yang He had expected, a batch of Fuyang Merchant Association clerks pushed over flatbed carts carrying a full twenty or thirty wooden crates.

Shopkeeper Chen looked terrified as he repeatedly urged the clerks beside him.

"Move it, all of you!"

He cautiously pulled open the carriage curtain and motioned for the clerks to carry the wooden crates into the compartment.

"Wait."

The coachman exposed a mouthful of rotten teeth and asked softly, "Chen Baosheng, you're a quarter of an hour later than usual today. How many livestock are there in total?"

"Thirty-one. All are full-grown pigs, sheep, and cattle, with—"

The coachman interrupted, "What about human livestock?"

"Immortal... Immortal Master." Shopkeeper Chen broke out in a cold sweat, his face utterly bloodless.

"Chen Baosheng, you're planning to send your daughter Chen Qian out of Jialiang Water Town. Could it be that you're guarding against me eating her? Hahaha."

"Immortal Master, I understand. There are human livestock, there are..."

Shopkeeper Chen's sweat soaked through his clothes. After leaving the carriage compartment, he hurriedly selected seven clerks, then called over a martial artist guarding the fish corpse.

"Y-you lot, help tidy up the carriage compartment."

The clerks raised no objections. After all, what merchant association lacked miscellaneous work?

The martial artist merely assumed the crates were valuable and that they were guarding against the clerks stealing from their employer. He had no intention of lending a hand, instead chatting and laughing with the coachman.

"Shopkeeper Chen, remember to investigate everyone Song Zhi has come into contact with over the past half year."

Shopkeeper Chen nodded in agreement and hurried away with the remaining clerks. Before he had taken more than a few steps, he heard the sound of wooden crates falling. He did not dare linger any longer.

Clatter.

The wooden crate was lifted open, revealing bloody pork. The laborers all froze in place.

The coachman swallowed. His invisible right arm began proliferating wildly; the hungry ghost had already classified everyone as food.

"I... I have something to do."

Though the martial artist was only mortal, he vaguely sensed that something was wrong.

He retreated several meters in a row. A hair-raising sound came from inside the carriage, like a wild beast tearing into its prey, while blood dripped down the wheel.

"Don't leave. You're the only one left. With a ghost inside you, your meat has plenty of chew."

Whoosh.

A barbed tongue instantly pierced through the martial artist's chest.

The marketplace was incomparably noisy, and the carriage was parked in a relatively secluded spot. No one noticed the fleeting scream at all.

The coachman let out a burp and closed his eyes, digesting the flesh and blood in his stomach.

At that moment, Yang He strode toward the fish carcass without hesitation, while the black cat cooperatively caused a commotion.

Meow~~

The black cat darted wildly around the stall, sending chickens and dogs scattering.

In the few breaths of chaos on the street, Yang He took the opportunity to slip beneath the white cloth covering the fish carcass.

An enormous fish stomach entered his sight. Its surface was covered in bluish-purple blood vessels, like a fleshy tumor on the verge of exploding, making his scalp tingle.

With a thought from Yang He, the ghost hand emerged behind him, while Pupil Ghost concealed the yin energy.

The ghost hand gripped his own throat.

Yang He's head swelled bright red, the blood throughout his body stagnating as his yang fire dimmed. Yet because of that, he entered a state that was half-illusory and half-solid.

With a cold sneer, he glanced toward the entrance of the marketplace before slipping into the fish stomach.

The coachman opened his eyes with a premonition and looked toward the fish carcass. He only sensed a slight anomaly in the yin energy and paid it no heed.

The fish stomach appeared to be only four or five meters across from the outside, but its interior space exceeded ten meters.

"Could it be that a Treasure Fish stomach at the Hungry Ghost stage can be refined into a storage pouch?"

Yang He looked around. Everywhere lay a disorderly mess of vegetation, rocks, and earth. Judging from the reaction of his spiritual sight, the mundane object should be deeper inside.

He discovered that the gaps between the vegetation and rocks were wide enough for a person to pass through, so he withdrew the ghost hand.

"Cough, cough, cough. Ever since accommodating the force ghost, I've only used it on myself."

Blood flowed from Yang He's facial features as a powerful sense of suffocation surged into his chest. The yang fire on his left shoulder nearly went out; clearly, such a method was far from ordinary.

He rested for a long while before setting out again.

Pushing aside the vegetation, he found a nearly collapsed house ruin deep within the fish stomach. Before its door lay two skeletons, one large and one small.

Yang He picked up the jade worn by the skeletons and could not help but sigh.

The jade pendant was engraved with the characters Song and Zhou. It was plainly a token of love.

He remembered Song Zhi mentioning that he wanted to take one last look at his wife and child back home.

"Damn it. Sooner or later, I'll scatter even your ashes to the wind."

Yang He used vegetation to give the skeletons a simple burial, then rammed open the wooden door of the ruins. At a glance, he spotted a stone ornament placed by the window.

Because it was so old, the stone carving's original form could no longer be made out.

It looked somewhat like a beast crouching on the ground.

Yang He picked up the stone carving, and a prompt appeared on the panel. It was indeed a mundane object.

Mundane Object: Stone-Born Stone

Associated Lore: "Ghost in the Stone." Consume 1 point of spiritual sight to enter the Lore World?