Lodging

About a minute later.

Light footsteps sounded from the direction of the dilapidated stone archway. Two groups arrived at the edge of the low-lying basin almost simultaneously: the Green Wolf party that had previously abandoned the pursuit of Chen Mo, and another group led by Ghost Eye.

The two parties stopped at a distance from each other, the scent of blood permeating the air causing everyone to tense up instantly.

Within their line of sight, in the center of the basin, the corpses of Lao Zhuang and the other two lay sprawled. The blood at their wounds had not yet fully congealed, reflecting a heart-stopping hue under the dark Red Moon.

"It's Lao Zhuang and the others..." a fierce-eyed man among Green Wolf's subordinates whispered, his hand immediately pressing against the weapon at his waist.

Green Wolf raised a hand to stop his subordinate from taking further action, then walked forward slowly and crouched beside the corpse of the stocky man to examine it closely.

The wounds were narrow and deep, the cut surfaces exceptionally smooth; they were certainly not caused by ordinary blades or axes.

He checked the fatal wounds on the other two corpses as well; the technique was identical—precise and efficient.

"The wounds are strange," Green Wolf stood up, his brows furrowed. "Thin blades, extreme speed, leaving them almost no time to react. And..."

He scanned the surroundings. Aside from the signs of struggle and the bloodstains, the basin was unusually clean.

There were no chaotic extra footprints, which meant the fight had ended extremely quickly—it might even have been a one-sided slaughter.

"The goods haven't been touched."

He added this, implying that the valuables on the corpses remained undisturbed.

On Ghost Eye's side, a subordinate had also finished his inspection and returned to his side, reporting in a low voice: "Boss, they're all dead. All killed in one or two strikes, and their belongings are still there."

Ghost Eye did not speak, his eyes—which seemed capable of perceiving the most subtle of mysteries—slowly sweeping across the scene.

In the air, besides the stench of blood, there seemed to linger a faint, chilling aura.

His gaze finally settled on the depths of the Mass Grave Mound where Chen Mo had vanished. There, the darkness was thicker, and the graves and withered trees loomed like the gaping maws of man-eating beasts.

"Green Wolf," Ghost Eye suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse and flat. "What do you make of this?"

Green Wolf walked back to his own men and brushed the non-existent dust from his hands. The usual hearty smile on his face had long since vanished, replaced by a grave expression.

"I misjudged. This isn't a fat sheep; it's a Sha. Lao Zhuang and his lot aren't exactly tough, but to be dealt with so cleanly and efficiently, without even a chance to fight back... the person who did this is no simple character."

He paused and looked at Ghost Eye: "More importantly, they killed them but didn't take the loot. Either they look down on these trifles, or...

"Or they had more pressing matters and only sought to leave quickly. Either way, it shows that our initial assessment was off by a long shot."

Ghost Eye nodded slowly. His grim face betrayed little emotion, but a rare trace of wariness flickered deep in his eyes. "The methods are unheard of. Someone from the Rain-Listening Pavilion... Hmph, Hu San was polite, perhaps not just out of courtesy. These waters are muddier than imagined."

He turned around, no longer looking at the three corpses, and ignored the depths of the Mass Grave Mound. "It's not worth tangling with a dangerous, unknown entity for money we might not even get. Lao Zhuang and the others brought this on themselves; they were just fools who acted as pathfinders."

Hearing this, Green Wolf also extinguished any lingering sense of opportunism.

He had made a name for himself on the outskirts of the Ghost Market not just through ruthlessness, but through the caution of knowing when to retreat.

The scene before him and Ghost Eye's judgment confirmed the unease in his heart.

"Brother Ghost Eye is right," Green Wolf exhaled a turbid breath. "It's better not to get involved in this mess. Let's go; this place is ominous."

The two groups came quickly and left just as decisively.

Without the slightest hesitation, they each led their men to retreat rapidly from the bloody basin, retracing their steps, and soon vanished into the edges of the Mass Grave Mound.

The basin returned to a deathly silence, with only the whimpering of the night wind through the wild grass and graves, and the cooling corpses, to bear witness to what had just transpired.

The dark red moonlight flowed silently, casting the pools of blood into an even deeper, darker shade.

The wind stopped at some unknown moment, and even the faintest chirping of insects vanished completely, leaving only the sweet, metallic scent of fresh blood to permeate the air.

The anomaly began with the moonlight itself.

As the lunar radiance spilled onto the undried blood of the corpses, those dark red liquids began to squirm slightly, as if they were living things.

Wisps of chilling earth-qi seeped out from the crevices of every grave in all directions, gathering into visible gray-black currents that swirled and burrowed into the open wounds and orifices of the corpses.

Immediately following, a bizarre transformation occurred.

The outline of each corpse began to melt under the moonlight, which was a mixture of ghostly green and dark red.

It was not the flesh that was melting, but the shadows.

On the blood-soaked soil beneath them, the previously blurred shadows suddenly turned as black as ink!

It was as if an invisible brush, dipped in the deepest resentment, were forcibly outlining the flat shadows into twisted, three-dimensional forms.

Three squirming, humanoid shadows slowly peeled away from the backs of the three corpses.

They were pitch black, save for two pinprick-sized points of ghostly green phosphorus fire where their eyes should have been, staring fixedly in the direction where Chen Mo had departed.

Chen Mo, having walked out of the Mass Grave Mound, was completely unaware of what was happening behind him.

By the time his figure had completely cleared the boundaries of the Mass Grave Mound, the night remained as dark as ink.

That dark red moon hung in the center of the sky, its light eerie, casting ghostly shadows of sparse, withered trees and desolate paths.

In the distance, toward Jin City, there were only a few scattered, dim yellow lights.

About half an hour later, scattered, low, and chaotic outlines appeared ahead.

This was already the outskirts of Jin City, commonly known as the lawless border zone.

The deep-night streets were empty and deathly silent, a stark contrast to the clamor of the day.

The uneven gray-tiled bungalows and crooked wooden shacks on both sides had their doors and windows tightly shut.

There were no rickshaw pullers, no vegetable peddlers, and no beggars or idlers to be seen.

Only the occasional muffled dream-muttering or suppressed cough drifted from the depths of the alleys, along with the faint, thin crying of an infant from some unknown household.

One or two stray dogs scavenged near a pile of trash, their greenish eyes peering over vigilantly from the shadows before slipping away without a sound.

Chen Mo swept his gaze across the pitch-black doorways and intersections on either side, turning into an even narrower alley where a faded paper lantern at the entrance was surprisingly still lit, casting a dim, hazy halo of light that revealed the shadow of the character for "Inn."

The third house down the alley, Yuelai Inn, had its two wooden doors left slightly ajar, with a faint sliver of light leaking through the gap, suggesting the oil lamp on the counter had not yet been extinguished.

Chen Mo pushed the door open and stepped inside, where a stench of cheap tobacco and mold rushed to meet him.

The room was dimly lit, and behind a dilapidated counter against the wall sat a gaunt old man of about fifty, puffing on a long-stemmed pipe.

Hearing the noise, the old man lifted his eyelids, his murky eyes sweeping over Chen Mo without expression before he mumbled in a heavily accented official tongue: "Staying? Five coppers a night for a shared room, fifty for a private one."

"Private room." Chen Mo fished a handful of copper coins from his robe, placed them on the greasy counter, and slid them forward.

The old man collected the money, pulled open a drawer to toss it in, and then fished out a brass key attached to a wooden tag, throwing it onto the counter.

"The room at the very end of the second floor. Lay out your own bedding, and fetch your own hot water from the kitchen."

Chen Mo picked up the key; the wooden tag was carved with the characters for "A-3."

Without a word, he turned and walked up a steep, narrow wooden staircase beside the counter.

The stairs creaked and groaned, as if they might collapse at any moment.

The second floor was a dim corridor lined with small rooms partitioned by thin wooden boards, each door hung with a similar wooden tag and lock.