Gu Mo looked at the two clearly demarcated clusters of qi above Ye Chen's head and found them rather strange.
The white cluster represented luck, while the black cluster represented bad luck.
And now, both clusters were enormous, locked in a divided-court standoff, yet completely incompatible.
Logically speaking, equal luck and bad luck should have canceled each other out. But Ye Chen's situation seemed different—bad luck ran its own course, luck ran its own course, and the two simply had nothing to do with one another.
"What would happen, then? Bad luck and good luck at once? Good luck and bad luck at once?"
Gu Mo pondered for a moment, then called out, "Ye Chen..."
Ye Chen sprang to his feet at once, forcing out an incomparably enthusiastic smile. "Yes, Big Brother, your orders!"
Gu Mo looked at Ye Chen's beaming face and found it almost too painful to look at.
Ye Chen had originally been quite handsome, but with his bruised and swollen face, bleeding from seven orifices, and that smile plastered on top, he looked like a battered chrysanthemum. It was truly unbearable.
"I still prefer that unruly, defiant look you had before. Change back," Gu Mo said.
Ye Chen gave a "heh heh" laugh and stepped back. Feeling his injuries rapidly healing within him, he exclaimed, "Big Brother, your internal energy is incredible! It can practically Bring Dead Back to Life!"
Gu Mo smiled faintly.
The second form of his Limitless Return to Origin Qi possessed the magnification effect. Any characteristic of internal energy would be magnified countless times after returning to origin. He possessed many internal arts capable of healing injuries, and especially after the Heavenly Silkworm Divine Skill had been magnified, saying it could "Bring Dead Back to Life" was somewhat exaggerated, but not far from the truth. So long as someone had not died on the spot, he could help them recover at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Circulate energy and cultivate that Great Sun Demonic Art of yours. Let me see it," Gu Mo said.
Although Ye Chen was somewhat puzzled by Gu Mo's request, he did not ask further. He immediately sat cross-legged and obediently began circulating energy to cultivate.
Seeing Ye Chen once more cultivate according to that utterly nonsensical manual,
Gu Mo was still deeply astonished. It felt like watching someone use the Four Books and Five Classics to research how to build a rocket.
As Ye Chen completed one Lesser Celestial Circuit,
Gu Mo discovered that special qi really did emerge. Yet strangely, even that tiny bit of qi still split into two—half becoming luck, the other half becoming bad luck.
Gu Mo looked at Ye Chen rather awkwardly and sighed inwardly. He had probably truly broken this guy.
A perfectly fine Child of Fortune had now become someone in whom luck and bad luck coexisted. And however lucky he was, he would be equally unlucky!
"Alright, alright, that's enough!"
Gu Mo patted Ye Chen's shoulder and said, "Go change into another outfit first. You probably won't be quite so unlucky now!"
"Then... shall I try?"
Ye Chen hesitantly walked toward the door, moving with extreme caution. He made it all the way to the entrance without any problems, then began hopping about again. After quite a while, once he was certain nothing was wrong, Ye Chen cupped his hands toward Gu Mo. "Big Brother, I'm going to verify whether my luck has returned!"
Gu Mo asked doubtfully, "How will you verify it? Jump off a cliff?"
Ye Chen grinned. "Heh heh, absolutely not. What if my luck hasn't returned and I fall to my death? I have a very simple way to verify it. Ever since I started cultivating luck, I've never spent money when I went to brothels to listen to music. And I always somehow ended up being chosen by the courtesan as her guest of honor. Afterward, she'd even cry and beg me to visit again next time. So, verifying whether my luck has returned is easy—just go through a brothel once!"
Gu Mo: "..."
Ye Jinglan: "..."
Both of them were speechless.
Gu Mo said, "Right, I need your help with something."
"Big Brother, just give the word. I will not refuse even a mountain of blades or a sea of fire!" Ye Chen said.
Gu Mo said, "I've recently been investigating a case—the Flesh-Eating Ghost Case that has been causing such an uproar in Chang'an City. But I currently have no progress or clues, so when the time comes, I'll borrow your luck and have you investigate it with me!"
Ye Chen slapped his chest. "Leave it to me, Big Brother! As long as my luck has returned, this is just a trivial matter. I'm not bragging—once my luck is back, whatever I want will come to me. If I want clues, clues will appear. If I want the murderer, I'll find the murderer!"
"Good," Gu Mo said with a slight smile. "Then I'll be relying on you."
"No problem."
Ye Chen cupped his hands, then immediately turned and left with a servant from Ye Manor.
However, the instant he turned around, he was tripped by a stone step and directly Pounced into the flower bush beside it.
His heart jolted. He worried that his luck had not returned, but in the very next moment, he saw a gold ingot lying within the flower bush.
It was only two or three taels of gold. For Ye Chen, that value was merely a drop in the bucket—he casually threw away more than that in a day. But at this moment, it was different.
This gold ingot meant far too much to him now!
"Hahahaha... I, Ye Chen, am back!"
"Hahaha, I knew it! What cannot kill me will only make me stronger!"
"It is merely a little wind and frost—what can it do to me!"
"..."
Ye Chen shouted Chuunibyou slogans as he departed in high spirits.
Ye Jinglan and Gu Mo both wore helpless expressions.
Ye Jinglan said quietly, "Has this guy gone mad?"
Gu Mo smiled. "You'll get used to it. After all, he always believed he was the protagonist of some storybook. Now that he has experienced such great rises and falls, it's only natural that he's a little excited."
"That's true." Ye Jinglan nodded, then asked, "Still, he thought you were the one suppressing him and specifically came to pay respects. It was a lucky accident after all—he was destined not to reach a dead end. Hmm, Brother Gu, did you really return his luck to him?"
"I did," Gu Mo said. "There's something strange about Ye Chen's luck. I can't study anything from it, and there's no point keeping it in my hand. It would be better to observe how that luck changes while it's on him."
Ye Jinglan sighed. "I'm truly envious. If that luck could be fused into other people, I'd want to hug Brother Gu's thigh and beg you to grant it to me. Tsk tsk, this guy is about to start riding a wave of tremendous fortune again. It really makes one jealous. I want to cultivate the Great Sun Demonic Art too!"
Gu Mo chuckled. "That may be difficult to say."
Ye Jinglan asked doubtfully, "What do you mean?"
Gu Mo said, "Aside from luck qi, Ye Chen now has an equal cluster of bad luck qi on him. And it's growing in sync. In other words, his luck and bad luck are now equal. His returning luck has not reduced his bad luck."
Ye Jinglan asked, puzzled, "Where did the bad luck come from?"
Gu Mo said, "Originally, I thought I'd suffered a backlash for taking away his luck. But just now, I discovered that the bad luck also came from the Great Sun Demonic Art he cultivates. That is to say, from the very beginning, what he cultivated was equal bad luck. It simply had never erupted, which was why he had always been lucky."
Ye Jinglan frowned. "Then by that logic, this Great Sun Demonic Art isn't so wonderful after all!"
Gu Mo chuckled. "If the Great Sun Demonic Art were truly that good, why would it be called a demonic art? I've been thinking about this all along. How did the Great Sun Demonic Art become one of the Thirteen Taboos as a mere martial art?
"I looked through related Case Files at Dragon Tiger Mountain, but the records about the Great Sun Demonic Art were all scattered fragments. They only said it was an extremely sinister martial art, the ancestor of all demonic arts under heaven. Even the four great demonic arts of the world, led by the Taotie Divine Skill, had all originated from the Great Sun Demonic Art.
"I never understood it before. Even if it was the ancestor of demonic arts, someone still had to cultivate it. The taboo should not have been a martial art itself—it should have been its creator or its cultivators. Only today have I roughly understood a little!"
Ye Jinglan said gravely, "According to Ye Chen, this Great Sun Demonic Art is indeed bizarre. It seems capable of selecting its own cultivator. Look at those incantations and manuals he described—we simply cannot use them. I've only heard of people choosing martial arts. This is the first time I've heard of a martial art choosing people!"
Gu Mo said in a deep voice, "There's another absurd point. According to Ye Chen, when he was in that dream, after the Old Beggar asked about his dream, he gave him the Great Sun Demonic Art. Could it be understood that if Ye Chen's dream had been to become emperor, then the manual he saw in the Great Sun Demonic Art would have been one that could cultivate him into an emperor?
"If his dream was to Unify the World, would the Great Sun Demonic Art have given him a martial art capable of allowing him to Unify the World?"
Ye Jinglan said in disbelief, "So the Great Sun Demonic Art is not only a martial art that can independently choose its cultivator, but one that can automatically tailor a martial art specifically for that cultivator? Is this a martial art? It sounds like an omnipotent Creator!"
Gu Mo chuckled. "The world is vast, and anything can happen. But combined with Ye Chen's current situation, with half luck and half bad luck, this Great Sun Demonic Art is probably not so simple."
Ye Jinglan asked, "Then what will happen to Ye Chen now, with both bad luck and good luck?"
Gu Mo shook his head. "I don't know either."
After bathing and changing clothes at Ye Jinglan's home, Ye Chen once again recovered the appearance of a young master. Although some wounds still remained on his face, they were rapidly healing under Gu Mo's Heavenly Silkworm True Qi.
Then he cautiously walked out through the main gate. After waiting for quite a while and confirming that nothing unlucky happened, he went onto the street. He waited there for another long while, and when no bad luck appeared, he finally relaxed and headed outside a brothel.
What struck him as strange was that the brothel was unusually quiet.
Still, he gave it no further thought and strode directly inside.
The instant he entered, he discovered everyone in the great hall staring at him. The men's eyes revealed envy, jealousy, and hatred, and many of them began beating their chests, stamping their feet, and howling in anguish.
As Ye Chen stood there with a blank expression, a brothel madam with a bucket waist swayed over to him. Smiling, she said, "Congratulations, Young Master. Our courtesan, Yu Niangzi, lost a wager to someone and was required by the winner to serve the tenth person entering our establishment for free and without conditions. Whether that person was a Beggar or a noble young master, old or young, from the moment the wager began, you happened to be the tenth!"
If an ordinary person encountered such a situation, they would inevitably suspect someone was setting them up. After all, such good fortune falling from the heavens was often accompanied by a bottomless pit.
But Ye Chen was no ordinary person.
After all, good fortune falling from the heavens was an everyday occurrence for him.
The brothel madam was still explaining. "Young Master, rest assured, we conduct business openly, and before so many witnesses, we would never—"
Ye Chen directly waved his hand, cutting her off. "First, take me to see whether the courtesan is pretty enough, and whether she deserves to have this young master as her guest of honor!"
Brothel madam: "..."
Very soon,
Led by the brothel madam, Ye Chen was brought to a small courtyard within the inner compound. The moment he entered, he saw a woman dressed in green, holding a Big White Cat in her arms. Her figure was enchantingly curvaceous—adding or subtracting even a fraction would have been improper.
The brothel madam hurriedly introduced her. "This is Yu Niangzi, the courtesan of our establishment." Then she introduced Ye Chen to the courtesan. "Yu'er, this is the tenth guest to enter our establishment. His surname is Ye!"
Yu Niangzi looked Ye Chen over, then slowly dipped into a curtsy. "Young Master Ye, I have caused you trouble. This servant has always sold her talents, not her body. But today, a young master came, the son of a court official, and insisted that this servant attend his bed. Our establishment truly cannot afford to provoke him.
"This servant had no choice but to deal with him, but in the end, I was forced into this wager. In truth, this wager was merely that young master's method of forcing me to submit. They found a Beggar whose entire body had been oozing pus and who had not bathed in years, intending to make him the tenth guest and force me to yield. Yet unexpectedly, Young Master Ye, you disrupted their plan."
Having said that, Yu Niangzi let out a long sigh and took a purse from her robes. "Young Master Ye, please leave. This servant truly does not wish for you to risk your life because of a mere woman of the dust like me." As she spoke, she pressed the purse into Ye Chen's hand. "This servant has truly wronged you. Please accept this small token of my regard. If you leave now, I will naturally go soften myself before that young master. I will not bring you trouble."
Although Ye Chen looked down on the rule of selling talents but not one's body in brothels, because he was a worldly person, to him, coming to a brothel yet claiming to sell talents but not one's body was no different from taking off one's pants only to fart.
However, he respected others greatly and never forced anyone.
He returned the silver to Yu Niangzi and said, "You do not sell your body, and this young master will not force you. But since I have come here, and you are beautiful enough, even if it is merely to listen to music and drink wine, this young master will certainly be the courtesan's guest of honor tonight. Even the Heavenly King himself could not stop me!"
At that moment, Yu Niangzi's heart stirred!
She did not know why. She had met countless high officials, nobles, heroes, and great men. There were many whose bearing and appearance surpassed Ye Chen's, yet no one had ever given her this feeling.
It was an impulse. With a single glance, she felt the urge to become his wife, raise children with him, and live a peaceful, steady life from then on.
She looked at Ye Chen, nearly falling completely for him. Stars seemed to shine in her eyes, and her heart melted at once.
"Young Master..." Yu Niangzi said softly. "You should still leave. That young master is the son of the current Ministry of Justice Official..."
Ye Chen waved a broad hand. "Who cares who he is? This young master just came from the home of Ye Jinglan, the Ministry of Justice Vice Minister!" He turned to the brothel madam. "Go tell that whatever-young-master that this young master is called Ye Chen. If he refuses to accept it, he can go to Ye Jinglan's home and ask about my identity. Tell him not to disturb me while I listen to music!"
With that, Ye Chen directly entered the room.
At that moment, Yu Niangzi watched Ye Chen's departing back, her cheeks flushing slightly. She said to the brothel madam, "Go on. Tonight, I will serve Young Master Ye here."
"You've thought this through?"
Yu Niangzi smiled gently. "In a place of dust and wind like this, I would have to receive guests sooner or later. If my first time can be given to someone as handsome and dashing as Young Master Ye, that is also my good fortune, isn't it? I only worry about bringing him trouble. Since he does not fear that young master, then all the better. And he is handsome to begin with!"
"Fine, then!" The brothel madam left.
Afterward,
Yu Niangzi entered the room, slowly closed the door, and walked toward Ye Chen. As she walked, she removed her outer robe and slipped off her shoes, carrying a pot of wine toward him.
The two began drinking together. They drank wine as they discussed everything under heaven, speaking of poetry and songs, then of life's ideals, from the stars and moon to the true meaning of life. Naturally, they soon found themselves unable to restrain their feelings.
"My luck has returned!"
Ye Chen was extremely excited. He knew that his luck had returned, and Yu Niangzi was the best proof. His interest rose even higher, and he pulled Yu Niangzi onto his lap.
Yu Niangzi nestled in Ye Chen's embrace, speaking in a soft and gentle voice, her cheeks faintly flushed.
Caught up in the moment, Ye Chen gently caressed Yu Niangzi's cheeks and softly toyed with her hair strands,
just as he was about to reach inside her clothes,
he suddenly noticed a strand of hair that seemed to be stuck to Yu Niangzi's neck.
As someone with a slight obsessive-compulsive streak, even in a situation like this, he could not restrain himself.
So he deliberately hooked at that clinging strand of hair. Yet what his fingertip touched was not the soft, smooth tip of hair he had expected, but an unusually stiff texture.
Frowning, he leaned closer and inspected it beneath the dim candlelight. Only then did he realize it was not hair at all—a black line had condensed along Yu Niangzi's fair neck, like an intricate brushstroke carefully drawn with soot ink, clinging tightly to her skin.
His fingertip instinctively rubbed that black line, and the skin beneath his fingers suddenly gave way with a strange looseness.
The black line wriggled and stretched like a living thing, swelling in the blink of an eye into a narrow crack as long as a knuckle.
Ye Chen's heart abruptly contracted. Leaning closer, he saw that what seeped from the crack was not blood and flesh, but dark, flowing black liquid, like the underlying color showing through silk soaked in ink.
Yu Niangzi was still leaning softly in Ye Chen's arms, completely unaware of anything else, still tenderly whispering sweet words.
Yet Ye Chen's scalp went numb. He tentatively pinched the skin at the edge of the crack between two fingers and gently pulled. That patch of skin split apart inch by inch like rotten paper!
"Riiip—"
Amid the tearing sound, black viscous matter slowly gushed out, carrying a thick, nauseating fishy stench that washed over Ye Chen's face.
It was a foul, turbid stench, so thick it could not be dispersed.
Ye Chen was very familiar with that smell,
because when he had crawled out of the Ghost City sewers earlier that day, they had been filled with precisely that rotten mud stench.
He jerked backward, only to see the crack in Yu Niangzi's neck had already spread down to her collarbone. What surged beneath her skin was not blood and flesh, but bubbling black slime. Under the candlelight, it glimmered with dark purple phosphorescence, and the fetid stench made his temples throb.
The substance felt slick and carried a cold, damp chill. It faintly writhed like a living creature.
Yu Niangzi's soft, lilting voice still lingered beside his ear, but the "skin" around her neck had begun to peel back layer by layer like a ruined painted hide. The spreading cracks were visible to the naked eye, while black slime flowed down her pale neck and soaked patches of foul stains into her clothes.
Ye Chen instantly went limp and hastily stepped back, his spine slamming into the cold table.
Yu Niangzi still had not realized what was happening. She only sensed that Ye Chen had suddenly gone limp, and her face filled with bewilderment.
But Ye Chen recoiled like a startled bird, flipping backward into a corner. When he looked at Yu Niangzi again, the split opening at her collar had already spread to her breasts. Within the black slime, he could vaguely see tiny, shredded clumps like decaying waterweed. Every wriggle came with the sewer sludge's distinctive fishy stench, so concentrated it made him want to vomit.
"Young Master, what is wrong?" Yu Niangzi asked softly.
"You... what exactly..."
Ye Chen's voice trembled. His gaze locked tightly onto the ever-widening crack, where thick, foul-smelling mud clung, along with faint scraps of sewer refuse.
"Urgh..."
Ye Chen immediately began dry-heaving in disgust, then quickly picked up his clothes and put them on.
At this moment,
Yu Niangzi remained on the bed with a blank expression, having no idea what was happening or why Ye Chen had suddenly acted as though he had seen a ghost. Instinctively, she tried to rise, asking in confusion, "Young Master, what exactly is wrong with you..."
However, before she could finish,
she suddenly saw a bluish-black lump bulge from her abdomen beneath her palm. That mass of sludge slowly writhed beneath semi-transparent skin, as though something alive were burrowing through her skin and flesh. Trembling, she raised her head, and her line of sight crashed into an even more horrifying sight—
The high curve of her left breast suddenly split open in a bloody gash. It was not the fresh red of torn skin and flesh; instead, roiling black sludge was revealed within. The black mud pulsed against the skin, contracting again and again like a heart. Several dark red earthworms poked their heads from the opening, their slick bodies still draped with strands of mucus.
"Aah—!"
Her scream tore through the bed curtains. Yu Niangzi scrambled backward in terror, and when her back struck the bedpost, all the skin over her shoulders and neck suddenly burst open with a "pop" like punctured oil paper!
Black sludge mixed with white maggot-like worms gushed out, flowing down her collarbones and onto the pale skin of her lower body.
She clawed frantically at herself, but ripped out great handfuls of hair covered in black mud. The hair strands slipping through her fingers curled one by one, while her facial features also became twisted and bizarre.
"Ah... ah... ghosts! There are ghosts..."
She screamed incoherently and crawled toward the door with hands and feet together. When her knees struck the ground, the skin over her entire thigh split open in a spiderweb pattern.
Black mud fell from her body in a steady rustle, exposing tangled black sinews beneath. Several thumb-thick centipedes darted out from behind her knees, leaving wet, sticky trails across the floor.
"Save me, Young Master, save me..."
She staggered as she Pounced toward Ye Chen. With every step, the skin on her body fell away in large patches like peeling wall paint. First, the skin on her cheeks split open, and her facial features vanished.
Ye Chen's face was filled with terror as well. Though he had traveled the martial world for years, he had never seen anything so sinister. Frightened out of his wits, he hurriedly dodged aside.
And after Yu Niangzi took two steps, the final layer of skin slid from her shoulders. Her entire body became like a shadow puppet stripped of blood and flesh, leaving only black mud that continuously fell into a heap.
Within the mud, that skeleton still retained its forward-moving posture before collapsing into the black sludge.
Before you continue