"This place really is dangerous!"
He pressed a hand against the Nine-Death Substitute Puppet hidden in his arms, thinking that he still had this trump card up his sleeve. Even if the worst happened, he could use the Immortal Puppet Sect's secret technique to fake his death with the puppet and escape in the confusion.
"With this Nine-Death Substitute Puppet, this place isn't impossible to brave!"
The sedan stopped. He lifted the curtain and looked outside. Before him lay a haphazard, dilapidated village of earthen houses.
Through the entrance to the street on the east side, he could see a stretch of earthen walls, gray tiles, and houses. Yet this gloomy village was utterly lifeless, without a glimmer of light or sign of life.
The end of the long street was also pitch-black, impossible to make out clearly. He looked around. Outside the village were quiet clumps of grass and mountain forests, steeped in a darkness that chilled the soul. Though quite a few houses seemed to line either side, they all had an illusory quality, as if they weren't real.
He Ping's heart gave a slight jolt.
He knew this village was no ordinary place. Staying in such an environment for too long would create an illusion: the darkness of night seemed to be closing in, layer by layer, until it surrounded everything.
The night wind made the weeds thrash about. The noise came from the sedan procession passing through and brushing against them.
At the head of the procession, a paper puppet carried a paper lantern, but its light couldn't reach more than a few yards.
For some reason, the air in the village was unusually cold. It also seemed veiled in a soft, gauzy layer that even the light of a flame couldn't easily penetrate.
After arriving here, He Ping had sensed something amiss. He thought it over briefly, then murmured the reason to himself.
"...It's the sounds."
He couldn't hear any insects chirping.
Though he could hear the wind and the clatter of doors and windows, he still couldn't hear any insects or the sounds of animals in the mountain forests...
Sensing something wrong, He Ping regulated his breathing and pressed a finger to the spot between his brows. A moment later, a glimmer of light shone from his Niwan Palace, and his brow suddenly split open, illuminating the scene outside.
In an instant, his awareness and senses expanded rapidly, and every detail around him became crystal clear. This was the Heavenly Peering Technique from the Formless Secret Treasury: using the soul to illuminate the void, reaching in every direction and missing nothing.
"Good grief!"
He Ping stiffened.
This desolate, dilapidated village was brimming with deathly, sinister, and ghostly energy... Beyond the long street lit by the lantern's green flame, behind the earthen walls, inside the broken huts, ghostly creatures with indistinct forms lay hidden...
—It was no deserted village at all. This was clearly a ghost domain!!!
"Come to think of it, I seem to have heard a rumor that there's a Ghost Stockade in North Prefecture, one that can move of its own accord. Over the past hundred years, it's devoured countless lives. Could this... be the place they were talking about?"
He Ping looked thoughtful.
In the past, rumors of the Wandering Soul Ghost Village had occasionally circulated in North Prefecture. He had tried to investigate, but found nothing. He hadn't expected to run into it today.
"No wonder the signs from the tracking art were so strange. It turns out this Ghost Stockade is the reason."
He had a rough idea now.
"Then where are the young servant in blue and the person who abducted him?"
He actually had a fairly good idea. Through the raised curtain, his naked eyes were fixed on the end of the long street.
The Ghost Stockade was filled with shifting illusions. Ordinary people who came here would fall into confusion. The long street seemed to run in a straight line, but once someone wandered into it, they could easily lose their way and stumble into danger.
Just now, he had used the Heavenly Peering Technique to search for traces of their aura and track their whereabouts. But now he had found nothing, as if they weren't in the village at all.
"Let's try again..."
He Ping activated the technique once more. His soul palace immediately shone with light, illuminating the surroundings in every direction, while his vital energy surged into it as well.
As he recited an incantation, his eyes seemed both open and closed, yet a beam of white light shot from between his brows.
Hum...
His soul palace trembled, and his perception greatly improved. But as he used the spell, his face gradually paled, and the color drained from his lips.
"The tracking art is very unlikely to be wrong. In that case, they should be in that direction, right?"
This time, he had locked onto a house at the very end of the Ghost Stockade's long street.
"An ancestral hall... It looks like an ancestral hall. It must be the largest building in the entire village!"
He secretly peered with the Heavenly Peering Technique. The mental power of his soul whipped up a gust of wind, and his awareness expanded several times over in an instant.
He Ping immediately felt that the ancient ancestral hall was like a giant beast crouching in the deepest part of the village, emanating an eerie, unfathomable aura.
"Could they be hiding in there...? That's a bit of a problem."
He began to suspect that the people he was after were hidden inside the house, their auras all tangled together so that he couldn't sense them.
Suddenly, a shrill, piercing sound echoed in his ears.
He Ping furrowed his brows. He could tell it was the sound of a musical instrument. Someone seemed to be playing a hujia reed pipe. Its wailing rang out like a ghost's howl, or a wolf's cry.
Once the sound reached his ears, it also seemed like the twang of an enormous, tightly drawn bowstring. But no ordinary bowstring could ever make such a loud, shrill noise—so sharp that it was almost painful to hear.
"Is that a hujia reed pipe? Could it be the Hu Ma Gang's Ghost Wolf Reed Pipe?"
He Ping knew that the Hu Ma Gang used it to send signals. Some of their members must have wandered into this place and were playing the pipe to call for help.
"Foolish."
He shook his head.
Those people hadn't even considered what kind of place this was... In the outside world, using the Ghost Wolf Reed Pipe to call for help and send a message would be a fine idea. But this ghost domain was occupied by countless ghosts, and no one knew how many sinister creatures lurked here.
"Help... Somebody help me!"
In the darkness, someone shouted as he stumbled and crawled out of the village. He Ping took one look and could tell that the man was a Hu Ma Gang swordsman.
The swordsman's face was full of terror. He scrambled to his feet, saw the sedan stopped in front of him, and cried out for help.
"Please, save me! There are ghosts here... so many ghosts!"
As soon as he finished speaking, the paper sedan's curtain lifted slightly. With a sharp pop, the air seemed to compress to its limit. Dozens of fine, nearly invisible gray lines shot through the air, sweeping across the swordsman's body as they passed.
Suddenly, red lines appeared all over the man. With several wet splatters, blood sprayed everywhere. One moment he had been fine; the next, the faint red lines gave way, and the swordsman's body collapsed into scattered bones and flesh. His head, torso, arms, and chunks of his abdomen fell to the ground like dice.
He was torn to pieces just like that, crumpling helplessly into a pool of blood.
"You don't know when to quit."
He Ping withdrew his hand, his gaze icy.
In the cold, silent night, a strange scene unfolded...
"...What a ruthless man!"
A voice rang out.
The head that had rolled onto the ground wasn't dead yet. The swordsman's eyes were wide open, his face smeared with blood, and his teeth seemed to grind furiously, making a chik-chik sound.
Blood dripped from the half-severed neck. The head's brows and beard stood on end, its eyes glaring furiously as it slowly floated up from the ground.
His face was twisted into a terrifying grimace. He stared fixedly toward the sedan, his eyes full of venom.