Huang San staggered through the door, while the woman in pink curtsied outside before turning and leaving.
Strangely, her movements were somewhat stiff as she turned. Under the noonday sun, her shadow stretched impossibly long—so long that... it no longer looked human.
But Huang San's mind was filled with nothing but soft fragrance and warm jade. How could he spare any attention for such details?
He pushed open the main room's door, and a warm fragrance washed over him.
The furnishings inside were elegant. A woman sat beside a round rosewood table with her back to him, dressed in green, her black hair cascading like a waterfall.
"Zhi Lan?" Huang San called.
The woman slowly turned around.
She was not Zhi Lan.
Yet Huang San instantly forgot about that, because the woman before him was more than ten times more beautiful than Zhi Lan!
Her brows were like distant mountains brushed with dark pigment, her eyes like rippling autumn waters. Her skin was so pale it was nearly transparent, gleaming like jade beneath the candlelight.
Her lips in particular—a touch of crimson, slightly upturned—were enough to steal one's soul and shatter one's spirit.
"Young Master, have you entered the wrong room?"
Her voice was soft and delicate, tinged with a little timidity that made her even more pitiable and lovable.
"Not wrong, not wrong!" Huang San chuckled as he moved closer.
"To think Drunken Spring Breeze has such a peerless beauty as you, yet I, Huang San, have never seen you before."
"So, Miss, are you newly arrived? What is your name?"
"This servant's surname is Pi, with Hua as my given name."
The woman lowered her eyes, her lashes trembling lightly. "I have indeed only been here a short while and have not yet been put on display."
Pi Hua? What a strange name.
But Huang San cared little for that. He plopped down beside her and reached out to take her soft hand.
"Miss Pi Hua, what a fine name!"
"I am the Huang Family's Third Young Master. In Black Stone City, when the Huang Family says one, no one dares say two."
"If you follow me, I guarantee you silks and fine food. Wouldn't that be a hundred times better than being some top courtesan?"
As Huang San spoke, his other hand restlessly slipped around her waist.
The instant his fingers touched her clothes, a chill shot from his fingertips straight to his skull!
It was no ordinary coolness, but a bone-piercing chill, like touching iron in the depths of winter.
Huang San shuddered, sobering up by more than half.
But when he raised his eyes and saw Pi Hua's face that could topple cities, his lower brain instantly suppressed his rational mind.
With beauty right before him, who cared whether she was cold or not!
"Miss, would you be willing to spend a lovely night with me?" Huang San panted, bringing his face close to hers.
Pi Hua smiled shyly. "Young Master, this... this is still broad daylight."
"What difference is there between day and night?"
Huang San could no longer restrain himself. He suddenly kissed those crimson lips.
They were icy and soft, carrying a strange fragrance.
But whether Huang San had used too much force or for some other reason, Pi Hua's lips actually split open.
No, it was not her lips that had split.
It was her facial skin.
Like a layer of soaked rice paper being torn apart, starting from the corner of her mouth,
a crack spread upward, exposing the dark red, blackened... thing beneath.
Pi Hua gave a soft cry and pushed Huang San away, chiding him coquettishly.
"Young Master Huang, why are you so rough? You even kissed through the skin I just painted."
As she spoke, she raised a hand, caught the edge of the crack on her cheek, and gave it a gentle tug.
Her entire face peeled away.
Under the candlelight, Huang San saw a face beyond description.
There was no skin, only dark-red muscles and blood vessels twisted together.
Her eyeballs bulged bare from their sockets, her nose was two black holes, and her teeth gleamed white as she grinned at him, still smiling.
"Ah! A ghost!!"
Huang San wanted to scream, only to discover that he could not make a sound.
It was as if an invisible hand had clamped around his throat. Even breathing became difficult.
A warmth spread through his crotch as he lost control of his bladder.
The candle flame went out with a puff.
In the darkness, that blood-soaked, mangled face drew close to Huang San.
A cold, rotten stench breathed over his face.
"Young Master kissed through the skin I just painted, so you must compensate me~"
"How about... using your flesh and blood, along with your three souls and seven spirits, as compensation?"
"Not saying anything? Then I'll take that as agreement."
Huang San shook his head desperately, tears and snot smeared all over his face as he roared inwardly.
I didn't agree! I didn't agree!
Let me go!
But his body could not move. He could not even lift a finger.
In the darkness, an icy hand stroked the top of his head.
"The formation should be activated."
The instant the Painted Skin Ghost's hand pressed onto Huang San's head, a dark-red pattern lit up deep beneath Drunken Spring Breeze.
The pattern spread rapidly like a spiderweb, passing through the foundations and crawling up the walls through cracks between the bricks, over the corridor pillars, every window, and every door.
The entire Drunken Spring Breeze trembled faintly, yet the guests inside, lost in their pleasures, noticed nothing and remained drunk in their tender paradise.
Until the women in their arms raised their heads one after another, revealing eerie smiles.
Then these enchanting, delicate women collapsed limply as though their bones had been pulled away.
Their skin rapidly withered and shrank, finally turning into thin sheets of human skin painted with facial features, fluttering lightly to the floor.
Beneath the skins were clumps of writhing, dark-red flesh.
Terrified screams finally erupted, only to stop abruptly moments later.
Gray mist seeped from every crack in Drunken Spring Breeze, flowing into the streets like a living thing and spreading along the stone-paved roads.
Wherever the mist passed, pedestrians and vendors alike froze in place.
Their gazes quickly grew vacant. Then, in perfect unison, they turned around and began walking.
Toward the Star Gazing Platform in the western district, which was nearing completion, they walked silently.
The mist spread faster and farther.
Jewelry shops, taverns, carriage houses... every corner of Black Stone City, anywhere living creatures could be found, was swallowed by this strange gray fog.
Commoners, livestock, even birds beneath the eaves and rats in their burrows, all seemed to be pulled by invisible strings as they staggered onto the streets in a daze.
Twenty thousand townspeople and tens of thousands of animals converged from every direction into a vast, silent torrent, flooding toward the western district.
The scene at the western construction site was even more horrifying.
The several thousand workers who had originally labored there, strong young men forcibly conscripted from Qi Family Village and other villages,
had long since stopped moving. Like sacrifices arranged in advance, they stood neatly around the Star Gazing Platform's foundation.
Their eyes were hollow and their postures identical, like a group of puppets on strings.
Inside the City Lord's Mansion, Tang Hao stood before the study window, watching the gray mist spreading in the distance with no expression on his face.
Behind him stood five Body Tempering Realm martial artists and two mid-stage Qi Induction Realm Qi Refiner guards, their eyes equally vacant.
"The time has come," Tang Hao said softly, turning to walk outside.
The guards followed close behind.
The interior of the Star Gazing Platform was not solid stone.
Entering through a hidden entrance somewhere in its foundation led to a broad stairway descending thirty zhang underground.
At the end of the stairs stood an enormous circular cavern.
At the center of the cavern was a nine-tiered altar carved from black stone, its surface covered in intricate, twisted characters.
Dark-red liquid flowed through the grooves of those characters, giving off a thick stench of blood.
At the altar's peak floated a fist-sized black crystal, slowly rotating.
With every revolution, it drew strands of gray-white currents from the void.
Those were the souls of living beings.
Two people stood beside the altar.
On the left was a woman in green: Pi Hua, or rather, the Painted Skin Ghost's true body.
She had now returned to her true appearance and was still beautiful, but an eerie ghostly aura seeped from her features.
On the right stood a tall, gaunt man in red robes. His face was withered, his eye sockets deeply sunken, and his pupils an uncanny grayish white.
The front of his robe hung open, revealing a ferocious black mark on his chest shaped like a vertical eye.
The red-robed man said hoarsely, "Painted Skin, you have done well this time."
"Sacrificing all twenty thousand living beings of Black Stone City, using flesh, blood, and souls as the catalyst to lay the Nine Nether Return to Ruins Grand Formation."
"Once we find a fragment of the Mask of Immortality, the Venerable One will surely reward you handsomely."