The Guardian Ghost

"Huh?" Everyone stared at the two of them, unsure what was happening.

The two before them had identical gazes, cold and brimming with murderous intent. Though they differed in height, their tone, expressions, and even movements were exactly the same. An inexplicably eerie atmosphere began to spread.

Dong Qianqiu watched the unbelievable scene on the screen, her mind full of question marks.

"Du Yu... what... are you doing?!" Just as Dong Qianqiu expected, Du Yu still gave no response.

Bai Qi froze for a moment, but quickly recovered and told his men, "These cultivators must have succumbed to cultivation madness. Kill them at once."

The moment he finished speaking, Du Yu flashed in front of Bai Qi, exactly as Zhongli Chun had done earlier.

Bai Qi had been observing him for quite some time and never imagined this man possessed such skill. His reaction came half a beat too late. Before he could raise his weapon to block, Du Yu drove a fist into his nose and sent him flying. A sharp crack rang out; Bai Qi's nose had likely been broken.

The soldiers snapped out of their stupor and thrust their weapons at Du Yu. He immediately unleashed the Ghostly Movement Technique, dodging attacks from every treacherous angle, then seized a spear and stabbed over a dozen men to death in an instant.

The soldiers kept pursuing Du Yu, but he toyed with them unhurriedly, as though facing a crowd of children. Though surrounded by thousands, he wielded a single spear, piercing a throat with each thrust before vanishing again, passing through without a single leaf clinging to him.

In moments, more than half the Qin Army had fallen.

"What on earth..." Dong Qianqiu stared at the screen in disbelief, then came to her senses and told the staff, "Stop the soul-extraction equipment! Get the technical department here immediately!"

Du Yu leaped lightly to Zhongli Chun's side. He looked at her with a complicated gaze, then asked coldly, "Can you still move?"

Zhongli Chun nodded. For some reason, she sensed a familiar presence coming from Du Yu.

"Good. Then let the two of us fight our way out together." Du Yu deliberately emphasized "the two of us," though his intention was unclear.

Du Yu helped Zhongli Chun up. Each held a spear, sending a chill through the Qin soldiers. With a rush of wind, both vanished from where they stood.

They were like two sides of a mirror, each making exactly the same movements as the other.

Screams suddenly rose one after another throughout the Qin Army. The soldiers fell into chaos, wanting to fight back but unable to see where their enemies were. All they knew was that their comrades were falling around them, one by one.

When the technical department arrived, Dong Qianqiu hurriedly asked them to analyze the situation-

Based on Dong Qianqiu's description, the technical department found themselves facing a difficult problem. What did she mean, a sinister gust had blown past and Du Yu had become an entirely different person?

The technical staff spent ages analyzing the scene and consulting every kind of reference, but could not determine what had caused this. Nothing like it had ever occurred in the history of the Legend Management Bureau.

"It feels... as though two Zhongli Chuns have appeared at the same time..." One of the technical staff hit the nail on the head.

"Two... Zhongli Chuns?" Dong Qianqiu seemed to suddenly realize something. She immediately dropped her work and ran out of the hall, rushing straight toward her office. There was only one person who could hold the answer now.

"Zhongli Chun... what have you done..." Dong Qianqiu said through gritted teeth.

Bai Qi lay on the ground, watching his elite troops being slaughtered to the last man. His face drained of color. The Qi army actually had two warriors this powerful?

On a battlefield where victory depended on military strategy and cunning, these two had annihilated an entire force through their overwhelming strength alone?

If that was the case, what was the point of waging war? Of recruiting soldiers? Of fighting to rule the world?

The military strategy he had studied since childhood and the experience he had accumulated along the way all seemed like a joke.

"Y-you... who exactly are you?" Bai Qi stammered as he looked at them. This might have been the closest he had come to death since he first went to war.

"I am Zhong Wuyan, Queen of Qi," Zhongli Chun said quietly.

"And you?! Who are you?!" Bai Qi pointed at Du Yu with trembling hands. "Why have I never heard of someone as powerful as you?!"

"Me?" Du Yu gave a cold laugh and said:

"I am merely... a malevolent ghost guarding the eight directions."

Dong Qianqiu slumped in her office, tears streaming down her face.

There was no Zhongli Chun here anymore.

On the floor lay only Du Yu's coat, which had kept Zhongli Chun company all these days, and an unrolled Eight Directions Ghost Record.

At the Death Gate position on the Eight Directions Ghost Record was a blood-drenched signature, as though someone had bitten open a finger and signed their name there not long ago. From that moment on, the signer would protect the owner of the Eight Directions Ghost Record and guard the Death Gate, forever barred from reincarnation until their soul scattered into oblivion.

"Zhongli Chun..."

Dong Qianqiu slowly gathered the Eight Directions Ghost Record into her arms, sobbing too hard to speak.

"Hadn't you already crossed that river... weren't you going to visit so many places with Du Yu..."

All that remained in the room was a distraught Dong Qianqiu and that cold name on the Eight Directions Ghost Record.

A thousand years earlier.

The seventh of the Eighteen Levels of Hell, the Hell of the Mountain of Blades.

"Sister Dong, you have to help me this time." Horse-Face looked at Dong Qianqiu with a face full of worry. "Otherwise, I really won't know what to do!"

"Fourth Lord, we've only known each other for half a day. Please don't address me so intimately," Dong Qianqiu said expressionlessly. "It makes me feel you're taking liberties with me."

"Oh, Sister Dong! As long as you help me deal with this prisoner, I'll call you whatever you want from now on."

Dong Qianqiu looked up. The sight before her was too ghastly to bear.

Amid towering mountains covered in blades, a tall woman was bound naked to a stone pillar. Knives pierced her entire body. The immense pain seemed to have numbed her, leaving her face utterly expressionless.

The woman raised her head and gave Dong Qianqiu a cold glance, then looked at Horse-Face. "What torture is it today? Bring it on."

"Sister Dong, look! This woman's resentment runs far too deep. No matter how we punish her, we can't scatter her soul. Apparently, she practiced some technique to strengthen her soul while she was alive... but the strange thing is, her soul is incredibly pure, nothing like the usual jumble of Three Hun and Seven Po."

Horse-Face looked anxious. He stole a glance at Dong Qianqiu and realized she did not seem to understand what he was getting at, so he could only speak plainly. "So, Sister Dong, please have your Legend Management Bureau go back into the past and help me deal with her. At least find out how she became like this, so I can work out a solution..."

"A hundred years from now, at the earliest," Dong Qianqiu said, adjusting her glasses. "Zhan Qisheng's schedule is completely booked."

"A hundred years?!" Horse-Face was stumped. "We have to keep her locked up here for another hundred years? We'll work ourselves to death every day!"

"Fourth Lord, what crime did this woman commit?"

"Th-this woman is called Zhongli Chun..." Horse-Face said helplessly. "About a thousand years ago, when she was crossing the Bridge of Helplessness, she refused to drink Meng Po Soup and smashed Meng Po's stall in front of everyone. It was an unprecedented incident, and the Kings of Hell were all furious. Now she's run into my elder brother Ox-Head in the street. He bumped into her while walking, and the two started fighting. My brother nearly detonated his Nascent Soul!"

"Detonated his Nascent Soul?" Dong Qianqiu had never imagined that Ox-Head, who looked so immensely strong, could be driven to that point by a lone wandering ghost.

"Sister Dong, why do you think this woman refuses to drink Meng Po Soup?"

"That means she has something she doesn't want to forget..." Dong Qianqiu adjusted her glasses. "Since she's suffered enough, why don't... we let her go?"

"Let her go...?" It was not as though Horse-Face had never considered it; he simply feared she would cause trouble again once released. "But what if she causes another disturbance after we let her out?"

"If she causes another disturbance, arrest her again." Seeing Zhongli Chun covered in wounds, Dong Qianqiu could not bear it. "Fourth Lord, she has endured the Hell of the Mountain of Blades. You no longer have any reason to keep torturing her."

"That may be true, but arresting her is a huge ordeal every time. This time, we lost six Underworld Enforcers, and my brother was beaten so badly he had to enter seclusion to recover. Only then did we finally subdue her."

"To be fair, what you should do now is hurry and improve your own cultivation, then step up the training of stronger Underworld Enforcers. You can't just arrest this woman and never let her go again. If the higher-ups find out, that will cause problems too, won't it?"

Horse-Face struggled with the decision. "Sister Dong, you do have a point. Ah, since we've already subjected her to the punishment of soul annihilation and her soul still hasn't scattered, we can't be blamed for that."

Dong Qianqiu slowly approached the woman. "Hello. I'm Dong Qianqiu, a newly appointed assistant at the Legend Management Bureau. I'm here to help you escape this sea of suffering. May I ask... what is your obsession?"

"Obsession?" The tall woman glanced at Dong Qianqiu and replied coldly, "I have no such thing."

"So you don't yet realize you've become a malevolent ghost..." Dong Qianqiu adjusted her glasses. "Then let me ask another way. You've wandered the Underworld for so long. Why do you still refuse to reincarnate?"

The tall woman slowly raised her head, blood running down her cheeks. She spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the ground and said slowly:

"I must cross a river spanning two thousand years to find someone."