The Second Red-Haired Monster

In the tavern's bookroom, Gu Baishui still hadn't opened his eyes. Instead, his brows were knitted in thought.

"Li Shiyi was the Decaying Great Emperor? The Old Saints in Luoyang City had all come for Li Shiyi's tomb?"

"If that really is the case, then who is the 'she' Ji Clan Head mentioned, the one who will die in Luoyang City?"

"Is it Li Xu, who already died in the story? Or is it someone else?"

His thoughts drifted away, and Gu Baishui thought again of the Little Beggar, who had been spouting nonsense.

She said she'd come to Luoyang City to find her family. Had she gone to the abandoned Ye Clan residence already?

And what would happen then?

The Green-Robed Youth kept his eyes tightly shut. On his knees, the plain Bronze Mirror silently began to seep tiny flecks of black-green patina from within.

Gu Baishui knew nothing of it. His mind was immersed in the Bronze Mirror, passing through the night rain and drifting on toward a corner in western Luoyang City.

A wisp of Divine Sense, imperceptible to anyone, rode the torrential rain on the streets and came to a halt at the most remote corner of Luoyang City, before the gate of a long-abandoned Old Courtyard.

This had once been the Ye Clan residence. Now, it was a deep, old estate, its bricks broken and tiles shattered.

The tall, weathered walls were covered in green ivy. The tenacious vines wound around each other, weathering the storm together.

The Stone Lions by the gate had long since been covered in dead branches and leaves. It looked as though no one had come here in a long time.

The ethereal Divine Sense passed through the heavy gate and entered the old courtyard, left behind in the river of time.

Dead branches and leaves whirled everywhere. Rain beat upon the banana leaves, and the old trees drooped low. In the middle of the courtyard lay a dry pond, its bottom washed by the torrential rain pouring from the sky that night.

Gu Baishui searched the first large courtyard for a while, but found no one-not even the Little Beggar who had said she'd come to find her family.

So he continued onward, searching deeper into the Old Courtyard.

Rain poured down in torrents. On the stone path through the Ye Clan Old Courtyard, a masked figure clad in black, with a hood over his head, moved stealthily through the shadows.

Lu Ziyou lowered his gaze, staring intently at the dark yellow Compass in his hand as he tried to find anything unusual in the courtyard.

"Mingque, do you think that Li Shiyi really was my predecessor?"

Lu Ziyou kept his eyes forward, yet suddenly spoke aloud.

The downpour washed over the entire courtyard. Dead branches swayed, and the shadows of the trees looked sinister.

From an ordinary perspective, the empty courtyard was utterly silent. There was clearly no one around but him, alone. But for some reason, the youth kept talking to himself in a nervous, almost paranoid way.

"Honestly, I'm not entirely sure either. After all, I've never actually met that predecessor. Ji Clan Head sent me to the Li Residence to look for clues, but something just doesn't feel right."

"According to legend, Li Shiyi had peerless talent. On the path of cultivation, he swept all before him, reaching the Quasi-Emperor Realm after only a few hundred years of cultivation. After that, history had no further record of him."

Lu Ziyou paused there, then gave a strange laugh. "But the Li Shiyi in this story is only the version passed around on the continent."

"The real Li Shiyi I learned about from Ji Clan Head was a man worthy of admiration, but also... terrifying."

The silent courtyard was quiet for a moment. The sounds of wind and rain briefly faltered, then a youth's muttering tore the still night apart.

"Slaying his father and killing his younger sister, causing his own birth mother to die of illness-when I first heard of such a cold-blooded, cruel person, it made my hair stand on end."

"But it makes sense. Only a peerless fiend, unknown to most, could live up to the title of Decaying Great Emperor."

"Tsk, tsk. A role model for us all~"

A muffled sound could be faintly heard amid the torrential night rain, but nothing emerged in the courtyard.

Lu Ziyou listened for a moment, then nodded with a smile. "You're not wrong, Mingque. For one general to achieve success, ten thousand bones must wither. And a predecessor who became an Emperor would naturally have left behind a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood."

"And this is the first time you and I have entered a Great Emperor's tomb. Just thinking about it makes me a little excited and nervous. I wonder what Senior Li Shiyi left for me. Did he leave any Dao Proving fortuitous opportunities, like an Extreme Dao Emperor Weapon?"

The masked youth and an invisible creature whispered together in the courtyard. They roamed the desolate Old Courtyard without restraint, trying to find traces of the life Li Shiyi had once lived here.

The vast estate seemed deserted. There was no Little Beggar, nor any old servant guarding the place.

At first, Lu Ziyou had been a little wary and timid, wondering whether some terrifying, unknown thing lurked in the Old Residence.

But after exploring for a while, he found that the Old Residence really was just an ordinary merchant family's home. There was no trace of cultivators having lived there.

So the youth, who was skilled at raiding tombs, began to relax and let his guard down.

He even picked up a conspicuous orange-yellow lantern and started casually looking around the Old Courtyard.

"Actually, the old Ye Residence has a bit of history."

Lu Ziyou spoke to the empty space beside him. "The last Ye Clan Head was an Old Scholar who had married into the family. He was also the tutor to Li Shiyi and Li Xu when they were young."

"The Ye Clan and the Li Residence had been close for two generations, and the Ye Clan Head's only daughter was Li Shiyi's childhood sweetheart, known to everyone in Luoyang City. But later, for some reason, the Ye Clan Young Miss rejected the Li Residence's marriage proposal. Li Shiyi deliberately retaliated, making the entire Ye Residence lose face and suffer disgrace throughout Luoyang City."

"The Ye Clan Young Miss was stubborn too. To the very end, she never bowed her head to Li Shiyi. She left Luoyang with the Ye Clan Head, and no one ever heard from them again."

Lu Ziyou followed the covered corridor to the Ancestral Hall, where strips of plain white cloth hung. He didn't hurry to push the door open, but stood outside for a while.

"So it's not just me. Even Ji Clan Head can't figure out what happened in Luoyang City back then."

"Why did that once-lazy, aimless, carefree youth change so drastically in the span of a single spring? Why did Li Xu die outside Luoyang City? And what illness did Li Shiyi come down with?"

The area in front of the Ancestral Hall fell silent for a while. Lu Ziyou listened, then nodded toward the empty shadows.

"That's right. Ji Clan Head thinks I'm a talent when it comes to raiding tombs, so he wants to test the waters with me first. But he doesn't know you're here. That's my greatest trump card."

The masked youth talked to himself in front of the empty doorpost. The scene was indeed so eerie it made one's blood run cold.

But not far behind Lu Ziyou, a colorless, soundless wisp of Divine Sense had quietly followed him the whole way, silently watching the youth who was still muttering to himself.

Its attention wasn't even on the strange youth. Instead, its gaze was fixed on the empty space Lu Ziyou faced.

There seemed to be nothing there, but in fact, there was a monster it knew well.

Another, entirely different, fanged... Red-Haired Monster.