The Red-Haired Monsters Behind the Transmigrators

"This is the Ye Clan's old Ancestral Hall. The people worshipped inside should all be deceased members of the Ye Clan."

With a soft creak, Lu Ziyou pushed open the wooden door of the Ancestral Hall and stepped inside.

The orange lanterns lit up the dim hall. Wind and rain swept past the doorway, sending dust swirling through the air.

One by one, yellow-black wooden tablets lay scattered in the dust in the corners of the hall. There were barely any spirit tablets left on the offering table.

"According to the customs of the Tang Kingdom, no matter where people died in life, after death they had to return to their roots. Even during the historical era of war among the feudal lords, the Tang Kingdom would do everything it could to bring back soldiers who had died far from home once the war was over."

"Li Shiyi was a citizen of the Tang Kingdom, and even a great-grandson of the imperial family. That's why those Old Saints guessed that before Li Shiyi died, he would return to Luoyang City and build a tomb of his own."

Lu Ziyou searched the Ancestral Hall at an unhurried pace, continuing to speak softly to the Red-Haired Monster behind him.

"But I don't think Senior Li Shiyi necessarily buried himself in Luoyang City. The idea of returning to one's roots doesn't really apply to Li Shiyi, either."

"Li Shiyi was an outsider to begin with. Where would he have roots to return to? It's just like me. If I die one day, Mingque, you can scatter my ashes beyond the stars. Maybe after countless years, I'll really be able to go home for a visit."

Night rain blew into the Ancestral Hall. The masked youth, bent over as he searched, suddenly paused, as though he had just thought of something. With a strange look on his face, he turned to the silent Red-Haired Monster behind him.

"Mingque."

"Tell me, if Senior Li Shiyi was like me... if we were both Transmigrators, could he have had a... kindred spirit like you by his side, too?"

The Red-Haired Monster stopped. Its wooden, ferocious face showed no expression, but it slowly and heavily nodded.

It seemed to part its lips. Its ivory fangs shifted at the corners of its mouth.

Lu Ziyou's pupils contracted sharply. His expression stiffened as he tugged at the corners of his mouth. "N-no way, right?"

"You mean that if Li Shiyi really was a Transmigrator, his kindred spirit might still be alive?"

Lu Ziyou found it hard to believe. Frowning, he said, "But Ji Clan Head did say that Li Shiyi often muttered to himself. At first, I thought it was a cheat code the Heavenly Dao had assigned to the senior Transmigrator. But now it looks like he had a relative like you hiding behind him?"

The Red-Haired Monster named Mingque gave no response. Only the masked youth, the tomb-raider, muttered to himself.

"Could it be that one Transmigrator and one Red-Haired Monster are standard issue in this world? Mingque, where exactly do your kind come from? Are you creatures spawned by the Heavenly Dao, or another newly developed system?"

"Strange, strange. I can't make sense of it. I just can't."

Mingque didn't answer Lu Ziyou's question. He stopped dwelling on it, turned around, and searched through the dusty tablets.

"According to what I know about the usual rules for Transmigrators, there's generally only one Transmigrator in the same period of any given century."

"Like Senior Li Shiyi many years ago and me now. We were born as protagonists, shoved into this world, and in the future we'll follow the established path and Prove the Dao to become Emperors."

"But there's something I can't figure out. Why were Senior Li Shiyi and his younger sister both Transmigrators, and why did they end up killing each other?"

Lu Ziyou muttered on and on to himself. "Does that count as kin slaying kin? I suppose it does, whether you look at it biologically or as souls from the same place."

"As far as I know, there were two seniors before me. One was the Heavenly Emperor Ye, and the other was the Decaying Great Emperor, Li Shiyi."

"Don't be fooled by the fact that I'm only in the Immortal Platform Realm now. I've already thought about what title I should take as an Emperor one day. What do you think of Ming Emperor? Or Martial Emperor?"

"But I've dug so many tombs. Surely I won't end up with the title Tomb Emperor, will I? It sounds far too inauspicious..."

No one answered Lu Ziyou's rambling. But just then, a cool night breeze suddenly blew into the dilapidated Ancestral Hall.

The breeze kicked up dust, revealing a black spirit tablet that had fallen behind the altar table.

Lu Ziyou glanced at it casually, then froze without meaning to. He reached through the gap in the table and fished out the tablet.

"Why is there someone surnamed Li in the Ye Clan's Ancestral Hall?"

Lu Ziyou frowned in confusion and carefully turned the tablet over in his hands a few times. "Memorial Tablet for Young Friend Li Nianyu?"

"Whose friend was this Li Nianyu...?"

A wisp of Divine Sense hiding in the corner of the Ancestral Hall shook violently, as if struck by lightning, and showed signs of disintegrating.

In a certain tavern, the Green-Robed Youth's face suddenly turned deathly pale as he sat with his eyes closed. His face had lost all color, and blood began to seep from the seven orifices around his eyes and ears.

The Bronze Mirror in his hand was now covered in greenish-blue patina. Countless flecks clung to its surface and squirmed quietly like living, granular monsters.

At that very moment, a familiar, clear girl's voice suddenly came from outside the desolate old Ancestral Hall.

"Who are you?"

The wisp of Divine Sense hiding in the corner of the Ancestral Hall, on the verge of disintegrating, instinctively tried to turn its point of view toward the person entering the courtyard behind it.

But a violent, tearing pain suddenly erupted in the mind of a certain Green-Robed Youth, as if someone were hacking wildly at his brain with an axe.

The intense pain drowned out everything else. Just before his consciousness shattered, Gu Baishui could only vaguely glimpse two figures standing in the rain at the entrance to the Ancestral Hall.

The one standing in front was a girl, frail in build, with clear and serene eyes. Gu Baishui couldn't see her very well, but he could just make out the outline of the Little Beggar.

But the shadow the Little Beggar cast on the ground was completely swallowed by a much larger, sturdier figure behind her.

Red hair fluttered, muscles bulged, and the pupils held nothing but the dead gray of utter silence.

Gu Baishui recognized it. The furry shadow behind the Little Beggar was the very Red-Haired Monster that had escaped from the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone and followed him all the way to Luoyang City.

It was also a Red-Haired Monster far older and more terrifying than Lu Ziyou's Mingque...

An old Red-Haired Monster.

Or perhaps it was the very Red-Haired Monster that had followed Li Shiyi so long ago.

"Rumble~"

A tremendous peal of thunder sounded outside the window. A bright flash of lightning illuminated the dim study.

The Green-Robed Youth slowly opened his eyes, bloodshot veins filling the bottoms of his pupils. In the space of just a few incense sticks, Gu Baishui had unknowingly been drained of all his strength by the Bronze Mirror in his hand.

He felt a crawling, granular sensation against his palm. Gu Baishui silently lowered his head and looked at the Bronze Mirror on his knees, now covered in patina. Then he gave a bitter smile, feeling as though he had lost something.

"Is this... out of power?"

"You really know how to pick your moment..."