The Red-Haired Ominous Entity

The shadows of the trees swayed, and the moonlight was hazy and clear.

In the middle of the forest path, a skinny youth dressed in blue stood utterly motionless, rigidly rooted to the spot like a piece of wood.

A bone-chilling cold crept from the spine behind him into his mind. Gu Baishui could almost picture a pair of lifeless, terrifying scarlet eyes staring fixedly at the back of his head.

It had come without a sound, but in truth it was already close at hand.

Gu Baishui couldn't move, and didn't dare to.

His gaze remained rigidly fixed on the bronze mirror in his hand. Everything reflected in it matched the real world exactly, without the slightest difference or change.

The only difference was that in the mirror, a shaggy, sinister shadow lay beneath the feet of the "himself" within it. But when Gu Baishui glanced at the ground out of the corner of his eye, he saw nothing.

It was invisible in reality, but unmistakably revealed in the bronze mirror. So this mirror could show some invisible, terrifying thing inside the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone!

And that thing had been following Gu Baishui for who knew how long, never showing itself to anyone else.

Gu Baishui's pupils contracted as an extremely terrifying suspicion suddenly flashed through his mind.

If the mirror his master had given him was the only thing that could detect the terrifying monster behind him, then could it be that...

The thing behind Gu Baishui knew that too?!

It knew that this bronze mirror was the only thing in the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone that could see it, so it had been hiding behind Gu Baishui all this time. As long as Gu Baishui didn't use the mirror to inspect himself, it would never be exposed?

And it might not have been following him just tonight, or just along this gloomy little path.

For many years, this terrifying monster had been silently clinging to Gu Baishui's back like a maggot on a bone, never leaving?

Something you couldn't see had been clinging to your back for years?

Everything you'd ever experienced and done had been laid bare before it. Even when you slept soundly at midnight, it could have been hiding in a dark corner behind you, watching you in secret with a pair of lifeless, chilling eyes?

A thread of icy night wind slipped through his collar. Gu Baishui's Adam's apple bobbed slightly, but he made no other noticeable movement.

He knew it was there, but it might not know what was happening now.

Whatever the monster behind him was, alerting it would undoubtedly be the stupidest choice.

Gu Baishui continued silently staring at the bronze mirror in his hand, trying to find anything else unusual or any clues in the scene reflected in it.

A shaggy shadow alone wasn't enough to make out the monster's true appearance. But he didn't dare adjust the mirror's angle to expose the thing completely.

Because Gu Baishui couldn't be sure whether the monster behind him could see the mirror in his hand. If it was more than a head taller than him, then its gaze might already be fixed on the bronze mirror, waiting for some subtle, terrifying moment to arrive.

Lin Yin swayed softly, and the mountain wind at night remained cold and eerie.

But when a gust blew from behind him, Gu Baishui calmly and naturally shivered, without the slightest hint of anything amiss, as if it were merely the body's instinctive reaction.

The scene in the bronze mirror shifted backward almost imperceptibly. And in the corner, right against the edge of the mirror, a tuft of... dark red hair lifted in the night wind and flashed past.

Gu Baishui's breath briefly caught. His deep-black pupils trembled rapidly, and he clenched his fists, his scalp prickling.

An ominous sign in his final years?

A red-haired monster?

Was that the thing his master had said would come alive before he died-the red-haired monster behind him?

But the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone was riddled with mausoleums and graves. If anything from any of those tombs crawled out and became a living red-haired omen, it would be a disaster worthy of being called a calamity.

If even Quasi-Emperors weren't qualified to be buried in the Emperor's Tombs, what qualifications or ability did he, Gu Baishui, have to keep watch over a red-haired monster at the Quasi-Emperor Realm-such a terrifying thing?

Gu Baishui unconsciously scraped the sole of his shoe against the soil. At the same moment, he noticed that the scene in the mirror was growing even stranger.

The shadows of the trees swayed in the wind, and the hazy moonlight scattered through the woods and over the path gradually turned into a different, misty shade of blood red.

The dense forest path before his eyes hadn't changed, but the identical scene in the mirror had become a scarlet world.

Gu Baishui froze for a moment. Before he could react, he suddenly saw the shaggy shadow beneath his feet in the mirror wriggle silently.

The youth's breath stopped at once, and his whole body went rigid.

Had the monster noticed that tiny, careful movement after all?

In the bronze mirror, strands of red hair drifted through the air with the night wind, falling from above like willow catkins and filling his entire field of vision.

On Lin Yin Road, the skinny Green-Robed Youth stood alone amid the falling Willow Catkins, as if he'd been caught in a drifting shower of red rain.

"Huu~"

A hot, heavy breath sounded behind him, almost pressed against his ear, as if it would bite into the youth's vulnerable neck the very next moment.

"Wait!"

Just before the vague sense of impending death was about to completely envelop Gu Baishui, the clean-cut, handsome youth suddenly shouted.

The shaggy shadow in the mirror paused, and the heavy breathing eased along with it.

The terrifying monster behind Gu Baishui seemed to have been startled by the youth's sudden shout. It stopped in place, caught off guard.

But the monster didn't attack again. It seemed to want to hear what the youth had to say.

"My master is dead, but there are still two senior brothers in the Great Emperor's Forbidden Zone. If you kill me, you'll definitely alert them. No matter how strange your abilities are, you won't get another chance to escape this place."

The youth's threat was blunt and weak.

But the monster behind him didn't react. It didn't seem particularly concerned about Gu Baishui's two senior brothers.

Gu Baishui's eyelid twitched. He continued, "My eldest senior brother is the reincarnation of Great Emperor Ziwei of the Ancient Divine Court. He wields the Extreme Dao Emperor Weapon, the Purple Ultimate Immortal Cauldron. He has quite a temper..."

The Green-Robed Youth didn't finish speaking. Or rather, Gu Baishui didn't continue.

A thick, shaggy arm reached out from behind his head, passed by his ear and through his hair, and slowly pointed toward... the shadows of the forest at the end of the path.

Thick red hair fluttered at the edge of his vision, while an ominous presence that made one's heart leap enveloped Gu Baishui.

But when Gu Baishui looked in the direction the monster was pointing, he froze again.

Beneath the forest's thick canopy, a blurry figure in black appeared and disappeared from view, its features impossible to make out.

The man's clothes were neat and immaculate. A simple wooden token hung at his waist, his sleeves swayed gently, and in the palm of his right hand rested an ancient, weathered purple cauldron.

"...Eldest Senior Brother?"