Chapter Eighteen: Filthy, Utterly Filthy!

In just over an hour, a series of sudden deaths shook Weiyang County, plunging the county office into utter chaos.

In the inner hall, Magistrate Zhang Pengwang paced the floor anxiously, wringing his hands and breaking out into curses from time to time. “Useless! All of you are useless!”

The registrar and the assistant magistrate, their faces flushed with embarrassment, stood at the doorway, backs hunched as if they were two old men, not daring to meet his gaze.

“Where is Officer Yang? Why hasn’t he returned yet? In just over an hour, several hundred people have suddenly died! I— I…” Magistrate Zhang choked on his words.

Even if the Tang Dynasty’s governance had grown lax, party strife rampant and the land rife with chaos, even if everyone knew the world was overrun with demons and ghosts yet could do nothing but turn a blind eye and muddle through—still, for such a monstrous case to erupt in his county, if those above pursued the matter, he—a mere county magistrate—would surely be ruined.

He picked up a bowl of cold tea, but his hands were trembling so badly that half the tea spilled on the floor.

“How long has Officer Yang been gone?” Realizing his own loss of composure, Magistrate Zhang coughed lightly and asked in a steadier voice.

“Sir, Officer Yang led the constables out to investigate nearly an hour ago,” the registrar replied, sweating profusely as he stepped forward, answering with utmost caution.

Such a sensational case would spell disaster for every official in Weiyang County’s yamen.

“An hour? A whole hour and still no answers? Which fiend dares cause such havoc? This is outrageous!” Magistrate Zhang flung his teacup aside in a fit of rage.

“Sir—”

A shadow flickered at the door, and Officer Yang strode into the inner hall, catching the flying teacup and gently setting it back on the table.

“Officer Yang, what’s the situation?” Magistrate Zhang pressed impatiently.

“It’s the work of a high-level ghost,” Officer Yang replied grimly. “It used a secret art—drawing out the very threads of life—to claim hundreds of souls.”

Such a technique was typically hidden; if more than ten were killed, it was already a major case. This time, however, the ghost had grown brazen beyond belief.

“A high-level ghost…” Magistrate Zhang slumped into his vermilion chair, his face ashen. He muttered, “Hundreds of lives lost—if the court investigates, what will become of us…”

“Sir,” Officer Yang said, frowning, “our only recourse now is to solve the case quickly and capture the ghost. That may at least serve as mitigation for our dereliction of duty.”

“But with seven or eight hundred dead, both you and I are guilty of negligence. How can we escape blame?” The magistrate rubbed his brow, worry etched across his face.

“If we mobilize the entire county to eradicate these demons and ghosts, these casualties could be counted as losses in battle,” Officer Yang suggested quietly. As a registered martial officer, he was used to violence.

Since his transfer to Weiyang as county constable, overseeing security and law enforcement, he had repeatedly urged the magistrate to launch a full-scale sweep of all evil spirits—only to be rebuffed each time.

But this unprecedented catastrophe was, in a twisted way, an opportunity.

“My dear Officer Yang, aren’t you afraid of retaliation if we go after these spirits?” The magistrate’s reaction was immediate and excessive; he sprang to his feet.

“These demons and ghosts are deeply rooted. Strike a small one, and a greater one appears; destroy the greater, and a host of old ones will swarm in. Even the imperial court—” He stopped himself, coughing. “Have you forgotten the bloodbath in Zhenjiang?”

The three officials couldn’t help shuddering and shrinking back.

“I believe—” Officer Yang began, but the magistrate waved him off.

“No more of this. Officer Yang, focus on the investigation,” the magistrate said, making his decision and signaling the meeting’s end. If necessary, he could return some of what he had swallowed—those above would see to the rest.

Officer Yang strode out, face like thunder, and entered the constables’ quarters.

All the constables had been dispatched—to calm the populace and track the ghost’s trail—leaving the office empty.

He stood there for a dozen breaths, brooding, before muttering to himself, “That damned He Chang’an is still recovering?”

After a moment’s consideration, he left the yamen, took the reins from a waiting attendant, mounted his horse, and set off for He Chang’an’s home.

—

He Chang’an was suddenly seized by a chilling thought—would that old fiend follow the spiritual thread back to him? The idea startled him.

Yet he was loath to halt his cultivation at such a critical moment. The vast influx of spiritual energy, freely offered, was an opportunity he could not ignore. Besides, his training had reached a pivotal point.

His Breath-Eating Technique was about to reach its fifth-layer peak, on the verge of breakthrough to the sixth. With his cultivation advancing, his physical strength had multiplied many times over; he reckoned he could now tear the legs off a corpse puppet with his bare hands.

Still, in his heart, he knew he was but a fledgling.

The returning black thread had grown several times thicker, nearly as wide as his little finger—a dense stream of ghostly energy pouring in through his brow, circulating along his meridians before settling in his dantian.

Had his spiritual millstone not expanded in tandem, he could not have endured this barrage.

Worst of all was the torment assailing his very soul. The old ghost had devoured untold life force, slaughtering countless innocents; even transformed into ghostly energy, it seethed with resentment.

Within his spiritual millstone, endless screams and wails echoed without reprieve—waves of soul-piercing agony that battered his mind, threatening to drive him mad.

—

At Weiyang Academy, the old ghost was locked in a desperate struggle.

Two shameless scholars, sensing something amiss with the ghost’s grand technique, attacked without hesitation. Protected by the immense power of their righteous aura, they assailed it with brushes, inkstones, pages, inkwells, and even a martial measuring rod, forcing it to defend on all sides.

Most terrifying was the steady siphoning of its ghostly energy—a black thread drawing it away without pause.

In nearly four centuries, it had never suffered such a loss.

Oppressed within a swirling mass of black mist, the old ghost fought bitterly, unleashing every secret art it knew against the scholar in white, Li Yishan, to little effect.

They cared not for merit, only for avoiding error. Shielded by the righteous aura that countered all evil, the two scholars maintained a flawless defense within ten feet, impervious to all attacks.

This was the Doctrine of the Mean.

The old ghost began to regret ever provoking scholars.

It recalled an old saying, passed down among demons, ghosts, and devils for millennia:

The Daoists are ruthless, the Buddhists are dark, and the scholars are dirty…

Martial types were too crude to mention.

Indeed, these two impoverished scholars were utterly shameless—setting such traps, sending a mere novice to lure it in; then the scholar in white forced it into using its ghostly secret art, and only then did the true master strike from the shadows.

Too cunning, far too cunning!

A chilling realization dawned—the true expert backing these two had yet to appear, not because he feared the ghost, but because it simply wasn’t worth his effort to destroy it in person.

If it didn’t escape now, it would never escape.

With that, the old ghost sacrificed fifty years’ worth of cultivation once more…