Chapter 32
Chapter 32
In that instant, Xie Qingling seemed to see a soft halo like moonlight rise from Shen Huaizhou’s body.
Within the halo, a white Nine-Tailed Fox slowly unfurled its nine enormous tails.
The Nine-Tailed Fox was pure white, noble and sacred, yet its eyes brimmed with bewitching allure.
The sound of a mirror shattering suddenly rang out. Xie Qingling’s pupils contracted, and then the illusion receded as the true scene gradually entered her vision –
A Painted-Skin Ghost had Ling Fang pinned to the ground and was pounding him wildly. Ling Fang could barely block its blows as he shouted, “Xie Qingling, calm down! Calm down!”
Ye Anran, clutching her long needle case, was also being besieged by another Painted-Skin Ghost. She was barely holding her own because she also had to find time to purge the poison from her body and treat herself.
Yu Wei, meanwhile, held his blade aloft and glared sharply at Xie Qingling. Brimming with killing intent, he looked ready to fight her for another three hundred rounds.
Dai Xingyu, Jiang Lulu, and Yang Xianxian had not joined the battle, so they had not been affected for the moment.
It was chaos. Everything was in complete disarray.
The thought that all the ferocious fighting just now had been them beating their own teammates made Xie Qingling’s expression darken.
When had the attack first taken hold?
It must have begun with the first shriek. That was when she had started to lose control of her body.
Then the second shriek had completely scrambled her perception.
“Brother Yu, stop fighting!” Xie Qingling shouted at Yu Wei, whose eyes had gone red with bloodlust.
As the Painted-Skin Ghosts’ illusion shattered, the other members of the team rapidly regained their senses.
Ling Fang focused his gaze and saw that the figure sprawled on top of him was not a teammate but a Painted-Skin Ghost. His face darkened, and he immediately drove a merciless kick into it.
Ye Anran used her black needles to hold a Painted-Skin Ghost at bay while slipping behind the others to seek protection.
A healer had to know when to play it safe.
The team regrouped and regained its ability to fight.
Shen Huaizhou spoke again. “Flowers in a Mirror, Moon on the Water.”
[A flower in a mirror, the moon on the water. All is empty, all is illusory. Within the Nine-Tailed Fox’s illusion, all living beings are confounded and the five senses become indistinguishable. Enjoy it. Enjoy the dream woven by the Nine-Tailed Fox. Then welcome death with a smile.]
The two Painted-Skin Ghosts that had been raging moments earlier suddenly fell silent.
They reached up to touch their faces. Despite having no features, their expressions gradually became ecstatic.
At this moment, they seemed to enter a state in which the self and the world were both forgotten. Utterly oblivious to everyone around them, the two ghosts smiled in blissful delight.
“Now,” Shen Huaizhou said. “Kill them!”
The Painted-Skin Ghosts had fallen into the dream Shen Huaizhou had woven.
Xie Qingling immediately raised her blade and charged at them.
Blinded by the illusion, the Painted-Skin Ghosts had no power to resist. They could not see Xie Qingling’s movements or even sense her presence. Instead, they remained completely immersed in that imaginary world – until Xie Qingling drove Bloodsworn through one ghost’s back and tore open its pitted skin. Only the stabbing pain jolted it awake from the illusion.
It screamed in agony and tried to loose another shriek to confuse Xie Qingling, but after falling for it once, she would not be fooled again.
She pulled back the blade in her right hand and swept the one in her left across the Painted-Skin Ghost’s throat, robbing it of its voice.
It could no longer shriek.
Without its power to confuse the mind, the Painted-Skin Ghost was nothing but a lump of meat waiting to be butchered.
Once they knew what its ability was, it was no longer difficult to deal with.
“I’ll split you apart!” Xie Qingling snarled.
Bloodsworn sliced through ghosts as easily as a knife through soft clay. Xie Qingling did not need to coat it in “Spirit” to attack them directly. She wrapped “Spirit” around the tips of her feet and sprang into the air, hanging there for a fleeting instant. After adjusting her angle, she brought the blade in her right hand down on the Painted-Skin Ghost’s face with all her strength.
The strike split the Painted-Skin Ghost in two.
Xie Qingling landed, sheathed Bloodsworn, and returned it to her back.
The Painted-Skin Ghost collapsed to the ground, one hand still reaching forward as though unwilling to accept its fate.
Only moments ago, it had gotten their skins. It had been so happy.
It did not understand what had happened or how everything had suddenly come to this.
On the other side, Yu Wei had also finished his fight.
“Yang Zhenhua” had likewise been cut in two, and its body was now gradually disappearing.
The battle ended as swiftly as it had been troublesome moments before.
Without their illusions, Painted-Skin Ghosts were fragile creatures with severely limited offensive ability. They were not even a match for some strong, well-trained humans, and their defenses were equally weak.
The group exchanged glances, their expressions a little strange.
Shen Huaizhou was an illusionist. In ordinary battles, they had always regarded his illusions as nothing more than an extremely useful control ability. They had never imagined that being caught in an illusion themselves could be so terrifying.
An illusion did not cause harm on its own, but in battle, making someone take falsehood for truth and mistakes for what was right was an utterly terrifying thing.
Ling Fang said to Shen Huaizhou, “Nicely done.”
Shen Huaizhou merely nodded, his expression indifferent.
If his original assignment had not been to take Yang Xianxian away, those two Painted-Skin Ghosts would never have had the chance to cast their illusion.
In Shen Huaizhou’s eyes, their illusions were far too crude.
A true illusionist needed to be capable of completing an illusion silently beneath the eyes of a vast crowd without anyone noticing.
The Painted-Skin Ghosts had launched their mental attacks with shrieks, causing such a commotion that all sense of mystery was lost. The effectiveness of their illusion was greatly diminished as a result.
They were hideous, their illusions were crude, and they had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Shen Huaizhou could not imagine how these two Painted-Skin Ghosts had managed to survive this long.
Then again, he had never exposed his teammates to mental attacks before, which was why all of them had fallen prey to one this time. Hopefully, they would learn a lesson from the experience.
Yu Wei walked over to Xie Qingling. When he saw the wound on her arm, he said apologetically, “I must have done that…”
Xie Qingling nodded. Only now did she feel the wound begin to sting.
“Brother Yu, it really hurts when your blade hits someone,” Xie Qingling joked.
Yu Wei gave an awkward laugh. “It does. But you only came away with a single cut this time. Looks like you’ve been practicing quite a bit on your own lately.”
When he normally sparred with Xie Qingling, he never used his full strength. Just now, however, he had genuinely regarded her as an enemy and tried to kill her without holding back in the slightest. For Xie Qingling to escape his assault in one piece showed just how much she had improved.
Xie Qingling smiled, tacitly admitting it.
At the same time, Ye Anran sent a healing ability her way, and the wound on Xie Qingling’s arm vanished without a trace.
If not for the tear in her sleeve, no one would have been able to tell that she had been injured.
Ye Anran lowered her head, guilt written across her face. “I… I can’t counter mental attacks. I can’t remove negative conditions like that.”
Even she, a doctor, had fallen under its influence.
Fortunately, the team still had an illusionist who had remained unaffected. Otherwise, they might have faced a bitter battle this time.
“Human strength has its limits.” Ling Fang walked over and stowed his weapon. “Check the scene first. See if we’ve missed anything.”
Once it was certain the battle had ended, Dai Xingyu led Yang Xianxian out of the storage room.
Xie Qingling was crouching on the floor, gathering the two human skins the Painted-Skin Ghosts had shed.
The human skin belonging to “Yang Zhenhua” had been partially scorched, while his wife’s skin remained comparatively intact.
Both skins had badly decomposed. No wonder the ghosts had been in such a hurry to find new ones.
As Xie Qingling pondered this, Jiang Lulu emerged from some unknown corner. The sight of the two human skins piled on the floor drained all color from her face.
She came up behind Xie Qingling and asked, “Qingling, is it over? Are they dead? Am I… safe now?”
Xie Qingling paused and glanced at her. “They’re dead. You’re safe now.”
After a moment, Xie Qingling added, “Now that the Painted-Skin Ghosts are dead, the mind control they placed on you should be gone. Try to feel for it. See if that urge to kill is still in your mind.”
Following her instructions, Jiang Lulu closed her eyes and concentrated. Then she opened them and smiled through tears. “It’s gone! They’re really dead!”
“Thank you so much, Qingling. If you hadn’t been here this time, I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
Xie Qingling patted her head and smiled. “Don’t worry. I would never abandon you.”
Jiang Lulu nodded, caught somewhere between laughter and tears.
Wonderful. She had finally gotten what she wanted.
Jiang Lulu looked overjoyed at that moment.
“Qingling, you’re so good to me,” she said.
Xie Qingling smiled in silence.
Ling Fang beckoned Dai Xingyu over. “Use your Groom talent to sense whether all the Painted-Skin Ghosts have been eliminated.”
Dai Xingyu nodded and went to Ling Fang’s side.
“Spirits of heaven and earth, seal of yin and yang. Ghosts and demons, reveal your true forms at once.”
As Dai Xingyu extended his senses, the already dark and cramped space suddenly felt even more suffocating.
After a moment, Dai Xingyu opened his eyes, his expression grim.
“Director, there’s still another ghost…” he said.
Yu Wei immediately raised his brows, looking ready to start another fight at any moment.
“But I can’t sense it properly or lock onto it. Painted-Skin Ghosts excel at disguise, so the Groom talent can’t sense them directly.” Dai Xingyu looked utterly miserable.
Were these damned Painted-Skin Ghosts designed specifically to counter him?
Ling Fang’s face took on a faintly livid cast. Then he turned his gaze toward Xie Qingling. “What about you?”
[Animal spirits scorch their tails; ghosts paint their skins. Ghosts and monsters all seek a place for themselves in human society, resorting to every conceivable means of disguise in the hope of becoming true “people.” Imitating humans, they formed a family and tried to build a happy home for themselves in the mortal realm.]
[But now, vile and brutal humans have forced them to dwell on opposite sides of life and death, never to see each other again. Daughter, oh, daughter – how can you bear to abandon your father and mother? Come. Come to us. Come keep your father and mother company. Family will always be your warmest harbor.]
The voice in Xie Qingling’s mind sounded at precisely that moment. Her body stiffened, and she raised her eyes to Ling Fang. “There are three Painted-Skin Ghosts. They’re a family of three.”
A family… of three?
Ling Fang froze, and everyone else reacted with shock.
Then, as one, they all turned to look at Yang Xianxian.
Yang Xianxian had yet to emerge from the illusion. She was waiting obediently for her father and mother to pick her up after school, her smile innocent and carefree. Standing quietly in her spotless white ballet dress, she looked impossibly well-behaved.
But as everyone stared once more at that pure, childish face, their scalps began to prickle.