Chapter 80

Chapter 80

The figure in the pool was red as flame. With an air of disdain for all things, she slowly rose from the water.

The person on the bank froze slightly, a flicker of surprise passing through his eyes.

Only then did he realize that the body he had dragged into the water was nothing but a shell.

This wisp of Yin Soul before him was the true formidable enemy he had to face.

“Who are you?”

He parted his lips and asked.

Yet the other party merely swept him with a cold glance. “Taking someone else’s things without permission isn’t called borrowing.”

“It’s called stealing.”

“How ugly must your original face be, for you to need to borrow someone else’s?”

At those words, rage instantly flooded his eyes. That handsome, refined face began to blur and twist.

The next second, he transformed into a human-shaped black shadow. Though faceless, he looked hideous and terrifying all the same.

The woman in the pool gave a cold snort. “So you really are an ugly thing.”

The black shadow was furious. It suddenly opened a bloody maw and let out a shriek.

A mass of black mist began to coil above the surface of the pool, like dark clouds before a torrential downpour, shrouding the entire sky.

In the blink of an eye, the black mist turned into countless ghostly hands. Corrosive power clinging to them, they swept swiftly toward the woman in the pool.

The momentum looked overwhelming.

Yet the blazing red figure in the pool only gave a contemptuous smile. “You want to eat me?”

The ghostly hands immediately covered her inch by inch, trying to claim her as their own just as they had devoured the souls of those mortals.

But that red figure burned like fire. How could it possibly swallow her?

In less than a moment, the hands retreated in a sorry state.

But by then, it was already too late to flee.

The woman in the pool swiftly raised both hands. The marks between her brows and at the corners of her eyes grew an even brighter red.

Killing intent boiled within her, and the water in the pool rose with it.

The bones sleeping at the bottom of the pool seemed to receive a summons, surfacing one after another.

Her gaze was cool and clear, her slender fingers fluttering like butterflies.

As though guided by her, the white bones flew into the air, sealing off the black shadow’s escape routes from every direction.

An eye for an eye.

The white bones trapped the black shadow within, then devoured it bit by bit, just as it had devoured those souls.

The black shadow wanted to struggle, but it could not move at all. It could only let out a howl of agony.

Her ten fingers closed. In an instant, the bones shattered and sank back to the bottom. The bathing pool also turned into a pool of blood in the same moment.

Ownerless Yin Soul began drifting out one after another, mingling with the smoke that curled through the pavilion.

Faced with this strange sight, Yan Zhengchu and Bai Qingshuang, who had been locked in combat nearby, both looked over and froze.

Worried about Xia Ximo’s safety, Yan Zhengchu immediately shouted, “Miss Xia?”

Seizing the chance, Bai Qingshuang lifted her foot and kicked him straight out of the pavilion.

By the pool, Wuyou stared at the water now filled with blood and could not help shouting, “Now everything’s ruined! Your body is still in there!”

“The Yin energy inside is so heavy. Your soul and body are separated-there’s no saving you now!”

“We finally managed to ferry over a few strands of soul, and now all that effort is going to waste! Aaaaaah!”

The “Xia Ximo” floating by the bank merely glanced at it calmly. “So noisy.”

Wuyou was practically grinding its teeth. “Do you want to go back to the Nine Abysses and be an imprisoned soul again? Was that land of extreme cold so pleasant? A hundred years, a hundred whole years! Do you want to stay there another hundred?”

She fell silent for a moment.

Since there was already no way back, she might as well solve another problem before leaving.

The thought had just risen in her mind, and she was about to go after Bai Qingshuang, when she saw a familiar figure hurrying into the pavilion.

“Miss Xia?”

He was calling her name.

“Xia Ximo” immediately came to a halt in midair.

Something in her heart seemed to stir.

She had not been in the mortal world for long, but she seemed to have already grown used to this name, and had begun to grow used to the man before her as well.

“Ren Fengjue.”

At this moment, one of them was a soul and the other a living person. They could no longer meet each other’s eyes, let alone speak to each other.

He could no longer see her, nor could he hear her voice.

Yet she could clearly see the expression on his face and the emotions in his eyes.

Worry, urgency, panic.

Such feelings were rather rare on that face of his, which was always so calm no matter what happened.

For a moment, she too felt a faint sense of daze.

But just then, Wuyou threw itself into the pool without a care, using soul power to lift Xia Ximo’s body out of the water.
Ren Fengjue, standing on the bank, saw her body as well. His expression was frighteningly grave, yet he seemed not to care in the slightest that the body had just been soaked in bloody water. He gathered it straight into his arms.

It seemed he meant to save her the same way he had before.

“Xia Ximo” felt her heart tremble.

Wuyou looked helpless. “Looks like this time, even Ren Fengjue can’t save you…”

She did not answer. Just then, footsteps suddenly sounded outside the door.

Wuyou sensed that it was Yan Zhengchu. To keep her soul from being discovered, Wuyou immediately sent her into the Soul-Ferrying Lantern.

Fu Tower was sealed off for investigation.

From a distance, Yu Lang, Guan Yue, and the others saw Ren Fengjue carrying someone out of the building.

They stepped forward for a look, but none of them dared ask a single question.

After all, they were men who dealt with murder cases year-round. One glance was enough to tell them the situation was far from clear.

And it was very possible that the person was already dead.

They had never seen such an expression on Lord Ren’s face before. For a moment, they could only exchange uneasy looks.

So when Ren Fengjue carried the person straight into the carriage, none of them dared say a word.

They even found themselves thinking that perhaps this was what people meant by being deeply in love.

Ren Fengjue believed that as long as he held on and did not let go,

she would probably wake up slowly, just as she had the previous two times.

But the carriage traveled on, and the body in his arms remained cold. There was not the slightest sign that it was about to come “alive” again.

No one spoke the entire way.

Yan Zhengchu, seated to the side, was in a complicated state of mind as well.

While he had been fighting Bai Qingshuang, he had not noticed when Xia Ximo left.

Nor did he know why she had fallen into that pool.

In the end, it was Ren Fengjue who spoke first. “In Tongtian Pavilion earlier, aside from Manager Bai, was there any other Evil Entity?”

Yan Zhengchu answered quietly, “I was locked in combat with the Evil Entity at the time. I didn’t notice.”

Ren Fengjue analyzed it calmly. “If Manager Bai was the only one in the pavilion, Miss Xia should not have fallen into the pool.”

“That pool…”

Yan Zhengchu hesitated, then decided it was necessary to explain. “That pool of water is very strange. I remember my grandmaster’s notes mentioning it…”

“Fifty years ago, during the previous dynasty… a Yin-Yang Fiend appeared once.”

Indeed, Great Qi had only been founded a little over thirty years ago.

Before that, the land had been known as Qi Kingdom.

As an important minister of the current court, and with his father being one of the founding marquises, Ren Fengjue was not in a position to bring up matters of the former dynasty lightly.

But this “Yin-Yang Fiend” sounded like something extremely sinister.

He could not help asking, “What is a Yin-Yang Fiend?”

Yan Zhengchu replied, “The notes said that refining this fiend requires three things. Not one can be missing.”

“First, a Yin Spirit. Second, a Yang Spirit. Third, essence blood.”

“Only when these three are combined can a Yin-Yang Fiend be refined.”

“And once a Yin-Yang Fiend is successfully formed, it will break through the barrier between the Underworld Administration and the mortal realm, throwing the order of both worlds into chaos. The ghosts stranded in the mortal realm would then be able to act without restraint.”

Ren Fengjue frowned. “This fiend is related to that pool?”

Yan Zhengchu’s expression grew even graver. “If I’m not mistaken, the bottom of that pool is filled with bones.”

“And not ordinary bones. They must be the remains of an Extreme Yin Body. That is the Yin Spirit.”

“As for the Yang Spirit, I still don’t know what it is. The notes only said that it feeds on Living Soul, but did not describe its form.”

“Lastly, there is the essence blood. A person is born with only three drops of essence blood, corresponding to the Three Hun. To extract one drop is equivalent to offering up one Hun.”

“A person whose Three Hun are incomplete is the easiest target for ghosts. If their luck is poor, they may even suffer Body Snatching.”

What he said was so bizarre that even Ren Fengjue felt a faint chill crawl up his back.

“In that case, what was hidden inside Fu Tower was no ordinary ghost?”

Yan Zhengchu nodded. “There was definitely more than one ghostly being hidden in Fu Tower. Manager Bai must be one of them…”

“The other may be the legendary Yang Spirit.”

“However, the most important thing right now, aside from sealing off Fu Tower and finding Manager Bai, is investigating one person.”

Ren Fengjue made the connection almost instantly.

“Crown Prince Zhao Li.”