As Shen Liang spoke, his voice trailed off.
He had actually lost control again, and he had even been counter-controlled to attack the Young Palace Master!
The moment the white water surged earlier, his consciousness had indeed been swept away by something.
He did not know why he had lost control again. He only remembered that a single thought had remained in his mind: summon the flood, drown everyone, and destroy everything.
That thought had been so intense that it made him tremble all over. He had tried with all his might to suppress it, but he could not.
The feeling was all too familiar, identical to when he was at the bottom of the river in Linhe Town a hundred thousand years ago.
“This subordinate...”
Chen Zhou sat at the bow, resting for a moment.
The massive amount of death qi stored in the Life-Death Realm was slowly flowing back into his body.
He looked down at Shen Liang’s kneeling posture, then at Taotie, who was kneeling stiffly beside him. His gaze was calm, and there was no trace of anger on his face.
“Get up.”
Shen Liang did not move.
Taotie did not move either.
“I said, get up.”
Shen Liang’s shoulders trembled. He hesitantly raised his head, meeting Chen Zhou’s eyes.
Chen Zhou looked at him and said nonchalantly, “You were indeed counter-controlled, and the flood was indeed summoned.
“But I wanted you to summon the flood anyway. It doesn’t matter who gave the order.”
Shen Liang: “...?”
Chen Zhou said, “What I wanted was to use your flood as a medium.
“Ah, though you might be useless to me in the future. I have this now.”
With that, Chen Zhou shook the Shen Shui Yuan bone carving in his hand.
Just a moment ago, Shen Liang had been deeply moved, wishing he could tear out his heart right then and there to present it to the Young Palace Master. But the moment Chen Zhou finished speaking, his feelings instantly became rather complicated.
His mind was still spinning with all sorts of chaotic thoughts. For some reason, he felt an inexplicable sense of grief, as if some residual emotions from his loss of control still lingered in his sea of consciousness.
But Chen Zhou did not look at him again. Instead, his gaze fell upon the blood-stained ledger on the deck.
He bent down and picked it up.
The leather cover was already ruined, but the inner pages were preserved reasonably well.
He casually flipped open a page.
The ink was ordinary pine-soot ink, and the handwriting was neat, executed in an elegant, formal script.
Every stroke was perfectly structured and evenly pressured, showing that the writer was a rigorous and meticulous person.
The first page recorded the price of rice.
“Linhe Town, seventh day of the third month of the Bingshen Year. White rice: one hundred and twenty copper coins per shi. Yellow rice: eighty-five copper coins per shi.”
“Eighth day of the third month. White rice: one hundred and thirty copper coins per shi. Yellow rice: ninety-two copper coins per shi.”
“Ninth day of the third month. White rice: one hundred and fifty copper coins per shi. Yellow rice: one hundred and five copper coins per shi.”
It rose a little each day—not too rapidly, but steadily.
Flipping further through the dates, every few pages recorded a number: “Seventeen deaths in Linhe Town today.”
“Twenty-two deaths.”
“Thirty-five deaths.”
The numbers grew larger and larger, rising even faster than the price of rice.
Chen Zhou paused when he reached a certain page in the middle.
There was only a single line of text on that page. The handwriting was much sloppier than before, as if written in a hurry.
“A life for a life. The fated count is complete.”
Turning the page again, the handwriting suddenly changed.
It was no longer the neat, formal script from before. It had become crooked, with uneven ink depth, and some characters were even cut off mid-stroke, as if the writer’s hand had been trembling.
“I will not sell rice anymore.”
“No more selling.”
“Never selling again.”
It was written three times in succession, each time messier than the last.
Then, the style of the subsequent content shifted drastically.
“Today, Granny Chen in the south of the town had a fever. Bought her three qian of medicine and gifted her one liang of silver.”
“The youngest son of the Zhao family by the west gate coughed incessantly. Sent them a jar of candied fruit and two dou of rice.”
“Those beggars under the stone bridge... they are all dead. Collected their corpses this morning and offered them to Heavenly Weeping.”
The sentence cut off there, leaving the remaining half of the page blank.
At the end of that line, the ink had smudged into a dark blotch, though it was unclear whether it was from splashed water or something else.
Chen Zhou closed the ledger and remained silent for a moment.
Without saying much, he simply raised his hand and handed the ledger to Shen Liang.
Shen Liang was taken aback and dumbly took the ledger. “...Young Palace Master?”
“You have always had doubts in your heart,” Chen Zhou said.
“Regarding what happened to you back then, about Linhe Town, and about Squire Zhou. The answers you seek might be in there. See for yourself.”
Shen Liang looked down at the swollen, yellowed ledger in his hands, his fingers curling slightly.
He flipped through it page by page.
A knot in his mind was slowly unraveling.
He had always believed that Squire Zhou had stood by and watched people die, hoarding grain to make a fortune during the flood, and then happily living out his days after causing Shen Liang's death.
But the ledger before him told a completely different story.
Squire Zhou had indeed hoarded rice and sold it at exorbitant prices.
Yet after Shen Liang died, he had never sold another grain of rice. Instead, he had spent his own money to buy medicine and give away grain, completely draining the fortune he had accumulated over the years.
Shen Liang raised his head, his gaze sweeping past the deck to look at the blurry, human-shaped figures slowly sinking into the waters of the River of the Underworld.
Squire Zhou’s swollen face drifted just beneath the surface, appearing peaceful as if he were asleep.
Squire Zhou was indeed still the kind boss in his memory; he had never changed.
He had indeed been threatened by something, left with no choice of his own.
Yet even more doubts arose in Shen Liang’s mind.
Before his death, many people in Linhe Town died every day, but why did Squire Zhou stop selling rice at high prices after he died?
What did “a life for a life” mean?
If his death was not an accident, if Squire Zhou had his own difficulties, and if everything was the work of the Fate Officer Shen Shui Yuan had mentioned...
Then did Lord Xuandu, who had admitted him into the Xuandu Ghost Mansion back then... know about this?
Could this be yet another hidden truth he was unaware of?
Shen Liang felt a chill run through his entire body at the thought. But before he could dwell on his melancholy, a violent tremor shook beneath his feet.
The entire memory space began to shake violently.
The ground tore open right through the center, a massive rift expanding rapidly as the gray membrane at the edges peeled away inch by inch, revealing a vast, empty, dark void behind it.
“The formation eye has collapsed?” Plague Rat leaped up and shouted, “This space is collapsing!”
Chen Zhou immediately stood up from the bow.
The River of the Underworld beneath their feet was receding rapidly, its black waters dispersing with a rush, quickly leaving behind only a smooth, grey ground washed clean.
The solitary boat dissolved as well.
Chen Zhou raised his head.
In all directions, countless cracks burst open simultaneously.
Thick phantoms of dead souls poured out from behind the rifts.
Countless dead souls flooded from the shattered space. Their numbers were so immense that they blotted out the sky and devoured all light, leaving only countless pale eyes gleaming in the darkness.
To think that the death of Shen Shui Yuan’s true body and the destruction of a single formation eye could have such a massive impact on this grand array!
“Fuck! There are so many!”
Plague Rat cursed. Great Plague Heaven unfolded in an instant, and the dark green toxic mist swirled into a massive dragon around it, sweeping toward the tide of dead souls.
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