Chen Zhou raised his head.
The auspicious cloud above his head, which only he could see, was slowly rotating. After the array's anomaly and the riot of the dead souls, the thing that had previously interfered with the auspicious cloud seemed to have disappeared.
After rotating a few times, the auspicious cloud finally stabilized its direction, pointing straight in one direction.
Chen Zhou looked in that direction and frowned.
Across layers of gray-white membrane walls and dense silhouettes of dead souls, there was a thick, impenetrable darkness in the distance.
The dead souls were gathered exceptionally densely in that direction.
“What's wrong?” Plague Rat looked in the direction of Chen Zhou's gaze, his crimson eyes darting around. “Milord, what is there to see over there?”
Chen Zhou shook his head, but his gaze did not leave the dense ghost tide.
He faintly felt that something was watching him from behind that ghost tide.
And Hong Xiu stood in front of everyone, her large red skirt fluttering without wind in the gray mist. The circular fan spun between her fingers, the peony on its surface shimmering with a dark, dull light.
She looked past the surging wave of dead souls, raised her hand, and gently tossed the circular fan into the air. The fan, as thin as a cicada's wing, unfurled in mid-air, growing larger and larger until it covered most of the sky.
The gold-threaded peonies embroidered on the fan's surface began to peel off, drifting down piece by piece and melting as soon as they touched the ground, accelerating the spread of the fragrance.
At first sniff, the fragrance was so sweet that it made one's heart itch, but upon second sniff, it carried an indescribable sorrow and bitterness, as if all the parting sorrows and resentful hatreds of the world had been brewed into a single pot of incense.
The fragrance spread extremely fast.
The frenzied dead souls, whose bodies were in the middle of whitening, suddenly froze. Their pupils trembled violently in the crimson fragrance, and their hostile energy peeled away layer by layer.
Then, someone began to cry.
One by one, the dead souls broke down, their half-whitened faces distorting as two lines of turbid tears rolled out of their eye sockets.
The weeping spread like a plague. Swathes of dead souls fell to their knees, burying their heads between their hands, their shoulders shaking violently.
Hong Xiu chuckled, tracing an arc in the air with her circular fan. The fragrance condensed into silk threads, crisscrossing to weave a net that covered heaven and earth, enveloping all the rampaging malevolent ghosts within.
“Don't be in such a hurry to wail.”
She casually flicked her finger, gently fanning her circular fan as she walked forward slowly, lotus flowers blooming with every step.
“The seven emotions and six desires are only natural for humans, natural for ghosts, and natural for demons and monsters. Which of them can escape the word 'emotion'?”
“Within the net of emotion, spend some time with yourself first.”
After the dead souls were enveloped by the net of emotion, the intensity of their struggling rapidly weakened.
The crimson threads wrapped around them. Their wails gradually turned into whimpers, and the whimpers slowly became intermittent sobs, settling down layer by layer.
Hong Xiu found that these dead souls were truly very interesting. Each of them had a deep sorrow hidden in their hearts, a sorrow so deep it was agonizing.
So she simply amplified these feelings, letting them lose themselves in their emotions.
As the dead souls lost themselves one by one, the whitening slowly receded. Chen Zhou saw that in the area from earlier, a canine figure was quietly squatting on a shattered stone slab, its limbs tucked in, its back straight, staring dead at him.
Lou-Metal Dog?
He really had escaped.
However, the distance was too far. Chen Zhou could see those amber vertical pupils, but he could not clearly see the expression on that face.
Lou-Metal Dog's body was covered in a thin layer of white slime, but unlike the half-human, half-canine form seen before in the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts, at this moment, Lou-Metal Dog was entirely in the form of a wild beast.
With his limbs on the ground, his fur disheveled, his ear tips standing straight up, and his tail pressed against the ground, his posture was alert.
But Lou-Metal Dog did not move. He only watched Chen Zhou, neither approaching nor retreating.
Chen Zhou was in no hurry to make a move either; he had been on guard against this vicious dog.
And Hong Xiu, following Chen Zhou's gaze, also spotted Lou-Metal Dog.
Her beautiful brows twitched imperceptibly.
“Who... is that?”
“Lou-Metal Dog, very annoying,” Taotie said.
So he was Lou-Metal Dog? But why did his silhouette make her feel strangely familiar?
Surely it couldn't be that absurd; she had never raised a dog.
But before Hong Xiu could think further, Lou-Metal Dog stood up from the shattered stone slab, stretched his limbs, and then turned around, diving into the depths of the ghost tide.
His movements were crisp and neat without the slightest hesitation, and in the blink of an eye, he disappeared among the dense gray dead souls.
“He ran,” she said.
“No need to chase,” Chen Zhou said. “Deal with the matter at hand first. That dog is very clingy.”
There were indeed many matters at hand. Shen Liang was still struggling in Taotie's embrace.
His hands were pinned by Taotie's iron arms, but the yellowish-brown floodwaters had already risen past Taotie's knees. The churning water surface continued to rise, splashing onto Taotie's face and making him grimace in pain.
Hong Xiu glanced at Shen Liang and let out a snort.
“Useless trash.”
“Get out of the way. This lady will sober him up.”
She tucked her circular fan into her waist and walked over with light, delicate steps.
Hearing this, Taotie felt as if he had been granted a great amnesty. He honestly complied, let go of Shen Liang, and retreated his massive body a full three zhang away, squatting next to Plague Rat.
Without the restraint, Shen Liang's floodwaters suddenly surged up significantly.
But Hong Xiu had already walked up to him, raising a pale hand and gently blowing a breath toward him.
The fragrant wind carried a sweet, rich aroma, like wine brewed from fully ripened fruit, yet mixed with a bit of the harshness of strong liquor.
When hit head-on by that fragrant wind, Shen Liang fell quiet for an instant, and then began to scream violently—sharp, shrill, and filled with bone-deep agony.
Shen Liang's limbs tensed straight, his body twisting in several contortions as his hands clawed desperately into the cracks in the ground, looking like he was in agonizing pain.
“Let... go...”
Shen Liang squeezed out a word from between his teeth, tears pouring out uncontrollably as his features contorted in pain.
Hong Xiu casually looked at her crimson fingernails. “To think such a tiny amount of emotion could make you lose control. How embarrassing.”
After saying that, Hong Xiu squatted down again, using the handle of her circular fan to tilt Shen Liang's chin up, staring straight into his eyes.
“You're such a big ghost, dead for a hundred thousand years, yet you can't even control that little bit of grievance in your own head.”
“What are you looking at me for? Sober yet?”
Shen Liang's teeth chattered and his whole body trembled, but the clarity in his pupils was returning bit by bit, and that pale white light grew fainter and fainter.
Hong Xiu stood up, withdrew her circular fan, bowed to Chen Zhou, and said respectfully,
“I didn't have the chance just now. This humble one, Hong Xiu, greets the Young Palace Master.”
“My master asked me to pass a message to the Young Palace Master.”
“No need to worry. Over at the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts, Miss Lian has already awakened and is currently trying to find a way to reopen the bronze gate.”
“Old Zhao and Master are protecting her, so nothing should go wrong.”
Chen Zhou's expression remained unchanged, but the tense lines of his shoulders relaxed imperceptibly for an instant.
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