“There is one more thing. Though you probably already know, the Lou-Metal Dog you imprisoned outside the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts has been rescued.”
Hong Xiu was still recalling her brief encounter with the Lou-Metal Dog, slightly puzzled as to why he had felt so strangely familiar.
However, she did not dwell on it. This was the former site of the Southern Tang, so it was only natural for her to encounter things that felt familiar.
Chen Zhou's brow twitched slightly. “By whom?”
“I do not know.”
“Master only felt a sudden disturbance at the seal,” Hong Xiu said. “By the time he rushed over from the ghost mansion, the Lou-Metal Dog was already gone from his cage.”
“The seal was unbroken, and your bone spear was not snapped. It was as if he had been plucked straight out from the inside.”
“Master pursued them for a distance, but the culprit left behind a cover. The trail went cold right at the edge of the realm.”
“He was worried about that side and feared a diversion, so he sent me ahead to inform you.”
Chen Zhou fell silent for a moment.
Plucking someone out of the Hate Prison without damaging the seal... Who possessed such means? Was it the mysterious Fate Officer? Or perhaps Bai Xing?
While Chen Zhou pondered, Hong Xiu's gaze swept over the dead souls still softly weeping around them. She hesitated for a moment before speaking.
“Young Palace Master, I have another discovery. After arriving and traveling through the fragmented spaces, I found that the state of this array is highly unusual.”
“When I was dealing with those dead souls just now, I sensed something from their emotions.”
She raised her hand, her fingertips pinching a wisp of crimson energy that slowly rotated in her palm.
“The root cause of these dead souls' violent whitening seems to be an emotion—a very deep, profound grief.”
“Someone is using their emotions as fuel.”
“Shen Liang lost control for the same reason. He harbored sorrowful emotions, which allowed someone to take advantage of his vulnerability.”
She gestured with her chin toward Shen Liang. “However, I used other emotions to suppress his grief just now, so there should be no issues for the time being.”
Chen Zhou frowned. “You felt it too?”
Hong Xiu was startled. “What do you mean, Young Palace Master?”
“I had already vaguely noticed it earlier,” Chen Zhou said. “From the moment we entered this fragmented space, a very faint emotion has been seeping out.”
“But I do not specialize in the path of emotions, so I could not make head or tail of it. But when Shen Liang lost control, that sensation became much clearer.”
Hong Xiu's eyelids twitched.
She was secretly alarmed.
She had cultivated the Path of Extreme Emotions for a hundred thousand years, which was why she had the ability to isolate that extremely subtle emotional fluctuation from the complex, chaotic battlefield aura.
She considered herself exceptionally gifted in this area. Taotie and Shen Liang, who were of the same grade, could not perceive it at all; Shen Liang had even been controlled by it.
Yet the Young Palace Master had actually detected it before she even spoke.
Recalling the Young Palace Master's terrifying soul age, Hong Xiu's awe of Chen Zhou deepened by another level.
“I can only vaguely sense its presence. As for its source, I cannot find it, nor do I know what it is,” Hong Xiu said honestly.
Chen Zhou raised his head to look in the direction pointed by the auspicious cloud. The direction where the Lou-Metal Dog had vanished and the direction indicated by the auspicious cloud overlapped perfectly.
A coincidence? Chen Zhou did not think so.
“Let's head that way.”
Plague Rat was puzzled. “Ah? We aren't going to chase those white-feathered birdmen?”
“Wei Tu Zhi and Bi Yue Wu only just fled. If we give chase now, we might still catch up to them. Milord, are we not going to intercept them?”
Chen Zhou glanced at him and, in a rare display of patience, explained.
“The Lou-Metal Dog has been rescued.”
“The other party went to such great lengths; it certainly isn't as simple as wanting to return him to the Myriad Ghost Array.”
“Although the array has mutated, the physical bodies of these Mansions have always been embedded within the formation eyes. Chasing the Lou-Metal Dog amounts to the same thing.”
There was another sentence Chen Zhou did not voice aloud.
The escape of Wei Tu Zhi and the others merely made the collapse of the formation eye at Shen Shui Yuan's location seem more meaningful.
But if the Lou-Metal Dog was the key node of this entire mutation, then the direction he had been taken was where the true target lay.
Moreover, with the guidance of the auspicious cloud, there was bound to be a new employee who had yet to be recruited!
The scale in Chen Zhou's heart steadied.
Hong Xiu waved her circular fan forward, and her fragrance condensed into a fine thread that pierced straight through the layers of gray fragmented spaces. The group set off.
Shen Liang walked at the rear of the group. His steps were still a bit unsteady, but he was no longer tottering like before.
Taotie walked beside him, his two thick arms ready to pin him down again at any moment.
As they walked, Taotie suddenly leaned in close to Hong Xiu and asked in a hushed voice, “Hey, old hag, let me ask you something. Did you use to slaughter entire cities back in the day?”
Hong Xiu was stepping along the fragrant thread. Without pausing her steps, she turned her head and rolled her eyes at him.
“Which one do you mean?”
Taotie asked with a look of pure, simple-minded confusion, “...What do you mean, which one?”
“I have killed countless people. It was just a single city. How should I know which one you are talking about?”
Taotie scratched the back of his head. “You know... that fragmented space we just passed through. The imperial palace one. It was full of flayed ghosts and a charred corpse.”
“Was that your doing?”
Hong Xiu's steps suddenly faltered. The circular fan in her fingers froze for a split second.
Taotie did not notice this detail and continued gesturing. “The layout of that palace looked quite grand, with gold-lacquered pillars. But the ghosts inside were all wearing the same style of clothing, like palace servants.”
“I was thinking, since you were the Courtesan Queen of the Southern Tang's Music Registry when you were alive, maybe that palace was—”
“I do not know,” Hong Xiu interrupted him, her tone sounding no different from usual. “I have never been to the Southern Tang's imperial palace. Those dead souls have nothing to do with me.”
“And I am not the only malicious ghost who enjoys flaying people. Stop pinning every dirty deed on me.”
After saying this, she quickened her pace, leaving Taotie behind.
Taotie let out a dumb "oh" and did not think much of it, trotting back to Shen Liang's side.
The surface of the circular fan in Hong Xiu's hand trembled slightly as her thoughts drifted far away.
She had indeed killed many people, so many that she could no longer remember them all.
But the description of that imperial palace vaguely overlapped with a rather unpleasant corner of her memories.
Could it really be such a coincidence?
But it did not matter anymore.
Those were all past events from her life, nothing worth remembering.
Hong Xiu's grip on the circular fan tightened for a brief moment before loosening, and she put on her usual nonchalant smile once again.
After passing through several layers of fragmented spaces, Chen Zhou continued forward under the guidance of the auspicious cloud. With every layer they crossed, the direction of the cloud shifted slightly.
The further they went, the thicker the scent of grief in the air became.
Shen Liang subconsciously tensed his body, but he realized that he was indeed no longer being affected.
He could merely smell the scent and feel the emotion, but he no longer felt the sensation of being consumed.
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