When crossing the seventh layer of fragmented space, Shen Liang stumbled, almost faceplanting into Taotie's back in front of him.
Taotie turned around and caught him. Smelling a burnt odor, he subconsciously looked back.
The layer of fragmented space they had just crossed was slowly closing. Its gray membrane edges looked as if they had been melted by something, curling and turning black, emitting a scorched scent identical to that of burning paper money.
“We're on the right path.”
Chen Zhou walked at the very front, his tone resolute.
The Breath of the River of the Underworld at his fingertips had been completely reeled back, and the death qi of the Myriad Herbs Life-Death Realm was still slowly replenishing, but channeling it was still somewhat sluggish.
He did not let it show on his face, but his steps were slightly steadier than before.
The further they went, the thicker the various emotions in the air became, but Shen Liang gritted his teeth and endured them all.
The emotional barrier Hong Xiu had placed on him was still intact, enough to block the pervasive grief within the array.
He couldn't help but glance at Hong Xiu. She was waving her circular fan, walking in the middle of the group. Her red dress fluttered, and her posture was relaxed, as if the intense, varied emotions here were nothing more than a gentle breeze brushing past her face.
But Shen Liang noticed that behind the circular fan, the corners of Hong Xiu's mouth were tight.
She wasn't as relaxed as she appeared.
After walking for about another two incense sticks' time, the gray mist ahead suddenly thinned out.
The view suddenly opened up.
Chen Zhou paused.
He had expected to see another illusory space, but what lay before him was a gray, desolate wilderness.
Countless dirt mounds of varying sizes and heights densely covered the wilderness ground. Crooked wooden plaques were stuck into some of the mounds, the writing on them worn down to nothing but a few scratches.
Even more mounds didn't even have wooden plaques; they were just raised handfuls of dirt with a stone placed on top as a makeshift marker.
It appeared to be a graveyard. The graves covered their entire field of vision, stretching from their feet into the depths of the gray mist, with no end in sight.
Chen Zhou remained silent for a moment. He squatted down and touched a dirt mound in front of him.
It felt hard—actual dirt. Pressing down with his fingertips, he could feel that the soil underneath was somewhat compacted. It wasn't an illusion, at least not this layer.
Plague Rat leaned in and poked a neighboring mound. His fingertip came away with a layer of grayish-brown dirt. He rubbed it, then held it under his nose to sniff it.
“Smells like dirt. Something was buried down there.”
Before his voice could fade, the graves ahead began to twitch one by one.
Grayish-black dirt cascaded down from the tops of the graves as pale beasts burst from the earth. Supporting themselves on all fours, they arched their backs, their cloudy pupils turning in unison toward Chen Zhou's group.
“Tsk.”
Plague Rat smacked his lips, already pressing both hands to the ground as dark green toxic mist seeped from his fingers. “These white-furred beasts again. Leave them to Lord Rat.”
“Don't rush to fight,” Chen Zhou said.
His gaze swept over the beasts.
They were a size smaller than the albinic beasts outside, with more slender limbs. A faint bump could be seen on their foreheads—so tiny that it was almost unnoticeable unless one looked closely.
Chen Zhou's brow furrowed.
“Horns,” he said. “They have horns on their foreheads.”
“What does that mean?” Plague Rat asked, puzzled.
“There are indeed horns. They look like antlers,” Shen Liang said after observing closely.
Chen Zhou's heart sank.
He recalled the auspicious beast herds in the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts. When he had first entered the graveyard, the herds had already vanished.
He had originally thought those auspicious beasts had all gone extinct.
But now, it seemed a portion of them had been transferred here.
“Descendants of the auspicious beasts from the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts,” Chen Zhou murmured. “Someone moved them here.”
These descendants of the auspicious beasts were supposed to live under the lunar protection of Dou Mu Xie. However, after the pollution arrived, Dou Mu Xie died, the Longevity Deer and Qianqiu Locust fled to his territory, and the remaining auspicious beasts vanished without a trace.
Chen Zhou had thought they were all dead at the time. Now, it appeared they had been collected by Bai Xing and moved into the depths of the Myriad Ghost Array.
The white beasts slowly closed in. Their pupils lacked the spiritual light expected of auspicious beasts, holding only a cloudy white and murky hostility.
“Hong Xiu,” Chen Zhou called out.
Hong Xiu stepped forward at his call, her bright red skirt brushing against the dirt of the graveyard as her circular fan spun in midair.
“Understood.”
She tossed the circular fan forward. Its surface unfurled once more, and the gold-threaded peonies peeled away into petals of crimson as a thick fragrance swept toward the white beasts.
Crimson threads condensed from the fragrance, wrapping around the limbs of the beasts.
Hong Xiu's fingertips trembled slightly as the power of extreme emotions flowed along the pathways of the net of emotion and into the beasts' bodies.
“As expected,” Hong Xiu's voice grew grave. “They also harbor a deep grief, even more intense than the dead souls outside.”
Her delicate brows furrowed slightly.
The net of emotion blanketed a large portion of the graveyard. Hundreds of beasts gradually quieted down under the wrap of the crimson threads, but Hong Xiu could feel their sorrowful emotions backlashing against her through the net. Bearing their respective weights and temperatures, they poured into her sea of consciousness.
She smelled rotting vegetation, heard the wind wailing through the empty valley, and felt the dampness surging from the freshly dug earth.
Xuandu had once warned her that those who toyed with emotions would ultimately be harmed by them; this was the greatest flaw of the Path of Extreme Emotions.
While she processed those emotions, she had to bear the backlash herself.
Within the distant gray mist, even more beasts poked their heads out from behind the graves.
White fur rippled under the gray light. Within her line of sight, there were already over a thousand, and more were continuously pouring out from deeper within.
Hong Xiu gritted her teeth, her hands not stopping for a second.
The circular fan spun between her fingers as the crimson fragrant threads stretched in all directions, stripping away the sorrowful emotions layer by layer.
One of the emotions was exceptionally heavy. Hong Xiu felt as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over her head, and a sharp, stabbing pain shot through the depths of her sea of consciousness.
She recalled the question Taotie had asked her earlier.
“Did you use to slaughter entire cities back in the day?”
That palace swallowed by raging flames, the many flayed ghosts, and a charred corpse.
Hong Xiu's fingertips paused for a split second.
But that slight stiffness vanished in an instant, and she expressionlessly quickened her movements.
She was a master of the path of emotions. Knowing the flaws of her cultivation method, how could she not have prepared countermeasures beforehand?
Hong Xiu directly sealed all of her own emotions. Now, she was nothing but a heartless killing machine.
“Hong Xiu!” Plague Rat's voice came from the side. “There are two behind you—”
Hong Xiu curled her lips. She didn't even turn around.
She shifted half a step to the left, and the beast's claws swiped empty air, brushing past her silk sash.
At the same time, she brought the fingers of her right hand together. Her fingertips suddenly grew three inches longer, and she slashed backward.
Slasht—
The sound was short and crisp.
The beast's forward momentum carried it, but its limbs had already been stripped away in midair.
Fur, muscle, and tendons peeled off its skeleton layer by layer, like a garment being torn apart.
By the time it hit the ground, nothing but a bare skeleton remained. A few residual strands of flesh still hung from its ribs, twitching twice before falling completely still.
Hong Xiu withdrew her hand and slowly stood up straight.
A few strands of white beast fur and traces of blood still clung to her fingertips, yet her nails remained as pristine and polished as new.
She casually raised her hand before her eyes, inspecting her deep red nails against the dim light of the graveyard, and gently blew away a stray piece of fuzz.
She understood perfectly well.
Those emotions were shadows of the past, fragments collected by the array that had fermented for a hundred thousand years, only to be dragged out by some power to be burned as firewood.
Grief was the fuel, emotions were the igniter, and all the dead souls trapped in the array were the logs fed into the fire.
And her own past events were merely one segment of it.
There was nothing to run from.
She had never been a good person. Whether as the Courtesan Queen of the Music Registry or one of the Seven Evils of the Xuandu Ghost Mansion, none of her identities were honorable.
But it didn't matter.
She wasn't a useless waste like Shen Liang.
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