Someone had died—someone extraordinarily important to Phoenix Village. Yet the matter was far from over.
Liu Yang Yang knelt on one knee, carrying both the coffin and the old man’s charred corpse. His entire body trembled from emotional collapse, yet he still refused to lower the coffin.
A coffin that had not yet been carried into its grave absolutely could not touch the ground. Otherwise, the dead person inside would be swarmed by wandering evil ghosts along the Yellow Springs Road, their marrow torn apart and their soul devoured, leaving them unable to reincarnate for all eternity.
And at this moment, the coffin held not only Xu Qian’s remains, but part of Zhang Mei Jiang’s bones as well.
Liu Yang Yang would never allow his Sister Mei Jiang to suffer another calamity, and Granny A-Shu made no attempt to stop his persistence.
But the rain fell harder and harder, as though determined to wash away every trace of blood and flame from the coffin. Everyone stared blankly at the horrific scene, standing helplessly in the rain with almost no one understanding why Chen Li Chi had chosen to die at this exact moment.
Even Liu Bai Long had not been told the entire plan. She had been specifically warned never to approach the coffin, and she could not go near her own lifeless husband either, now reduced to nothing more than an empty shell.
But she absolutely could not fall apart. All she could do was shout from a distance, “Granny! What do we do?!”
Granny A-Shu’s face showed neither joy nor grief. She dropped the brazier and answered with a single word. “Wait!”
“Wait for what?!”
She did not answer and merely stood there in silence. Without eyeballs, no one could even tell where she was looking.
Qin Shu suddenly remembered something and murmured, “At noon, when the phoenix circles overhead, make the divine flame resonate with my yang energy and lend it strength… Chen Li Chi said that before. Does that mean the phoenix is about to hatch? Zhaozhao, how long until noon?!”
Pei Zhao glanced up at the sun and then back at him. “Five, four, three, two…”
“One.”
Crack—!
The instant the countdown ended, a crisp sound came from the surface of the coffin, like an eggshell breaking.
The soft milky shell had been burned hot and hard, but its texture had also become more brittle. As a result, the unknown writhing creatures hidden inside finally gained an opportunity to break through.
The first thing to crawl from the crack made everyone except Qin Shu and Pei Zhao suck in a sharp breath, unable to believe their eyes.
It was a fat, swollen white maggot with a soft body nearly as thick as Liu Yang Yang’s forearm.
It wriggled down the coffin, leaving behind a trail of viscous, foul-smelling fluid and making a slick squelch, squelch sound that set people’s teeth on edge.
Its target was unmistakable. It climbed straight onto Liu Yang Yang’s back, flicked its thick tail, and used the momentum to coil rapidly around his neck before tightening abruptly. Its movements were far faster and more agile than anyone had expected.
Because the white maggot was so enormous, Qin Shu could even clearly see the most threatening structure on its face—a retractable bone hook serving as a mouthpart, its sharp tip curving slightly downward beneath a coating of unidentified slime.
The hook gleamed with cold light, sharp enough to pierce almost anyone’s flesh and suck out nourishment.
That naturally included Liu Yang Yang’s carotid artery. Inside Phoenix Village, he would not die from blood loss because his bodily functions were suspended in that strange paused state, but that did not mean he could tolerate something this disgusting.
A perfectly respectable corpse herder had just become the first meal of a newly hatched maggot. Worse still, because he was carrying the “eggshell,” he could not retaliate and had to remain in place while those filthy hooks stabbed into his flesh. Anyone would break down under those circumstances.
And so he did. Still kneeling on one knee, he collapsed inward without making a sound. The restraint, disgust, and unease churning in his eyes abruptly lost all brightness and became a dense, shadowed black.
That brief emotional shift took place in the instant after the creature hatched. The second hand moved forward once—just once.
Only Qin Shu, concentrating intensely, seemed able to see Liu Yang Yang’s collapse clearly. The moment was so brief that it seemed only he could see it.
Qin Shu had no time to react at all, because in the very next instant, an enormous piece of the “eggshell” was blasted outward by a tremendous force from within.
It flew high and far, crashing through the forest and continuing another several dozen meters before finally stopping. Only Chen Li Chi’s charred corpse remained attached to the shell, still bound by the threads and dangling from what remained.
Immediately afterward, an enormous blood-red beak thrust from the opening, seized the white maggot, lifted it high, and swallowed the evil creature in a single motion without even needing to chew and without suffering the slightest consequence.
An immense, almost unbelievable wave of heat erupted outward from it, creating a suffocating sensation as though everyone’s airways had been blocked by flame. Normally, Liu Yang Yang would already have been yelling about how hot it was, yet now he continued maintaining that eerie silence.
No one but Qin Shu paid him any attention, because everyone else was crying, tears pouring uncontrollably as they witnessed the miracle before them.
“A phoenix… It’s a phoenix!”
“Ancestor Long E came back from the underworld to find us! Grand Shaman Chen can still be saved!”
The two muscular men responsible for beating the drums hurriedly tore off their masks, revealing elderly, deeply wrinkled faces. Tears streamed uncontrollably from their eyes as they picked up the drumsticks again and began striking the drums with all their strength, this time in a far more celebratory rhythm.
It truly was a phoenix, a divine bird reborn from flame in the midst of catastrophe.
It had the head of a rooster, the jaw of a swallow, the neck of a serpent, and the back of a tortoise. Its long, magnificent tail feathers shimmered in five brilliant colors, embodying the Five Phases. Ancient, mysterious character-like markings appeared across different parts of its body—“virtue, harmony, righteousness, faith, benevolence”—each carrying a strange and wondrous meaning as they seemed to flow through its beautiful plumage.
Although it had only just been born and was still a juvenile, the divine bird’s eyes were already enormous and perfectly round, almost frightening in size, like the eyes of colossal beast-shaped bronzes handed down from ancient China. They occupied nearly two-thirds of its face, blazing like fire as though capable of staring straight through every illusion and evil thing.
Granny A-Shu was crying as well, tears gathering within her empty sockets. For once, she showed something resembling timid reverence. Her hands trembled as she reached carefully forward and softly touched the phoenix’s wings, which she would never be able to see, murmuring, “When the divine bird appears, all beneath heaven shall know peace…”
“All beneath heaven shall know peace!”
“All beneath heaven shall know peace!”
Everyone else visibly relaxed, but Qin Shu’s unease only intensified.
Liu Yang Yang showed no expression whatsoever. Liu Bai Long’s posture was strange, her body half-bent while both hands covered her face tightly. The threads attached to Chen Li Chi’s corpse had not only survived the divine flame but had begun quietly winding around the phoenix’s tail feathers, slowly spreading outward in every direction like living things.
Qin Shu was just about to warn Granny A-Shu to be careful when his gaze returned to her. His expression changed violently, and without the slightest hesitation he lunged toward the center of the ceremony. “…Granny! Back up, back up, back up!”
His voice reached her faster than his body. Granny A-Shu heard Qin Shu’s urgent shout, yet showed no intention of moving aside.
With a wet schk, the blood-red beak pierced straight through her chest like a blade. The blood that poured from the wound evaporated beneath the high temperature before it could even reach the ground.
The newborn phoenix had turned its head and stabbed directly through Granny A-Shu’s heart.
Lots of bad things! Move away!
While everyone stood stunned, Yuanbao suddenly began shouting inside Qin Shu’s head. Qin Shu, sprinting at full speed, completely ignored the two warnings.
As he ran, he grabbed his coat and tore it apart with a violent rrrip, ripping it into several long strips in only a few motions. The pockets tore open along with it, sending the eyeball and Coalball tumbling onto the ground, where they rolled several times.
Qin Shu caught Granny A-Shu as she fell backward and rapidly wrapped the strips around her bleeding body, winding them around her again and again and pulling tight to compress the terrifying wound, even though the effort might be completely futile. After all, the hole the phoenix had pecked through her chest was larger than Qin Shu’s fist. There was flesh missing entirely…
But when he finished tying the cloth, Qin Shu froze in astonishment.
The phoenix had brought its blood-red beak close to him and tapped him on the head. Then it opened its beak several inches, releasing a wave of heat like molten lava.
It wanted Qin Shu to look at the object held in its mouth—the thing it had just torn from Granny A-Shu’s chest.
A huge, wet eyeball with two pupils.
It was black and red, carrying an extremely ominous, unnatural aura. Faint blood vessels densely covered the white of the eye, and it was even beating rhythmically with a steady thump, thump.
“…What is that? That… That can’t be Granny A-Shu’s heart, can it?” Qin Shu could hardly describe the unease flooding through him.
Functionally speaking, the thing did seem somewhat like a heart. Yet at the same time, it was profoundly wrong, grotesquely unnatural, and unmistakably evil.
When Qin Shu spoke, the bird’s beak—easily as long as his arm—moved even closer and pressed beside his face so he could inspect the object properly. An indescribable stench surrounded its mouth, and it was obvious the smell came from the eyeball.
An uncontrollable chill of disgust rose through Qin Shu. The more closely he looked, the stronger his instinctive urge to vomit became. Then he abruptly remembered Pei Zhao’s assessment when they left Granny A-Shu’s house the day before.
That inner eye of hers is far stronger than Chen Li Chi’s. They aren’t even on the same level.
So it was both a heart and an inner eye.
That meant Granny A-Shu had not only been able to glimpse part of Pei Zhao’s true nature, but had also used this thing to sustain the bodily functions of an elderly woman, allowing her to remain agile and healthy even past a hundred years old. It was absolutely no ordinary object—and no ordinary “orthodox art,” either.
“What do you want me to do?”
Qin Shu’s entire body tensed as he tentatively placed a hand along the edge of the phoenix’s beak. Even through his gloves, the scorching heat instantly reddened his fingertips, but his expression did not change as he stared into the enormous avian eyes. “Do you want me to help you… smash this thing until the yolk breaks?”
Zu! Zu! Qiang—!
That was the phoenix’s cry. It was strange, resembling a short, slightly unpracticed note from an ancient xiao flute. Despite sounding right beside his ear, it was not shrill.
Qin Shu thought he had probably understood. Without hesitation, he gripped the lower edge of the phoenix’s beak with one hand and raised the other high, turning his suppressed urge to vomit into force. His back tensed so hard that his muscles began aching.
Splurch!
One punch was enough. The swollen black-and-red eyeball shattered against his knuckles, spraying fluid everywhere as the eerie double pupil burst apart. The fragments were hurled backward by the hurricane-like force, raining directly into the phoenix’s throat.
The fiery divine bird lifted its head and swallowed everything with an easy gulp, then exhaled a breath of foul air toward the sky.
“…Ugh, cough… How can you eat something that smells that bad…” Qin Shu finally relaxed and almost genuinely threw up. His hand felt coated in slime and chunks of flesh, somehow several times more disgusting than an ordinary corpse.
Having eaten its fill, the divine bird no longer bothered with him and began trying to move the wing still stuck in the threads. Qin Shu covered his nose and stepped back, intending to carry Granny A-Shu away, only to suddenly “meet her gaze.”
Granny A-Shu was not dead.
She lifted her soft, sagging eyelids and turned her head slightly, aiming those hollow, sunken sockets directly at Qin Shu.
Pitch-black, bottomless… yet glowing with an eerie, unnatural light.
See Through.
Qin Shu stared straight into her eye sockets and looked deep inside without hesitation, immediately following the foreign light hidden beneath the darkness.
His gaze seemed to fall continuously along the path of that light, bringing a faint sensation of weightlessness. When he finally reached the depths, Qin Shu discovered that he was looking into an unknown space. The source of the strange light was easy to recognize now, because it had become an old acquaintance.
Countless white threads.
Even “countless” felt insufficient. Innumerable shining white filaments were packed and layered densely over one another until their accumulation distorted and transformed them into a heavy, oppressive darkness, as though even the unknown space itself were on the verge of collapse.
At the very center of that dark glow hung a snow-white cocoon, suspended silently in midair by several unusually thick threads.
Two of those threads ran directly into Granny A-Shu’s eyes, rooting themselves inside the flesh of her sockets.
Those fine roots, which had taken hold at some unknown time, had continued growing until this very moment, only stopping once the phoenix tore away her “inner eye.”
Before that, the threads had already grown and spread wantonly along the lines of her flesh and muscles, expanding outward until they parasitized her entire head. They had even wrapped themselves around the major arteries throughout her body…
They resembled parasites ravenously sucking nourishment from her flesh.
Qin Shu’s breathing tightened. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, but when he withdrew from the intense state of concentration, he abruptly realized that Granny A-Shu had deliberately allowed him to see it.
“These threads look almost exactly like Chen Li Chi’s Karmic Threads. They’re too similar.”
Qin Shu slowly exhaled, trying not to let anything abnormal show on his face. He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Don’t tell me… both of you were…”
Granny A-Shu nodded with enormous difficulty.
Her hand rested against Qin Shu’s shoulder, thick veins bulging grotesquely beneath the dry, withered skin of an old woman. She seemed to expend tremendous strength just to push him lightly. Unable to resist directly and apparently struggling even to speak, she could only use the silent motion to warn him and urge him to let her go.
“Careful,” she whispered through trembling lips. With half her lungs destroyed, only a hoarse breath came out. “…Behind you.”
Before the words had fully left her mouth, Qin Shu felt a serpentine chill crawl suddenly across the back of his neck.
The cold aura was sharp as a blade. It somehow cut easily through the tremendous heat surrounding the phoenix and slashed straight toward one side of Qin Shu’s neck.
Qin Shu did not immediately turn around.
For the first time, the jadeite bracelet around his wrist truly reacted to danger. Red light erupted from it, instantly wrapping Qin Shu in a translucent red-and-gold barrier so mysterious that he could faintly hear distant Buddhist chanting.
Qin Shu immediately crouched with Granny A-Shu in his arms, dodging the first unknown attack in an extremely undignified posture, while shouting without hesitation, “Yuanbao, hit him! Beat him awake!”
Yuanbao shot out from beneath the bracelet.
The tiny blood-red centipede was extraordinarily agile, moving through the air like a guided missile. Its damaged tail limbs whipped up a miniature hurricane, startling even the phoenix still struggling with the threads and making it throw back its head with a sharp cry.
Liu Yang Yang was holding a small knife, an exquisitely crafted ornamental dagger.
Of course, the dagger was now completely ruined. Yuanbao, thoroughly offended, had bitten it into a pitted, curled mess. Liu Yang Yang himself had been bitten until blood ran down his face and head as well… and with death by venom only one final step away, the weapon he had hidden inside his clothes finally fell to the ground with a clang.
“Awake yet, Liu Yang Yang?” Qin Shu removed his bracelet and slipped it onto Granny A-Shu’s wrist, then finally stood and turned toward him with a blank expression.
“…”
Liu Yang Yang did not answer and simply stared back just as expressionlessly. Snow-white threads had wound around him in layer after layer, forcing Chen Li Chi’s corpse and the newborn divine bird alike to remain strapped tightly onto Liu Yang Yang’s back like swaddled infants, turning the entire arrangement into a grotesque multi-legged monster with three heads and two wings.
The person carrying all that weight was in terrible condition. Liu Yang Yang’s lips had somehow turned a pale shade of purple, making him look close to death.
His eyes remained dark and empty, and together with the small wounds Yuanbao had torn into the corners of his eyes and cheeks, where thick blood had turned dark red and nearly black under the venom, he looked even more sinister than before.
“You actually look smarter like this. Kind of handsome too.”
Qin Shu could not resist offering the sincere compliment. Compliment or not, however, the bastard had actually tried to attack him with a knife, so a beating was still necessary.
Their coordination required no words. Yuanbao silently wrapped several body segments around Liu Yang Yang’s neck and jerked him backward. Qin Shu immediately lunged forward and drove his fist into Liu Yang Yang’s chest once, twice… Strange pfft, pfft noises came from the flattened rib cage, yet Liu Yang Yang showed no sign of pain.
Since there was no reaction, Qin Shu simply punched him several more times.
Qin Shu breathed heavily but did not stop moving. From the corner of his eye, he could see the Phoenix Village residents reacting with shock, confusion, and even protective anger. He could also hear Liu Bai Long struggling to keep her voice steady as she fought back sobs and ordered people to avoid Qin Shu, first carry Granny A-Shu somewhere safe, then find a way to rescue Brother Liu…
But Qin Shu was neither venting his anger impulsively nor trying to kill anyone.
He was carrying out a secret plan—the one he and Liu Yang Yang had discussed the previous night involving the corpse-liberation secret art.
If the false god that had granted Liu Yang Yang the art intended to exploit his identity as a Corpse-Liberated Immortal, then the joint burial ceremony was the perfect opportunity for it to act. Rather than sit and wait, Liu Yang Yang had decided to seize control of the timing himself.
The problem was that becoming a Corpse-Liberated Immortal required abandoning the physical body and entering a near-death state in which the soul separated from the flesh. That was extremely dangerous.
The safest method for Liu Yang Yang was therefore to have a trustworthy friend do it personally—to use a controlled method to torment him until he was barely alive, leaving only a faint breath without actually killing him.
And how exactly were they supposed to accomplish that?
Yuanbao’s deadly venom, combined with Qin Shu’s fists.
Nobody knew that Qin Shu could personally “punch” the little centipede’s poison out of someone else’s body. ……Yes. He literally punched it out with his fists, like some absurdly violent trick for physical detoxification.
The terrifying venom delivered by a demigod’s child was a weapon designed to kill, which meant it could naturally be classified as something evil and impure.
And Qin Shu’s fists were especially good at dispersing things like that.
Of course, the only people Qin Shu was currently confident he could completely detoxify were those poisoned by Yuanbao. If they were bitten by some ordinary venomous centipede that had naturally grown in the wild… the same method might not necessarily work.
He needed to beat Liu Yang Yang half to death without actually killing him, and that threshold was extremely difficult to control. Qin Shu had originally intended to let Yuanbao and Pei Zhao help him monitor the process, but unexpectedly, the newborn phoenix perched on Liu Yang Yang’s back reacted first.
Screech! Screech!
With two short warning cries, the divine bird finally made a major move.
It raised its head high and abruptly exerted its strength as the surrounding flames surged hotter, violently tearing half of one trapped wing free from the threads. Only half, but the visual effect was magnificent.
The severed threads rapidly withered and lost their glow. Like willow fluff killed by drought, they drifted down into the phoenix’s scorching field of distorted air and became fuel for its flames.
The wave of heat, wind, and fire unleashed by that burst of power formed an incredibly violent crimson vortex that actually swept Qin Shu off his feet and sent him flying.
He rose high, was thrown far backward, slammed heavily down, and rolled several times before finally stopping.
“…Hiss.”
Qin Shu was not seriously injured. He had used the rolling motion to disperse the impact, and after touching the broken skin and blood on his palm, he did not complain of pain. Instead, he drew in a low, cold breath.
Right where he had been standing, the ground had split open.
More accurately, an enormous fissure had appeared—a bottomless chasm, a lightless abyss. It stretched from the entrance of the cave all the way toward the two drums, and its width alone was roughly two meters.
A phoenix really is a phoenix. It’s surprisingly kind, Qin Shu thought. Without that rough gust of wind blowing him away, he might have fallen directly into the abyss before having any chance to react.
Qin Shu turned to look at Pei Zhao and caught sight of his slightly furrowed brows. The silent boy was staring intensely at the fissure, his beautiful amber-gold eyes showing open displeasure and, unusually, even a trace of impatience.
Cute.
But why was none of that attention directed at him? Qin Shu immediately whispered, “Zhaozhao, I’m bleeding.”
“I know. I’ll clean it later. Focus.”
Pei Zhao heard his whisper and replied in an equally soft voice.
“I know, I know. I’m very focused.” Qin Shu gave him an aggrieved look, then obediently turned back toward the fissure.
For some reason, he did not think the truly dangerous thing was beneath that terrifying-looking abyss.
It was not arrogance or overconfidence. He simply felt a strange sense of familiarity, like encountering an old friend.
A familiar yet unfamiliar aura was slowly rising from the crack—that cold, damp, resentful, unsettled smell of genuinely pure ghostly energy. It clashed with the phoenix’s scorching field, each force eroding the other’s territory while neither could gain the upper hand.
The ghostly aura was extraordinarily pure. It was powerful, certainly, but it did not awaken any fear in Qin Shu. If anything, it inexplicably gave him the feeling of coming home.
Even stranger, Liu Yang Yang’s feet were no longer touching the ground.
His back had slumped forward, both arms hanging limply between his legs and his head bowed, yet somehow he still carried the phoenix curiously turning its head from side to side, the broken coffin, and the charred corpse. All of them floated silently in midair together.
Corpse herders could not fly.
They might refine powerful corpses capable of flight, but the corpse herders themselves normally possessed no such ability.
The thing suspended in midair was the physical shell abandoned by an underworld ruler.
Then Qin Shu heard a series of perfectly synchronized footsteps—stiff, mechanical, and monotonous—echoing eerily from below.
Just as expected, the underworld soldiers had arrived.