Ning Ran was not surprised by his reaction at all.
Knowing his older brother had a simple way of thinking, Ning Ran rubbed his forehead and said gloomily, “You only need to remember two things. First, humans are good. Second, immortals are bad.”
Ning Yan only half understood. “Then are we still rebelling or not?”
Yin Wu Xue did not know whether to laugh or cry either. “Of course! The disgusting things that dog emperor has done to the common people are even more perverse than what the immortals have done.
“The mermaid troops have already set out. The plan is for all of them to hide in the moat, then coordinate with the Northern Pacification Army attacking from the front and strike from both sides. Ning Yan, don’t get scared when the time comes.”
“So… we’re joining forces with the oppressed mermaids to overthrow the tyrant and save the people from misery. And if possible, we’ll overthrow the immortals while we’re at it?”
Ning Yan unwrapped a white glutinous-rice cake wrapped in bamboo leaves and ate while speaking with sudden enlightenment. “Daoist Master, I understand!”
“…How long has he been like this?” Yin Wu Xue silently looked toward Ning Ran.
“About a year. Ning Yan became stupid because he was trying to save me. His brain was deprived of oxygen for three hours, he was forcibly brought back from the dead, and Chi Yan found a way to revive him.”
Ning Ran put another duck wing into his brother’s bowl, then turned his head and continued quietly, “Ever since he regained consciousness, his condition has been unstable. Sometimes he’s completely normal, and sometimes he suddenly becomes weirdly slow for no reason. Daoist Yin, do you have any way to fix it?”
Yin Wu Xue hesitated for a moment, then cautiously asked in a low voice, “Can I join the Future Research Institute?”
“If you can cure him, I’ll ask Chi Yan to give you a strong recommendation. We’re seriously short on people,” Ning Ran said solemnly.
“Deal! I’ll do my best. His condition resembles aftereffects from contamination. It’s pretty sinister, and the method Ms. Chi used to bring him back was pretty sinister too… I might need to consult some obscure ancient texts.”
Yin Wu Xue suppressed her excitement and answered seriously.
She pondered the matter by herself for a moment. Then, in the blink of an eye, she vanished from the dining table with a bang, like some kind of magic trick, startling Ning Yan so badly he nearly choked on his rice cake.
Song Zang had not spoken from beginning to end because he was secretly snatching duck meat for Yin Chen.
The Ning family cook had made only two drunken ducks in total, which meant there were not many pairs of legs and wings.
Back at Helin Manor, Song Zang had eaten at the same table as the Ning brothers almost every day, so he was extremely familiar with how quickly those two ate.
They were two enormous bottomless pits, starving ghosts reincarnated, and they even liked launching surprise contests to see who could eat faster… If your chopsticks were a little slow, there would be nothing left to grab.
So Song Zang concentrated completely on fighting for food for ten minutes. Yin Chen’s delicate porcelain bowl was already piled into a little mountain and could not hold another bite.
“Yin Chen, you don’t have an appetite?” Song Zang wondered inwardly when he noticed Yin Chen looked faintly distracted.
“…That wonderful son you picked is going crazy inside my stomach.”
Yin Chen instantly returned to normal. He pinched Song Zang’s cheek with a half-smile and mocked, “Calling wind and summoning rain, stirring up storms. Very lively.”
That little brat was a stone spirit that had gained consciousness. It did not understand anything about the true nature of immortals, so naturally it would protest.
Song Zang had no intention of doing any “prenatal education.” The stone spirit was capable of independent thought. With an extraordinary existence like Yin Chen carrying it around and showing it the world, sooner or later its horizons would broaden and it would gradually understand everything.
The most important thing right now was coaxing Yin Chen.
Song Zang scooted his chair closer, tilted his head, and kissed Yin Chen’s long, beautiful fingers. In a clingy voice he said, “Then I’ll give you a kiss, and you eat two more bites, okay?”
“Only a kiss on the mouth counts.” Yin Chen’s fingertips trembled slightly, but his position did not waver.
“There are other people watching. I’ll get embarrassed. When we go back to the room, I’ll kiss you slowly,” Song Zang lowered his voice even further and hinted, “The Ning residence has maids who help change the bathwater. It’s really convenient.”
“Could the little couple stop talking? We can hear you!” Ning Ran held his forehead in agony.
Yin Chen lifted his eyelids and glanced at him. His rebellious streak immediately flared. He turned sideways and bit hard at the corner of Song Zang’s lips, leaving a visibly reddened mark.
“I’m kissing him anyway.”
Yin Chen spoke at an unhurried pace, picked up a duck wing, and threw it back into Song Zang’s bowl.
Ning Ran: …
Having both kissed Song Zang and disgusted every single player at the table, Yin Chen was in an excellent mood.
After thinking happily for a moment, he moved directly to serious business without the slightest pause. “Ning Ran, I suggest you burn every corpse in the cold-storage cellar. Forget the issue with your concubine-mother for now. Ghosts are the weakest kind of monster.
“If your theory is correct, every one of those bodies could undergo corpse transformation at any moment and might even actively attack humans.”
Ning Yan chewed his glutinous rice. “So Boss, do you think our theory is actually right or not?”
Yin Chen nodded. “Free while alive, returned to Heaven after death… This instance doesn’t resemble a world inside another world so much as a half-enclosed sheep pen.”
“We’re the sheep, and the immortals are the shepherds?” Song Zang asked thoughtfully.
“Mm. For example, when herding sheep across a wide grassland, a shepherd can’t directly control where every sheep goes, but they can use sheepdogs to drive and restrain the flock.
“Once the sheep have been fattened, all they need to do is slaughter them. Whether they grill or stew the meat, or peel off the hides to make padded coats, everything depends on the shepherd’s whim. They can dispose of the sheep however they want.”
“Holy shit, I really understood it this time. That example is so vivid. Hiss…” Ning Yan’s face twisted. “Does the mermaid race count as livestock inside the pen too?”
“Mongolian gazelle meat is firm and springy, even tastier than mutton,” Yin Chen said meaningfully.
Since the conversation had reached the mermaids, Yin Chen brought up the ancient formation inside Cangmu Mountain.
When he had gone to place the luminous pearl, he had already sensed something strange. Judging from his experience, the formation was neither Buddhist nor Daoist magic. It resembled the work of immortals instead.
Designing a formation this precise and profound was already as difficult as reaching Heaven. It was almost impossible unless an immortal had done it.
And to bring out the formation’s complete power, someone had to cruelly split open the mermaid queen’s tail and forcibly remove that unique, world-famous pearl.
But the problem was that an individual mermaid’s combat strength already surpassed that of any ordinary monster.
One casual sweep of a tail could smash the stone spirit into soft, finely crushed stone porridge.
Before modified humans with extraordinarily powerful bodies appeared… even an accomplished Daoist skilled in magical arts, even a formidable martial artist capable of beating a Mountain Lord to death with a few punches, could not have killed a mermaid easily.
Never mind the uniquely precious luminous pearl belonging to a mermaid ruler. A heavenly treasure like that had never truly appeared among ordinary mortals. It sounded more like one of the strange tales young people enjoyed listening to.
No rational human would ever harbor even the slightest delusion of obtaining it.
Even if someone exhausted every scheme, survived countless brushes with death, and somehow obtained such a peerless treasure… who would be stupid enough to waste it merely suppressing a bunch of demons and monsters on one mountain beside an insignificant village?
A normal person would rather grind the pearl into powder and swallow it themselves than place it inside a mountain-spring formation and leave it there for a thousand years.
Only immortals, who lacked neither spiritual materials nor resources and would never take a mermaid they could crush casually seriously, might behave that way.
It was like a wealthy shepherd casually killing the fattest sheep, marinating all the choice offal for hotpot, soaking it in liquor, or simply throwing it away. However the shepherd disposed of it, the loss would never be significant.
When all the recent events were connected, Yin Chen’s example really did seem like the closest fit.
The immortals had not completely mastered this world, nor could they directly control human words and actions.
Their response was more like releasing several not-very-skilled sheepdogs to restrict where the fattened sheep were allowed to walk and graze.
It also resembled a preset defensive program that repeatedly attempted to “restore the proper order,” encircling and blocking every possible direction for humanity’s future.
Ning Ran understood perfectly. His expression tightened slightly and he stopped talking. He might have a poisonous tongue and a bad attitude in daily life, but he never created trouble when it truly mattered.
He lowered his head, quickly finished his meal, then found a fire striker and a large bucket of cooking oil and strode toward the cold-storage cellar.
“Yin Wu Xue, where are you? Come help with the exorcism!” he called twice while walking.
No one knew where Yin Wu Xue had run off to, and she still did not answer.
Song Zang thought about it and followed Ning Ran downstairs. After all, however things had turned out, the corpse they were about to burn technically belonged to one of his elders.
Yin Chen, the “pregnant husband,” was left where he was. His porcelain bowl still held plenty of beautiful slices of duck meat, all secretly stolen for him by Song Zang.
Yin Chen stared thoughtfully at the bowl. Only after a long while did he pick up a piece of thigh meat and slowly put it into his mouth.
Ning Yan hesitated, then failed to restrain his curiosity. “Boss, how come you’re the one who’s pregnant? Shouldn’t Song Song be pregnant?”
“Why should he be the one who’s pregnant?” Yin Chen asked in genuine confusion.
Ning Yan looked even more confused. “Because you’re the one on top…?”
Yin Chen’s chopsticks paused. He fell into thought.
When the mood struck him, he would occasionally sit on Song Zang’s waist of his own accord, so perhaps that technically counted as being the one on top?
But most of the time, on summer nights after the candles were extinguished, Yin Chen preferred lying on the cool, damp silk sheets and mindlessly following Song Zang’s arrangements.
Song Zang seemed much more practiced than he was.
Even if he started out inexperienced, he learned quickly. With soft silk and hair ribbons, he could even come up with a few interesting little variations.
Apparently, the one-use skill book Yin Wu Xue had given them had contributed enormously.
Yin Chen’s nighttime experiences had become increasingly colorful, and because of that he had even improved his opinion of her considerably.
If a massive amount of faith power ever overwhelmed her sanity and even turned her into some enormous, distorted bloated monster… he could save her life one extra time in the future to express his gratitude.
“I just like carrying babies. It improves the relationship.”
His thoughts were gradually drifting farther and farther away, so he casually tossed Ning Yan that answer.
Ning Yan’s eyes lit up. “Improves the relationship… So that’s how it works. If this trick really works, can a straight guy use it too? Do girls like men who can get pregnant? I’ll try it next time!”
Yin Chen was speechless for a moment, then held his forehead. “I don’t know about anyone else, but Lan Yu Heng would definitely like it. She doesn’t want to give birth herself.”
“Boss, teach me. How exactly did you get pregnant?”
“You can’t learn it.”
“Please!”
Meanwhile, inside the basement cold-storage cellar.
The servant who had been beaten to death was still mostly intact, but Grandfather Song had only half a face left. Beneath the decayed skin were two rows of loose gums and teeth. He looked genuinely hideous.
“Move the ice out first. Take it slowly.”
“Got it, Brother Ning.”
The two rolled up their sleeves, deliberately avoided the corpses lying in the corner, and began working while chatting.
“By the way, Brother Ning, what happened to the soldiers the county magistrate sent? They still haven’t woken up?”
“They haven’t woken up at all. It’s bizarre.” Ning Ran opened the oil container and ladled a scoop over the servant. “What exactly is that invisible force that makes people lose consciousness?”
Song Zang cautiously touched Grandfather Song’s eyelid and answered casually, “Judging only by the way it attacks, I think it resembles chi-mei the most… something combining the power of chi-mei with some kind of higher-dimensional life-form.”
Ning Ran’s movements paused. He suddenly raised a brow. “Wait. That actually makes sense. Is it possible that thing really is one type of chi-mei?
“For example, imagine dismantling an ordinary commercial drone, replacing its chips with hypermodern military-grade hardware, installing cutting-edge electromagnetic munitions, adding stealth coating on the outside, and giving it long-distance remote control.
“It keeps the basic functions it had when it left the factory. You can still use it to film scenery normally, but in combat it can unleash terrifying power that’s almost impossible to imagine or understand.”
Song Zang felt dizzy listening to him and tried to simplify the matter. “So you mean the only way to completely solve the problem of those people never waking up is to kill the immortals?”
“There’s another solution. Kill all of those people in advance, so the invisible force can’t control them and make them attack us instead.” The more Ning Ran spoke, the more eager he became, his killing intent rising.
“…Even the babies?”
Ning Ran handed him an oil ladle and raised a brow. “Equal treatment. I’ve killed hundreds of babies in this game. You really don’t want to know the details. That orphanage instance was absolutely disgusting.”
Song Zang nodded thoughtfully, neither supporting nor opposing him. He turned, took the ladle, and poured oil over Grandfather Song as evenly as possible.
He chatted with the corpse while pouring.
“Grandfather, where exactly did the ghost bamboo come from? Who told you ghost bamboo could kill people?”
“Great-Grandfather never told you about the curse, right? I can understand how angry you were after being betrayed, but… did you really want to kill every member of the Song family?”
“I’m curious about what happened while everyone was fleeing the disaster. How did you discover Song Wei Yi wasn’t your son? I suspect someone wanted the Song family line completely extinguished, every last person dead, so they used you.
“If you really did kill Grandmother back then, nod your head for me, okay?”
Creak, creak…
The next instant, the quiet grinding of stiff bones came from the corpse’s cervical spine.
Song Zang’s movements froze. His eyes widened in shock. His knees went weak and he collapsed onto the floor with a white face.
Ning Ran immediately put down the oil ladle. “What happened?”
Song Zang braced himself with his hands and shuffled backward. Tears filled his eyes as he said shakily, “Brother Ning, he moved just now. He nodded at me.”
Ning Ran said nothing. He immediately lit two fire strikers and threw them at the corpses without hesitation.
Flames roared upward. Soft, rotting flesh rapidly melted beneath the intense heat, dripping continuously in thick, viscous strands.
Grandfather Song burned until almost nothing remained but his skeleton, yet he still staggered to his feet. Scraps of rotten flesh clung to his face, somehow radiating deranged resentment. Dragging his heavy legs, he lurched toward the two of them.
Ning Ran grabbed Song Zang by the collar and yanked him backward, retreating quickly and cautiously.
Fortunately, Song Zang had been thorough while pouring the oil. Before long, the flames burned all the flesh from Grandfather Song’s face into ash.
At that exact moment, a slender, illusory figure quietly appeared reflected inside the fire. Her long hair hung loose, and she held an embroidered handkerchief. It was a female ghost.
Her figure swayed in time with the flames. She wept and lamented, shaking her head from side to side, yet somehow restrained the corpse’s speed whenever it tried to approach again.
“Concubine-Mother, is that you?” Ning Ran’s eyes widened.
The woman’s crying became even more sorrowful, steeped in thick hatred and bloody tears.
Ning Ran thought they might as well forget waiting until the Ghost Festival. He hurriedly shouted, “Mother, who wronged you? Who killed you? Was it Imperial Preceptor Xu or that dog emperor? Your son failed to fulfill his filial duty while you were alive, and to this day I carry immeasurable regret!
“Mother, you only need to give me a name. Your son will exhaust every ounce of his strength to avenge you!”
The instant he finished, the crying stopped.
Within the wavering firelight, an extraordinarily hideous and terrifying human face gradually emerged.
From the bone structure, it was barely possible to tell the face belonged to a man, but he had no skin.
The red-and-white muscle fibers were severely congested. His exposed, blood-red gums had begun to rot. Squirming gu insects poked feelers from his eye sockets and crawled through the yellow-white layer of fat.
The female ghost explained nothing. She covered her mouth and wept bitterly for a long while, her gaze never leaving Ning Ran. Only after studying him carefully from head to toe did she slowly disappear into the depths of the flames.
The fire grew even stronger, nearly swallowing the entire cold-storage cellar. Thick smoke rolled through the room, enough to burn any living thing to ash.
Ning Ran looked thoughtful. “That’s way too disgusting. Someone deliberately mutilated his face that badly. This person should be inside the imperial palace. He might be my father, or he might be the person who killed my mother… It’s hard to say.”
Only by fighting their way into the imperial city could they discover the truth.
He was thinking while Song Zang coughed until tears streamed down his face. “Brother Ning, can we leave first? It’s… cough… way too smoky in here.”
“Right, I almost forgot you were still here.” Ning Ran rubbed his nose in embarrassment. “You go upstairs first. I still need to set up fire precautions.”
Song Zang immediately bolted, seizing the opportunity to go find Yin Chen while crying and demand comfort.
Yin Chen had not sensed any danger at all. Thoroughly confused, he pulled Song Zang into his arms, only to be dragged back to the guest room and straight toward the bed.
Song Zang looked pitiful as tears ran down his face. His soft lips were bitten pale with fear. He sniffled quietly while undressing Yin Chen.
“…Why are you crying?” Yin Chen hurriedly pulled the hairpin from his hair and asked in complete bewilderment.
“I’m scared.”
Song Zang answered softly through suppressed sobs, though his hands were not gentle at all.
Yin Chen’s breathing grew heavier. Unable to resist this attitude, he pressed his lips together, turned his head aside, and silently gave up resisting.
Black hair spilled and layered downward. Scalding tears fell against the side of his face, then slid in a chain into the hollow of his neck. Song Zang’s canine teeth pressed and worried at his moving throat, and the light trembling in Yin Chen’s eyes shattered in an instant.
“…Song Zang. You’re doing this on purpose.”
“I’m not.”
To shut him up, Song Zang immediately kissed his warm lips. Their breaths tangled as he rubbed against him and continued coaxing in a clingy voice. “I’m already crying. Comfort me.”
＊
Yin Chen had never imagined comforting someone could be this exhausting.
When Song Zang kissed him with tears in his dark eyes, the act seemed to possess some kind of magic, leaving Yin Chen unable to firmly refuse any request.
The consequence of falling into the weaker position was being thoroughly bullied and taken advantage of.
The sensation of pleasure climbing to its peak was almost indistinguishable from pain. And this time, his waist was sore.
Really sore.
Yin Chen raised a hand with a dark expression and pinched Song Zang hard at the waist.
Song Zang did not resist. Completely satisfied, he lay lazily across the bed and allowed Yin Chen to do whatever he wanted.
After touching, hugging, and clinging to each other for a while, the desire that had only just died down quickly ignited again… and the two happily fooled around for most of the day.
Yin Chen had even deliberately let half of the little stone spirit out and told Xiu Zhu to take both children into town to eat, drink, and play however they liked.
Xiu Zhu stood on the busy street with the Zhang family baby in one arm and the half-grown boy held by the other hand, sinking into deep thought.
He could not understand where this little stone wild child had possibly come from.
Driven by selfish curiosity, Xiu Zhu had tried several indirect ways of asking. Every time, the little stone declared confidently, “My father is Song Zang, and my mother is Song Zang’s wife!”
Forced to accept reality, Xiu Zhu was profoundly shaken.
…Could it be that the Eldest Princess had actually given birth long ago and had already carried on an illicit affair with this country bumpkin without a matchmaker or marriage? No wonder she had hidden herself in Tian Family Village. Had she actually gone there because she wanted to experience the simple life of an ordinary farming couple?!
Xiu Zhu’s heart turned sour and bitter. He became intensely anxious, an indescribable fire of rage and jealousy burning through his mind until even his memories began developing intermittent blanks.
Four hours later, he stood in front of the Ning residence holding two perfectly unharmed children, yet had absolutely no idea how he had returned.
That wild child actually glared fiercely at him, turned around, and ran.
The little stone transformed back into half a stone, became a streak of light, and shot into Yin Chen’s abdomen. It immediately began muttering indignantly and complaining to its “mother.”
Only after listening for a long time did Yin Chen finally understand. Xiu Zhu actually knew how to train carrier pigeons too.
He had borrowed paper and a brush from a bookshop to write a letter accusing the Eldest Princess of having an illicit affair with a wild man, begged the Son of Heaven to punish her, then sent the letter toward the capital by carrier pigeon.
“Could Xiu Zhu be the emperor’s man?”
“He shouldn’t be. He was born into the princess’s household, he has feelings for me, and he’s very loyal. He has never been to the capital before,” Yin Chen said thoughtfully.
“…Wait. You know Xiu Zhu likes you?” Song Zang abruptly sat up. A thread of coldness rose from the depths of his obsidian-dark eyes.
Yin Chen froze slightly, not understanding why Song Zang cared so much.
Plenty of people inside the Infinite Game liked Yin Chen, and there were even more insane players. NPCs were the category least worth worrying about.
There had once been a crazy male player who fell in love with him and directly sacrificed his soul to an evil god inside an instance, all so he could sign some twisted, sinister contract and fuck Yin Chen.
…Then Yin Chen killed him with one slash. A perfect ending.
“It’s part of the role setting,” Yin Chen tried to explain in confusion. “Whoever plays the Eldest Princess, he likes that person.”
Song Zang’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Then why were you so unhappy when Medisa liked me?”
Yin Chen was stumped.
He lowered his eyes and thought with difficulty for a moment before cautiously offering an answer. “Because I can control myself, but I can’t control you.
“Because I understand my own desires perfectly well… but I don’t know what you might want.”
The emotion hidden inside those two sentences carried a faint trace of insecurity, something that hardly resembled a feeling Yin Chen would ever reveal.
But Song Zang was extremely satisfied.
Learning that Yin Chen could feel insecure too somehow made Song Zang feel much more secure.
“You only want me, right?” Song Zang curved his lips. “Hurry up and admit it, or I’ll cry for you.”
Yin Chen’s expression stiffened. He was genuinely a little afraid Song Zang would keep crying and neither of them would sleep tonight. He answered without the slightest hesitation, “Mm. I only want you.”
Song Zang became even more pleased. He kissed Yin Chen’s cheek as a reward and casually began whispering persuasive pillow talk. “Tomorrow we officially attack the city. We can’t ignore anyone suspicious.
“Xiu Zhu might be under someone’s control, like with the Myriad Flowers Gu. What do you think?”
Yin Chen glanced at him. “Fine. We’ll cut open his stomach right now and look for insects. Satisfied?”
“Yin Chen, you’re wonderful~”
Three minutes later.
Yin Chen knocked Xiu Zhu unconscious with the back of his knife, then slit a bloody line straight down along his spine.
“Stone, take a look.”
After speaking, Yin Chen paused for several seconds. Then he raised the dagger again, drove the point hard into the left side of Xiu Zhu’s lumbar spine, and flicked upward.
An enormously fat milky-white maggot emerged impaled on the dagger.
It was about as wide as a human thumb. Its exterior was soft and its body extraordinarily long. Yin Chen pulled for nearly ten full seconds before the entire maggot finally came free from Xiu Zhu’s body.
“It coils around the spine and spirals all the way up toward the cervical vertebrae. A very sinister method of planting gu.” Yin Chen frowned.
Song Zang already had the iron pot ready and looked eager. “That’s a lot of meat. Hurry and fry it so we can eat it. It’ll definitely increase Resistance.”
“…Song Zang, sometimes you really are perverted.”
Yin Chen tapped the knife handle and casually tossed the maggot into the pot as he spoke gloomily.
“Am I? Maybe we’ve kissed so many times I absorbed your share of the perversity.” Song Zang smiled and put the lid on the pot without the slightest shame.
【You consumed True Dragon Gu · Adult. Resistance +30.】
Obviously, the gu insect inside Xiu Zhu had already existed for many years, used to monitor the Eldest Princess’s words and actions, report information, and secretly transmit private matters.
Emperor Yongjia had never trusted his daughter from the very beginning.
Or rather, he had never cared about any of his biological children, male or female. All he wanted was a stable imperial throne.
“What could Xiu Zhu possibly know? No wonder they could never find clues about the posthumous prince.” Song Zang laughed. “With Emperor Yongjia’s personality, learning that you got pregnant and had a child out in the countryside might actually make him like you more.”
“Kill him?” Yin Chen weighed the dagger in his hand.
“Forget it. We still need him to help watch the children. Making him stand there and watch us love each other with his own eyes is the cruelest punishment.”
“…Song Zang, you really are perverted.”
＊
On the day of the Ghost Festival, the streets were already bustling early in the morning.
Grand, passionate ancestral processions and drum performances intended to intimidate ghosts and monsters began all across the Lin Dynasty.
Emperor Yongjia valued ceremony, so naturally the imperial capital was the liveliest and noisiest place of all.
Tall, powerfully built men went bare-chested, their faces painted in brilliant colors as they dressed as mortal heroes such as Guan Yu and Zhong Kui. They carried clubs and weapons, every one of them imposing.
They advanced in formation, roaring, singing, and dancing through the cheering crowds.
Gradually, they approached the Forbidden City.
Every sharp blade and spear had been forged from refined iron. Every sturdy club had been ritually blessed by a Daoist priest.
No one realized they were mermaid soldiers.