Lu Yu thought this man was being completely unreasonable. “I only came up while the ghost gate was open to find Ji Luo. Why would I seize Yue Jingming?!”
“My wife is the most handsome man under Heaven, powerful in magic and kindhearted besides. Who knows what a vicious evil ghost like you might want with him!” Xiao Chunhe snarled. “He’s so harmless and delicate, and he even wanted to help the two of you.”
Lu Yu stared at him in disbelief. “Are you sick in the head? He can fight like that and you call him harmless and delicate? If anyone is truly harmless, delicate, and the most beautiful under Heaven, it should be Ji Luo—where is Ji Luo?!”
Lu Yu hurriedly turned his head, only to see Ji Chen and an evil ghost at the doorway. Ji Luo had long since vanished. Panic threw off his rhythm in the fight. Xiao Chunhe seized the opening, snapped his fan, and sent the charm-incense-laced phantom stone and poison needles straight at Lu Yu. The needles struck his major acupoints, instantly plunging his consciousness into an illusion.
“Heh.” Xiao Chunhe gave a cold laugh and abruptly vanished from where he stood.
Ji Luo had just reached the inn entrance when he heard something cut through the air behind him. He turned in alarm and saw Lu Yu lunging toward him with a twisted expression. He stumbled, and in the next instant someone had seized him hard by the throat. Ji Luo looked back in shock, only to see a beautiful yet vicious face.
The corner of Xiao Chunhe’s mouth curved. He held Ji Luo by the neck in front of himself like a shield and looked sidelong at Lu Yu. “If you want him dead, go ahead and make your move.”
Lu Yu’s face darkened. “If he dies, that suits me just fine.”
“Really?” Xiao Chunhe’s mouth drooped. His grip tightened as though he were about to snap Ji Luo’s neck.
“Wait!” Lu Yu cried in alarm. “Don’t hurt him!”
“Tsk.” Xiao Chunhe lowered his head and sniffed Ji Luo. Understanding flashed through his eyes. “Fine. Hand Yue Jingming over.”
Lu Yu gritted his teeth. “I really don’t know where he is.”
Xiao Chunhe said blandly, “Then all of you can die.”
He grabbed Ji Luo by the face and wrenched him viciously, only to be rammed unexpectedly by the evil ghost that had appeared from nowhere. His eyes turned cold, and he struck the obstructive ghost away with one palm.
Yue Jingming staggered backward several steps and felt his body grow even stiffer.
Lu Yu exclaimed, “Xiao Chunhe, if you dare kill Ji Luo, everyone outside will die!”
“What does that have to do with me? You’re the one who caused it anyway.” Xiao Chunhe stared at him expressionlessly.
Lu Yu ground his teeth. “What do you think Daoist Yue would say if he knew you were behaving like this?”
At those words, irritation rose from the bottom of Xiao Chunhe’s heart. He watched Lu Yu’s reaction. Perhaps the other man truly did not know where Yue Jingming was, but a living person could not simply disappear without leaving a trace. Yue Jingming was always measured in what he did. Even if something urgent forced him to leave, he would have said something first.
Xiao Chunhe’s thoughts raced. With the phantom stone present, Yue Jingming could not have fallen into an illusion. He had been right beside Xiao Chunhe at the time, so he could not have been silently abducted either. Given his cultivation, even if he had encountered a moyao, there should have been some sign of resistance. Unless… unless something had happened so suddenly that he truly had no time and no way to react.
“It’s that scar by his dantian.” Xiao Chunhe’s gaze sharpened. He saw Ji Chen running for the door and seized him. “Was that your doing?!”
When Xiao Chunhe turned fierce, foxlike traits surfaced on his face. Ji Chen was so frightened that his soul nearly fled his body. His eyes rolled back as he started to faint, only for the fox demon to forcibly throttle him awake again. Ji Chen said in terror, “N-no, it wasn’t me. It really wasn’t!”
Across from them, Lu Yu did not dare act rashly with both Ji Chen and Ji Luo in Xiao Chunhe’s hands.
Xiao Chunhe’s eyes shifted, and a malicious smile suddenly spread across his face. “Lu Yu, that story of yours was certainly convincing. Yue Jingming believed it, but I don’t. If you really went to all this trouble just to drag Ji Luo down to the underworld to keep you company, why make it so complicated? How about this instead. Choose one.”
Lu Yu froze. “Choose one?”
“That’s right. They both smelled strange to me just now. There’s death qi on both of them, but only one of them is actually close to death.” Xiao Chunhe’s smile slowly widened. “I can’t find my Daoist, so I need to kill someone to vent my anger. You choose.”
Lu Yu snapped, “This has nothing to do with them!”
“Choose!” Xiao Chunhe roared, his face twisting savagely. “Otherwise I’ll kill them both!”
Both men were being held by the throat and could not speak. Lu Yu clenched his fists. “Let Ji Chen go.”
Ji Luo’s eyes widened in disbelief, and tears spilled instantly from them. Ji Chen, meanwhile, looked at Lu Yu in stunned disgust and fear.
Xiao Chunhe’s smile vanished. “Fine. But first, tell me this. Which one is Ji Chen?”
Lu Yu suddenly fell silent.
Yue Jingming understood what Xiao Chunhe meant and whipped his head toward the two brothers in his grasp. “Let them go!”
But no one could hear him. He could only drag his heavy body toward Xiao Chunhe. He was far too slow, and could only watch helplessly as a ghostly hand like an infant’s reached out and clawed viciously at the center of Xiao Chunhe’s chest.
Caught off guard, Xiao Chunhe was injured and his grip loosened. Ji Chen crawled away in terror. Ji Luo looked down at the ghostly hand withdrawing into his lower abdomen, his face drained white. “Wh-what is that?”
As another hand began to emerge from his abdomen, a crooked black hand formed a strange seal and slammed down against his stomach. Ji Luo’s whole body stiffened, and he forcibly spat out a mouthful of black mist.
Yue Jingming gripped the brush in his hand and jabbed it hard against the space between Ji Luo’s brows. Then he turned and caught Xiao Chunhe, pressing his misshapen palm over the wound in his chest where blood was pouring out. “Chunhe. Xiao Chunhe.”
Xiao Chunhe had no attention to spare for him. He desperately poured true qi into the wound. In his panic, fox claws burst from his fingers. He opened his mouth and bit off his little finger, transformed it into a black thread that passed through flesh, and forcibly stitched the wound shut.
Seeing him wounded, malice flared in Lu Yu’s eyes. He flipped his wrist, produced a halberd, and chopped toward him. But the evil ghost supporting Xiao Chunhe immediately pulled him firmly behind himself. Holding a strangely shaped writing brush, the ghost drew a talisman in midair toward Lu Yu and actually forced him back several zhang.
Yue Jingming had no true qi left at all. In the emergency just now, he had realized that only the brush given to him by the Human-Head Ghost was saturated with yin qi and did not clash with the ghost qi covering his body. He could only borrow one force against another, using yin qi to suppress ghost qi. By sheer accident, it actually worked.
Xiao Chunhe looked at the brush in his hand and grabbed him hard with his blood-soaked hand. “Where did you get that brush? Where is the Daoist who was holding it?!”
Yue Jingming could not explain. He frowned at Xiao Chunhe’s bloodied hand and tried to write with the brush, only for the Cloudsmoke Brush to refuse to touch down and instead begin trembling violently.
“Forget it. In any case, thank you for saving me once.” Xiao Chunhe clutched his wound and struggled to his feet, but could only watch Lu Yu seize Ji Luo and Ji Chen and flee.
He tried to chase them, but Yue Jingming stopped him, pointed at the horrific wound on his body, and shook his head.
Seeing the brush, Xiao Chunhe finally regained a little clarity. He asked the ghost, “Do you know where the owner of this brush is?”
Yue Jingming nodded.
Xiao Chunhe hurriedly asked, “Is he in danger?”
Yue Jingming shook his head, then awkwardly patted Xiao Chunhe’s shoulder to reassure him.
Xiao Chunhe found the ghost in front of him oddly honest and simple, enough to give him a strange sense of familiarity. He believed him a little more. “Fine. I’ll trust you for now. If anything happens to Jingming, I’ll chop you into ghost paste and plaster you onto a wall.”
Yue Jingming: “…”
Xiao Chunhe reasoned that the ghost would not hurt him and narrowed his eyes. “The Cloudsmoke Brush belongs to Yue Jingming. I’ll keep it for him.”
Yue Jingming shook his head. The brush was the only weapon he could still use right now.
“Heh. You’re in no position to bargain with me.” Xiao Chunhe stuffed the Cloudsmoke Brush into his sleeve, found a length of rope, and tried to loop it around the ghost’s neck, only for Yue Jingming to dodge.
Yue Jingming looked at him sternly and shook his head. He tore off a strip of cloth and wrapped Xiao Chunhe’s still-bleeding hand, then held it carefully, signaling that this would do.
Xiao Chunhe yanked his hand back and snapped, “You’re a clever ghost, aren’t you? Only my wife is allowed to hold my hand!”
Yue Jingming tried to write something for him, but after using the Cloudsmoke Brush once, his body had grown even stiffer and he could no longer form the characters. After thinking for a moment, he gestured for Xiao Chunhe to tie the rope around his wrist instead.
“Fine. You’d better not try to run.” Xiao Chunhe was determined to wring some answers out of him. But he had only just stopped the bleeding and was worried about his mother’s heart inside his chest, so he hastily tied up the ghost and led him behind, planning to find somewhere safe to tend his wounds.
Still uneasy, Yue Jingming looked back toward the noisy bonfire and stopped walking.
Xiao Chunhe gave the rope a vicious tug. “What are you looking at? Hurry up!”
By the bonfire, Ye Shijiu and Liang Yun were clearly close to their limits. Many of the maddened people were already fighting to throw themselves into the flames. Their screams mingled with the laughter and shouting in a horribly jarring din.
Yue Jingming shook his head and pointed at Xiao Chunhe’s sleeve, signaling for him to return the brush.
“Why bother with them? I’m about to lose my life myself.” Xiao Chunhe ground his teeth.
Ye Shijiu and Liang Yun would be fine either way. As for everyone else, they were neither kin nor friend to him, and Yue Jingming was nowhere nearby. He had no interest in pretending to be some righteous, warmhearted hero. For a fox, not adding fuel to the fire already counted as mercy.
“Move!” He tugged the ghost again.
Yue Jingming did not budge. Slightly angry now, he raised a hand and patted Xiao Chunhe’s sleeve, staring straight at him. “I have a way to put out that fire. We can’t stand by and watch them die. Chunhe, hurry and give me the brush.”
Xiao Chunhe saw the ghost’s mouth move. Somehow, even that ferocious ghost face looked a little puffed up with anger, which inexplicably reminded him of Yue Jingming. A thought struck him, and he simply tossed over the Cloudsmoke Brush. “Fine, fine. Grandpa Fox would like to see what tricks a little ghost like you can pull.”
Yue Jingming caught the brush, seized the rope, and dragged Xiao Chunhe toward the crowd, looking extremely anxious.
Xiao Chunhe became even more certain that this was a good ghost. Seeing how difficult it was for him to walk, he grabbed the ghost by the arm and leapt with him straight to the bonfire.
After landing, the ghost turned back uneasily and looked toward Xiao Chunhe’s chest.
Xiao Chunhe understood and scoffed. “A little wound like this is nothing.”
Yue Jingming instead took his hand with its missing finger, lowered his head, and enclosed the wound in his mouth before biting the tip of his own tongue.
The blood from the still-uncontaminated tip of his tongue was warm and wet, slowly enveloping the torn wound. Xiao Chunhe found it strange and tried to pull his hand back, but for a moment he could not move it at all.
Yue Jingming released him on his own. The blood in his mouth stained his blue-black lips red. Although this bit of tongue-tip blood was the last trace of true qi remaining to him, as long as he could protect Xiao Chunhe’s wound, there was still hope of reattaching the severed finger.
Xiao Chunhe looked down at his hand with a strange expression. The evil ghost in front of him had already taken the Cloudsmoke Brush and was walking toward the bonfire without hesitation.
He raised his hand, hesitantly sniffed it, frowned, then experimentally touched the tip of his tongue to a little of the evil ghost’s blood. One eyebrow slowly rose.
“Hmm?”