Spirit Realm Walker

Zhang Yuanqing considered the information the woman had given him. The explicit videos she mentioned should be enough to serve as evidence. The next objective is simple: capture Master Wu alive, and find the videos or that ledger.

Then again, Master Wu is just an ordinary person. Using these videos to blackmail government officials is one thing, but how does he have the guts to threaten Spirit Realm Walkers? Maybe he only recorded footage of ordinary elites and never kept anything on Walkers. In that case, the women in this building are the only witnesses who can testify against Chi Yue’an.

This Master Wu is truly lawless. Treating people like slaves, like livestock, and profiting off their suffering, committing murder and arson while colluding with the authorities to keep it under wraps.

Even with all his mental preparation, Zhang Yuanqing could not suppress the fury and killing intent churning inside him after hearing everything Cao Jing had to say. All he wanted was to put down every beast in this building.

He had already chosen his next target: the security chief, Lai Wan. According to Cao Jing, Lai Wan was one of Master Wu’s most trusted enforcers, responsible for ”keeping order” inside Bronze Sparrow Tower. Every woman in the building feared him, because nearly all of them had been personally beaten by him.

For those like Cao Jing who had resisted fiercely at first, Master Wu would order Lai Wan to rape them and break them. He was a villain whose death would be no loss to the world.

I have 138 Morality points. That’s enough to kill eight people. I’ve been accumulating Morality for two months. If not now, when?

Zhang Yuanqing’s spirit drifted out of the middle aged man’s body, picked up the yanagiba, and left the room.

***

In the security office on the first floor, security chief Lai Wan lounged comfortably in his office chair. Boxes of braised snacks sat on the desk before him, and a case of canned beer rested at his feet.

Lai Wan, a veteran of street brawls, had been running with Master Wu since he was young. He could hack at someone with a watermelon cleaver without batting an eye. At the turn of the century, he had killed two people while fighting to expand Master Wu’s territory and steal women for him. Master Wu had spent a fortune making those charges disappear, and far from blaming Lai Wan, he had valued him even more for it.

After Master Wu went semi-legitimate, Lai Wan was installed as head of security at Bronze Sparrow Tower, where most of the old crew from those early days had ended up as well.

Lai Wan was perfectly content with his life. The work was easy and the salary was generous, and he could spend every day reminiscing with his old brothers, shooting the breeze, and fooling around with the women. Life was good.

Yes, the women of Bronze Sparrow Tower were available to him. Lai Wan could have any of them whenever he pleased, aside from a handful of the prettiest ones reserved as top attractions. 

The women were all Master Wu’s slaves. None of them had been obedient when they’d first arrived, but Master Wu’s methods for dealing with them were simple: beatings, rape, and prolonged torment until they submitted.

And Lai Wan was the one who carried all of that out.

Lai Wan spat out a chicken wing bone and grumbled, ”Master Wu’s getting old, and more and more timid by the day. Making a fuss over every little thing.”

His mistress had no clients tonight. They had planned for him to stay over with her, but that afternoon, Master Wu had suddenly called all security personnel together and demanded increased patrols. He had doubled the number of guards on duty from the usual six to twelve, and they were working in pairs on twenty-four hour rotating shifts. Even Lai Wan, the security chief, had to pull an overnight shift.

Just then, a powerfully built man in a security uniform walked in. Lai Wan glanced over, then turned back to his beer.

”Old Yang, let me tell you something,” he said to his colleague. ”Come take my spot for half an hour. No, make it an hour. I’m going upstairs to have some fun with Qu Xiu.”

He hadn’t touched a woman in days. A few drinks in, the urge was impossible to keep down. 

Old Yang walked over and stopped beside Lai Wan, staring down at him with cold, empty eyes.

”Hm?” Lai Wan grunted as he swallowed a mouthful of bitter beer.

The next instant, Old Yang reached behind his back, drew a gleaming yanagiba, and swept its blade toward his throat. The alcohol had numbed his nerves and slowed his reflexes by a critical beat. By the time his muscles tensed to resist, great gouts of blood were already spraying from his severed carotid artery.

Old Yang clamped a hand over Lai Wan’s mouth and drove the knife into his chest several more times, until the man stopped struggling and his body went completely limp. At the same moment, Zhang Yuanqing received the notification for a ten-point Morality deduction.

He was not surprised. Killing would result in the loss of Morality. It was mandatory, regardless of whether the victim was good or evil. But doing good deeds awarded Morality. By that logic, killing a monster like Lai Wan should have counted as a good deed, yet no Morality reward came.

There probably isn’t such a basic bug in the Spirit Realm’s code, Zhang Yuanqing thought to himself. Hmm. Looking at the bigger picture, I am doing a good thing, but it has only just begun. Perhaps the Morality reward would come when this whole case is resolved.

Zhang Yuanqing dismissed the thought. Darkness surged in the depths of his eyes as he awakened the residual spirit lingering within the corpse, opened his mouth, and inhaled it into himself.

Foreign memories flooded into his sea of consciousness like a thin stream flowing into an ocean. The impact was negligible, barely causing a faint ripple. Scenes unfolded in front of his eyes one after another, some continuous, some fragmented, flashing past like a dying man’s final montage.

He saw Lai Wan killing someone for the first time, clutching a fruit knife, his whole body trembling. He saw Lai Wan walk into a hair salon and spend fifty yuan to lose his virginity. He saw Lai Wan swinging a short club, striking a woman again and again while she screamed and cowered before him, clutching at her bruises. He saw the man instructing three underlings to pin a sobbing woman to a bed, the men sneering as they sated their animal lust, jeering, ”Won’t serve clients? We’ll take turns with you a few more times, and you’ll get used to it.”

Then he saw Master Wu, roughly six feet tall with a thick stubbled jaw and a mole on his right cheek, speaking in a low, commanding voice, ”Stay sharp the next few days. Someone might come looking for trouble.”

”Trouble? Who’d dare start trouble here?” Lai Wan replied.

”That’s none of your concern.”

The scene shifted. Zhang Yuanqing watched Master Wu greet three distinguished guests with fawning courtesy and usher them into the casino. Lai Wan was at his side as the two parties exchanged words.

”Apologies for the inconvenience these next few days,” said Master Wu. ”Everything you spend at the casino is on me. Pick any girl in the building you like, and I’ll have her sent to keep you company.”

”Relax,” one of the guests replied. ”If anyone’s stupid enough to come around, we’ll handle it. We’re all working for Boss Chi here. No need for formalities.”

Zhang Yuanqing withdrew from the spirit communion and drew a deep breath, forcing down the fury roiling inside him. From those final fragments of memory, he extracted one critical piece of information.

They were all working for Boss Chi?

There were two layers of meaning behind that statement. First, the three men had been sent by Chi Yue’an to protect Master Wu. Second, the backer behind Master Wu was Chi Yue’an himself.

Chi Yue’an is Master Wu’s patron, he realized with a start. That’s why Bronze Sparrow Tower has been able to exist in Songhai’s underground for so many years. Chi Yue’an uses Master Wu as a proxy to amass wealth and to indulge his own twisted appetites.

Therefore, when Kou Yusi escaped, it was Chi Yue’an who had acted.

The veins on Zhang Yuanqing’s forehead bulged one by one. Being of a Lawful class did not necessarily mean someone was righteous. He had understood that truth long ago, but the fury in his heart was still impossible to contain.

Chi Yue’an is being cautious, just as expected. He stationed three Spirit Realm Walkers here to protect Master Wu. I don’t know their exact levels, but they should all be Transcendent-tier Walkers. It’s unlikely he’d bring in anyone at the Saint tier. Chi Yue’an has fought Kou Beiyue before and has a read on his strength. Among the three, there should be perhaps two Level 3s, or one Level 3 with one of the others wielding a powerful item. That’s the only way they can fend off an attack from a Level 3 Enchanting Demon.

Between Kou Beiyue and me, we should have enough to deal with them. There’s no need to call Guan Ya or the Squad Leader for backup, though just to be safe, I should notify them to head this way in case something goes wrong.

Zhang Yuanqing’s spirit form drifted out of the security guard’s body, and it collapsed to the floor, unconscious. He floated out of Bronze Sparrow Tower and streaked back to where his physical body waited.

Beneath the shrubbery, the eyes of Zhang Yuanqing’s physical form opened. Kou Beiyue, who had been standing guard nearby, sensed the change immediately and spun around. 

Seeing him awake, he asked urgently, ”What’s the situation inside? Can we move? Did you find Master Wu?”

Zhang Yuanqing rose to his feet, quietly recalling Little Goofball. ”We move now!”

Kou Beiyue licked his lips in excitement.

***

Bright lights spilled across the main hall of the two-storey building. The building housed Master Wu’s casino. Every interior wall had been knocked down save for the load-bearing columns, opening up a space large enough to hold two hundred people.

The gilded hall was crammed with all manner of gambling machines, most of them types that ordinary people had never laid eyes on. There were also the familiar staples: mahjong tables and card tables. Patrons were scattered throughout, some feeding coins into machines, some pushing mahjong tiles, others playing Texas Hold’em with sultry, provocatively dressed dealers.

Scantily clad women attended to their assigned clients, ferrying drinks and refreshments. They were all young, caked in heavy makeup, wearing numb or sycophantic expressions as they catered to the gamblers. 

The clients barely showed them any respect. They barked orders left and right, and whenever they lost a hand, they would curse and drag their companion off to some secluded corner to take out their frustrations.

At a table by the window, the six-foot-tall Master Wu, with a cigarette clamped between his teeth, glanced at his cards then shook his head in disappointment before tossing them down. 

He had already lost close to a million that night, but it didn’t matter. The entire game existed so that one party would lose money.

Master Wu looked to the bald man on his left and grinned. ”Mr. Dao, your luck is running hot tonight. It’d be a waste not to play through till morning.”

The bald man’s full name was Seven Blades. He was five-foot-three, around forty, and completely bald. He wore a white tank top, and the thick, stocky muscles packed onto that compact frame made him look like a steel anvil.

The man was a compulsive gambler, greedy for money, and had zero interest in women. A mountain of chips was piled before him. From the moment he had sat down, he hadn’t lost a single hand.

Seven Blades rubbed his gleaming scalp and flashed a wide grin. ”Then don’t you dare run off. Tonight I’m winning the pants right off your bottom.”

Master Wu touched the mole on his cheek and sighed. ”My mistake. I never should have sat down against you.”

He turned to the horse-faced young man beside the bald gambler and teased, ”Qingsong, my friend, why don’t you give the girl’s mouth a rest? Her jaw’s not tired, but her legs have gone numb from squatting. Here, let me swap her out for you.”

The horse-faced youth was looking lazily at his cards. At the offer, his gaze snapped to the woman sitting beside Master Wu and his eyes lit up.

”I want her.”

The girl, barely in her twenties, was a recent acquisition of Bronze Sparrow Tower. She pressed her lips together and stayed seated, but Master Wu shot her a glacial sidelong glare.

The young woman flinched, fear flashing through her eyes. She scrambled to her feet in a panic, hurried over to the horse-faced youth, and crouched down to slip beneath the table. On the other side, another woman clapped a hand over her mouth as she crawled out, staggering toward the restroom.

Qingsong was insatiable. He seemed to have an inexhaustible well of energy every single day. One or two women were never enough for him. Master Wu had given him an access card that could unlock the door to any woman’s room in the building.

The third man was a youth with hair dyed blonde and a flashy leather jacket. He had handsome features, and the smoky stage makeup on his face lent him a certain androgynous allure. In that full concert getup, anyone who didn’t know better would have mistaken him for a pop star.

His name was Shenle. He dabbled in gambling, women, and drugs alike, though not heavily in any. For him, all Master Wu needed to provide was cash, female company, and a few packets of premium product.

These were the three bodyguards assigned to him by Chi Yue’an, Master Wu’s shadow backer. All of them were formidable fighters with supernatural abilities. Master Wu didn’t know exactly what kind of enemy Chi Yue’an had provoked, but if it warranted deploying three people of this caliber to protect him, that enemy had to be dangerous.

Because of this, Master Wu had dropped everything since the day before and holed himself up inside Bronze Sparrow Tower, waiting for word.

He wasn’t afraid of pressure from the authorities. His shadow backer and the network of clients Bronze Sparrow Tower had cultivated over the years were more than sufficient to shield him from legal consequences. What he feared was exactly this sort of enemy: someone with supernatural powers. Especially after Chi Yue’an told him the enemy was Kou Yusi’s brother.

Master Wu had long forgotten the name Kou Yusi. He’d had to ask Lai Wan to jog his memory. She was the woman Chi Yue’an had killed two years ago.

That woman had truly had it bad. The moment she’d arrived, Chi Yue’an had taken a liking to her. Day after day of abuse, day after day of torment, and when his own cruelty wasn’t enough, he would sometimes call in a few security guards to join in.

Now, her brother had come looking for payback.

Fortunately, the case had been closed years ago and all the evidence had been destroyed. The brother might not even be able to trace anything back to this place. If he could, he would have come already.

”Deal!” Master Wu called to the dealer, then turned back to Seven Blades with a smile. ”Mr. Dao, looks like I’m keeping you company all night—”

Just then, Master Wu saw a sixteen-inch-long yanagiba materialize out of thin air behind Seven Blades, its gleaming edge sweeping toward the bald man’s carotid artery. His eyes went wide, and his expression froze.

The razor-sharp blade was a heartbeat from slicing through Seven Blades’ throat when the androgynous youth in stage makeup inhaled deeply, flooding his lungs with air. In the next instant, a piercing, impossibly high-pitched dolphin squeal erupted from his throat.

The supernatural harmonics of that dolphin squeal resonated through the gilded hall, a shockwave of sound that felt as though it were hammering directly against one’s soul. Gamblers throughout the room clutched their heads and screamed, caught completely off-guard.

Master Wu’s vision went black. Warm liquid streamed from his nose. He watched as the yanagiba lost its energy and drifted feebly to the floor. A moment later, an invisible power scooped it back up, and it vanished from sight.

The androgynous youth cut off the sound he was making and swept his sharp gaze across the hall like a blade.

”He’s gone,” he announced in a low voice.

”Wh-what just happened?” Master Wu demanded through the splitting pain in his skull.

”Master Wu, find a corner and hide,” Shenle replied flatly. ”Call Boss Chi.”

He turned to Qingsong and Seven Blades, his expression grave. ”It’s a Nocturnal Specter. He used Astral Projection to send his spirit out of his body.”

As a Musician, he possessed extraordinary spiritual sensitivity, and was able to perceive spirit forms that were invisible to everyone else.

A Level 3?! Qingsong and Seven Blades both flinched. The bald man in particular felt an icy chill crawl up his spine, cold sweat seeping through his skin.

Qingsong shot to his feet and yanked up his zipper, snapping into combat readiness.

The enemy’s spirit ambush had failed, and he had retreated for the moment, but there would certainly be a next move.

Bang!

The casino’s double doors burst open, and two men wearing baseball caps and face masks stormed in. One of them raised a large-caliber pistol overhead and fired several rounds into the ceiling, bellowing, ”Vice squad! Anti-crime sweep! All civilians, clear the casino!”