Spirit Realm Walker

Was he hearing things?

Zhang Yuanqing stood frozen in place, his expression rigid. His first instinct was that he’d hallucinated the whole thing, that the whisper in his ear wasn’t real but some kind of foreign influence worming its way into his mind.

After all, there was no way an outsider could know his father’s name. The most likely explanation was that the whisper had originated from somewhere deep inside himself.

But why his father’s name? If he’d been targeted by some illusion-type power, it should have latched onto whatever he craved most. He didn’t crave fatherly love. The man had been dead for years, reduced to little more than a blurry outline in his memory.

While Zhang Yuanqing puzzled over this, Fu Qingyang, up ahead, noticed his hesitation. The centurion’s voice cut through the darkness, sharp and deadly serious.

”Don’t stop. Keep moving.”

The authority in those words carried an almost physical weight. Zhang Yuanqing’s head cleared instantly, the stray thoughts scattering like startled birds. He held his breath, shut out the whisper, and fell into step behind the white-suited figure, striding toward the zoo’s main gate.

The whisper turned shrill and mournful, like an abandoned woman watching her lover walk away. ”Zhang Zizhen, you’re leaving again, you oath-breaking scoundrel…”

Zhang Yuanqing gritted his teeth, silently chanting ”A heart like still ice, unmoved even if the sky should fall,” and quickened his pace. He finally stepped through the Zoo’s gate, hot on Fu Qingyang’s heels.

The whisper vanished instantly.

He didn’t dare linger or look back. He sprinted to the luxury sedan, and only after the engine roared to life and they’d driven a considerable distance did he finally glance over his shoulder.

The night pressed down on him like a weight. The Zoo’s silhouette wavered in the darkness, half visible, half imagined, silent and eerie.

Zhang Yuanqing let out a long breath. Elder Teddy’s Zoo is way too damn creepy.

Fu Qingyang sat upright in the wide leather seat, his gaze carrying equal parts curiosity and gravity. ”What did you hear?”

Zhang Yuanqing chose his words carefully. ”A name that shouldn’t have been spoken. Centurion, I suspect someone hit me with an illusion. I just can’t figure out who.”

Fu Qingyang picked up his half-smoked cigar, lit it, and exhaled a thick plume of white smoke. ”The foundation of any illusion is emotion. It targets the weakest point of the human heart, then detonates it. That name you heard, is it your vulnerability?”

The core ability of the Illusionist class was the manipulation and provocation of a target’s emotions, reading the cracks in someone’s psyche at a glance. It was precisely this that made the Dream Envoy, the Saint-tier Illusionist, so terrifying.

Zhang Yuanqing’s expression froze for a moment, then he slowly shook his head.

Fu Qingyang exhaled another stream of smoke. ”Then it wasn’t an illusion.”

Not an illusion… Zhang Yuanqing’s suspicion was confirmed, but that brought him no comfort whatsoever. 

”If what I heard wasn’t an illusion, then who was speaking to me?” he asked aloud, his voice low and heavy. ”Was there some zoo staff member hiding nearby? Or maybe one of the animals?”

Fu Qingyang shot that theory down too. ”No. There was nothing around us.”

This was the judgment of a Scout.

Zhang Yuanqing fell silent. Fu Qingyang took a deep drag on his cigar, pulled it aggressively through his lungs, and released a dense cloud of smoke. ”Once you eliminate the staff and the animals, and then eliminate Elder Teddy, the answer to who was speaking is actually quite obvious.”

He looked at Zhang Yuanqing, his tone uncharacteristically somber. ”The Zoo is a rule-type item. A rule-type item with its own consciousness.”

At this point, there was no way Zhang Yuanqing could miss the implication.

The one whispering in my ear was the Zoo itself? Does it know my father?My father was… a Spirit Realm Walker?!

He lowered his head to hide the turmoil twisting across his face. The revelation hit him like a physical blow, and for a long moment he couldn’t process it.

If Dad was a Spirit Realm Walker, then he didn’t actually die in a car accident. How could a Walker die in something that mundane? And the Zoo recognized him. They had a history. Perhaps he was even the Zoo’s previous owner.If that’s the case, he must have been incredibly powerful.

His mind kept churning. The Zoo whispered to me because it mistook me for him. But how? What did it use to identify me as Zhang Zizhen?Appearance? Aura? Bloodline? My Character Card?

Appearance was out. There was no way he looked exactly like his father. And the Character Card belonged to Demon Lord. That left bloodline.

The Zoo is a Wood Demon-class item. Wood Demons have power over reproduction and life-related abilities. Using blood ties to identify someone actually makes perfect sense.

Zhang Yuanqing’s thoughts grew clearer with each passing second. At the same time, he thought about his mysterious headaches, the ones no doctor could diagnose. It wasn’t until he met Bill Tarantino that he learned the cause: damage to his soul. However, back then, he’d been an ordinary person. His world and the world of Spirit Realm Walkers were two parallel lines that never intersected. How could someone like him have sustained that kind of injury?

Finally, he understood. He still didn’t know the specific cause of the wound, but at least he now knew he hadn’t been completely disconnected from the Spirit Realm world. Somewhere in his family background stood a Spirit Realm Walker.

What about Mom? Is she a Walker too?

He thought back to how Chen Shu had reacted when his strange illness first struck. She’d been anxious, frantic, and completely at a loss. If she were a Walker, she wouldn’t have been so helpless.

But she found that pill to treat soul damage remarkably quickly, which means she had connections. So while she isn’t a Walker herself, she probably knows about the Spirit Realm and has cultivated relationships within that world.

By connecting the dots one by one, Zhang Yuanqing gradually pieced together the outline of the truth.

Another thought struck him. Elder Teddy was the one who owned the Zoo. Could the elder have some connection to his father?

Zhang Yuanqing pulled himself out of his thoughts. ”Centurion, how did Elder Teddy acquire the Zoo? Does every Sovereign-tier Walker have a rule-type item?”

Fu Qingyang tapped the ash from his cigar. When it came to questions from his trusted subordinate, he always answered. ”Information about the elders is above my clearance level. As for whether everyone at that tier has one…”

He gave Zhang Yuanqing a look. From that flat yet unmistakably regal glance of disdain, Zhang Yuanqing found his answer.

The luxury sedan continued on through the night. Partway through the drive, Zhang Yuanqing messaged the little green tea princess and arranged to meet the palace master at the usual spot.

Then he asked Fu Qingyang for a cigar. He didn’t smoke it, just held it between his fingers, staring blankly ahead. Only when the embers were about to die did he bring it to his lips for a single drag.

***

The streets at four in the morning were empty. Zhang Yuanqing walked along wearing a surgical mask and a baseball cap, his footsteps tapping out a solitary rhythm.

Across from the Public Security Bureau, the door to the coffee shop stood open. Warm light spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the sidewalk. It was the only business still operating on the entire street.

He pushed through the door with practiced ease and spotted the familiar silhouette in the red dress standing behind the counter, focused on brewing coffee.

”Go sit down somewhere,” she said, her voice quiet and unhurried. ”Give me a few minutes.”

Why does that sound so familiar? Zhang Yuanqing thought to himself as he picked a table at random.

Before long, the palace master walked over carrying two cups. She set them on the table, propped her chin in one hand, and gazed at him with a playful smile. 

”You’ve been seeking me out more and more often,” she noted. ”Starting to miss me?”

She just can’t help flirting with me. Zhang Yuanqing picked up his cup, took a sip, and immediately frowned. ”Black coffee?” 

He hated straight black coffee. Nothing but bitterness and acid.

The Palace Master flashed a mischievous grin.

Zhang Yuanqing sighed. ”Palace Master, you’re exactly like this cup of coffee.”

”Oh?” Her eyes sparkled with amusement. ”Bitter, yet irresistibly alluring?”

”No. No sweetness and no cream.”

Having laid the groundwork, Zhang Yuanqing delivered the punchline with surgical precision, seizing the chance for payback.

The smile froze on her lips. Behind her mask, her eyes narrowed into a sharp glare.

Zhang Yuanqing pivoted without missing a beat, his voice dropping low. ”I saw the Demon Eye tonight. Elder Teddy was interrogating him about the Chu family massacre, and he specifically asked to see me.”

He could afford to antagonize this particular madwoman because he had leverage.

Sure enough, the palace master forgot all about the coffee jab. Her breathing quickened. She leaned forward abruptly, her bright eyes locking onto Zhang Yuanqing with fierce intensity. 

”What did you learn?” she asked.

Zhang Yuanqing had rarely seen her lose composure like this. He straightened up. 

”The ones who led the massacre were Ghost Blade and Extinction, two of the Four Heavenly Kings,” he told her. ”The order came directly from Asura.”

”Asura…” The palace master considered this for a moment, then slowly shook her head. ”The Chu family and the Bing Zhu Sect operated in completely different regions, one in the south and the other in the north. There was no grudge between them. Simple factional opposition wouldn’t be enough for Asura to personally order a family’s extermination.”

Zhang Yuanqing recounted everything the Demon Eye Heavenly King had told him, word for word.

The palace master went still as a statue. A long silence passed before she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. ”So that’s what happened…”

She looked up at him. Something raw and vulnerable flickered in those luminous eyes. 

”Thank you,” she said softly. ”You’ve helped me untangle a knot I’ve carried for years.”

The truth behind the Chu family massacre had been an open wound she had never been able to close. Over twenty years later, she finally understood the full picture.

Zhang Yuanqing pressed on. ”If you want revenge against Dark Rose, you need to know your enemy. Are you familiar with the properties of that rule-type item?”

The palace master lifted her cup, pressed its white rim to her red lips, took a small sip, then set it back down. 

”I never personally examined the item’s properties, but the family member who helped me escape to Songhai told me about it,” she said. ”It can bring the dead back to life. It can resurrect them even if the soul has been annihilated or the body ground to dust. It’s called the Womb of the Mother Goddess, one of the most powerful rule-type items in the Musician class. 

”Two things are necessary. First, you need the blood of the person to be revived, collected while they were still alive, still full of vitality. A specific amount is required, not just a drop, though I don’t know the exact quantity. Second, you need one of the person’s children or someone they truly loved as a sacrifice. There has to be an equivalent exchange.

”As long as both conditions are met, the item’s rule activates, and the person is reborn from the Womb of the Mother Goddess. Nothing can stop it, not even the Spirit Realm itself.”

The palace master’s eyes found his. ”There is one limitation. Once someone has been resurrected through the Womb, they can never be reborn through it again. Each person gets only one chance, like how no one can crawl back into their mother’s belly for a second birth.”

Zhang Yuanqing listened in silence, then asked, ”When it comes to the blood, what does ’full of vitality’ mean exactly?”

”When a Spirit Realm Walker dies, they return to the Spirit Realm, meaning all their abilities are reclaimed. Because of this, any blood drawn before and after death is fundamentally different. Blood drawn post-mortem can’t be used to resurrect a Walker’s true body. When it comes to blood that is full of vitality, you can think of it as blood that has to be collected while the person is still alive,” the palace master explained.

Zhang Yuanqing nodded. ”Based on the item’s rules, can we deduce that Dark Rose’s leader foresaw their own death and made preparations in advance?”

”That’s a certainty,” the palace master replied, then furrowed her brow. ”What are you getting at?”

Zhang Yuanqing laid it out. ”From the Prophecy of the Compass of Light, we know Asura chose to invest in Dark Rose’s leader. That was twenty-one years ago. At the time, the leader must have already possessed considerable power and reputation. Asura wouldn’t have backed a nobody. If we investigate which prominent, high-level Nocturnal Specters rose to fame twenty to thirty years ago, couldn’t we use a process of elimination to identify Dark Rose’s leader?”

The palace master’s eyes lit up, and her voice quickened with excitement. ”The Taiyi Sect is the largest Nocturnal Specter organization in the world. Official or otherwise, any Nocturnal Specter with exceptional talent would have caught their attention and been registered in their records. Using that angle, we could narrow down the leader’s identity even further.”

She frowned. ”The problem is, the Taiyi Sect and Five Elements Alliance may both be official organizations, but they’re hardly on the same page. If you go through the Alliance to request this information, the Sect will notice.”

And then they’d likely hand over worthless scraps to brush him off while quietly launching their own investigation. That would mean doing the sect’s legwork for free. And if the Taiyi Sect did their own investigation, they almost certainly wouldn’t share their findings.

Unless we can cultivate an insider within the Taiyi Sect. Zhang Yuanqing couldn’t think of a good solution at the moment. 

”We’ll need to take our time with this,” he said.

The palace master gave a small nod. ”Your priority right now is the tournament. Don’t waste your energy on these things.”

After a pause, she suddenly asked, ”The Demon Eye Heavenly King asked to see you for a reason. You haven’t said what it was.”

Zhang Yuanqing’s gaze darted away, avoiding hers.

The palace master’s heart sank and her brow creased. ”Tell me.”

He spread his hands in resignation. ”He did have a purpose. He cursed me. Cursed me to end up like him. Elder Teddy examined me afterward, but couldn’t find where the curse was hidden—”

Before he finished speaking, the Palace Master’s hands clamped down on his shoulders. A sharp sting prickled across his skin. He turned to see countless red threads squirming out from between her pale, slender fingers, burrowing into his body like parasites.

Moments later, the threads retracted back into her. She released him, her jaw tight. 

”Nothing. No anomalies at all,” she said, and anger colored her voice. ”That Demon Eye deserves worse than death. You shouldn’t have agreed to see him.”

Zhang Yuanqing’s expression turned solemn. ”It concerned a knot you’ve carried for years, palace master. I thought the risk was worth it.”

The palace master blinked, caught off guard.

Seeing her frozen in surprise, Zhang Yuanqing knew it was the moment to stop. He stood. 

”Don’t worry about the curse,” he said to her. ”We’ll deal with it when the time comes. I should get going, Palace Master.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked out of the coffee shop.

After putting some distance behind him, he glanced back. The coffee shop lights were still on, unlike previous times, when they’d gone dark the instant he left.

That last move worked pretty well. Share the intel selflessly, then pull away at just the right moment, leaving her to sit with it. Ling Jun might be garbage as a person, but his techniques for handling women are genuinely masterful.I can already feel her attitude toward me warming up.

Zhang Yuanqing disappeared into the night.

***

The next morning at nine, he logged into the official forum right on schedule to check for updates. Phoenix Descending had been right. The day’s matches had indeed been cancelled. An official notice had been posted on the forum.

【#Due to recent adjustments to the competition format, today’s tournament matches have been cancelled#】

So headquarters really is changing things up. Zhang Yuanqing felt more relief than worry. This was good news for him. He wouldn’t claim to be unbeatable in one-on-one fights, but when it came to clearing dungeons, his confidence ran deep.

⤷ White Dragon: I heard from Yuan Ting that they’re planning to throw the top eight into a dungeon. They’re still debating what difficulty level would be appropriate.

⤷ Call Me Queen: Oh, I heard about this yesterday but wasn’t sure. If even the Taiyi Sect’s biggest loudmouth is saying it, then it’s probably true. This is great news. Yuanshi Tianzun is guaranteed first place now.

⤷ Long Road Ahead: @Call Me Queen, has it occurred to you that the other seven contestants might team up to eliminate Yuanshi Tianzun first?

This Long Road Ahead guy is always belittling me, but he does have a point every damn time. Anyone who made the top eight is no fool. A dungeon isn’t an arena. Expecting them to play fair would be naive. I’ll need to watch my back.

Zhang Yuanqing scrolled through comments a while longer, then closed the forum. With no tournament matches that day, he needed something else to do. He wavered between two options: visiting Xiao Yuan or calling his mother.

If Dad really was a Spirit Realm Walker, then Mom has been hiding a lot from me. Not that I can blame her. The Spirit Realm is supernatural territory. How would you even begin to explain that?Besides, I was just a regular college student back then. What would have been the point of telling me?

But if I tell her I’ve become a Spirit Realm Walker myself, she might come clean about the past and explain where my headaches came from.

Still, it’s better to have this kind of conversation face to face. If things go south over the phone, she can just hang up, and there’s nothing I can do about it. In person, I can at least use the Eye of the Observer to read her reactions. 

Zhang Yuanqing chose to visit Xiao Yuan.

Following his life coach’s advice, he would deepen his relationship with Auntie Xiao Yuan while figuring out what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into.

***

In the reception area of Wuhen Inn, cold air blasted down from the air-conditioning vents overhead.

Xiao Yuan stood behind the front desk, her back perfectly straight, her striking features locked in a blank, icy mask. There wasn’t a single trace of the welcoming warmth a receptionist ought to have.

Business was dismal. The inn had seen only two groups of guests all morning, and one of them had only booked a room by the hour.

A hotel’s success depended on two things: the commercial potential of its location and convenient transportation access. Proximity to airports, train stations, tourist attractions, business centers, and university neighborhoods all fit the bill.

Wuhen Inn sat in the suburbs. It was a small establishment that positioned itself toward budget and mid-range clientele. A few years back, several factories had operated nearby, and where there were factories, there was foot traffic.

Back then, business had been decent enough. But the economic downturn of the previous year had hit hard. The surrounding factories shut down one after another, and the neighborhood went quiet overnight.

With nothing to do, Xiao Yuan picked up her phone, opened the messaging app and tapped on Yuanshi Tianzun’s profile picture. She typed out a message: Who’s your opponent today?

She stared at it for a moment, then deleted the text and closed her phone, her expression unchanged.

Just then, the inn’s glass door swung open, but there was no one at the entrance.

An invisible person had walked in.