Miss Fairy, Please Hear Me Out

A faint smile touched Xu Yinhe’s lips. “What you and I pursue are different things. Still, if you wanted to live longer, you should have listened to Prince Xiang back then.”

Hearing this, Jiang He did not answer right away. He leaned back against his chair and fell silent for a long while. In the end, he let out a long sigh and murmured, “Cultivation, you mean?”

Jiang He thought of that father whose face had already blurred in his memory, then shook his head. “If I had chosen cultivation back then, I would have been putting the cart before the horse. There is only so much time in a life. Spend more of it on cultivation, and there is less left for studying formations. And besides, I truly had no interest in the path that old man laid out for me. This little bit of cultivation I have now is only for the sake of my formation work.”

As he spoke, Jiang He seemed to think of something. His old face suddenly brightened, and excitement lit up in his eyes. “Oh, right. Xu Yinhe, that grand formation I mentioned to you four years ago is almost complete. Its power will be at least twice that of the Imperial Capital’s city-wide defensive formation.”

At this point, Jiang He gave a light cough. “But that old fellow Hua Hong won’t give me any silver. So, you see...”

Xu Yinhe listened carefully, amusement appearing in his eyes, but he did not loosen his stance. “Hua Hong will handle the accounts of the Calm Sky Merchant Association himself. I will not interfere.”

The Institute of Applied Research burned through money, a lot of money, especially since most of its investments produced no visible results at all.

Four years ago, Jiang He had first told him and Hua Hong about this supposedly world-shaking grand formation. What he had said back then was almost exactly the same as now. Just invest a tiny bit more, he said. Just a tiny, tiny bit more, and the Institute of Applied Research would immediately produce results.

And by tiny bit, of course, he meant another mountain of silver.

And so Hua Hong invested. Then four years passed.

When Jiang He heard this, his expression immediately stiffened. He gave a cold snort, picked up his teacup, and plainly began seeing his guest out.

Xu Yinhe looked at his old friend, whose personality had not changed one bit from those days, and smiled as he shook his head. Then he suddenly said softly, “Jiang He, there is a problem with that soul draining grand formation you created.”

When Jiang He heard this, his stiff expression froze, then gradually turned grave. But he was not surprised that something had gone wrong with a formation.

Any complete formation had to go through thousands upon thousands of calculations before it could be put into actual use, but that did not mean it was perfect. Many things changed with time, and the countless variables of reality could also cause a formation to deviate from its test results. In the end, formations had to be perfected step by step through practice.

Just like the human race’s earliest attempts to domesticate demonic beasts, the formations and techniques related to raising ghost fog in captivity still had a long road ahead of them.

After thinking for a moment, Jiang He shook his head and said, “I knew it. A person like you doesn’t visit without a reason. Tell me the details.”

Xu Yinhe pondered briefly, then said, “Changge went to Stillwater again because of certain matters.”

Jiang He frowned slightly. “Stillwater... Is that the ghost fog in the mountains near Ninesource?”

“Yes,” Xu Yinhe said.

Jiang He paused. A few traces of hesitation appeared on his aged face. “I remember that ghost fog had three Grandmasters guarding it, didn’t it?”

“Yes.” Xu Yinhe nodded, then calmly said three words. “They all died.”

“Impossible!” Jiang He’s hands, which had been stroking his long white beard, suddenly clenched tight. His voice sank. “My formation would never allow a ghost above the fourth rank to be born inside that ghost fog.”

Xu Yinhe calmly stared at the old friend before him for several breaths. His voice was very soft. “The ghost was not born inside the ghost fog.”

Hearing this, Jiang He’s aged face suddenly turned a little pale. His wrinkled hands trembled slightly, and he asked with a hint of uncertainty, “Was it ghostification?”

“Yes,” Xu Yinhe replied.

Jiang He’s breathing became slightly hurried. For such a massive flaw to appear in a formation he had created was something he absolutely could not tolerate. He clenched his hand into a fist and struck his own brow hard.

After a long while, he raised his eyes and asked, “No... no, that’s not right! If something like this happened, then once the formation lost control, Ninesource should already have been swallowed by that ghost fog by now. The court should have...”

“Gui Qi was there,” Xu Yinhe interrupted, his voice very even.

“Gui... Gui Qi?” Jiang He froze, then asked in a low voice, uncertain. “The guard who followed you when you first entered the capital? He... didn’t ghostify?”

Beneath the warm winter sun, a gentle breeze drifted by.

“He did.” Xu Yinhe looked at Jiang He, his voice still without the slightest fluctuation. “Changge said he has been guarding that formation all this time.”

ᯓ➤

Organs, chunks of corpse, and thick, sticky blood flowed downward along the corridor as if there were no end to them.

Tap, tap, tap... The sound of boots stepping on the ground echoed through the spiraling stairway, neither hurried nor slow.

Xu Changge walked downward, watching everything around him. His calm eyes carried a faint trace of thought.

Lou Ji had told him that something seemed to have gone wrong with the ghost fog here. Although the soul crystals produced by this ghost fog formation had still been delivered on time over the past three months, the people who entered each month for their rotation had never come back out. Now, it seemed the change in this place was not as simple as something wrong.

As he thought this, Xu Changge stepped out of the long, gloomy corridor. Beyond the passage, what entered his sight was a cavern like a honeycomb, with dense stone chambers imprisoning countless ghosts.

Apart from that, there were human remains spread almost evenly across the ground. Among those corpses, he saw two familiar faces, two third rank Grandmasters. He had once met them in the imperial capital. But now, their auras had been gone for a long time. Their third rank Grandmaster bodies, which should not rot even after death, looked especially eerie in this place.

Xu Changge glanced over them, then withdrew his gaze and continued forward. In the northeastern corner of the cavern, he saw a living person.

The figure was small and thin, his face withered. He was quietly kneeling in a corner without saying a word.

Xu Changge walked to a spot three meters behind the withered old man and stopped. Silently, he took a three-foot azure sword from his Sumeru Ring, but he did not swing it down at once.

Beside the withered old man sat an entire box of neatly stacked soul crystals. These should have been the soul crystals meant to be supplied to the Calm Sky Merchant Association this month.

A flash of confusion crossed Xu Changge’s eyes. Then his expression grew somewhat complicated, and he silently put the sword away again. He stood there in silence, dressed in azure like an Immortal banished to earth, looking utterly out of place amid this hellish scene.

The withered old man kneeling toward the northeast finally seemed to sense something. His head turned a full hundred and eighty degrees to look at Xu Changge behind him.

He stared blankly for a long time. Then a certain clarity seemed to return to the withered old man’s eyes. “Eldest... Young Master...?”

Xu Changge looked at the old man and felt the ghostly qi around him, so dense it was almost solid. “You are Gui Qi?”

“Gui Qi?” The withered old man murmured the name. Then he froze for a long while before slowly nodding. “This old servant... greets the Eldest Young Master...”

Within that hell-like cavern, everything fell silent. No one knew how much more time passed.

The withered old man shakily pushed the box beside him forward. “These... these are this month’s soul crystals... This old servant has failed the Chancellor. Please, Eldest... Young Master... Kill this old servant.”