Chapter 4: Young Lady, Who Are You?

In just an instant, the courtyard once teeming with specters was left with only the monstrous demon, Man Niang, revealed in her true form—along with a yard strewn with rotting corpses and decaying flesh.

“Ah!!!...”

Stripped of her human disguise, the skin-changer cloaked in Man Niang’s hide was grotesque beyond measure. From a distance, she resembled a creature crudely assembled from the remains of cats, dogs, and other beasts. Under the relentless assault of the spectral soldiers, her flesh was torn asunder, and she howled with pain and terror, her screams filling the night.

“Spare me, do not kill me! I am the daughter of the Black Mountain Ghost Mother. If I die here, my mother will surely seek vengeance upon you!”

The hideous demon writhed upon the ground, her voice a desperate blend of threat and supplication as she pleaded with Xu Ye.

“Spare you?”

Xu Ye’s gaze, cold and desolate, fell upon the demon as the memory of Xu Yuan’s recent death flickered in his mind.

“Spare you—can you bring back the lives of those who perished in this courtyard?”

His tone was ice itself.

“I... I...”

The demon stammered at his words, but in the next instant, her head, bristling with seven or eight eyes, abruptly snapped toward him. Her body swelled, transforming into a vast maw that lunged at Xu Ye to devour him whole.

“I’ll eat you!”

With a thunderous crash, the demon’s massive form collided with the righteous aura that surrounded Xu Ye. She enveloped him and his protective energy alike, viscous and suffocating as a mire.

Within, Xu Ye found himself surrounded by countless eyes—glaring, greedy, or furious, each one fixed upon him.

“I am a Ghost Lord! Such meager righteous energy cannot kill me!”

The demon shrieked, and dozens of eyes burst at once. The righteous aura around Xu Ye all but vanished, the air now grating with the screech of blades scraping iron—a sound sharp enough to pierce the soul.

Clearly, the fiend had chosen to wound herself in order to dissipate Xu Ye’s protective force.

“Come now, aren’t you the poet? Why not compose another verse—let’s see if I can withstand it this time!”

With the tide turned, the skin-changer taunted him gleefully.

Xu Ye’s expression remained unmoved as he glanced at the multitude of eyes before him, then at the ceremonial ruler in his hand. He nodded.

“Very well.”

“Very well?” The skin-changer paused, perplexed.

Then, Xu Ye’s resonant voice rang out once more:

“Power compels men to forfeit their freedom,
The dragon soars, the phoenix sweeps—their charge unstoppable.”

Hearing him recite yet another fine verse, the demon grew wary.

“Enough! Stop—stop it!”

She bellowed, detonating another volley of eyes and baring her fanged maw as she lunged to bite.

Unshaken, Xu Ye gripped his ruler and chanted:

“In grand halls, three thousand revel in drunken flowers,
One sword chills fourteen provinces with frost.”

At these words, the ruler in his hand erupted in a blaze of verdant light. A mighty surge of righteous force exploded outward like legendary sword qi, shredding the demon’s form that had enveloped him.

“Mother... Mother! This youth is a true threat, a true threat!”

The skin-changer, now in tatters, screamed in terror. Just then, Xu Ye recited the final lines:

“War drums thunder, the noble air runs cold,
Winds and waves shake earth and sea in autumn’s hold.
In the southeast, the golden pillar stands forever,
Who envies the marquis of ten thousand households of old?”

As the poem’s completion echoed forth, Xu Ye heard a clear sword cry. A dazzling arc of sword light sliced through the air, striking the fleeing demon and shattering her into countless fragments—leaving only a gemstone, round as an eye, to fall to the ground.

Yet even as the skin-changer perished, the sword light, imbued with boundless righteous force, showed no sign of waning. Roaring, it pierced straight into the heavens.

With a deafening peal like thunder, the thick clouds above were torn asunder, revealing the vast blue sky—and a blinding sun.

“The... sun?” Xu Ye was struck dumb.

For the object radiating such brilliance high above was not the familiar oval of his memory, but a perfectly square shape. Beneath this “sun,” two rows of golden, archaic script floated faintly in the sky:

“To unite with heaven and earth in virtue,
To join with sun and moon in brilliance,
To harmonize with the seasons in their course,
To share with spirits joy and woe.”

As Xu Ye made out these golden words, a sudden buzzing filled his ears. His left eye was seized by searing pain, as though a fire raged within.

“What is this world? Why is the sun not a sphere, but a square seal...?”

Confused and frightened, Xu Ye clutched his eye and fell to his knees, wracked with pain.

At that moment, a fresh surge of righteous energy poured from his ruler, enveloping him and, in part, coalescing into a ghostly figure.

Fighting agony and bewilderment, Xu Ye looked up and finally saw the apparition clearly—a tall, white-haired elder.

The old man spoke not a word. He merely reached out and drew the gem through the air into his palm. With his finger as a brush, he swiftly inscribed several strokes onto the gemstone, then pressed it directly into Xu Ye’s left eye.

“Ah!...”

The pain was so intense that Xu Ye lost consciousness at once.

Yet before he faded, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the old man bow deeply to him.

Behind the elder stood a host of equally spectral figures—members of the Xu family, among them Xu Ye’s elder brother, Xu Yuan.

“I remember now... That old man must be Xu Jiugē, our founding ancestor...”

As his awareness ebbed, Xu Ye’s thoughts reached this revelation—the elder was the very image of Xu Jiugē from the ancestral portraits in the clan shrine.

“But what does it all mean...?”

With a mind full of questions, Xu Ye’s consciousness dissolved into darkness.

...

Several mornings later.

“You’re finally awake.”

“How do you feel? Any discomfort?”

Xu Ye awoke on an unfamiliar bed, his gaze blank as he stared at the young woman questioning him.

She wore a white dress, her dark hair falling to her waist. Her features, flawless and unmistakably Eastern, were strikingly beautiful—yet her eyes were blue, reminiscent of a mixed-blood girl from Xu Ye’s original world.

“Uh... Why is my eye covered...?”

As Xu Ye studied her, a searing pain flared in his left eye. Only then did he realize it was tightly bandaged.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing? If you don’t wish to be blind, keep still.”

The girl caught his hand as he tried to remove the bandage.

“To dare gaze upon the Sacred Relic of Destiny—if you’re not blind already, you should thank your ancestors for their virtue.”

She shot him a sharp look.

“Sacred Relic of Destiny? So the square seal I saw before fainting was the Sacred Relic of Destiny.”

Her words brought Xu Ye fully back to his senses.

“Wait—who are you? Where is this? And those specters—what became of them?”

Despite a flood of questions, Xu Ye, regaining his composure, voiced only those that were both urgent and unlikely to arouse suspicion.

“Not bad. The fact that you can ask such questions proves your mind is clear.”

The young woman did not answer at once. She nodded thoughtfully, jotted a few notes in her ledger, then looked back at him.

“I am Lin Buyu, medical officer of the Bright Division, Ghost Suppression Bureau of Great Liang. You are in the infirmary of the Bright Division. As for the specters haunting your family, all have been sealed or banished by the Bureau’s ghost envoys.”