The evening wind was cold, and the sound of the wind in the mountains whimpered like a ghostly wail, echoing in the ears of the few people present.
Lu Heng said, “Lu Xuan, what’s right and wrong doesn’t matter today. Let’s end this now.”
Lu Xuan gave a strange laugh. “It’s time for a resolution.”
“That useless stinky Daoist back then… but some of the things on him are still very interesting.”
Lu Heng frowned. “What things?”
Lu Xuan said, “Why are you so nervous? You’re already dead anyway. Are you worried about this slave?” He gave a sinister smile, glancing over at Song Xiaozhou. “It seems you like him a lot. How about I send him to keep you company?”
Lu Heng said indifferently, “Dream on.”
Lu Xuan suddenly exploded with anger, staring hatefully at Lu Heng. “You’ve looked down on me since childhood because I’m the son of a prostitute. And him, a low-class slave, how is he any better than me?”
Lu Heng looked at Lu Xuan with a condescending arrogance in his eyes and said coldly, “Even with the surname Lu, you’re still just an illegitimate child, a treacherous and vicious lowlife.”
Lu Xuan was stunned for a moment. “You’ve always looked down on me.”
Lu Heng didn’t comment, but Lu Xuan started to laugh. “So what if you look down on me? You’re the one who’s been utterly defeated, and you’re the one who has nothing left!”
He raised a finger and pointed towards the Jing’an Courtyard down the mountain. The rotting, horrible-looking back of his hand was exposed as he said, “Brother, can you guess? If all the specters of Mount Furi go crazy, can you still get out of here?”
The expressions of the few people changed. Shen Zhi remembered the large fire he had seen rising from the Jing’an Courtyard earlier. His brows furrowed, and he said angrily, “You’re summoning ghosts, sacrificing living people to evil spirits!”
Lu Xuan glanced at him lazily and laughed. “Shen Daozhang[mfn]Daozhang means daoist[/mfn] is knowledgeable, but unfortunately, you lack foresight.”
Since ancient times, there has been talk of human sacrifice, using living people as livestock to worship ghosts and gods. This practice has been passed down for thousands of years, and one branch of it was particularly cruel, cutting off the heads of living people or splitting them in half to drain their blood to attract yin energy and summon ghosts.
However, such a sinister method greatly shortens one’s lifespan and is more likely to incur divine wrath, so it had almost disappeared.
In just a moment, the area for ten miles around became deathly silent. Lu Heng caught the metallic tang of blood in his nose, laced with the freshness of human flesh. It was strong and pungent, yet it held a strange temptation.
Shen Zhi said, “You’re sacrificing so many people to ghosts. Do you think you’ll be able to get out of here?”
Lu Xuan looked at Lu Heng, the corners of his mouth turned up in a manic and pathological smile. “I won’t be able to live anyway. The road to the underworld is long, so I might as well find more people to accompany me.”
Lu Heng tightened his grip on Song Xiaozhou’s hand, gave him a deep look, and then pushed him directly toward Shen Zhi. “There’s still a chance. Go now. Take Xiaozhou and get out of here.”
Lu Xuan sneered. The several attendants behind him drew their swords and leaped forward, aiming straight for Shen Zhi and the other two.
Within the forest, malevolent spirits and demons stirred restlessly, a hundred ghosts roaming in the night.
Lu Xuan watched with a sense of satisfaction in his heart, as if the long-awaited blade had finally fallen. Ever since Lu Heng’s death, he hadn’t had a single good night’s sleep. Later, he heard that people had died in Jing’an Courtyard, and that the servants who had once served Lu Heng had died sudden, violent deaths one after another. Lu Xuan couldn’t say what he felt; there was horror, but also a certain sense of inevitability.
Finally, today, he and Lu Heng had reached the moment of truth. Lu Xuan was impossibly calm, setting up an altar in Jing’an Courtyard and sacrificing people to ghosts.
Ordinary people couldn’t fight ghosts, but he was determined to compete with Lu Heng for dominance.
Lu Xuan’s attendants were not ordinary people. Shen Zhi and Liang Mu had many scruples; they were cultivators and couldn’t kill ordinary humans. Lu Heng, however, was unrestrained. His hands were already stained with blood, and one or two more lives on his hands made no difference to him.
Seeing his attendants fall, Lu Xuan’s mind was clear. His brother, the high and mighty Lu Heng he remembered, had become a vengeful ghost. His hands were bloody, and his eyes were a vicious crimson, which gave Lu Xuan a certain sense of retaliatory pleasure.
Greedy evil spirits, due to the presence of two cultivators and a vengeful ghost, hid in the shadows, waiting for their chance. Some couldn’t bear to wait any longer and darted out, grabbing the corpses that Lu Heng had discarded, and feasted upon them.
The scene was so bloody and impactful that Song Xiaozhou’s face turned pale, and he nearly threw up on the spot.
He tried desperately to break free from Shen Zhi’s grip, his eyes stubbornly fixed on Lu Heng, saying, “Jinzhi, I’m not leaving! Shen Zhi, let go of me!”
With a clang, the azure sword light in Liang Mu’s hand blazed brilliantly, shredding the evil spirit that had sneaked up behind them.
“Northwest direction, go.”
Shen Zhi stuffed his sword into Song Xiaozhou’s hand. “Take this.”
Song Xiaozhou glanced at him. Perhaps because the ghost energy in the mountain was too intense, Shen Zhi’s face was frighteningly pale. Song Xiaozhou tightened his grip, clutching the sword tightly in his hand.
Lu Heng didn’t look at Song Xiaozhou. He was panting heavily. He was a vengeful ghost, and the scent of fresh human flesh from the evil spirits feasting in the forest had not yet dissipated, drawing out the ferocity deep within Lu Heng.
His gaze fell on Lu Xuan, and his body moved, closing in on Lu Xuan. Lu Xuan’s pupils were constricted. He dodged frantically, but his internal organs suddenly began to ache. It was the backlash from sacrificing living people.
His expression became pained, mixed with a sinister gloom. The ghost energy around him surged. His pitch-black pupils were bottomless, his appearance ghastly, becoming something that was neither human nor ghost.
Lu Heng wanted to kill Lu Xuan and use him as a lure to attract the evil spirits in the forest, but he didn’t expect Lu Xuan to become a monster that was even more difficult to deal with.
Lu Xuan clung to Lu Heng, who had been trying to help the three escape, and said, “Brother, let them die with us.”
Lu Heng’s eyes turned red with hatred. He almost wanted to pulverize Lu Xuan into dust as he said coldly, “Dream on. No one is allowed to touch Xiaozhou.”
“If he’s dead, then you can be together forever, wouldn’t that be better—” Lu Xuan didn’t finish his sentence as several wounds suddenly appeared on his chest. Blood splattered out, and he grunted. Lu Heng’s eyes lingered on the bloody flesh on his chest for a few moments, his expression growing more brutal. He said sinisterly, “Weren’t you trying to summon ghosts?”
Lu Xuan felt a sudden tightening around his neck as Lu Heng’s hand clamped onto it, cutting off his breath.
Lu Heng said softly, “What goes around comes around. Go feed the ghosts you summoned yourself.”
There were simply too many ghosts in the forest. The three of them were outnumbered, and as the evil spirits began to surround them one by one, Shen Zhi had nearly run out of talismans.
Suddenly, the evil spirits stopped in their tracks. It seemed they had smelled an even more tempting meal. They turned their heads to see Lu Heng standing behind them, clutching the bleeding Lu Xuan.
Song Xiaozhou cried out, “Jinzhi.”
Lu Heng’s face had gone pale as he fixed his gaze on Song Xiaozhou, his eyes flickering between lucidity and confusion. When he retreated a step, the evil spirits closed in, multiplying as they trailed after him. There was blood on the ground, and some even crawled on the ground to lick it up.
His fingers were covered in blood. Lu Heng took a short breath and glanced at Liang Mu, the meaning in his gaze self-evident.
Liang Mu was startled, and for a rare moment, he hesitated before tightening his grip on his sword. “…It will hurt you.”
“Don’t waste time,” Lu Heng interrupted him viciously. “If you don’t act, you’ll all die!”
Song Xiaozhou, however, suddenly tore free from Shen Zhi’s grasp. A circle of ghosts separated them, like an insurmountable mountain range. Tears streamed down Song Xiaozhou’s face.
Lu Heng saw Song Xiaozhou trying to run towards him and immediately said, “Xiaozhou, be good.”
Song Xiaozhou’s steps faltered. He looked at Lu Heng in a daze. “If you’re gone, I won’t live either.”
Lu Heng was stunned. The evil spirits, unable to hold back, all rushed forward. Liang Mu gave a low shout, his sword leaping from his grasp. In an instant, it shattered into countless blades, blazing with a brilliance like the scorching sun, surging forth like a tidal wave to sweep through the swarm of evil spirits.
Wherever the sword light passed, screams of agony rose one after another.
Lu Heng felt the imposing sword light but didn’t resist. Instead, he trapped all the evil spirits trying to flee in his vicinity. Suddenly, his arm tightened. It was Lu Xuan—barely holding onto life, his face smeared with blood, his eyes burning with a terrifying brilliance.
He held on to Lu Heng, and with a ruthless determination to die together, he pushed him toward the solitary tomb he had prepared for him.
The moment the Soul-Sealing Array touched his blood, the markings glowed brightly. Lu Heng only heard a heavy thud, as if he saw a coffin open wide, revealing a lonely skeleton inside, its hands and feet wrapped in chains, firmly nailed to the coffin.
It was his coffin, his bones.
After all that, he had returned to where he started.
Lu Xuan said, “Lu Heng, you still lost.”
