Chapter 523 – A Blood-Red Night, Powers Unleashed, the Nine-Headed Ghost Gate Shattered! - Part 1

Chapter 523 – A Blood-Red Night, Powers Unleashed, the Nine-Headed Ghost Gate Shattered! - Part 1

Boom! BOOM! BOOOOM!

The living might not have noticed a thing yet, but within ancient ghost street, the world was being torn asunder.

All the ghostly buildings trembled violently. The bricks and stones paved along the streets suddenly shot into the air like swarms of grey butterflies, fluttering upward only to disintegrate mid-flight, vanishing like paper offerings tossed into a blazing wind.

The source of the tremors was at the far end of ancient ghost street.

Even from the entrance, one could see the grand, eerie spectacle unfolding in the distance.

There loomed a towering, ancient bronze gate, rising into the clouds and lost in the churning grey mist.

Its once-proud bronze rings were now rotten and crumbling. The beast heads that held them were eroded and indistinct, like some forgotten ancestral mansion newly unearthed, worn down by centuries of decay.

Suddenly, those beast heads twitched, as if waking from a long slumber. Pale eyes snapped open one by one, and even the rusted bronze rings twisted into wide-open jaws bristling with jagged teeth.

It was as if the ancient ghost street itself had come alive.

These were the Nine Gates, each one bearing a dragon’s head.

And now, those dragon heads were open, snarling, their maws full of fury and menace.

Even during the merging of the Exotic Beast Park and Apparel Atelier, this had never happened. Yet now it was happening.

There could only be one explanation. Whatever was coming was worse than when the Lotus Cult stormed into Jade Capital.

This world didn’t revolve around Li Yuan. During his years of quiet cultivation, the tides had shifted. Powers from every corner had bypassed him entirely, brewing a storm too vast to ignore.

He had sensed flickers, brief glimpses of something beyond the veil, but only from afar like a half-forgotten dream.

Now, the storm had finally broken loose.

And though he could see it, he could not yet understand it.

He was no omniscient hero. Not every cataclysm had to involve him.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

At this moment, Li Yuan stood silently on a mountain slope beside the Ghost Prison.

A crow perched on his shoulder, and behind him rested an ancient locust tree.

Below, in the monochrome underworld riddled with hanging iron cages, Yan Yu stood still in her black dress, a hundred embroidered ghosts rippling over her body. Hands clasped before her, she stared calmly into the distance.

Behind her, the others stood in a line, the boar, the frozen maiden, the two little flower girls, the stone-laden fat ghost, the scrawny one with iron tongs, and the white-robed ghost woman bearing a cage on her back.

Li Yuan and Yan Yu had never lacked communication, and so he understood something very clearly. Clinging to one’s humanity was an extraordinarily difficult task for a ghost.

At first, it might still seem possible. But the stronger they grew, the more that fragile shred of humanity was threatened.

Just as ordinary people couldn’t bear the power of ghosts, neither could ghosts bear the weight of humanity, especially someone like Yan Yu.

This truth applied not only to her, but to all awakened ghosts.

The difference was this. If she absorbed too much, she would lose her humanity. But the others, if they absorbed too much, they would lose their minds altogether.

And so, most ghosts exercised strict restraint. They avoided consuming random

mutt ghosts

, choosing instead to preserve a coherent sense of self.

But to go further, there was only one path. They had to devour their own kind. That was the forbidden path of mutual consumption.

Ever since she consumed the flower shop, Yan Yu had been restraining herself, working tirelessly to digest it. Now, at last, she had succeeded, and with the aid of incense and worship, she had woven more and more threads between herself and the human world.

But if she were to face the madness of those other awakened ghosts, slaughter and devouring alike, there was a real chance her humanity would vanish. And that...was what she feared the most.

Li Yuan understood this too. That was why, the moment the gates at the end of the ancient ghost street began to tremble, he had rushed straight to the edge of the Ghost Prison.

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

He would never allow Yan Yu to disappear.

Now, he stood silently, eyes fixed on the empty plains in the distance.

There was nothing there yet. But soon, something stirred. Yan Yu hadn’t moved, but the ghosts behind her were beginning to act as if pulled by some invisible force.

At the front, the boar snorted and puffed white mist, clearing the way. Behind it, emaciated ghosts hunched low, their bones protruding through parchment-thin skin, staggering forward like slaves in chains.

They shuffled past in eerie unison, like ghostly wardens on their patrol. And then, one after another, they vanished into thin air.

Li Yuan’s pupils contracted. They hadn’t disappeared. They’d been transported into the ancient ghost street.

Someone was attacking Yan Yu. And they were doing it using ghost items at the level of great ghost domains.

His gaze darted across the landscape, trying to lock onto the attacker. But he couldn’t see anyone. An impossible thought struck him like lightning.

Yan Yu hadn’t moved an inch either. This meant whoever was using the ghost items were far, far away. Too far for her to retaliate.

Unable to strike back, she had only one option. That was to track down the origin of the attack and enter the ghost domain behind it.

No matter how much humanity she’d cultivated, Yan Yu was still a ghost at her core.

And ghosts couldn’t escape their nature.

Even if she could suppress the rules once or twice with sheer force of will, no one could withstand hundreds or even thousands of such attacks without consequence.

First the boar and the hungry ghosts had gone.

Then went the frozen woman in blue robes. She moved with a smile too wide, too strange, her joints cracking as though frost were breaking apart inside her limbs.

As she walked, a trail of snow and ice followed behind her. And within it, the faint forms of corpses began to emerge.

These corpses seemed to come alive, pale eyes open, dragging themselves painfully across the ground, crawling like worms through a frozen graveyard.

And just as suddenly, the frost woman and her corpse train vanished.

Then it was the two flower girls, one with a white headscarf pushing a little cart, and the other with a red scarf skipping with a basket on her arm. One swayed with every step, the other bounced along cheerfully. Then both flickered out of existence.

After them, the fat ghost. Then the thin ghost...

One by one, they were gone.

Only the white-robed woman with the iron cage on her back remained behind.

Yan Yu still hadn’t moved.

And now, with the others gone, Li Yuan finally saw what had been hidden in the haze.

Countless threads were wrapped around her.

They were hair-thin, nearly invisible, strung through the ghostly mist like spider silk glinting beneath a white-hot lamp.

She looked like prey caught in a vast, invisible web. But this

prey

was far too large for any spider to contain, so large the web itself became laughable. Yet the threads weren’t meant to trap her.

They were conduits. Channels. Something to guide her, push her, toward the gates at the end of the ancient ghost street..

“Happyland Zoo,” Li Yuan muttered.

He understood now exactly who was behind this. But it wasn’t the ghost domain itself that was attacking. It was someone using its ghost items.

Happyland Zoo’s ghost items were notoriously strange, with a particular focus on range. From the thousand-mile-thread to the binding silk carried by the undying husk Chang Qi, whom Li Yuan had encountered many years ago, nearly all of their tools attacked from absurd distances.

This meant the attacker could strike from well beyond Yan Yu’s reach.

She had no choice but to respond, yet she couldn’t strike back at enemies who were attacking from outside her reach.

To pull that off, though, two things were required. First, the attackers had to know her exact location. Second, they had to possess a sufficient number of high tier ghost items.

Li Yuan suddenly turned to the little crow perched beside him and asked sharply, “Why did your mother come out tonight?”

The little crow replied, “It’s the end of the year. Mama said she needed to summon Black and White Impermanence and the temple guards."

Li Yuan narrowed his eyes. “So she didn’t come out because she sensed anything unusual happening on the ancient ghost street?”

“No... She already had the meeting planned,” the little crow said, then hesitated. “Papa, are you saying there’s a traitor among us?”

“...” Li Yuan didn’t reply, but a certain person came to mind.

Realizing this, the crow said, “But Xiang Yan doesn’t seem like a bad person. I’ve been watching her.”

“Let’s keep observing for now...”

Li Yuan’s gaze returned to the shimmering threads. They were faint and delicate, nearly invisible, only becoming discernible when they clustered around Yan Yu. Beyond that, they vanished into the darkness of the night sky.

The little crow was starting to panic. “Papa...what do we do?”

Li Yuan’s voice turned icy. “The blade has been drawn from the map, now we just need to know what it’s aiming to stab.”

The little crow had heard that phrase before. In the old story, the blade of the dagger was aimed at a king.

But this time...who was the target?

“Do they want Mama to merge with the other great ghost domains?” she asked, unsure.

“That’s just the first layer,” Li Yuan said. His thoughts crackled with clarity, everything connecting in an instant. “The second layer is destroying your mother’s humanity. Whether she merges or not doesn’t matter. If I’m right, the great ghost domains from all the other provinces are all crashing toward the gates, not just Silkfloss and Hidden River Province.”

The little crow’s eyes widened. “A-All of them are attacking?!”

Li Yuan nodded grimly. “The power behind the Deathless Tomb screwed up. They thought having you devour the meat fields, and sending Naran to wipe out the ghost domains, would tie everything off neatly. They thought annihilating the seven nation alliance’s 400,000-strong army was a victory, something worth celebrating.

“But in truth, the enemy used that defeat to collapse the will of all the kings. Before, those kings still feared the consequences of the Grand Union of Yin and Yang. Now? They’ve become fugitives with nothing to lose. And in their eyes, if they’re doomed anyway, what difference does it make whether this world survives?

“However, among all the great ghost domains, your mother is unique. Her humanity is the greatest threat, the most unpredictable factor. So they’ve decided...to destroy it.”

The little crow sat stunned.

Li Yuan narrowed his eyes and said calmly, “There’s a third layer to all this.”

“Another layer?” She could hardly keep up anymore. How was her father able to piece all this together in just a few moments?

Right, he

was

a schemer himself. Maybe this was what they meant when by the phrase,

to understand a monster, you must be one yourself.

Li Yuan didn’t explain further. He just squinted into the distance, a dangerous, composed smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

He murmured, “What a shame. If your plan had started just a bit earlier, you might’ve had a chance to succeed. But now? Not even the slightest.”

“Huh? Papa, what do you mean?” The little crow blinked, confused. “What do we do now?”

Li Yuan said calmly, “Scan the area. Anyone acting suspicious, judge for yourself. If they need to die, kill them. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Suspicious...” The little crow hesitated. “But Papa, I think they’ll be good at hiding.”

“So what?” Li Yuan replied. “They’ll show themselves soon enough. Just remember, our enemies might already be inside the temple.”

The moment he said it, his body shimmered and transformed.

Where Li Yuan had stood now appeared a young boy, delicate and doll-like, sculpted as if from powdered jade. With a whoosh, two blazing fireballs shot from beneath his feet. Then, a crimson ribbon spiraled into existence, whipping through the air like a living flame.

[1]

1. For reference, I think he’s taking on the appearance of Nezha. ☜