Chapter 169 – Seasons Pass, The Disappearance of Yan Yu - Part 1

Eyes like jade, a naturally born undying husk, a living ghost.

According to ancient records, such a being was called a

jade husk

.

Why would Sheng'er be a jade husk? Both Yan Yu and Li Yuan knew the answer, yet they kept silent for the time being.

In the past, perhaps it would not have mattered. But in this era, where martial artists and undying husks stood on opposing sides, it had become a grave concern.

From the perspective of martial artists, she would be a demonic seed who could bring disaster in the future, something they might choose to kill outright or imprison as a rare asset.

From the perspective of undying husks, she would be a

treasure

—though whether they would teach her, exploit her, or even dissect her to uncover the secrets of a jade husk, no one could say.

Inside the side room, the candles crackled softly, casting faint shadows on the tables, chairs, and cabinets. The blind girl, still unaware, clung to Yan Yu, who held her tightly and kept urging, “Call the crows back. Don’t let them fly around!”

Her anxious tone frightened Sheng'er. The little girl, not knowing what had happened, looked back and forth between her mother and father, tears beginning to well in her jade-like eyes.

Suddenly, Li Yuan stood up and lifted the girl from Yan Yu’s arms. Then he smiled, a smile that shattered the tense atmosphere in an instant.

Holding his precious daughter aloft, he twirled her around twice and said, “Because Sheng'er is someone important, different from everyone else. If the world found out, it’d be a huge problem.”

“Eh?” The little girl blinked at her father. “Papa birbs?”

Li Yuan chuckled. “All right, papa will recall his birds too. Will that do?”

The girl then looked to her mother. “Mama an me dweams...”

Understanding Li Yuan’s intent, Yan Yu sighed in mock annoyance. “It’s fine, no one can see your crows in your dreams.”

“Oh...” Sheng’er began summoning back her crows.

Before long, there came the flap-flap of wings from the window, followed by soft taps on the oiled paper. Li Yuan opened the window to find two polite-looking crows perched there, each with 35~36 floating above their heads—an impressively high combat power for ninth rank creatures..

Throughout the night, crows came whizzing in one after another, like children returning home, lining up neatly on the rafters. Altogether there were 32.

After tucking Sheng'er into bed, Yan Yu—still dressed in her undergarments—leaned back against her husband’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her as she spoke in a worried whisper, “If Yan Mu hadn’t told us our child was a jade husk, we’d still be in the dark. Husband, are we supposed to keep Sheng'er hidden away at home from now on?”

Before Li Yuan could answer, Yan Yu’s tears welled up again.

“That poor child... Born into this world without her sight, and now even the heavens won’t tolerate her? Is this wide, wide world only big enough for our daughter to hide in this tiny courtyard? What does it matter if there’s animosity between martial artists and undying husks? Let them fight among themselves. Why should it involve us? We never did anything to provoke them...”

Her tears flowed freely. Li Yuan squeezed her shoulders, feeling them tremble. He could almost see it coming. If his daughter’s secret were revealed, if they couldn’t keep it hidden, he would have only two choices—to abandon her or become an enemy to both martial artists and undying husks.

Of course, he wasn’t foolish enough to challenge everyone at once. There would be alliances, feints, fabrications, maybe even borrowed power. Still, no matter how it played out, it would be fraught with danger and peril at every turn.

Yan Yu cried for a while and then fell silent, her reddened eyes growing resolute. But the next moment, that resolve was shattered by Li Yuan’s words.

“I have a plan.”

She drew in a quick breath. “What plan?”

“Her eyes are like jade; that’s why she’s labeled a jade husk. So, I’ll simply give her new eyes. With a hat that covers her face, no one will ever suspect.”

“Huh???” Yan Yu fell speechless.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Early the next morning.

Li Yuan went to see Pang Yuanhua, taking out a 1-candareen note of ghost money. “Miss Pang, could you buy me another gray rouge compact?”

She didn’t ask any questions and promptly returned with what he requested.

Then Li Yuan headed straight for the Gemhill county prison.

Scanning the inmate records, he waved the jailers out. “Wait for me outside.”

Once they left, he locked the prison door behind them, descending into the cold stone depths.

Tap, tap, tap...

each step echoed like the harbinger of doom.

Suddenly, he stopped in front of a single death-row cell. Within that solitary cage stood a lone woman.

Li Yuan had come for a certain woman. She was technically a broker of human trade, but her dealings ran far deeper than simply buying and selling live goods. She specialized in abducting children from villages when no one was watching. As for what she did with them afterward, Li Yuan didn’t need to hear the details; one look at her record was enough to wipe out any shred of sympathy he might have felt.

Clack!

He unlocked the cell door.

Startled, the woman blurted, “W-What? It’s not my execution day yet, I—”

Li Yuan silenced her with a swift blow and dragged her into a separate interrogation chamber. There, he tied her up, doused her with a bucket of cold water to wake her, and said calmly, “Do as I say, and I’ll leave you with a chance at life.”

Sensing his commanding tone and seeing how freely he moved about the prison, she scrambled to appease him. “Y-yes, sir. Ask me anything!”

“I’m going to carve out your eyes and then heal them,” Li Yuan replied.

She froze, uncomprehending. Then the glint of a blade flashed, and blood spurted from where her eyes had been.

The woman let out a piercing shriek. Li Yuan said, “Stop screaming. I’m going to heal you now.”

He took a box from his equipment box, the gray rouge compact. Opening it revealed a powder the color of gray ash, exuding a chilling aura. With a single gesture, he dabbed the powder on his fingertips and began to apply it to the woman’s face.

The rouge was peculiar. Even for someone inexperienced in makeup, it would perfectly take on whatever form the user imagined. Before long, the powder was used up. When Li Yuan finished, the woman’s painted appearance was exactly how she had looked before—right down to a pair of intact, seemingly radiant eyes.

Sure enough, her gouged-out eye sockets were gone, replaced by what appeared to be normal, spirited eyes. Li Yuan stared thoughtfully, stroking his chin. Meanwhile, the woman pleaded, “Is it done? Is it really done?”

“It’s done,” he said.

“But I... I still can’t see!” She wailed in panic. “You said you’d heal me, but I’m still blind!”

Baffled, Li Yuan retrieved a mirror and held it in front of her. Her eyes blinked as though they were perfectly functional, reflecting vividly in both mirror and reality. Yet she insisted over and over that she saw nothing.

Ignoring her cries, Li Yuan set down the mirror and stayed in that chamber for a full day and night. The woman drifted into sleep once; upon waking, she remained unable to see. That was when Li Yuan understood—

Although the gray rouge compact could change a person’s appearance, it could not cure innate defects. A blind person would remain blind, even if they were

painted

with lifelike eyes.

After waiting a while longer and confirming there were no strange side effects, Li Yuan pressed a fingertip to the woman’s face, letting a bead of blood drip forth. It sizzled against her skin like fire hitting ice—pure yang colliding with utter yin. Once these droplets of his blood left his body, the supernatural power within them was lost; there was no taking them back.

In a few seconds, the woman’s face was washed clean by Li Yuan’s blood. The makeup disappeared, and her new

eyes

reverted to bloody sockets.

He cut out her tongue next, then left the chamber. On his way out, he instructed the jailers, “Carry out the sentence as soon as possible.”

“We’ll do it today!” one called after him. “Headsman! Go fetch the headsman! Tell him to head to the marketplace and get ready!”

Li Yuan exited Gemhill County Prison. The experiment had succeeded. Next, he would give Sheng'er her own

eyes

.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

That night, Yan Yu sat anxiously at one side, watching Li Yuan pull out a peculiar gray rouge compact and carefully paint their daughter’s blind eyes with ash-like powder. Though curiosity burned inside her, she held her tongue. She knew Li Yuan’s love for their daughter ran just as deep as hers.

Before long, the powder was gone, and the little girl’s sightless eyes became a bright, lively pair that looked entirely natural.

Yan Yu gaped in astonishment, and Li Yuan finally explained how the rouge compact worked, along with what he had been doing at the prison. A look of delight lit her features—this was perfect. If Sheng'er wore a face-covering hat, who would ever suspect that she was a jade husk?

“That’s wonderful, Husband,” she said with a sigh of relief. Li Yuan, too, felt some of his tension ease.

They observed Sheng'er a while longer, and everything seemed normal. To be certain, they called for one of her crows. A crow fluttered down from the rafters to perch on the little girl’s shoulder, and Sheng'er let out a childish giggle, as if her new appearance was some grand joke.

That evening, the family of three went to bed, with Sheng'er nestled against the wall, Yan Yu in the middle, and Li Yuan on the outside.

In the dead of night, the bed began to shake more and more violently. Li Yuan snapped awake to see Sheng'er convulsing as if in the grip of a fever. Alarmed, he leaned over to find the little girl’s eyes flickering unpredictably—one moment they were milky white, the next they shone brilliantly, and then they began to distort in bizarre ways.

Li Yuan reached out to touch Sheng'er and found her body ice-cold, like a block of frozen jade.

“Sheng'er!” he shouted urgently, trying to shake her awake. But she wouldn’t respond, not even the slightest stir.

“Yan Yu!” he called, pushing at Yan Yu, only to find she, too, slept like the dead, no matter how hard he tried to rouse her.

Even Li Yuan, usually calm in a crisis, felt panic gnawing at him. His first thought was that this must be related to the gray rouge compact from earlier in the day.

“It must be the difference in their constitutions,” he muttered. “That death-row prisoner was just an ordinary person, but Sheng'er is a jade husk.”

He kept thinking it through. “A jade husk is a living ghost...while the gray rouge compact was clearly sold by another ghost. One ghost’s powers used on another ghost...”

He slapped his thigh in regret, then hurriedly reached into his equipment for the copper pendant—an item that could ward off curses—intending to place it on Sheng'er. He stopped himself at the last moment. That pendant, too, was forged by a ghost. He had no idea what two powers might do to each other if they collided inside his daughter’s body.

𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

But why wouldn’t Sheng'er wake up, and why had Yan Yu been dragged into this dream-bound slumber as well? Desperate, Li Yuan’s mind whirled through countless plans. Just as he was about to act, Yan Yu’s eyes slid open. She regarded him calmly.

“Husband,” she said quietly, “stay here with us.”

With that, she closed her eyes again, sinking back into her deep sleep. Though it was only a single phrase, they were enough to steady him like a charm of reassurance.

He understood. Something was happening inside that little dream house, and Yan Yu was there with Sheng'er. Since she trusted him, he would trust her in return. Yan Yu might have once been an ordinary woman, but after she managed to withdraw one mace worth of ghost money so effortlessly, there was no denying her abilities were no longer ordinary.