Chapter 174 – Husband and Wife, Shoulder to Shoulder in the Ghostly Frontier - Part 3

In a courtyard under the moonlight, Li Yuan sat cross-legged, pondering the events of the day.

He had told Sheng'er, “Your mother is fine. In a few days, I’ll take you to see her.”

Delighted and impatient, Sheng'er wanted to leave right away.

However, Li Yuan said, “Only if you go to bed like a good girl, then I’ll take you.”

So tonight, she went to sleep early, full of excitement.

Outside the courtyard, along the stone path through the nearby woods, came the sound of wheels rattling. It was unmistakably a wheelchair, moving quickly.

Soon enough, Pang Yuanhua arrived beside Li Yuan, her expression a mix of astonishment and disbelief.

“Senior, something major has happened!” she blurted out. “On the ghost street marketplace, that rouge peddler reappeared, and he was walking alongside some mysterious undying husk.

"The Clock Mansion’s master saw it with his own eyes. He had one of his people try to attack the undying husk, but the peddler protected him instead. This...this is either a human controlling a ghost or a ghost controlling a human!”

She sounded half in a trance; the very notion of humans ruling over ghosts—or, worse, ghosts ruling over humans—shook her deeply. How could a person possibly command a ghost?

“Oh,” Li Yuan replied calmly. Then he peered at Pang Yuanhua in her wheelchair and asked, “Would you like to be my sworn sister?”

She froze, gaping at him for a moment before giving a quick bow. “It would be my honor.”

As the eldest daughter of the Frost Sword Sect, famed for her cunning, she understood perfectly well what it meant to forge such a bond. It was a way for both sides to strengthen ties.

Li Yuan nodded. “That mysterious undying husk was me.”

Pang Yuanhua’s mouth fell open so wide it looked as if he could stuff three duck eggs and two chicken eggs inside.

Wasting no time, Li Yuan handed her three 1-mace notes in ghost money.

“Buy me 15 copper pendants,” he said.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Two hours later.

A lone figure stood on a small boat drifting into the black market ghost domain, past rows of blood-red warning stakes.

Li Yuan patted his chest to confirm he still carried sixteen copper pendants, then tightened his grip on his Dragon-Fanged Spear.

The water was murky, dark, eerily silent. Shadows moved just below the surface. One careless downward glance might bring one face to face with a bloated white face staring back.

Up ahead, structures loomed in permanent shadow, a scene both menacing and oppressive. Li Yuan remembered how the black market had burned once before, only to rise from the ashes exactly as it had been.

His small boat carved a faint path through the black water. From afar, he could see the place more clearly, and each stroke of the oar made it look both startlingly familiar and entirely alien.

Now the black market was split in two. The old north market and east market no longer resembled the trading hub he’d known; instead, they formed a wide clearing centered on a massive building draped in shadow. Faint silhouettes of human skins hung in the lantern light, waxy and yellow, swaying in the gloom.

Meanwhile, the south market and west market remained as they had been before.

With a

thump

, the small boat reached shore. Li Yuan, revisiting a place strewn with memories, hopped ashore gripping his Dragon-Fanged Spear, heading into the depths of the district.

“Husband.”

A spectral figure in white called out to him from a nearby corner. It was Yan Yu.

“Sheng'er isn’t with you?” she asked.

“I came to scout things out first.”

“Good. That’s the right idea.”

They were husband and wife, yet there was nothing left to say—countless words, all unspoken.

Li Yuan snapped his spear, and with a series of metallic clicks, the shaft extended fully, the cold blade gleaming in the moonlight.

“Tonight, I plan to test those ghost servants across the way. I’ll kill as many as I can.”

“Use this instead.” Yan Yu produced a bow from behind her back and held it out. “I know you prefer blades, but there aren’t any for sale on my street. No spears either. It took some effort to find this bow.”

Li Yuan studied the bow in his hands. Its design was nothing special at first glance, but the entire thing glistened a deep, wet crimson, as if coated in fresh, flowing blood.

The moment he took hold of it, it felt like the bow had latched onto his palms. Surprisingly, though, it didn’t sap his strength or cause any sudden spikes of power.

In fact, that lack of change was cause for relief. Normally, only when Li Yuan wielded a blade could his overall combat power reach 1,140~1,890.

Reaching the upper limit of 1890 demanded both an explosive surge of blood energy and one of his three blade styles—Ruling Blade, Phantom Blade, or Final Blade.

Each of these styles varied in potency, and only real combat could reveal their true differences.

Yet as soon as he picked up this bow, it somehow allowed him to deploy his archery with the same force he mustered when using a blade.

His greatest archery move was the seventh rank ultimate skill called Cloud Piercer, whereas his sixth rank Ruling Blade was maxed out at the Master level.

Technically, a Master level regular skill was still a step below an ultimate skill, which had to be self-created and couldn’t be reached simply by piling on skill points.

Even so, Piercing Clouds still trailed far behind the Ruling Blade, just like how the Final Blade was the evolved form of City Toppler. However, this eerie red bow bridged that gap.

A quick glance at the equipment box confirmed a new entry—Ghost Bow.

“Husband,” Yan Yu said, “when you use this bow, the blood will start to flow over your hands, then your arms, and eventually your whole body. Whatever you do, don’t let it cover your face; if it does, this bow will become a terrifying curse.”

𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Li Yuan took out 16 copper pendants. “Will these help against its curse?”

She hesitated for a moment, but before she could respond, Li Yuan stashed the bow away and carried his Dragon-Fanged Spear eastward.

Soon, he reached the boundary between the black market ghost domain and the human-skin rouge shop.

He planted the spear into the ground with a thud, then stared into the darkness and drew the bow once more.

He tested the string, and his senses immediately expanded outward. Places he couldn’t see before became sharply outlined; whispers he couldn’t hear became distinct in his ears. It felt as though he could now perceive everything for miles, covering nearly all of the east and north markets.

An arrow wasn’t even necessary. One bead of blood welled at his fingertip and sank into the string. With a smooth draw, he fired.

That droplet of ancestral seal shadow blood sliced through the air before landing on a distant pavilion, then vanished in a wisp of gray smoke.

It was like rapping a beehive. The great pavilion door creaked open, and out drifted a procession of figures with black pits for eyes, nostrils, and mouths like hollow shadows. On closer inspection, they were bloated human skins.

Swish, swish, swish!

Li Yuan’s crimson arrows rained down like meteors. With each hit, the human-skin figure hissed into puffs of gray smoke and slumped to the ground. He brought down eight of them in quick succession.

Just as the remaining skins were about to advance, they abruptly halted and lowered their heads, as if applying makeup.

Moments later, they lifted their faces again—now sporting features exactly like the people closest to Li Yuan—Xue Ning, Ping’an, Pang Yuanhua, Senior Ye...all familiar faces. Only Yan Yu and Sheng'er were missing.

Li Yuan refused to be rattled, firing another round of blood arrows that felled seven or eight more. The next wave of skins paused,

redressed

themselves once again, and resumed their approach.

This time, they not only wore his friends’ faces, they had duplicated their body shapes too. Someone unprepared might be fooled into thinking these were living, breathing humans.

Li Yuan continued firing. The cycle repeated; one group of skins collapsed while a new group began putting on

makeup

.

Then, suddenly, every last skin looked up wearing his face instead. Even their bodies matched his form perfectly. Their sleeves slipped back, revealing Dragon-Fanged Spears of their own.

In Li Yuan’s vision, faint lines of text flickered with a combat power of 684, hinting that these clones possessed about sixty percent of his power.

It reminded him of the rouge peddler’s merchandise. In this domain, illusions that mimicked a person’s form could also replicate a portion of their abilities.

Beneath the waning moon in the ghost domain, with his ghostly wife by his side, Li Yuan watched the waxy human skins ripple in the cold breeze.

Behind Yan Yu, more and more pale, crawling figures emerged. She needed to seize her window of lucidity to master her new powers...for Sheng'er’s sake, and her husband’s.

Once she sank into slumber, the peddler would lash out with human-skin minions to assault the black market.

The ghosts themselves had reached a precarious stalemate, unable to strike directly at one another. They could only clash through their servants.