Chapter 204 – Yan Yu’s General Store, A Visitor Arrives - Part 3

That night, Xue Ning was too exhausted to keep Li Yuan company, so one of her personal maids attended to him instead.

When Li Yuan fell asleep, he rejoined Yan Yu in the ghost domain. After shooing Sheng'er out of the back room, husband and wife savored a moment of intimacy in those dreary quarters before heading out into the main hall.

They found Sheng'er playing by the shop’s large front room, perched on a window side bench, peering out at the street. Though the room felt warm and bright, her small figure seemed strangely lonesome as she pressed her hands and cheeks to the crystal pane, gazing into the distance.

The world outside lay pitch-black; only a narrow, winding path...thin as a snake’s body, glimmered faintly in the darkness. Very few passed by, and the ones that did weren’t quite human.

Something out there caught Sheng'er’s eye. She exclaimed happily, “Flowers!”

When Li Yuan and Yan Yu approached, she grabbed their hands in excitement. “There’s a big sister out there selling flowers! I love flowers!”

Li Yuan glanced out the window and saw a little girl in a blood-red headscarf carrying a basket of flowers. Worried, he pulled Sheng'er closer. “Don’t go.”

“Why not?” she asked, puzzled.

“It’s dangerous.”

She pouted for a while before finally mumbling, “I have no friends...I just want a friend...”

Li Yuan said, “Your younger brother doesn’t have friends either, but he’s just fine practicing his swordsmanship every day. Besides, the two of you can be friends, can’t you?”

Sheng'er thought for a moment, then tilted her head up. Her eyes were like spotless white jade, and she smiled sweetly. “If Papa says so, then I won’t look for that big sister or buy any flowers. Tomorrow, I’ll go play with my brother.”

Relieved by his daughter’s obedience, Li Yuan smiled and relaxed.

𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Just then, the door flew open, letting in a gust of chilly wind. The gray-clad peddler entered, beaming, and led in a man who gave off an air of cold indifference. After stepping inside, the peddler politely said, “Welcome.”

The man swept his gaze around the shop. He soon noticed Li Yuan, Yan Yu, and Sheng'er by the display case. His eyes flickered with a hint of calculation as he slowly approached.

Li Yuan, too, quickly sized the man up, and saw something odd in the information streaming through his vision, 165~330. An overall combat power starting at standard seventh rank yet nearly reaching sixth was highly unusual.

Instinctively, Li Yuan moved forward to shield his wife and daughter, even here in the dream realm.

The man glanced at Li Yuan and smiled. “Such a chance meeting. My name is Bao Liuqi.”

Li Yuan noted a bulge at the man’s waist, almost certainly a concealed dagger. For a moment, they locked eyes. Whatever plan Bao Liuqi might have had seemed to fade.

After all, he’d stumbled onto this strange ancient street while fleeing through the wilderness after wiping out an entire family. Seeing the gray-clad peddler, he suspected there could be some hidden opportunity and had followed her here, deeper into the street.

The place was clearly eerie, but he was bold. As the saying went,

Fortune lies in risk.

Without gambling, how could one hope to profit?

Still, he had a vague sense that something was off. He’d half-planned to seize the little girl, but for reasons he couldn’t name, he backed down. He cupped his hands politely. “Might I ask where this place is?”

Li Yuan saw no sign of the

equipment

that typically marked a fellow undying husk, so he realized this must be just an ordinary martial artist who’d wandered in. He was unsure how to respond. After all, he remembered how unsettling it was to blunder into a ghost-run shop for the first time. So he kept quiet.

Yan Yu, however, spoke up in a calm, measured voice, “Xu Qi. A seventh-rank martial artist from Phoenix Immortal Prefecture in Hidden River Province. Orphaned and taken in by the Wang Family, who taught you martial arts as a child in the hope you might one day join a proper sect. But when it came time to select a disciple for the sect, the Wang Family chose their own blood son over you...”

Yan Yu continued in an even, unhurried tone, “Although you couldn’t enter the sect due to the limited number of spots, the Wang Family compensated by putting you in a lucrative managerial position. By chance, you used that money to pave your own way into another sect.

“Publicly, you still oversaw the Wang Family’s affairs. Secretly, you pursued martial arts until you reached the seventh rank. Then, this year, when a powerful foe slaughtered the Wang Family, you did nothing, clinging to your old grudges. You believed they owed you, had used you, so why save them?

“After the enemy left, you discovered some members of the Wang Family had survived by using a hidden passage. They possessed a precious demonic blade. You made your move then, stole the blade, and turned on the survivors. The first to die was your sister-in-law, and you left no one alive. Afterward, you fled in a panic and ended up here.”

Her words were as clear as they were precise, and they shattered any pretense the man had. His name wasn’t Bao Liuqi at all; he was really Xu Qi, and from the moment he set foot inside, Yan Yu had seen straight through him.

Xu Qi wasted no time on denials. He yanked out the

dagger

at his waist. Now revealed, its blade radiated searing heat, crimson veins flickering across it with a sinister aura.

Li Yuan recognized the weapon. It was made of ordinary blood gold crystal, a metal that couldn’t birth a sentient spirit or be forged into a true spirit weapon. Still, having been tempered by a sixth-rank martial artist’s shadow blood, it had absorbed that person’s bloodlust, emotions, and some vestige of power. Using the blade granted bursts of strength but also risked corrupting the wielder’s mind.

Xu Qi glared at Yan Yu, simultaneously terrified and enraged. “Who are you? How do you know all that?” he demanded. Then, voice rising, he all but shrieked, “I-I killed them because they owed me! I was a martial prodigy! If they’d sent me to that sect, I’d be a revered master by now, but they forced me into mediocrity! A pittance of money wasn’t going to soothe my resentment!”

Yan Yu responded calmly, “Yet you used that money to buy your way into another sect.”

Perhaps feeling cornered, Xu Qi lost what composure he had. “That’s the money I earned running their business! I shared some with the Wang Family each year. Didn’t that repay their so-called kindness? Then my sister-in-law shows up with this demonic blade, and she wants me to avenge them? Ridiculous! I could just kill her and take the blade; why waste time on revenge? She threatened to toss the blade off a cliff if I refused! So what choice did I have but to kill her, and all those...kids, too?”

Gripping the demonic blade, Xu Qi pointed it at Yan Yu but gradually backed away. He sensed the eeriness of this place, realizing it was somewhere he shouldn’t have come. Step by step, he retreated toward the door, pressing it with his elbow before spinning around to shove it hard. Yet the door stayed sealed.

Suddenly, he felt a chill at his back. He whirled and saw a long-haired, pale-faced attendant gripping his wrist. An icy dread shot through his body; he tried to fight free, but discovered he couldn’t move at all. His eyes could still dart around, but the rest of him was paralyzed.

Feng’er simply held on and walked forward. Xu Qi was dragged along in lockstep, helpless. Moments later, she opened the general store’s back door and led him into darkness, where he vanished.

Li Yuan spoke quietly. “She took him to the storeroom...”

Yan Yu nodded. “He tried to attack me, so having money won’t save him now. By the way, someone else followed the rouge peddler in earlier today and ended up going to Feng’er’s storeroom, too. If you’re dragged off from the street directly into the storeroom, you don’t become an undying husk. Odds are, a

buyer

will come for them soon.”

Li Yuan rested his chin in his hand, studying his wife. Suddenly, an idea came to him. “Yan Yu, if I hung your portrait on my front door at home, and a thief tried to break in at night, would that trigger Feng’er’s grudge to kill intruders?”

Another possibility lit in his eyes. “Or what if I wore your portrait like a chest plate? If an enemy attacked, they’d basically be slashing your likeness. Would Feng’er show up then?”

“...” Yan Yu simply stared at him, speechless.