Chapter 269 – Gaining Trust, Deepening Chaos, and Relocating to Cloudpeak Province - Part 3

Life seemed to settle again into a calmer rhythm.

Li Yuan was called upon to assist with missions more and more often, and his freedom gradually returned. In time, he was even allowed to travel alone as far as the second gate, and then the first gate. Each time he came back safely, the watchers grew less suspicious.

He also started taking Ping’an with him more frequently. Their personalities were worlds apart; at best, they could avoid arguing. Li Yuan was calm enough, but Ping’an would explode at the slightest spark...like a keg of gunpowder with a short fuse.

Eventually, after one particularly intense battle, Li Yuan earned enough trust to take Ping’an outside the third gate—and then brought him back again under watchful eyes.

Not long after, the watchers, confronted by an indignant Li Yuan, vowed they’d stop following him. In truth, they merely reduced their numbers and tracked him from a distance. But for Li Yuan, that was more than enough.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Time went by day after day, half a year slipping through his fingers in a flash.

Early winter arrived.

Li Yuan made his way beyond the first gate to a tavern called Famous Toast. It was an establishment secretly run by the Black Cloaks.

After stepping into a private suite, he tapped lightly on the floor. A hidden trapdoor slid aside, revealing a concealed passageway.

From below emerged a

womanly

figure in pale makeup—actually a man in disguise—who stayed in the private room to order drinks and dishes, creating the impression Li Yuan was still there.

Meanwhile, Li Yuan slipped down through the passageway into a secret chamber.

Inside, the leader of the Black Cloaks, Wang Heran, was waiting respectfully.

“Master,” Wang Heran greeted him.

“How are things lately?” Li Yuan asked casually as he took a seat, getting straight to the point.

Wang Heran handed him a set of written reports—much more efficient than a spoken briefing. Li Yuan took them and scanned through, narrowing his eyes slightly at what he saw.

The first report was about all the recent chaos.

Silkfloss Province was in utter disarray. Within the Beggars Sect, almost all the plants Li Yuan had embedded—via the human-skin manacles—had been wiped out, replaced by an unfamiliar crowd that Wang Heran suspected to be members of the Lotus Cult. In other words, most of the jianghu forces in Silkfloss Province were now firmly under the Lotus Cult’s control.

As for the Windfall Group, things looked grim there, too. Ying Mei’er had been ambushed and lost an arm. Once the picture of sultry coquetry, she’d grown vicious and spiteful. Then she went missing, and the rumor mill insisted she was already dead. An executive of the Windfall Group quickly stepped up to seize control of the merchant guild.

Ying Mei’er, along with Xue Ning, had led her band of loyal followers into the barren Cloudpeak Province.

In short, outside of the Holy Tree Temple’s city stronghold in Skygarden Prefecture, Li Yuan no longer had any other established forces under his direct control.

The second report was about the war. Over the past half year, it had been a rollercoaster of battles. For a few months, the Holy Tree Temple held the clear advantage and eliminated scores of Lotus Cult followers. But more recently, widespread disasters had begun erupting in various regions. Word from the south hinted at some massive upheaval—unimaginable events that were rapidly changing the tide of conflict.

The third report was news from Cloudpeak Province. After about two years of careful development, Tang Nian had secured a firm foothold there. This time, she sent her godfather a special present. From the outside, nobody could tell what was inside—it was tightly wrapped and only about the size of a palm. But when people lifted it, they found it was so heavy it almost crushed the wheel axle of the cart that carried it. The Black Cloaks expended considerable effort to bring it into the city stronghold.

“Master, the eldest miss’s gift arrived as well. Would you like to take a look now?”

Li Yuan closed his eyes briefly, taking a moment to process everything. “Yes.”

“Then please, come with me.”

Following Wang Heran, Li Yuan peeled away the wrappings. Instantly, the air in the small room turned cold and clammy.

A letter slipped out, which Li Yuan picked up; it was from Tang Nian. In it, she explained that she’d discovered a promising ghost domain. After consulting with Pang Yuanhua, they had identified it as a single-entity ghost domain.

As for the parcel, it contained something Pang Yuanhua had purchased from the ghost street marketplace in Cloudpeak Province—a local ghost item known as an ice coffin.

𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

An ice coffin was worth three candareens—all you had to do was toss in a small woven doll imbued with the target’s aura, and the person on the other end would suffer a terrifying curse.

After stowing the ice coffin away, Li Yuan removed part of his thousand-mile thread connection from Yao Jue and instead wound it around Wang Heran, instructing him, “I’ll be back in two hours. In the meantime, bring more good wine to the decoy standing in for me outside.”

“Yes, Master,” Wang Heran replied dutifully.

Li Yuan then tugged on the thousand-mile thread and teleported straight to Gemhill, making his way toward the black market ghost domain with practiced caution.

The time had come to help Yan Yu move out.

Immediately, he noticed a bizarre atmosphere in Gemhill. The air was thick with an almost tangible perfume, a rouge incense that belonged to the Immortal Worship Cult. Far off in the distance came unsettling howls...like wild beasts, yet not quite beasts, almost half-human shrieks. Worse, the cacophony sounded like a jumble of monstrous creatures crowding together.

Li Yuan felt the copper pendant in his pocket heat up, cracks branching across its surface. He frowned. As expected, the three gates of the Holy Tree Temple seemed to be among the safest places left in the world, shielding him from how chaotic things had become beyond those walls. Out here, everything appeared to be upside down.

The black market ghost domain was as deathly silent as ever. While Li Yuan walked with painstaking care, a red ghostly figure drifted out in front of him, face pale as a corpse—yet radiating a strange allure unlike any living woman.

“Yan Yu!” Li Yuan exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.

Spending so much time with Jing Shuixiang and Cui Huayin had only reminded him how few people genuinely understood him. In the end, it was Yan Yu, and possibly Xue Ning, who truly shared both his joys and his dangers, without ever leaving his side.

“Like my new clothes?” Yan Yu’s voice was icy and unnerving. She did a small turn, showing off the vivid red dress and the sharpened points of her ears.

Li Yuan pulled her into a tight embrace. “I’ve missed you.”

“It’s been a while.” She allowed him to hold her, though her tone stayed cold. “Another few years, and whatever humanity I have left will start to fade.”

“It won’t be much longer,” Li Yuan assured her. Then, taking out the ice coffin from his equipment box, he explained its use and origin. “Yan Yu, it’s a single-entity ghost domain, so it won’t be able to stand up to you. My plan is for you to relocate to Cloudpeak Province first. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

Yan Yu studied the tiny coffin, which was a palm-sized, ghostly blue box studded with protruding ice-bone ridges. “I have no objection.”

“Is just one ice coffin enough?” Li Yuan asked.

She nodded. “Plenty. That ghost will cross ancient ghost streets to come after me. But I’ll keep attacking it, forcing it to merge with me. Normally, a ghost item can only be used once, but I can strike without limit. Once I force the merger, I can uproot this entire black market ghost domain and relocate it instantly to Cloudpeak Province.”