Chapter 423 – Fusion Begins, A World in Flux - Part 2

Clock Mansion, Hidden River Province’s ancient ghost street...

The mansion master felt the shudder and clamor welling up from the deepest place and let out a soft sigh.

“It’s begun.”

At the ends of the two ancient ghost streets, Hidden River Province and Hidden Dragon Province, people were packed shoulder to shoulder. Blindly they kept pressing forward, battering at the farthest brink.

In the crowd on Hidden Dragon Province’s ancient ghost street walking a man in red funeral robes. Bobbing lanterns made from human heads followed him. He was also followed by pallid corpses soaked in water, the liquid streaming off them looking as if it had been steeped for centuries. Their skin was wrinkled and pale, no longer a trace of the beautiful celestial maidens in the illusion.

In Hidden River Province’s ghost street, snakes slid between the legs of the shuffling crowd, while rabbits and rats scurried about. It all looked chaotic and terrifying, yet somehow it moved as one, forming a single horde of beasts.

The boar trailed alone at the very rear, snorting and snuffling, chalk-white vapor puffing from its nostrils. As the fumes spread, the shambling people ahead gave louder, keening howls; ravenous hunger drove them to fling themselves madly forward.

As the numbers swelled past all measure, the end of the ancient ghost streets finally showed its face.

They were two mottled bronze doors, towering into the clouds and wavering in a sea of gray mist.

The ring fittings at the lintel had rotted to ruin; even the beast carved to bite the rings was battered past recognition, the whole thing looking long abandoned.

No one could say how long these doors had existed within time.

Now, at last, the ends of Hidden River and Hidden Dragon Provinces’ ancient ghost street showed themselves.

In the next instant, people hurled themselves at the bronze doors, jostling and shoving, trying to push them open.

The doors didn’t budge.

After only a few breaths, it was as if they had triggered some hidden law.

Anyone who laid a hand on the bronze began to shriek and collapse. They were already dead. Yet it felt like they were dying all over again.

Small hills of bodies piled up at the threshold.

The man in red funeral robes watched the bronze doors with a chill, viperish patience.

Across the way, the exotic beasts watched as well.

At length, the man in the funeral robe and the great serpent seemed to sense their moment. They moved toward the bronze doors.

The human-head lanterns, the water-logged corpses, the other exotic beasts, and the boar all held their ground and waited.

Under the blows of so many dead, the bronze gates took on the look of a ghost shop temporarily filled to capacity. It wasn’t that the doors had failed; it was simply that, for this brief heartbeat, they couldn’t admit another thing.

The funeral robe man was already climbing, stepping up a staircase made of twisted bones. He set his palm to the bronze and let a surge of power explode outward, as if to strike past the doors and hit the serpent beyond.

The giant snake writhed upward along the bony steps and spat a rich, black slurry. It hit the bronze with an angry sizzle, trying to eat through the gate and strike the funeral robe man behind it.

When the black lotus was planted in the Jade Pool, this was the Exotic Beast Park committing a grave trespass against the Apparel Atelier.

By the rules, when one ghost directly attacked another, it forced the two ghosts behind them into mutual assault.

And just then, the lotus in the Jade Pool was bubbling and gurgling, each instant like countless strikes landing. So the Apparel Atelier would be compelled to unleash a storm of attacks upon the Exotic Beast Park.

Peng Mingyi’s part was clearly special. He had eaten that enormous Immortal peach, and its effect transmitted straight to the Exotic Beast Park.

Smiling beatifically, he ate on, bite after juicy bite.

With every mouthful, the peach flesh turned inside him into something unknowable, producing the same effect as the lotus in the pool. Every heartbeat was as if the Apparel Atelier were hammering the Exotic Beast Park with a thousand furious blows.

So, by the rules, the Exotic Beast Park would return the favor in equal measure.

A black lotus sown in the Jade Pool; a jade husk feasting on flat peaches.

The Jade Capital was a purgatory now, its dead wandering the ancient ghost street.

The tide was set.

At that moment, both ghosts struck. Bones broke trail, ramming down the ancient ghost street, bent on forcing two places that should never touch to meet, and then to fuse.

Soon after, a shriek of metal split the air.

Creeeak... GAAAK!

The bronze doors cracked open a sliver.

The man in the funeral robes stepped through without a flicker of hesitation; the giant serpent shot in after him with a hiss and a blur.

Time lurched and stopped.

Apart from the throng of people still being shoved and puppeted into battering the bronze doors, the rest—the human-head lanterns, the water-seeping corpses, the exotic beasts, and the boar—settled in to wait.

When Feng’er fused with the peddler, it took ages. How could these two be done in the blink of an eye?

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Outside the alley, the beasts blocked the soldiers’ view. No one knew what was happening inside.

Only Xie Feng’s face told the story. It looked terrible. He felt like a cat’s-paw to a tiger. If it were merely men killing men, that would be one thing. But this was men and ghosts. As the general of the Ocean Province Armored Cavalry, he knew plenty about ghost domains.

His expression curdled, yet he could no longer go back on his stance.

The Xie Clan was chained to the Emperor now. If the Emperor did evil and aided ghosts, he had to help him all the same.

What Xie Feng didn’t know was that the very Son of Heaven he thought was abetting ghosts was carefully studying the ghost cavalry.

For the moment, the ghost cavalry still looked whole, but the exotic beasts ridden by the Green Lotus fearless soldiers were starting to glitch, like fine hairline cracks showing on a golem you once thought unbreakable.

It was because the exotic beasts had already slipped out from Peng Mingyi’s control.

In other words, the ghost cavalry’s formation now hung together solely on Ying Zhuoyao’s efforts.

And that grip was fragile as spun glass.

That was why the Lotus Cult and Zhao Gutong needed the Ocean Province Armored Cavalry and Flying Bear Army as a second ring of guards on the outside.

Just then, Lu Xuanxian’s voice rang out. “Your Majesty, are you tired?”

It was a code phrase. Time to move.

He barely finished speaking before he struck.

Above the Flying Bear Army, a halberd-shadow bloomed, heavy with crushing might, and came slamming down toward the ghost cavalry out of nowhere.

Li Yuan dropped the mask. His voice was iron. “Xie Feng, hear my order! Cut down the ghost cavalry, now!”

Xie Feng blinked, then recalled the earlier order.

Xie Feng, take your men and seal the perimeter. Await my command and do exactly as I say the moment I say it.

“Your servant obeys!”

Something clicked inside him. His blood surged. This Son of Heaven might skimp on the small virtues, but he had not betrayed the greater good.

He roared, “Soldiers! Form ranks! Slay the ghosts!”

Cold flared along his spear. He gathered the will of his troops and swept forward, casting a colossal spear-shadow that raked the sky.

A needle of icy light leapt like a divine tiger. Then the wind howled, and broken tiles and stones kicked up to whirl like a dragon.

In Li Yuan’s vision, 200,000 popped up over the Flying Bear Army and 300,000 appeared over the Ocean Province Armored Cavalry.

The 750,000 hovering over the ghost cavalry was plummeting fast, as if the whole thing were about to shatter.

As expected, the two sudden opening blows—the halberd’s shadow and the spear’s—slammed home, and the 750,000 above the ghost cavalry shattered to near dust.

Only then did Ying Zhuoyao realize what was happening. She tried to reassert command over the formation, but she could control only the Green Lotus fearless troops..

The exotic beasts beneath those troops were already scattering in a panic.

That left the ghost cavalry unable to mount any meaningful counterattack.

The Flying Bear Army and Ocean Province Armored Cavalry, meanwhile, were in a frenzy, hammering the ghost cavalry without letup.

Just then, figures began popping into view on the street.

One after another, undying husks stepped out from their hideaways in the ancient ghost street, all entering through this very nexus. They were Zhao Gutong’s people.

Among them were Chang Qi, who had crossed paths with Li Yuan before, and Liu Yishou, the same assassin who’d tried to kill Zhu Nuyang in Silkfloss Province.

These were elite among the undying husks.

Almost in the same breath, from a ruined corner of the street, a clutch of uncanny folk lurched out. Their strength varied, but they charged the undying husks—and some sprinted straight for Zhao Gutong—heedless of life and limb.

They looked like the ghost servants from the mass grave, out hunting vengeance again. Only this time, there was no pretense, just steel on steel at arm’s length.

“Your Majesty, allow me to kill this traitor!” Lu Xuanxian’s roar tore through the chaos..

Li Yuan flicked a glance at the field. The 750,000 above the ghost cavalry had already fallen to zero.

Lu Xuanxian blurred, and in an eyeblink he stood beside Zhao Gutong at the alley mouth, where the paper censer still smoked. His eyes were bloodshot with fury.

“Traitor, die!”

Zhao Gutong carried many ghost items, but while he fed the incense he couldn’t move. He had a few defensive trump cards, sure. But what good were they against someone of Lu Xuanxian’s caliber? And Lu Xuanxian knew his tricks well enough.

The great halberd punched into Zhao Gutong’s heart before he could even react, then flicked up, hooking the jade husk in red funeral robes and tossing him into the air.

BOOM!

Zhao Gutong exploded, bursting apart.

With his death, the incense in the paper censer guttered out.

Without the incense, the path into the alley turned hazier by the heartbeat.

Lu Xuanxian bolted into the alley. “Your Majesty, hold the line outside. Allow your servant to go in and scout!”

He moved like lightning and reached Peng Mingyi at the Jade Pool just before the alley dissolved completely. Peng Mingyi had a heartbeat to react. Still smiling, he gathered himself. Just as the halberd-shadow swept in, he leapt cleanly into the Jade Pool.

That abrupt disruption put a hairline crack in what had been a smooth fusion.

Before the bronze gate, the waiting ghosts whipped their heads around, a disturbingly human rage flashing across their faces.

It was too late. Nothing could be done now.