Chapter 531 - When Ghosts Eclipse the Heaven, the Human Emperor Is Just a Piece on the Board - Part 1

Under Xie Wei’s careful arrangement, Li Yuan and Xie Yu were temporarily hiding in a quiet, well-guarded pavilion.

Outside, day and night, sharp screams would pierce the silence.

Through the drifting haze of black mist, ghost servants in all manner of grotesque forms roamed. A white robed female ghost crawled along the ground. A spider-like creature with a human head clung to the oiled paper window, its pale eyes glaring inside. A drowned ghost floated in from the Silver Creek river and crept ashore. Around the corner, a creature with the head of a man and the skin of a dog prowled silently.

All of these spectral horrors were remnants from the fusion of Happyland Zoo and Ghost Prison.

No one knew how far that fusion had progressed.

Li Yuan stood by the window, watching the shadows move beyond the glass.

Xie Yu lay on the couch, bundled in a thick cotton jacket and pants. Her hair was unkempt, left untouched by comb or hand, and her belly was round with life. With a gentle, serene look, she caressed the swell of her stomach, completely absorbed in the miracle growing within.

“Your child’s kicking me again,” she whispered, lost in the quiet world that only she and that little life shared.

Li Yuan turned from the window and sat beside her. He leaned in with a smile. “Let me listen, too.”

Xie Yu let go of her belly, unfastening her jacket slightly, and allowed her man to rest his face against her bare skin.

No sooner had Li Yuan pressed his cheek to her bump than the skin shifted just a little but with perfect precision, the tiny foot within gave him a thump square in the face.

Li Yuan broke into a grin, eyes lighting up.

“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?” Xie Yu asked suddenly.

Just as Li Yuan opened his mouth to reply, his senses flared. A hundred meters away, in a grove, two white robed female ghosts were crawling toward them.

Still smiling, he said, “A girl.”

And as he spoke, an invisible force smashed down from above, crushing the two ghosts. Their bodies imploded with a boom, black smoke rising before they disintegrated into ash.

“Why a girl?” Xie Yu asked.

Li Yuan thought of his two wild sons, then of the quiet, sweet-natured Sheng’er. With a smile, he said, “Because daughters are gentle.”

“No matter what we have, boy or girl, I’ll love them all the same,” Xie Yu replied softly.

Li Yuan gently pulled her jacket closed and tucked the quilt over her, then leaned back beside her, their eyes drifting once more toward the window.

Outside, guards patrolled the perimeter.

Beyond that, the evergreens stood tall, and the wheat fields lay bare and dry.

This place wasn’t one of those blood-drenched flesh lands, nor was it suited for cultivation. But it offered something else, a kind of peace that soothed the heart.

Li Yuan realized something odd. Without his Nine Provinces Provisional Patrol Token or the thousand-mile thread, he felt strangely...limited. It was like someone used to the internet returning to their old hometown, only to find there was no signal.

A little relaxing. But at the same time, it made the world feel smaller, small enough that it felt like there was only him and Xie Yu left in it.

It had been a long time since he’d felt like this.

His eyes narrowed slightly, and in the distance, a spider-ghost with a human head lurking in a dried-up canal near the wheat field was abruptly crushed into a bloody smear.

Xie Yu turned her head lazily. “Why don’t you come under the covers? It’s winter. The bed is warm.”

Li Yuan chuckled, warmth flickering in his eyes.

Xie Yu blinked at him with curiosity.

Then he shivered a little as he rubbed his hands together. “Damn, it really

is

cold. You hungry?”

She shook her head gently, then, without bothering to answer him further, curled up on the bed. Her slender body shifted slightly to the side, and she yawned. “Sleepy.”

Li Yuan murmured in response and returned to the window.

Without the ghost items that used to allow him to travel through space, he now had to rely entirely on what news he could gather through old channels and the eyes of birds scattered across the land.

Thanks to the recently enriched soil, sparrows had been making a slow comeback in the hills and forests. Just standing by the window, he could already spot a few fluttering about.

But sparrows didn’t fly far, and he hadn’t bothered trying to control them. He needed something stronger.

He was waiting for the demonic beasts.

Around dusk, Xie Wei arrived downstairs with three eighth rank mirage sparrows locked in a birdcage.

Li Yuan didn’t hide anything from her. With a flick of his fingers, the three sparrows suddenly straightened, as if standing at attention. Their pupils shifted, glowing faintly and full of intelligence, almost human.

He opened the cage, unfastened the shackles, and let the sparrows fly free into the evening sky.

Xie Wei had seen enough to sense what was happening. Her eyes narrowed with a trace of awe. “With skills like that, no one’s secrets are safe from you.”

Li Yuan looked at her but then turned his head away, lowering his voice. “There’s a lot happening across this land. Let me fill you in.”

His serious tone made Xie Wei straighten. She nodded.

And so Li Yuan began to explain everything, the truth behind the Dragon Vein, and the nature of the Imperial Human System.

The more she listened, the more serious she became. By the time he finished, her brows were furrowed. “Then our top priority now should be figuring out exactly what the Imperial Human System is...and just how much power it holds.”

Li Yuan nodded. “For now, I can only rely on the demonic beasts to scout out the King of Chu’s residence. Hopefully, we’ll get something soon.”

As they were talking, Xie Yu’s voice floated down from upstairs.

“Is that Big Sister?”

Xie Wei glanced at Li Yuan and called back, “It’s me! I brought you two something to eat.”

With that, she headed upstairs.

𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Xie Yu was still on the bed. When she saw Xie Wei, elegant and poised as ever, she teased her with a smile. “Sister, shouldn’t you be home with Brother-in-law this late?”

Xie Wei replied with a faint laugh, “That man’s always disappearing like a dragon diving into the sea. Never around. I had nowhere else to go, so I came to crash with you.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, smirking. “What, am I ruining your romantic little bubble?”

Downstairs, Li Yuan listened to their banter with amusement. He grabbed one of the roast ducks Xie Wei had brought and a clay jar of wine, then went to sit on the stone steps outside the loft. As he sipped and ate, he casually kept the nearby ghost servants in check, swatting down any that dared wander too close.

Above him, the mirage sparrows soared ever higher, their vision casting far across the sprawling land.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Days passed.

The Ghost Prison continued merging with Happyland Zoo.

Then, the little crow brought news.

“The ancient ghost street had been destroyed. Even the Clock Mansion is gone.”

A few days later, one of the mirage sparrows landed near the mass grave ghost domain.

This pit was a branch of the Dragon Vein faction in Hidden River Province.

From the outside, it looked like nothing more than a serene cluster of cabins in the mountains, surrounded by lush trees and babbling brooks.

The scenery was beautiful, idyllic even. But once a person stepped in, the illusion shattered. The truth revealed itself. It was a festering pit of yellow earth, reeking of rot, littered with dried blood and corpses swarming with flies.

At that moment, the mirage sparrow’s eerily human-like pupils contracted sharply.

The mass grave ghost domain had vanished.

It was a clear sign confirming the rumors. The ancient ghost street had indeed been annihilated.

News about the King of Chu was still nowhere to be found. Instead, reports from the surrounding ghost-infested regions were pouring in like a blizzard.

With Xie Wei and the little crow relaying messages from all corners, Li Yuan was able to stay fully informed, his finger on the pulse of this unraveling world.

He stood in the courtyard, listening silently as the little crow rattled off the updates.

“Something big’s happening. Ghost tides are appearing everywhere, and no one knows where they’re coming from.”

“In the northern suburbs, people opened their doors in the morning and vanished without a trace. Looks like the work of the carpenter ghost... but that thing’s been dormant for ages.”

“Further down south, dozens of people went missing at the same time.”

“On the western outskirts near Goatpeak Village, a fountain of blood burst out of the ground.”

“Papa, all these ghost tides...they’re spilling out from the old ghost domains. For some reason, the boundaries must’ve collapsed. The ghosts inside are flooding out, but even they don’t seem to know what they’re trying to do.”

Li Yuan said nothing. He simply turned and climbed the stairs to the loft.

He hadn’t spoken a word yet when Xie Yu looked up from the bed.

“You’re heading out again, aren’t you?”

Li Yuan nodded. “I need to take a look.”

“Go ahead,” she said softly. “Just come back soon.”

“Mhm...” He gave a quiet reply, then turned and left.

Once he was far enough from the building, his body shimmered and shifted until a sparrow took flight, climbing swiftly into the skies.

From that height, his senses stretched across almost 50 kilometers. With nothing obstructing his view and the flow of Yin and Yang now visible to him, his search was razor-sharp and comprehensive.

What others couldn’t see, he could grasp with frightening clarity.

He spent three full days and nights combing the land. By the end, he had reached a chilling conclusion. The ghost domains really had been unsealed. But the ghosts weren’t running wild at random.

They were moving with purpose toward Gemhill County.

To be precise, not the county itself, but the Ghost Prison, which was currently merging with Happyland Zoo.

That was his sense of it.

From the air, he watched black smoke roll in from every direction, swallowing the horizon like an endless tide.

The density of Yin energy in the air was unlike anything he’d ever seen.

At ground level, this Yin energy manifested as thick black fog, crawling with all manner of ghost servants, twisted remnants of human souls bound into grotesque forms.

Among them, the true ghosts moved, towering over the rest like ghostly monarchs.

Some were lone wraiths. Others moved in pairs. Some appeared in clusters as

multiple entities.

each more nightmarish than the last.

Wherever these ghost tides passed, life ceased to exist. The silence they left behind was suffocating.

The Yin energy was so heavy, so deeply concentrated, that even Li Yuan felt the cold sinking into him, not the biting chill of winter winds, but a deeper, soul-piercing frost.

He did some quick calculations in his head. Even if he fought with everything he had, at best he could wipe out the ghosts and servants on the surface. The Yin currents surging beneath the ground? He had no way of touching them.

He possessed the rare withered flame, yes. But even that was only on par with the strength of a multi-entity ghost domain. And now? The waves of ghosts coming from all directions...they far surpassed that.

A single phrase suddenly rose in his mind.

The Grand Union of Yin and Yang...

As for what the future held, Li Yuan no longer dared to guess. But one thing he knew for certain. They couldn’t stay in Gemhill County any longer.

When a ghost tide passed through, there was at least some chance of survival. But when pure Yin energy swept in, suffocating and absolute, it would mean death for everyone. Everyone...except him.