Chapter 732 – Who Holds the World’s Chessboard? The Underworld Bed Outshines a Wedding Night - Part 1

Deep within a palace hall, Yan Yu in her azure robes studied the crow and spoke in a gentler tone, “Sheng'er, the ghost inside you is no ordinary thing. I have a fair idea of where it came from.”

“Papa said it’s a ghost that escaped from the Ghost Sealing Pagoda back in the Age of the Ancient Gods,” the crow replied.

Yan Yu nodded but said no more about the ghost’s origins. Instead, she continued, “Come with me. Removing this ghost will take patience, a great deal of it.”

As she spoke, her slender form rose lightly. The pale white of her ankle flashed briefly beneath the undulating sheer veil of a hundred ghosts, before disappearing once more.

Chin raised, she dragged the trailing azure veil behind her as she rose to her feet. Then she glanced at the crow.

“Come.”

The crow flapped its wings happily and landed on her shoulder.

Once they stepped outside the hall, the little girls in red and blue reappeared from the mist, emerging suddenly from the grey haze. They fell into step behind Yan Yu.

Both girls wore beaming smiles, and their expressions suggested they had developed some degree of sentience.

Apparently, for ghosts to gain intelligence, it was merely a matter of time and cultivation.

The ones that still wandered mindlessly weren’t incapable of thinking. It was just that they hadn’t yet reached that threshold. But once they crossed into the

taboo

tier, their minds would slowly begin to awaken.

These two nightmares from Li Yuan’s

beginner village

had clearly long since broken past that boundary. And yet...here they were, simply following behind Yan Yu like flower-scattering maids.

Li Yuan trailed along at the side, feeling like some kind of attendant. He found himself closer to the girl in blue, and couldn’t help asking the

nightmare from his youth

, “What’s your name?”

The little girl tilted her head and kept tilting it until it rotated more than halfway around. Then she looked at Li Yuan and stuck out her tongue.

Li Yuan was startled. That level of expression? That human?

The girl in blue murmured softly, “You better be careful. A lot of ghosts want to kill you. If not for Her Ladyship holding them back, they would’ve swarmed you already.”

“What crime did I commit?” Li Yuan asked.

The blue robed girl replied, “The Mirror of Karma reflects good and evil. It judges merit and wrongdoing on its own. Whenever the mirror reveals someone, the ghosts gather round to watch. If someone has done evil, it will inevitably trigger a ghost’s

murder rule

. Once the mirror has finished its reading, the ghost whose rule was triggered will drag the person away to suffer punishment.”

Li Yuan wasn’t all that surprised to hear he’d set off some ghost’s murder rule.

From a moral standpoint, many of the things he’d done could be called evil, especially that

Lord of Light

business.

From the Underworld’s perspective, wasn’t he just hiding behind divine authority to kill countless people, all to solidify the status of the Church of Light?

And yet...the mortal world needed exactly that kind of blood-soaked sanctity.

To believe in him, to believe in the Scripture of Light, one had to act with kindness and hold pure intentions. Only then could one transcend the mundane. Wasn’t that better than those who ascended to power just to exploit the common people?

Through the Church of Light, he reshaped the very pinnacle of worldly power.

At the same time, it gave him a way to remain connected to Ancestral Land and its mountains and rivers.

Yet these actions, when reflected in the Mirror of Karma, would be judged simply and harshly as evil.

That was the problem. The Mirror of Karma was good for reflecting the deeds of ordinary folk, but it wasn’t suited to judging those who had pushed the tide of history forward.

Li Yuan asked, “So the people punished by the mirror...do they turn into ghost servants?”

The little girl in blue shook her head. “No, they don’t become ghost servants. Her Ladyship takes the shattered spirits and casts them into the Jade Pool. As long as the spirit hasn’t been broken for too long, the pool can stabilize and repair it.”

Jade Pool?

Li Yuan remembered that place.

It was a part of Apparel Atelier’s ghost domain. At its center stood the legendary Peach Tree, and its depths were filled with papery ghosts made of talisman sheets.

Those two little flower-shop girls had already transformed into taboo level beings. If even they had evolved like that, then the architectural

modules

of that taboo ghost domain must have advanced just as much, perhaps even more.

He’d seen it clearly from within the voidveil. All the Yin energy falling on the Ancestral Land had been siphoned into the Underworld. With the realm sealed off for so many years, it was inevitable that terrifying transformations had taken place down here.

The blue-robed girl said, “We’re going to the Jade Pool now.”

Li Yuan nodded and stopped asking questions.

He turned to glance at Yan Yu, and suddenly thought his wife was seriously cold and aloof.

She walked with her chin lifted, veil trailing behind her, and her dark, cavernous eyes held a depth that seemed to swallow all light.

She didn’t spare a glance to either side. Her presence made one feel she wasn’t someone you could approach, only someone to kneel before and worship from afar.

After walking a short while, they arrived at the hall where the Mirror of Karma once hung.

The Jade Pool lay just southeast of the Karma Hall.

As they reached it, the crow let out a sigh as she flapped her wings. “What a breathtaking sight.”

Thick mist rose like clouds from a dream, washing over them with a refreshing clarity. There was no trace of the Underworld’s usual gloom here. Instead, it felt like they had wandered into a celestial paradise.

Everywhere he looked, it was soft and surreal, like being wrapped in a living dream.

The Jade Pool stretched out endlessly, its space seemingly layered and vast, like the depths of the ocean. In the fog, the outlines of mountains and islands shimmered. Somewhere in those distant peaks, ethereal music drifted on the air, accompanied, strangely, by eerie, bone-chilling laughter.

Compared to the Jade Pool he’d seen in the Apparel Atelier, this one was many times larger, perhaps immeasurably so.

“Mama, do I get to soak in it? I feel like I can't wait any longer,” the crow asked.

“Not yet,” Yan Yu replied.

“Oh,” the crow replied dejectedly.

Beside them, the red robed girl chimed in.

“Little Lady, don’t be in such a rush. The Jade Pool is now split into two. The northern side is for repairing the bodies of wicked spirits, so they can be used again...for torture and punishment, of course. The pool is large, yes, but all that evil energy has tainted it. It’s still filthy. The southern Jade Pool has been cleared out just for you. The Peach Tree’s there too. It’s all prepared for you.”

“Little Lady?” the crow echoed, puzzled by the odd title. People had once called her Lady Divine Crow, but that was just mortal nonsense. Nothing official.

Yan Yu didn’t bother addressing the confusion.

Soon, the group passed the main Jade Pool and arrived at a smaller, separate one.

This second pool was much more compact.

Just as they arrived, five figures in flowing white garments drifted down like Immortals from a painting. They were paper people, each bearing a sword on their backs. They floated silently to Yan Yu and bowed with reverence.

All five were beautiful, ethereal, serene like goddesses from the mountains. Clearly, these weren’t random attendants. They were leaders, commanders among the paper figures that guarded the Jade Pool.

Though not as overwhelmingly powerful as the red and blue robed girls, these five had also entered the taboo level.

Yan Yu looked to the black crow.

“Go on. The Jade Pool doesn’t just repair the soul. It also separates it. Right now, your soul and that ghost are completely fused. I need to pull you two apart before I can deal with it properly.”

The black crow responded sweetly, “Okay, Mama.”

Yan Yu turned her gaze to the two ghost girls flanking her. “Yu Huan, Yu Su, you’ll stay by her side from now on. Along with the Five Weavers, you’ll watch over her together.”

It appeared the red robed girl was Yu Huan, and the blue one was Yu Su.

Clearly, these were names Yan Yu had bestowed upon them.

The two girls bowed in acknowledgement. The Five Weavers did the same.

And just like that, the seven of them led the crow deeper into the Jade Pool.

The Jade Pool, Divine Mother of the West, Peach Tree, and now these seven Immortals...

Li Yuan couldn’t shake a strange sense of deja vu. These elements felt oddly familiar, though he couldn’t quite place why.

Now that the area was empty again, he asked, “Yan Yu...what are the Weavers exactly?”

“Weavers of dreams. They can shape dreamscapes, places where spirits can meet in slumber,” Yan Yu replied.

Li Yuan had an epiphany. So that’s what kind of

weavers

they were.

Thinking back, this did feel like an extension of older powers. He remembered Apparel Atelier used to sell that dream inducing rouge, followed by incense offerings.

Both the rouge and the incense could drag someone into a dream, leaving their mind foggy and vulnerable to the ghost servants of the Apparel Atelier.

Apparently, those abilities had evolved and extended into this realm.

And the paper people? The Apparel Atelier was practically a breeding ground for them. Back then, Zhao Gutong was surrounded entirely by paper servants.

Their brief exchange ended naturally, and the silence that followed settled gently around them.

Just a moment ago, the space had been bustling. Now, it was only the two of them.

Li Yuan turned his head to look at Yan Yu. His heart skipped a beat, a flutter rising straight from the soul.

This was his wife. They’d been together long enough to be considered an old married couple. And yet...she gave off a feeling of distance, like someone far away on a mountain peak, someone who had to be pursued all over again, with full devotion.

The immortal mists of the Jade Pool mingled with the ghostly aura of the Underworld, as if they were standing on the border between gods and demons from an ancient myth. There was a kind of romance in it, one that could never be found on a casual date in the mortal world.

Li Yuan edged a little closer to Yan Yu.

She didn’t move. Her voice, however, was cold and crisp: “I’m still recovering my memories.”

Li Yuan asked, “Then...can I hold your hand?”

“No.”

Just that one word was clean, firm, and final.

The atmosphere instantly froze.

Awkward silence fell between them like a dropped curtain.

“How about...we go for a walk? Let me take you somewhere.” Li Yuan tried again.

This time, she gave a small nod.

Li Yuan raised a hand and, with a sweep of his sleeve, brought her onto the voidship.

With her silent approval, he easily brought the Empress of the Underworld aboard his transparent boat, which drifted between the starlit sky and the edge of the voidveil.

But the moment Yan Yu stepped onto the vessel, Li Yuan felt his voidship suddenly locked itself into the very fabric of this universe.

The lock, however, wasn’t on him. It was on her. That meant once she left, the binding would vanish too.