Chapter 96: Lantern

Just now, from beneath the tall building, amidst the clamor of voices, Ning Changjiu keenly heard the mechanism disengage and a blade spring out from inside the *guqin*. He also caught the sudden scent of blood. Yet, before his thoughts could form, everything unfolded before his eyes like lightning.

Seeing this sudden turn of events, Ning Xiaoling softly called out her senior brother's name. In the chaos, she suddenly recalled her weakness from days earlier, and shame flushed her cheeks, forcing calm and reason back into her mind.

This naturally beautiful songstress had endured for over a decade, and with an era of peace now settled, days of luxury and prosperity were within reach. Yet, on the eve of the New Year, she inexplicably fell to her death from the building, with no warning.

Up in the building, the vividly dressed stout woman wept and cursed, wiping her face with a silk handkerchief. In an unforgivable rage, she overturned and smashed the *guqins*, *se*, *pipas*, antique stands, and jade tables in the pavilion.

Below the songstress building, the crowd had formed a circle around the woman's corpse. Everything had happened too quickly and abruptly; their whispered discussions were fragmented, and even rumors hadn't taken shape. They merely imagined a narrative: the madam's bullying and oppression, her endless endurance, and finally, unable to bear the humiliation, choosing to end her life by falling from the songstress building in broad daylight.

As for these sudden events, the old man by the Shalei River remained silent, his footsteps slowly continuing along the embankment.

Perhaps his advanced age had dulled his senses, preventing him from noticing the commotion, or perhaps everything was unfolding just as he expected.

Ning Xiaoling was still pondering the reason behind all this, but Ning Changjiu had already turned his head.

At the end of the long bridge stood two people inexplicably. One had a black cloth covering his eyes and held an *erhu*. The other was a girl still dressed in plain clothes, barefoot, her body as thin as a bamboo stick.

They looked towards this side, speaking to each other, yet eerily silent, as if they were mere illusions hanging by willow branches.

“Sister Mian’er is dead too,” the girl said.

“She should have died over a decade ago,” the man replied, seemingly perceiving everything despite seeing nothing. “But by dying now, she has achieved something great.”

“Can we… truly have eternal life?” the girl asked.

“I don't know,” the man answered, “but this is the will of the Underworld Lord.”

“The Underworld Lord…”

“Wandering lonely spirits have strayed too long; they should return to their realm.”

“Does the Underworld Lord really exist?”

“We will meet him soon.”

“Who is the Underworld Lord?”

Their conversation was interrupted.

A youth in white appeared beside them at some unknown moment, his gaze seemingly capable of piercing the veil between yin and yang, clearly seeing their faces.

The girl was slightly startled, then looked up, meeting his gaze with some trepidation. “You can really see us?” she asked.

As Ning Xiaoling stood beside him, the girl's words made her thoughts explode. She suddenly looked up, staring at the young girl she had given coins to just yesterday, and noticed a prominent scar on her neck. Even in her spirit form, the scar was fresh, and within its flesh, countless tiny, black and white intertwined soul-worms seemed to writhe.

Ning Xiaoling stared at the scar and asked, “Are you already dead?”

The girl shook her head. “Not at all. We have no right to control our own lives. Only if our Lord wants us to die do we truly dare to die.”

“Who is your Lord?” Ning Changjiu asked.

He directed his question not to the girl, but to the blindfolded man.

The man noticed his gaze but remained silent.

The girl smiled faintly. “You must be a cultivator, right? I advise you to leave quickly. You people of the immortal realm might have some abilities, but why stay in this city when you can roam freely throughout the world? But if you also seek eternal life, why not stay with us and peacefully await the arrival of the Underworld Lord?”

Ning Changjiu sighed. “You've been deceived.”

The girl, however, was completely disbelieving. “Look, we are clearly dead yet alive; this is the great power of the Underworld Lord. If everyone were like us, Linhe City could become the City of Eternal Life.”

“There is no such thing as eternal life in this world,” Ning Changjiu stated.

This time, it was the man who spoke. His clothes and accessories were all black, and standing in the night, only his rough skin could be vaguely discerned.

He “looked” at Ning Changjiu, his expression utterly serious. “In the Underworld Lord's realm, death is eternal life.”

The girl looked at the young girl in the Taoist robe, whose expression revealed a faint wariness and fear, and gracefully curtsied. “Thank you for the money, young lady. If I had met someone like you years ago, I... wouldn't have ended up like this.”

Ning Xiaoling stared at her, her spiritual energy already exploding from every pore. She was like a cautious kitten, with claws retracted within her sleeves, but her senior brother hadn't spoken yet, so she didn't act rashly.

The girl looked at her and smiled, then suddenly pointed behind her. “Look, who's behind you?”

Ning Xiaoling furrowed her brow, but the words, as if magical, compelled her to turn around. Her body tensed even more, like an arrow poised to fly from the string.

She saw a woman with her hair piled high like clouds, as graceful and melancholic as an apricot blossom.

It was the songstress who had fallen to her death earlier, now appearing before them as a ghost.

“Souls... how can ghosts be complete?” Ning Xiaoling's hand clenched tightly, suppressing the urge to strike and disperse it with a single punch, and asked in a cold voice.

According to her master's teachings, the three souls and six spirits of a person can only briefly coalesce after death before dissipating like smoke from sandalwood, unless they are accomplished cultivators who can find a way to keep their souls from dispersing, or even wander the human realm as heroic spirits. But she was certain that this songstress and the dancing girl were merely ordinary people. So why could their souls coalesce completely after death?

As soon as this question arose, she found the answer in her heart: it meant there was another highly skilled individual in this city, an expert in ghost arts!

And the songstress's soul, though deceased, still carried a lingering resentment. Her expression was gloomy; she did not answer Ning Xiaoling's question but turned slightly, gazing at the lights of the pavilion, where many people were still gathered around her corpse, discussing animatedly.

The girl enjoyed Ning Xiaoling's suppressed look of horror and said in a soft, thin voice, “From which immortal mountain are you a cultivator? You probably haven't experienced any suffering, have you? The sister behind you was once a royal princess of the Liang Kingdom. When the Jin Kingdom annihilated the surrounding smaller states, her mother…”

“Shut up!” the songstress finally spoke, her tragically beautiful face already tainted with the ferocity unique to vengeful spirits and malevolent ghosts.

Ning Changjiu, meanwhile, had no mood or time to recount his own past tragedies. He patted Ning Xiaoling and sent a focused sound transmission, speaking a sentence to her. Ning Xiaoling, feeling her senior brother's tense mood, quickly nodded vigorously.

“Senior brother, don't worry!”

As soon as the words fell, Ning Changjiu vanished from the spot, while Ning Xiaoling ran in another direction.

None of the three spirits showed any intention of stopping them.

The girl looked in the direction Ning Changjiu had gone, her expression ethereal. “Nothing will go wrong, will it?” The man steadily held the *erhu*. “The Underworld Lord's arrival is a foregone conclusion; they cannot stop it.”

The girl seemed to relax as well. She sat on the long bridge's railing, tapping out a rhythm on it with her hand, and began humming the tune from that day.

“Trees yellow, birds depart, white snow softly piles on ancient tablets. The ferry of yesteryear has sailed far away, reed blossoms turn to snow for several years. Pearl yellow, jade old, sighing again and again, 'What can be done... what can be done.'”

Eventually, her words lingered repeatedly on “what can be done,” transforming from smooth and melodious to a dry, eerie wind that chilled one's face. Her eyes, which once held a hint of human warmth, gradually turned completely black.

By the Shalei River, the old man also stopped.

The middle-aged man watched him, wondering what surprising words the elder would utter next.

But the old man said nothing. The middle-aged man then realized that today the old man seemed to have said everything he wanted to say. What did this mean? Was the old gentleman's life drawing to an end? Impossible, sir clearly…

His thoughts raced. He looked at the old man he so deeply respected, wanting to go forward and persuade him, but he hesitated.

The old man didn't look at him again, nor did he pay attention to the clamor by the long bridge, as if the whole world had nothing to do with him.

He closed his eyes and began to recall his life.

Born and raised in Linhe City, his humble family, his hunchbacked mother, his honest and simple father—money saved grain by grain and stitch by stitch to support his imperial examinations, his high spirits upon returning to his hometown for office, the successive deaths of his parents, the sorrow of wishing to care for parents who are no longer there. Then war suddenly came, bringing destruction, pushing everything down to be rebuilt from scratch, the sweep of disaster to reconstruction, the struggle between nation and city, and the rebirth witnessed amidst toil and hardship…

And then everything was shattered again.

The old man closed his eyes. He had to make a decision, a decision that would originally have shaken this city for years. But not tonight, for tonight was already too chaotic. And after tonight, it would be even less so…

“No!” the middle-aged man suddenly cried out sharply.

But before he could finish his words, the old man leaped, jumping into the Shalei River.

The splash of falling into the water was delayed. The scene seemed to freeze, and the middle-aged man's eyes widened in profound shock as he watched what unfolded before him.

A youth in white, who had appeared at some unknown moment, grabbed the back of the old man's clothes and pulled him back while his body was still in the air.

“Who is the Underworld Lord? And who is commanding you?”

Ning Changjiu grabbed the old man by the back of his neck, turning his body, and stared into his eyes, intending to directly extract the secrets from his heart using the Soul-Piercing Spirit Art. But as soon as his gaze connected with the other, before he could even extract a coherent thought,

With a soft thud, the old man's cane fell into the river, and his eyes immediately lost focus.

Ning Changjiu was startled, discovering that a dark dagger had been plunged into his back at some unknown point.

The vigilance of his Dao heart made him look up immediately.

On the tall building across the river, a pair of pale, eerie eyes stared at him from afar. The figure was wrapped tightly in a black robe, with only his eyes, glowing in the night, visible.

From afar, the figure made a provocative gesture towards him, then slumped, falling between the many buildings, and instantly disappeared into the dark night.

The old man no longer breathed.

Soon after, the old man, once hailed as the Iron-Blooded Yama in his youth, would now become a true Yama.

And before the old man died, Ning Changjiu only managed to extract two words from his consciousness: “lantern.”