She came to a sudden halt, the sharp edge of the white sword in her hand retracting its brilliance.
The hulking male ghost was startled by this unexpected turn of events. Once he saw that the newcomers were just two half-grown children—carrying swords but lacking any significant ghost qi—his malice surged.
"Where did you brats come from? How dare you mind my business?"
The male ghost grinned hideously, dropping the female ghost and swinging a fist as massive as a stone mallet toward Bai.
Though he was merely a low-level evil ghost, he had spent a long time in the Ghost Dynasty, and his aura was thick with hostility.
Bai let out a cold snort, her body shifting slightly to easily dodge his strike before she delivered a casual kick.
Thump!
The male ghost felt as if he had been struck by a rampaging bull. He flew backward, crashing into a wall. His soul-body was nearly kicked into dispersion, and he struggled for a long time to stand back up.
"You..." The male ghost looked at Bai in terror, trying to say something.
Bai ignored him and walked over to help the female ghost off the ground.
"Auntie, are you alright?"
The female ghost seemed terrified. She stood up tremblingly, casting a fearful glance at Bai, not daring to speak.
Suddenly, the sound of rhythmic footsteps echoed from the entrance of the alleyway.
"Who is making a disturbance and fighting here!"
A squad of enforcer ghost soldiers marched in, each radiating an eerie ghost qi and clutching steel forks.
The lead ghost bailiff remained expressionless. With a flick of his chains, he instantly bound the fallen male ghost tightly.
"Reporting received: committing violence in the streets, disturbing the order of the Ghost Dynasty. Take him away!"
The male ghost struggled desperately, cursing loudly, "Let me go! I was disciplining my own woman, what does that have to do with you?"
The ghost bailiff ignored him completely, thrusting the steel fork into the male ghost's abdominal cavity.
A plume of black smoke erupted from the male ghost and was sucked into the steel fork. As more sinful karma was absorbed, the fork began to glow with a dark, oily luster.
The male ghost's aura instantly withered, as if his very life-force had been drained.
"Stripping three measures of sinful karma. Forfeited to the state," the ghost bailiff recorded coldly.
Immediately after, the ghost bailiff pulled out another set of chains and looped them around an elderly ghost couple who had been cowering in the crowd.
"For the merit of reporting a crime, you are awarded one measure of merit."
As the ghost bailiff spoke, a dim, lusterless Death-Exemption Wooden Plate in their hands was instantly renewed, emitting a faint, steady light.
The elderly couple held the wooden plate, their bodies trembling with excitement. They collapsed to their knees, bowing repeatedly to the ghost bailiff.
"Thank you, Sir! Thank you for saving our lives!"
Xiaoye watched from the side, dumbfounded.
He noticed that the dense resentment originally clinging to the elderly couple had dissipated significantly after they received the merit; their auras seemed to have grown 'kinder.'
When the arrested male ghost saw his parents receive the merit, he actually stopped struggling. Instead, he let out a sigh of relief as if a heavy burden had been lifted.
At that moment, the female ghost suddenly scrambled to her feet.
She no longer cried out in pain. Instead, she lunged at the ghost bailiff, grabbing his leg and pleading, "Sir, this is a mistake! It's all a misunderstanding!"
"He is my husband. We were just... just playing around."
"I let him hit me willingly! Please, don't take him away!"
The ghost bailiff kicked the female ghost aside, his voice icy. "The laws of the Ghost Dynasty only look at results, not reasons."
"Once a case is established, there is no possibility of change."
With that, the ghost bailiff began dragging the male ghost away.
The elderly couple who had received the merit stood up and pointed at their arrested son, cursing loudly, "The provincial capital has no room for idlers, nor for those without merit!"
"You unfilial son!"
"We told you to accumulate merit during the day, and now look at you. Since you have no merit, go and be a criminal then! You deserve to be conscripted into the army!"
"If our family's Death-Exemption Wooden Plate wasn't about to expire, we wouldn't have had to sacrifice our own kin to report you just to get that measure of merit to extend our lives!"
The female ghost was not to be outdone, turning back to shout her own curses, "I spit on you!"
"If I hadn't cooperated, you two old fossils would have had your souls dispersed long ago!"
"Hurry up and give me my husband's blood money!"
"Our family doesn't have much merit left either!"
The family of three cursed at each other in the street, throwing accusations back and forth.
Bai and Xiaoye stood rooted to the spot, watching this scene with a sense of utter absurdity.
This was the Ghost Dynasty?
Family, love, morality—everything had been quantified into merit and sinful karma.
To survive, to avoid soul-dispersion, ghosts would sell out anything, even their closest kin.
The so-called 'good souls' were merely the beneficiaries who possessed more merit.
The so-called 'evil spirits' seemed more like pathetic creatures forced into malice just to stay alive.
It seemed the boundary between good and evil had become blurred and indistinct.
"Sister Bai..." Xiaoye lowered his head, his voice heavy. "I think I'm starting to understand."
He recalled what Lord Jian Huaishuang had said before—that the world's black and white, purity and filth, good and evil, were not so easily distinguished.
Especially here in the provincial capital's Ghost Dynasty.
This place gathered true fiends and hypocrites, desperate wretches with no choice, and schemers who appeared virtuous but were dark at heart.
If they drew their swords based only on a fleeting moment of perceived good or evil, they might very well strike the wrong person—or worse, aid a tyrant.
'If the Master were here, what would he do?'
Xiaoye murmured to himself, the image of that man instinctively surfacing in his mind.
During his time in the City of the Wrongfully Dead, he had heard many rumors about that Master.
He heard that the Master had once used his divine power to create wells and spirit fields out of nothing just to save a group of refugees he didn't even know.
He also heard that in White Jade City, out of fury for the sake of the innocent citizens, he had set the entire city ablaze, dragging countless immortal masters down from their pedestals.
Xiaoye suddenly remembered the small golden tadpole that Sister Su Xue often looked after near the Gathering Fortune Pavilion in the City of the Wrongfully Dead.
That tadpole had a weak aura, yet it carried an extraordinary air of nobility.
Su Xue had once told him with a gentle expression that it had once been the Lord of the Southern Region, the Thousand-Eyed Toad Saint.
A seventh-stage great demon who had committed countless atrocities.
Logically, such a fiend falling into the Master's hands should have met the end of soul-dispersion.
But the Master was merciful. Though the death penalty was unavoidable, the Master took into account that he had not been the primary instigator and had repented at the final moment, choosing to sacrifice himself. Thus, the Master left him a thread of hope.
He allowed him to transform into a tadpole to cultivate anew, to atone for the crimes he had committed.
He then thought of the novice monk, Wu Gou, who had been born alongside him.
Once, Wu Gou had gotten drunk and rambled to him.
Wu Gou told him that in the Northern Region, there was a madwoman who specifically targeted the Heavenly Sword Sect, the leader of the righteous path.
The world only knew that she raised snow demons and that her hands were stained with blood—an irredeemable female fiend.
But few knew that she was the true protector of the Northern Region.
She was the final Nightwatcher of the Northern Region, using her own methods to uphold justice for the heavens and seek redress for all the tragically murdered souls.
She was the cleanest person in the Northern Region.
Xiaoye hadn't understood back then. Even though his face had been covered in tears after hearing it, he hadn't understood why he was crying.
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