What Eve did not know was that Lin Gui's heart was also in turmoil at this moment.
Though the smile still lingered on his lips, his heart was deeply shaken.
Under the gaze of his Eyes of the Netherworld, the surrounding scenery looked completely different.
Floating inside the tavern were no longer the usual bored, lazy spectral silhouettes.
Instead, they were twisted, hideous faces filled with murderous intent.
Their eyes were wide open, their mouths agape, and their spectral bodies fluctuated violently from sheer rage.
They looked just like the mermen's souls in the Silent Sea that had suddenly lost control and turned into vengeful spirits.
They were terrifying, yet... sorrowful.
Lin Gui understood.
The source of all this was the conversation of those hunters just now.
It was that line, “slaughter his entire family,” and that ruthless, mocking laughter.
These ghosts—most of them had been ordinary residents, peddlers, and craftsmen in life.
They were the absolute bottom of this dog-eat-dog city-state world.
What did they remember?
Was it a past where they were equally powerless to resist?
Was it a history of being trampled upon by nobles and the strong at whim?
Was it the despair of having everything they had worked a lifetime to accumulate destroyed in an instant?
None of them were cultivators, and they could not affect reality in the slightest.
Yet their anger caused their spectral forms to radiate a bone-chilling coldness.
A few spectral silhouettes were even trying their hardest to face the direction the hunters had left, opening their empty mouths to bite and tear.
Others were using every ounce of their willpower, trying to move the debris on the ground.
That brick thrown at the assassin was the result of their collective effort.
But in the end... nothing changed.
The hunters left, carrying their contempt and ridicule, leaving this crowd of ghosts behind, trembling silently in place.
They were desolate, unwilling, and aggrieved.
“...If only these bastards were like those nobles back then...”
“...How great would it be if they were swallowed by demons...”
“...That way... we could tear their souls to pieces...”
“...It's always been like this... always... They've always treated us like stray dogs on the side of the road!”
“Damn it! If I had known, I would have cultivated. At least now, I could bite off a chunk of their flesh!”
“Who wouldn't want to cultivate? But those noble lords would never let us lay our hands on a breathing technique.”
“Once discovered, we would be thrown into hard labor, serving a lifetime of forced servitude in the nobles' mines.”
“Those damned beasts!!”
“Sob, sob, sob... My daughter was killed by a passing hunter. She was the only child I managed to raise.”
...
Faint curses drifted over intermittently.
They were accusations of anger against an unjust world, and even more, the desperate sorrow of their own helplessness.
Yet, unlike the pain and anger of these spirits, Lin Gui felt incredibly refreshed!
Merely out of sympathy for the weak, and simply because they did not want to see an ordinary family destroyed and trampled upon at whim, they had swung their “hoes.”
Such simple, direct, and even somewhat naive anger—Lin Gui had not seen it in a very long time.
Eve's puzzled voice sounded in his ears.
She could not see the spirits, but she could vaguely sense the suppressed anger in the air.
“Are they...?”
“They are just like me,” Lin Gui smiled.
“They find those guys an eyesore.”
“They are currently wondering how to slaughter them and make them kneel and eat demon dung.”
He spoke in a tone as casual as discussing the weather.
“Alright.”
“I was quite entertained by this 'scare game.'”
“It's also time... to let this game continue.”
“But before that, let's take care of business first,” Lin Gui said as he turned his staff around.
He did not pursue the mist where the hunters had vanished.
Instead, carrying Eve, he silently glided out of the tavern and sped toward another direction—the direction of Deepwood Outpost.
No matter how much he wanted to feed those bastards to the demons, he would not let his emotions disrupt his delivery steps.
In this world, strength was everything.
Without strength, sympathy was merely self-deception.
Anger was nothing but powerless rage.
Just like those ghosts, who could only move a single brick even after putting in all their effort.
Just like his past self, who had developed the Shroud of the Gloomy Night that could subvert concealment magic, yet could only watch with his own eyes as everything was sent into that despairing fire.
He could only let those arrogant laughs echo in his ears, helplessly letting the towering rage in his eyes extinguish.
Braving the wind and snow, the flying vessel sped at a low altitude.
It traversed rolling hills and glided over frozen streams, leaving Whitestone City far behind.
Lin Gui stopped thinking about those hunters.
They were just an interlude, a minor accident in a boring game.
Little did he know that the farce he had witnessed had already quietly pushed him to the edge of a certain vortex.
It was a bottomless storm that the system had deemed “impossible to intervene.”
The wind and snow grew heavier.
Ahead, deep within the gray mist, a blurry outline gradually emerged.
Deepwood Outpost had arrived.
This city-state stood quietly in the snow.
Unlike the ruggedness of human city-states, its buildings were slender and tall.
The overall color scheme was a gloomy dark purple, which exuded a deep, mysterious beauty even when covered in white snow.
Pointed watchtowers, arched gateways, and remnants of vine and star reliefs adorned the walls.
This was once a border outpost of the Night Elves.
Now, only a silent ruin remained, gently buried beneath the white snow.
Among the seventeen city-states devoured by the Wall of Sighs, there were not only human ones, but also those of dwarves and elves.
Lin Gui had traveled east along the Wall of Sighs, and now he had entered Deepwood Outpost.
This could be considered entering the elves' sphere of influence.
Further ahead, passing through Shadowmoon City and crossing the Gloomlight Forest, he would be able to walk out of the Wall of Sighs and reach the border of the Elven Forest.
If The Silent End had spread a bit further back then, the elves would probably have been forced to relocate their capital again.
The flying vessel slowly landed on the main road of Deepwood Outpost.
The snow was thick, deep enough to submerge one's ankles.
On both sides of the stone-paved street, the buildings still maintained the unique elegance and decay of the elves.
Pointed arched window frames were shattered, and the vine reliefs were covered in frost.
It was excessively... quiet.
Following his usual routine, Lin Gui chose a relatively intact elven hall.
He cleared the snow and hung up a wooden sign.
【7-Copper Post Office Deepwood Outpost Branch】
Subsequently, he hung the 103 letters belonging to this city-state on a temporary display board set up outside the door.
As the cold wind blew past, the letter papers rustled.
They were like a crowd of pale hands, waving silently in the quietness.
After doing all this, Lin Gui retreated into the room, lit a fire, and waited as usual.
Eve rubbed her red, cold-bitten hands and flipped open the book she had brought along.
Lin Gui sat by the fire, playing with his newly acquired magic—Flower Growth.
He chanted softly, his hand gestures unpracticed yet stable.
One by one, small flowers of various colors emerged out of thin air from his palm.
Red, white, and purple, they stood trembling on his fingertips.
It was like a silent magic show.
Just like that, time passed amid the falling snow and the sound of flipping pages.
One day.
Two days.
Three days.
On the evening of the fourth day, Lin Gui stopped practicing Flower Growth.
A pile of withered flowers had already accumulated in front of him.
On the display board outside, the letters were still hanging neatly.
There was no sign of them being touched.
In his mind, the system's signature notification had not sounded even once.
Rate on N.U.
