Fang Xuan was left dazed by the sudden movement, having been just about to break the restriction barrier.
But a hand suddenly reached out from the shadows and gently grasped his wrist.
Then, it pulled.
The darkness before his eyes instantly receded, and his vision returned to normal.
Moonlight, the shadows of bamboo, the familiar courtyard, and right before him, Ning Xian's cold, elegant face.
One of her hands still held a fading sword spell, while the other gripped his wrist.
However, Fang Xuan's first reaction was...
Wow... Senior Sister's hand... her fingers are slender, her skin smooth... but it's a bit cold; she needs more nourishment.
"Why are you daydreaming?"
Ning Xian's cold voice dragged him back from his brief lapse in concentration.
"It's nothing."
Fang Xuan stood up straight, glancing left and right. "Where's the ghost? Where did those shadows go?"
The courtyard was empty, and the moonlight was bright. It was as if the terrifying scene of howling winds and a parade of ghosts from a moment ago had been nothing more than an illusion.
Ning Xian replied, "Inside your room."
"Huh?" Fang Xuan instinctively shrank behind her, poking only half his head out.
"It's still inside? Senior Sister, how about... we reconsider this? Let's wait until dawn when the sun comes out..."
Ning Xian was still somewhat perplexed.
"As a cultivator, how can you fear such dark and foul things?"
Her tone remained flat, but Fang Xuan could clearly detect a hint of disdain within it.
Ning Xian truly could not understand how someone possessing a top-tier protective spiritual item, with strength at the Void Core Realm, who could bury people into the ground when he fought, would be so afraid of ghosts that he tried to hide behind her.
She walked straight toward the bamboo hut.
Seeing this, Fang Xuan had no choice but to brace himself and follow closely behind her, step for step.
Reaching the door, Ning Xian did not push it open immediately. Instead, she reached out a finger and traced a line through the air.
Her brow furrowed slightly.
"The baleful energy has condensed into a formidable force; it was hidden so deeply..."
Fang Xuan's heart hammered in his chest as he listened.
If it had become a formidable force, didn't that make it a big boss?
Just then, Ning Xian pushed open the bamboo door.
Boom!!
A surge of dark red baleful energy, ten times more violent than before, erupted from inside the room.
Fang Xuan instinctively tried to pull Ning Xian back, but she moved forward instead of retreating, stepping up half a pace to completely shield him behind her.
"Disperse."
With her fingertip as the center, a wave of supremely sharp 'intent' suddenly expanded outward.
Fang Xuan's eyes widened slightly.
This was the first time he had felt Ning Xian's sword intent from such a close distance.
The tide of dark red baleful energy rapidly dissolved and receded under the impact of the sword intent.
However, the aftershocks of the sword intent did not seem to stop.
Whoosh!!!
A gust of air swept outward in all directions with Ning Xian at its center.
The objects inside the room were blown over, left in total disarray.
And the most unfortunate victim was the roof of the bamboo hut, which had just been repaired and had yet to be enjoyed.
After the newly laid tiles and bamboo beams let out an overwhelmed groan, the entire roof was directly blown away by the freezing aftershocks of the sword intent.
Bamboo and wood fell to the ground with a series of crashes, making the destruction even more thorough than when Fang Xuan had collapsed it himself...
Standing behind Ning Xian, Fang Xuan looked at his little shack, which had instantly turned back into an "open-air scenic room," and the mess on the ground.
He opened his mouth, momentarily speechless.
His roof... it was gone again...
This was truly... wonderful.
If he spoke now, would his angry Senior Sister silence him for good?
He took a soft breath, forced himself to swallow the words on the tip of his tongue, and adjusted his facial expression.
Ning Xian looked at the bare roof beams and the debris on the ground, her hand at her side clenching tightly.
She had spent... the entire afternoon fixing it...
...
The churning baleful energy inside the room did not completely vanish under the impact of the sword intent. Instead, as if provoked, it frantically contracted and condensed.
Finally, it formed a terrifying cloud of dark mist in the center of the room.
Within the mist, countless hideous faces were faintly visible.
The black mist lunged toward the two people at the door once more.
This time, its target seemed locked on Fang Xuan, whose aura was weaker and who had been hiding behind her just now.
Ning Xian's gaze turned cold as she prepared to strike again.
But the mass of baleful energy was only halfway through its charge.
Under the stunned gazes of both Fang Xuan and Ning Xian, it actually...
Turned around and fled.
It didn't rush toward the door, but instead slammed into the rear wall of the bamboo hut. Like an incorporeal entity, it instantly passed through and vanished toward the bamboo forest on the back mountain.
Fang Xuan: "..."
This ghost... it's quite pragmatic, isn't it?
After a brief silence, Ning Xian quickly regained her composure.
She glanced back at Fang Xuan, her speech slightly faster than usual.
"This creature possesses significant intelligence. What we saw was only a fraction of its power manifesting through an object. I will pursue it to ensure it does not escape."
"You stay here and search. Since the baleful energy erupted from this room, there must be a remaining anchor vessel. It might be an old utensil, a weapon stained with blood-malice, or perhaps... something foul buried underground."
Before her voice had even faded, her form transformed into a faint shadow, chasing after the direction the baleful energy had fled.
...
"Find the... host body?"
Fang Xuan looked into the dark room, which was still emitting traces of residual yin energy, feeling a bit creeped out.
The moonlight shone directly down from the roofless sky, making it brighter than when the lamps were lit, though it felt a bit chilly.
"A host body... it's usually an old object, right?"
Fang Xuan muttered as he began to rummage around.
The bed? He had been lying there like a corpse just now, and he hadn't felt anything besides the cold.
The table? A regular bamboo table newly made by Senior Sister, impossible.
A chamber pot? ...There wasn't one in this room.
Even if there were, he would have felt sorry for the ghost.
The tiles and beams of the roof? Senior Sister had just replaced them; they were brand new. If the baleful energy had anchored to those, she would have noticed while fixing the roof.
He turned his meager possessions upside down.
A few sets of clothes, some miscellaneous items, and the new bedding Ning Xian had laid out for him earlier, which was now covered in dust from the collapse.
In short, he found nothing.
"Is it buried underground?" Fang Xuan squatted down and tapped the floor. It was paved with bluestone slabs and felt very solid; it didn't seem like anything was there.
Searching for things wasn't his strong suit.
I'll just use spiritual pressure to force it out.
He began to circulate the vast, ocean-like spiritual energy within his body.
Although he hadn't specifically learned any investigative spells, given his total spiritual energy at the Void Core Realm, he could still achieve a sense of pressure simply by releasing it.
The invisible spiritual energy slowly expanded with him as the center, sweeping over every inch of the room and every object like a ripple on water.
At first, there was no reaction.
But when his massive spiritual energy swept over the corner under the bed—
Buzz...
A faint vibration emanated from beneath the bed.
Fang Xuan's gaze locked onto that corner.
He remembered that... something seemed to be tucked away there?
Right, it was a jar of wine he had stolen from Senior Sister and hidden under the bed.
He reached out and dragged the wine jar out.
The jar was very ordinary, the kind of coarse ceramic jar most commonly seen at the Qingshi Town night market, with a seal made of red cloth and mud.
It looked completely unremarkable.
Fang Xuan hesitated for a moment, not opening it immediately.
Something was wrong.
This discovery... was it a bit too easy? It was as if it had been left there for him to find on purpose.
He rubbed his chin and stared at the wine jar with a wary gaze.
In horror movies, these seemingly crucial clues were often traps.
But before he could think it through—
Crack.
A faint sound echoed.
The previously intact mud seal and red cloth on the wine jar split open on their own.
Immediately afterward, a burst of pitch-black baleful energy, even more venomous than the one that had erupted in the room earlier, surged out from the crack.
It swallowed Fang Xuan whole in an instant.
On the body of the jar, a distorted ghostly face faintly emerged, facing Fang Xuan with a bizarre, eerie smile.
Rate on N.U.
