Chapter Eleven: The King of Ghosts

The cacophony, mingled with the roar of thunder, crashed into Chu Tiange’s mind, a searing pain threatening to tear his very soul apart.

Beads of sweat as large as soybeans rolled down his forehead.

In that instant, Chu Tiange seemed to fall into a nightmare. Within it, the shadow of a man approached, step by step.

“Mother, Father’s old now—he’s useless. The trafficker will bring a woman tomorrow. I hear she’s a real beauty, from a scholarly family. If we miss this opportunity, we’ll never get a better one for the shop.”

“But he’s your father!” The old woman’s voice trembled.

Then there was the sound of a struggle, shrieks, and furious shouting filling the entire room.

“To be unfilial in three ways, having no descendant is the worst! Father! You wouldn’t want our Jia family to die out, would you? Would you face our ancestors in the afterlife, shamed and childless?”

“You… you wretched beast! May you die a miserable death!” The old woman cursed, followed by a blood-curdling scream, then only ragged breathing remained.

“Father is dead, and you, Mother, you’re dead too. Father helped me marry, Mother, you’ll help me raise a child. Just as Grandfather and Grandmother helped you. Now you both may rest in peace.”

Chu Tiange found himself utterly paralyzed, unable to make a sound, forced to watch as the phantom man plunged a knife into his own abdomen.

Blood sprayed everywhere; the man’s face was smeared with it as he laughed uncontrollably.

“Ancestors, I, Jia Xiao, can now take a wife! The Jia family has an heir!”

An old man with a fleshy tumor on his neck pushed open the door, tossed down six strings of copper coins, slung the still-warm corpses onto a donkey cart, covered them with straw, and drove away.

Scene after scene flashed before Chu Tiange’s eyes.

A woman donned a tattered wedding dress, weeping as she entered the household, suffering night after night of abuse, until the family’s ancestors manifested their will from the heavens.

After nine months, the woman bore a child. At the sound of a newborn’s cry, the man was ecstatic, but on seeing the baby, realized it was a girl, and nearly fainted from rage.

The woman bore child after child, her belly marked with countless scars. The eldest daughter was called Recruiting Sister, the second Longing Sister, the third Arrival Sister, the fourth Hoping Sister, the fifth Guiding Sister, yet still no true brother came.

Once more, the sounds of violence, furious shouts, and the wailing of little girls filled the air.

“Useless woman! You cost my parents their lives, and now you bear me nothing but worthless brats! If I had money for a new wife, I’d have cast you aside long ago!”

The phantom man prayed to heaven and earth, spent a fortune on incense for the Goddess of Mercy, all in hope of a son to carry on the Jia family name.

The girls disappeared, one after another—sent away, it was said, by the old man with the donkey cart.

The sixth child was still no brother. The midwife announced the woman could bear no more.

“Useless thing! Go die! I’ll sell you off, and with the money from those worthless girls, marry anew!”

Chu Tiange felt a pain like knives rending his heart, agony that tore at his very being.

The suffocating sense of despair—when the woman died, her spirit could not escape this place, her hatred so fierce that she transformed into a vengeful specter.

She would have her revenge, for herself and her children. She would flay Jia Xiao alive.

On a stormy night, the lanterns of the Jia household burned dimly.

Jia Xiao knelt before a shrine, burning offerings with a look of terror, muttering, “Merciful Goddess, protect me! I only wanted an heir for the Jia family—what wrong have I done?”

He dared not look up, paralyzed with fear.

The statue of the Goddess before him bled crimson, its eyes glaring down with chilling malice.

Suddenly, a tumult erupted outside, punctuated by children’s cries.

A violent wind battered open the door; panic-stricken shouts rose from within.

“What wrong have I done? You were born Jia family, you die Jia family—why won’t you help me continue the line? Ah! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

His screams of terror echoed through the night until, deep into darkness, the manor gates were pushed open.

The old man returned, surveyed the room strewn with limbs, and laughed with delight.

“A fine filial son! Pity, your Jia family ends here.”

He gathered the remains and departed, leaving the Jia house to silence and the stench of blood.

A torrential rain washed the night, icy and relentless. Chu Tiange awoke as if from a dream.

“So… you’re already dead. Even after death, your shadow remains—such a powerful hatred… But I hadn’t expected that Jia Xiao wasn’t killed by your hand.”

He sensed a chill beside him and spun around.

The woman’s eyes bled in two slow, ghastly streams. Her skin was deathly white, marred by black-violet scars, her gaze fixed behind the eaves where five strips of blood-red cured meat swayed violently in the storm.

“Be careful. He’s here,” she rasped, her voice drifting as if from some distant place.

Chu Tiange looked at her, his eyes filled with complex emotion and awe.

Though she had long since died and her resentment was vast, she forced it deep within. Were it not so, she would have become a fiendish specter—a blood demon, soon perhaps a Lord of the Underworld.

“After I died, he kept my body hidden under the bed, to satisfy his lust, rather than disposing of it.”

“Once Jia Xiao was dead, the Butcher Ma moved in. After he arrived, the yin energy here thickened, and so my corpse gained consciousness. When the butcher left, I escaped.”

“A Jiangshi!” Chu Tiange’s pupils contracted.

She had become something uncanny, not a wraith but a corpse turned monster—one of the twenty-four malign spirits: a Jiangshi.

“The Butcher Ma is here?” Chu Tiange narrowed his eyes.

The old man who worshipped the Bodhisattva was no ghost, but more terrifying than any ghost. The malice here had bred ever more powerful monsters. All of this stemmed from the Butcher Ma.

The people of this mountain town, wicked as they were, had not crossed the line into utter depravity. Yet the Butcher’s hidden hand had accelerated the town’s ruin, drawing the shadow of the underworld onto this place.

“Yes, he’s nearby!” The woman’s eyes glinted with bloodthirsty madness. “I will have my revenge! I’ll tear him limb from limb! I’ll subject him to the most dreadful tortures—may he never know release, not for all eternity!”

Chu Tiange nodded and asked, “But you didn’t bring me here just to see the Butcher damned. You must know my abilities.”

Her crimson eyes locked onto his, but Chu Tiange did not flinch. He continued, “After nine months, you bore Recruiting Sister. Clearly, she wasn’t Jia Xiao’s child. You must have been pregnant before you were trafficked here.”

The woman trembled, the madness in her gaze fading, clarity returning as she spoke softly, “Her name isn’t Recruiting Sister—she has her own name. He said, whether boy or girl, he’d love our child all the same.”

“He named her Li Lingwei.”

“Li Lingwei will be a spirited, vibrant girl. Your husband must have cherished and respected you.”

It was a tragedy—a family meant for happiness torn asunder by abduction, cast into an abyss from which there was no escape.

The woman’s sorrow deepened, and a sticky tear of blood ran down her cheek.

“I suspect she isn’t dead. You sensed Jia Xiao’s change early and hid her. The five strips of meat under the eaves represent the five girls. Jia Xiao must have had the Butcher leave a piece to hang in the house for ‘good fortune,’ hoping it would bring a real brother,” Chu Tiange pressed, “Where did you hide her?”

The woman was silent for a moment before replying, “In the backyard, I found a cellar long abandoned and well concealed—even Jia Xiao didn’t know of it. I’d sneak out to the wilds for fruit to bring her now and then.”

“But he’s there too.”

“The cellar? The same one? Then Li Lingwei…” Chu Tiange frowned.

“There are many cellars in this manor, tucked away in remote corners—old woodsheds, kitchens, northwest wings. But Lingwei’s hiding place is beneath Jia Xiao’s parents’ bed. He would never have guessed,” the woman revealed.

“It’s safe for now. He won’t awaken until the hour of the rooster. I know you want to look around, but don’t dig too deep. When the rain eases, I’ll fetch Lingwei. Please, take her secretly to Splendor City. Her father will surely thank you.”

“Now is not the time. You should hide,” Chu Tiange shook his head.

His intention was clear: to lure out the Ghost King and hold out until Lu Shiqi arrived.

Chu Tiange turned, gazing through the towering walls, his eyes piercing the stormy night, seeing two figures staggering through the rain.

One was small, clearly exhausted. The other tottered, barely able to walk without support.

They struggled beneath the weight of a red coffin, heading toward the Jia Manor. In the deluge that washed away all traces, Lu Shiqi had decided to act at last.

When Chu Tiange looked back, the woman had vanished.

The house was empty, steeped in a sinister, uncanny silence. The strips of cured meat still swayed soundlessly beneath the eaves.

At this moment, Chu Tiange no longer concealed his immortal bone. He briefly unleashed its power, sensing the malice that pervaded the place, perceiving not only its presence but its very nature.

He walked slowly, guided by the evil intent through the gloomy house, glimpsing formless souls drifting in the rain, howling in agony, finally gathering at the kitchen.

The whispering voices came from here, the densest evil as well. Countless wandering spirits circled this spot.

At the kitchen’s edge, an entrance to a cellar emerged.

Chu Tiange did not hesitate. He slipped inside. Immediately, a stench of rot struck him, making him frown.

The cellar was pitch-black and damp, reeking so foully that he could not see his hand before his face. There was a faint rustling ahead, as if something lurked in the darkness.

Including the one where the girl was hidden, there were five cellars in the Jia house. Each held some resentment, but this one’s malice was tenfold that of the other four combined.

Here lay the greatest evil of all.

The cellar was vast, seemingly layered. As he drew closer, Chu Tiange saw a faint glow, and heard the sound of flesh being chopped.

“Who was the ‘he’ the madwoman spoke of? Jia Xiao, or the Butcher? Or… the Ghost King?”

Chu Tiange held his breath, creeping nearer. The scene that met him sent a jolt of shock through him.

Even with candles burning, the space was dim. Corpses hung from iron racks, while the Butcher Ma dismembered bodies with practiced ease. A monstrous, bloated pig gorged itself on limb after limb, devouring them with ravenous hunger. The stench was overpowering.

The pig, grotesquely fat, its eyes hollow and black, chomped down greedily, excreting filth into a wooden bucket as it ate.

A sinister-faced old monk, his countenance half-black, half-red, replaced each bucket in turn, while an old woman kneaded dough, making buns with the pig’s filth.

Revulsion rose in Chu Tiange. So this was what the townsfolk ate each morning, the source of those slick, greasy buns.

He also noticed a shrine.

Before it stood an incense burner, offerings, and a bronze cauldron. The deity enshrined was a scarlet Bodhisattva.

Chu Tiange recognized this idol—it was the one Jia Xiao had worshipped in his nightmarish vision.

In the Bodhisattva’s hand was a blood-red bead, gleaming with a strange, sinister light.

“That’s the Ghost King’s relic…”

A Buddha’s relic is a treasure; a ghost’s relic, the most evil of all. It grants the ghost immunity to all dharma, aids their cultivation, and, according to records, any ghost born of such a relic is a thousand-year fiend, immensely powerful.

“No, it’s not just a ghost relic,” Chu Tiange scrutinized it and saw that the bead was shrouded in dense black vapor.

It was the aura of the underworld. This bead did not belong to this world, but to another—perhaps it was a bridge linking both realms.

“Heh heh heh… Those immortal disciples have been quiet of late. Sons and daughters, keep sacrificing your parents to heaven, let the town’s hatred fester, let the underworld’s aura on the ghost relic grow denser still, until Jia Manor and the relic become one, and the underworld is forever joined to the world of men.”

The old monk’s dual-colored face twisted in a smile and a mask of sorrow.

“Amitabha, a pity these people cannot become my devotees. Still, the buns are delicious.”

“I have schemed long and hard, at great cost, to move Filial Piety Town from the Eastern Realm to here, all to catch the immortals of the Azure Continent off guard. And you lot do nothing but eat, eat, eat!”

At the shrine, the Bodhisattva glared in anger, frightening the Butcher into dropping his cleaver.

“Last night, Dreaming Beauty Ghost King caught the scent of a great tonic and, ignoring my warning, descended early from the underworld by means of a dream. Since then, she has vanished. Have you heard any tidings?”