"Ghost... there's a ghost! A ghost!"
A strange incident occurred in a small mortal town called Wufu. When the news reached the Tai Xuan Sect, Master Hao from the Duty Hall was seized by intense curiosity. Seizing the opportunity, he issued a "Gui"-level investigation mission under the guise of official business.
Sect missions were categorized by danger level, ranked as "Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui."
Gui-level meant no danger at all—just a formality, a chance to log a mission record and earn a guaranteed ten spirit stones.
The plump junior brother, who loved date cakes, used his sheer bulk to snatch the mission token and eagerly rushed to find Gu Meng. "Junior Sister Gu! Come on, senior brother will take you on a mission!"
The chubby junior brother's name was Zhao Yu.
Gu Meng was crouching under a Chinese parasol tree, struggling to memorize an introductory cultivation manual sent by Master Lingxue.
The manual was filled with obscure, convoluted phrases. Forget comprehension—just rote memorization was enough to make her dizzy, her resolve wavering like a retreating drumbeat.
Gu Meng couldn’t help but lament: no talent, a late start—she’d never catch up to those natural prodigies in this lifetime.
Hearing Zhao Yu call her, she raised her eyes with a bitter smile and declined softly, "No, I shouldn’t hold Senior Brother Zhao back."
"Ah, come on!" Zhao Yu said. "I’m not like Junior Sister Luo—how could I ever look down on you?"
Gu Meng quickly shook her head. "No, no, Senior Sister Luo doesn’t look down on me. It’s just that I’m useless."
Zhao Yu thought for a moment. "You should call Luo Luo ‘Junior Sister’ too. She was the youngest when she joined, just a little sprout, so everyone calls her that. Even newcomers like you should too."
Gu Meng murmured, "Oh..."
She had thought she’d be the new "junior sister." Turns out, she wasn’t.
"Let’s go!" Zhao Yu said. "Moping here won’t help. Might as well get some fresh air—and earn ten spirit stones!"
Gu Meng asked, "Spirit stones... can they help me improve my cultivation?"
Zhao Yu grinned. "Of course! Absorbing spiritual energy from stones is the easiest thing! You don’t even need to memorize manuals!"
Gu Meng’s eyes lit up. "Alright, I’ll go!"
The two left the sect and traveled westward.
Zhao Yu couldn’t resist advising her, "Stay away from those two from now on. Junior Sister Luo’s domineering nature aside, Senior Brother Li truly has no sense of chivalry. You have no idea—during the annual sect tournament, anyone who draws him as an opponent ends up wailing like ghosts. Three years ago, I was unlucky enough to face him. I spent five hundred spirit stones begging everyone to switch with me!"
Gu Meng pressed her lips together and looked at him.
"Guess what happened?" Zhao Yu shook his head. "Junior Sister Lan Fu from Qingyu Peak—gentle as water, the kind anyone would want to protect—she didn’t believe the rumors and swapped with me. Back then, everyone thought Senior Brother Li wouldn’t have the heart to go all out against her. But..."
Gu Meng pressed, "But what?"
Zhao Yu raised his thick, stubby eyebrows. "But she spent eight hundred spirit stones on healing. I ended up three hundred in the black!"
Gu Meng fell silent for a moment before murmuring, "But Big Brother Li has been very kind to me lately."
Zhao Yu clicked his tongue. "How is that kindness? After that trip to the Netherworld, your robes were torn to shreds—the duty logs recorded everything! You call that ‘kind’? Hey, tell me, what really happened back then?"
Gu Meng bit her lip. "There were too many demons... everything was chaotic... I really didn’t see clearly... Junior Sister Luo lent me her teleportation talisman to escape."
Of course, she wouldn’t blindly trust Luo Luo’s words and rashly doubt Big Brother Li.
If there was a misunderstanding, she’d clear it up face to face.
Wufu Town.
Zhao Yu strode ahead, swinging his medicine pestle like a weapon, motioning for Gu Meng to stay safely behind him.
The "haunted" street was deserted, the wooden buildings on either side with doors and windows tightly shut. Occasionally, a faint creak sounded as a child’s curious, fearful eyes peeked through a crack in a door or window.
Another creak—the child was promptly yanked back inside by a parent for a spanking.
Zhao Yu gulped, brandished his pestle in a wide arc, and stomped onto the cobblestone street with all the bravado of a hero.
Boom!
"The Daoist Master is here!" Zhao Yu bellowed, channeling his core formation cultivator’s aura. "What demon dares run rampant?!"
His roar echoed down the empty street.
Creak, creak—a few doors and windows cracked open, and hands pointed urgently ahead.
Zhao Yu glanced sideways and declared grandly to Gu Meng, "Fear not! With senior brother here, no demon can harm you!"
Before accepting the mission, he’d naturally skimmed the briefing.
The "ghost" was just a fish. Master Hao had issued the mission out of sheer novelty.
A Gui-level mission, nothing more.
Further ahead, the street grew so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
A breeze carried a faint, unsettling sound from up ahead.
Squelch, squelch, squelch.
It was hard to describe—heavy, viscous.
A large pool of dried blood stained the road, mixed with fragments of flesh and bone.
From there, a long trail of blood stretched forward.
Zhao Yu swallowed hard.
What kind of abomination was this—an unkillable, walking fish?
Whatever it was, he’d pound it into paste!
Steeling himself, he avoided the central blood trail and marched onward.
Closer... closer still.
On the empty street, a fish walked.
A large, gray fish. Grotesquely shaped.
From a distance, it looked like a person dragging a lame leg, shuffling forward step by step.
"Immortal Master! Immortal Master!" A young woman suddenly darted out from the roadside, pleading tearfully. "Please, slay this demon and save my family! I’ll do anything—anything at all!"
Zhao Yu scowled. "Cut the nonsense. What’s really going on?"
The woman sobbed. "This fish... we don’t know where it came from. It just keeps walking... like a person." She pointed east. "Everyone was curious, following it... then... my boy got mischievous and threw a rock, smashing half its head off..."
She shuddered. "But it didn’t die! It just kept walking! Toward the east! My husband grabbed a shovel and hacked at it... but no matter how much we struck it, it wouldn’t die! It’s an unkillable ghost—it’ll come back for revenge, won’t it?"
Gu Meng trembled, her hands clutching at Zhao Yu’s robes for comfort—only to find his girth left no slack in the fabric. She tugged several times in vain.
Zhao Yu shivered as her fingers brushed his back.
He coughed loudly. "No big deal! Watch me smash this thing into mincemeat! What kind of monster even is this?!"
His words were bold, but when he finally caught up and saw the fish up close, his chubby frame quivered, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
Halfway through, realizing how undignified he sounded, he hastily covered his mouth—but the wind whistled through his fingers with a long, shrill squeak.
"Eeeeee—"
No one could blame him for his terror.
This "ghost fish" was a nightmare made flesh.
Half its skull was missing, revealing glistening brain matter. Its scales and flesh had been hacked away, bones jutting out at broken angles. A long trail of blood smeared behind it as it dragged itself forward.
Yet it kept moving. Step by step, it trudged forward, dragging its broken bones with it, heavy and steady, like a blood-soaked revenant crawling back from the battlefield of the netherworld.
Eerie. Unnerving.
No wonder the entire town held its breath in terror.
Zhao Yu swallowed hard, his throat dry.
Just as his scalp prickled and goosebumps erupted across his skin, the fish suddenly halted. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, it turned its head.
A single cold, bloodshot, lifeless fish eye fixed its gaze on Zhao Yu.
Zhao Yu: "Hss—koff!"
The moment it locked onto him, a chill shot straight to the crown of his skull!
Gu Meng shrieked, her voice shrill with fear, "Senior Brother, it's looking at you!"
"No," Zhao Yu gasped between breaths, "It's not looking at me. It's just staring at my robes. I am a disciple of the mighty Tai Xuan Sect—it’s afraid of me."
Gu Meng stammered, "S-Senior Brother, it—it’s coming toward you!"
"No," Zhao Yu said calmly. "It must be after that woman from earlier. Didn’t she say her whole family had a grudge against this fish?"
Gu Meng: "…"
She could feel it—that single eye boring into Zhao Yu, even as she hid behind him. The weight of its gaze was suffocating.
Closer.
Closer still.
It moved toward Zhao Yu, deceptively slow, yet in the blink of an eye, it was right in front of him.
A jagged bone spur hooked onto Zhao Yu’s robe, scraping against the fabric with a sound like metal screeching against skull.
"AHHH—hit it! Hit it now!" Gu Meng screamed. "Senior Brother, kill it!"
Zhao Yu snapped out of his daze.
He looked down.
One fish eye.
His vision swam.
He didn’t even remember swinging the medicine pestle down.
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD!
Finally, silence.
Zhao Yu shuddered, his hair soaked in cold sweat. He didn’t dare look at the mess on the ground. Grabbing Gu Meng, he mounted the pestle and fled Five Blessings Town.
The journey was as silent as a grave.
Only when the grand silhouette of Tai Xuan Sect came into view did Zhao Yu finally catch his breath.
Struggling to salvage his dignity, he cleared his throat and explained to Gu Meng, "Of course I wasn’t scared of a fish. It’s just—something about its aura reminded me of the Eldest Senior Brother. Gave me the chills, that’s all. Heh! Heh!"
A sidelong glance told him Gu Meng wasn’t buying it. Desperate, he added, "Look, it was heading toward Tai Xuan Sect, wasn’t it? You think I’d be afraid of a fish?"
Gu Meng: "…"
Then her eyes widened. She shrieked, "Y-you—it’s on you!"
Zhao Yu’s scalp crawled. Following her gaze, he saw it—two rows of fish teeth sunk into his shoulder.
A bloodcurdling scream later, the two of them—and the pestle—plummeted straight down, smashing through half of Tai Xuan Sect’s mountain gate plaque.
CRASH!
CRACK.
Embers burst from the campfire, casting flickering shadows on the stone walls.
"You really," Li Zhaoye murmured, his dark eyes reflecting twin flames. He tilted his head slightly, gaze dropping to the sword in Luo Luo’s grip. "Pointing blades at people all the time—don’t you think that’s rude?"
Luo Luo considered this for a moment, then released her hold and set the sword aside.
Across the fire, he smiled at her.
"Much better."
Li Zhaoye’s smiles were usually bold, dazzling to the point of arrogance. But not now. This one didn’t reach his eyes, cold as the firelight dancing in them.
Still smiling, he leaned in—suddenly closing the distance between them.
"Will staring at me help?" he asked.
Luo Luo’s brows furrowed in alarm. Her fingers twitched toward her sword, then went limp.
Her voice came out hoarse. "You… when did you poison me?"
He glanced at the steam rising from the fire and grinned. "Did you really think trees grew in the underworld? I brought it with me. You’re drained of spiritual energy—no resistance to the ‘Armor-Shedding’ toxin. Can’t lift your sword now, can you? Perfect."
Luo Luo snarled, "You’re stronger than me. Was this underhanded trick necessary?"
He chuckled lowly. "I learned from the best—you. I won’t make the same mistake again."
As he spoke, he closed in.
His left sleeve flicked her sword—the Autumn Water—away, pinning it under his boot. His right hand shot up, calloused fingers clamping around her throat.
Luo Luo’s pale face flushed crimson. A pained gasp escaped her lips before she bit it back.
He tightened his grip, slamming her against the stone wall.
THUD.
A stifled groan escaped her.
The Taiyi Sword materialized soundlessly behind him, its icy tip hovering inches from her eye.
"Who," she forced out, breathless, "are you really?"
His obsidian eyes mirrored her face—her lashes fluttering, lips trembling, beautiful as a flower on the verge of withering.
He smiled. "I’m Li Zhaoye."
She strained to search his gaze, her voice breaking. "You’re going to kill me. Still too cowardly to admit it? Or are you just not confident enough to finish the job?"
He laughed. "I don’t perform, and I don’t fall for taunts."
Luo Luo stretched her fingers desperately, but her sword remained out of reach.
She tried summoning it with hand seals, but it only let out a feeble whine against the ground.
He’d prepared for this.
Despair flickered in her eyes. A plea slipped into her voice. "Where is Li Zhaoye? Tell me, please."
True to his nature, he wasted no words. His fingers tightened, lifting her off the ground as he reversed his grip on the Taiyi Sword—and swung down!
SHING!
The blade’s edge split the air before reaching her eye. Pain lanced through her vision, but Luo Luo refused to blink.
Her pupils constricted as the sword tip rushed toward her.
He had already won.
Her pouch was empty. Her life dangled in his grasp. In the next heartbeat, the Taiyi Sword would pierce her right eye.
Her own blade was trapped beneath his foot.
She had no way to fight back!
A lazy smirk curled his lips as he whispered, "Go ask him yourself in the underworld."
Admitted.
He wasn’t Li Zhaoye.
