Chapter 40: The Ghost Infant Appears

The chef completely ignored Xie Sui’s threatening words. He let out another eerie laugh, then opened his mouth and spat out a piece of bright red flesh.

The piece of meat emitted a strange odor. Xie Sui caught a familiar stench from it… a nauseating smell that mixed foul decay with the aroma of cooked meat, making it even more unbearable than a simple stink.

After the chef spat out this chunk of meat, the people in the room who had been frantically trying to eat fell into a state of stupor. Like robots with their power cut, they lowered their heads, their eyes glazed and lifeless.

Everyone in the room, except for Xie Sui, Nie Pengpeng, and Liu Wuyong, had lost consciousness.

The chef’s fingertips rapidly rubbed the piece of meat. Under his touch, the meat began to stretch and deform, quickly turning into a red veil as thin as a cicada’s wing that draped onto the floor.

Then, instead of attacking Xie Sui, he turned his blade and pointed the tip at the foal still struggling and crying on the ground.

“You seem to care a lot about this little girl. Tell you what, I won’t make things difficult for you. As long as you put on this skin yourself, I can restore her to her original form… otherwise, before I kill you, I’ll chop her head off first.”

The chef was rugged and tall, looking like a common brawler, but his methods were unexpectedly insidious and cunning.

Even though Xie Sui was alone and carrying two dead weights, and on the surface had no means to compete with him, the chef still chose the most convenient and fastest way to threaten Xie Sui into submission.

“You don’t have much time to think…” The smile on the chef’s face grew more hideous. “See these diners? For every minute you hesitate, I’ll kill one person. Do as you see fit.” Having said that, he tossed the skin at Xie Sui’s feet.

The chef had mistaken Xie Sui for a member of the Xuanmen who had infiltrated the production crew to investigate his restaurant.

The Xuanmen practitioners who came to investigate him were either old foxes who turned a blind eye or fools missing a few brain cells. That was why his small restaurant had remained open and successful all these years.

The chef had noticed Xie Sui the moment he stepped off the bus, because Xie Sui was the only one unaffected by his spells.

The chef knew people like him all too well – righteous individuals who came down from their mountains full of hot blood, wanting to uphold justice and punish evil.

These youngsters who had just finished their training were all fools with nothing but passion in their heads. To uphold their morality and save a few insignificant people, they would easily throw away their own lives.

They couldn’t do anything to him because they still had humanity and a conscience; they were held hostage by a boring sense of morality. That was why they could be threatened whenever he had hostages in his hands.

Seeing the tip of the chef’s knife pointed at the little girl’s neck, Xie Sui’s face remained expressionless. Instead, he scanned the surroundings of the small restaurant and asked a strange question: “This place isn’t bad. To hide the stench on your body, you must have used quite a few breath-concealing talismans, right?”

“Good eye.” The chef looked at Xie Sui mockingly, not angered by the offense in his words. He was very tolerant toward the dying.

“The entire house is one giant talisman array, with hundreds of talismans hidden in every wall. Don’t think about breaking out; message-transmitting talismans are useless here. And don’t think about using the Yin-Yang Gap to escape… this house is the graveyard I prepared for people like you.”

Xie Sui raised an eyebrow. “Someone else has opened the Yin-Yang Gap here before?”

The expression on the chef’s face became increasingly arrogant. “Just some low-level tricks from the Shangqing Sect. They couldn’t beat me, so they tried to trap me in the Yin-Yang Gap… Hahaha, a bunch of fools. By the way, looking at the Ghost Qi¹ on you, you wouldn’t happen to be from the Shangqing Sect too, would you? A pity, you’re destined to join your fellow disciples in the hot pot.”

He shook his head in mock regret. “One minute is almost up. Make your decision quickly. Of course, you can take your time. The lives of everyone in this room can buy you half an hour of thinking time.”

There was no sign of struggle on Xie Sui’s face. Instead, a faint smile appeared. “In that case, I’m relieved.”

Seeing him like this, the chef felt something was wrong. A flash of ruthlessness crossed his eyes, and he squatted down, thrusting the knife toward the little girl’s neck without hesitation.

But in the next instant, he suddenly felt his body grow heavy. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push the knife down.

The chef strained to roll his eyes and found himself making eye contact with a pair of eyes that were nothing but white, staring from his shoulder.

It was a child that looked about six or seven months old. Its body was blue-purple, and deep black veins crawled across its entire face like a spiderweb. Its body was unnaturally bloated, with large patches of deep red livor mortis covering its bruised skin, looking terrifying to the sight.

‘Daddy.’

When it opened its mouth, thick black slime formed from dense Yin Energy flowed out, dripping onto the chef’s right arm. The chef felt an extremely frigid sensation instantly spread from his arm to his entire body. He felt frozen solid, completely losing control over his physical form.

‘Why did you drown me?’

The chef’s eyes slowly widened.

A Ghost Infant?! Could a Ghost Infant with such heavy resentment actually exist? He had never offended an Evil Cultivator who raised Ghost Infants, so how could…

He suddenly realized something and rolled his eyes upward to look at Xie Sui.

The man he had originally thought was from the Shangqing Sect had undergone a world-shaking change in temperament at some unknown point.

The man’s already bloodless skin was now pale to the point of being translucent, with spiderweb-like blue-purple veins standing out starkly against the ghastly white. His eyes were completely overtaken by a blood-red color, and two Blood-colored Double Pupils slowly split apart… If this man had just been an ordinary person with some Yin Energy before, now… it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call him a vengeful ghost.

Judging by the murderous aura and Yin Energy emanating from this guy, he looked more like an Evil Cultivator than the chef did.

Looking at those blood-colored double pupils gazing down at him, various thoughts flashed rapidly through the chef’s mind.

A Ghost King possessing a corpse? Or a zombie that had achieved a high level of cultivation?

The chef had assumed this was like any other time, with some righteous sect from the Xuanmen coming to kick down his door. He hadn’t expected it to be a case of the wicked meeting someone even more sinister.

Xie Sui’s pale fingers tapped on the stove again.

This time, the chef crouching on the floor saw it clearly. With Xie Sui’s movements, a nearly physical black Yin Energy began to spread slowly from the shadow beneath his feet, with countless distorted faces of children bobbing up and down within the dark mist.

The children’s faces were hideous and terrifying. Within every pair of eyes was a malice so thick it wouldn’t dissipate, along with a hatred for all living things. Those tiny bodies, either deformed or shattered beyond recognition, were the products of human evil. In the brief lives they had once lived, they had endured a monumental malice that they should never have had to bear.

They didn’t understand why they couldn’t be born safely, why they were drowned the moment they entered the world, or why they couldn’t grow up healthy like other children… They didn’t understand why the ones who killed them were their own parents.

A life cut too short hadn’t allowed these Ghost Infants to learn the meaning of reason. They only knew how to curse everything they saw and tear apart anything living; only then could the violence in their hearts be slightly soothed. Then, they would continue to struggle in a sea of resentment, suffering because they could find no release, killing others because of that suffering, and continuing to be tortured by resentment because of those killings, on and on without end.

The excessive Yin Energy caused the light inside the restaurant to dim. At some point, this place that should have been the chef’s home turf had been transformed into a sinister ghostly domain.

And the master of this ghostly domain stood not far away, looking at him indifferently with those blood-colored Double Pupils.

The chef’s sense of foreboding grew heavier… It seemed he had provoked a real monster this time.

Surrounded by the Ghost Infants, Xie Sui looked down at the chef and asked another strange question: “Since you’re a chef, do you know what the inside of a meat grinder looks like?”

Xie Sui didn’t know how to restore those who had been subjected to Zaochu² to their original forms, nor did he know how to snap the diners controlled by the chef back to their senses. Therefore, he chose the simplest method – since he didn’t know how to dispel the spell, he would simply eliminate the one using it.

Nie Pengpeng watched this magical scene with a numb expression.

She felt like she was the only one who didn’t fit in.

Mr. Xie, whom she had relied on as her savior, had now become more terrifying than a ghost.

As for Liu Wuyong, the ‘ordinary person’ who was under Xie Sui’s protection just like her, he had already calmly retreated to a corner the moment the chef threatened Xie Sui.

Nie Pengpeng’s facial muscles had gone through an extremely complex range of emotional changes in just a few minutes, moving from initial panic and confusion to shock and fear, and finally to her current state of numb despair.

She felt that if she survived this and made it back, she might try auditioning for horror movies. Perhaps she would be the next great method actor.

Experiencing a horror event firsthand – wasn’t that more effective than paying a fortune for acting classes?

The only downside was that a training class might only cost money, but this method of experience could easily cost her life.

Though her legs were still too weak to stand, Nie Pengpeng used her strong willpower to crawl to another corner on all fours.

Then, she pulled her jacket directly over her head and faced the corner, sinking into a state of self-isolation.

This was all just a dream caused by her motion sickness. Maybe the bus hadn’t even reached its destination, and she hadn’t gotten off at all.

Now that the situation had reversed, the chef was completely suppressed by Xie Sui.

Although he was indeed startled by the Ghost Infants at first, the chef quickly recovered his wits.

He closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath. A moment later, the old lady in the grey gown hopped out from the dark kitchenette and walked silently to the chef’s side. She held a tray in her hands, her movements agile in a way that didn’t suit an elderly person.

The old lady seemed even shorter than before, and that kind, amiable smile was pinned to her face like a mask.

Xie Sui noticed that the long grey gown covering her feet had been flipped up at the corner by her hopping movement. Beneath that grey gown were two unmistakably furry, black cat legs.

Noticing Xie Sui’s gaze, the old lady patted the hem of her gown, re-covering her hind limbs with the fabric.

She looked at Xie Sui with a beaming smile, her vocal cords vibrating with effort as she spoke in a high-pitched, shrill voice: “Why aren’t you eating? You helped bury my child’s body, so I’m helping you stay alive. But instead of appreciating my kindness, you’ve trashed our place. I’m a little angry.”

Xie Sui looked at the old lady, his brow furrowed.

Child… Was the dead black cat under the tree her child?

A look of realization dawned on Xie Sui’s face.

So this old lady was an Old Cat Spirit.

The Old Cat Spirit, also known in folklore as a Maoguishen³, is a spirit formed from the soul of a psychic black cat after its death. Unlike those Wild Immortals in the Northeast who held official titles, this kind of spirit was very wicked. They would steal human corpses and possess them to cultivate. They were also extremely petty; if offended, they wouldn’t stop until they had tormented the other party to death.

The Old Cat Spirit before him was likely walking around in the corpse of an old woman.

Because the stench outside the restaurant was so pungent, Xie Sui, whose sense of smell had been temporarily neutralized by the odor, hadn’t been able to smell the rot of a corpse on her when he entered the building.

By the time the Old Cat Spirit served them food again, the scent on her body was masked by the aroma of meat in the restaurant, which was why Xie Sui hadn’t noticed anything unusual about the old lady.

Xie Sui looked at the vegetable dishes on the stove again. Under the gaze of his blood-colored Double Pupils, the home-cooked stir-fries in the plates slowly dissipated – those weren’t vegetables at all, but handfuls of wild grass still mixed with soil.

The Old Cat Spirit’s words sounded nice, but she was clearly just toying with them. He had never heard of foxtail grass being able to break a curse.

Even though an Old Cat Spirit had suddenly jumped out, Xie Sui didn’t particularly care. What he cared about more was another piece of information hidden in the spirit’s words.

This Old Cat Spirit was clearly in league with the chef. Even if she couldn’t touch the cat’s corpse herself, if she wanted to hang the cat’s body back up under the tree, she could have easily asked the chef for help…

Xie Sui recalled the blood-colored talisman on the black cat’s chest and suddenly realized something.

The person who placed the cat corpse under the tree and the person using the Zaochu Art in this restaurant were likely not accomplices. The chef and the Old Cat Spirit were probably unable to move the cat corpse because of that talisman on its chest.

There was a third party hiding in the shadows… this run-down restaurant was truly a mess.

Xie Sui began to understand why the bad luck hanging over the production crew and the guests was so heavy. They hadn’t even reached the filming location yet, and things had already escalated to this point. It really wouldn’t be easy for them to stay alive.

The Old Cat Spirit reached out and swatted away the Ghost Infant perched on the chef’s shoulder. The chef stumbled to his feet, regaining his ability to move.

Xie Sui caught the Ghost Infant as it flew back toward him.

He wasn’t surprised that the Old Cat Spirit had so easily dealt with the Ghost Infant on the chef’s shoulder. Black cats were naturally psychic and could ward off evil, and an Old Cat Spirit formed from the death of a black cat naturally countered sinister entities like the Ghost Infant.

However, dealing with the Old Cat Spirit was also quite simple: he just had to destroy the corpse it was controlling.

Once the Old Cat Spirit lost its human vessel, it would lose more than half of its cultivation. At that point, it would be easy for the Ghost Infant to tear it apart.

Humans were the most spiritual of all living things, favored by heaven. Animal souls were not as stable as human souls, and the ghosts they formed were quite fragile. They couldn’t drift around freely like fierce ghosts or vengeful spirits. To continue their cultivation, they needed a human corpse to shield their fragile souls.

The Old Cat Spirit cultivating within a corpse was the same principle as a fox wearing a skull to worship the moon, a weasel crawling into a person’s belly to control their body, or a hedgehog sitting on a shoulder to manipulate someone’s mind.

When a person dies, they need to exhale one final breath. The reason the Old Cat Spirit could move the corpse was because of this lingering breath that had yet to dissipate from the body.

Xie Sui beckoned to his own shadow, and five tall, thin black figures emerged, swaying. The leading ghost shadow had only a single eye, with the stitched marks at the corners of its mouth still visible. Behind it followed four ghost shadows wearing bamboo hats.

Coincidentally, he happened to have a ghost in his shadow that specialized in devouring “Qi.”

Translator’s Notes