Xie Zhou: “Alright.”
Song Yao organized her thoughts and summarized the situation in a few brief sentences.
At the end, she added the most crucial point: “Also, do not trust anyone. The citizens in this city, and even our disciples from the Nine Saints Hall, might not be who they seem.”
The night wind swept through the empty courtyard, making the dilapidated, long-unrepaired gate creak on its hinges.
Xie Zhou paused almost imperceptibly. “Do not trust anyone?”
Song Yao: “Yes.”
Xie Zhou: “Then why do you trust me?”
He asked in a flat tone, but the fingers hidden inside his sleeves had unconsciously curled tight.
Song Yao was startled. She hadn't expected him to ask this, and her brow furrowed slightly. “It's hard to say.”
Xie Zhou: “Hard to say?”
Song Yao thought for a moment, then looked up at him, her eyes curving into crescents. “Maybe because Fourth Senior Brother doesn't look like a bad guy in disguise.”
As if.
It wasn't that she trusted him completely.
But when the courtyard caught fire earlier, Caopu Hall was short on hands.
If this Fourth Junior Brother were fake, he should have gone to those two places to help instead of going to all this trouble to chat with her here, let alone saving several unrelated people.
Moreover, she was currently a bit too lazy to distinguish truth from falsehood. She only wanted to rush to Caopu Hall to test her pills.
Xie Zhou, however, was momentarily dazed, his pupils reflecting the girl's smiling eyes.
She trusted him.
That was a rare thing.
Xie Zhou's clenched fingers inside his sleeve slowly relaxed. He lowered his gaze, concealing his fleeting, private lapse in composure.
When he looked up again, his voice had softened a fraction. “What do you plan to do next? I will go with you.”
Having someone with her was for the best, so Song Yao didn't overthink it. “Go to Caopu Hall? Those infants might be the source of the demon realm.”
Xie Zhou: “Alright.”
No time was to be lost. The two set off immediately, but before leaving, they carried the Ming family members into a house and laid them out neatly.
Since they were all severely injured, it would actually be safer to leave them there and move them after the demon realm was broken.
Moving swiftly, it wasn't long before they spotted Caopu Hall's peeling wooden gate.
Before they could even get close—
“Wah! Wah, wah!!”
Countless babies' cries surged from the courtyard, sharp, dense, and rising one after another.
The sound pierced through the night, making their eardrums ache and their heads throb.
Judging by the cries, there was a significant number of infants.
The two did not rush in blindly. They found a high wall and peered inside.
Candlelight illuminated the courtyard.
A dense crowd of citizens packed the space—men, women, young, and old. Every single one of them held an infant in their arms, gently patting and soothing them.
There were at least fifty or sixty of them.
The more heart-wrenchingly the babies cried, the more gently the citizens cooed, humming songs with unintelligible lyrics, their faces wearing smiles of near-religious devotion.
However, compared to when she had seen them this morning, these citizens were now sallow-faced and emaciated.
Meanwhile, inside the side rooms in the center of the courtyard, the candlelight flickered as painful shrieks echoed out continuously.
—More women were giving birth.
In the courtyard, there was an endless supply of crying babies to soothe.
In the rooms, there was an endless cycle of children being born.
This scene was utterly bizarre.
“It's probably because the essence of ordinary people isn't enough for them to absorb, which is why they are crying.”
Song Yao recalled something and peered inside again. “Why don't I see Jiang Jin and Ning Zhou...”
Before she could finish, both of their expressions froze.
A cold, sinister aura suddenly lunged from the shadows at the base of the wall, aiming straight for their faces. A hand with five clawed fingers and unnaturally dark, greenish-black nails lunged forward, carrying a pungent stench of rot.
Without the slightest hesitation, Xie Zhou reached out to shield Song Yao while a talisman in his other hand flared with light—
But he caught nothing but air.
Song Yao possessed an incredibly strong survival instinct and gave him no chance to shield her. Twisting her waist, she dodged to the side. The black claw barely grazed her hair, the gust of wind it generated making the rim of her ear sting.
The black shadow's missed strike slammed into the spot where the two had been standing moments before.
“Sizzle—”
A plume of white smoke immediately rose from the wall. Before their eyes, the brick was corroded into a bowl-sized crater, its edges turning black and purple, as if it had been licked by something highly toxic.
Song Yao's pupils contracted. “Dark poison?!”
Having missed its strike, the black shadow whipped its hand back to swipe at her again.
This time, Xie Zhou gave it no opportunity.
The talismans in his robes flew out on their own, flashing with golden light. The thin edges of the paper, sharp as blades, precisely sliced open the shadow's outstretched arm.
“Awooo—”
A cry of pain escaped from beneath the black robe. Black, purulent blood dripped from the wound, sizzling and corroding several small holes into the ground.
The shadow stumbled back. Realizing that the two before it were formidable opponents, it spun around and fled deep into the dark alley, its speed as fast as a wisp of black smoke.
Song Yao immediately ordered, “Go after it.”
Only after giving the order did she remember she wasn't currently Third Senior Sister. She added, “I can't keep up with it.”
Xie Zhou hesitated for a brief second.
Guessing his concerns, Song Yao waved her hand. “Fourth Senior Brother, don't worry about me. I won't die.”
She spoke the words with absolute nonchalance.
Xie Zhou's brow furrowed even deeper. “Do not say such things.”
He then added, “Don't wander off. I will be right back.”
With that, a talisman flew from his sleeve, forming a faint golden ring of light around Song Yao before he turned and dashed off in the direction the shadow had fled.
Song Yao looked down at the rotating talisman array around her feet, completely baffled once again.
It seemed her Fourth Junior Brother's corruption wasn't quite complete.
He was cold and aloof, yet in some ways, he was far more considerate than before.
Had he evolved from warm on the outside and warm on the inside to cold on the outside but warm on the inside?
Shaking her head, she squatted down to examine the corroded holes in the ground.
Earlier, the cultivators in Wuzhou City had mentioned that some unknown entity was attacking people at night. Could it be the one her Fourth Junior Brother was chasing?
No, that wasn't right.
Her Fourth Junior Brother had only tracked the clues of the dark poison to Wuzhou City tonight.
Could there be two different factions at play?
How chaotic.
Thinking so much made Song Yao drowsy, and her eyelids were beginning to droop when a sinister voice suddenly echoed behind her: “Seventh Junior Sister, why are you here?”
Song Yao whipped her head around.
Jiang Jin was standing not far behind her, holding his sword.
The tip of the sword pointed downward, glinting coldly in the night.
It wasn't raining now. A few beams of moonlight broke through the cracks in the dark clouds, illuminating his face. His once clean-cut and proper features now looked inexplicably bizarre.
The corners of his mouth were curved in a faint, mocking smile, but his eyes were completely hollow—as if something was hiding behind them, studying Song Yao through his pupils.
Song Yao instantly concluded that this was a fake Jiang Jin.
Pretending to know nothing, she stood up and furrowed her brow slightly. “Can't you tell? I was attacked. How did you get here? What's the situation now?”
The fake Jiang Jin tilted his head and took a step closer to her.
His sword dragged along the ground, leaving a shallow groove and making a harsh, scraping sound.
He spoke in a slow, unhurried manner. “Didn't Seventh Junior Sister see it just now? So many children are being born, yet we are short on hands. The babies are hungry and crying because they can't get enough to eat.”
Song Yao remained still, even offering him a smile. “Not enough to eat? I have a way.”
The fake Jiang Jin stopped in his tracks. “Oh? What way?”
“I brought a lot of Qi-Replenishing Pills.”
Rate on N.U.
