Chapter 137: The Shadow Walker (Part 2)

“Those who were bewitched by you and killed people with stones—let’s set them aside for now—what about the other villagers? Are they not entirely innocent?” Fang Yue asked.

“Innocent? Although the others didn’t strike, they all knew when those people killed the farming couple with stones. They just stood there and watched without lifting a finger. So now, I let them watch helplessly as their bodies turn to stone bit by bit. Tell me, isn’t that fair?” Jiang Fucheng smiled brightly, though she had possessed a burly man’s body, which made her smile somewhat eerie, causing chills to run down the spine.

“Spreading falsehoods to confuse the masses,” Fang Yue sneered. “You’re stirring trouble in Qiao Hou Village simply to instill fear in the villagers. If I’m not mistaken, the emotion of fear—or the fearful souls themselves—must be of use to you.”

Jiang Fucheng cooed coquettishly, “You’re quite sharp, my enemy. You’ve guessed nearly everything. But there’s one thing you haven’t figured out yet: I’m in need of the vital essence of an Innate martial artist. The two cultivators who came before had yang energy in their essence, but it was insufficient and unsuitable for me. I could make do, but I’m afraid of alerting the prey. Finally, you appear, so handsome—I’m reluctant to waste you. Had my mortal body still been intact back then, I would have surely invited you as an honored guest, enjoying daily pleasures with you. But now, I cannot. I must use the yang energy from an Innate martial artist’s essence to balance my yin aura, or I won’t survive much longer.”

Jiang Fucheng spoke brazenly, as if she had Fang Yue completely in her grasp. Then she chuckled, and suddenly vanished from the street corner.

At that moment, the ancient city began to change.

Where it had been deathly silent before, the city slowly revived. Pedestrians appeared on the wide streets.

“Steamed buns, fresh from the oven!”

“Newly arrived rouge, come and buy!”

“Fabrics from Leizhou, come have a look!”

The desolate, dilapidated shops along the street suddenly restored themselves, with vendors calling out their wares. Except for the pervasive gray-white hue, the scene looked like a bustling city street.

“This is the power of a Yin Walker from the heterodox arts, moving between the realms of yin and yang,” Fang Yue thought to himself.

From the memories of the old steward Bai Fu, the county magistrate Wen, Li Tianmu, and others, Fang Yue had learned much about various heterodox arts. Their methods were diverse, with bizarre and unheard-of abilities.

Among them, the Yin Walkers were relatively well-known.

Through his divine-seeing ability, Fang Yue had glimpsed Jiang Fucheng and after further investigation in Qiao Hou Village, he roughly understood that the petrification incident there was the work of a Yin Walker from the heterodox arts.

Of course, the hallmark of a Yin Walker is traveling between yin and yang realms. The petrification of villagers was not a universal ability of all Yin Walkers but a special skill Jiang Fucheng possessed.

Heterodox practitioners above the Innate realm often had various strange abilities beyond their main talents.

This was also why the two other groups from the White Cloud Palace, who had attempted to investigate the petrification incident, couldn’t uncover the truth.

Though the second group had not yet reported back to White Cloud Palace, they may have discovered the truth—that a Yin Walker was behind this—and wisely retreated, knowing it was beyond their ability to handle.

As Fang Yue walked along the now lively street in the ancient city, the passersby respectfully avoided colliding with him.

“This isn’t a simple illusion, nor is it a typical ghostly apparition. It’s more like the residual imprint left by the long-departed inhabitants of this ancient city, manifested into a parallel world different from the living realm under the power of the Yin Walker,” he reasoned.

This gray-white world should, by rights, be considered the netherworld.

But from what he had learned from the county magistrate Wen’s memories, both the heavenly realm and the netherworld had long since been destroyed, leaving only this fractured human world—the living world.

Therefore, the ancient city Jiang Fucheng conjured up was at best a fragment of the netherworld or a gap between the living world and the shattered netherworld.

Fang Yue had yet to fully understand this. At this moment, he remained vigilant, anticipating the danger about to appear.

Jiang Fucheng had pulled him into this gray city not for sightseeing.

“Sir, would you like some wine? Our house specialty is fine Hua Diao wine,” a waiter eagerly greeted Fang Yue as he approached a tavern.

Fang Yue glanced at the faint, ghostly figures on the tavern’s upper floors but remained silent, walking straight inside.

Inside the tavern’s main hall, tables were filled with patrons.

On the tables were wine jugs and plates piled with dishes.

But these gray-white dishes were unlike any ordinary food.

Fang Yue saw a ghostly pig’s head shrieking on a plate—that must be pig’s head meat.

A gray-white crucian carp flapped helplessly in its soup but could never escape—that was fish soup.

A gray-white rooster crowed wildly on a plate—that was stir-fried chicken.

Despite the bizarre scene, the diners appeared unaffected, cheerfully eating and drinking as if nothing was amiss.

Other than their gray-white appearance, they looked like normal customers.

Naturally, Fang Yue was not frightened. He quietly sensed the atmosphere in the tavern, glancing around the hall. Finding nothing unusual, he ascended the stairs to the second floor.

“Sir, what would you like to eat or drink?”

“Sir, what would you like to eat or drink?”

The waiter trailed closely behind, persistently repeating the question over and over like a broken record.

Gradually, a fierce expression crept onto the waiter’s face.

Fang Yue ignored him and looked toward a patron sitting by the window on the second floor.

The man was holding a wine jug, drinking deeply and continuously.

Fang Yue waited near the stairwell for about a cup of tea’s time, noting the man never stopped drinking.

That wine jug seemed bottomless—no matter how much he drank, the wine never ran out.

Having confirmed his target, Fang Yue stepped forward without hesitation and unleashed his Third Flame Palm, slamming it toward the man.

The palm strike was merciless, the scorching wind scorching the air as if igniting it.

The patron struck by the flame palm was instantly dispersed, turning into gray-white vapor that dissipated into the air.

Immediately, a chain reaction occurred: all the tavern’s patrons, dishes, the waiter—everything vanished.

Left behind was a dilapidated tavern.

Only a few broken tables remained, and nobody was inside.

“Merit points +3100,” a prompt from Fang Yue’s divine merit system appeared in his mind. Killing this patron earned him over three thousand merit points.

This meant the patron was effectively a resentful spirit.

Unwilling to retrace his steps, Fang Yue leapt out of the open window on the tavern’s second floor, landing lightly on the street below.

Outside, the bustling street continued with people coming and going.

Fang Yue looked back toward the tavern, now visibly old and crumbling, empty inside—vastly different from the lively scene he had passed earlier.

“Jiang Fucheng, your petty tricks won’t trap me. Your strength far surpasses mine; why don’t you come out and fight me fair and square?”