“The deal is quite simple. I will help you fulfill your wishes, and in exchange, you will lend me your five senses. Each wish costs one sense for ten days, during which you will lose that corresponding sense, but after ten days I will return it to you. In other words, you will have many opportunities to make wishes to me.”

The method He Simu proposed was the best result she had obtained after carefully studying the incantations within the luminous pearl.

She naturally wanted to use a once-and-for-all method, but borrowing one sense for ten days at a time was the limit a mortal’s body could withstand. Any longer and Duan Xu’s body would quickly collapse—attempting a permanent solution would be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Even with the method she was now proposing, the more times Duan Xu lent his five senses to her, the more severely his senses would deteriorate. If not for this limitation, how could it have taken the luminous pearl three hundred years to find someone like Duan Xu who could withstand this spell?

He Simu informed Duan Xu of these dangers concisely and clearly, adding: “Let me make this clear, there are limitations to these wishes—they cannot excessively influence the mortal world. For example, you may wish for me to save your life on the battlefield, but you cannot wish for me to help you win the war. Do you understand?”

She had prepared herself to negotiate with Duan Xu, but after listening attentively to her words, he innocently pointed at himself and her, saying: “Do we have to talk in this position?”

Duan Xu was still lying on his back on the bed, while He Simu sat on his waist, holding down his neck. If anyone were to open the door, they would first be frightened by this intimate yet strange posture, then frightened again by He Simu’s face, as pale as a corpse. Fortunately, He Simu had withdrawn her ghostly aura and pressure, and her eyes were now clearly defined with black and white, otherwise it would have given people a third fright.

He Simu seemed to find nothing improper about it and calmly said: “What’s wrong with this position?”

Duan Xu sighed diplomatically: “Your body is not light, and it’s very cold.”

In the bitter cold of deep winter, her body was no different from the ice chunks outside, perhaps just slightly softer. He had recently been wounded and lost a lot of blood, and was already sensitive to cold, feeling that her chill made him shiver.

He Simu glanced at him, nimbly getting off him and sitting on the edge of the bed. The place where she had just been felt ice-cold to the touch.

Duan Xu sat up. His clothes had already been disheveled by He Simu, now giving him somewhat the air of a dissolute young nobleman from the Southern Capital. He said composedly: “So, Ghost King, you have no five senses? No taste, smell, color perception, sound perception, or touch—what about pain, is that also absent?”

That was naturally also absent. Pain exists to help the living avoid the risk of death; for instance, people avoid fire after being burned. What use would the pain be to the dead who are already dead?

Moreover, the cotton-wrapped mattress under her palm should be described as “soft” according to the living, but in her hands, it felt no different from table and chair legs, except that it didn’t take much effort to deform when squeezed.

“The dead do not need these things.”

“What a pity,” Duan Xu lamented.

He Simu kindly comforted him: “There’s nothing to pity, when you die it will be the same.”

But Duan Xu changed the subject, saying: “I feel sorry for myself—I’ve thought for a long time and can’t think of any wish I want to make. Ghost King, I never make wishes.”

The young man spoke with utmost sincerity, but He Simu felt he was telling ghost stories.

In these hundreds of years, she had made deals with countless living people to borrow bodies and consume soul fires, but no living person had ever said thank you, I’m living well and am at peace with death, I don’t want anything. People living in the world always have desires. Naturally, monks and Taoist priests who had renounced all worldly attachments might be without desires, but Duan Xu showed not the slightest sign of having renounced worldly attachments.

“Today, if I hadn’t saved you, you might have died at the hands of the Huqi people. The battlefield is a place where nine out of ten die. Are you certain that without my help, you could escape death every time?”

Duan Xu’s eyes held a subtle hint of a smile. He propped up his leg to support his chin and said leisurely: “In any case, I thank the Ghost King for your assistance today.”

His “in any case” strongly implied “even if you hadn’t saved me, I could have escaped by myself.” He Simu slightly narrowed her eyes and looked at him for a while. She moved closer to Duan Xu, looking at his bright, deep eyes from a very close distance. This time, her pale face was finally reflected in his eyes.

She laughed softly: “Young General, you are still too young. You should know that fate is unpredictable, causing all things to crawl before it, beyond the power of mortals.”

Duan Xu blinked and repeated: “Fate is unpredictable, causing all things to crawl before it.”

Then he smiled brightly, his eyes showing some disdain and willfulness: “But I too am unpredictable.”

I too am unpredictable.

I too am unpredictable.

He Simu thought, fine, this kid’s arrogance knows no bounds, he’s beyond help. Let whoever wants to educate him do so—he’ll stumble eventually. When he truly becomes an evil ghost someday, she won’t be as good-tempered as she is now.

She waved her sleeve and stood up from the bed, making as if to leave without further conversation. But after taking just one step, she felt resistance. Looking back, she saw Duan Xu holding her sleeve, his fair fingers very conspicuous against the rust-red (which appeared black to her) sleeve. He smiled brightly: “The Ghost King’s clothes are truly magnificent, unlike mortal garments.”

This comment again strayed far from the topic and was quite subtle. The young ladies in the Southern Capital now all wore narrow-sleeved shirts and skirts. If He Simu were to walk on the streets of the Southern Capital, this multiple-layered curved-hem robe would look like something just excavated from an ancient tomb.

He Simu smiled slightly and said: “If the Young General is interested, dig up a few three-hundred-year-old tombs, and you’ll see plenty.”

Duan Xu smiled, but his fingers gradually applied a little more strength, holding onto her sleeve. No matter how much strength he had, he couldn’t stop her, but this small force subtly conveyed a sense of pleading.

He Simu raised her eyebrows, moving her gaze to his hand: “Your hand has no calluses, and the wounds are fresh.”

At first, she had been deceived by these hands, thinking he was a proper scholar.

“Ah…” Duan Xu’s gaze fell on his hand, and he said lightly: “I used to have calluses and scars, but later removed them with medicine. The places that others can see are all cleaned of traces.”

“When did you remove them?”

“At fourteen.”

Duan Xu answered very smoothly and naturally, but he was so often mysterious that even this seemingly sincere conversation was impossible to judge as true or false.

He pulled at her sleeve and said: “Isn’t the Ghost King curious about many things that have happened recently? What’s going on with Han Ling Qiu, and what about the traitor?”

He Simu looked at him for a long time, displaying a false smile. She simply swept her sleeves, shaking off his hand, but sat down on his bed. She turned, took off her shoes, and slipped into the inner side of his bed, pulling his quilt to half-recline beside him.

Now it was Duan Xu’s turn to widen his eyes in astonishment as he looked at her. He Simu reached up to untie her hair band, and with a snap of her fingers, the hair band dissolved into blue smoke and disappeared. Her ink-black long hair fell all over the bed. Her pale skin was like white snow covering dark branches and red plum blossoms, so intense it captivated the soul.

“Isn’t the Young General reluctant to see me leave? Then I’ll stay and listen properly. I’m genuinely very interested.” He Simu pointed at the bed beneath her: “Tonight I’ll sleep here.”

Duan Xu was rarely caught off guard; his eyes flickered slightly. An ordinary proper person, especially one who had read the Four Books and Five Classics, should now say something about men and women keeping proper distance to avoid impropriety.

But Duan Xu was not an ordinary proper person. He merely sighed helplessly: “Then I’m afraid I won’t be able to sleep again tonight.”

“Tell me, what’s going on with Han Ling Qiu?” He Simu didn’t care who couldn’t sleep.

“Han Ling Qiu hasn’t revealed his true strength. I’ve watched him compete in the training field before. Perhaps out of gratitude for Wu Sheng Liu’s recognition, or perhaps for some other reason, he deliberately concealed his skill, repeatedly losing to Wu Sheng Liu. Today, his reaction when he drew his sword to my neck was many times faster than when he competed in the training field. He comes from Danzhi, Ghost King, do you know that under the Danzhi Kingdom, there is a secret organization called Tian Zhi Xiao?”

“I don’t care much about most of these chaotic worldly affairs. But since it’s a secret, how do you know about it?” He Simu said leisurely: “What relationship do you have with the Danzhi Kingdom?”

Duan Xu smiled but did not answer He Simu’s question, instead continuing: “Tian Zhi Xiao has always been mysterious, specifically training loyal death soldiers for the Danzhi Kingdom. These dead soldiers often exhaust human potential, are extremely formidable, and only one is trained each year. I guess before Han Ling Qiu lost his memory, he was probably a member of Tian Zhi Xiao.”

Guess? He was truly too modest. He Simu thought this wasn’t something one could casually guess. She had followed Duan Xu and Han Ling Qiu all the way, listening to their conversations. Duan Xu most likely had met Han Ling Qiu before and should be quite familiar with him.

“So? Do you think he hasn’t lost his memory? You suspect he is the traitor?”

Logically speaking, going to Shuozhou to meet her and encountering an ambush, the granary fire, the grain robbery, and being surrounded—each incident was more or less related to Han Ling Qiu. His Danzhi identity and claimed amnesia all aroused suspicion.

When they were surrounded during the grain robbery, the Huqi people wanted to keep Duan Xu and Han Ling Qiu alive. Duan Xu being the commander needed no explanation, but Han Ling Qiu was just an obscure small captain—what did Danzhi want by capturing him alive?

If Han Ling Qiu were a spy, then the Huqi order not to harm him would make sense.

Duan Xu frowned, interlacing his hands, nonchalantly intertwining his ten fingers then releasing them: “It can’t be confirmed yet, but it should be confirmed soon. The Ghost King will surely have a good show to watch.”

He Simu thought, this truly was excellent talk that amounted to saying nothing at all.

Duan Xu concluded the topic cleanly and neatly with a sigh, frankly removing his outer garment leaving only his undergarment, then lifted the quilt and lay down on the bed. He looked at He Simu for a while and said: “Do you want to share half of the pillow?”

He Simu rested on her arm and said indifferently: “In the dead of night, an evil ghost lying in your bed, aren’t you afraid? I eat people, you know.”

“To fight for land is to fill the fields with corpses; to fight for cities is to fill cities with corpses. This is what is meant by ‘leading the land to eat human flesh.’ Looking at it this way, we are in the same line of work,” Duan Xu said with a smile.

To fight for land is to fill the fields with corpses; to fight for cities is to fill cities with corpses. This is what is meant by “leading the land to eat human flesh.”

Duan Xu’s recitation of the Four Books and Five Classics was quite fluent, showing that he must have earned the title of Second Scholar on his own. However, although Master Mencius disliked war, he wouldn’t go so far as to equate generals with evil ghosts.

Yet in this world, birth, aging, illness, death, war, rise and fall—which doesn’t devour countless lives? Perhaps evil ghosts eating people, by comparison, seem insignificant.

He Simu watched as Duan Xu slowly closed his eyes, his face appearing slightly pale due to blood loss and fatigue, imprinted in the dim candlelight. His breathing was steady, slightly blowing the stray hairs on his face.

She reached out to place her finger beneath his nose but felt nothing.

That rumored feeling of breath brushing against one’s hand, the warm feeling—there was nothing.

She could see the wind between heaven and earth, could predict the smallest changes in climate, but could not feel them.

Even so, Duan Xu was not awakened by her, sleeping very soundly. He Simu said softly: “Not a single true word, this little fox.”