The truth was, the bandits who had once followed the Northern Madmen possessed no real military discipline. When they were with the Northern Madmen, they had survived on savagery and nothing else.

Xiu Miluo had stepped in personally because he considered it a waste to let such a force disperse — yet this band fell far short of what he conceived a true army to be.

In his mind, the true army was the Black Wu Blood Hooves. But the Blood Hooves were the Khan-Emperor’s imperial guard. Apart from the Khan-Emperor himself, no one could mobilize that most ferocious force under heaven.

These bandits had a heavy taste for killing but no discipline whatsoever. Before, the Northern Madmen — whose taste for killing ran even heavier — had kept them in line. But obedience and discipline were two different things. Otherwise, a bandit company of over a thousand men would not have been reduced to the state Li Chi’s people had left them in.

Xiu Miluo disliked these bandits. From the bottom of his heart, he disliked them. He looked at them the way one looked at wild men who ate raw flesh and drank blood.

Had his target not been the Yanshan Camp, Xiu Miluo — even if he intended to reconsolidate this group — would at most have chosen a new leader for them and sent them back to plunder beyond the frontier. Nothing more.

By the fire, Xiu Miluo lay on a pile of straw with his eyes half-closed. He would not eat what the others were eating. He believed, at the very least, that a person should not eat another person.

He had food — because every scrap discovered by anyone in the group had to be turned over to him, on pain of death.

But he did not object to the bandits eating. There genuinely was no grain. And these men had been doing this already since their days with the Northern Madmen.

The winters beyond the frontier were harsh, he thought, eyes closed. These animals had probably always survived winter this way.

He opened his eyes and looked around. Neither of the two women was eating. The one in the red skirt — the Central Plains woman — had moved far away, found herself a spot, and kindled her own fire.

Earlier, several bandits had tried to ambush her. She was genuinely beautiful, her body genuinely alluring. Xiu Miluo had seen it and done nothing.

Those bandits had been killed by Gong Shu Yingying. Then, in front of the others, she had tossed one of the bodies onto the fire.

She had forced the one bandit she had deliberately left alive to eat his companion. The man refused; she carved a piece of flesh from him. By the third piece, the man had started eating.

And so Xiu Miluo had come to feel something like admiration for that woman — because she knew, in this environment, how to survive.

Perhaps sensing him watching her, Gong Shu Yingying glanced toward him. Their eyes met across the fire, then quickly parted.

Meanwhile, at the city gate.

Five or six bandits huddled around a fire, cursing under their breath. They had drawn night watch duty, and they were not pleased about it. They didn’t dare defy Xiu Miluo openly, but behind his back their curses were vicious.

While they were talking, they spotted a dark shape approaching from a distance, moving at an unhurried pace. Taking it for one of their own, someone called out — and got no answer.

When the figure drew close, all five or six of the bandits startled badly. By the firelight, they made out a face — green-skinned, with vicious fangs. Those teeth especially made the heart stutter.

One moment later, the bandits on patrol arrived at the gate. They found someone sitting by the fire with his back to them, alone. His hands were outstretched, warming themselves by the flames. In the dim light, something looked off about the color of those hands.

All the others were gone. Puzzled, the patrol called out. The figure by the fire slowly turned.

They saw the Yaksha’s face.

Another moment passed. A man soaked in blood came crashing into the courtyard and fell to the ground.

No one noticed when Xiu Miluo moved, but he was the first to appear beside the fallen man.

“A ghost…” the blood-soaked bandit trembled as he spoke. “There’s a ghost in this city. A fierce ghost. They’re all dead… they’re all dead.”

Xiu Miluo’s brow furrowed.

He had never believed in Central Plains ghost stories. Demons and spirits were all inventions of the human imagination — and besides, whatever demon or spirit existed was never as fearsome as a person. If it were, the world would be ruled by demons and spirits, not by people.

He carefully examined the man who had come running back, then confirmed one thing: whoever — or whatever — this so-called ghost was, it had deliberately let this one man go.

If it really was a ghost, it was a clever one.

Xiu Miluo stood and said, “No one leaves this compound. Someone out there wants me to send you out.”

He walked to the fire and planted his longsword in the ground. He stood with both hands resting on the hilt.

“If it really is a ghost, we wait here for it to come to us.”

At that very moment, he saw the ghost.

It simply appeared at the entrance to the courtyard — standing there, watching them. No words, no movement. Just standing, and no one could say when it had arrived; they only knew it was there when they looked.

“I would prefer the ghost to be formidable,” Xiu Miluo said, raising a hand to point at the entrance. “Shoot it.”

The bandits with bows and crossbows trained their weapons and released. In moments, a swarm of bolts and arrows flew toward the figure. It did not move. Dozens of bolts struck it, the sound of arrowheads sinking into flesh clearly audible — yet it did not budge.

After a moment, the ghost seemed to smile — a slight sound, barely perceptible, but full of cold contempt.

Then, before every watching eye, it slid sideways and drifted away. Its legs made no movement whatsoever. It simply floated sideways and was gone.

“Do not pursue it,” Xiu Miluo said. He had never believed it was truly a ghost.

He had a rough idea: the thing standing there was simply a corpse, propped up with a stick. The fire didn’t cast enough light that far. Someone was crouched behind it, holding it up. A bandit’s bow had no real force behind it — not enough to punch through a body. So whoever was behind it had nothing to fear from the arrows. When it “left,” they had simply lifted the corpse, legs clear of the ground, and backed away — which gave it the appearance of floating sideways.

“Yaksha?” Gong Shu Yingying murmured suddenly to herself.

Her eyes were filled with uncertain thought.

“What are you saying?” Xiu Miluo asked.

Gong Shu Yingying explained: “Inside Jizhou, there has long been a legend about a Yaksha — no one knows when he’ll appear, but every time he does, he takes several hundred lives with him. The story goes that the Yaksha announced his first visit by saying he would take three hundred lives. That night, three hundred people died within Jizhou’s walls.”

“After that, the Yaksha appeared at intervals. Every time, someone survived to report that the Yaksha had told them how many people he intended to kill that night.”

Xiu Miluo listened. His brow drew slowly together.

He asked Gong Shu Yingying, “Is this person formidable?”

Gong Shu Yingying said, “I’ve wondered whether it might be a true demon, or whether it’s simply not one person — because on the same night, the Yaksha has reportedly appeared in different locations.”

Xiu Miluo said, “You Central Plains people are strange. If you’re going to kill, kill. All these theatrics. What’s the point?”

Gong Shu Yingying said, “Do you think he kills people this way to make it interesting for the ones being killed?”

Xiu Miluo considered that, and understood what she meant: because the one doing the killing found it interesting for himself.

At that moment, someone cried out again.

Every eye snapped to the entrance. The corpse that had been knocked down by the spear — it appeared to be crawling forward.

It was already inside the gate.

The crawling motion was uncanny: the arms and legs moved not at all, yet the body lurched forward in slow, rhythmic undulations.

—