In a large private room at the farmhouse restaurant, eighteen or nineteen people were packed together—everyone except Que Cha was present.
Xing Shen played the second voice message from Lin Xirou. The first wasn’t crucial, and the third was meant only for Yan Tuo, so those were skipped.
After the recording ended, silence fell. Half the people exchanged glances while the others were still processing what they’d heard.
After a while, Shan Qiang exploded like a firecracker: “What does this mean? I can’t get married or have kids anymore? Even if I do, there won’t be a good outcome, is that it?”
Someone echoed: “That’s exactly what it means. She’s saying we won’t have peace for the rest of our lives.”
Once these two spoke up, everyone else erupted in chaos, voices overlapping as they cursed and pounded tables. Some suggested plastic surgery, while others proposed emigrating abroad—though that idea was quickly shot down: “Why should we be afraid? Why should I change my face until my parents wouldn’t recognize me? We’re comfortable here, why should we suffer in unfamiliar places? Besides, if you can leave the country, what’s stopping the Ground Wraiths from following?”
Yu Rong found the noise irritating. She bent down, head lowered, running her hands through her hair until the discussion quieted down. Then she said: “Too much nonsense. Let’s just do it.”
Da Tou gave a cold laugh. “Do it? Easy for you to say. Look at their resources compared to ours. Are you sure we won’t just be walking to our deaths? If we’re going to die anyway, I’d rather drag it out for another ten or twenty years. Live as long as we can.”
A square-faced man suddenly remembered something and looked hopefully at Xing Shen: “Deep Brother, didn’t you say last time that we’d rescued Lin Xirou’s blood sac? Without it, she can’t survive long. Why don’t we just wait for her to waste away?”
This suggestion energized the room, with at least half the people’s eyes lighting up.
Xing Shen gave a faint smile: “First, the blood sac only allows her to live longer. Without it, she won’t die immediately. How long would it take to wait her out? Fifty years? Sixty?”
“Second, even if she dies, her clan remains. There will be another Wang Xirou or Zhang Xirou. As long as we’re on their clan’s blacklist, we’ll still face retribution.”
“When Uncle Jiang was here, he respected everyone’s opinions. This decision can’t be mine alone. I called this meeting to ask: how many of you are willing to accept this challenge? Raise your hand if you’re willing.”
The room fell quiet again. Yu Rong glanced around, seeing everyone’s hesitation, and feeling contemptuous, she lazily raised her hand first.
She didn’t care—she lived alone anyway. Beast taming was largely about seeking thrills for her: if it was about excitement, the more intense the better. She hadn’t even been to the Golden Human Gate yet.
Motivated by her action, several hot-tempered individuals also raised their hands.
Xing Shen estimated that it was less than a third of the people.
He said calmly: “Could everyone split into two groups? It would make things clearer.”
They complied, some dragging stools, others moving chairs. Soon the room was divided into a small group facing a larger one.
Yu Rong pulled out a cigarette and lit it, holding it between her teeth like a lollipop. She glanced sideways at Da Tou: “With so few people willing to fight, what’s the point? We’ve already lost before fighting. Let’s forget it, go home, and wait to die.”
At these words, the opposite group became somewhat sheepish. Someone stammered: “It’s not that… we don’t want to fight, it’s just… the power gap is too big. Everyone saw how badly Uncle Jiang and the others were defeated. If we face them head-on, we just can’t win.”
Xing Shen said: “We’re not idiots. We wouldn’t choose a confrontation knowing we’d lose. If we’re going to fight, of course, we need a strategy.”
Hearing this, about half of the remaining people seemed reassured. After a few seconds of hesitation, they moved to Yu Rong’s side.
Da Tou and a few others still held their ground in opposition, though he wasn’t entirely against the idea. He mainly disagreed with Yu Rong out of habit due to their past conflicts.
He said: “Don’t just talk about having a strategy, tell us what it is. Let everyone judge if it’s feasible. After all, our lives are at stake.”
Xing Shen pressed his lips together without responding, but Yu Rong laughed and stood up, arrogantly giving Da Tou the middle finger.
She said: “When the Ground Wraiths threatened your life, you didn’t dare make a sound, but here you are spitting at your people. The strategy relies on the element of surprise. Why should we reveal everything so early to everyone? What if one or two people betray us? We’d all be finished.”
With that, she snorted and left the private room.
Da Tou felt somewhat embarrassed. After a pause, he smiled at Xing Shen: “Deep Brother, I’m not targeting you. I just wanted to be cautious and ask a few questions. If you have a reliable plan, then there’s nothing to discuss. If we can eliminate future troubles, rescue Uncle Jiang and the others, and give Lin Xirou a good beating, I’ll support it with both hands and feet.”
…
With a basic consensus reached, Xing Shen felt relieved. He still needed to contact Nie Jiuluo later to ask her opinion.
Just as he left the private room, someone called out: “Xing Shen.”
It was Yu Rong.
Xing Shen walked over to her.
Yu Rong felt this wasn’t the right place to talk. She beckoned him to follow her to a quiet spot. Her first words were: “Are you hiding something from us?”
Xing Shen laughed: “What makes you say that?”
Yu Rong gave him a cold glance: “Don’t try to brush this off. I don’t fall for that. Lin Xirou’s challenge isn’t a small matter. Their reactions were very normal, but you’re not. You seem oddly confident. You mentioned having a strategy—why not share some of it with me? If others can’t hear it, surely I qualify to hear a bit. But what puzzles me is, if you have a strategy, why have we been hiding like cowardly turtles for the past two months?”
Xing Shen hesitated: “I’m not exactly confident, I just…”
He paused here, looking around before continuing: “I just feel that when we reach Black White Rapids, perhaps… there might be…”
Yu Rong couldn’t stand people beating around the bush: “Might be what? Helpers?”
Xing Shen’s lips felt dry. He licked them uncomfortably and suddenly changed the subject: “Yu Rong, everyone knows our hometown is Ban Ya, but do you know which village number Ban Ya was for us?”
Yu Rong didn’t understand.
Saying their hometown was Ban Ya wasn’t exactly accurate—more precisely, their ancestral home was Ban Ya: Yu Rong’s family hadn’t lived there since her parents’ generation.
She asked: “What do you mean by ‘village number’?”
Xing Shen explained: “Initially, everyone lived deep in the mountains, but that was too inconvenient. There were many [censored], and it took several days round trip just to visit the market. People naturally move to better places, so the village inevitably relocated to flatter terrain with better access to the outside world.”
Understanding now, Yu Rong nodded: “Just tell me directly, don’t ask me. I only know Ban Ya is our ancestral home. I’ve never even been there, how would I know which number village it is?”
Xing Shen said: “The eighth. Since the Qin Emperor’s time, when the Twisting Head Army forged the Golden Human Gate, until now, we’ve moved villages eight times. With each move, we got further from our roots. By the time we reached Ban Ya, everyone had scattered across the country into different walks of life.”
“You’ve never walked the Green Soil Path, but I walked it with Uncle Jiang. He would occasionally point out the village ruins to me.”
Yu Rong was surprised: “Point them out to you?”
When she first met Xing Shen, she had privately wondered how someone blind could seem so normal, but over time she got used to it, assuming his family’s enhanced sense of smell and hearing made daily life manageable.
But “pointing things out” to him seemed a bit extreme.
Xing Shen seemed not to hear her and continued: “Those villages, according to how long ago they were abandoned, range from barely habitable to half-collapsed to complete ruins, and some can’t even be found anymore.”
“Uncle Jiang said that beneath the earliest village, some things were hidden.”
His voice became very soft with the last sentence, making Yu Rong’s skin crawl: “What things? What use are they?”
Unless they had hidden assault rifles, she couldn’t imagine what could help them directly confront Lin Xirou.
“The hidden things are said to be able to… borrow ghost soldiers.”
Yu Rong stared at Xing Shen for a full five seconds before saying: “Borrow ghost soldiers… you mean ghosts?”
She was speechless: “After all that talk, you plan to summon ghosts?”
***
Yan Tuo listened to Lin Xirou’s three voice messages again.
He felt surprisingly calm—this was exactly the sort of thing Lin Xirou would do.
Nie Jiuluo watched him worriedly. Yan Tuo returned a smile: “This woman is quite extreme in her actions, isn’t she? Actually, from another perspective, she’s quite impressive.”
Nie Jiuluo asked directly: “Are you going?”
Yan Tuo fell silent: For Yan Xin’s sake, he would probably go.
Nie Jiuluo guessed his thoughts: “I don’t think we should take Lin Xirou’s words too seriously. She claims to have Yan Xin, but where’s the proof?”
In TV shows, kidnappers with hostages would at least provide a photo or voice recording to prove the hostage was alive. Now, Yan Xin’s whereabouts were unknown—perhaps dead, perhaps living as a “human-turned-wraith,” perhaps imprisoned by Lin Xirou, or perhaps already beyond her control. There were too many possibilities.
Lin Xirou’s casual mention of “giving your siblings a chance to reunite”—who knew if it wasn’t just a trap for Yan Tuo?
Yan Tuo said softly: “I understand what you mean, but you know that feeling of searching endlessly without finding anything? When suddenly there’s hope, even if it might be false, you want to verify it. Only after confirming can you let go.”
He added: “I’m going to eat now, otherwise the food will get cold.”
Nie Jiuluo watched Yan Tuo go downstairs, his words “verify it, only after confirming can you let go” echoing in her mind.
But surely there must be more than one way to confirm Yan Xin’s whereabouts.
Nie Jiuluo’s heart began to race.
Chen Fu—she still had Chen Fu in her custody.
***
Nie Jiuluo found the storage room key and hurried downstairs.
The storage room was near the kitchen, in its own separate space. Sister Lu saw her come down and thought she was coming to eat: “Are you eating in the kitchen today? No need to send it upstairs?”
Nie Jiuluo gave a casual response as she opened the door and locked it behind her.
The room had open shelving and large locked cabinets. She opened the compartment closest to the corner and pulled out a suitcase.
Whether it was just her imagination or not, the suitcase seemed lighter than before. Thinking about it, it made sense: Chen Fu was completely fasting but hadn’t died, so he must be constantly consuming his essence to maintain life.
She laid the suitcase flat, entered the code to unlock it, and pulled the zipper open.
Chen Fu inside the suitcase looked frightening. His cheeks and eye sockets had sunken deeply, his mouth area was so gaunt you could almost see his teeth’s outline, and his hands folded over his abdomen were curved like bird claws.
Last time, Chen Fu had awakened fairly quickly, but this time, it was taking so long.
Nie Jiuluo thought for a moment, closed the lid again, and dragged the suitcase across the courtyard.
The sound of rolling wheels attracted Yan Tuo. He immediately recognized his suitcase and, seeing Nie Jiuluo about to lift it over the threshold, quickly took three steps forward to help while lowering his voice: “Is he awake?”
Nie Jiuluo shook her head: “Not yet, but I thought of a way that might wake him up faster.”