Faced with Ming Li’s choice and answer, Shu Sheng was extremely disappointed.

His fingertips moved slightly, and the Circulating Qi word formation he pointed out knocked everyone except the pilgrims off the palace wall.

Chen Zhou protected Qing Ying and Dong Yeyun, while Lu Yi protected Princess Chang Xi.

They landed within the palace wall, where a squad of Imperial Guards rushed over and said to Princess Chang Xi, “Sixth Princess, His Majesty summons you.”

Chang Xi looked back in surprise.

“Don’t go,” Fang Hui said softly.

Chang Xi asked him: “Why shouldn’t I go?”

Fang Hui’s eyes darkened: “Haven’t you seen what happened to the Fifth Prince? He came on His Majesty’s orders, but what was the result? The life and death of princes and princesses mean nothing to His Majesty. He’s a madman!”

Lu Yi frowned upon hearing this: “Watch your words.”

Fang Hui gave him a cold look. “If you’ve been by His Majesty’s side and still haven’t seen his true nature, then you’re no better.”

Qian Li kept an eye on both the commotion on the palace wall and the arguing people nearby.

Lu Yi chose to ignore Fang Hui and addressed Princess Chang Xi: “Sixth Princess.”

Princess Chang Xi looked at Fang Hui with unprecedented seriousness: “If you know something, I hope you’d tell me directly, rather than distancing yourself for no reason, leaving me distressed about whether I’ve done something wrong. Even if I have done something wrong, I hope you will tell me and give me a chance to correct it.”

Fang Hui was slightly stunned by her words. His hands clenched into fists inside his sleeves, wanting to reach out but not daring to. He pressed his brows together with some annoyance at himself: “You’re not the one who’s wrong.”

After a moment’s pause, Princess Chang Xi said: “I’m not a child desperately seeking Father Emperor’s love.”

“So you don’t need to worry.”

In the end, she chose to go with Lu Yi to see Emperor Wen Xiu.

Fang Hui’s brows furrowed as he watched Chang Xi walk away, his eyes filled with inexpressible worry.

Qian Li said, “If you’re worried, just follow her.”

Fang Hui took a deep breath but didn’t respond.

Qian Li continued: “I’m quite puzzled about what you’re sulking about with the little princess.”

Fang Hui remained expressionless.

Qian Li nudged him with his elbow and added: “Before you completely fall out with the little princess, could you double my medicine money and return it to me?”

Hearing this, Fang Hui turned and left.

Qian Li watched him leave, rubbing his nose, then looked back at the palace wall, his gaze passing over Ming Li and Cui Yaocen.

A communication talisman flew out from the void and landed before him. After reading the information on it, Qian Li also left.

Watching pilgrims fight might be interesting, but he had more important things to do.

*

Tonight was excessively long, with many events unfolding in every corner of the imperial capital.

People from the Imperial Martial Alliance were moving through the streets of the capital. Those unrelated to the conflicts kept their doors and windows tightly shut, unwilling to get involved in trouble.

Amid the various battles, all members of the Star Fate Department had mobilized, setting up various formations to prevent harm to innocents.

The students of the Martial Academy had fallen into deep sleep, silently dying in their dreams.

Several dark figures left the academy dormitories. They wore Martial Academy student uniforms. After dealing with the students, they began advancing toward the teachers’ residences, leaving behind bloodstains as they departed.

A man wearing a Martial Academy teacher’s uniform stood beneath a giant tree in front of a pavilion, looking up at the distant imperial palace. He had been there since the star wall rose.

Behind him stood Snow Sound, the maid who had escaped from the western palace wall.

“It’s quite lively over there,” Sui Qiusan remarked.

Snow Sound said, “I couldn’t protect her.”

“It’s not your fault. That little girl, though interesting, was never of our kind,” Sui Qiusan said, then withdrew his gaze as several dark figures landed behind him.

Qiu Hong said, “They’re all dead.”

Sui Qiusan nodded. “Then let’s go.”

“Not so easy,” Qiu Hong scratched his head. “Qian Li is outside.”

Snow Sound said: “I’ll hold him off. You take a different route to leave.”

But Sui Qiusan shook his head: “You all go first. I’ll meet him.”

Qiu Hong: “I’ll go with you. He seems to have gotten much stronger. He doesn’t look like he’ll go crazy at the sight of you anymore.”

Sui Qiusan smiled slightly, not refusing.

In front of the Martial Academy, Qian Li stood calmly in the snow, looking at the main gate. The academy’s gatekeeper was already dead, lying on the ground with half his body covered in snow, apparently having been dead for some time.

At the western palace wall, the pressure from several pilgrims and the disturbance in the circulation of Qi had driven away the wind and snow. Only upon arriving at the Martial Academy did Qian Li realize how heavy tonight’s snow was.

As Qian Li was casually wondering whether he should use an umbrella, he saw someone inside walking out with an umbrella, strolling toward the gate. When they reached the front, they tossed him another umbrella.

Sui Qiusan stood on the stone steps at the entrance, his face gentle beneath the umbrella: “The snow is heavy. Better use an umbrella.”

Qiu Hong squatted on top of the Martial Academy gate, getting drenched in the snow as he watched the two.

Qian Li looked up at Qiu Hong, then at Sui Qiusan, and leisurely bent down to pick up the umbrella from the snow and open it.

The tension between them seemed much less than when they met in Nanque, mainly because Qian Li’s attitude had become much calmer, as if he no longer harbored killing intent or hatred toward Sui Qiusan.

“Finding you has been quite difficult,” Qian Li said languidly, twirling the umbrella handle. “So you’ve been busy hunting down Eight Meridian Awakened ones.”

Sui Qiusan said, “With fewer Eight Meridian Awakened, the probability of pilgrims appearing also decreases.”

Qian Li looked up at Qiu Hong squatting on the academy gate: “Aren’t you Eight Meridian Awakened yourself?”

“That’s different,” Qiu Hong raised his eyebrows at him. “If I break through, I won’t spend all day hunting Ghost Tribe members when I have nothing better to do.”

Initially, Qiu Hong would challenge the strongest people in Nanque to assess their strength, preparing for later hunts.

But coincidentally, those on his hunting list at that time were either Ghost Tribe members or pilgrims, and he didn’t manage to kill any of them.

“What’s the difference? I see that Ghost Tribe members also kill each other,” Qian Li looked back at Sui Qiusan. “The snow is heavy tonight, and it’s cold. I didn’t intend to fight with you. Why don’t we calm down and have a good talk?”

Sui Qiusan looked at him with gentle eyes: “Alright, what do you want to talk about?”

“Everything you know,” Qian Li said. “Tell me all of it.”

“I can tell you, but you may not remember,” Sui Qiusan’s gaze seemed to look past him, far into the distance. “When you find it hard to understand, think about one question: why can Ghost Tribe members also awaken the eight meridians?”

Qian Li frowned: “Why?”

Sui Qiusan gently guided him: “Qian Li, try to imagine what would the Tong Gu Continent be like if there were only Ghost Tribe members, or only humans?”

“If there were only Ghost Tribe members, it would be hell. You would all massacre each other, with killing intent and indiscriminate slaughter everywhere,” Qian Li answered without much thought, or perhaps he had pondered this question before. “If there were no Ghost Tribe, this world wouldn’t be so cruel.”

“Nothing in this world is immortal. If the Tong Gu Continent had only Ghost Tribe members, apart from natural death, Ghost Tribe members would only be killed by other Ghost Tribe members,” Sui Qiusan’s face showed no joy or sorrow. “The same goes for you humans. Besides natural death, humans kill humans, and they die.”

“Your statement that a world with only Ghost Tribe members would be hell is invalid, because in a world with only Ghost Tribe members, there wouldn’t be anomalies like you. And the perception of hell is something only anomalies like you would have.”

“The talk of mutual slaughter is even more ridiculous. Qian Li, how do you define what a human is? And what gives you the right to define them with these notions?”

Qian Li’s eyes reflected the man holding an umbrella in the snowy, misty lamplight: “Someone like you, who harms his wife’s entire clan, is not human.”

“I see,” Sui Qiusan was not surprised by his answer.

Although Qian Li had said he wanted to talk calmly, his resentment still leaked through somewhat. Perhaps this young man’s heart was not as calm as it appeared.

“That year, the Zhao family discovered a Ghost Tribe member who had infiltrated the mansion. After dying and reviving, they tried to escape but were caught by your mother. You should remember—your mother was taking the person out of the mansion when you and I happened to return and met them at the gate.”

As Sui Qiusan spoke, vague images surfaced in Qian Li’s mind.

His mother walked at the front, her brow furrowed and expression serious as she spoke to someone beside her. Behind her was a woman covered in blood, bound and gagged by star threads.

Qian Li didn’t see clearly before Sui Qiusan, who was beside him, covered his eyes.

Although his mother had given up becoming the clan leader due to marriage, the Zhao family still needed her to manage affairs. Sometimes she was busy with business, and Qian Li spent much more time with Sui Qiusan than with his mother.

“She was just an ordinary person doing odd jobs in the mansion’s kitchen, struggling daily for medicine money for her critically ill husband and three children. She worked at the Zhao mansion during the day and at a medical pavilion at night.”

Sui Qiusan’s tone was unhurried, but the memories were as cold as the snow and wind before them: “The reason she was discovered to be a Ghost Tribe member was because she saved a drowning child—your cousin. Due to her day and night toil, she was utterly exhausted and drowned herself after saving the child.”

“She was sent to Nanque, along with those three children who were the same age as you.”

Sui Qiusan asked Qian Li: “If I’m not human because I killed many people, then what about her? This woman who sacrificed her entire life for others—by your standards, is she ‘human’?”

Qian Li’s expression remained indifferent: “You’re engaging in sophistry. The terrifying thing about Ghost Tribe members is that they always lose their humanity and become unrecognizable. You’re like this, and the woman you mentioned would be the same. She just died before awakening the Ghost Tribe’s murderous instinct.”

“If she had awakened the Ghost Tribe’s murderous instinct before dying, then her husband and children would have been the most pitiful, as they would have died cruelly at the hands of the person closest to them.”

“Your understanding of the Ghost Tribe is entirely wrong. There was never any ‘awakening’—it was taken away,” Sui Qiusan said. “On a certain day, at a certain moment, when an unpredictable voice descends.”

“This is what the Ghost Tribe members are fighting with all their might to change, no matter how many times they die.”

Qian Li furrowed his brows and asked: “What voice?”

“A voice that only pilgrims and Ghost Tribe members can hear,” Sui Qiusan tilted his umbrella back and looked up at the night sky. “Or rather, it’s just a Circulating Qi word formation that will only disappear after killing all Ghost Tribe members.”

“It searches for Ghost Tribe members in this world, and then in a certain moment, it takes away all your emotions, turning you into a bloodthirsty shell.”

Qian Li scoffed: “So you’re trying to exonerate yourself, saying that you killed those people not of your own volition, but because an unknown Circulating Qi word formation stripped away your humanity and made you this way?”

The umbrella moved back, and snowflakes fell on Sui Qiusan’s clothes and hair, landing in his eyes.

He heard that voice, without warning, filled with intense killing intent and hatred, a high and mighty pressure. It was impossible to concretely describe that voice; it was just a message, summed up in one word: die.

But fate is unpredictable. When the Divine Oracle stripped away his humanity and turned him into the monster that people feared and hated, Sui Qiusan saw tiny fireflies dancing and felt the gentle comfort of heaven and earth.

What followed, pouring into this body, were the countless dead Ghost Tribe members.

They came with killing intent and anger. These wills, which had been dead for an unknown time and couldn’t dissipate, occupied this body, resisting the enemy’s Divine Oracle.

From that day on, Sui Qiusan, who deeply loved his wife and children and had abandoned his Ghost Tribe identity, was already dead.

Sui Qiusan smiled slightly and said to the snowy sky: “I no longer have to fear it. Humanity isn’t something it can take away as it wishes.”

“Qian Li, there were never any Ghost Tribe members in this world, only humans.”

Unfortunately, the person hearing these words wouldn’t remember them.

In the moment Qian Li heard this, he sneered: “You’re right. When all Ghost Tribe members are dead, only humans will remain.”

Qiu Hong, squatting on top of the Martial Academy gate, lowered his gaze to Qian Li below and said seriously: “He is your father. Why are you so sure that you yourself aren’t a Ghost Tribe member?”

Qian Li responded without thinking: “Impossible.”

“This is the Ghost Tribe’s world. For people born on this continent, becoming a Ghost Tribe member is just a matter of probability,” Qiu Hong raised his hand toward him. “Do you dare to die once and see?”

Qian Li raised his eyes to look at Qiu Hong as the wind and snow howled.