"You're quite a gang," Qing Lai remarked casually, as if he hadn't just used force.
The big man with the dirty, worn clothes, the scruffy beard and the disheveled hair, his eyes swelled out of his skull. He tugged at his invisible bonds, but only caused the ghostly threads to tighten more tightly around his muscles, tearing his veins from the inside. He gasped.
"Normally, no more than twenty of you join forces. You would rather decimate yourselves than practice a certain discipline," Qing said, standing in front of the giant.
Although his figure looked almost scrawny and light, he seemed more grounded and stronger than the highwayman cowering at his feet.
"Why?" It was a simple question, a single word. But Qing Lai's voice had taken on a completely different tone. The bright, friendly tone had completely disappeared. It had a rumbling, deep undertone and Zhi Cheng trembled inwardly at the sound of her voice.
The highwayman looked up. His face had turned an unhealthy blue-purple color, and Zhi Cheng clicked his tongue. He must have poisoned the barbarians' bodies with his black magic, which was contaminated by the nightshade poison.
Qing Lai took the leader's face in his hands and lifted his swollen eyelids. The others didn't look much better either. Their veins had turned black and thick blood ran from their noses. They vomited gushing, slimy, foul-smelling blood and gasped. Qing Lai looked helplessly at Zhi Cheng.
"This is the first time I've seen something like this!" he said, and his tone of voice sounded much friendlier again. Zhi Cheng pushed his pounding heart back into place and shrugged.
"Maybe they deal in poisons," he mentioned in passing. The two looked at each other.
"THEY ARE TRAFFICKING POISONS!!!" they exclaimed simultaneously. Not with tea, herbs and spices. The mugger they had questioned had been just plain stupid.
Qing Lai pulled the big man to his feet with a frightening ease.
"Tell me who your mastermind is," he ordered angrily.
Zhi Cheng carefully released the ghostly strings and let them into his body, returning them to his meridians as black magic. Some of the weak men collapsed, panting, and never moved again. Others summoned all their hatred and rose up one last time.
Qing Lai swept the leader's legs away and cut off the blood circulation in his body with two blows.
"Speak!" he ordered emphatically. Zhi Cheng raised his clumsy broadsword.
"Those who have nothing to say can bite the dust!" he announced. But his good humor had evaporated. His body ached and he felt tired and abused.
Black magic was like the air he breathed, his second skin, completely natural to him. He never would have thought that it would affect him so much.
No one wanted to talk; they all pounced on him. Zhi Cheng felt the unpolished, raw blades cutting through his flesh; he felt his muscles being torn apart and rebounding off his bones. Blood spurted from his wounds and the barbarians watched skeptically as the thick black evil splashed onto the ground.
The Ghost King opened his fan with a wave of his hand and pushed the pack several meters away from him before letting the fan glide through the air as if in a dance, repaying each wound tenfold.
With a mudra behind his hidden back, he let his blood crumble into dust and was pleased to find that the poisonous pulp in his veins was replaced by new, fresh blood.
He didn't let the bright, fresh red on Qing Lai's borrowed robe disappear and stabbed the pointed metal fittings into the chest of the next best man, slicing him open sideways to the top.
The more blood he lost, the easier it was to breathe, and when he stood among the heaps of corpses, he felt almost refreshed and reborn.
Qing Lai ignored the men on the ground. He was struggling to keep the leader alive, who could only utter a few words between gasps and in pain.
"T... there is... a... a... a merchant. I... in Ch... Cha..."
"Chaisang?" Qing Lai helped him. The man nodded and coughed up a torrent of blood that squirmed out of his throat like a thick snake. He coughed and choked before he could continue.
"S... some... months ago, a new poison came into the country,« a coughing fit shook him and he rolled his eyes until only the whites could be seen.
Zhi Cheng wrapped the remains of his robe around his shoulders and watched the man closely. He seemed to be telling the truth despite the excruciating pain. Qing Lai must have thought the same, because he waited patiently until he could continue.
"The h... merchant... B... Bo Chao," the man broke off and slumped in Qing Lai's arms.
"The merchant, does he export it or buy it? What is it, where do you get it from? Where is it made?" Qing Lai had a thousand questions. But Zhi Cheng put a hand on his shoulder.
The cave was filled with a nauseating stench and the sweet, sour smell of death. As luck would have it, the barbarians were dealing in poison, so it wasn't noticed that it was Zhi Cheng who had poisoned them.
But his relief was limited. There were still too many inconsistencies. Qing Lai dropped the man and sighed. He punched the wall, leaving a sizable hole in the rock.
"Let's get out of here and think about what we've learned," Zhi Cheng suggested. Qing Lai nodded in defeat and let him help him up.
Even though Zhi Cheng looked a lot worse than he did. Qing Lai raised his hand and felt Zhi Cheng's pulse at his carotid artery. Surprised, the Ghost King winced at the touch. He did have a pulse, but it was different from that of a mortal.
He gently withdrew his hand. Qing Lai frowned and then felt Zhi Cheng's head. He raised his eyelids and listened to his heartbeat. Zhi Cheng laughed nervously. On the one hand, he was surprisingly not opposed to Qing Lai's brisk examination of him, but on the other hand, the timing was extremely bad.
"You must be poisoned too!" Qing Lai realized and a hint of fear lay in his voice.
Zhi Cheng waved him off. But Qing Lai didn't give up. He pushed Zhi Cheng gently onto the ledge and rummaged through the boxes of loot.
He didn't even notice the lifeless bodies he had to step over and came back with some lengths of fresh cloth and a waterskin.
"Maybe you aren't as poisoned as they are, because you haven't had contact with it as long," he said and rinsed Zhi Cheng's wounds, which were already starting to close up again, and bandaged them.
Wordlessly, Zhi Cheng endured the procedure. What could he say? When Qing Lai took the money bag from his belt, the Ghost King protested defiantly. But Qing Lai shut him up.
"The gold could also be poisoned or contaminated with the poison. After all, you and the plunderers are the only ones who have touched it," he reprimanded the Ghost King severely. Zhi Cheng opened and closed his mouth without saying anything useful.
"Gold is innocent," he finally said helplessly.
"Gold is never innocent," Qing Lai replied gruffly and threw the bag away.
Zhi Cheng's mouth dropped down at the corner as he watched the bag land in a puddle of the corrupted blood and soak up the poison. He mumbled something but stayed quiet when Qing Lai glared at him. You're clearly not good for me, Zhi Cheng grumbled inwardly and sighed.
"Do you remember the way back, Brother Zhi?" Qing Lai asked when he had finished. Zhi Cheng nodded, defiant and offended like a small child crying over the sweets it couldn't have.
"All right, lead the way, I'll follow," Qing Lai said and rose. Zhi Cheng leaned on the rock wall.
"What are you planning, Brother Qing?" he called after him anxiously.
"We don't know what kind of poison it is, only that it's fast and deadly. I have to prevent it from falling into the hands of others," he called back.
Zhi Cheng frowned. If he wanted to find the poison, he could look for a long time. Because he had just sent the vessel for it outside.
But Zhi Cheng just shrugged. He was only too happy to leave the cramped, damp cave passages behind.
He took a deep breath and enjoyed the fresh air and the refreshing wind. The morning sun peeked cautiously over the treetops and colored the horizon a delicate pink when suddenly there was a tremendous explosion behind him. He felt a shockwave, followed by a flood of heat that knocked him to the ground. Zhi Cheng got up with a single leap.
"Qing Lai?" he called. But the whole mountain was on fire. Zhi Cheng felt the immense heat and the enormous raw power. His heartbeat stopped for a moment as he watched the wild flames burst out of the mountain. He involuntarily took a step forward.
"Qing Lai!" A hand was laid on his shoulder. When he turned around, he almost slapped him. His fingers itched and tingled.
Qing Lai had lost some of his hair and his face was black from soot. His white clothes were lowered and covered in soot and bloodstains. He coughed and patted himself clean.
"Now neither the corpses nor the hidden poison can be dangerous to anyone," he said.
Zhi Cheng raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He was torn between giving Qing Lai a good thrashing or hugging him and being glad that he wasn't stuck in this sea of flames.
He clutched his fan, every muscle in his body tensed to the point of rupture.
"Brother Qing..." he began. Qing Lai looked at him. His bright, wide eyes fixed on Zhi Cheng, as if he couldn't see anything else.
"Yes?"
"That was reckless!" Although he wanted to reprimand him much more harshly, his words came out rather soberly. Before he lost his composure completely, he hid his face behind the fan and turned away.
"It seemed to me, under the circumstances, to be the simplest and most effective solution," Qing Lai defended himself.
For a while they stood there, watching the flames and the rising sun. Zhi Cheng felt the throbbing of his wounds, the exhaustion of his muscles.
With a sideways glance at Qing Lai, he knew that he too was exhausted and tired. So many deaths in just one day. That's what happens when a pacifist gets involved with the king of ghosts. Zhi Cheng thought. But there was no irony or amusement.
When they finally forced themselves to move on, they stopped for a rest by a small river. Qing Lai bent over the cool water, while Zhi Cheng looked at himself in another place.
He rubbed the rest of the make-up off his ghost mark before it crumbled away at an inconvenient time and hid it with a little magic.
When he fled Duifang, even this tiny amount would have been enough to knock him out. But after last night, he had lost so much blood that it had to be replaced, leaving only a small amount of the poison in him.
After the fight, he had started to heal his wounds without being noticed and had also realigned his meridians, and his heart was now beating back in place.
Should Qing Lai want to examine him again, he would no longer be able to distinguish him from an ordinary mortal.
He would have preferred to have done all this in less painful weeks or months, instead of tearing himself apart again and again. But now it was done. He breathed a sigh of relief and washed himself awkwardly.
There wasn't much clothing left to cover his body, and Qing Lai had nothing left to share either. When Zhi Cheng looked up, he saw Qing Lai beaming with joy, holding two fish.
"Look, Brother Zhi, what I've caught," he shouted and immediately set about gutting the fish and gathering everything for a small fire.
Zhi Cheng opened his mouth, but then let it be. He wasn't really surprised now. Even if Qing Lai had arrived with three pheasants, five hares, or a whole deer, it wouldn't have really surprised him.
The Ghost King stretched out on the rocky shore and enjoyed the warmth of the morning sun. When Qing Lai carefully roasted the fish over the fire, he broke the silence.
"If I may summarize the recent events," he began without opening his eyes or leaving his sunny spot,
"Then the various groups of highway robbers, under the merchant Bo Chao of Chaisang, joined forces to attack the caravans in search of the poison. Unfortunately, we don't know whether Bo Chao is the seller or the buyer of this merchandise. Nor do we know what kind of poison it is," he summarized.
He didn't comment on the fact that they also didn't know how it worked. After all, Qing Lai thought that the robbers had infected themselves by carelessly handling it.
He wouldn't tell him what it really was.
"This poison is new on the market and so highly sought after that the barbarians were even willing to wipe out a caravan complete with women and children so that no information would leak out."
Again, he didn't mention that their hasty actions could be attributed to him. If he hadn't killed the group and hadn't stolen some of the gold, the marauders wouldn't have thought that they had competition.
And Qing Lai's intervention on the road had only confirmed their fears. In fact, none of the parties had had any idea about anything. He sighed.
"To Chaisang, then?" Zhi Cheng remarked and glanced at Qing Lai. His expression darkened, but then he nodded.
"You should rest a little longer, Brother Zhi, the fish will take a while yet," he said and gave Zhi Cheng an encouraging look.
Zhi Cheng closed his eyes again and felt the warm rays of sunshine tickling him. The poison in his body was slowly receding, allowing him to be drawn back into a world full of memories.
"What do you mean, Quancheng is refusing further peace negotiations?" one of his father's advisors, King of Xuyu, shouted angrily. Immediately, a hissing sound filled the hall, and the advisor was admonished to be quiet.
Qiao Guan had pressed himself against one of the white marble columns and swallowed the queasy feeling inside. He had only wanted to play a little trick on his oldest brother. He hadn't reckoned on stumbling upon a consultation.
Quancheng had been a friendly neighboring country for as long as he could remember. He had played with the princess, been invited to dinner and parties, and now it was rejecting the peace?
From the back of his mind, he dug up the information that his teacher had left behind with all his strength and effort.
Quancheng and Xuyu were once one country. But a long time ago, Xuyu split off as an independent kingdom. With the protective symbol in the sky, no evil could enter and no misfortune could befall the country.
Every fifteen years, Xuyu honored its ancestors and the land of Quancheng with a huge festival. He had been just two years old at the last festival and had been eagerly awaiting the next one the following year.
But if Quancheng rejected peace, it didn't just mean that the festivities were canceled; it inevitably meant war, didn't it? Qiao Guan listened intently.
"It seems that Quancheng has allied itself with Jeha and now believes that it is time for Xuyu to reunite with them!" said one of the wise men.
"Jeha? Isn't that the land of black magic? I heard that demons even live among the ordinary mortals there," another man said, becoming agitated.
Qiao Guan felt a hot, cold shiver down her spine. She had heard of demons, but supposedly they were already as good as extinct.
According to legend, the last great demon had retired to eternal rest with his mortal companion on a huge mountain, shrouded in fog. But that was thousands of years ago. The demon's country of birth was now known as Jeha.
"What is Quancheng thinking? We have had peace for many centuries and it has done no harm. The people are happy," one of the wise men said aloud.
Suddenly, there was silence, not even the rustling of clothing could be heard. Qiao Guan leaned forward a little further to get a better look. His father raised his hand. His serious face was wrinkled and a few gray hairs were visible in his otherwise jet-black hair.
"Just because there are no peace negotiations doesn't mean we have anything to fear from war," he said in a deep, melodious voice.
"Black magic has a bad reputation because of the demons that cultivate and invoke it. But even in Jeha, there is no mortal who has mastered this art. We should not be afraid of something that does not yet exist in this form," he appeased his men.
A general murmur and nodding went around the circle. But then the oldest of his Majesty's advisors leaned forward. There was a rare concern in his eyes.
"But, Majesty. Not yet does not mean impossible. Should a mortal cultist one day succeed in mastering black magic, then we should all pray to the gods of this world for mercy," he said in a hoarse, broken voice.
Qiao Guan could almost taste the ominous, frightened mood that lay in the air. Was black magic really so dangerous? He tiptoed around the column and saw his father rubbing his temple.
"There are rumors of a man, a nameless beggar on the streets, who supposedly has mastered black magic."
"If he really does have it, not even our hexagram could protect us," the king interrupted briskly.
"We, the Zhou, the royal house of Xuyu, stand with this protective circle for peace and harmony in the world. As long as the hexagram circles in the sky, the whole world knows there is still hope!"
With these words, the king dismissed his advisors. Qiao Guan cowered behind the column, his heart pounding. He would only live to see, just fifteen years later, in the same place where he stood today, how the baneful mark, the royal house and his parents would fall.
In a storm of black magic and blood conjured up by none other than himself, no one would have thought possible in this century.
"Qiao Guan?" he looked up.
"Brother Zhi," he frowned, the name seemed strange and familiar at the same time.
"Zhi Chengcheng!" The Ghost King opened his eyes wearily and blinked. He had actually drifted off again. Qing Lai leaned over him, worried.
In one hand, she held a roasted fish, the other was on Zhi Cheng's forehead. An electric shock went through his ghost mark and he quickly sat up.
"I must have fallen asleep," he laughed and took the fish from Qing Lai. It smells delicious and although he didn't need to eat, he was actually looking forward to it after days of dry mantou. Qing Lai frowned.
"A nightmare?" He asked, concerned. Zhi Cheng waved it off.
"It's nothing!" Although Qing Lai didn't look as if he was satisfied with this answer, he let it be and sat back down at the campfire.
"If we follow the road, we'll reach Chaisang after dark," he said.
"If we don't want to attract attention, we should make a small detour and take care of ourselves first," Zhi Cheng pointed out.
Surely a businessman like Bo Chao had spies everywhere. The two of them were attracting attention right now, and marching directly into Chaisang from the trade route would put him on alert. Qing Lai sighed.
"You're right. But am I to understand from your words that you won't leave me alone even after the promised meal and replaced clothing?" He asked, and a mischievous smile slid across his lips.
Zhi Cheng looked up with the mouthful of fish. "Yes, when the hell did you plan to leave this idiot to his own devices?" he asked himself. Zhi Cheng returned the smile, thanks to the fish Qing Lai escaped the self-pity in it.
"After that... Maybe!" Zhi Cheng replied with an air of torment.