253 The Amazing Adventures of the Vengeful Spiri

"Pretty much." Lola seemed to see into Ye Qingxuan’s mind and chuckled. "Then let’s get to the main event."

Ye Qingxuan instantly felt dizzy as a strange auditory illusion sounded in his ears and faint numbness spread through his body. This was the phenomenon of an outside force controlling his body.

His vision went dark before it brightened again. There seemed to be moonlight before his eyes.

"How is it? Are my eyes nice to use?" Lola asked.

"They’re okay," Ye Qingxuan said with mocking indifference. His brows furrowed as he looked around.

Under the gaze of those eyes, layers of distorted music notes appeared on the blood-covered walls, ground, and withered corpses. The notes wriggled like maggots. Having lost control and support, they were gradually fading. One could vaguely see the original large structure—countless black music notes pierced the poor slain men, stringing them together as if on a string, creating a vast ritual.

An extremely strange insignia was carved in the center of the ritual, at the heart of dozens of concentric circles. There seemed to be dozens of sub-eyes in the single giant eye. They wandered and swallowed with chilling eeriness. It was the Eyes Within the Eye.

"It’s true, Lola." Ye Qingxuan squatted and studied the insignia of Hyakume. "The parliament has gotten together with Hyakume’s believers, and they are starting to think of ways to open the path."

Lola fell silent. After a long time, she sighed quietly. "No, perhaps…it’s worse than this," she said. "They have a mark too and had just sent a group of people into Avalon’s Shadow through this ritual."

"Mark?" At that moment, Ye Qingxuan felt heat in his arms. The blood-colored shell began trembling and shone dimly. A song sounded within the shell. This song seemed to come from thousands of miles away. It wrapped around one’s ears, faint but clear.

"The king and his helpers kidnapped the queen, imprisoning her in dreams…"

"Lola, did you hear the song?"

"What song?" Sensing something wrong, Lola was instantly shocked. "There’s power remaining from the ritual. Be careful, don’t reply to Avalon’s calls."

"Too late." Ye Qingxuan looked down and chuckled dryly. "I think this thing is automatic." In his hands, the blood-colored shell grew hotter. A warped gleam of fire shone faintly, singing by its own accord. The song grew closer and closer, but Lola’s voice was quickly becoming distant. The connection was becoming blurry and broken until he could only hear static.

In the silence, thick fog surged like a tidal wave, swallowing him. He was surrounded in ghastly white. Something seemed to be hidden inside but he could not see clearly.

The fire within the mark grew brighter. It chased away the fog, allowing him to see clearly the river of blood under his feet.

The Blood Path.

Lola had given him the road mark so he could use the nightmares to practice the basics of the School of Mind. It was also an abnormally effective amplification tool. It could magnify the effects of music scores from various schools. But he had not expected to be pulled into this again.

"Huh? What do you mean by ‘again?’" Ye Qingxuan muttered to himself. He could not help his habit of talking sh*t. How unlucky was he to keep getting pulled into this place?!

The thing that the guys at the parliament dreamed of was just unavoidable to him. But there was no way out of this now. The only fortunate thing was that the connection between him and Lola was not completely broken. After all, she had sucked so much blood from him. She could use the mark as a fulcrum when needed to enter coherence, allowing Ye Qingxuan to use some of her strength.

Today was a full moon. Lola was at her strongest.

Someone prepared to enter the Scepter level and was above the Resonance, Interference, and Distortion level was behind him. He actually felt a little safe.

"I can’t hear what you’re saying but there aren’t any other ways. After all, I’m already here." Ye Qingxuan sighed. "I’ll go first and then we’ll see if there are any ways to leave. Maybe I can beat them. Just pay attention and help me when needed." He repeated it four times and Lola seemed to have heard. The static faded gradually and a faint message traveled over.

"Uh, I’ll just take it that you told me to be careful." Ye Qingxuan shrugged and activated Jiu Xiao Huan Pei. The long-awaited steel black hand snapped out and knocked against the stones under the Blood Path with a heavy and clanging echo.

"Now, let’s start the amazing adventures of the Vengeful Spirit. Uh, there’ll probably be at least eight books if this gets turned into a comic. People would love it."

He raised the road mark of the Blood Path. Using the sliver of light, he walked down the road. His steps stopped abruptly as he walked. A bubble-shaped glow appeared when he snapped his finger. It illuminated the ruined wall beside him, as well as the extremely smooth crack on it. It looked like the claw mark of some beast, but also like the mark from the full-out effort of a terrifying weapon.

Ye Qingxuan walked forward emotionlessly. He reached out to touch the crack and could not feel any other cracks. It felt entirely natural, as if it had always existed on this wall, had been planned since the beginning, and had existed on the blueprint.

But it was not—It had been clawed out by bare hands.

If Ye Qingxuan had not remembered incorrectly, someone he knew had this talent.

"The Ripper?" he muttered. "When did she get together with the Parliament?"

This was undoubtedly bad news. Raising his guard, he continued on the Blood Path. In the end, the fog thinned, revealing faint blue moonlight that fell onto his shoulders.

It was the Blue Moon

The moonlight that represented catastrophe and destruction shone on the youth as well as the silhouette of the fierce city in the distance. Under the moonlight, the city that pierced into the sky slept in darkness. It emanated with eeriness. The rusted iron gates of the black city opened, and a rotting scent blew in with the wind.

Everything, from the organization to the details, had the same contours as Avalon. It was as if he had instantly traveled millenniums and witnessed the city immersed in death and disaster.

"Yo!" Ye Qingxuan stared at the dark city before him and waved. "We meet again! How’ve you been?"

No reply.

Under the moon, the black shadow of a giant bird suddenly rose out of the darkness. It swept across the moon and hovered in the air. The silhouette looked like an oddly shaped moth. It screamed in the air and fell back into the darkness.

The Blue Moon hung high in the sky. The moonlight in Ye Qingxuan’s eyes brightened a bit as well. Using the light, he could see the ripples of aether on the strange bird even from a distance away. The ripples were strong and aggressive; it had a faint wildness that could spread out at any time and tear apart any living thing. The air around it was slightly distorted.

The aether’s strength forcefully distorted reality, upending everything. Otherwise, how could the bird fly with these strange wings? Ye Qingxuan did not know what it was, but if it was under the Resonance level, it would definitely die if it tried anything.

"I haven’t even entered yet and they’re already trying to scare me off?" Ye Qingxuan murmured, stopping before the entrance.

He gazed at the darkness within. The city felt too strange to him, as if it was a living thing that had opened its mouth greedily, waiting for anyone to enter so it would swallow all life into its stomach.

Anyone with some common sense would reconsider if they wanted to go in and die, but no matter how Ye Qingxuan thought about it, he still felt unsatisfied. If the parliament could go in, why couldn’t he?

What a joke!

Chuckling, the youth rested his cane on his shoulder. Humming, he stepped into the moonlight and Blood Path, and entered the gates. A bell rang from the deepest part of the dark city as if welcoming the guest, as if it was crying, as if it was pleading.

-

There was only temporary darkness in the city’s tunnel, but Ye Qingxuan involuntarily let out a sigh of relief when he re-entered the moonlight. The darkness was too sticky and slightly suffocating. Walking in it was uncomfortable, like walking in a quagmire; however, the strange road after the city gates was not any better.

The Blue Moon hung high in the sky. The buildings on either side of the street were dilapidated and sad. Though they managed to retain their original form, they were definitely ruins. Corpses were littered all over. Ye Qingxuan could vaguely see a destroyed stand and the frame of a carriage.

It was as if all living things had disappeared in an instant and left the city behind to decay for a millennium. But in his memory, Avalon was still bustling in the daytime. Comparing the two, one instantly felt dazed and unsure as to which was real.

In comparison, the corpse hanging before Ye Qingxuan felt friendlier.

Yes, a corpse. It was clear it had not been dead for long. It should still be warm if Ye Qingxuan touched it.

Under the cold moonlight, the corpse with a red robe hung on the wall from a rusted chain, swinging in the breeze. The withered arm seemed to be waving at the latecomer.

The Eyes Within the Eye—Hyakume’s insignia—on his chest had been torn apart. All that remained was a charred mess. He swung in the wind during this endless night. The lower jaw under his lowered neck swung as well with the song in the wind.

The voice sang quietly, "The king and his helpers kidnapped the queen, imprisoning her in dreams. We have power and the sea so which direction should we wander? Oh ho, millions of pairs of hands raise the sails high. Pull, the thieves and beggars, we’ll have eternal life…"

Receive eternal life in death.