CH 38

Sad to say, if it’d just been one lost person, then in that period, it wouldn’t really have been considered any big earth-shaking incident. 

People die every day in this world, and not all of their deaths could have a clear reason to be found.

Those cultivation sect disciples couldn’t find the person or work out a cause. In the end, they could only recite the easiest explanation for people to accept—devils were afoot. 

It was definitely a certain superbly well-concealed, as-yet-undiscovered devil who’d furtively gobbled up that missing man. 

Hence, this incident went from “seeking a missing person” to “seeking the concealed devil.”  

But then, the conclusion they found made people’s hair stand on end…  

Ever since, the innkeeper still felt a chill throughout his body, a numbness in his scalp, when he thought back to it. His voice issued out hoarsely: “You… have you seen those devil-probing talismans the cultivators use? They just light them on fire until they burn to ash, and a blow of wind will scatter them out. If they run into demonic energy, those ashes will gather there.” 

“That day, I looked on as those ashes floated out of my inn’s window. Those cultivators were afraid of causing a panic, and they all pretended to be going on daily patrol or a stroll while they followed the ashes around Falling Flower Mountain Market and back. In the end, they looped back to my inn…” 

At the time, everyone was exchanging glances, all thinking that there were too many people in Falling Flower Mountain Market, and all this assembled living human qi provided sufficient cover to any other aura, so the devil-probing talismans were no use. 

They were just about to withdraw the ashes when they saw those pale scraps of dust whirling about and congregating on a single person’s body. 

It was none other than that missing man’s young daughter.  

The girl was truly quite young, and the bellboy couldn’t bear seeing her cry, so he went to gather a bunch of little toys at the market to coax her, and then went to warm up a bowl of sweet jujube soup on the stove. 

At the time, the little girl was sitting in front of the inn’s dining hall, eating the soup spoonful by spoonful. 

When the ashes congregated over, she raised her eyes to look at everyone and licked her lips.

At first, everyone went dead silent. Then, they thought it ridiculous and hard to believe— 

This little girl had gobbled up her own dad? 

How could that be… 

Thus, the cultivators fished out another talisman, for soul-seeking.  

Previously, to seek out the missing man, they’d taken these soul-seeking talismans and tested them out on every corner of Falling Flower Mountain Market to no avail.

Using it again now, they watched as the soul-seeking talisman drifted about, then, at last, landed beside the little girl’s feet.

If the soul-seeking talisman wasn’t a defect, then the residual scent of the missing person’s soul was really on that little girl’s body… 

At that moment, everyone present went quiet as cicadas in winter.  

***

Later on, the cultivators took away that little girl, and the “inexplicably missing guest” case was closed. 

The innkeeper and bellboy were both scared, and fell ill for several days. After the illness subsided, everything went back to normal, and they gradually put this incident behind them. 

Until the next year. Before the market’s lanterns had been lit for long, the inn had another incident—

That day, a scholarly-looking person took along his page boy to stay at the inn. At first, they were talking and laughing, and the scholar even appeared gentle and polite. 

But on the second day, the page boy was gone without a trace. 

Everything was identical to that father-daughter pair. 

The innkeeper felt like he’d entered a recurring nightmare. 

Seeing the scholar’s “worried sick” look, he felt that under that layer of skin, there was definitely a devil that’d eaten and drunk its fill, licking its lips. 

Just like before, he again asked after those cultivators, and watched as they first used a devil-probing talisman, and then a soul-seeking talisman. 

And as expected, whether devil-probing talisman or soul-seeking talisman, both pointed to the scholar.

When the scholar had been stuck with talisman paper, the slowly rising shock and terror on his face were actually stronger than anyone else’s. He madly brushed away the devil-probing talisman dust on his body, mouth full of “It’s not me,” “It wouldn’t be me,” so scared he tumbled to the ground, losing all sense of gentility. 

Watching the scene back then, a terrifying thought abruptly flashed through the innkeeper’s mind—supposing that this scholar wasn’t concealing things deep down, but was really unaware, might he have been coerced by something in his sleep? What if he was originally just fine, and the reason this had happened was something wrong with the inn? 

He again recalled those cultivators’ counsel, saying that this lucky place of his would become a site of disaster with frequent wicked happenings. 

At the time, the thought terrified the innkeeper; he felt that every inch of the ground below his feet was permeated with some ineffable strangeness.  

Although the accidents all happened to guests, and it’d only happened twice in two years, scarcely more… who knew what it would spell for the future, whether there might come a day when the one meeting misfortune turned out to be him?  

For a while, the innkeeper was plagued by daily nightmares. If he wasn’t dreaming of being eaten by the bellboy, then he was dreaming of himself eating the bellboy. Either way, he was rendered too scared to sleep deeply.  

Thus, he no longer dragged his feet; he sought a cultivation sect to give him a hand.  

***

“They were actually very happy to help, and dispatched quite a few experienced people to dress up as guests and guard this little inn of mine every day,” the innkeeper said in distress, “But heaven practically seemed to be toying with me; when the cultivators came, nothing happened. Not one little thing, no wind at sea.”

“Everyone was preoccupied with various things, and they also wanted to cultivate, so they couldn’t keep dilly-dallying at my inn. Afterward, they worked out a way to appease us both.” The innkeeper pointed to the corpse on the floor to say, “With that…” 

It was the first time he’d learned that, as it turned out, cultivation sects would also use such a shady-seeming practice as “corpse animation.”

At the time, the cultivators explained to him: “If there was an alternative, we wouldn’t turn to this. Mr. Innkeeper, you may not know, but corpses are actually a little more sensitive to devils than us living people, and more clever than things like devil-probing talismans. Were a devil to enter your inn again, it would assuredly know. If something happens again like before, it can stop it beforehand.” 

“What about afterwards?” The innkeeper wasn’t appeased by this, “What if it can only provide an impediment, but not actually stop it!” 

The cultivators replied: “There’s an incantation left on its body. If it really has to take action here, we’ll know at once even if we’re a thousand miles away. Once we receive the notification, we’ll hurry over immediately. Should that time come, whether it’s a devil or an ill-omened disaster, when their aura is thickest, they’ll be very easy to find. At that point, we can take a look and determine once and for all whether your inn is built on cursed ground, and how it could have possibly turned into a cursed ground.”  

Although the cultivators reassured him over and over, although the corpse was specially treated for this purpose, although that yin corpse was different from those of the devils’ crooked path—the innkeeper still had reservations, and was only half-believed. 

Based on the cultivators’ briefing, they’d usually just keep the corpse in its coffin and place the coffin in the upstairs attic with quite a few coffin-sealing talismans stuck on its cover. 

He often warned the bellboy to periodically switch them out for a new batch of talismans, lest the coffin loosen and the corpse be allowed to go out and make mischief. 

***

Two years passed like this, and no new disaster occurred in the inn. The corpse, too, contentedly never opened its coffin. 

People were ever as such—when the wound scarred over they’d forget the pain. 

The innkeeper gradually also thought that the so-called “inauspicious site,” “cursed ground,” was also only temporary. It was said that small omens lasted three years and large omens lasted ten. Once the previous augury was defunct, it’d turn over anew. 

After marinating in it awhile, the bellboy took on a hint of corpse odor, while he himself developed ponderous eyebags. But, nowadays they can sleep the night through. It was just that his inn’s business was unable to bounce back. 

Clearly, those who knew about those two disasters had kept their mouths shut tight and hadn’t recklessly spread it around the Falling Flower Mountain Market, but this inn of his got lonelier and less frequented by the day. 

Because of those two disasters, the innkeeper and bellboy developed a bad habit—

If just a single guest came, they’d be quite welcoming. But if there were two travelers, they’d be reluctant and on edge, afraid that there’d be another scene of them waking up with one less. 

The innkeeper looked at Wu Xingxue fearfully, then promptly stuffed it back in: “The day before when you wanted to stay, I was scared to death, I really was scared to death! I didn’t sleep the entire night, and didn’t dare open my eyes, afraid the night wouldn’t see peace.”  

There was one thing the innkeeper didn’t dare say—He had indeed kept his ears perked for activity in the guest room the whole night. But the night was indeed extremely peaceful, he didn’t even hear the slightest bit of noise, whether it was a conversation or the sound of walking or what—nothing at all. 

For a time, he suspected that those two guests had sealed the room with a prohibition or ward.

At dawn the next day, he stood behind the counter, waiting and hoping for those two guests to get up and go downstairs.  

“When I saw you both come down with everything intact, my heart could at last calm down,” the innkeeper said. With a long sigh, he continued despondently: “So, why did you two have to come back? If you hadn’t added this night, then you wouldn’t—”  

The innkeeper was full of worries, and only got halfway through before realizing what all he’d said.

He abruptly stopped, and raised his head in terror.

Only to see Wu Xingxue’s deep pupils looking back at him: “I wouldn’t what?”  

The innkeeper swallowed. Even scrounging up all his courage, he didn’t dare say the words that came next.  

But even if he kept silent, Wu Xingxue knew what he was about to say.  

He’d already said a lot—said that, under the influence of the cursed ground, that little girl had gobbled up her own father in the depths of night. Said that, under the influence of the cursed ground, that scholar had gobbled up his own page boy. 

And Wu Xingxue here was naturally the same. From the innkeeper’s point of view, it was none other than another tragedy of someone gobbling up one of their own. 

In a wink, Wu Xingxue felt particularly ridiculous, so ridiculous he could almost laugh.

How could that be, it’s not like I’m crazy. 

He thought. 

But very quickly, from that ridiculous feeling emerged an even more ridiculous sense of retrospective dread…   

Because he really was a devil.

Devils cared not for propriety—one moment that Sang Yu’d still be wallowing in a person’s aura for comfort, and the next he’d be draining them of their blood. When Yunhai, who’d once been an immortal, lost control, he acted with reckless abandon.  

What about me?

Wu Xingxue thought.

Would there have been times when I was like this? Lost control? Done similar deeds? And then… 

Has Xiao Fuxuan seen? 

In truth, he didn’t think the dignified Tianxiu Immortal could have disappeared into thin air never to be seen again just because of a little inn. Those folk rumors and intrigues didn’t scare him.  

He just suddenly missed the other man, really missed him. 

As this thought flashed across, there was a sudden hubbub of footsteps outside the guest room door. A dump of ash was flung into the room from out the open window, and congregated beside Wu Xingxue. 

Perhaps because his devilish energy was too abundant, the ash even burst into intermittent sparks.

A flock of uniformed disciples chased the ash over, long ribbons fluttering behind their high-bound hair crowns. Each one had a sword, the silver sheaths of which were all engraved with a circular, cinnabar-colored “Feng” seal. 

It was the immortal sect often asked after in Falling Flower Mountain Market, the Feng family.

In the lead was a young woman with an intelligent face, opening her mouth to say: “The corpse  hasn’t stirred in a while, it must have already gotten that devil under con—” 

“…….trol.”

As soon as they entered the door, they saw the “unstirring” corpse on the floor, as well as the “under control’ devil carrying its sword.

The devil’s voice was as mild as a cool breeze, but the words he spoke grew more and more terrifying the more one thought: “I’m afraid I have to trouble you all to help me dig up every inch of this ground to help me find someone, else you can forget about going back.”