TRYMBPIETM 49: Mirror, Night, Snow Peak (12)

Chi Qingzhou stood on the rooftop, briefly glancing at the stunned Xue Jinshi before calmly averting his gaze.

His shadow extended numerous tendril-like branches, carrying the force of wind and thunder, and lunged toward the two men desperately fleeing.

Ghostly energy surged into the air, clashing with the atmosphere.

Normal people couldn’t see such scenes, but the livestream, already affected, lasted only three more seconds before the entire screen was covered with static, leaving only noise, leaving the audience bewildered.

Not only the viewers, but even Xue Jinshi, present on the scene, had no idea what was happening.

However, he noticed the two strange men, who had been so arrogant earlier, now fleeing in panic. Suddenly, a few rumors flashed in his mind.

There were whispers that Chi Qingzhou was actually a cultivator, that during the last episode of Scenery Along the Way, it was Chi Qingzhou who saved the day—exaggerated claims like these spread everywhere.

Before today, Xue Jinshi hadn’t believed a single one of these rumors.

He had always thought that most people in the circle were somewhat superstitious and not very sharp, and that such ridiculous rumors were just fads. It was simply laughable.

But now, looking at Chi Qingzhou standing on the rooftop, he suddenly realized that perhaps the one who was laughable was himself.

Chi Qingzhou, this person, might indeed be somewhat unscientific.

Xue Jinshi bit his lip, staring at Chi Qingzhou’s profile for a few seconds, his heartbeat irregular again.

Clearly, before today, he had disliked this person, but after what had just happened, he now felt strangely at ease just by looking at Chi Qingzhou.

The stark contrast made him feel awkward and embarrassed, his face suddenly flushing, his gaze becoming restless.

He was afraid that Chi Qingzhou might notice his current expression and lowered his head guiltily.

But Chi Qingzhou had no time to pay attention to him. He was manipulating his shadow to relentlessly chase the two fleeing men. Though the attacks were few, each one was crucial, eventually forcing the two to separate and flee in different directions.

The two were in complete disarray, their clothes torn, and their steps becoming staggered.

But the fact that they had managed to avoid Chi Qingzhou and entered the resort villa earlier indicated that they were no ordinary individuals.

After managing to maintain their pace for a short while, their figures began to flicker, their breaths growing fainter, and even Chi Qingzhou and Xing Shuangzhan couldn’t track them normally.

Chi Qingzhou narrowed his eyes slightly and whispered, “They’ve got some skills, no wonder they dared show up here.”

Xing Shuangzhan didn’t make an appearance but was gathering pure emotional energy from the livestream while asking, “Which one are we going after?”

Chi Qingzhou’s strength was certainly sufficient, but given his current position, the range his shadow could cover was actually limited.

Considering his soul condition, Xing Shuangzhan didn’t agree with him splitting his attention between his body and the shadow. He could only pursue one of them.

Chi Qingzhou glanced at the trench coat man who appeared to be stronger but immediately made his decision and headed toward the shorter man.

The shorter man resembled the person Ah Ting and Ah Yu had mentioned—Sheng Yihang.

Chi Qingzhou needed to confirm the identity of the shorter man before his friends entered the villa.

Chi Qingzhou leaped over the gap between two rooftops and quickly pursued the shorter man while also remembering to make a hand gesture to send a message to his friends.

Both of his friends were kind-hearted and didn’t want to scare the staff, so they had no plans to use the main entrance of the villa.

Due to being a walking corpse, Luo Huaiyu couldn’t climb the walls normally.

Chi Qingzhou had arrived first, to help confirm the situation for the two of them and also to rescue Xue Jinshi.

Chi Qingzhou’s target was extremely clear, without a hint of hesitation, his speed increasing with each moment.

In contrast, the shorter man barely managed to escape for a short while before his movements became stiff.

The dense ghostly energy pursued him relentlessly from behind. In fear and anger, he suppressed his frustration and muttered a curse under his breath, glancing back instinctively.

That glance nearly scared the soul out of him!

Under the dim moonlight, the huge shadow stretched to its limits, the color seemingly fading slightly.

Long tendrils surged toward him, forming an enormous net that descended upon him with a mighty force!

“To hell with this!”

Was this shadow really following him? Was this even a person?!

His eyes filled with intense anger and panic, and in shock, he let out a low growl before instinctively leaping to the side.

His stiff joints made it hard to control his body, and he rolled several times on the ground, narrowly avoiding the attack.

He had no time to be relieved, as the terrifying ghostly energy lingered nearby, forcing him to scramble up and desperately flee sideways.

He knew full well that if that ghostly energy touched him, he would never be able to escape!

The shorter man gritted his teeth, twisting his joints, his eyes flashing with a ruthless look, and he desperately increased his speed.

The shorter man was fast, but Chi Qingzhou wasn’t slow either.

With several leaps, he covered a distance of over ten meters, almost closing the gap with the shorter man in the blink of an eye.

The net formed by the shadow adjusted its angle slightly and descended with a thunderous force once again!

The short man turned around and lunged in the opposite direction.

However, Chi Qingzhou had already reached his vicinity, and this time, evading was in vain.

As soon as the pale shadow made contact with his shoulder, it immediately coiled around him.

Despite the thick clothing and scarf, the shadow’s tendrils were like red-hot branding irons, instantly burning his left shoulder.

White smoke rose from the wound, and he felt as though his flesh and bones had been splashed with a bucket of aqua regia, quickly dissolving and vanishing.

Even a zombie could feel pain, especially when it wasn’t just physical.

The indescribable agony made him let out a beast-like scream, unable to control his limbs, and he lost his forward momentum.

He rolled several meters on the ground like a ball, finally using the force and speed of his fall to break free from the shadow.

But he no longer had the strength to rise.

The melting pain in his shoulder continued to assault him, and he could only scream again and again. The breath that had been hidden by the trench coat man was now leaked, causing the expression of the man running toward the other side to drastically change.

The trench coat man glared at Chi Qingzhou with resentment, then made a complex series of hand seals, muttering words under his breath.

The sharp pain in the short man’s shoulder slightly eased, and he struggled to turn over, his eyes filled with fear as he looked at Chi Qingzhou.

Chi Qingzhou had guessed correctly—he was indeed Sheng Yihang, the person Luo Ting and Luo Huaiyu were looking for.

Once, he had been an ordinary person, but now, like Luo Huaiyu, he was no longer human.

However, unlike Luo Huaiyu, who had been consumed by resentment, naturally becoming a corpse, Sheng Yihang had been artificially refined.

The person who refined him had a purpose from the beginning, giving him no chance to cultivate on his own, forcibly turning him from a corpse into a living zombie.

In the classification of this realm, a living zombie was the third level among the five types of zombies.

Having skipped over the stages of a walking corpse and a regular zombie, Sheng Yihang should have been happy—it meant he had potential.

However, when he saw his reflection in the mirror, he realized he had been tricked.

A living zombie, as the name suggests, looked almost like a living person.

A self-cultivating living zombie at this stage, apart from having no heartbeat, body temperature, and some stiffness during intense movement, appeared no different from their life before.

They were no longer afraid of sunlight, as long as they avoided the midday sun.

Retaining the excellent defensive abilities and corpse poison of zombies, they could blend in with humans.

But Sheng Yihang was different.

He had been forcibly catalyzed, without going through the previous two stages. Not only were his joints less flexible than ordinary living zombies, but his corpse poison was also weaker than usual.

His appearance didn’t recover like a normal living zombie’s either, instead retaining death’s marks.

With this appearance, who would believe he was a living person?

Seeing his own face in the mirror nearly drove Sheng Yihang mad.

Fortunately, the blood used to refine him came from Luo Huaiyu’s family, and his copper skin and iron bones made him stronger than a typical living zombie. Ordinary thunder couldn’t harm him, allowing him to barely accept this ghastly appearance.

However, this sole advantage, the one thing he had been satisfied with, was shattered by Chi Qingzhou’s strike earlier.

What good were copper skin and iron bones?

Totally useless!

Chi Qingzhou’s shadow, filled with ghostly energy, caused more harm than the most powerful thunder spells. It was simply his nemesis!

Sheng Yihang could only feel as if he had seen a ghost. How could such a person exist in the world?

No wonder Bei Shen was so jealous of this person. Both were cultivators, and who wouldn’t be jealous of such a genius?

Knowing that Bei Shen wouldn’t give up on him so easily, Sheng Yihang gritted his teeth, turned, and let out a long, blood-curdling scream toward the direction of the trench coat man.

He was warning Bei Shen to hurry and take him away, or he would be completely killed by Chi Qingzhou!

Bei Shen, panicking, immediately increased the speed of his incantation.

Chi Qingzhou sensed the air becoming thicker with corpse energy, but the trench coat man’s presence had completely vanished. He turned back, surprised.

Finally, after completing his spell, Bei Shen looked up and made eye contact with Chi Qingzhou from several dozen meters away, before transforming into a pool of black water. In the blink of an eye, he seeped into the soil of the greenery, disappearing without a trace.

At the same time, Sheng Yihang, who had been caught by Chi Qingzhou’s shadow, also turned into a pool of black water. His breath completely faded, flowing into the gaps of the shadow and escaping far away.

Chi Qingzhou’s smile faded.

His shadow flickered beneath his feet, and the other half of his soul emerged, about to separate to act independently and give chase.

Xing Shuangzhan quickly stepped out from the shadow, lightly landing beside Chi Qingzhou and hugging him tightly.

“Qingzhou, calm down, don’t be too hasty. There will be other opportunities.”

Chi Qingzhou fell silent for a moment, then turned around, biting his lip firmly.

“Xing Su.” He pushed Xing Shuangzhan’s arm away and called out his real name. “What exactly do you know? Why do you always say things like this?”

Xing Shuangzhan gently touched the back of his hair, his gaze soft.

“I haven’t lied to you. I can’t see your future life, and I really don’t know anything. The things I’m doing now are only because I hope you won’t get hurt again.”

Chi Qingzhou remained unmoved, staring at him steadily.

Xing Shuangzhan sighed. “It seems that, apart from the three years after you were 19, you can’t remember what happened when you were 11 and 15.”

Chi Qingzhou still didn’t speak.

But after a moment of confused recollection, the memories felt as though they were veiled, and he couldn’t see them clearly.

He stood still for a moment, looking at Xing Shuangzhan with a bewildered expression.

Xing Shuangzhan embraced him again, gently patting his back for comfort.

“You just can’t remember clearly, it’s not a big deal. If you want to know anything, I’ll tell you.”

Chi Qingzhou grasped Xing Shuangzhan’s sleeve, letting out a faint hum with a subtle nasal sound.

Xing Shuangzhan leaned in closer, whispering, “When you were 11, you lost control once.”

That was actually the first time Chi Qingzhou lost control.

In the fall of the year he turned 10, Chi Qingzhou had been beaten by his adoptive father, who was also Chi Qingning’s biological father, suffering several strikes to the back of his head with a belt. Dazed, he vaguely sensed something was wrong.

To protect himself, he used all his strength to push away from his adoptive father, but this only angered him more.

The man in his prime grabbed him with one hand, carrying him all the way from the sixth floor to the open space below, raising the belt once again.

His adoptive mother followed downstairs, not only failing to stop his adoptive father but also shouting angrily, trying to shift the blame entirely onto him.

His head was getting more and more dizzy and painful. Although the belt lashed against his body, he couldn’t feel the pain; he only felt extremely cold.

For the first time, he experienced what it felt like for life to slip away. He wanted to call for help, but all he saw were a group of old men and women pointing at him and laughing.

He had no phone, no friends, and the usual ways to seek help were completely blocked. The overwhelming frustration led him to make a decision before his life came to an end:

No matter if the person he encountered three months ago was a true or fake master, or what kind of entity the ritual would summon, he had to take a gamble.

He barely managed to use his finger to draw the talisman taught by the master on the cement floor with his own blood. He recited the sacrificial prayers bit by bit, almost failing at the end due to not having the right offerings.

Just before losing consciousness, he looked at the bloodstains on the floor, had a flash of inspiration, and used himself as the offering to complete the ritual.

In theory, this kind of small-scale, strange time and place, with an incorrect offering, should have been ignored by someone like Xing Shuangzan, a world-destroying ghost king. But everything was so coincidental.

That day, Xing Shuangzan was in a bad mood and using a human sacrifice clashed with his taboo. In his desire to vent his frustration, he paid attention to this simple ritual.

Then he discovered that the offering being presented was none other than the one who was trying to summon him, solely in hopes of surviving.

If it weren’t for the fact that the one receiving the sacrifice was Xing Shuangzan, he would have thought this was some kind of performance.

The offering for the ritual was supposed to be something that could not survive, but oddly, Chi Qingzhou was asking for survival.

Xing Shuangzan, who had long been used to life and death, and to humans making astonishing moves to achieve their goals, was still taken aback by the calmness in Chi Qingzhou’s peach blossom eyes at that moment.

For a brief moment, he even felt that 45 years ago, when he deliberately reduced half of his cultivation to deal with the Xuanxu Sect, he did so to notice this simple ritual at this moment.

If his strength were still as overwhelming as before, according to the rules he set, such a simple and improper ritual should have been blocked by the Jingmibg Mountain Grand Tomb immediately, and he would never have seen it.

For various reasons, Xing Shuangzan reached out and saved the already lifeless Qi Qingzhou.

From that moment on, Chi Qingzhou’s cultivation talent directly erupted.

He grabbed the belt his adoptive father had used to beat him, and the ghostly energy overturned everyone nearby, causing them to forget this memory completely.

However, Chi Qingzhou’s outburst left them with a terrifying psychological shadow. Even if they forgot what happened, subconsciously, they were still filled with fear towards Chi Qingzhou.

But Chi Qingzhou didn’t feel better just because he saved him.

He wasn’t truly reborn, but this act defied the heavens.

That night, the unending lightning illuminated the whole of Qingjin County. Xing Shuangzan blocked all the lightning tribulations for Chi Qingzhou, worsening his injuries significantly.

The heavenly thunder caused him immense pain, but when he saw Chi Qingzhou open his eyes, he felt no regret.

He couldn’t explain why, perhaps because he didn’t want the light in those eyes to extinguish.

From that day on, Xing Shuangzan began to appear beside Chi Qingzhou from time to time, guiding him in his cultivation.

His adoptive parents and brother, who had once been harsh towards him, gradually began to avoid him, and his life soon became easier.

But the good times didn’t last long.

Chi Qingzhou, after all, was someone who had already died once. His situation was different from normal humans, and a ghostly energy ran through his meridians. No matter what methods Xing Shuangzan tried, he couldn’t rid him of it.

In the winter of his 11th year, Qi Qingzhou’s soul could no longer bear the overwhelming ghostly energy and lost control for the first time.

Xing Shuangzan had to admit, his little contractor was the most talented among all the humans and non-humans he had seen.

More than a year of intermittent teaching had already made his abilities very astonishing. Even those who were being flaunted by the Xuanxu Sect like Shen Wenxu and others were no match for Chi Qingzhou at the age of 11.

The brilliance of such talent was evident, but it also made his loss of control even more dangerous.

During the few days of his loss of control, at first, Xing Shuangzan could suppress him. However, as time passed, Chi Qingzhou became more difficult to deal with, and eventually, they were evenly matched.

It was thanks to this evenly matched battle that Chi Qingzhou could regain his senses; otherwise, who knew what the consequences might have been.

Xing Shuangzan was very worried about Chi Qingzhou and tried everything to stabilize his soul, but with little effect.

In the following years, Chi Qingzhou’s situation worsened, constantly teetering on the edge of losing control, and even a millennium-old ghost like Xing Shuangzan was powerless.

Finally, when Chi Qingzhou turned 15, Xing Shuangzan could no longer suppress the ghostly energy in him.

Chi Qingzhou lost control for the second time.

This time, it was neither good nor bad. His shadow underwent an irreversible transformation during the loss of control, becoming a place between the realms of yin and yang.

Meanwhile, due to the ghostly energy flowing into his shadow, his soul slightly improved.

Xing Shuangzan picked up his contractor and looked at him gently.

“Perhaps you don’t remember, but this result didn’t come without a price. Qingzhou, from that moment on, every time you use your shadow, your soul will be cut by the ghostly energy.”

Chi Qingzhou had always liked making friends and it was from that moment that this habit began.

Chi Qingzhou tilted his head and thought for a moment. He didn’t comment on his past but quietly protested, “It has nothing to do with the shadow. I didn’t have friends before, which is why I wanted more.”

As for making friends of different kinds…

Since I was going to make friends, why not make ones that are a little interesting?

Xing Shuangzan smiled and said indulgently, “You’re right.”

Chi Qingzhou hugged his neck and leaned his cheek against his head, gently nuzzling.

Talking about this past finally eased his anger.

But he was still upset that the Sheng Yihang’s escape.

Xing Shuangzan glanced towards the greenbelt and sneered.

” They’ll probably show up again soon.”

He used uncertain words, but his tone was confident, which made Chi Qingzhou recall what happened in Shangling County.

Chi Qingzhou tugged at his hair, “Do you recognize the man in the trench coat?”

Xing Shuangzan didn’t answer, only smiling.

Soon, Luo Ting and Luo Huaiyu, who had arrived late, looked at the two of them and followed the death aura left by Sheng Yihang, reaching the greenbelt. They carefully examined the ground and immediately confirmed their identities.

“It should be this person who stole the body. There’s only a small trace of water in the greenbelt. It’s hard to see at night, but by morning, it will have dried completely. It’s pretty hidden.”

Luo Ting said, “What surprised me is that this person actually turned Sheng Yihang into a living zombie.”

This cut off Sheng Yihang’s path to cultivation.

“It seems he doesn’t plan to keep Sheng Yihang with him.”

Luo Huaiyu remained silent, his expression dark.

Although he was itching for revenge against Sheng Yihang, he was still just a walking corpse, not even a full zombie.

Under the suppression of their levels, even though Sheng Yihang was a forced, fake living zombie, he still couldn’t beat him.

With his current cultivation progress, he might become a zombie in a month, but to become a living zombie, it would take at least three to five years.

“I can’t wait that long.”

Luo Huaiyu, filled with hatred but helpless, had his eyes redden, resembling a trapped beast.

Chi Qingzhou thought for a moment and waved to his new pitiful friend.

“Ah Yu, come here. I have a gift for you.”