Chapter 44: The Ghostly Night of Anping

  The evening rain gradually stopped, and thin mist began to rise.

  The convoy slowly traveled along a winding mountain road, the sky already darkening. Tang Ping rode up to the front of the procession and raised his hand to signal.

  "We’ve arrived at Anping Town. We’ll rest here for the night."

  Anping Town was quiet and still. The characters "Anping" on the stone monument at the town entrance were worn and indistinct from the wind and rain. The streets were clean and orderly, but there was not a single person in sight. Only a few houses had faint light flickering through their windows.

  Sanbao lifted the curtain of the carriage slightly and gnced at the street.

  "It's too quiet," she murmured.

  "The quieter it is, the more cautious we should be," Tang Mingli nodded.

  The group stayed at the only inn in the town. The innkeeper’s expression was bnk, and his words were sparse. After quickly settling them in, he hurriedly left.

  In the middle of the night, Sanbao, still in a dazed sleep, suddenly felt a tightness on her scalp.

  "Wake up... wake up... danger is coming..." A voice echoed in her mind.

  This voice was not unfamiliar. It was the same voice that had awakened her from her bath-induced slumber back in the Rest Inn at Pingjiang’s Rui Si Te Hotel.

  "Wake up... danger is coming!" The voice, one word at a time, seemed to come from another world.

  Sanbao suddenly opened her eyes, a cold sweat forming on her forehead.

  The first thing she saw was the round, glowing green eyes of Sanbao's cat, Sanhuabao.

  Sanhuabao was crouched beside her pillow, gently pawing at her hair, letting out low "mewing" sounds, as if trying to wake her.

  "Did... you hear that voice too?" Sanbao reached out and petted the cat’s head.

  Sanhuabao stopped, lifted its head, its ears twitching. Its body stiffened, and its tail fluffed up.

  "Not good, there's danger!" Sanbao felt an eerie pressure slowly approaching from afar, and the spiritual energy in the air started to stir and become disordered.

  A chill ran down her spine, and she immediately threw on her cloak, stood up, opened the door, and shouted, "Tang Mingli, Tang Ping, wake up! Something is coming!"

  Tang Mingli immediately rushed out of his room upon hearing her, his brow furrowed. "You felt it too?"

  "Something is coming."

  Tang Ping quickly organized the guards, splitting them into groups to patrol the area around the rooms.

  Suddenly, a thick mist began to quietly spread inside the inn. The surroundings grew increasingly blurry, and the mist carried a faint, rotting smell.

  "It’s here!" Sanbao suddenly turned around.

  Through the mist, a twisted, translucent figure slowly emerged. Its shape was vague, with features barely discernible, and its fingers were long and cw-like, resembling dead branches. The figure flickered and lunged toward them!

  "Form the formation!" Tang Ping shouted, and several guards immediately lined up, activating their spirit symbols to form a simple defensive formation.

  Sanbao summoned the Candle Dragon Sword from her arm. The combined power of water and fire dragons gathered at the sword’s tip, and with a swift motion, she sshed.

  The sword light cut through the air like a streak of lightning, but it only sliced through empty space. The ghostly figure dispersed like mist, and in the blink of an eye, reappeared elsewhere.

  "What is this thing?" Sanbao frowned, unching three more spirit symbols. Each one pierced through the ghost's body, but it vanished again like mist, reappearing somewhere else.

  The ghost said nothing, only swirling through the mist, disturbing the minds of the people. The guards threw various weapons at it, but none of them struck the ghost. The defensive formation they formed was quickly scattered, and the formation was no longer effective.

  Sanbao and Tang Mingli tried to fight the creature off, testing spells, spirit symbols, and magical items, but nothing worked. They could only watch as the ghost constantly disappeared into the mist, reappearing in different pces.

  "We can’t hurt it, but it doesn’t seem to want to harm us either," Tang Mingli said, his expression grim.

  "Not good!" Sanbao suddenly realized. "We need to check on Zhu Ting and her brother!"

  With several guards, they hurried to the room where the Zhu siblings were staying.

  From a distance, they saw that the door was tightly closed. Several guards were standing in front of the door, their expressions serious and their eyes fixed on the door without the slightest sign of rexation.

  Sanbao’s heart tightened, and she quickened her pace. As she reached the door, the head guard came forward and whispered, "Tang family master, Miss Sanbao, has the ghost been dealt with? Everything here is normal, and no sound has come from the room."

  Sanbao didn’t respond. She suddenly pushed the door open and stormed into the room.

  Inside, she saw Zhu Ting lying in a pool of blood, her eyes closed, her face calm but lifeless. Her chest was slightly open, revealing pale skin with no bloodstains or wounds, as if her soul had been drained away.

  Zhu Chengzhi was sitting dazed on the bed, his eyes hollow and his expression lifeless.

  "Zhu Chengzhi!" Sanbao rushed forward, grabbing him. "Are you okay? What happened to your sister?"

  Zhu Chengzhi stared at her bnkly, as if he couldn’t hear her. He muttered, "She was... talking to me just now..."

  Tang Ping arrived and his face changed dramatically. "How could this be? We’ve had guards stationed outside, and there’s been no movement in or out of the room!"

  The guards at the door looked horrified, all speaking in unison, "We have not been negligent. We’ve been fully focused and detected no anomalies!"

  Tang Mingli surveyed the room, sensing for traces of spiritual energy, and indeed found no signs of a battle or any external intrusion.

  "It seems this ghost has accomplices!" Sanbao said. "It must have sent its partners into the room while we were fighting it in the front yard."

  But Zhu Ting was also a cultivator. Although she was only at the te stage of the First Rank, she shouldn’t have been able to die so quietly and quickly without having time to activate her spiritual power. Sanbao continued to think about what had really happened here. There were no signs of defensive barriers left on her body. She died quietly and swiftly.

  Sanbao looked at Zhu Chengzhi. The boy looked like he had been petrified, tightly clutching his sister’s hand, motionless and silent.

  The night wind blew through the room again, rustling a corner of the window curtain damp with night dew.

  Everything in the inn was eerily quiet, as if nothing had ever happened.

  The ghost in the front yard never reappeared, as if it had never existed at all, silently leaving.

  Sanbao stood beside the bed, staring at Zhu Ting’s cold corpse, then gnced at Zhu Chengzhi, who was still frozen beside her. Slowly, she began to think deeply.

  Tang Mingli walked up to her side. The two exchanged a gnce, and they both read the same question in each other's eyes.

  What secret was hidden within the mysterious Zhu siblings?

  What kind of "artifact" could attract a ghost that couldn’t be harmed, disappearing quietly after taking one life?

  Or perhaps... the ghost wasn’t after the treasure at all, but had other intentions?

  The wind fluttered the tattered curtains, the light flickered, and shadows danced.

  This night was destined to be one of sleeplessness. The thought that lingered in Sanbao’s mind was the one she couldn’t shake—what was the "artifact" the Zhu family had guarded for generations that could supposedly change the fate of the Kingdom of Rudy?