Immortalis

Death Hex Eleven

Even Yang Wujian hadn't expected that Sun Eryuan would be so terrified he'd insist on sharing a room with him and Shen Qingshi.

"Aren't we a married couple? Why do you have to intrude?"

Yang Wujian looked at him with a forced smile, but Sun Eryuan was genuinely frightened out of his wits. Ignoring Yang Wujian's dagger-like glare, he stubbornly insisted on staying in their room.

Since when did ghosts start appearing here?

Yang Wujian couldn't help but wonder. Earlier, he and Shen Qingshi had circled Sun Eryuan's cabin several times but found no footprints. Yet Sun Eryuan swore he saw a pale greenish face staring at him, watching for who knows how long... He only noticed it after lighting a fire.

Sun Eryuan was sleeping soundly when Shen Qingshi suddenly stood up and silently approached him, administering another dose of knockout incense.

With Sun Eryuan now completely unconscious, Yang Wujian sighed, "If you didn't want him here, you could've just thrown him out."

"He said he saw a ghost. He might be the next to die. It's better to keep him where we can see him... But I noticed both Xue Qiu and you don't seem to like having him here, so this was the only way."

Shen Qingshi unceremoniously nudged him with her foot to confirm he was completely unresponsive before rebuilding the fire. She then took Xue Qiu out of the cage where the rabbit had been confined for some time and began stroking its fur.

"So it seems what was written on the first corpse was truly a death date?"

Yang Wujian was beginning to realize that the Meteor Star incident was likely a carefully set trap, and they were all caught in it now.

Shen Qingshi gently stroked the rabbit's fur: "Only two death dates remain. Whose deaths are they... Yours? Mine? Sun Eryuan's? Or those two brothers'?"

Yang Wujian shook his head: "It doesn't seem to be us. When we mentioned the old incident at Aconite Kiln the other day, they all seemed to know something about it... Besides, if Sun Eryuan truly had nothing to hide, he wouldn't have been scared like this."

Shen Qingshi immediately understood his meaning: "Should we find ways to make him talk?"

At this suggestion, Shen Qingshi's expression darkened. Seeing this, Yang Wujian sighed: "No need for Zhaoming Division's methods... In his current state, just scaring him a bit more will make him talk."

With that, he had an idea and whispered a couple of sentences in her ear. Shen Qingshi understood: "Let's do it that way then."

Within the time it takes for one incense stick to burn, when Sun Eryuan suddenly woke up, Yang Wujian's hand was firmly clamped over his mouth.

"Don't make a sound."

Yang Wujian whispered: "It's all because you insisted on sharing our room... You've attracted something unclean."

Sun Eryuan's courage was truly comparable to Zhou Huai's. Hearing this, he immediately trembled all over. Following Yang Wujian's gaze, he saw the bonfire in the stone room was dying out. Shen Qingshi sat with her back to them in a corner of the room, most of her body hidden in darkness. Her arms hung limply on the ground, her head nodding slightly as if asleep.

Yang Wujian gritted his teeth: "She's born with an extremely yin fate. I'm afraid she's become possessed."

"P... possessed?"

Sun Eryuan's voice trembled as he tried to get up and run outside, but Yang Wujian pressed him down: "Why run! Can you outrun evil spirits? If you want to live, stay put right here!"

"Young Master Yang... This place was never clean to begin with. If she's prone to such things, you shouldn't have brought her here at all."Sun Eryuan was on the verge of tears, filled with regret. Had he known that coming to Yang Wujian’s room would lead to another encounter, he would never have joined this commotion.

“Why… why…?”

Suddenly, Shen Qingshi, who had been hanging her head, softly uttered two words. Unlike her usual cold tone, her voice now sounded like a spider’s thread on the verge of snapping—low and eerie.

Sun Eryuan couldn’t bear to stay any longer and tried to flee again. This time, Yang Wujian was even less courteous. He grabbed the back of Sun Eryuan’s neck like a monkey and pinned him to the ground, snarling, “You’re the one who brought this upon us! And you still want to run? Earlier, you said this place was haunted—why didn’t you tell us before?”

“Why… why?”

Shen Qingshi continued to mutter to herself, her tone growing increasingly venomous. Yang Wujian struggled to hold back a laugh, thinking that in the past, he would never have imagined Shen Qingshi capable of such acting.

Perhaps this was all thanks to the young master.

Thinking of Zhou Huai, Yang Wujian felt a pang of melancholy. Meanwhile, Sun Eryuan, still in the dark, had completely broken down. Clutching his head, he screamed, “Go find the one who betrayed you back then! Don’t come after me—I had nothing to do with it!”

Yang Wujian narrowed his eyes. “What did you say?”

Sun Eryuan murmured, “The people who died at the Aconite Kiln… they were all betrayed… they’re vengeful ghosts.”

“Didn’t Dong Dali already mention that?”

“No… it’s more than that. They… they were betrayed by their own mining brothers! The ones who killed them were fellow prospectors! Over the years, almost all the illegal mines that were discovered were exposed this way!”

Sun Eryuan trembled uncontrollably, his thick upper arms now utterly useless. Gradually, Yang Wujian understood. “So you’re saying… the malevolent spirits haunting this mine resent miners like you?”

Finally, Yang Wujian realized why Sun Eryuan was so terrified.

Earlier in Baiqian Town, they had heard that the Gold Splitting Hand had once mined in an old quarry left behind in Northern Xiang and nearly lost his head for it. Forced into the martial world, he learned the Gold Splitting Hand technique… In other words, Sun Eryuan had originally been an illegal miner.

To be precise, there was a difference between prospectors in the martial world and those who illegally smelted silver ore, whom the authorities hunted down. The former had little interest in silver mines, focusing instead on copper and iron. The authorities were aware of them but turned a blind eye over the years, as they operated alone and possessed some martial skills. As long as they didn’t cause major trouble, they were left alone.

Yang Wujian thought to himself that Sun Eryuan’s skills didn’t seem to come from a proper master—more like he had been driven to desperation and forced into the martial world… If that were the case, what about the others?

He immediately recalled Shen Qingshi mentioning that she seemed to have seen Dong Dali in the Zhaoming Division. Unless Dong Dali had committed crimes, Shen Qingshi would never have remembered him.

A suspicion formed in Yang Wujian’s mind. “So, you survived back then because you betrayed your brothers?”

This time, Sun Eryuan buried his head even lower. Only after repeated urging did he whisper, “They forced me to drug them… I had no choice. If I didn’t do it, I would have died.”

Yang Wujian’s mind worked quickly. The monkey’s words had made everything clear.The Aconite Kiln was located in such a remote area, yet it was still discovered by the authorities back then. There must have been a traitor who tipped them off... And those summoned here by Tian Ting had all engaged in such dealings before.

After all, given the government's thunderous crackdown on illegal silver smelting, once captured alive, survival was impossible—unless they traded a greater bargaining chip for their lives.

Yang Wujian asked again, "But didn't you say it was the corpse with paralyzed limbs that sought you out?"

Sun Eryuan kept his head down and refused to speak until Shen Qingshi pressed, "Why?" Trembling, Sun Eryuan stammered, "They say Tian Ting's limbs were paralyzed because his partners in mining the illegal silver betrayed him. The authorities broke his limbs and threw him into a mine shaft. If not for divine intervention, he would have died."

"What?"

Yang Wujian was startled. Until now, they had never truly regarded Tian Ting as a real "person," assuming that someone with such transcendent abilities must possess some divine nature.

But according to Sun Eryuan, although Tian Ting could rival a deity, he harbored resentment and hatred. Deliberately luring someone like Sun Eryuan, who had a tainted past, to the Aconite Kiln now seemed more like seeking revenge.

The questioning had reached its limit. Seeing Sun Eryuan trembling so badly he might wet himself, Yang Wujian knew his courage was only slightly greater than Zhou Huai's. Seizing the moment, he knocked Sun Eryuan unconscious from behind.

"Your acting skills have improved since our time at the Boundless Sword Manor."

Yang Wujian helped the disheveled Shen Qingshi to her feet, amused. "I thought you wouldn't agree to it."

Shen Qingshi frowned. "Something's odd."

Yang Wujian moved behind her and tied her hair back. "What's odd?"

"He should have known all this before coming, yet he still came."

Shen Qingshi pondered and said, "Knowing this is an ominous, gloomy place and the other party is no benevolent figure, yet he was drawn here by a single message—isn't that strange?"

Yang Wujian thought of Zhang Buwei, who had gone straight to dig up a grave on his first night, as if he already knew something was buried there.

He smiled. "It seems the stakes Tian Ting offered them might be higher than we imagined."

"What do you mean?"

"The letters Tian Ting sent them likely specified more precise locations. As they say, 'where there's great reward, there's boldness.' Only if the stakes were high enough would these people come despite knowing this place is ill-omened."

"But... none of them wanted others to share the spoils, so no one revealed anything after meeting. Zhang Buwei even tried to drug everyone at night to take it all for himself."

As she spoke, Shen Qingshi searched Sun Eryuan's person but only found the short letter he had shown them earlier. Yang Wujian shook his head. "The little monkey isn't that foolish. He'd never carry such a thing on him. Even under such pressure, he didn't talk, which means he has some cunning... We might as well wait and see what he does next."

Shen Qingshi thought for a moment. "Since the letters sent to each person were different, what about the Dong brothers..."

"Since we can't sleep anyway and are just speculating, we might as well go check directly."

After securing Sun Eryuan, Yang Wujian and Shen Qingshi left the stone hut.The night had deepened, and the Dong brothers' house remained utterly silent. Shen Qingshi took two steps closer to listen, then quickly said, "Neither of them is inside... not a single human sound can be heard."

"No wonder they seemed so pleased when the haunting occurred... they had an ambush prepared all along."

Yang Wujian let out a cold laugh. While they were busy extracting information from Sun Eryuan, the Dong brothers had already taken action. In this desolate wilderness, with the two absent from Stone Village, there was only one place they could have gone.

Once again, Yang Wujian and Shen Qingshi hurried toward the Ore Vein. By the moonlight, they spotted Dong Dali's massive figure from afar, but... it remained completely motionless.

A sense of foreboding rose in Yang Wujian's heart.

Stranded in this abandoned village, they had no way to determine whether the third watch had already passed. If it had... wouldn't the next day have already arrived?

"Quick, let's check."

Yang Wujian immediately stepped forward to investigate and saw Dong Dali kneeling on the ground like a stone statue. Even though his body had long stiffened, his gaze remained vacantly fixed on what he had dug up before him.

It was... the first corpse they had discovered earlier—limbs paralyzed, suspected to be Tian Ting.

Under the moonlight, the long-stripped corpse was pale as a human-shaped piece of jade, emanating an ominous white glow all over. Just as Shen Qingshi was about to step forward, Yang Wujian grabbed her arm.

"Wait."

He said, "There seems to be something on that corpse."