Volume II: The Mortal Realm Chapter Forty-Seven: Encounter with an Immortal

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The night was as dark as ink, the flames in the forest flickering like a lonely, dim lantern.

Ye Mingke sat quietly by himself in the night, his eyes half-closed, accompanied only by the firelight.

Suddenly, he raised his head sharply, gazing through the sparse branches at the pitch-black sky above. Several dazzling beams of light flashed overhead.

He instinctively narrowed his eyes.

Was that... sword light?

There were immortals riding swords through the sky. Yet, encountering these legendary saviors of light in such a shadowed and terrifying land, he felt no joy.

He thought of the emperor who claimed to rule the celestial court, and a shiver ran through his heart. That was an enemy as vast and boundless as the heavens themselves. Could these so-called cultivators of the mortal world be connected to him?

Though Dabai had managed to keep their pursuers trapped in the small world of the town, safety was not guaranteed.

During his late-night conversation with Li Han, he had revealed too much, had been far too careless.

“Live cautiously. You absolutely cannot die,” he reminded himself in silence.

...

There were immortals in the sky, but at this moment, they were nothing like immortals—fleeing in panic, as wretched as stray dogs, as if escaping something, though nothing chased behind them.

Jian Jiu rushed forward atop his flying sword, several other blades swirling in a protective circle around himself and his junior sister.

Beside him was the mature-faced cultivator from before. The three of them lagged at the end, frequently glancing back, as if wary of some unspeakable terror closing in.

“Gui Fan, senior brother!” Suddenly, a piercing scream came from the front left of the mature-faced cultivator. One of the sword-riding disciples, who had been watching the rear with them, turned in shock toward the source.

That disciple continued flying, but his head twisted at an unnatural angle, his face contorting in a grotesque, distorted expression as he stared back at Li Guifan.

The three at the rear could not yet fathom what was happening. But the disciple’s head kept turning, nearly past three hundred and sixty degrees.

“Help me!” His mouth formed the words, a hoarse, feeble cry escaping.

“Something’s wrong,” Jian Jiu muttered, preparing to act.

Suddenly, the disciple’s right hand moved—grabbing his own head and wrenching it in a sharp twist. With a sickening crack, he tore his own head free, a fountain of blood spurting skyward.

Those ahead who turned at the sound, and the three behind, all witnessed this horrifying, macabre scene; terror widened their eyes almost to the point of tearing.

They saw the disciple grasping his severed head, his headless body facing them. The face on the head was frozen in a twisted mask of agony and horror, yet the lips trembled, emitting a series of chilling laughs.

The sound rang clear in the ears of every cultivator present.

“The ghost—it’s back!” one disciple screamed in abject terror.

The headless body stood atop the flying sword, passing through a dense bank of mist. Suddenly, a blue light, like lightning, ignited in its abdomen and spread like ghostly flame, licking and writhing.

In an instant, the blue fire engulfed him. His body withered swiftly, becoming a shriveled, pitch-black corpse within the flames. The head, too, was swallowed by fire, its charcoal face twisting in a final, ghastly cackle.

“Attack—kill it!” Jian Jiu was the first to recover, grasping a sword before him and flinging it backward. The other swords whirled in concert, linking tip to tail in a line of dazzling sword light that pierced toward the blue-flamed, headless corpse.

The remaining cultivators, horrified by this bizarre suicide, also unleashed their own attacks, sword light and sorcery raining down.

The headless corpse was consumed by the searing onslaught, shattering inch by inch. The charred head trembled, and before it disintegrated, it let out a scream even sharper and more unearthly.

The corpse broke apart completely, reduced to drifting ash, but the echo of that laughter lingered in every heart.

Clang—

The flying sword that had carried the dead disciple trembled, then, drained of all power, fell into the churning mists below.

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The only thing left of the dead disciple was gone as well. Though they watched the last relic of a fellow brother vanish, not one dared reach for the sword.

For they were all terrified of the elusive, unfathomable “ghost”—something beyond comprehension or touch.

“That’s the seventh one,” one disciple murmured in a daze.

All the swords hovered in midair, for the hope of escaping the ghost by sword flight had been utterly crushed.

“How many will remain?” There was no fear on Jian Jiu’s face, only suppressed fury. He counted the frightened, wooden faces beside him.

“Seven.”

Of the famed Fourteen Swords who had crossed the sea, only seven survived.

“Let’s go. There’s no point in staying.” Jian Jiu addressed the dazed, numb gathering coldly.

“As long as we’re alive, there’s always a way.”

“Junior brothers, sisters—let’s move,” said their leader, Senior Brother Li Guifan.

The seven surviving cultivators turned their swords to leave, but this time, they stayed close together.

Though they knew that, should the ghost strike again, even clustering together would do little, fear drove them to seek some small sense of safety in proximity.

Jian Jiu considered mocking and warning those pressing too close—if another was possessed and turned to attack, the rest might not escape—but before he could speak, the lively red-garbed Song Mingyu had already drawn near, her trembling hand clutching his sleeve, eyes wide and lost like a frightened doe.

His cold, detached face softened for a moment, but in the end, he said nothing. The tension in their group had stretched to the breaking point.

...

At dawn, the men resting in the forest awakened.

A peaceful night’s sleep and the joy of soon returning home left smiles on every face. After a simple breakfast, they quickly repacked their belongings and lined up, excitement shining in their eyes.

Everyone was up, but Ye Mingke still sat, the black-cloth-wrapped sword case resting across his knees.

“Friends,” he said, raising his head to look at the familiar faces he had journeyed with these past days, his voice solemn.

“We’re headed for the Cang Sea, and I promised to do everything in my power to protect you. But I have a request I hope you’ll honor.”

The once merry grove fell silent, the mood turning serious. Only Zhugan, still not fully recovered from his wounds, spoke up boisterously.

“Ye, you’ve saved our lives so many times—what wouldn’t we agree to?”

“I mean it,” Ye Mingke said, sitting up straight and gazing at them.

“I hope you won’t mention my existence, my name, or any information about me to anyone. Can you promise that?”

“Ha, is that all? If you don’t want people to know about you, we just won’t tell,”

“That’s no problem at all,”

“Haha, fine. But Ye, you’re not some runaway prince or noble from another country, are you?”

Apart from Zhugan, the others, initially sobered by Ye Mingke’s grave tone, immediately agreed to such a simple request, even joking with him.

Only Li Han, who had guessed the night before that Ye Mingke was likely from an immortal estate, sensed the weight behind his words.

For mortals to become entangled in immortal disputes—even the smallest ripple among immortals could become a tidal wave to mortals, costing them their lives.

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Still, he agreed. He wanted to do something, however small, for the man who had saved him so many times.

After Ye Mingke rose, he led the group deeper into the perilous forest, following the marks Li Han had left to guide them back to the small boat they’d left by the shore.

They survived several attacks by strange beasts and avoided a few places where Ye Mingke sensed lurking danger. At last, they emerged from the woods onto the beach.

The boat was still there.

Together, they hauled it back into deeper water.

“We just need to wait for the tide to rise, then we can row out,”

“It wouldn’t have been so much trouble, but the Ghost Sea is so strange, we just didn’t trust a rope anchor. That’s why we pulled it ashore,” Li Han explained, wiping sweat from his brow and turning to Ye Mingke.

“Alright, we’ll wait for the tide then,” Ye Mingke nodded. He had grown up on an island, but knew little of seafaring, so he left these matters to Li Han.

As they waited for the tide, everyone relaxed, chatting happily by the shore, confident that with Ye Mingke present, they would make it home safely.

What they did not know was that this period of waiting would shatter their dreams of a safe return.

A flash of blinding sword light streaked across the sky.

“It’s an immortal!”

“There are immortals!”

The men, seeing rainbow arcs in the daylight for the first time, were dumbstruck, crying out in astonishment.

But what surprised them more was that the rainbow lights, already far off, suddenly turned and headed back.

“Why are the immortals coming back?”

“Wait, are the immortals flying toward us?”

“Are they here to rescue us?”

They watched in awe as the rainbow lights shot closer, and the figures of the white-robed immortals became clear.

Ye Mingke looked up at those elegant, white-robed figures, but instead of awe, a suffocating sense of danger seized his heart.

Danger! Danger!

His animal-like instincts screamed in alarm.

“Run! It’s dangerous!” he shouted to the men still frozen at the water’s edge.

“What? Why?” The men, confused, turned to look at him.

In an instant, the rainbow lights arrived.

The fastest crashed down onto the sand—a white-robed immortal with a wild, crazed expression, face twisted in terror, stumbled forward and grabbed Fang Si, who had only just sensed something was wrong and tried to flee.

“Don’t choose me, don’t choose me!”

“Take him! Take him!” the immortal shrieked in terror, like a vengeful ghost.