Volume Two: Mortal World Chapter Fifty-One: Fortune-Telling for Ghosts

Because night had fallen, the cultivator named Song Mingqing went nearby to gather firewood and lit a bonfire. The flames pushed back the darkness, but only managed to dispel a portion of the fear lingering in people’s hearts.

It had only been one or two hours since the ghost last appeared—still not the usual time when it would manifest. Yet the shadow of that ghost hung heavily over everyone’s mind, and terror was etched upon many faces present.

Ye Mingke showed no fear on his face; he simply lowered his head, listening to Li Guifan’s account while drawing something on the ground with a branch.

The first line read: “Black shroud, humanoid lightning, possession.” These were the three forms in which the ghost existed.

The second line: “Rebirth, possession, thunderfire.” These were its abilities.

The third line, written much larger than the previous two, declared: “Never let the ghost escape!” This was the taboo when confronting the ghost.

His memory and mental calculation were formidable, but he was accustomed to drafting his thoughts this way, a habit fostered during his studies of Celestial Chess, when Aunt Long would feed him piles of draft paper as tall as a small mountain.

“The ghost that returned was too powerful for you to handle—how did you escape in the end?” Ye Mingke asked, his voice as calm as ever, lending a sense of reassurance to those around him and inspiring a subtle trust.

“I used a Spirit Awakening Talisman to kill the ghost that escaped and returned,” Sword Nine replied quietly. Perhaps apart from Ye Mingke, he was the only one among them who remained unafraid and could keep his composure.

Of course, not far away, the sword-bearer Ying Kui sat beneath a tree’s shadow, his face sinister and crazed, seemingly unafraid of the ghost as well—but his half-mad state could not be called calm.

“The Spirit Awakening Talisman is a precious charm bestowed by the sect to protect disciples’ lives. It requires no spiritual power to activate; one simply triggers the mental imprint upon it. Its power is immense.”

“Of all of us, only Sword Nine and I still possess one,” Li Guifan continued, perhaps encouraged by Ye Mingke’s clear and logical demeanor to place more hope in this unusual mortal, recounting the events in great detail.

“After Sword Nine destroyed the ghost with the talisman, we feared its return. We flew on swords for a full day, but even though we left the area where the ghost was first encountered, it reappeared before us last night.”

“The fourth time it appeared, it possessed and killed one of us, but we managed to destroy it.”

Ye Mingke recalled seeing several bright flashes of swordlight in the sky the previous night; perhaps those belonged to the people before him now.

Sadly, although he had been alert at the time, he still ended up encountering these cultivators, landing himself in an extremely perilous situation.

“After that, I began to try, as you did, to deduce a pattern in the ghost’s behavior,” Sword Nine interjected, glancing at the words Ye Mingke had written on the ground, recognizing that their methods of problem-solving were closely aligned.

He looked at Ye Mingke, and a glint of excitement shone in his detached eyes.

“I discovered a commonality in the ghost’s attacks: every time it possessed someone, its target was always the weakest among us. So I proposed a hypothesis: the ghost always possesses the weakest person in the group.”

Li Guifan continued from Sword Nine’s words. “This hypothesis was confirmed at dawn today, when the ghost appeared for the fifth time and possessed the weakest disciple among us. Even with our preparations, we could not save him.”

“But Sword Nine had previously placed a secret technique on that disciple, capturing a strand of the ghost’s pure aura.”

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“So now Sword Nine’s Enlightenment Sword can alert us in advance to the ghost’s appearance.”

“And the sixth time the ghost appeared, you were all present, so I need not recount that again.”

Ye Mingke thoughtfully raised his head, gazing at the elegant little sword weaving affectionately through Sword Nine’s long, loose hair, then closed his eyes.

The scenes from the ghost’s appearance today replayed in his mind: the white-robed cultivator who pounced and grabbed Fang Wu’s arm with a ghastly face, Sword Nine’s elegant little sword, Sword Nine’s ghost-slaying sword formation, the ghost’s possession, its aura, its escape.

Everything he had experienced, combined with the information just recounted by Sword Nine and Li Guifan, intertwined and corroborated in his mind.

He opened his eyes and began to speak.

“First, the ghost’s Law of Possessing the Weakest has been validated at least four times and is basically reliable. Including Fang Wu, who, by constitution, should indeed be the weakest among us.”

Fang Wu, who was pressing his freshly bandaged arm, shuddered instinctively at hearing his name and raised his thin, gaunt face.

His face, tinged with bluish-black and deeply sunken, resembled a mortal drunkard; his eyes were dull and vacant, filled only with terror.

Several people shifted their gaze to Fang Wu. This cowardly drunk, though younger than Old Liu, and with a bigger build than the adolescent Ye Mingke and the stick-like Zhu Gan, was quite possibly the weakest person present.

He stared blankly at their gazes, and after a moment, finally understood, mouth agape, terror nearly spilling from his pupils.

“The ghost... next time, it’ll choose me again?” he stammered, trembling so violently he could hardly sit, nearly collapsing to the ground.

“Quiet. If you’re so frightened that you can’t think or respond, leave it to those beside you who can. Don’t drag the group down,” Ye Mingke’s words were stern and cold as he turned to Fang Wu.

But his admonition had little effect; instead, the nonchalant Song Mingqing slapped the terrified mortal’s shoulder and shot him a cold look.

Only then, under the immense fear imposed by the immortals, did Fang Wu fall silent.

“The Law of the Weakest needs further clarification: the ghost merely appears first beside the weakest person. If its initial attack fails, and there are others nearby susceptible to possession, it will target them as well.”

“That’s what happened today.”

After speaking, Ye Mingke wrote two new lines beside the bonfire on the sandy ground.

“Possession, once successful, cannot be reversed.”

“The ghost targets the weakest person for possession first.”

He then started a new line, consulting Li Guifan about the specific times the ghost had appeared and marking a range.

The shortest interval between appearances was four hours; the longest, seven.

This range excluded the ghost that returned after escaping for more than a day, focusing only on the time it took for the ghost to be reborn after destruction.

Finally, the question of the ghost’s power.

Ye Mingke looked up at Sword Nine, who was seated quietly by the fire, and asked, “If you consider the ghost you first encountered as a baseline of one, what about the ghosts you met afterward?”

The question was abrupt and unexpected; Li Guifan and others were caught off guard, but Sword Nine reached out with his sword and wrote seven numbers in the sand before Ye Mingke.

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One, seven, nine, seventy-seven, twenty, twenty-seven, thirty-nine.

Ye Mingke stared at the numbers, lost in thought, his brow furrowed as he scribbled something with his branch.

“What’s this?” Song Mingqing craned his neck to peer at the seemingly patternless numbers, curious.

No one answered him, because the only two capable were both focused on the numbers in the dirt.

“You’re trying to deduce the pattern of the ghost’s increasing strength and its appearance intervals, to identify the initial value and variables affecting its power and timing,” Sword Nine observed Ye Mingke’s calculations.

“Your method is sound, but I’ve already tried. No model fits.”

“That ghost’s behavior seems essentially random.”

Ye Mingke did not respond, but moved to a fresh patch of earth to continue his calculations.

“What’s this method? No, you’ve used seven different algorithms now—could there be a foundational approach I’ve never seen?” Sword Nine watched Ye Mingke’s calculations, his eyes glowing with surprise.

The numbers Sword Nine wrote took the first ghost’s strength as a unit—one—and quantified the power of each subsequent ghost’s appearance. The abrupt jump in the middle represented the strength of the ghost that returned after escaping.

Ye Mingke tried to correlate these numbers with other factors, but as Sword Nine had said, they seemed utterly patternless.

“It’s not time—not entirely. If it were, the growth would be gradual, or even if it were a leap, the increase rate should accelerate, so it doesn’t fit.”

“Nor is it location.”

“It’s unrelated to climate. Well, all the foggy weather—does that count?”

“Or the duration of each battle?”

“No, it should be depletion. Every time the ghost is killed, it takes more energy than the ghost possesses, so the power should keep rising.”

“But that’s not right either—the greatest depletion should have been when destroying the ghost that returned after escaping, but the second appearance had much lower energy, only twenty compared to seventy-seven.”

Ye Mingke did not answer Sword Nine’s question, muttering to himself as he continued to write, while Sword Nine seemed triggered by a train of thought, his right hand twitching as he calculated.

In the end, both stopped in frustration, exchanging a glance.

“No good,” Ye Mingke said, putting down the branch.

“No model can be established; there’s no pattern,” Sword Nine agreed, withdrawing his hand.

“You two idiots, after all this time, do you have any method at all? It’s been two hours already,” Song Mingyu, unable to bear the pair’s cryptic exchanges, puffed out her cheeks and urged them impatiently.

Ye Mingke looked at Sword Nine. “If we can’t calculate it, we must rely on luck. Two options. If we’re lucky, at least nobody has to die.”

“You thought of it too,” Sword Nine replied, meeting Ye Mingke’s gaze.

“Anyone with a normal mind would, except for the fool who’s been scared witless,” Ye Mingke tossed the branch aside, stretched his arms and leaned back, speaking coolly.

“The trouble is, most people are less than normal when afraid,” Sword Nine noted.

“What are you two idiots thinking? Spit it out already!” Song Mingyu, unable to contain her curiosity, demanded.