“Milord, I’m the real one, she’s fake!” The Wanfeng by Lu Yun’s side was on the verge of bursting into panicked tears.
“Sir, you just told this servant to not call you ‘milord’.” The other girl smiled coquettishly. “So of course the one calling you ‘sir’ is the real one.”
Though she was smiling and her mouth was moving, the expression on her freakishly ashen face remained frozen in that uncanny smile. It didn’t change at all, as though it’d been carved into stone. Her voice also wasn’t coming from her mouth, but rather echoing out of her body instead.
Lu Yun grabbed Wanfeng’s hand and slowly backed up. The other Wanfeng stood next to the pill cauldron, seemingly wanting to step forward but prevented from doing so by her unnaturally stiff body.
“Sir, won’t you come help me?” her mournful voice rose.
“Wait!” Lu Yun suddenly recalled a few lines from an ancient record in his master’s library. “Stone sculptures in tombs accumulate yin energy and collect evil spirits. Encountering the vitality of the living transforms them into stone spirits. Great horror lies ahead.”
There was no further explanation as to exactly what stone spirits were, but the last four words were clarification enough.
The stone sculpture next to the pill cauldron had disappeared, and in its place was the immobile Wanfeng. Patently, this was the stone spirit recorded in the ancient record. Since the tomb was located in the midst of the Crouching Black Tortoise, it was a node of supreme yin of its own. Who knew how many living beings had lost their lives on the south side of the mountain? The amassed grievances and resentment must be able to pierce through the sky!
That was why such a monster had been nurtured here. The stone sculpture must have absorbed Wanfeng’s vitality when she touched it, thereby transforming into a stone spirit.
“That’s a stone spirit, stay far away from it! We’re leaving!” Lu Yun took in a deep breath and tugged on his maid’s hand to leave. Wanfeng had only briefly brushed it just now, so the stone spirit hadn’t absorbed quite enough vitality and was still partially petrified.
“Come back, come back here!” the stone spirit shrieked shrilly when it saw the humans were about to depart. “Boy toy, you can leave if you want, but leave the baby girl behind! I want to eat her, I want to eat her!!”
Wanfeng shuddered violently, deep fear suffusing her face.
“Don’t pay any attention to it and don’t look back.” Lu Yun wrapped an arm around Wanfeng’s waist and issued stern instructions, stopping the girl in mid head turn.
“Little thief, you ruined my plans! I’m going to eat you ahhhhhhhhh!” The stone spirit howled like a banshee.
Crack!
A fracture suddenly appeared on its body; it seemed to be on the verge of crumbling.
“Don’t look!” Lu Yun covered Wanfeng’s eyes when he saw curiosity begin filling them. She couldn’t turn back at this moment, no matter what. She couldn’t look at the stone spirit.
The spirit had awakened because it absorbed Wanfeng’s vitality. If the maid looked at it again, it would entrance the girl and control her mind, making her its puppet.
Then, once the spirit sucked the maid dry, it would slough off its stone form and walk about freely. Though Lu Yun didn’t know the full extent of the spirit’s abilities, he had hefty amounts of experience with similar things.
The stone spirit continued howling, but Lu Yun couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. Even if this thing embodied great horror, a great horror that couldn’t move wasn’t much of a threat.
The two humans arrived at a closed stone door that Lu Yun couldn’t budge, no matter how hard he shoved it.
“Sir, please allow me!” Wanfeng forced herself into a better mood and plugged her ears so that she wouldn’t be bothered by the spirit’s shrieks. She placed both hands on the stone door, a pale-green hue flared out from her.
Rumble.
The door that was as heavy as Mount Tai for Lu Yun was easily opened by the slender beauty.
Is this what it means to be a cultivator? Admiration flashed across the governor’s face. More than ever, he really wished he could cultivate. If he was also a cultivator and had his maid’s stunning abilities, then life would be ten times easier in this tomb.
“Hehehehe, I’ve finally found you two.” A sinister voice sounded from the other side of the threshold the moment the door opened.
“Ah!!!” Startled into a high-pitched scream, Wanfeng subconsciously took three steps back, her face frozen by incredulity. Someone who shouldn’t have been there at all was standing right in front of them!
How is this possible?! Eyes wide with shock, Lu Yun felt all of his hairs stand on end. This couldn’t be real!
Ge Long!!
The dead Ge Long, the dead and decapitated Ge Long, stood in front of them!
Dumbfounded, Lu Yun subconsciously moved next to Wanfeng.
“Get out of the way!” The maid screwed up her courage and summoned a small tornado in her hand, then brought it crashing down on the dead steward’s head.
Bam!
Roll roll roll.
Ge Long’s head fell off his neck and rolled down the steps into the stone chamber.
“I think my head’s fallen off again.” The head seemed to sigh while Ge Long’s body knelt down. The body crawled probingly into the chamber, slowly moving toward its head.
As much as she’d seen and weathered in the tomb, Wanfeng was still flabbergasted at this scene. Lu Yun’s head likewise prickled with numbness. He wasn’t afraid of zombies, and though corpse flies and stone spirits were spooky, he could still accept those.
But what the hell was all this?
Someone already dead, someone with their head chopped off, was alive and kicking in front of them!
The most important detail was that the guy’s headless corpse was crawling on the ground in search of its head. There was a large hole in it, courtesy of Wanfeng’s sword. The bizarre scene painted the already frightening chamber with even more terror.
“Mi-milord, he, he…” Wanfeng’s shaking voice couldn’t form a complete sentence. Lu Yun was likewise lost for words. Nothing in his sect’s ancient records had spoken of anything like this.
Ge Long found his head, placed it back on his neck, and wobbled back to his feet.
“You, you, you—what are you!” The stone spirit suddenly shrieked with fear. “Don’t come nearer! Go away!”
“Eh? Isn’t this little girl Wanfeng?” Ge Long held his head in place with one hand and gave the stone spirit a once over. “No, you’re not her. You look very delicious!” he mused with some confusion.
His eyes shone with excitement, then he opened his mouth wide and bit down on the stone spirit’s neck.
An inky black air current flowed from the spirit’s neck into Ge Long’s mouth. The spirit struggled and shrieked, but since it couldn’t move, it couldn’t shake off its attacker.
The spirit’s cries gradually dwindled, then ceased, the spirit having turned back into a mere stone sculpture in the end.
“Burp!” Ge Long burped, his head bouncing once on his neck but managing to stay put. “That tasted good indeed.”
Wanfeng’s eyes rolled up in the back of her head and she toppled over in a dead faint. The series of events had finally proven too much for her. Though she was a cultivator, she was still a fifteen year old girl at the end of the day. Persevering until now after encountering all of these happenings was already quite a feat.
“The old servant greets Your Excellency.” Ge Long turned around and bowed to Lu Yun.
Roll roll roll. His head fell off again.
“Don’t come any closer!” Lu Yun picked up Wanfeng and backed up with her in his arms. “Are you alive or dead?”
The steward located his head again and placed it back on his neck. Uncertainty flashed through his eyes.
“I, I don’t know if I’m dead or alive either.” He wanted to shake his head, but since his head and neck weren’t connected, he couldn’t manage it.
“Are you here for revenge?” Lu Yun ventured cautiously.
“No, no, no! I serve milord, why would I seek revenge? Though milord and the little girl killed this servant, I am loyal to a fault,” Ge Long responded righteously.
“Then, your granddaughter?”
“It would’ve been her honor to die at milord’s hands! But it wasn’t you who killed her!”
“What do you know?” Lu Yun felt a bit uncomfortable. He glanced subconsciously at Wanfeng and saw that she was still unconscious. In a similar vein, his subconscious felt that Ge Long had discovered that Lu Yun wasn’t the original governor of Dusk.
“It was that bastard Xue Lang who killed Ning’er!”
Xue Lang was the name of Grand Steward Xue serving in the governor’s manor.
Lu Yun heaved a sigh of relief. It seemed like Ge Long didn’t know of his secrets. “Then what are you doing here?”
“To follow milord, of course!” Fervor bloomed in Ge Long’s eyes as he looked at the governor. Lu Yun could almost see Ge Long’s brain boil over with excitement through the hole in the servant’s skull. [1]
“Then how did you get in here?” Lu Yun took a few more steps back. There was something very wrong with this Ge Long. Had he been tainted by the evil energy in the mountain and turned into a zombie?
But even a thousand-year-old zombie was a brainless thing, or had just the barest inkling of intelligence. Apart from his head regularly falling onto the floor, Ge Long was no different from an ordinary person.
“This old servant walked inside. I walked and walked and saw a big door. When I opened it, I saw you and Wanfeng. Milord, it’s very dangerous inside this tomb. It’s very strange and tricksy, let me protect you!” Ge Long spoke with a righteous air, but the hole in the middle of his forehead was really too… eye-catching.
“That’s what you said when we left town,” grumbled Lu Yun. “Then come with me if you say so.”
It didn’t seem like he could get rid of this living, yet not alive, dead but not really fellow. He might as well let him do whatever. The guy spent only a few seconds sucking the horrifying stone spirit back into a sculpture, after all. If Ge Long had wanted to kill him, Lu Yun would’ve died a long time ago.
“Aye!” Ge Long cheered and quickstepped to Lu Yun’s side.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
At this moment, the wall on the other side of the stone chamber suddenly shattered. Countless corpse flies and a millennia-old zombie with a green flame floating next to it charged through the opening.
“Another yummy thing!” Ge Long almost drooled at the sight of the zombie. “But this yum-yum doesn’t look easy to deal with. Milord, you leave with the little girl first, leave this to me!” He blocked off the zombie’s path.
Lu Yun had no mind to spare for Ge Long. He hefted Wanfeng into his arms and rushed out of the stone chamber.
Crack.
“Yum-yum, eat my Flying Head Technique!” Ge Long took off his head and flung it ruthlessly at the big zombie.
1. Ew, wtf is going on? Ew.