Way of the Devil

“Puff, puff, puff!”

Three rays of bright red light flashed across the darkness, then disappeared slowly.

The children’s shadows shattered into countless pieces one after another, then turned into white dust and dissipated.

The darkness was lit up by the red light that suddenly appeared.

Even though it was only the light from the man’s veins and sword, it was still eye-catching in the pitch-black environment.

Fei Bailing was startled too; her heart jumped like crazy in her chest, and wouldn’t calm down even after some time.

Her gaze darted around, and she finally let out a sigh of relief as she saw the shadow of the child closest to her suddenly disappear.

“Hisss.”

She took a huge breath, and lowered her head which was drenched in sweat.

She was nearly… nearly caught by those children. Thankfully, this person had randomly charged out through the wall.

“Thank you for saving my life.” Fei Bailing raised her head and tried to stand up, but even now, her legs were soft, and she could only sit on the ground.

“You live in this mansion?” Lu Sheng looked around. The air was filled with a sliver of a strange scent.

It wasn’t Yin Qi nor Ghost Qi, nor was it something similar to Devil Qi. It was some other strange scent he couldn’t identify.

“I…” Fei Bailing’s whole body had gone soft, but knowing that this person in front of her was her only chance of survival, she immediately told him everything that had happened.

“You mean the Fei Family had been acting strangely for a while now?” Lu Sheng frowned.

“Yes… I… I have another friend who is also inside, could you….” Fei Bailing thought of Inspector Sima Xiu who was still inside.

“What are you talking about?” Lu Sheng interrupted her, without care. He was quite intrigued by the this mansion, and didn’t plan to leave until he figured out what was going on.

Encountering trouble like this in an ordinary county capital was intriguing enough, let alone considering the fact that he had never seen something like this before.

“You can get out by yourself, I want to walk around a little longer.” Lu Sheng looked left and right while holding his sword. “What happened to those shadows?”

He completely ignored Fei Bailing and walked up to where the children stood and carefully poked around with his senses.

“Walk around a little longer???” Fei Bailing’s heart nearly stopped. The Fei Family Mansion was filled with strange dangers, yet someone was still intrigued by it, and even insisted on walking toward his death.

“I hope you don’t stay here for long. I’m the third daughter of the owner of this mansion, if I had any other options, I wouldn’t—”

“Shhh…” Lu Sheng abruptly put a finger in front of his mouth to motion for her to be quiet.

Fei Bailing paused and looked around, but didn’t notice anything wrong.

“What—”

“Puff!”

Instantly, a ray of red light exploded, splitting into ten in front of her eyes, and flew toward different corners of the garden.

Lu Sheng, on the other hand, stepped forward and slammed his sword toward her head with both hands.

“Puff!”

“Aghh!” Fei Bailing screamed in terror and closed her eyes. But, she didn’t feel any pain after a moment. She opened her eyes and looked around.

Two pale arms floated in mid-air beside her neck.

The arms seemed like they were about to hug her, but no longer had the ability to do so. Red markings started to appear clearer and clearer on their wrists.

Lu Sheng’s sword was right to the left of her neck and cleanly cut through the pale arm. A faint red bloodstain was still left on the sword.

Fei Bailing breathed heavily, her body drenched in cold sweat. She stood stiffly in place, not daring to move.

Until Lu Sheng slowly drew his sword away from her head.

“Hisss…”

The arms to both sides of her neck turned into a swirl of white dust and covered her body.

“Hah! Hah! Hah!”

Fei Bailing started to gasp for breath. She fell forward with her hands in front of her. She was in a trance, and felt as if all the strength in her body had been exhausted. Even breathing was hard.

“I haven’t… seen this thing before? This species…” Lu Sheng crouched next to the white dust and stirred it around.

“So this was how the white dust came about…” A sense of realization showed up on his face.

“Smack.”

All of a sudden, the faint sound of soft footsteps could be heard from afar.

Lu Sheng raised his head and abruptly turned to the dark corners of the passage. A vague shape with long hair stood there, like it was staring at him through the darkness.

“You are welcome to try to kill me, little guy.” Lu Sheng raised his hand and lightly swiped across his neck, wearing a cruel smile on his face.

The long-haired shape slowly disappeared in the dark passage.

Lu Sheng held up his sword, stood up, and looked toward Fei Bailing.

“Do you want to come with me or go by yourself?”

“I… with you!” Fei Bailing finally realized he was trying to save her.

Lu Sheng was too lazy to respond, and felt the Mental Energy coursing into him. He instantly knew he’d made the right decision to come here.

Even though this place was putrid, it was an absolute treasure trove for him.

The arms appeared by themselves behind Fei Bailing. Just the arms and nothing else. That was why he easily cut through both.

Surprisingly, he got 10 units of Mental Energy out of that.

He only planned to take care of the putrid scent, but he was immediately intrigued by the presence of Mental Energy. It seemed that no one from the county capital had noticed. This was a perfect opportunity for him to farm Mental Energy.

“Crack.”

Lightning flashed, shining a pale light throughout the garden.

Lu Sheng brought Fei Bailing with him and slowly walked along the passage. Everything around them was dark. Only a single bedroom was on their side, and even it was covered in dark mist.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The sound of their feet echoed across the passage without any coverage.

“After all that happened, how much longer did you stay in this mansion?” Lu Sheng asked as they went along.

“Ten or so days…” Fei Bailing thought back and surprised even herself.

“Ten or so days? What did you eat and drink then?” Lu Sheng glanced at her, amazed.

“What? What did you say?” Fei Bailing stared at Lu Sheng with a confused expression.

“I said, what did you eat and drink these past few days?” Lu Sheng repeated.

“I hid in my bedroom and didn’t dare come out. I swear it’s true, I didn’t take one step outside,” Fei Bailing answered a random question. “Right, what did you ask? I didn’t hear you correctly.”

Lu Sheng suddenly stopped and stared straight at Fei Bailing’s face in the dark. He had asked twice already, and both times with a loud voice. Yet somehow, she still couldn’t seem to hear it.

“Nothing,” he said flatly. “Tell me when these things started to happen to Fei Family.”

“When…” Fei Bailing fell into deep thought. He was right… when did everything start? When did everyone start to get nervous? Why did people have to be checked to go in and out of the mansion? Why were people regularly cleaning blades that weren’t usually used at all?

The two continued forward.

Suddenly, Fei Bailing saw someone through the window in her peripheral vision.

The window was open, and the smiling face of a middle-aged man appeared in the dark. The face was pale, but also relatively clean.

“Uncle Zhao?! You… How are you here?!” Fei Bailing trembled.

“Oh, it’s Bailing… You brought a friend with you?” the face said slowly.

“Uncle Zhao…” Fei Bailing stepped back. Meeting Uncle Fei Zhao under these circumstances was not normal at all. Why didn’t he show up earlier, and instead chose to appear at this exact moment?

“Bailing… why don’t you invite your guest inside—”

“Hiss!”

A blinding ray of red light flashed across the darkness and cut through the middle-aged man. Then, it promptly cut the window and wall into two.

“Boom.”

A pile of rocks fell down, bringing with it the body of the Uncle Zhao.

“Ahh!”

Fei Bailing retreated several steps and covered her mouth after seeing the truth, her face turning pale.

“This place sure has a lot of tricks.” Lu Sheng walked near it and looked at the Uncle Zhao that had only half of his body laying on the ground.

This Uncle Zhao’s upper body had been stitched into the wall behind the window by some sort of black thread. It almost blended into one with the wall. Its mouth was still opening and closing, emitting a faint clicking noise.

“The corpse was made into a puppet.” He casually discerned where that thing came from.

‘The corpse…’

Fei Bailing’s heart sunk as she heard the words. When she looked back at Uncle Zhao, that half of his body that was left had already turned into white dust.

“This place…” Lu Sheng sheathed his sword. Although it appeared he used True Qi, he actually used Devil Essence.

The Yin Flame of the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl creeped up the instant his blade struck, and quickly gathered a wave of Mental Energy.

The Yin Flame of his Eight Headed Divine Pearl was sitting solidly at the upper limit of Devil King level. Even when used without any Secret Arts, the Yin Flame could match the strength of a normal Devil King. It was far from something these random anomalies could bear.

“Let’s go. We are going to the center of this place.” He didn’t even look at the white dust on the ground, and instead sped up toward the end of the passage.

The scent of that strange Essence Qi in the air got thicker.

Although Lu Sheng couldn’t find any clues, following the Essence Qi to the center couldn’t be wrong.

Holding his sword in one hand, he soon led Fei Bailing in front of an office.

“This is my father’s office.” Fei Bailing nervously looked left and right, scared that some other danger would pop up.

“Do you have the key?” Lu Sheng asked casually.

“…No.” Fei Bailing shook her head.

The door suddenly opened from the inside as they were talking.

Fei Bailing’s father, Fei Shende, stood at the door, smiling in the dark.

“Bailing, you finally have the time to visit?”

“Dad!!!” Fei Bailing was startled, then turned ecstatic. Tears were about to stream out of her eyes.

“Whoosh!”

But, suddenly, a huge hand reached out from the side. It grabbed Fei Shende’s head and squeezed it lightly.

“Ripp…”

With the sound of crumpling paper, Fei Shende’s whole body started to twist.

Fei Bailing finally noticed that her ‘dad’ was only a live portrait painting.

‘Fei Shende’ was quickly crumpled into a ball and burned. Lu Sheng stood by the side and ignored the screaming paper man on the flood. He strode into the room and looked around.

Soon, he found a little notebook, something that also looked like a diary.

He lightly flipped it open and found that it was filled with information.

“…I failed… I still failed in the end. What went wrong?” A lot of pages were ripped out of the notebook, and only a tiny line of messy writing was present on the most recent page, clearly left by someone in a hurry.

Lu Sheng casually threw the notebook to Fei Bailing behind him, and started to walk around.

The rows of books on the shelves were covered in white dust. He chose one at random: ‘ 36 Great Shipwrecks ‘.

Lu Sheng frowned, then chose another.

‘ Seasonal Winds and Ocean Currents ‘.

He selected a few others, and all of them were books related to ocean and sailing.