Chapter 117: The Yellow Paper

As the city gate swung open, a straight road stretched out before them. On either side of the road stood dilapidated houses, extending all the way from the gate. Rather than a street, it resembled more a narrow passageway. Not a single soul was visible along the way, not even a dog.

Amidst the eerie silence, Fang Mu caught glimpses of shadowy figures flickering before his eyes, vanishing as quickly as they appeared.

“This is strange,” Zhang Liu said, drawing his wild goose feather saber. “Looks like we’re the first to enter the city, or perhaps the previous mystics who came in are no longer here.”

Tie Suanxian shook his head. “There’s another possibility — this isn’t the only road into the city.”

With the shadows gone, the street fell silent once more. Aside from the crumbling buildings, everything else appeared unusually clean.

Fang Mu drew his butcher’s cleaver. “Let’s go in and take a look.”

The group stepped inside the city, but the moment Fang Mu crossed the gate, a chilling coldness washed over him. He furrowed his brow and glanced around, only to find Zhang Liu, Tie Suanxian, Chen Yan, and the others had vanished without a trace. Their disappearance was abrupt, coinciding exactly with the arrival of the cold sensation.

“Could it be an illusion?” Fang Mu pondered.

He had encountered something similar before; Yan Xian had vanished suddenly in Tiger Leap Gorge.

After a moment’s hesitation, Fang Mu activated his Green Eye Technique. His pupils instantly flooded with emerald green, but the street before him remained unchanged—no threads of light, no distortion.

He retracted the technique, concluding that what he saw was not a hallucination. His companions had truly disappeared, but the method of their disappearance left no trace.

“Where could they have gone?”

With no answer forthcoming, Fang Mu pressed forward alone. The deserted street echoed only with the sound of his footsteps, deepening the sense of unease.

Approaching the end of the street, something unusual caught his attention.

First, the sound: the beating of drums and clanging of gongs reached his ears. Fang Mu frowned. Such noises signified two extremes—either a joyous occasion or a funeral. Much like the suona horn, which could be played at both birth and death, the slow rhythm carried a tinge of sorrow.

After taking a few steps, Fang Mu suddenly felt something beneath his foot. Looking down, he saw he was stepping on a sheet of yellow paper. Following the paper’s trail, he found the once neat street littered with ominous yellow sheets.

At the end of the paper path stood a procession—no more than a dozen figures holding bronze gongs and suonas, the source of the music.

In the center was a horse—not a real one, but a paper effigy, hollow and lifted aloft by the crowd.

The figures faced Fang Mu directly, moving toward him. As they drew nearer, he discerned their appearance: stiff, slow movements and bodies covered in dense corpse-like spots. Their vacant eyes stared fixedly at Fang Mu, as if he were their quarry.

Fang Mu sneered, gripping his cleaver as he advanced.

Halfway through, he struck. A fiery red net of blades swept out, yet astonishingly, it passed through the eerie figures without harming them, instead carving countless cracks into the street beneath.

The figures seemed oblivious to the blazing blade net, continuing forward with corpse-spotted faces breaking into smiles.

Fang Mu frowned. “Another rule-based apparition?”

From the gate to this street, all the strange entities he encountered appeared governed by specific rules.

He wondered if the vanished Tie Suanxian and others had encountered similar beings. The separation of several into individuals suggested the city intended to isolate and defeat them one by one.

But how to overcome these rule-bound phantoms?

While pondering, the apparitions closed to within ten meters. The lead figure smiled even brighter and raised its hands, conjuring a crimson robe.

A chilly wind swept over Fang Mu as he suddenly realized he was clothed in the red garment, a large scarlet flower pinned over his chest.

The festive attire made the meaning clear—this was a wedding ceremony!

In the ancient Yue Kingdom, weddings followed a process: the three letters and six betrothals aside, the bride was received and then the couple worshipped the ancestral hall.

Fang Mu guessed they were at the stage of bride reception, with earlier formalities skipped.

The phantoms parted to reveal the paper horse in the middle. Fang Mu glanced at the effigy, then at the red flower on his chest, and strode forward. Since these were rule-bound spirits, he decided to investigate the rule rather than blindly attacking.

He had thought the paper horse would collapse under his weight, but as he stepped onto it, something unexpected happened.

The paper steed seemed to come alive, emitting a whinny. Its once rigid legs began to move slowly, as if real.

The procession turned around, heading back the way it came. The last phantom became the first, scattering yellow papers underfoot, which formed a path they trod upon.

The spirits carried Fang Mu along the yellow-paper road to the street’s end.

Beyond the street lay no direct path forward, but two narrow lanes branched left and right.

The phantoms led him rightward, continuing their ritual: every so often scattering yellow papers for their procession to step upon.

Watching this, Fang Mu smiled sitting astride the paper horse.

It seemed the street itself harmed them, hence the need for the paper path.

A legend came to mind: humans walk the yang path, ghosts the yin path. If a person strays onto the yin path, they meet ghosts; if ghosts stray onto the yang path, they face oblivion.

To traverse the other’s path safely, certain measures are necessary.

Fang Mu suspected the yellow paper was that measure—laying a yang path for the phantoms to walk upon safely.

Of course, this was conjecture. He had never seen such traits in phantoms before.

His reasoning was simple: these spirits wouldn’t scatter yellow papers without purpose.

Yet Fang Mu chose not to test this theory—not yet. He had other goals, and if the theory proved true, what then?

Clearly, the phantoms were leading him somewhere—perhaps to the marriage ritual itself.

In dealings like this, one must consider the greater strategy; probing the dead prematurely could forfeit the larger prize.