baiyuyi 35: Possessed

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Chapter 35: Possessed

Yuan Chenglei wasn’t out for too long.

No matter what, he’s at least a cultivator, even if he’s at the lowest stages, so fainting purely from fright wasn’t something that would knock him out for that long.

Not to mention, there was a noisy little ghost wailing about inside his head; it would be difficult for him to ignore it for long.

After coming back to his sense, Yuan Chenglei felt like he was at a huge loss for what to do.

Well, what would YOU do if the street you were on turned into a horror story without warning, and then you were suddenly possessed by a ghost?

Even if it is a ghost he was on friendly terms with!

“S-sisi, um …. Sisi-?”

“Wuwuwu… wuwu… Sisi gonna be eaten… wuwuwu… Cain… Sisi want to see Cain…”

“Sisi-!”

“Scaredycat, so noisy, let Sisi die in peace!”

“Nonono, you’re already dead!”

“Geez, Scaredycat, so insensitive… eh? Scaredycat?”

Yuan Chenglei felt Sisi’s panic fade into confusion as she began to recognize the abnormality of her situation.

“Eeeh!? No way! Sisi actually managed to possess someone correctly for once!”

“What does incorrect possession look like!? No, wait, forget it… Um, Sisi, can you … unpossess me?”

“Nonono, Sisi won’t leave-! Sisi will be eaten if Sisi leaves-!”

Yuan Chenglei’s feeling of helplessness grew three times more helpless than before.

It’s not like HE knew how to expel a ghost, and even if he did he’d feel guilty about ousting her if there really was a terrible danger to ghosts around here.

He’d feel terrible if Sisi got … er, eaten.

Fine, he’ll bear with it for now.

After all, if you’re going to be possessed by a ghost, it’s better to be possessed by a friendly ghost!

Er, well, it’s still better if you weren’t possessed at all but … currently, compared to the rest of the situation he found himself in, Yuan Chenglei felt like being possessed by Sisi was the least of his concerns.

Taking a deep breath, he activated his special skill of ‘ignoring everything inconvenient and going on auto-pilot’ in order to … deal with the fact that he was trapped in some sort of ghost hellscape with no idea on what’s going on.

The downside with this ‘skill’ is that Yuan Chenglei increased his clumsiness and decreased his ability to react to unexpected circumstances, as well as the fact that if he had to resort to this, he could only be one step away from a panic attack.

“… Okay Sisi, it’s fine. But can you tell me what’s going on here, and where we are?”

Yuan Chenglei might sound fine, but for Sisi, a ghost who was currently possessing him, his quivering heart was on full display.

Scaredycat indeed, but a Scaredycat who tried his best despite being a Scaredycat is pretty admirable – ah, but not as admirable as Cain, okay?

Anyway, Sisi wasn’t airheaded or stupid enough to call Yuan Chenglei out on his weaknesses when they were in this sort of situation.

Actually, meeting Scaredycat helped calm her down a lot, so Sisi was actually pretty grateful.

Also, now that she was possessing him, she wasn’t going to be eaten by whatever it was that was trying to suck every damn ghost into it!

“This place … this place is inside the Phantom Raising Hall’s array. … Actually, Scaredycat, you feeling alright? The Flesh and Blood Devouring Array should be affecting you too, although you far from the center.”

The… what?

Yuan Chenglei felt his skin go cold.

As for Sisi… well, unfortunately, even if she decided to be serious, Sisi was still Sisi, and the airhead quickly got distracted as she investigated Yuan Chenglei’s physical condition.

“You also not feeling bad from Sisi’s possession. Hm…? Eh? Scaredycat, your vitality is amazing-! To avoid being affected by the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array, Cain and the others had to protect themselves with qi, but … Scaredycat’s vitality is just blocking the Array’s power completely! Hm hm…”

“H-hey, stop poking around in there!”

Yuan Chenglei was having a hard time maintaining his ‘I’m alright’ facade with the foreign feeling of Sisi searching curiously around in his head.

“A-anyway, what’s going on?”

“…Hah-! That’s right! Sisi doesn’t know what happened to Cain!”

Yuan Chenglei could feel Sisi’s sudden anxiety as she remembered that they were in a precarious situation.

It was an uncomfortable feeling.

Luckily, although Sisi seemed to want to run off to find Cain, it seems like Yuan Chenglei was still in full control of his body.

Maybe it was his overwhelming vitality, like Sisi said, but it didn’t seem like the possession had any effect on him other than having Sisi babbling inside his head.

“Slow down, Sisi. Tell me what’s going on or else I won’t know what else I should do.”

“Th-that’s right… uuun….Cain and Ghost Hunters were tracking Phantom Raising Hall to City J, and today they followed some Phantom Raisers to base, but it was trap!”

Ah… this place is full of abandoned buildings, so it wouldn’t be unheard to for someone to set something up without anyone else noticing.

Yuan Chenglei could only blame his bad luck for being impervious to the warding incense used to detour mortals, as well as still stubbornly taking this shortcut.

“So … there are cultivators here that are … bad cultivators? Er, I mean…”

Yuan Chenglei stumbled over his words a little bit.

It was probably a bit too naive to just label cultivators as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but if these Phantom Raisers were willing to set up something called a Flesh and Blood Devouring Array…

“They are heretical cultivators, yes. Ghost Hunters don’t like them, because unlike the Ghost Hunting Clan that tries to help ghosts cultivate, Phantom Raising Hall uses mortal and cultivator flesh, blood, and terror to feed ghosts.”

“…”

Yuan Chenglei was pretty sure that he could classify the Phantom Raising Hall as a clan of ‘bad’ cultivators.

If he remembered what Ouyang Cain, or rather, Expert Ghost Scholar, had said, cultivators who use ghosts can strengthen them by carefully raising them through cultivation, which took much longer and required many more precious materials, or by sacrificing the lives of the living. The first would help bring the ghost back to sanity, and was more like a partnership formed between the ghost and the cultivator. The second was a method of enslavement and further damnation to the ghost in order to draw out malicious power.

From a ghost’s point of view, the Phantom Raisers were undoubtedly ‘evil’ … well, from a human point of view they were evil too!

“So… what happened after the Ghost Hunters got caught in the trap?” Yuan Chenglei asked.

“Sisi… doesn’t know. Cain told Sisi to scout out the area before the array activated, so Sisi was out here and doesn’t know what happened at the center of the array.”

Yuan Chenglei could feel Sisi’s anxiety very clearly.

But Yuan Chenglei was very reluctant to go to the center of this death array – er, the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array.

Even if he was fine out here thanks to his overwhelming vitality, there’s no guarantee he’ll be fine as he moves further in, if what Sisi was saying could be trusted.

And Yuan Chenglei didn’t have any methods to withstand the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array through qi like other cultivators could.

He’s only barely a cultivator, okay?

On the other hand, this array was set up by some seriously evil people.

It was only though luck that they didn’t find him and hack him to death as a sacrifice yet!

Come to think of it, if they didn’t notice him yet, it’s possible that meant the Phantom Raisers were too busy fighting the Ghost Hunters, which meant it was possible that the Ghost Hunters were alive and well!

If he thought about his chances for survival… as long as that array doesn’t prove too fatal to him, then it would probably be better to join up with the Ghost Hunters?

At the very least, he could see if it was possible to get close enough to see if they were still alive without being devoured by the array.

“Okay, then go, go!”

“Sisi … stop reading my mind…”

“Scaredycat doesn’t have any mental defenses. It’s not Sisi’s fault it’s so easy to read.”

That means you want to read them anyway! Well, whatever. It’s not like he had anything to hide, it’s just…

“Sisi, later on, is it possible for me to talk to you without speaking? Just in case ”

“If Scaredycat thinks about letting Sisi know, Sisi will pick up on it one way or another.”

“Kind of like telepathy, then…”

“Yupyup, like that~♡.”

… At least one of us is feeling better now…

Yuan Chenglei sighed heavily.

So far he’d actually been lucky in this situation, aside from getting trapped in it in the first place, and he’d even scored a companion, but for some reason he had a feeling that he couldn’t rely on luck forever.

If there were malicious cultivators around, Yuan Chenglei couldn’t just wander around and rely on hoping that they were too busy to notice him.

There was only one thing he could do!

“Hey Sisi, I’m going to use a Stealth Technique. It’s kind of complicated, though, so I need to concentrate.”

“Roger! Sisi will be quiet!”

Well, actually it’s not like Yuan Chenglei had to be entirely focused on the Shrinking Turtle Breathing Technique for it to work, but given Sisi’s tendency to chatter, it was better for her to remain silent.

So now, all he had to do was … seriously go on autopilot!

It couldn’t be helped, every fiber in his body did NOT want to go investigate what was going on in the center of the array, so Yuan Chenglei could only empty his mind and reach inner peace – er, he could only focus wholeheartedly on moving quietly while using the Shrinking Turtle Breathing technique.

Silently, barely even casting a shadow, Yuan Chenglei forced himself to move further into the terrifying, haunted landscape.

Sisi was amazed.

Not only was the Scaredycat able to be impervious to the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array, he had so much qi that he was able to use this weird stealth technique that was like pissing qi away.

But what was weirder was, since she was possessing him right now, she knew that Scaredycat … didn’t have any meridians open.

Sure, he had a qi pool, but it wasn’t like he could draw on it; the qi the Scaredycat was using was qi he was converting from vitality right on the spot.

This Scaredycat… was he a monster?

He’s a monster, right? It’s impossible for someone to have such a high rate of qi accumulation!

Despite her curiosity, Sisi did her best to restrain herself.

She didn’t really understand how Yuan Chenglei was doing the Shrinking Turtle Breathing Technique, but she understood that it took a lot of concentration.

Sisi was a bit of a scatterbrain, but she knew her ghostly abilities well.

If she wasn’t careful, her emotions would affect the person she’s possessing.

Doing the ghost equivalent of holding her breath, she watched as Yuan Chenglei quietly snuck deep into the Phantom Raising Hall’s array.

It wasn’t an extremely large array, but it did span a few city blocks. This was probably a good thing, since if it was a really small array, there was no way the Phantom Raisers wouldn’t have been able to sense Scaredycat wandering into it like this.

Actually… could the reason why the Phantom Raisers were unable to notice him be because the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array wasn’t able to penetrate Scaredycat’s vitality?

It was an array without any way to detect what was within its boundaries, so an anomaly like Yuan Chenglei with his impenetrable vitality was more like a building than a normal cultivator.

Still, as he continued further in, there was definitely an oppressive pressure that grew the closer he got to the ‘center’.

Thankfully it didn’t feel like his flesh and blood were being drained away, but … it did feel like there was something trying to.

On the edge of the array he hadn’t noticed it, but now Yuan Chenglei could definitely feel something. It was an odd feeling, like a vacuum that was just barely being blocked by some sort of film.

The suction feeling was, naturally, the power of the array. Was the film his vitality?

It was a little confusing to Yuan Chenglei, since it felt like vitality was something the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array would, er, devour, but maybe there was a maximum threshold?

Like, with the vacuum metaphor, if something was too large, it couldn’t be vacuumed up?

Either way, Yuan Chenglei was dead certain that his very excessive vitality was the only thing that was keeping him alive.

Hey, so, if I didn’t have so much vitality from all the training Laoban put me through… wouldn’t I just shrivel up and die?!

Yuan Chenglei was struggling to keep from thinking about what would have happened if he wasn’t a weirdo cultivator.

When the oppressive aura became somewhat overwhelming, Yuan Chenglei found himself in front of an abandoned parking garage.

With the feeling of peril increasing as he proceeded, Yuan Chenglei’s auto-pilot had already come undone.

He was now very aware of the fact that his life was very much in danger.

However, that sense of danger was also now overriding his fear of ghosts, so… Yuan Chenglei was actually in a better state of mind than he was when he first found himself trapped within the array.

He’s originally the reckless sort, after all.

“Sisi, I think it’s around here somewhere.”

Even though the air had gotten more oppressive and the atmosphere felt even creepier, Yuan Chenglei didn’t see anything that looked out of place around them.

Relatively.

Being this close to the center of the array… you’d think they’d be able to see SOMETHING by now.

“Sisi thinks… it’s probably below. It easier to use yin from earth than it is to use yin from sky.”

“Earth is yin?”

“Earth has yin and yang.”

Maybe Sisi meant that it’s easier to tap into yin that’s located in the ground rather than elemental earth…?

Whatever the case … right now, it meant Yuan Chenglei had to go down.

Ignoring the stairs, since he was 100% sure he would be able to keep his steps from ringing on the metal stairs in the echo-y stairwell, Yuan Chenglei crept down the ramps, keeping to the shadows as best he could.

It wasn’t long before he finally caught sight of what he and Sisi were looking for.

“Cain!”

“Ssh, Sisi! Let me see what’s going on first!”

Doing his best to ignore Sisi’s agitation from catching sight of Expert Ghost Scholar, Yuan Chenglei stuck close to the wall as he analyzed the situation in front of him.

There was Expert Ghost Scholar, still wearing his sunglasses underground, and next to him were other six other cultivators dressed in mostly modern clothing.

Opposite from them were some people dressed in matching dark robes.

If Yuan Chenglei were to guess… the five people in dark-colored robes were all one organization, and they were probably the Phantom Raisers.

Then the people on the other side were all Ghost Hunters?

But looking at the state of the Ghost Hunters…

Expert Ghost Scholar and three other Ghost Hunters were standing protectively in front of three other Ghost Hunters who had collapsed, barely able to resist the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array.

However… it didn’t seem like Expert Ghost Scholar and his comrades who were still standing were able to do much more than stand firmly, glaring hatefully at the Phantom Raisers in front of them.

As for the Phantom Raisers, they seemed much more at ease, taunting and jeering at the Ghost Hunters, but they weren’t making any moves either.

Certainly, the Ghost Hunters outnumbered the Phantom Raisers, but it wasn’t by that much.

With the Ghost Hunters besieged by the Flesh and Blood Devouring Array, it didn’t seem like it would be that difficult for five people to overpower seven, but it was clear that the Phantom Raisers were cautiously keeping their distance.

Yuan Chenglei only had one thing to say about the situation.

…Is this a game of chicken?

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