Chapter 45
Chapter 45: Corpse-Nurturing Grounds (Part 2)
Mo Ting Feng’s heart seized at that single motion. He lunged for her, dragging her into his arms as if he could anchor her to the world by sheer force. He didn’t know why he was this panicked—this afraid. A harsh, white ringing filled his skull until everything blurred, until the world narrowed to the warmth and weight of her breathing.
“I won.”
Song Wei Chen opened her eyes. One hand was still wrapped around the sword hilt, and she flashed him a smug little smile, like she’d just pulled off the easiest trick in the world.
Color snapped back into place. Mo Ting Feng shut his eyes, forced his breathing steady, and felt a nameless fire climb up his spine.
“Song Wei Chen, do you have a brain? Do you know how dangerous that was? What if you guessed wrong? Do you think a spell can bring you back from the dead? It can’t. Dead is dead!”
He was practically roaring, veins standing out at his temples, anger shaking through every word.
She had been working. If he didn’t want to praise her for being smart and capable, fine—but why did he look like he wanted to tear her apart? Song Wei Chen felt furious and wronged all at once.
“What does it have to do with you whether I live or die?!”
She snapped back without missing a beat. Her hands didn’t stop moving. She shoved him away, yanked the sword free, then strode over to Ding He Ran with a cold face and held it out.
Ding He Ran took it uneasily, examined the blade, then stared at Song Wei Chen—no wound, not even a tear in her clothes.
“Brother Wei… you’re unbelievable. You were right!”
“Do you believe me now?”
Everyone nodded again and again, eyes full of admiration.
“Venerable, your insight, wits, and courage are extraordinary. We truly admire you.”
Ye Wu Jiu looked to Mo Ting Feng. “Lord, how do we proceed?”
Mo Ting Feng still stood where he was, his back to them. Without a flicker of expression, he wiped the blood at the corner of his mouth and swallowed the metallic taste rising in his throat. Song Wei Chen’s sword strike had thrown his mind into chaos; only with effort did he press down the turmoil and steady himself.
“White Robe judged correctly. We go out first.”
“Hey—at least take me with you!”
In the blink of an eye, one after another flashed away. Only she and he remained in the cave.
“Come here,” he said.
He held out a hand.
Song Wei Chen remembered the way he’d yelled, and her temper flared all over again. She ignored him on purpose, turned to the rock wall, and started eyeing it like she might climb out on her own.
She’d taken two steps when an arm wrapped around her waist from behind. With surprising gentleness, Mo Ting Feng guided her back down as if she weighed nothing at all.
At the cave entrance, everyone had gathered again. If something was wrong, it was here.
Ding He Ran and Ye Wu Jiu exchanged a look and each cast probing spells at the mouth. They tested again and again. No barrier. No obvious spell restriction. Yet the air at the entrance pulsed with a clear, abnormal energy reaction. In the end, both withdrew in frustration.
“What kind of dark sorcery is this?”
“It’s hard to believe this was done by a chaos wraith.” Ding He Ran’s brow knotted. “Maybe it really is dark sorcery.”
Mo Ting Feng rose into the air and surveyed the terrain from above.
He formed a Bagua with his palm as a guide and murmured an incantation under his breath—Heaven’s secrets are hard to read, harder still to master. Seek the dragon’s vein and discern the stars. If you would know bone, stone, and hidden gold, then separate stillness from motion, yin from yang, split from merge.
After a brief calculation, the site backed Gen and faced Kun. The right-side water reversed to the left and exited at Yi-Chen. Judged by that alone, it should have been auspicious: water embracing the land, a life-welcoming flow—signs of thriving fortune and harmony.
But the slopes to either side were wrong. The soil, trees, and grass cut sharply apart, as if two worlds had been stitched together. Where the cave opened, the qi was dead and exhausted; the earth was cold and black, yin pushed to an extreme. Beside it ran the River of Oblivion—its black water steeped in poison and shadow. Add the distant cliff face that cleaved the sky, and the winds that crashed through the pass carried a withering bite—withered wind, thin horse, a barren hollow with no shelter.
A corpse-nurturing ground.
The more he looked, the more wrong it felt.
No—this cave was not that simple.
A blessed living site and a corpse-nurturing grave site overlapped here, life and death turning on the same hinge.
And the bright sunlight spilling into the cave wasn’t merely glamour art. Sunlight was yang. Yang striking the deepest yin could invert the balance. Someone had set this place as a reversed heaven-and-earth corpse-nurturing array—a formation meant to revive the dead.
Mo Ting Feng’s chest sank. He dropped back to the ground in a flash.
“A life-bearing alignment, yet wind cuts through the cave. The pattern is broken; the earth is no longer earth.”
At his words, the grievance-breakers’ faces tightened. Only Song Wei Chen blinked at everyone, completely lost.
“You understood that?”
“Lord means this place can raise the dead,” Ding He Ran said simply.
Raise the dead. Nurture corpses.
A chill crawled up Song Wei Chen’s spine. She edged back without thinking.
Of course. The one thing she feared most—right here.
Please don’t let there be some white-haired corpse bride in there. Forget female ghosts. Even one of those hopping zombie freaks would be too much.
[Help, I’m not Lin Zheng Ying… Madam!]
I want to go home.
She looked at Mo Ting Feng with pure misery. “Boss… if I resign right now, is it still in time…?”
He saw the fear she was trying to swallow. Without a word, he pulled her to his side.
“Search the area carefully. There will be something out of place.”
“Other than White Robe, the remaining ten will split into five teams by the Heavenly Stems positions. Investigate. Regroup here in one incense stick.”
Everyone acknowledged and scattered.
“Scared?” he asked.
Her mouth crumpled into a pout and she nodded hard, fast—no more sulking now.
“Then why weren’t you scared when you stabbed yourself with a sword?”
“What was there to be scared of?” she muttered. “Even if I lost the bet, it’s not like I’d reanimate and scare myself…”
She didn’t get to finish.
Mo Ting Feng’s arms closed around her—tight, sudden, as if he were afraid she might vanish if he loosened his grip.
“Why didn’t you ask if I was scared?” he murmured.
“Huh?”
For a moment she couldn’t process it. This Ice Block… cared?
He eased back just enough to look into her eyes, gaze steady and too honest. “Song Wei Chen. I’m still shaken. Don’t ever do something that stupid again.”
She tried to laugh it off. “Let me guess—you’re scared that if I really die, you won’t solve your case. You’ll lose your suspect, and you can’t report upstairs? Or is it because I’m a Po Yu Zhe, so you care?”
His feelings tangled into something he didn’t have words for. He was afraid of never seeing her again, of never touching her again, of losing her forever. The thought alone hurt like a knife.
Was it because she might be Sang Pu reborn?
It didn’t feel like the whole truth.
He forced down every real reason and let the lie stand. “Think what you want. Just stay alive.”
Then, softer, he took her hand. “I won’t let anything you fear hurt you. I’ll protect you.”
Her heart kicked hard, then harder. Heat rushed to her cheeks. What was wrong with this Ice Block today? Why was he suddenly… like this?
And stupidly, another thought slipped in—did he speak to those fox sister like this too?
The sourness that rose in her chest startled her.
“If you’re still afraid,” he said, “I can send you back now. You won’t have to take outside missions anymore.”
Song Wei Chen shook her head and lifted her gaze to meet his.
“I promised I’d take Bao Er home. I’ll do what I said.”
“…And I believe you’ll protect me.”
The air between them turned strangely warm, almost too intimate to breathe in. They were still standing there, uncertain what to do with their hands, when footsteps and voices swept back in.
From far away, Ding He Ran’s shout rang out.
“Lord! We found something big!”