“Oh my god! That’s just shameless!” Lin Mingxi was furious, and a little aggrieved.
“No wonder Volume A felt impossibly difficult this time!”
“Turns out, it was all the examinees making it harder for each other!”
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became, but also chilled to the bone.
“So they were all just putting on an act!”
“Misleading us, stirring up confusion…”
He couldn’t help but sigh deeply, “Is this what high-level play looks like?”
By comparison, Lin Mingxi felt as naive as a newborn lamb.
“Human minds are way scarier than ghosts! Everyone’s just acting their hearts out! How is anyone supposed to handle this?!”
Su Fu nodded in agreement, sighing, “What a bunch of sneaky bastards.”
Not a single one of them was simple.
“So…” Lin Mingxi gulped.
“You’re saying the way into Volume B is… death?”
The answer unsettled him.
Wasn’t this just absurd?
He muttered to himself, “But if you’re dead, where can you even go? Where exactly is the Volume B exam hall… the underworld?”
Lin Mingxi found the idea of death as the answer a bit too insane.
But Jiang Qingyu said, “I lean toward this conclusion too. Given Elai and the others’ abilities, I refuse to believe they’d stop at Volume A.”Â
“So,” she looked at the two of them, “this is a high-stakes gamble, friends. The answer is right in front of us. Win, and we advance.”
“Lose “She paused meaningfully.
“And we lose everything.”
Lin Mingxi was floored.
Betting with their lives?
That was insane!
His mind was a whirlwind of thoughts:
What if they were wrong?
Were they really going to stake their lives on this?
Even if they knew the answer, this was just…
“Oh my god, what was the Education Ministry thinking?!” He couldn’t help but curse.
“This exam setup is so cliché ‘the courage to face death’? That’s the theme? How trite!”
“Who would dare take this bet?”
“Boss, what do you think?”
Su Fu flashed a brilliant smile.
“No bet.”
Lin Mingxi: “???”
Wait, what if this really was the way to enter Volume B?
Wouldn’t refusing to bet mean certain failure?
But Su Fu abruptly changed her tone.
“However… if we want answers, why don’t we just ask the murderer directly?”
“At midnight tonight, we’ll go on an expedition-round up all the spirits involved and interrogate them. Let’s see what’s really going on.”
Why midnight?
Because there were too many spirits involved in the examinee cases.
Her current contingent of underworld soldiers wasn’t enough-she needed to form an array and summon Lord Zhong Kui.
And midnight happened to be when yin energy peaked, significantly boosting her soldiers’ power.
Even if ordinary spirits also grew stronger then, she had numbers on her side with equal enhancement, sheer quantity would overwhelm them.
When the ghost gates opened at midnight during the Hundred Ghosts Night Parade, she wouldn’t just capture spirits from these two cases- she’d round up every supernatural being in the entire area for questioning!
Right on cue, Lin Mingxi asked in confusion, “Boss, why must we wait until midnight?”
“Because,” Su Fu said ominously, “at midnight, the ghost gates open for the Hundred Ghosts Night Parade.”
“That’s when we’ll catch them all in one sweep.”
Lin Mingxi was stunned by this answer, suddenly realizing his boss’s true intention-to interrogate every supernatural being in the entire district?
He became momentarily incoherent.
“We can… just capture and question them all directly?”
This was an approach he’d never considered…
The method seemed brutally simple, yet undeniably effective.
Who killed you?
Just ask!
Who did you kill?
Just ask!
Why gamble?
There’s no need to gamble at all!
Jiang Qingyu recognized the deeper implications-while the plan sounded straightforward, executing it meant facing every supernatural being in the area at midnight!
Lin Mingxi’s expression suddenly changed.
He leaned in close to Su Fu and whispered conspiratorially, “Boss, be honest with me-are you secretly cheating?”
Seeing her raised eyebrow, he explained:
“Think about it-others are painstakingly following clues, outwitting key figures, dealing with plot twists upon twists, barely identifying the culprit after multiple rounds. But you?”
He threw up his hands dramatically.
“You just grab spirits and interrogate them! And they have to answer truthfully with no possibility of lying!”
“Let’s be real-with this ability, it’s like bringing textbooks to an open-book exam in a mystery dungeon!”
Su Fu: “…”
Seriously?
You’re only realizing this now?
If not for those two troublemakers increasing the difficulty, they would’ve speedrun Stage A long ago.
But now-
It had inspired an even better solution.
She already suspected where the Volume B examination hall was.
If Volume A was above Chang’an, then Volume B… must be beneath it.
Beneath Chang’an lay the Netherworld.
All theories would be verified tonight.
If successful, they could bulldoze through any subsequent survival challenges!
Then she’d show all these sneaky bastards who truly ruled the underworld!
Oh right-Su Fu suddenly remembered this was the perfect time to contact the Imperial Astronomer and enlist the City God’s assistance.
As midnight arrived, tendrils of mist began rising throughout Chang’an.
On the bluestone-paved road, pale gray mist flowed like water, swirling at the street corners.
In the distance, the faint sound of the night watchman’s drum echoed, hollow and distorted as if passing through layers of fog, barely resembling a human voice.
Under the eaves of a tavern in the southern part of the city, three figures pressed close to the wall.
Su Fu stared at the area thickest with yin energy, Jiang Qingyu stood ready with his bow, and Lin Mingxi had already turned pale from the oppressive aura, barely holding on despite his fear.
“D-did I just see something float past?” Lin Mingxi’s voice trembled as he pointed at a fleeting white shadow in the distance.
Jiang Qingyu narrowed her eyes.
“Not a skin-stealing demon.”
She paused and said, “Looks more like… an ordinary wandering spirit.”
The words “ordinary wandering spirit” made Lin Mingxi’s blood run cold.
What kind of test was this?
How could anyone say “ordinary wandering spirit” so casually?!
And what wandering spirit—that was a ghost!
But he didn’t dare scream, clamping his mouth shut.
Su Fu reminded them, “Since there’s no skin-stealing demon, let’s focus on finding the victims from the cases.”
“The Lantern Case had four victims, the Coffin Case seven, plus the newly added case of the deceased scholar from the Dali Court records today. Look for their faces.”
As soon as she finished speaking, Lin Mingxi suddenly grabbed her sleeve.
“B-boss! Over there!”
In the distant mist, a familiar figure drifted aimlessly to the second victim of the Lantern Case.
Su Fu praised him, “Good. Keep going.”
As the night deepened, eerie figures gradually emerged on the streets.
Some dragged long shadows, others wandered with heads bowed, and a few crouched under eaves, weeping silently.
Occasionally, twisted figures floated past them, emitting bone-chilling sounds.
Half an hour later.
“Thirteen…” Lin Mingxi counted on his fingers, disbelief in his voice.
“We actually recognized thirteen victims’ spirits!”
“That should be enough,” Su Fu suddenly said.
“This is sufficient to get some answers.”
She stepped out from the wall.
The ghosts had been marked-they wouldn’t escape now.
“I summon the Demon-Subduing True Lord, Zhong Kui!”
“Today, with a hundred ghosts running rampant, I seek the passage of the Yin Soldiers!”
As her voice faded, the spectral image of the great Zhong Kui materialized behind her, and the world instantly transformed.
A howling wind swept up countless withered leaves, swirling in the air.
The lanterns lining the streets extinguished in eerie unison, plunging all of Chang’an into dead silence.
Within moments, the ground trembled violently.
The bluestone slabs on either side of the street split open, and countless Yin Soldiers clad in black armor poured out from the fissures, their sinister armor gleaming coldly under the blood-red moon.
“It’s over! The Yin Soldiers!”
“Run!”
“There’s no escape!”
The wandering spirits on the street erupted into chaos.
Some desperately fled into alleyways, others tried to melt into the walls, while many more collapsed in terror.
Lin Mingxi gaped.
“My heavens…”
This was nothing like the simple ghost-catching he had imagined—this was annihilation on a grand scale!
Meanwhile, in the City God’s Office.
The green-robed Judge Zhang, who had been reviewing the records, suddenly shot to his feet in excitement.
“Lord Zhong Kui has come again!”
“Quickly! Quickly! Follow me to greet him!”
This time, he learned his lesson-he couldn’t just wait around.
If the adults weren’t coming, fine, they’d go to them instead!
The two clerks hurried after him but noticed someone was missing.
“Huh? Where’s Judge Wang?”
“Ah!” A junior ghost quickly explained, “The director of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau from the mortal realm asked for his help. He just left.”
“Tsk,” Judge Zhang sighed regretfully.
“Of all times! Brother Wang admires Lord Zhong Kui the most. He’s really going to miss out now.”
Without looking back, he chuckled, “Eh, forget about him. Let’s hurry!”
Inside Chang’an City.
A dozen souls were neatly lined up in a row-some with bowed heads, some trembling, others staring blankly into the distance, unsure why they alone had been singled out.
Su Fu walked past the line, double-checking before speaking gently, “Don’t be afraid. I just have a few questions. Once we’re done, you can leave.”
The ghosts: “……”
Yeah, like we believe that.
But soon, they had no choice but to believe because they had to.
Su Fu activated the Judge’s Token, and in an instant, an overwhelming pressure filled the air.
She started with the wronged soul from the Lantern Case.
“Tell me, how were you killed?”
The spirit trembled violently, its voice broken.
“It… it was a foreign merchant… a skinner from the Western Regions…”
“He… he sold ‘Calming Incense,’ but it was actually a hallucinogenic drug… I inhaled it and couldn’t move, but I was still conscious.”
“He used a special curved blade he called the ‘Bone-Scraping Knife’… He… he skinned me… while I was still alive…”
“Wait!” Su Fu cut in.
“It wasn’t the Painted Skin Demon?”
“No, no!” The ghost shook its head frantically, suddenly agitated, its eyes burning with hatred.
“My eyes were open when I died! I saw everything! It was that foreign merchant!”
“It was him!”
“He… he turned me into a human-skin lantern with his own hands… and then… then deliberately made it look like the Painted Skin Demon’s work!”
Lin Mingxi shuddered beside her.
“So there was never any Painted Skin Demon!”
“Then Elai staging this whole ‘I killed myself’ act makes perfect sense-it’s the way to advance to the next stage.”
“Tsk, tsk,” he couldn’t help clicking his tongue.
“And he went to all that trouble to make it look like murder. What was the point?”
He gave Su Fu a thumbs-up.
“Boss, with just one question from you, all the case details, all the methods, everything came spilling out!”
“Straight-up laying all the cards on the table.”
Jiang Qingyu, however, seemed thoughtful.
“If Elai’s case follows this logic, then ZongZheng Ye and Su Luan…”
By then, Su Fu had already moved to the souls from the Coffin Case.
Unsurprisingly, their testimonies were eerily consistent-ZongZheng Ye and Su Luan were the killers.
Lin Mingxi shook his head in disbelief.
“These people are something else! Every single one of them is a scheming old fox, a master actor!”
“They were deliberately misleading us.”
“Truly wicked.”
Just then, Su Fu turned her gaze toward the thick fog in the distance.
“You’ve been following us long enough. Seen enough? Aren’t you coming out?”
“What?!” Lin Mingxi was startled.
“Heavens, someone’s been tailing us?!”
Su Fu’s gaze fixed firmly in one direction.
Through the shared vision of the Hundred Birds’ Heart, a crow was surveying the entire street from above.
In that bird’s-eye view, a figure stood clearly visible in the distance.
As if realizing they’d been spotted, the person slowly emerged from the mist.
Jiang Qingyu’s pupils constricted: “It’s her…”
The swirling mist outlined her tall silhouette.
It was a woman with delicate features, yet the smile in her eyes never reached their depths.
“Allow me to introduce myself. Liu Yingxue, Scavenger of Xuandu Province.”
“Here to welcome you all.”
Su Fu:”……”
[I can’t stand this. How can someone out-pretentious me?]
[Is this really a welcome? More like being forced out.]
Su Fu sneered, “Shadow soldiers, form ranks!”
“Kill her now!”
Liu Yingxue:”…….”