Forced Confession

A "ghost" climbing into one's bed at midnight, what great fortune.

Wu Xingxue had intended to act a little weak and scholarly, but in the blink of an eye, he had scanned the entire room and found not the slightest trace of High Immortal Tianxiu's presence.

Xiao Fuxuan was truly not here.

That was right. If he were here, there's no way he would have allowed such an ugly thing to appear in the room.

Thinking this, Wu Xingxue instantly lost the mood to feign weakness. The person wasn't even here, who was he putting on an act for?

The thing leaning by the bed was about to move, but someone was faster—in the blink of an eye, the bed was empty, and Wu Xingxue had vanished.

That pair of deathly pale eyes blinked, rapidly scanning the bed, the sides, and under the bed... but found no trace of Wu Xingxue.

The eyeballs spun extremely fast, their eyelids could barely contain them. The edges were tinged with a dark, bruised color, as if they were rotting. If they spun any faster, they looked like they would fall right out of their sockets.

Just as it was about to look up, a voice sounded softly from behind it: "I'm behind you."

It froze stiff, its pale eyeballs unmoving. The next instant, its fingers arched, about to burst up! But it felt the vital point on the back of its neck, along with its scalp, get seized.

That hand was as cold as frost, colder than a dead man's.

After the world spun around it, it was dragged and slammed viciously onto the ground. The hand clamping its vital point had already moved to its throat.

It struggled violently, its strength so great that it slammed against the floor with loud thuds, cracking it in many long splits.

But that fair, slender hand did not move an inch.

It could feel a roiling killing intent from that hand.

"You're truly unlucky. I don't remember anything, and all I know now are killing moves. You'd best behave and not move around," Wu Xingxue said softly.

This was the first time its haunting had failed; instead, it was suppressed to the point of being unable to move, and it even cowered slightly at the threat.

In an instant, a cold wind raged, and the wooden window was blown open with a bang.

Wu Xingxue spoke again in the darkness. His voice held a faint trace of a smile, but his words were anything but amusing: "You, the one leaning outside the window. My temper isn't very good right now. You'd best get in here and light the lamp."

"..."

The person outside the window had probably never heard such a demand and remained silent.

After a long moment, someone finally pushed the door open with trembling hands and carefully fumbled their way to the table.

***

The long-extinguished oil lamp lit up, and that single bean-sized flame illuminated the scene in the room clearly—

The one who lit the lamp was the innkeeper.

Wu Xingxue, draped in plain clothes, was half-kneeling on the ground, his hand gripping the thing that had climbed into the bed at midnight...

To be precise, it wasn't a thing, but a person.

A person who looked to have been dead for a long time.

His head, face, and neck were somewhat swollen, not because he was naturally plump, but rather as if he had been soaked in some kind of fluid for a very, very long time, soaked until his skin and flesh turned a deathly white and puffed up.

Wu Xingxue thought of Coffin Fluid—

In some regions, common folk would often ask the Immortal Sects for specially made medicinal liquids to fill coffins with, ensuring the deceased's body would not decay.

The expression on Wu Xingxue's face vanished instantly.

He glanced around and saw that the corpse person actually had a sword at its waist.

So he released the hand gripping the other's neck, drew the sword, and stood up.

The corpse person was about to take the opportunity to struggle to its feet when the tip of the sword was pressed against the center of its forehead.

"Did I say you could get up?" Wu Xingxue asked.

His tone was never fierce, always light and easy as if making small talk. But the killing intent never receded. So much so that the corpse person under the sword dared not move, and neither did the innkeeper by the table.

"Innkeeper, pass me that clean cloth," Wu Xingxue said.

The innkeeper, with huge bags under his eyes drooping, stared at him with a face full of fear. He carefully reached for the cloth and passed it over from more than a step away.

He dared not move or make a sound, simply watching as Wu Xingxue took the cloth and wiped his fingers.

He saw the other man stop wiping and stare down quietly at his own wrists.

The bones of his wrists were long and well-proportioned, perfectly clean without a speck of dirt. There was no telling what was so interesting about them.

'The innkeeper thought.'

What was even more terrifying was that as he watched, the man actually frowned, looking for all the world like he was in a very bad mood.

The innkeeper carefully shrank back again.

An outsider wouldn't know, of course, that Wu Xingxue was frowning precisely because both of his wrists were bare.

Last time at the Hua Family, when Xiao Fuxuan's Spirit Essence left his body to handle matters alone, he had tied a silk thread and a bell to his wrist.

He had only to tug it a few times, and the other would return.

This time, there wasn't even a bell to summon him, and he couldn't sense any trace of Xiao Fuxuan's presence in the entire inn.

Where did he go?

Wu Xingxue tossed the cloth back on the table and looked up at the innkeeper.

The innkeeper's scalp went numb under his gaze, and a chill shot up his back. Just as he was about to wave his hands and explain, he heard Wu Xingxue ask him, "Where is Xiao Fuxuan?"

The innkeeper was stunned, barely hearing him. "Huh? Who?"

In that split second, many things Wu Xingxue might ask had flashed through his mind—

What's with this corpse person on the floor? Why did it appear in my room in the middle of the night?! And why were you leaning by the window? What are you people trying to do?

Anyone in peril in the middle of the night would most want to ask these questions, yet Wu Xingxue had asked the most irrelevant one.

"I'm asking," Wu Xingxue said softly, "the person who came with me, have you seen him?"

The innkeeper shook his head.

He saw Wu Xingxue's expression instantly turn cold.

When he was expressionless, the slightly downturned corners of his eyes filled with a sense of disgust, and the killing intent that had never subsided grew even stronger.

The innkeeper was truly frightened now. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. "I... I really didn't see him."

"Weren't you peeping from outside the window?" Wu Xingxue's voice became even softer.

"I-I-I just came up. When I came up, when I came up..." The innkeeper seemed at a loss for how to explain, rambling incoherently, "I hadn't been up here for long when I heard you say, 'I'm behind you,' and then... and then what happened, you should know."

Hearing this, Wu Xingxue's expression soured. "And you expect me to believe you?"

The innkeeper grew anxious. "It's all true! The truth! If there's a single lie, may I be struck by lightning!"

It wasn't that Wu Xingxue didn't believe him.

In fact, he could have guessed this result before he even asked—the innkeeper was such a coward after a little scare, there was no way he could have done anything to a High Immortal.

So Xiao Fuxuan's disappearance should have nothing to do with him.

Wu Xingxue had guessed as much.

He was simply annoyed because he couldn't find the person.

"What about you?" He reversed his grip on the sword and stabbed it down—

The corpse person squeezed its eyes shut, feeling the blade just barely scrape past its scalp. It could even feel a thin, long cut open on its skin. If it were still alive, blood would surely be gushing out from that long wound.

It wouldn't kill, but it was enough to make one stream with tears and snot.

"And what are you? When did you come into the room, and where is the other person?" Wu Xingxue squatted down.

The corpse person stared at him with its deathly white eyes, unblinking. It opened its mouth, then pressed its lips tightly shut. Then it shook its head.

Wu Xingxue, however, frowned at the sight.

He pinched the corpse person's cheeks with his thumb and forefinger and squeezed hard.

With two cracking sounds, the corpse person's tense jaw loosened, and its mouth fell open naturally, like a gaping cave—

It had two rows of fine teeth, but no tongue.

Wu Xingxue then pressed down further and found a protrusion under its larynx. It felt hard to the touch, as if a nail was sealed inside.

Tongueless and sealed with a nail, this was probably why it couldn't speak.

If Xiao Fuxuan were here, he would definitely have a way to make this corpse person speak even without a tongue.

But he just wasn't here.

Wu Xingxue's annoyance grew. He casually grabbed a cup of tea, splashed it beside the corpse person's hand, and said in a low voice, "Write."

But the corpse person's fingers trembled, tracing meaningless, repetitive motions in the puddle of tea.

"This thing, it... it can't answer you," the innkeeper couldn't help but add from the side.

"Then what can you answer?" Wu Xingxue said without looking up. "Someone once said..."

Xiao Fuxuan had said that this place was an illusion, and it was best not to cause a major disturbance, lest the illusion be affected and some unforeseen trouble arise.

"He said it's best not to cause a major disturbance here." Wu Xingxue turned to look at the innkeeper. "Now he's gone, and I have no one to ask. Tell me... what constitutes a major disturbance? Fighting? Killing?"

The innkeeper's face turned ashen. He hastily spoke, "No, no, no, we can't do that, we can't. I—ai! I'll talk, I'll say whatever I know."

The innkeeper said it was a long story, and he didn't know how to explain it clearly, so he could only start from the beginning.

***

"My inn has been open here in the Fallen Flower Mountain Market for so many years, and it's always been fine; nothing ever happened. Before, some people from the Immortal Sects even took a look for me and said I had chosen the best spot on the Fallen Flower Terrace, a treasured land that gathers fortune and Qi. Then one day, a Jade Branch grew out of the stone crevice behind my inn. Although it was only this big..."

His fingers trembling, he carefully showed a distance of less than an inch and said, "I thought to myself, could it be that the treasured land is showing its power? So I invited the Immortal Sects to have a look again, but they said it wasn't an auspicious sign. They said the fortune of my treasured land had already dissipated, and it was about to go from prosperous to declining, from auspicious to ominous. They even advised me to find another place..."

Naturally, he didn't believe that nonsense. They had clearly said he occupied a treasured land before, so how could it suddenly become a disastrous one? So he inquired all over, checked countless books, flipping through ones he could understand and ones he couldn't. He didn't even spare the legends from the beginning of the Heavenly Dao.

Finally, he came to his own conclusion.

"I think, that should be a piece of Jade Essence, something seen only once in a hundred years," the innkeeper said.

Hearing the "Jade Essence" that Xiao Fuxuan had mentioned, Wu Xingxue raised his eyes.

"If it really is Jade Essence, then it's a legendary object; it should be greatly auspicious. How could it go from prosperous to declining!" the innkeeper said. "So I didn't listen to those Immortal Elders and didn't plan to move away. As a result... ai, it wasn't long before something happened."

The innkeeper glanced at Wu Xingxue's expression and said, "A guest who was staying here suddenly vanished. No trace of him could be found."

"He had come with his daughter. The little girl was young and couldn't even speak properly yet; she cried so much no one could bear to look at her. Naturally, I couldn't just ignore it, so I called upon the Immortal Sects again. The Fallen Flower Mountain Market is crowded and has all sorts of people, so fearing that a big commotion would cause trouble, those Immortal Elders stayed here and investigated secretly. As a result..."

The innkeeper glanced at Wu Xingxue again, hesitating as if he didn't dare to continue.

Wu Xingxue stared at him and said, "The result."

The innkeeper swallowed, closed his eyes, and said with resignation, "The result was that those Immortal Elders searched the entire Fallen Flower Mountain Market, but they couldn't find that guest. He just vanished into thin air and was never seen again."