Li Yuan took a moment to reflect on the battle. The leap from seventh rank to sixth rank went far beyond raw power—speed, reaction time, the mysterious ancestral seal, and a doubled lifespan were all part of the package. And the gap was vast enough to be decisive.
If Li Yuan and General Mammoth had been on equal footing in terms of raw strength, his spear might never have so much as grazed the other man.
Sixth rank cultivators seemed to have eyes everywhere, granting them near-impossible levels of perception. And they could potentially recover from being sliced in half, thanks to their ancestral seals. It truly was a world of difference between sixth rank and seventh rank.
“Impressive,” Li Yuan said.
General Mammoth gave a bitter smile. “Not compared to you.”
Li Yuan nodded. “Your timing with that needle was excellent. Quite clever. You’re not hiding another one in your mouth, are you?”
General Mammoth felt very much like a mouse being toyed with by a cat. Faced with Li Yuan’s overwhelming power, he knew he had no chance; even trying to flee had proven pointless.
Bowing his head, he answered obediently, “You overestimate me, Mister Wood. It’s risky to keep a poisoned armor-piercing needle in one’s mouth. One slip, and I’d be the first to die.”
He hesitated, then added, “If you’ll spare me, I’m willing to serve you.”
Li Yuan studied him. “You’d swear an oath?”
“I can,” General Mammoth said. He paused. “But who really believes in oaths anymore?”
After a sigh, he went on, “I can’t return to the Central Plains; my only option is to remain here. Wouldn’t it be better if we allied together, two sixth rank experts forming a small power bloc on the frontier?
"If other threats come, we can help each other. We’d all have our reasons not to stir up trouble. Just look at how I let Zhao Xiantong run wild while I stayed out of sight.
“As for any grudge I might’ve had against you or your senior brother, well, there really wasn’t much to begin with. And now that we’ve fought, there’s even less reason to hold a grudge.”
Shunk! Li Yuan pulled his spear free. General Mammoth fell to the ground, blood seeping from the wound in his abdomen. He dared not use his ancestral seal to heal, letting the blood flow.
“Let’s talk about that mass-grave ghost domain,” Li Yuan said. “If we don’t deal with it, it’ll become a disaster of epic proportions.”
“Understood, sir,” General Mammoth replied, bowing respectfully. Then he asked, “Was Zhao Xiantong really a ghost-servant?”
A look of horror crossed General Mammoth’s face. “I never even noticed...”
Li Yuan glanced at him. “Come on. Let’s go have a look.”
They started walking, but after a few steps, Li Yuan stopped. “By the way, did you bring any money with you?”
General Mammoth shook his head. Who carried silver when marching off to battle?
“You should compensate the people whose houses we smashed up,” Li Yuan said.
A flicker of relief crossed General Mammoth’s face. “Certainly.”
Before long, the two arrived at the perimeter of the mass grave. From a distance, it looked like nothing more than a small homestead on a mountain slope—ordinary and unremarkable, showing no obvious signs of the horror within.
General Mammoth spotted a woman swaying her hips as she led a weary, unsteady man toward the site.
Li Yuan fixed his gaze on the pair and said, “That woman is a ghost-servant. If you go save that man, you’ll finally see what’s really going on.”
General Mammoth hesitated; he wanted nothing to do with these fiendish entities. But he also understood that if he refused, Li Yuan would never let him off. Part of the reason Li Yuan had spared him was that his words carried some weight. But more importantly, Li Yuan wanted him to help contain this ghost domain. To do that, he’d have to get involved.
So, in one swift motion, General Mammoth lunged forward like a panther. He snatched the man by the collar and slammed him into the ground, shouting, “Look around you, do you even know where this is?!”
The man blinked in confusion. Meanwhile, the woman had already slipped deeper into the ghost domain, beckoning him anxiously. “Hurry, my love. Come here!”
Terrified by General Mammoth’s fierce approach, the man scrambled to his feet and tried to chase after her. But then he stopped dead, body stiffening in horror, before collapsing with a cry.
Because where he’d expected to see a simple little cottage, there was nothing but a gaping, grayish-black pit exuding a faint, nauseating stench, swirling with a dizzying haze.
General Mammoth saw it too, and more. The woman’s skin seemed to melt away, leaving behind a ghastly, waxy corpse glaring at him with a bitter, hateful stare.
Hauling the man up by his neck, General Mammoth roared, “Think carefully. Do you know her?”
“I...I...” The man’s face was pale, and only after a long pause did he stammer, “Yes...I remember now! She was Xiao Cui... She...”
With a bit of forceful questioning, General Mammoth got the story. This man was the wealthy son of a prominent family who’d repeatedly harassed a woman years earlier. Desperate to escape his harassment, she drowned herself in a river. Her body was carted off to this very mass grave and buried.
Without another word, General Mammoth knocked the man unconscious. “Rotten scum,” he spat, “you deserve the ghost’s revenge!”
Then he heaved him into the pit.
The cadaver-lady seized hold of the man. Her hateful glare toward General Mammoth vanished, and she dragged her victim down into the depths.
Although every hair on his body stood on end, General Mammoth simply dusted off his hands and walked back over to Li Yuan.
With an air of righteous indignation, he muttered, “Vermin like him deserve to die a thousand times over.”
Li Yuan gave him a sidelong glance but didn’t comment. Instead, he said calmly, “The last time I did that, I threw Zhao Xiantong into the pit. A few days later, he came walking right back out, and came looking for both you and me. If nothing unexpected happens, that man you just tossed in will be after you soon enough.”
General Mammoth, outraged by evil, declared, “If that man comes to find me, I’ll just kill him again. People like that deserve to be cut to pieces.”
“That’s enough,” Li Yuan said flatly.
General Mammoth gave a sheepish laugh. “I’ve heard a saying in the Central Plains. If you survive a ghost’s first attack, the ghost will leave you alone. So if that man shows up to haunt me, I can just kill him again, and it’ll all be over.
“But...” His expression grew somber. “From what I’ve seen, if you stop these ghost-servants from killing their targets, they might turn on you instead.”
Li Yuan responded, “Get your men to surround the entrance to the mass grave. The moment the next ghost-servant comes out, lock it up in a cage. If that ghost-servant can’t return, then the mass grave won’t be able to send the next one. We can at least put a halt to this cycle.”
“Brilliant idea!” General Mammoth clapped his hands in approval.