In the darkness, footsteps approached him—seven or eight specters and a Soulwarden. They, too, were born and raised here, creatures that could not bear the light by nature, all equally adapted to the darkness. In a fight, neither side had the upper hand; it was only a matter of whether the soul-slaying blade was faster, or the specters’ teeth and mouths were sharper.

William Sherman was preoccupied with thoughts of Logan Sullivan and didn’t want to get entangled with them. In the darkness, he dodged three times in a row. The cautious specters finally shifted from probing to attacking, charging at him all at once. Only then did William Sherman let out a low shout, thrusting the soul-slaying blade he gripped in his palm. With overwhelming force, he chopped off a string of specter heads, which rolled all over the ground.

Without hesitation, William Sherman didn’t even glance at the corpses on the ground. He kicked aside a head and strode forward.

He didn’t know how long he had walked before he finally stopped. At William Sherman’s side, a faint sound like a human heartbeat could be heard.

The “yin soldiers” summoned by the Yin Soldier Execution were not actually yin soldiers in the usual sense. Those little souls under the jurisdiction of the underworld—how could they dare respond to the wildly arrogant call of “all under heaven, earth, man, and gods may be slain”?

In fact, they came from the Lightless Reach, deeper than the Yellow Springs, darker than hell.

Those armored horses and white bones were merely projections of the summoner’s unreliable imagination. They originally had no physical form, and even… if not for Logan Sullivan using blood and iron as a medium, even if they crawled up to the surface, in others’ eyes, they might have been nothing more than a row of “specters.”

In such circumstances, for Logan Sullivan to rashly summon the yin soldiers and then actually control them—first, it was due to his natural talent, and second, perhaps he was just lucky. With William Sherman holding the fort downstairs, those things didn’t dare act out of line.

“Lightless Reach, the prison of great blasphemy.” Back when Pangu split heaven and earth, separating the clear from the turbid, the turbid became earth, all things fell into order, and chaos was first broken. Afterward, the dregs of the earth settled for billions of years, and outside of heaven and earth, such a filthy, corrupt place formed.

Nüwa created humans from clay, but she was too impatient. Before the filth of the earth had settled, she hastily mixed the mud from above and below to form people. Thus, from the very beginning, humanity was born with original sin, the same as this place—the innate violent and destructive desires in people’s hearts.

The sages deeply regretted this and later called the Lightless Reach the “The Profaned,” forcibly isolating and sealing it. Now, the ancient divine power that sealed this prison has long since broken, torn open at the root into a gaping maw. Later, someone forcibly sealed it again with an array, but now that added seal is also on the verge of collapse. Spirit Mask has broken free and is running rampant in the world, and more and more specters are escaping as well.

The rift cannot be allowed to grow any larger.

William Sherman knelt on one knee, silently reciting the sealing incantation, temporarily reinforcing the loosened seal. The tremors gradually subsided, and the breach seemed to be covered by another layer.

Only then did he turn away with a grave expression, not knowing how much longer this temporary peace would last.

When William Sherman returned to the human world, dawn was nearly breaking. He landed in Logan Sullivan’s small apartment, intending to quietly remove his black robe so as not to wake Logan Sullivan. Suddenly, his expression sharpened, and he waved his hand to turn on the light—the room was empty. The bed he had tidied that morning was still neatly made, with no sign that anyone had touched it.

Logan Sullivan, who had not returned all night, pulled his coat tighter around himself in front of the graveyard and turned off the car.

When William Sherman mentioned that Charles Gray had seen a puppet in the glass window, Logan Sullivan immediately caught the unspoken implication—at that time, William Sherman had suddenly appeared before him in his own identity, probably not of his own will, and very likely had been set up.

Logan Sullivan believed that if he hadn’t pressed so hard, William Sherman would have avoided him. If he had known Logan Sullivan was there, then even if Charles Gray had seen a puppet, or even the true face of the Soulwarden, William Sherman would not have revealed himself in front of him—it would have been all too easy to make Charles Gray forget what he saw.

Logan Sullivan also recalled that after the Reincarnation Sundial incident, when he followed the Soulwarden to Quinn Barnes’s house, he heard a sentence on the rooftop—“deliberately sent him to you.” Who? What did that mean?

If the master of the specters was Spirit Mask, then why did Spirit Mask go to such lengths to draw the Soulwarden toward him?

Yet at the foot of the Terra-Spike, Logan Sullivan felt that although Spirit Mask kept threatening the Soulwarden with certain things, he never intended to let Logan Sullivan know. In comparison, the black notebook sent to him by the underworld’s emissary seemed even more deliberate.

Logan Sullivan felt as if he were standing on the surface of the human world, with a giant whirlpool beneath his feet, countless hands tangled within—some pushing him out, some pulling him in. Everyone seemed to have their own agenda, and everyone’s face was shrouded in mist.

Logan Sullivan looked up and saw a ball of ghostly fire halfway up the mountain, emitting a cold light, like a pair of sinister eyes in the night, staring at him from not too far away. He stopped, and the ghost fire stopped as well, as if leading the way. Logan Sullivan followed, slowly walking into the wild graveyard outside Westplum Village.

At some point, a fog began to fall, growing thicker and thicker until visibility was less than a meter. In the white haze, only the ghost fire ahead flickered, leading the way.

The air became damp, and occasionally a drop of water landed on his face, chilling and eerie.

From time to time, sighs of varying weight sounded in his ears, as if countless wandering souls were drifting through the withered forest. Logan Sullivan kept his eyes straight ahead and walked on—they did neither evil nor good, lingering in the human world, never entering the cycle of reincarnation. Everyone was crying, everyone felt wronged.

How many people in this world die willingly?

Logan Sullivan walked through the deep fog, the wide hem of his dark gray coat sweeping the ground. Wherever it passed, the white mist and the hands reaching out from the graves all shrank back, but not a single wandering ghost dared approach him.

Then, in the wild graveyard outside the city in the dead of night, the sound of weeping rose all around. Logan Sullivan finally lost patience and stopped. He spread his palm roughly, and a fierce flame ignited beneath a yellow talisman. The weeping instantly turned to shrieks as countless blurry shadows scrambled to retreat. The white mist seemed flammable, catching fire at once. Like a dragon of flame, it shot from his hand, sweeping the entire graveyard clean of fog in an instant.

“If you want to seek justice, go knock on the grievance drum of the Ten Yama Kings. Why are you wailing at me?” His expression was cold as he looked ahead—the ghost fire had already vanished.

The night was as cool as water, the stars as clear as if washed.

A waning moon hung in the sky, and the dry, cold wind cut like a knife across his exposed skin. Logan Sullivan pulled his scarf higher, nearly covering half his face.

Just then, a voice sounded at his side, sometimes near, sometimes far, with a rasp as if torn, singing:

“Waning moon, wild grave mound, ghost fire leads the way, resentful souls grieve.

Wind through the woods, bone flute blows, fox-worn human skin, monsters play.

Old man counts your fate, please listen close,

Living heads for silver coins, beauties’ whole skins for gold,

Two or three jin of corpse oil from a hundred-day-old child,

In exchange for half a lifetime of glory and wealth.

If you offer up your three souls and seven spirits,

I guarantee you’ll return to dust and earth,

A butcher’s karma for a lifetime of merit.”

The voice was like fingernails scraping glass, making one’s scalp crawl.

Chapter 58 Virtue Quill …

Logan Sullivan said coolly, “You know, there’s a saying that villains who give long opening speeches get shot dead. Do you believe it?”

Rustling sounds rose from all directions in the forest, as if countless tiny footsteps were moving within. Logan Sullivan pressed his lighter, raising the bean-sized flame high, casting a small halo of light.

Suddenly, he whipped his head around. A short shadow flashed past behind him, floating straight up into the air and vanishing in an instant, leaving only a long, cobweb-like hem trailing by at a speed too fast for the naked eye to follow.

It let out a laugh like a night-calling death bird.

Logan Sullivan stood still for a moment. That thing seemed just as wary of him, circling and darting around him, always probing but never daring to come close.

Suddenly, a long whip lashed out with a gust of wind from a tricky angle, catching the thing around the waist. Logan Sullivan flicked his wrist, and the tip of the whip slammed down hard. There was a strangled scream caught in its throat. Looking closely, he saw a “person” just over a meter tall thrown to the ground.

It was impossible to tell if this “person” was male or female—its face was covered in wrinkles, with a nose so prominent it took up most of its face, crowding out the other features. At first glance, it looked like an ominous bird, its beady eyes clouded and almost without whites, staring with a sinister gaze. When it suddenly grinned, it revealed a mouthful of jagged, yellow teeth, some pointing in, some out.

Logan Sullivan crouched down, resting his elbow on his knee, and stared at the creature for a moment before bluntly asking, “Hey, what exactly are you?”

The person glared at him and replied in a voice like a saw, “Kid, don’t be so arrogant.”