The more ashes that entered the bag, the more difficult it became to hold. It was like holding a bucket that was continuously being filled with water until it overflowed. Qiu Yunru's arms began to ache as the bag filled with vengeful spirits.

  The weight was coming from their rage at being captured. When one vengeful spirit was captured inside a spirit-holding bag, it was already bad enough; that spirit would rage and stomp about, hitting the bag from the inside and making a ruckus.

  However, when there were almost ten spirits, it was a hundred times worse!

  Those spirits not only wailed and stomped and hit at the bag, but they also would begin to fight one another, being crushed into such a small space without their own territory to lurk in.

  Though Qiu Yunru was exceptionally strong through martial cultivation, this was still a bit too much.

  His arms shook, and he fell to his knees.

  He was rather embarrassed at this. Not far behind him was Li Chenyuan, surely watching him topple over from just holding a brocade bag of ashes. What kind of weak shixiong would he think he had? Oh, his poor Reputation Points!

  But it really wasn't his fault!

  That Spirit-Disintegrating Pollen had truly weakened his muscles. It came from a plant found only in the Ghost Realm, and was incredibly difficult to harvest, requiring disguising oneself as a ghost and picking the plant on the night of the Hungry Ghost Festival. He had only managed to get his hands on some because of his friendly relationship with some of the disciples at Fu Yao Peak, and he only had it now because he had been preparing for the worst-case scenario with Fu Qiuyue. But now, he had sucked in many mouthfuls of it, and his brain was swimming with ghost qi!

  Trembling, Qiu Yunru tried to stand, but failed. Settling for the next most respectable thing, he managed to sit criss-cross and tie the bag shut.

  It was only then that he realized he hadn't quite captured every spirit.

  "Qiu-ge!"

  A hand with blue flesh and clawed, dirtied nails tore through the air towards his face.

  Qiu Yunru sighed internally, closing his eyes. Even if he tried to block this blow now, he wouldn't be able to dodge a second. Better to just get hit now, wasn't it? Though, his nice face might be ruined...He should be able to fix that with alchemy, no...?

  A flash of silver light darted in front of his face, and there was a wet slicing sound, then a thump.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Li Chenyuan had somehow gotten to him in time and sliced that clawed hand clean off! It lay now in a puddle of blackened blood, twitching violently. What a sickening sight!

  Even more terrifying, however, was the expression on Li Chenyuan's face.

  He was standing behind Qiu Yunru, towering over him and covering him with his shadow, while his sword arm had lashed out just next to Qiu Yunru's head to stop the corpse. The darkness of his expression, combined with the crazed look in his eyes and the tremble of his lip, would make anyone shudder and run the other way!

  Feeling a bit terrified, Qiu Yunru managed to say: "Many thanks, Li-shidi."

  "Ha...So it's...true..."

  Qiu Yunru jumped, sneezing out some more spirit pollen. Through his dizzy vision, he could see that indeed, the body belonging to the corpse that had just attacked him was still moving.

  It was in an incredibly pitiful state. It seemed that it was a corpse without legs, so it had been dragging itself all through the caves with its arms until the stumps of its legs trailed black blood. Its eyes were cut out, creating a gruesome sight. Every word it spoke sounded as though it was gritted out with great pain and effort.

  This made sense--most vengeful spirits of this level couldn't speak, let alone full sentences. Even if they could, it would always be incredibly difficult and take all of their vengeful energy to focus on producing language, so vengeful corpses only spoke when they had something they longed to say even more than they longed for violence!

  The corpse went on:

  "Li Guiren...and now you..." It tried to drag itself forward by digging its remaining fingers into the mountain stone, but only managed to pitiful strain. A high-pitched, scratchy sound came from its mouth. Was it laughing? "You're going to be the...same...same as him...I can sense it on...you..."

  Qiu Yunru really couldn't let this spirit go on, even if he was in a bad state himself. With all of his remaining effort, he grabbed some remaining spirit pollen from the ground and tossed it at the corpse.

  It wailed, melting away into a cloud of dust. Qiu Yunru quickly untied the brocade bag to capture it, then sealed it once more.

  If he had let that spirit continue to speak, who knows what it might have said? Even with what it had already said...

  Qiu Yunru wanted to glance at Li Chenyuan's face to see whether he had caught onto anything. However, he was really losing control of his body now!

  Weeping internally, Qiu Yunru collapsed backward into Li Chenyuan. How many Reputation Points would he lose for looking like a damsel in distress, passing out into the arms of his poor shidi? This was truly unseemly!

  "Qiu-ge!"

  Li Chenyuan's arms were rather warm. Qiu Yunru's head spun in circles, golden fog clouding the edges of his vision. The ghost qi had reached his meridians, and was beginning to interfere with his own spiritual circulation.

  Even though this amount of Spirit-Disintegrating Pollen definitely shouldn't kill him, he couldn't move a muscle! Since his mortal body wasn't familiar with ghost qi, it had frozen up entirely, unsure of what to do! Until that ghost qi dissipated sufficiently into the environment, he would be entirely useless.

  "Qiu-ge!" Li Chenyuan's arms tightened around him like a vise.

  Ah...Not so comfortable anymore...Too tight...

  Being immobilized, Qiu Yunru couldn't communicate this, so Li Chenyuan only squeezed him tighter. His eyes hovered above his shixiong's face, wide with panic and brimming with tears.

  Ah...Don't cry...I'm really not dying...I just can't speak...

  A hot tear dripped down onto Qiu Yunru's face, sliding into his eyeball. If he had been able to, he would have wiped it out right away--wasn't having someone cry right into your own eyeball a little too uncomfortable?!--but he couldn't even blink.

  Slowly, the golden clouds crept over his vision, and his eyes fluttered closed.