Stranger Danger

Chapter 348: Qi Eater

Boom!

There was a loud boom as two men wearing masks and burial clothes leaped into the air, fleeing from the gates. They were both middle-stage Astral Refiners and pretty strong. But as soon as they leaped into the air, the yin guards threw out a chain each from their sleeve. It moved as quick as lightning and caught the two Astral Refiners with ease.

This wasn’t a scary sight. What was scary was the yin guards pulling out what looked like two semi-transparent silhouettes from the Astral Refiners’ bodies. It was their souls. Their bodies sailed forward for a bit before dropping to the floor because of momentum, but their souls were still tightly bound by the chains.

When the two souls saw this, they immediately struggled and begged for mercy with all their might. It was futile though. The yin guards pulled them over and declared, “The punishment for forging a Yin Token and attempting to infiltrate Fengdu is a hundred years in the Hell of Mountain of Knives!”

After sweeping their black, lightless pupils across the crowd, the two yin guards slowly opened their mouths until their cheeks literally split into two. There was no tongue or goozle[1] in their throats, however. Instead, they were treated to the horrifying sights taking place in various hells such as the Hell of the Cauldrons of Oil, the Hell of the Mountain of Knives, the Hell of Mills and so on. Each and every hell showed countless souls suffering inhuman punishment and screaming on top of their lungs. It was terrifying to look at to say the least.

The two yin guards threw the still struggling souls into their mouths and slowly closed them. But even after their faces had returned to normal, the crowd could still vaguely hear the two souls screaming in pain and torture. The two yin guards declared coldly, “This is Fengdu. Respect our laws, or suffer the consequences!”

......

Chu Nianjiu chuckled after the show was over. “Ah, if it’s not the age-old tactic our bureau has used countless times to intimidate our enemies!”

“So what if it’s old? Don’t fix what isn’t broken,” Ye Qing commented as he observed the crowd. If the atmosphere was light and relaxed just now, now it was tense and silent.

No one in Ye Qing’s group took the example to heart. The yin guards might be very powerful—not to mention that this was their turf where they could unleash their full potential—but it didn’t matter to them, because they were men with a genuine Yin Token.

Of course, that wasn’t to say they hadn’t taken anything away from the experience. For starters, their desire to let their impulse run free was way smaller than before. Why suffer in hell when you can live in comfort?

As expected, the group passed through the checkpoint smoothly and without trouble. Something happened when it was Ye Qing’s turn though. When the yin guards saw his Yin Token, a flicker of astonishment appeared in both their eyes. They even saluted him and returned his token to him respectfully.

Ye Qing was confused by their change in attitude, but he didn’t dare to ask them about it.

“What was that about, Joyless?” Chu Nianjiu asked Ye Qing after they were inside the city.

“I don’t know. Maybe my Yin Token is special?” Ye Qing answered while feeling the Yin Token in his pockets. Technically speaking, his Yin Token was a tad different from his companions’. Their tokens were black in color and somewhat coarse in appearance, while his looked like it was made from glass or jade. At the very least, its looked better than the normal tokens.

“Who are you really, Joyless? You blasted a Yin God’s statues and their brazier, and you still got a better token than us? How is that fair?” Chu Nianjiu joked.

“Who knows? Maybe I’m just handsome.” Ye Qing shrugged. He couldn’t give an answer because he himself had no idea why he was getting special treatment. If he had to guess, it probably had something to do with the Annon Sutra, but that was a secret he would be taking to his grave.

Meanwhile, Qi Xuanyun was examining his surroundings curiously and excitedly, “So this is the Yin Market. How lively! It doesn’t feel too different from a normal market.”

Ye Qing and Chu Nianjiu stopped their conversation and looked. The place was full of people, shops and stalls lined both sides of the street, all kinds of goods were on display, and the sheer number of colorful lanterns and banners on display rivaled that of the Lantern Festival in the yang world, if not more.

Of course, the atmosphere was a little strange. The items and the people selling them were much stranger than the average human as well. For starters, the lanterns hanging on the flag poles, eaves and more were pale white in color. The candle flame was an eerie green as well.

The stalls were selling bones, writhing yin souls, bloody organs, dark green eyeballs and more.

The people—or more accurately, the ghosts selling the items looked far more varied than a human ever was. Some had blue faces and long fangs, some had an animal’s head despite their humanoid body, some had their guts spilled all over the floor, and some were straight up a ball of nothingness.

Even the humans roaming the market were wearing jarringly colorful burial clothes that you would never catch them wearing in their own world.

It was strange, but it definitely fit a human’s impression of the yin world.

At the beginning, everyone was a little tense worried that they might offend one of the ghosts and be eaten like the poor fucks from earlier. However, they soon realized that these horrifying-looking ghosts weren’t too different from the human merchants in their own world. They boasted their products to stupid levels just like a human merchant would, they haggled over every coin like a human merchant would, and they even lied and pulled all sorts of trickery to scam their customers like a human merchant would. It was all so familiar, and it was that familiarity that allowed them to relax again.

“What’s that?”

“How much is this?”

“Brother Ye, look! Look!”

Qi Xuanyun’s eyes shone brightly as he ran all over the place admiring the strange products that were on sale like a kid. Ye Qing, Chu Nianjiu and Lin Yuhuai too felt like their horizons were broadening by the minute.

A Stranger called Two Halves—it was because his head was made up of the right half of one head and the left half of a different head joined in the middle[2]—was calling for his customers to buy the other halves of his head.

A saliva ghost was spitting black water into a wooden basin and drinking from it after it was full. He was literally selling its own saliva.

A faceless ghost with long hair and an hourglass figure was selling clothes and ornaments woven from her own hair.

A ghost scholar with no head was singing from his bare neck and selling his ghastly artworks and poetry.

A ghost bride wearing a bridal dress and a phoenix coronet was selling her own husband’s soul.

There were also bones that were wreathed in ghostfire, a stone that sang in a sweet, feminine voice whenever it felt the wind, a ghost willow branch that could be used to repel stray ghosts, Water of Forgettance that could make one forget their memories on sale.

Unfortunately, Ye Qing hadn’t found a Duckweed Flower amidst the stalls. He was a little disappointed.

“Scions, warriors, big brothers, passerby, ladies and gentlemen, wanna check out a bottle that can turn breath into gold? Come, come! You don’t want to miss this!”

Suddenly, a loud cry drew everyone’s attention. Ye Qing too got curious and went over to check out the situation. It wasn’t long before he saw a thin, long-faced ghost with pointed lips holding a bottle that was literally bigger than him.

“A bottle that turns breath into gold? You’re not kidding, are you?” Someone asked.

The ghost chuckled. “Not at all! My bottle is a natural magical item that can turn any breath into gold! All you need to do is to blow into it, and it will spit out a block of gold in return!”

“This can’t be real, can it?” Someone looked dubious.

“Of course it’s real! Would you like to give it a try, scion? Even if it’s fake, it’ll only cost you a single breath anyway. It’s a win-win for you no matter how you look at it, don’t you think?” The ghost urged.

“Why not? Okay.” The young man stepped forward and blew into the bottle once. Two breaths later, it spat out a block of gold as promised.

“It’s real?!” The young man picked up the gold, weighed it in his hand, and even bit it with his teeth. He exclaimed in shock, “It really is gold!”

“Of course it is!” The ghost grinned widely. “You can have that, scion. It’s yours.”

“Is there anyone else who would like to give it a go? I’m just doing this for fun. I promise I won’t take a single coin for you, but you are free to take the gold my bottle spits out.”

“Me! Let me!”

“No, let me!”

“Stop pushing me! I came here first!”

“Fuck you! I’m the one who came first!”

Practically everyone who saw the performance went bonkers when they saw that the bottle could actually turn a person’s breath into actual gold. No one wanted to miss the opportunity.

“Do you want to give it a try, Joyless?” Chu Nianjiu looked tempted.

“Haha. If you think that your life is worth a block of gold, then sure,” Ye Qing replied nonchalantly.

“Wait, what? What do you mean?” Chu Nianjiu frowned.

Ye Qing’s lips curled into a smile. “Did you notice? The air these poor fools are breathing into the bottle isn't normal. Specifically, it’s a breath of pure yang.”

“A single breath of pure yang is worth a full year of qi, essence and spirit. Anyone who breathes into the bottle is going to get terribly ill when they return.”

“Is that so?” Chu Nianjiu suddenly felt far less tempted to give the bottle a go. “But a bout of illness is nothing to a warrior, is it? Why did you imply that breathing into that bottle would cost someone’s lives?”

“Because it literally would kill them,” Ye Qing sneered.

“If I’m not mistaken, that ghost is what they call a Qi Eater[3],” Lin Yuhuai said. “According to ‘Hundred Ghosts Record of Fengdu’, there exists a ghost who is as thin and small as a child and carries a silver bottle with it all the time. During a full moon after midnight, it would slip into a person’s room and feed on their yang qi while they are asleep. Hence, it is called the Qi Eater.”

“Every time a Qi Eater feeds on a person’s yang qi, the silver bottle would spit out a block of gold that the Qi Eater would place next to the person’s head. If the person accepted the gold, the Qi Eater would take it as permission to feed on their qi until they die. That’s what Joyless meant.”

“These people should’ve known better. There is no such thing as free lunch in this world. If you take the Qi Eater’s gold, then you will die.”

“Heavens above!” Chu Nianjiu didn’t think that it would be so serious. His lips curled into a cold sneer as he asked, “What an audacious, vile Stranger!”

“This is the Yin Market, you know. What did you expect?” Ye Qing wore a smirk that didn’t reach the eye. “See that ghost who’s selling mirrors? He’s called a Mirror Spirit or Mirror Ghost. If you buy his mirror, then you better be careful when you look into the mirror at night. He might just crawl out and consume your soul.”

“See that ghost scholar giving away his artwork for free? If you’re stupid enough to buy his paintings, there’s a non-zero chance that the person returning to the yang world won’t be you anymore.”

“Humans think that ghosts are scary, and ghosts think that humans are cruel and vicious. They are both right. The last thing you want to do in the Yin Market is to lose sight of the bigger picture.”

“Should we get involved?” Chu Nianjiu’s eyes glinted dangerously.

“What do you think?” Ye Qing sighed. They were the Pacification Bureau after all. They couldn’t possibly watch someone throw their lives away and do nothing about it.

1. Adam’s apple. Can’t really use the word Adam even in narration, sorry. ?

2. You guys get what this means, right? Two heads, cut both in half, then join two different halves together? Tell me if there’s a better way to describe this. ?

3. Breath is sometimes synonymous to qi. Thanks to Demon Slayer er it’s less awkward to translate breath as qi these days, but it’s still best avoided due to how common the word ‘breath’ is even in an English original. ?

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