Chapter 8: Qi Eating Spirit (3)

“Does this damn thing come with rollback and reset too?!” Zhou Xin shouted as she ran off, ducking beneath an osmanthus tree nearby.

Shen Jibai blocked with his blade, but the qi-eating spirit swerved downward and slammed straight into his stomach. With a dull thud, he was sent flying into the courtyard wall, then crashed to the ground.

Then the qi-eating spirit abruptly turned and shot straight toward Zhou Xin. She circled the osmanthus tree several times, and the qi-eating spirit flew after her several times.

If things kept going like this, with her running and it chasing, it might not be impossible.

But the qi-eating spirit was far too clever. It suddenly stopped, and Zhou Xin, unable to brake in time, rounded a bend and ran straight into a wisp of black hair.

She hurriedly swung her sword and cut it down, then turned and ran back, biting open the wound on her finger as she ran and drawing a talisman in her palm.

Seeing that she was about to run back in front of the qi-eating spirit, Zhou Xin tentatively raised her palm and slapped it straight at the black smoke.

With a hiss, the black smoke vanished into nothing.

Zhou Xin was overjoyed. She thought to herself, The evil-breaking talisman really works!

“Court Minister Shen! Work with me!”

Before she had finished speaking, Shen Jibai had already grasped the trick. He leapt into the air and swung his blade down at the qi-eating spirit.

The man and the spirit became locked in battle once more.

This time, Zhou Xin did not stand aside and watch. She slid the peachwood sword back behind her waist, drew a talisman on the palm of her other hand as well, and struck with both hands at the black smoke formed from the strands of hair.

The black mist coiling through the air scattered completely. The qi-eating spirit let out an enraged, drawn-out shriek and fought back even more fiercely.

It gathered up its hair and instead began fighting Shen Jibai bare-handed. Zhou Xin seized every opening to chop at its head, successfully cutting off several sections of black hair, then slapped them apart with her palm before continuing her sneak attacks.

Compared to Shen Jibai, who had shaved it nearly bald, it seemed to hate Zhou Xin even more for dispersing its hair. It suddenly turned, reached for Zhou Xin, grabbed her wrist, and twisted hard.

A sharp pain shot through her wrist. With a clang, the peachwood sword fell to the ground.

Seizing the chance, it raised its hand, its five claws curling as they went straight for her throat.

“Help!”

Zhou Xin endured the pain in her wrist and retreated again and again.

But how could her movements possibly be faster than the qi-eating spirit’s?

In the blink of an eye, its sharp claws locked around her throat. A powerful foreign sensation pressed against her windpipe, strangling her until her lips parted instinctively and even breathing became extremely difficult.

At that critical moment, a sharp blade tip pierced out from its forehead.

“Hrrgh—!”

“Hrrgh—!”

The pressure around her neck vanished. Zhou Xin fell heavily to the ground. She saw that the qi-eating spirit’s head had been pierced through from back to front by the dragon-patterned blade. Its body trembled uncontrollably as dense black qi poured out from its head.

Its incorporeal body shattered along with it, completely transforming into a mass of black cloud that merged with the thick black qi, revealing a black human-shaped figure.

“It’s shown its true form! Hurry, use the demon-locking pouch!”

Shen Jibai’s eyes shifted slightly. He immediately untied the pouch at his waist, opened the seal, and raised it.

Zhou Xin held two fingers upright before her face, her lips moving as she chanted the incantation. Then she shouted, “Collect!”

The black human-shaped figure turned into rolling black smoke and was sucked into the demon-locking pouch in a spiral, accompanied by a piercing roar.

“Hrrgh—!”

In an instant, the black cloud disappeared. The surroundings immediately fell silent, so quiet that one could almost hear a pin drop.

Shen Jibai tightened the drawstring and hung the pouch back at his waist.

Zhou Xin asked, “Lock it in the Demon-Locking Tower?”

Instead of answering, he asked, “Does Lord Lingyun have a better method?”

“As it happens, I do.”

Hearing this, Shen Jibai lifted one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, as though he did not quite believe she had that ability.

He picked up the lightning-summoning talisman that had fallen to the ground. “Is this that method?”

Zhou Xin gave two awkward chuckles. “...Just pretend Chao never said anything.”

Shen Jibai crumpled the talisman into a ball and threw it aside. Expressionless, he walked over to the stone table beneath the osmanthus tree and sat down, clearly with no intention of speaking further.

Clear moonlight slipped past the branches and fell upon him, making his aura seem even colder, as though everything around him had nothing to do with him.

Zhou Xin hesitated for a while, then sat down across from him.

Shen Jibai’s cold eyes swept over the tabletop. Then he turned his head away, so stingy that he did not even spare her the corner of his eye.

Zhou Xin tactfully shut her mouth, completely giving up on the foolish idea of easing their relationship. She picked up the teapot on the stone table, poured herself a cup of tea, and drained it in one gulp.

Shen Jibai said, “The tea is cold.”

“It quenches thirst precisely because it’s cold.” As she spoke, she poured herself another cup.

“I heard Lord Lingyun has recently been cultivating in seclusion?”

She guiltily rubbed the tip of her nose and stubbornly tried to save face. “These were all accidents. Chao did not expect the lightning-summoning talisman to fail either.”

He sneered. “Wherever Lord Lingyun is, accidents truly happen everywhere.”

Zhou Xin took a deep breath, calmed herself down, and changed the subject. “How is the investigation into the city entry and exit records?”

Hearing this, Shen Jibai’s expression darkened slightly. He turned his head to the side, as though he had not heard her question.

Zhou Xin laughed softly. “Court Minister Shen actually didn’t find anything?”

Shen Jibai was silent.

He said, somewhat unnaturally, “...There were no suspicious individuals.”

That was it?

Seven or eight days had passed, and he had not found a damn thing, yet he still had the nerve to make snide remarks at her!

She silently rolled her eyes, but then suddenly realized something after the fact. A thought flashed through her mind.

Her expression became unusually serious. “Since you couldn’t find a person, then could it be—”

Shen Jibai immediately understood what she meant. “A demon?”

Demons and evil beings left strange and elusive traces, coming and going without a shadow. It would not be surprising if Shen Jibai could not find anything.

Moreover, the cultivation-boosting effect of a demon core was greatly diminished for humans, but for demons, it was exactly the opposite.

Thinking of this, Zhou Xin simply told him everything about the lost thousand-year demon core.

The more Shen Jibai listened, the more solemn his expression became.

After she finished speaking, he lowered his eyes and pondered for a while, analyzing the matter piece by piece.

A person, even if their memory was damaged and they had forgotten everything, would not lose the martial skills they had tempered through countless trials.

Those were bodily reactions that had sunk deep into the bones and fused into the blood.

The person before him was not Chao Nanyi at all.

Ever since she appeared, there had first been the hamster demon injuring people in the busy streets of the Eastern Capital, then the qi-eating spirit entering a residence to commit murder. Now, Perfected Linghe had discovered that someone had stolen the inner core of the King of Ten Thousand Foxes.

All of this was inseparably connected to her sudden appearance.

Furthermore, on the night the King of Ten Thousand Foxes escaped from the Demon-Locking Tower, Lord Lingyun had happened to be on duty at the Court of Judicial Review, so naturally she would have gone after it at once.

But sealing the Fox King was an extremely dangerous matter. With her cultivation, it would have been nearly impossible to succeed without assistance.

Yet she had not asked anyone for help. She had even rejected the bailiff’s suggestion to go to Taiqing Temple and invite Perfected Linghe to intervene, insisting on acting alone. Could it be because she had another helper?

And that helper was the person who had dug out the Fox King’s inner core!

Then the person who released the King of Ten Thousand Foxes would be...

He slowly raised his eyes and looked at the person sitting across from him.

That person was propping her cheeks in both hands, her brows slightly furrowed, her eyelids drooping, as though she had fallen into deep thought.

A moment later, she suddenly slapped the stone table hard. “No, there’s another possibility!”

Shen Jibai: “?”

“If Court Minister Shen couldn’t find any clues in the city entry and exit records, then that means... this person isn’t an outsider, but someone who lives in Luoyang City.”

She analyzed with certainty, “Or to narrow the scope even further, it was someone on duty at the Court of Judicial Review that night.”

Shen Jibai narrowed his phoenix eyes, his gaze turning cold. “If Shen remembers correctly, Lord Lingyun was also on duty that night.”

“Court Minister Shen suspects Chao of guarding the treasure while stealing it and staging this whole show?”

Zhou Xin laughed in anger. “That Fox King’s demon core is no good thing. Its illusion-casting ability is unparalleled in the world. If Chao had swallowed it, I might still be trapped in an illusion right now!”

“Besides,” she muttered quietly, “Perfected Linghe already examined Chao’s spiritual platform long ago. There was no trace of a demon core at all.”

Shen Jibai gave a low hum and said nothing more, but he did not look particularly convinced.

“Heh.” Zhou Xin laughed coldly.

This man really was something.

One moment she had helped his family eliminate an evil spirit, and the next he could turn around and accuse her instead. No wonder he could accept the pine-blossom wine and still report her to Perfected Linghe. He had no awareness of having taken a bribe at all.

A corrupt official. A purely heartless, dog-like corrupt official.

Forcing down the urge to curse him out, she rolled her eyes and dragged the topic back to the case.

“After a demon core leaves the body, it must be used for cultivation immediately. Once it is used, there will be changes in the spiritual platform. Court Minister Shen may as well investigate who was on duty that night and compile a list.”

Shen Jibai did not agree right away. Instead, he pressed further. “Why would he go to such lengths to harm the hamster demon?”

“Chao couldn’t figure that out at first either, but now...”

Zhou Xin paused, then said meaningfully, “Perhaps we were looking in the wrong direction from the very beginning.”

Shen Jibai: “?”

“Court Minister Shen may as well carefully investigate who entered and exited Changfeng Tavern that day. This evil cultivator took such a risk—could he have been targeting someone inside the tavern? For example, the scholar the hamster demon attacked first?”

Zhou Xin’s analysis was clear and logical, almost without reservation.

Hearing this, Shen Jibai lowered his eyes, and no one knew what he was thinking. After a while, he looked up at her, his expression becoming exceptionally serious.

“Why is Lord Lingyun so invested in this case?”

“Does investigating a case need a reason? Isn’t this the duty of a court secretary?” Zhou Xin looked puzzled. “Besides, all beings are equal. A demon’s life is also a life.”

Shen Jibai looked deeply at her. “Demons and evil beings cause chaos. How can they be mentioned in the same breath as humans?”

“Are demons the only ones who cause chaos?”

Shen Jibai narrowed his eyes slightly. “Humans do so even more.”

“Exactly,” Zhou Xin said. “The human heart is a ghostly realm. Demonic evil cannot compare to the human heart. Whether human or demon, there is still a distinction between good and evil. How can they all be dismissed with a single phrase?”

As soon as she finished speaking, Shen Jibai’s already narrowed phoenix eyes narrowed even further. Only then did she remember that Chao Nanyi hated demons. These words of hers would surely arouse his suspicion.

Perhaps he had said all that deliberately to test her.

Zhou Xin cleared her throat, turned away somewhat unnaturally, picked up her teacup, and drank, saying nothing more. Shen Jibai watched her with an unreadable expression and also remained silent.

Beneath the cold moonlight, a faint ripple passed through those ink-black eyes, and the ice that had long accumulated in their depths seemed to show signs of slowly melting.

“The identity of that scholar has already been found.”

Shen Jibai, who had been listening one-sidedly to Zhou Xin’s analysis without the slightest intention of sharing clues, suddenly relented, displaying the awareness that a colleague jointly investigating a case ought to have.

“He is the son of the wealthiest man, Zhang Guangji. Recommended by the Minister of Justice, he was granted the qualification to sit for the imperial examinations. He is the number one talent of the Eastern Capital, Zhang Qingqing.”

“That’s a nice name!” Thinking of that handsome, refined face, Zhou Xin only felt that the man truly lived up to his name.

“And then? Did you send someone to investigate his home? Were there any new clues?”

Shen Jibai said, “There were no clues at all.”

“Why?” Zhou Xin asked.

He suddenly raised his eyes and looked straight at her, enunciating each word as though deliberately testing her.

“He. Has. Gone. Mad.”