Chapter Six: Eerie... Divine

A wretched scream escaped from the corpse woman’s mouth, mingling not only with pain, but even a trace of fear. Fang Mu pressed the corpse’s head down with all his strength, the Ghost Thorn twisting back and forth, his hand steady as a rock.

“As a coroner, I gave voice to the dead; though I haven’t uncovered anything for you yet,” he said quietly, “that’s hardly a reason for you to turn on me.”

A hissing sound rose as the Ghost Thorn met the corpse’s flesh, smoke curling up and leaving charred marks visible on her neck. Fang Mu suddenly felt the weight in his hand lighten as the corpse’s body, starting from her limbs, was reduced to ash by the flow of true energy within, leaving only a single head behind.

He exhaled slowly and stood, gripping the corpse woman’s long hair so that her head hung just above the ground. The features frozen on that face were still twisted in terror and despair, but the former menace had faded.

Just then, the sound of clapping came from behind. Fang Mu turned to see the beauty with the tear-shaped mole, Qing Ruowu, approaching. He calmly let the woman’s head dangle from one hand, the Ghost Thorn in the other. He made no attempt to hide; at such a distance, it was clear Qing Ruowu had discovered something.

“As I thought, you’re not human,” she said, drawing nearer with a sword in hand.

Fang Mu was silent. If he hadn’t known the context, he might have thought she was insulting him.

Qing Ruowu seemed to realize her words were off and corrected herself. “I misspoke. You’re one of the Arcane as well.”

Arcane? The word brought to mind the Ghost Thorn he’d acquired with his corpse-touching skill, engraved with the same characters.

Qing Ruowu shook her head, tossing him a smooth stone. “Inject your true energy into this.”

Fang Mu caught the river stone, considered for a moment, then sent a thread of true energy into it. Though his reserves were meager, their regenerative power was considerable—unfortunately, such a small amount didn’t allow him to do much. As his energy entered, the stone flashed with white light.

“The Stone of Revealed Vice glows white—no collusion with the uncanny, so you must be an ordinary person who’s recently obtained supernatural abilities.” With a wave of her hand, Qing Ruowu summoned the stone back to her.

“Supernatural? Uncanny?” Fang Mu frowned. Another new term—what did ‘supernatural’ mean in this context?

“There’s no time to explain.” Qing Ruowu carefully tucked the stone away, her gaze sweeping the surroundings. “That corpse was uncanny, transformed after midnight and arriving here. This village is more complicated than I thought; there may be clues. The previous bodies didn’t change, only this woman’s did, and the missing parts returned—something major is afoot.”

Fang Mu fell silent. He might have understood why the corpse transformed—possibly related to the bead he’d placed in her mouth. But the situation was not as simple as Qing Ruowu made it out to be.

Noticing his silence, Qing Ruowu frowned. “Have you thought of a good plan?”

Fang Mu grinned, swinging the severed head by its hair. “I don’t have a plan. Unless the mastermind decides to reveal themselves, we’ll never find them.”

Qing Ruowu stared at the head in his hand, surprised by how quickly this newcomer adapted. Most people, even with newfound powers, remained fragile at heart. Yet Fang Mu treated the severed head as if it were nothing, waving it about like a toy. What she didn’t know was that, as a coroner, Fang Mu found the dead far more trustworthy than the living.

He noticed her suspicion and gestured at the head. “I fought with her and made quite a racket. We’ve been in this open area since you arrived—if there’s anything to uncover, it’s only because the other side wants us to see it.”

And there was another problem: despite the commotion, the village remained eerily quiet—not even a dog barked. A village at night might lack human voices, but the absence of dogs was unnatural. Every village kept dogs for guarding homes; they were sensitive and quick to sound the alarm at the slightest disturbance. The silence here meant something had happened.

Qing Ruowu raised her sword, reversing her grip so the hilt pointed upward at her chest. With her other hand, she formed a sword seal, pressing her fingers to the end of the hilt. The pose might have seemed ridiculous to an outsider, even childish, but with the accompanying glow, it was transformed. After all, if someone ran into the street shouting about becoming light, they’d be seen as a fool—unless they truly did become light, trailing sparks and thunder, and then it was something else entirely.

Strange, dark-red patterns flowed from her fingers, coursing through the hilt and staining the blade. Her long black hair billowed, the crimson glow lending her an air of mysterious power. At that moment, Fang Mu thought she looked more like a villain than anything else; if not for her position, he might have shouted some dramatic phrase at her.

Her eyes widened as she intoned, “By command of the Divine Sword, let sigils arise; Heaven clear, Earth turbid—let the sigil sword pursue the culprit!”

The dark-red sword quivered violently as dazzling, dangerous sigils rose from its surface, surrounding the severed head in Fang Mu’s hand. With a crisp sound, the head dissolved into blood, which was then absorbed by the sword. It trembled upright, pointing in a specific direction.

“The Sigil Sword Tracking Art, using the head as a medium, though its range is limited,” Qing Ruowu said, her eyes turning cold, her alluring face now chilling. “Fortunately, I followed the corpse here—the mastermind has been found.”

Fang Mu felt a sense of foreboding. After all that noise, the enemy was likely expecting them to track this way. Was a net already set, just waiting for her to walk into it?

“Let’s go!” Qing Ruowu seized Fang Mu’s hand, intending to head where the sword pointed.

But Fang Mu stopped, unmoving.

Qing Ruowu looked back, her brows knitting, the tear-shaped mole barely visible.

“I’m not going,” Fang Mu said, shaking off her hand. “You’re more professional than I am—I’ll go fetch reinforcements.”

Any normal person faced with such uncanny events, lacking matching strength but still rushing in, would almost certainly be out of their mind.