372: Chapter 372 Empty Grave

The flying boat descended slowly onto the edge of a desolate wilderness.

In the distance, the outlines of a newly built village were faintly visible, with wisps of cooking smoke curling upward. This land had been trampled flat by the iron hooves of the Erosion Beast over a thousand years ago. Now, with dozens of generations having passed and two Imperial Dynasties rising and falling, the tragedy of the past had long since vanished into the dust of time, forgotten by those who came after.

Beneath her feet lay a path overgrown with weeds; the jagged rocks and a few gnarled old trees barely outlined the blurry contours of the homeland deep within Yue Xinxi's memory.

Yue Xinxi stood frozen, gazing at this land that was both familiar and strange, as if her feet had taken root.

The closer she got to home, the more timid she felt. A millennium of evasion and deeply buried fear coiled around her heart like cold vines, leaving her almost unable to breathe.

Ling Hao walked silently to her side, his broad, warm palm gently enveloping her cold, trembling hand.

Feeling that steady strength, Yue Xinxi's body gave a slight jolt. She took a deep breath, as if breaking free from invisible shackles, and took a heavy step forward.

Following the overgrown and nearly unrecognizable path, they finally arrived at a more desolate mountain hollow.

Three lonely earthen graves came into view.

The grave where her parents were buried together, though overgrown with waist-high mugwort, appeared somewhat desolate, but the outline of the mound remained, and the earth covering it was intact.

"Wrong!"

Yue Xinxi muttered to herself.

Before leaving Baiyan Prefecture, she had set up a simple Formation to maintain the graves of her parents and younger sister, but the overgrown mugwort before her eyes clearly indicated that something had gone wrong with the Formation.

"Could it have been damaged by the True Demon Realm or the Erosion Beast Tide?"

At the thought of this, a bad premonition arose in Yue Xinxi's heart.

When her gaze touched the small grave belonging to her sister nearby, Yue Xinxi instantly felt as if she had fallen into an ice cellar.

The grave mound had been crudely dug open to reveal a large, pitch-black hole, with fresh soil scattered haphazardly all around.

Three young men wearing the uniforms of Yunyan Sect Outer Sect Disciples, with cultivation levels only at the Qi Refinement Stage, were squatting by the edge of the hole, peeking inside. One of them was holding a crude shovel.

"...Should we dig a bit further down? Senior Brother Liu said he saw something crawl out. Maybe there really is something good down there, like burial jade or something..."

One Disciple lowered his voice and suggested with greedy excitement.

"Dig! Since we're already here, it would be a huge loss to go back empty-handed!"

Another one chimed in.

Yue Xinxi's pupils suddenly contracted to the size of pinpricks.

A towering rage, mixed with the sorrow and indignation of being desecrated, erupted in her chest like a volcano.

The terrifying pressure of the Body Integration Stage slammed down hard upon the three Disciples, though she had clearly restrained its force.

"Thump! Thump! Thump!"

The three were like being struck by a giant hammer; they instantly collapsed to the ground, their bones rattling, all color drained from their faces, leaving only extreme terror in their eyes.

The leading Disciple, who had suggested digging up the grave, instantly wet himself, and a foul, acrid smell began to spread.

He looked up and saw Ling Hao and the others; his teeth chattered uncontrollably, and he couldn't even speak a plea for mercy clearly:

"Sen-Sen-Senior, please... spare our lives! We... we didn't dig up anything! Really! We... we were just looking!"

Yue Xinxi didn't even hear what he was saying. Her gaze was locked onto the pitch-black grave, which now contained only some rotten, broken coffin boards. Her sister's remains... were gone!

"You bastards! You are courting death!"

Murderous intent boiled in Yue Xinxi's eyes. She reached out and made a grasping motion in the air, seizing the Disciple by the throat and lifting him off the ground.

The Disciple's face instantly turned liver-colored, his legs kicked wildly, and the fear of death made him weep and snot uncontrollably.

"Spare... spare me! It... it has nothing to do with us!"

Another Disciple was scared until his Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering, wailing,

"We... when we arrived... it... it was already like this! It... it was because we heard Senior Brother Liu say this grave was strange... that we... we wanted to come and try our luck!"

Just as Yue Xinxi's fingers were about to tighten, Ling Hao's deep voice sounded:

"Xinxi, wait."

He had already squatted by the edge of the opened grave, carefully examining the marks on the rim of the hole.

"Come look here."

Ling Hao pointed to the edge of the soil inside the hole,

"Look at this soil; it was pushed outward and shattered from the inside. If it were people from the outside digging the grave, the soil layer should be turned outward and piled on the outside of the mound, and the digging marks would show collapse from the outside in. But here,"

He tapped a few distinct arched cracks with his finger, "These are traces of something forcing its way out from the inside with tremendous power."

"And, it shouldn't have been broken for too long."

Yue Xinxi's grip loosened unconsciously, her gaze fixed intently on the spot Ling Hao was pointing to.

Ling Hao continued,

"Look at these coffin fragments; most are scattered inside the grave pit, with no signs of being dragged outside. If it were grave robbers looking for burial goods, they would either drag the entire coffin out and smash it, or scatter the fragments everywhere. But as it is now... it looks more like..."

He paused and looked at Yue Xinxi's suddenly widened eyes, "It looks more like the person inside crawled out from within."

"Wha... what?!"

Yue Xinxi was as if struck by lightning. She abruptly released her hand, and the Disciple fell to the ground like a pile of mud.

A huge and absurd hope welled up in her heart,

"You... are you saying... Lan'er... she... she isn't dead?! She... she crawled out... from here?!"

"Cough, cough, cough..."

The Disciple who had been dropped to the ground clutched his neck, coughing and gasping violently.

Ling Hao's gaze was sharp as a knife, landing on the leading Disciple,

"Tell me everything you heard and saw regarding this grave, from beginning to end, clearly. Don't leave out a single word."

The Disciple dared not hold anything back and stammered out his confession:

"It... it was Liu Sanshui from the Outer Sect... Senior Brother Liu! Half a month ago... he, he was taking a shortcut back to the Sect at night and passed by this place... he said... he said he saw with his own eyes that this grave... out of this grave... crawled... crawled out a 'thing'! It scared him... scared him into fainting on the spot! When he... woke up, he scrambled and crawled back to the Sect, saying... saying he had run into a ghost!"

The Disciple swallowed hard and continued,

"Most people in the... Sect thought Senior Brother Liu was talking nonsense again. He... he is naturally timid and was scared to death of ghosts before joining the Sect. But... but the three of us..."

He glanced at his two companions, who were also shaking like chaff, "We were really short on money... we thought... we thought since a 'ghost' crawled out, then... then maybe in the grave... maybe there were good things that weren't taken by the 'ghost'... so... we thought we'd come and try our luck... to... to pick up some scraps... Senior, please spare us! We really didn't get anything! We... we just wanted to look further down when you... you all arrived!"

In reality, they thought it was a "ghost," which was likely a Cultivator, which is why they came to investigate.

The wild joy on Yue Xinxi's face was instantly covered by immense suspicion and worry.

Over a thousand years! For a Mortal, she should have long since been a pile of withered bones.

She looked anxiously at Ling Hao: "Lan'er... is she still alive? How is this possible..."

Xia Yingying, who was on the side, interjected:

"Sister Xinxi... could it... could it be an Evil Path Cultivator, controlling... controlling Sister Xinlan's... corpse?"

"No—!"

Yue Xinxi was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on; she instantly bristled, a surge of evil fire rushing straight to her head, "To be desecrated even after death, unable to rest in peace?! Simply damnable!"

She was trembling with rage; if her sister had suffered such a calamity after death, she wished she could grind those Evil Path Cultivators to dust!

Ling Hao frowned slightly and looked at the Disciple again, his voice grave:

"That Liu Sanshui, did he say clearly at the time, was the 'thing' he saw a complete human form? Or... a skeleton? Or something else?"

The leading Disciple was drenched in cold sweat under Ling Hao's gaze, trying hard to recall, his eyes flickering:

"Th-this... this one really doesn't know! Senior Brother Liu was scared out of his wits at the time, and he was speaking incoherently... it seemed... seemed to be a human figure... but specifically... this one only heard it relayed by others..."

He was terrified of saying the wrong thing and angering this great deity before him, who felt even more terrifying than the Sect Master, and bringing about his own death, so he could only speak vaguely.

Yue Xinxi took a deep breath, forcibly holding back the tears surging in her eyes.

She turned her head abruptly, her gaze shooting toward the three Disciples shaking like chaff on the ground, her voice cold as an icy wind:

"Lead the way! To the Yunyan Sect!"

As it happened, she still had an old debt at the Yunyan Sect, and it was time to settle it clearly.