To Offend the Imperial Might Is to Die!

Zhou You closed his eyes and tried to let his soul leave his body. It did not leave. Instead it overlapped his body completely, so that he gained a soul's-eye view and could still control his body. This was the method he had thought up during evening self-study, while puzzling over how to send his soul out of his body. In theory, ghosts could see ghosts. A soul that had left the body differed from a ghost only in still being alive—basically, it counted as a ghost too. So a soul outside the body ought to be able to see ghosts. When he opened his eyes, a very pretty female ghost in white abruptly appeared before him. Her mouth gaped wide. She gestured at him and made sounds of "awu, awu." Zhou You jumped in fright and backed up several steps. The method worked. He really could see! "Whoa, a ghost!" Zhou You had gained a soul's-eye view. He could see what ordinary people could not! Nuomi was startled by Zhou You's reaction and instinctively backed up several steps as well. She hurriedly looked left and right. A ghost? Where was there a ghost? Seeing Zhou You watch her direction so warily, Nuomi suddenly realized that the ghost he meant was her! This person could see her? Zhou You stood ready, as if facing a mortal enemy, and even struck the military boxing stance he had learned in first-year military training. But he had learned it back in his first year and had forgotten most of it, so the stance came out rather a sorry mess. Seeing him so on guard, Nuomi did not dare underestimate him either. She copied his stance and struck an even more ridiculous military boxing pose. Partway through she noticed she had the stance reversed, and hurriedly switched her left and right hands. The old dormitory building was pitch-black. Only a little moonlight seeped through a door crack into the corridor. It was frighteningly quiet. This was the first time Zhou You had met a supernatural being. He could hear his own heartbeat. His mouth was dry, his tongue parched, and every cell in him was wound tight. What moves did she have? Could he even touch her? What was he supposed to do next? A string of questions flashed through his mind. Zhou You was terribly tense. Even with Chu Xiaoyao beside him, he was deeply uneasy. Wait—Chu Xiaoyao? He suddenly remembered. With Empress Chu Xiaoyao backing him, what was there to fear? From the corner of his eye he watched Chu Xiaoyao, and found her perfectly composed, calm and unflustered, not frightened by the female ghost in the least. Her manner gave Zhou You confidence, and he steadied as well. Of course Chu Xiaoyao had not been frightened by the female ghost. She could not see the female ghost at all. "So confident?" Seeing Zhou You so calm, Nuomi could not help growing nervous. "Could he be an expert?" The two sides faced off. Neither dared strike first. The air was stifling and tense. Zhou You held his breath and stared hard at Nuomi, trying to predict her next move. Nuomi could not hold her nerve, and moved first. "Here she comes!" His heart clenched. He braced to meet her, both hands set in a guard before his chest, ready to explode forward at any moment. But Nuomi did not attack Zhou You. She chose instead to attack Chu Xiaoyao, who was off to the side and still had no idea what was happening. Nuomi knew a little of the art of war, and understood the principle of defeating an enemy one at a time. This boy was hard to handle, but this girl seemed unable to see her. She would be easy. "Xiaoyao, watch out! That ghost is heading your way!" "Let it come. I, the illustrious Carefree Empress, fear no demon or monster that shuns the light!" Chu Xiaoyao spoke with heaven-soaring boldness, as if she bore the power to suppress all the heavens and swallow the cosmos. She could not see the ghost, but she firmly believed she was an Immortal Emperor cultivating anew, able to suppress every evil spirit! Who was the Carefree Empress? Still wondering, Nuomi unleashed a secret art. "Hei!" She could slip into the depths of an opponent's heart, draw out what they feared most, and trap them in it! The move had nothing to do with how high or low one's cultivation was. However great one's cultivation, however strong one's heart, one still knew there was always someone greater, always a heaven beyond heaven. There was always a being more powerful than oneself, and something one feared most. With this move, she had never failed! "Let me see what you fear most!" The scene before Nuomi's eyes changed. She arrived in a pitch-black space—the depths of Chu Xiaoyao's heart. "Strange. Why is it so dark in here?" Nuomi wondered. Could this person have a very dark heart? Her face didn't look like it. She instinctively reached out, hoping to touch something that would make her feel safe, only to find it so dark she could not even see her fingers. Not even the old dormitory building had ever been this dark. How dark did a person's heart have to be? "This is fine too. A dark heart is easier to scare." Nuomi thought wickedly. She snapped her fingers. By rights a ball of flame should have sprung up and lit the surroundings, but nothing happened. "That shouldn't be." Nuomi was baffled. She was not the master of this inner world, but she ought still to have had some control over it. Only if the other's mental fortitude far surpassed her own would she be left completely unable to control it. "She's just an ordinary student, isn't she? Could her nerves really be this strong?" Nuomi muttered inwardly. A student, with no cultivation to rely on, who had never seen a ghost—shouldn't her first reaction on meeting Nuomi have been panic? She could not control the surroundings. Things had gone somewhat beyond what she expected, and the pitch-black space gave her an unease she had not felt in a long time. There was nothing in this space. It was empty, with only the sound of her own footsteps, so vast and vacant that it left her ill at ease. Here she lost all sense of time. She did not know how long she had been walking. The farther she went, the more panicked she grew, as if the space had no end, and no matter how far she walked she could never get out. At the thought that she might be trapped and die here without ever knowing why, Nuomi was the one who panicked. She lowered herself, bent at the waist, and crept along, not daring to move too broadly, so that if something happened she could curl into a ball. She walked another stretch. Nothing changed. She would rather there were some change. She had never felt a loneliness like this, not even in the old dormitory building. Nuomi lowered her voice and tried hard to keep it from shaking. "Hello, is anyone there?" At last a second sound appeared in the space. What answered her was a scraping from far off, as if someone were dragging a heavy object this way. The footsteps were steady and powerful. Nuomi's heart leapt straight into her throat. "Are you the master of this place?" The other showed no intention of answering. The scraping did not pause for an instant. It only grew louder, which meant the other was drawing closer and closer to Nuomi. Whoever was coming did not come in peace. Nuomi shook from head to foot. She wanted to flee, but she could not bring a shred of strength to bear, as if every bone had been drawn out of her body. She struggled to crawl a couple of times the other way, and still could not outpace the scraping. A mass of dim white light appeared, which only frightened Nuomi more, because the white light and the scraping came from the same direction. Out of the white halo stepped a tall, slender figure. It was Chu Xiaoyao. She was dragging a broad axe as tall as a person. So the scraping had been the axe dragging along the ground. Seeing Nuomi, Chu Xiaoyao heaved both arms and raised the axe overhead with killing intent and resolve. Nuomi clutched her head and curled into a ball. She could not hold it in any longer, and burst into tears. "I was wrong! I won't scare anyone again! Don't kill me!" "I say: let there be light." Chu Xiaoyao's words sounded beside Nuomi's ear. The great axe crashed down, and with it heaven split and earth cracked, primal chaos broke open, yin and yang were divided, and the world met the light. Chu Xiaoyao opened heaven and earth. Nuomi raised her head, trembling, and met Chu Xiaoyao's gaze. Chu Xiaoyao's eyes had become two blazing suns, dazzling and brilliant. A mere ghost like Nuomi naturally dared not look straight at them. "To offend the imperial might is to die!" The voice boomed like thunder, echoing through the inner world, each peal higher than the last. It shook Nuomi until her soul could not hold, and she was forced out of the inner world. When her consciousness returned to reality, Nuomi actually felt the relief of having survived a calamity. So terrifying. So scared. Am I still alive? Oh—no, wait. I'm already dead... Before Nuomi could react, Zhou You's fist followed. "Let go of Xiaoyao! Taste my fist!" Zhou You shouted, swinging his fist and smashing it into Nuomi. What had happened in the inner world had taken place in the space of a single thought. To Zhou You, Nuomi had still been attacking Chu Xiaoyao a second ago, and he charged in to fight at once. Nuomi had just been badly hurt in the inner world, and she had no strength to begin with. She did not even have the strength to dodge. She could only take the punch, and passed out cold. She felt as if she had dreamed a very, very long dream, in which she lay on a bedboard in the old dormitory building while the sound of a dragged axe came down the pitch-black corridor. Bang. One of the dormitory doors was smashed open. Then another bang. The dormitory door beside it was smashed open. She wanted to flee, but for some reason she was bound fast to the bedboard and could not move. Could this be the legendary ghost pressing on the bed? Door after door was smashed open. At last the footsteps stopped before the door of the room where Nuomi lay. "Gulp." Nuomi swallowed nervously, hoping the other would spare her. Bang— The axe arrived right on time. A gap was smashed through the wooden dormitory door, and a bone-white axe edge showed through. The other pulled the axe free, peered in with one eye, and spoke in a deliberately warm voice. "Is anyone in there?" It was Chu Xiaoyao! Nuomi's eyes flew open. Realizing it had only been a dream, she was flooded with relief. She heard Zhou You and Chu Xiaoyao sitting off to one side, talking. "Xiaoyao, do ghosts sleep too?" "She was surely frightened unconscious by my imperial might." "Didn't you say you can't see ghosts? She was clearly laid out by my punch!" "I need not see her to frighten her." "Hey, she's awake." Nuomi tried hard to burrow into the corner. The look she turned on Chu Xiaoyao was full of terror. This move of hers had never failed. She had never imagined it would fail against a mortal—and leave her with a nightmare besides. No. Was she really a mortal? "Y-you... don't you have anything you fear?" Zhou You passed Nuomi's question on to Chu Xiaoyao. "Fear?" Chu Xiaoyao gave a soft scoff, thoroughly disdainful of so foolish a question. "What I fear most is having no opponent." A melancholy clung to her words that would not dissolve—the loneliness of myriad ages gone empty, known only to the one who stood first beneath heaven. Although she could not clearly remember what had happened on the Hongmeng Continent, it was easy enough to guess that she had stood unmatched in the world and attained the seat of Immortal Emperor. What an invincible existence that was. Her greatest enemy was nothing more than the solitude of a vast world with no opponent, and loneliness was her only company. Nuomi was cowed by Chu Xiaoyao's aura and could not get a word out. Trembling, and with what she had just been through and the nightmare as well, grievance, fear, and a host of tangled feelings welled up in her. She could not stop them, and broke into loud sobs. "You all bully Nuomi! The ones who come to my home to date, the ones who come to my home to explore, and the ones who hate Nuomi!" "The moment they see me they throw glutinous rice at me. Nuomi thought it was something to eat, and foolishly picked it up off the ground and ate it. She even named herself Nuomi, and only later found out it meant they wanted to drive Nuomi away!" Zhou You had not expected Nuomi to react like this, and panicked at once. If she had taken a hard line, he would not have been afraid. He would simply have answered in kind. They had already hit her anyway. But crying the moment she woke—what was that about? It wasn't as if he could cry along with her. Zhou You was at a complete loss. He did not know how to comfort her. "Don't you comfort me!" "The most hateful ones are you two! One of you scared me in the inner world, and then the other hit me!" Nuomi's eyes swam with tears. She shot the two of them a fierce glare and went on crying. At the same time she was a little afraid. These two did not look like good people. What if they hit her again? Should she go cry somewhere else? "You were fine. Why are you crying? Don't cry." Pity stirred in Zhou You. When it came down to it, this female ghost had done nothing worse than scare people. "It has nothing to do with me. You knocked her down with one punch." "Wasn't she frightened unconscious by you!" "I can't even see ghosts. How would I scare her?" The two of them shifted the blame with practiced ease. Zhou You put on what he believed was the smile of a decent person, and explained gently, "Miss Ghost, we didn't come looking for you with any ill intent. We only want you to live somewhere else." After what had just happened, an idea came to Zhou You. The old dormitory building was so pleasantly cool because it was haunted. If Nuomi moved into their classroom, wouldn't the classroom be cool too? Nuomi was instantly on guard. She forced herself to stop crying. Her eyes were still red, and the more she looked at the two of them, the more they seemed like utterly vicious villains. "You want to live here?!" So they had come to seize her territory. No wonder they had struck so hard.