Chapter 44 Rouge Brings Allure "Little wolf, does it hurt?"...
This demon is called "Shadow Lantern".
It takes shape after absorbing spiritual power from the wick of a lamp. Human faces will gradually grow on the paper lantern. It is best at luring lost people to follow it, and the path it illuminates is difficult to reach the end.
The person holding the lamp will often die from exhaustion in the illusion it illuminates, and then its remaining spiritual power will be absorbed, leaving only a skeleton.
It seems that the corpses in front of Emperor Yi's tomb were all worn down by it.
Lou Yan chuckled, stood up and took two steps back, put away the spirit-detecting technique on his fingertips, and instead unleashed an even more ferocious spiritual force.
The blood-red lantern shattered instantly, and the distorted human face on the paper changed dozens of expressions in that instant, finally letting out a strange scream.
A flash of golden light, and the entire lantern vanished instantly.
It's resolved.
Insidious little thing.
Lou Yan clapped his hands and gave a disdainful snort.
Hey, it's so easy!
A chilling aura ran up his back, and Lou Yan's heart skipped a beat. He turned around and his expression changed drastically.
Behind them was no longer the long passageway, but a huge tomb. At their feet, white bones were piled up like mountains, and countless ghostly auras were seeping out from among the bones, being devoured by the demons crouching beside the coffin of the Yi Emperor.
Lou Yan twisted his neck and looked at them one by one.
A smiling cat brazenly crouching on the coffin lid, a glossy red fox, and a willow tree with supple branches...
They were lurking outside the enormous coffin of the Yi Emperor, greedily absorbing the ghostly energy from the tomb like clouds of smoke. Conversely, a foul and stench of demonic energy was being released even more recklessly, making Lou Yan want to vomit.
Everything else was fine, but he really didn't like the smell of foxes.
Lou Yan took a deep breath and held it, then walked over and squatted down in front of the group of demons, using the spiritual power at her fingertips to defend against the attacking ghostly energy.
"Hey," he asked rather rudely, "do you know that attracting ghosts into your body is the easiest way to go into a state of demonic possession?"
Only the smiling cat gave him a disdainful look; the other monsters ignored him completely.
Lou Yan was not angry despite his setback. Having stayed in the Eighteen Realms for so long, he actually missed the demons that could be found everywhere in the mountains and fields.
Then he said in a good-natured tone, "I didn't lie to you. Not long ago, I saw a rhinoceros demon that failed to transform into human form. It was extremely ugly."
He pointed to the smiling cat that had just rolled its eyes at him, "If you fail to transform, you'll end up looking like neither human nor ghost."
The little white cat slapped his hand away hard, adding another scratch to his already bruised arm.
Lou Yan hissed and obediently withdrew his hand. He heard the smiling cat give a haughty snort, saying "Meow~" while absorbing ghostly energy.
We're all demons, why are you pretending to be so high and mighty?
Didn't you come to Mount Sixiang to absorb the ghostly energy here?
Lou Yanxin said, "Then you've really misunderstood me."
When I ruled the Nine Netherworld Realm, I had more than enough ghostly energy to spare. Why would I bother competing with you for such insignificant things?
And it's not a good thing either.
Lou Yan chuckled casually, strolled over to the demons, raised his hand and pointed, and a burst of spiritual energy cut off the ghostly energy they were greedily absorbing.
The demons, tainted with ghostly energy, turned their heads like wolves and tigers, ready to pounce on Lou Yan.
Lou Yan sidestepped, letting the group of delirious red foxes crash into the opposite wall and wail in despair. Only then did he exhale softly, finally free of the foul smell from his nostrils.
Realizing that Lou Yan possessed formidable spiritual power and that they were likely no match for him, the Smiling Cat brought its front paws together, puffed out its chest with a tuft of snow-white fur, and looked at Lou Yan, meowing.
Hello--
What exactly do you want to do?
Lou Yan didn't even look at it. With a gentle flick of spiritual energy at his fingertips, he raised his hand and burned the tuft of white fur on its chest.
"Meow!" The smiling cat bristled and sprang away, hiding behind the coffin of the Yi Emperor and watching Lou Yan warily.
Having probably realized that Lou Yan was using immortal magic, her beautiful eyes suddenly narrowed, and she felt that her previous words, "We are all demons," were simply laughable.
Lou Yan had already dealt with the overconfident willow tree in the forest. He clapped his hands and walked towards the smiling cat, confirming that it, like the willow tree spirit, had not yet reached the point of going berserk.
"Get out of my way." He condensed a burst of spiritual energy at his fingertips and threatened, "We're all demons, so I don't mind sparing your life, provided you don't get in my way."
The smiling cat is clearly a pragmatist.
It bit its lower lip, suppressing the smile at the corner of its mouth, and glared at the person fiercely.
Then he decisively turned and fled towards the exit of the imperial tomb.
"Meow!" Lou Yan heard the sound coming from behind it after it had run far away.
We're all demons, so I advise you to be careful! There's something terrifying inside that coffin!
What else could be so terrifying? It's nothing more than the Qin Mirror that Xuanwu mentioned.
"So what if it exposes my true form?" Lou Yan thought—"As long as it doesn't expose me, that's fine."
He ignored the weak cries of the foxes lying against the wall, went straight up the stone steps, and walked around to the back of the coffin to look down at it.
Upon seeing this, he squinted his eyes.
The stone coffin had already been opened by the tomb robbers. The coffin lay horizontally covered with spider webs, and huge spiders were spinning silk and pacing back and forth on it, their bodies glowing with a ghostly blue light.
Lou Yan picked it up from the coffin by a piece of spider silk.
Even if a low-intelligence demon were to spin spider silk here for a thousand years, it might not be able to cultivate a human heart. He wouldn't bother with such trivial matters.
The spider was thrown to the ground and quickly began looking for a place to weave its web again.
The dark blue spider silk was spit out on one foot of the stone steps, and soon it wove into a dense hexagonal spider web.
Lou Yan watched it weave for a while with her arms crossed, then suddenly smiled contemptuously. As she turned around, she suddenly smelled a seductive fragrance of cosmetics.
He smelled such a scent for the first time in his life, and immediately felt something was wrong. Before he could even hold his breath, his legs went weak.
Lou Yan felt dizzy and barely managed to stand by supporting himself on the stone edge of the coffin. The overly pungent scent of cosmetics wafted in unrestrainedly.
He coughed softly, turned his head to look in the direction of the smell, and saw a woman's skeleton lying in the coffin.
She is a woman.
She had a petite frame and was wrapped in a delicate pink silk palace dress. It was made of some kind of luxurious material that had not decayed even after a thousand years, and its original color could still be recognized.
Beneath the disheveled clothes, half of a woman's skeleton was visible, with crimson blood peeking out from between the bones. Even if Lou Yan, with his wolfish aesthetic sense, were to judge it, he would find it to be extremely beautiful.
Why was a woman's body, defiled, lying in Emperor Yi's coffin?
In his previous life, after Lou Yan ruled the demon realm, he met Emperor Yi and knew that he was a man with a refined appearance, and it was impossible for him to be replaced by a woman's corpse.
Could it have been stolen and removed from the imperial tomb by tomb raiders?
Or perhaps after the Yi Emperor entered the underworld, his remains left in the human world naturally disappeared?
Lou Yan thought that was unlikely.
He stared at the woman's skeleton in the coffin, his vision blurred, yet he could vaguely see the woman's graceful figure.
She sat on a grave mound, her slender, lotus-colored arm revealed when she raised her sleeve. A flower dangled from her mouth, and she parted her lips slightly, calling him "Little Wolf" and beckoning him over.
Lou Yan took a step as if possessed.
He leaned forward, bracing himself against the stone edge of the coffin, when the woman gently touched the corner of his mouth. "Little Wolf, does it hurt?"
Lou Yan's lips twitched, his body stiff as a rock, even his labored breathing seemed to be stuck in his throat, unable to come up or down.
The hand that rested on his lips was cool and soft, then touched his lips and stroked his neck.
The woman clung to the back of her neck, leaning in to embrace her, her voice endlessly seductive, "I've lived here for thousands of years, and no one has ever been with me..."
"Little wolf, can you stay with me?"
Lou Yan's heart trembled. Before she could even think, she spoke, her voice trembling, "How...do you want me to accompany you?"
The woman's eyes were full of seductive charm. Suddenly, she lowered her head and used her sharp teeth to bite a small piece of skin on his arm.
The greater the force, the more it hurt.
Lou Yan groaned, hearing her ask him between bites, "Could you... cut some of your flesh for me?"
"Okay," Lou Yan heard herself say.
He took out the dagger he always wore at his waist, tilted his head and used his teeth to pick off the scabbard, pressed the cold blade into his palm, and then pressed it against his arm.
A bloody gash was immediately drawn on his arm.
The bloodstains rolled down his wrist to his fingertips, then meandered down, where they were devoured by the ghostly energy scattered on the ground.
Lou Yan smiled bitterly. If Heng Qichun knew that he had been bewitched by a woman to such an extent, he would probably be scolded by his master as a "bastard".
But his body just wouldn't go under his control.
The more force he applied, the more his already scarred arm was cut open, yet he seemed oblivious to the pain, continuing to forcefully cut his own flesh.
However, Heng Qichun's voice remained in his imagination, constantly swirling in his ears.
"You bastard!"
"He was bewitched by a woman, and all the cultivation he had done was for nothing!"
"Get out, and don't even mention that you're my disciple!"
Lou Yan felt a chill run down his spine. Just before the piece of skin on his arm was about to be completely peeled off, he looked up and down—there was no woman in the coffin.
The enormous stone coffin was covered with spider webs, the spider silk glowing with a dark blue light. Illuminated by the light, the skeleton, hidden beneath the clothes, still exuded an eerie aura.
It's a form of enchantment.
The flesh about to be cut from his arm was still dutifully screaming in pain, and the bloodstains stained his already shabby clothes.
Lou Yan threw away the dagger amidst the searing pain and pressed his hand heavily against his bleeding wound.
Oh shit.
We actually fell for this damn thing's trick!
Memories swirled in his mind, and he couldn't help but recall the time when Heng Qichun picked him up and took him back to the Eighteen Realms, and then he secretly ran away to the back mountain.
At that time, he encountered a succubus.
That too was a half-skull of a woman, with the same blood-red rouge seeping from the crevices of her bones, mostly transformed from concubines who were buried alive with her in the human realm. She was most skilled at using bewitching arts to seduce people, enticing them to cut off their own flesh as a "sacrifice" to her.
What did Heng Qichun say that thing was called again?
oh.
He remembered—it was Rouge Skull.
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Author's Note: My master will arrive tomorrow, I promise! [doge emoji]
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