Then another.
Wrist twisting, fingers clawing for purchase, Li Lingrui hauled himself out of the rubble like something that refused to stay buried. Cold dust slid off his shoulders. He staggered, sucked in a breath, and swept his gaze over his body.
No cracks. No torn flesh. No dead weight in the bones.
Perfect.
The same mineral tunnel, wedged into the mountainside. The same vein-cave that had become his grave. Only now every trace of the struggle had been wiped clean, as if the world itself had decided to delete the evidence. Moonlight spilled in from the entrance, pale and indifferent, cutting the darkness into neat, cruel shapes.
Li Lingrui’s lips moved without sound at first.
Then the words came out, rough as gravel.
“Wan Beast Abyss… Wang Zuoqi.”
His eyes hardened into embers.
“Wait for me.”
He sat cross-legged on the cold stone. The moment his breathing settled, a flood of knowledge tore through his mind, dense and intricate, like a bureaucrat’s manual written in blood and night.
Night Unbounded.
A compulsory secret art for the “civil servants” of the Nine Netherworld. To cultivate it, one forged a Ghost Domain as a furnace, drew darkness as a curtain, and learned to drape the world in shadow.
At mastery, the cultivator could unfold a domain between heaven and earth. Black veil descending, swallowing light, smothering the sky, turning everything into endless night.
Night without borders. Night without mercy.
That was why it was called Unbounded.
If he could truly bring this to completion… even in the demon sect’s filth and hunger, he would have a place to stand.
Hope was a dangerous thing in the Demonic Path.
He allowed himself a single, sharp breath of it anyway.
Then he began.
He drew the lingering heaven-and-earth qi from the cave’s seams, guided it into his meridians, and refined it in silence. The tunnel stayed cold. The moonlight stayed pale. Days passed like teeth grinding.
And then, one day, the dark answered.
In the heart of the mine, Li Lingrui formed a hand seal. A dot of pitch-black gathered at his fingertip, deepening, thickening, until it became a swelling mass of shadow.
It expanded.
The cave vanished beneath it.
Like ink poured into water, the darkness spread until it covered everything.
Li Lingrui’s voice cut through the murk.
“Suppress.”
The spirit vein underfoot shuddered.
Then collapsed.
Rock and ore fractured in a chain reaction, and from within the broken vein, clusters of golden-yellow spirit stones spilled out, glittering like stolen sunlight in a place that had never deserved it.
The mine’s real owners came screaming.
Creatures crawled from the cracks and pits, hunched and winged, faces like withered masks. Night Matrons. They lived in spirit stone nests, fattening on the vein’s qi.
They should have swarmed him.
Instead, they faltered.
Inside the Ghost Domain, all outside light was devoured. Direction warped. Distance lied. Time itself felt… bent, unsure whether to move forward or fold back.
The Night Matrons spun in place, shrieking, slashing at empty air.
They couldn’t find him.
Li Lingrui exhaled, almost amused.
“Come and go without pattern.”
The first secret technique of Night Unbounded.
His body blurred. Not speed, not stealth, something worse: absence. He became part of the curtain itself.
One breath, he was nowhere.
The next, he was behind a Night Matron.
A flash of cold black.
Head rolled.
He moved again, as if the darkness had grown hands. A neck snapped. A torso split. A shriek cut off mid-note.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Within moments, the swarm was a slaughterhouse.
Some died by his blade. Others, trapped in blindness and terror, tore into each other. Without a ruler, they were just hungry animals with sharp claws and no sense.
Then the cave shook.
A roar ripped through the Ghost Domain like a spear.
A massive shadow surged forward, wings unfurling, the air thick with mid-stage Dao Entry pressure. The Night Matron King (or Queen, it hardly mattered) slammed its power outward, and the black curtain tore open at the edge, letting a thin needle of light stab into the domain.
The monarch’s fury was physical. The night itself trembled.
Li Lingrui’s smile turned thin.
“Enough hiding.”
He lifted his hand.
“Ghost Domain, become blade. Kill.”
The darkness collapsed inward, condensing into a grotesque weapon: a broad, heavy saber with a ghost-faced guard, several meters long, black qi streaming from its edge like smoke from a funeral pyre.
Li Lingrui leapt.
The saber came down like judgment.
The Night Matron King met it with a hooked wing-claw.
CLANG.
Metal-on-bone. Qi on qi. A sound like iron biting iron.
Li Lingrui was thrown back ten meters. He hit stone hard enough to spit blood. Something in his ribs cracked, sharp pain blossoming, bright and vicious.
He laughed anyway, bubbles of blood breaking on his lips.
Because the Night Matron King staggered too.
Three wing-claws lay on the ground, severed cleanly, twitching like dying spiders.
The monarch collapsed, screaming, wings beating uselessly against the stone.
Li Lingrui wiped blood from his chin, eyes cold.
“A thousand corpses, a thousand ghosts. Devour.”
The dead Night Matrons on the ground convulsed.
Their bodies emptied.
What rose from them was worse.
Skeletal, wailing, twisted things formed from lingering resentment and the Ghost Domain’s imprint. They rushed the fallen monarch, clawing into wings, legs, throat, back, chest. They didn’t kill cleanly.
They ate.
In seconds that felt like an eternity, the Night Matron King’s struggles weakened. Its screams turned wet, then small, then stopped.
The massive carcass toppled over with a final, dull thud.
Only a mangled ruin remained.
Li Lingrui stood in the cooling dark, chest heaving. He had won. Barely.
He had dared challenge a mid-stage Dao Entry monarch only because his Netherworld qi-sense let him grasp Night Unbounded’s three core techniques fast:
-
Come and Go Without Pattern
-
Ghost Domain Becomes Blade
-
Corpses Become Ghosts
Even then, it had been a hair’s breadth from death.
He looked around at the glittering wealth now strewn across the shattered vein.
Thousands of spirit stones.
A windfall so obscene it made his breathing turn ragged.
But the true prize wasn’t the stones.
It was the shadow rising above the Night Matron King’s corpse: a vast ghost-image, obedient, silent, waiting.
That was the cruelty and strength of Corpses Become Ghosts.
Anything killed inside his Ghost Domain could be turned into a ghost servant. No bargains. No rebellion. No “master, I have concerns.”
A perfect worker.
A perfect weapon.
Of course, power always came with a leash.
At his current qi reserves, Li Lingrui could command ten ghost servants at most. Any more, and the backlash would tear him apart from the inside.
He rested half a day, forced his ribs to knit, and walked out beneath the moon.
Qi gathered under his feet, forming a cloud.
He rose, and the mine became a black scar behind him.
He left Wan Beast Abyss and drifted toward the place his memory insisted was his.
A cave-dwelling cut into stone. Familiar angles. Familiar wards.
Except the plaque at the entrance was new.
A single character, carved sharp:
GUO.
Li Lingrui’s pupils tightened. He suppressed his aura and listened.
Inside, a man’s voice rang out with casual greed.
“Between Li Lingrui’s sect compensation and that insurance policy I quietly bought under his name… even after I hand thirty percent to Wang Zuoqi, I’m still walking away with five hundred. Hah!”
A pause, then laughter thick with satisfaction.
“Brother Li… I really do love people-mines like you.”
The world went very, very cold.
So that was it.
From the beginning, Guo Yuan hadn’t been helping him. He’d been pricing him. Lining up the paperwork. Setting the stage. Planning the “accident.”
Compensation? In a demon sect? The kind of place where mortals were livestock and Dao Entry cultivators were tools?
He remembered Guo Yuan calling him “nephew” when he first arrived. Remembered the too-friendly smile. The insistence on personally arranging his dwelling.
Not kindness.
Ownership.
Li Lingrui’s thoughts sank deeper, colder, past anger into something that felt like the Nine Nether’s wind.
He had been careless.
He had walked into a place where everyone’s face wore the same two invisible characters:
EAT PEOPLE.
There were no good men here.
Only patient predators.
A crack split the silence.
The cave door exploded inward, cleaved into pieces by a single blade of qi. Stone groaned. Dust poured.
Li Lingrui stepped through like a verdict arriving late.
Guo Yuan turned.
His face did something ugly, the expression of a man watching his own profits crawl back out of the grave.
“You…? You’re alive?”
Li Lingrui didn’t answer.
The Ghost Domain fell.
Darkness flooded the dwelling, swallowing lamps and talismans, turning Guo Yuan’s home into a pocket of night. Nine Night Matron ghosts lunged forward, shrieking, claws extended.
Guo Yuan’s eyes narrowed. Fear flashed, then steadied into practiced viciousness.
He’d been Dao Entry early-stage for years. He’d killed. He’d robbed. He’d built his foundation on other people’s bones.
He flicked his wrist and threw a scroll into the air.
It unfurled with a snap.
A painted diagram, lines writhing like veins, ink soaked with malice.
“Heavenly Demon Diagram.”
From the scroll, a Heavenly Ghost tore itself into existence, muscular and armored in pale qi, roaring as it slammed into Li Lingrui’s Night Matron ghosts.
The dwelling became a butcher’s dance.
Guo Yuan barked out over the chaos, voice forced into negotiation.
“Brother Li, this Heavenly Demon Diagram cost me eight hundred spirit stones at the artifact pavilion. You’ve cultivated for a few days at most. You can’t match this.”
He spread his hands slightly, like a man offering peace instead of poison.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Why don’t we stop? I’ll take you to Wang Zuoqi, we’ll ask him directly, clear it up, resolve the…”
Li Lingrui’s eyes were flat.
Go to Wang Zuoqi?
So the two of you can put me down properly this time?
He smiled, sharp and humorless.
“Sure.”
He tilted his head.
“Then you stop first.”
Guo Yuan hesitated, then made a show of command.
The Heavenly Ghost retreated, planting itself protectively before him.
Li Lingrui’s Night Matron ghosts melted into black water and sank into the ground, vanishing as if they’d never been there.
Guo Yuan’s heart hammered.
Something was wrong.
The darkness felt… heavier.
Then the air behind Li Lingrui shifted.
A presence rose like a mountain.
A massive Night Matron monarch loomed, a ghost the size of a beast, shoulders broad as an altar. Li Lingrui stood on it like a man standing on a throne he’d carved from someone else’s spine.
He drew in a breath.
Held it.
Then exhaled.
Sound erupted.
Not a shout. Not a blast.
A wave that didn’t care about walls, distance, or mercy. It expanded from Li Lingrui in a perfect circle, invisible and absolute, a pressure that hammered flesh, qi, bone, soul.
The Heavenly Ghost tried to roar.
Its mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
It folded like paper in a storm.
Guo Yuan dropped to his knees, eyes wide, lips trembling around a word he never got to finish.
Cracks webbed across his skin.
Then his whole body shattered, porcelain-thin, collapsing into fragments with a soft, obscene clatter.
Silence returned like a curtain falling.
Guo Yuan was gone.
Dead.
Li Lingrui looked down at the pieces, expression unreadable.
In the Demonic Path, debts didn’t get forgiven.
They got paid.
In full.