Chi You still hadn’t given up on luring him.
Jiang Luo laughed in fury. He slapped away Chi You’s hands and stepped aside. “Chi You, my companions are all dead.”
He gave a couple of short, bitter laughs. “If this dream were real, my friends wouldn’t survive it at all.”
“I understand now why you wanted me to have this dream,” Jiang Luo’s eyes darkened under the shadows. Chi You saw a bright, dangerous flame ignite within them—a fire of anger suppressed and ready to explode. “It’s to win me over—and to warn me, isn’t it?”
The malicious ghost, who only wanted to court Jiang Luo, paused and asked, “How so?”
“You want to go after the Fated One,” Jiang Luo said. “I agreed to work with you, but you didn’t trust me. So you used this dream to show me how powerful you are, how much this ghost-infested world would suit my taste.”
He added, “But at the same time, you dragged my companions into the dream and had them die one by one in front of me—to warn me not to act recklessly. Right? Otherwise, you could easily make them die.”
The malicious ghost fell silent.
He stood straight, hands in the pockets of his tailored trousers, watching Jiang Luo thoughtfully.
He wasn’t warning Jiang Luo—he was warning everyone else.
Jiang Luo belonged to him. Anyone who tried to get close to him would meet a bad end.
But what Chi You found more intriguing—and more puzzling—was: “You’re really angry.”
“Yes, I’m furious,” Jiang Luo admitted without hesitation. The fire in his eyes flared brighter and brighter—images of Ge Zhu’s severed head, Ye Xun’s corpse, and every companion’s death overlapped in his mind. “I’m extremely, incredibly angry.”
He spoke each word slowly and with force.
The malicious ghost furrowed his brows. His handsome face grew cold, and a trace of irritation flickered through his eyes. He clearly didn’t understand why Jiang Luo was angry.
“What are you so angry about?”
He had thought Jiang Luo would love this world.
“Chi You, I don’t want to kill you. It’s also very hard to kill you,” Jiang Luo said calmly. “Everyone seems to want me to kill you. The Fated One told me once—he said that if I kill you, I’ll become a powerful false god.”
The malicious ghost’s face turned expressionless, and black mist surged behind him, boiling with monstrous rage and distortion.
“But I won’t kill you, and I don’t want the world to become like this either,” Jiang Luo said with a smirk. “This is the world five years into the future. In just five years, so many ghostly realms have emerged. I don’t know how many ghost subordinates you command or if you’ve emptied out the ghost city entirely. But I know you won’t change your mind easily—so there’s only one way to make you behave.”
The black-haired youth raised his hand. “And that’s to beat you up—so badly that you give up on this idea.”
The malicious ghost thought he had misheard. He couldn’t help but laugh. “What?”
Jiang Luo suddenly changed the subject. “Do you know spirit channelling?”
He didn’t wait for Chi You to answer. “Everything has a spirit. Anything can be communicated with—even dreams have spirits. I didn’t know what to summon before, but thanks to the lines you wrote in the elevator, I got a brilliant idea.”
“I’m a greedy person,” he said. “Wind, fire, thunder, lightning—metal, wood, water, earth—I want them all. I used to think that was impossible. But thanks to you, you sparked a wild idea in me.”
Jiang Luo’s right hand curled loosely, leaving only his long index finger extended. The finger traced several gestures in the air.
With the movements, the air in front of his fingertip began to stir without wind, as if something immensely powerful was forming before him. The surrounding temperature surged to the extreme; nearby plants curled up and withered from the heat, the air twisted, and the scorching wind whipped Jiang Luo’s hair and clothes.
Jiang Luo wrote the character “fire” in the air, and the moment he completed the final stroke, there was a “boom” — a platinum-colored blaze burst into roaring flames from the written character.
If words can carry magic, then written characters can too.
There are thousands upon thousands of Chinese characters, and each one holds a unique energy. Jiang Luo had communed with the spirits of these characters, forcibly breaking through the restriction that spirit channelling could only draw from a single source.
Jiang Luo threw back his head and laughed, then slapped the blazing fire straight at Chi You.
In the silent night, the glass dome suddenly shattered under the impact.
The evil ghost plummeted rapidly from the top of the eighteenth floor, and within an instant, serpentine flames fiercely wrapped around him. Jiang Luo stood at the edge of the floor-to-ceiling window, watching Chi You’s caught-off-guard fall with schadenfreude.
This was a dream — Chi You wouldn’t die.
So Jiang Luo could beat him up as viciously as he wanted.
“Burned once, fell once,” Jiang Luo snorted with amusement, “That’s two times paid back, just like that. Feels almost too easy.”
The platinum fire could melt stone. The evil ghost crashed hard onto the road below, the flames twisting and melting his arm. He turned his head to look at his fingers, and the sensation of being seared by the high heat was painfully vivid — almost worse than death.
His fingers curled slightly. Amid the flames, the evil ghost murmured to himself, “It really does hurt.”
He closed his eyes.
When the flames finally died down, the evil ghost reformed, once again perfect and unblemished. At that moment, Jiang Luo arrived on the first floor via the elevator and slowly walked up to him.
He crouched down and tugged at Chi You’s tie. “Teacher Chi, have you changed your mind?”
Chi You let out a low chuckle, lifted his hand to grasp Jiang Luo’s, and sensually caressed it, confessing with thinly veiled suggestion, “You excite me.”
He was like a pervert — the stronger Jiang Luo became, the more damage he could inflict, the more exhilarated Chi You felt, and the less he could bear to let Jiang Luo go.
Jiang Luo sneered coldly, wrote the character “mountain” in midair, clenched it into a fist, and with earth-shattering force, slammed it into Chi You’s abdomen.
“B*stard! Today! I’m going to teach you a lesson!” A deafening crash and flying debris followed as the street cracked open. Jiang Luo punched again and again, shouting with each blow, “You can kill your enemies, destroy the metaphysical world — that’s your business! But you can’t make the world into this!”
The clash between two powerhouses nearly destroyed the entire street. When Jiang Luo had vented enough, he wrote the character “water” in the air.
A towering tidal wave surged from the horizon, rushing to engulf the dream city — vast and overwhelming, as if to annihilate everything.
The moment he finished writing “water,” Jiang Luo felt the sharp weakness of being completely drained. He understood — this was the sign that he had exhausted all the qi in his body.
Ji Yaozi had once said: the number of spirit techniques one could use depended entirely on how much qi the caster possessed.
As the wave was about to swallow them, Chi You laughed softly without the slightest worry. He deliberately said, “You’ve destroyed the whole city. Everyone here will die because of you.”
“Are you an idiot?” Jiang Luo frowned in disdain. “This is just your dream.”
“And the deaths of my friends were just dreams, too.”
Jiang Luo’s eyes shifted. He grabbed Chi You by the collar and yanked the malicious ghost’s handsome face close to his own. “I know your goals — three of them: ‘The Chi clan’s destruction, the curse’s end, and dragging the metaphysical world down with you.’ I don’t care how many people from the Six Great Clans you want to kill, or what destruction you plan — just don’t f*cking touch my friends or their families.”
He let out a cold laugh. “This world is pretty thrilling, sure. But once in a while is enough. I don’t want corpses crawling out of the drain every time I take a shower, or ghosts knocking when I order takeout. I support you stirring up chaos in the metaphysical world, but society? It needs to stay normal.”
“Got it?” Jiang Luo’s gaze was warning. “Teacher Chi.”
The sound of the flood was now roaring in their ears. Chi You stared at Jiang Luo for a moment, then suddenly reached out and pressed a hand to the back of Jiang Luo’s neck, forcibly claiming a kiss.
Jiang Luo froze — Chi You’s lips and tongue had already invaded with brute force. The roar of the oncoming wave echoed in his ears. At this edge of life and death, the kiss stirred every nerve in Jiang Luo’s body. After two seconds of shock, he kissed back — passionately, aggressively.
The deluge swallowed the city. The false people and ghosts in the dream were swept away in the sea.
But the man and the malicious ghost who kissed before the wave struck — their souls seemed to pierce through their bodies, resonating wildly with each other. Life and death no longer mattered. Jiang Luo’s mind went blank, guided only by instinct as he fiercely and dominantly made the malicious ghost submit with sheer skill and desire.
Heat passed between them. Blood tinged their lips. As the damp breath pressed in, Chi You finally cupped the back of Jiang Luo’s head and slightly pulled away.
They stared into each other’s eyes.
In Chi You’s pitch-black irises was Jiang Luo’s reflection. Dry tinder met wild fire — it needed no oil to blaze instantly. Jiang Luo’s heartbeat suddenly quickened, pounding in his ears.
Chi You opened his mouth to speak — but Jiang Luo suddenly yanked on his tie and kissed him hard again.
Chi You’s eyes widened in surprise — but he accepted this “counterattack” completely and with great delight. His hands rested on Jiang Luo’s waist. Jiang Luo’s chest heaved. His gaze was bright and burning, his breath rapid, tugging at every one of Chi You’s emotions.
Only when water began to fall on them did the two equally deranged men finally separate.
The evil ghost’s fingers tapped lightly on the back of Jiang Luo’s neck, as if playing an instrument. His voice was slightly hoarse, laced with a sensual dissatisfaction: “Before this dream began, Ge Wuchen reminded me to pull your companions into the dream too, so they could witness that you belong to me.” The corners of the evil ghost’s mouth curled up meaningfully. “I thought that was a good idea, so even though they died, I turned them into ghosts so they could once again witness our date.”
Jiang Luo, who had just been fiercely “biting and kissing” with the evil ghost, froze with a stiff smile.
The evil ghost pinched his neck and forced him to turn around. Jiang Luo stiffly looked back and saw, inside the haunted skyscraper, on the first floor, the fifth, the fifteenth… his companions floated on the levels where they had died, their faces pressed tightly against the windows, staring wide-eyed at him and Chi You.
Jiang Luo: “…”
The evil ghost sat up and stared directly at Jiang Luo’s friends. His pale hand lifted Jiang Luo’s chin and deliberately pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips.
“I’m looking forward to your next storyline,” the evil ghost said. “From ‘you’re someone I’ve secretly loved for a long time’ to ‘I became someone you no longer recognize’—congratulations, we’ve officially confirmed our status as lovers once again.”
As soon as he finished speaking, a massive wave surged in and swept away the haunted skyscraper, along with Chi You and Jiang Luo. In an instant, the dream had completely collapsed.
***
Jiang Luo suddenly opened his eyes.
The ginseng doll was sitting nearby, picking at its toes. When it saw him awaken, it joyfully pounced over. “Daddy, you’re finally awake! Why’d you sleep in so late today? It’s already ten o’clock!”
Jiang Luo stared blankly, still caught up in the dazed, unbelieving expressions on Ye Xun and the others’ faces at the end.
After a long pause, he sat up with a groan, covering his face in shame. He never expected that after tricking Chi You several times with verbal lies, this time he’d actually been played by Chi You.
Ge Wuchen, huh!
He was going to remember that monk!
Jiang Luo gritted his teeth, wiped his face, and pretended to compose himself as he got out of bed—only to see the rose still lying on it.
His eyelid twitched violently. He was about to throw it into the trash, but as he picked it up, his hand moved involuntarily to lift it to his nose for a sniff.
Thanks to the ginseng doll’s meticulous care, the rose had bloomed even more vividly—its petals now ripened to a deep red, almost peony-like in their lush arrogance. The fragrance was rich and overpowering, instantly flooding his senses.
Jiang Luo couldn’t help but smile. He suddenly turned and walked out the door.
The ginseng doll shouted loudly after him, “Daddy, where are you going?”
“To say my goodbyes,” Jiang Luo said lazily. “It’s time I headed down the mountain.”
