The pain tore through his eardrums, spreading from his chest all the way to the crown of his head.
Qin Yan struggled to open his eyes. Filling his vision was a night sky as black as ink, moonless and starless, with only waterlogged clouds drifting overhead like corpses floating down a river. All around him, an overwhelming stench assaulted his nose—the distinctive odor of rancid blood, rotting flesh, and damp, moldy earth mingled together.
He tried to move a finger. A sharp pain immediately shot from the left side of his chest, nearly making him pass out. Glancing down from the corner of his eye, Qin Yan was horrified to discover a fist-sized hole punched through the black leather armor he wore. Dark-red blood was still seeping out, soaking the earth beneath his back.
At the same time, countless fragments of unfamiliar memories surged into his mind like a storm, brutally merging with his consciousness.
The Great Qian Dynasty, the thirtieth year.
The Imperial Capital was a prosperous, splendid place, yet it concealed countless malignant spirits, while demons ran rampant in the darkness.
The original owner of this body was also named Qin Yan. Nineteen years old, he was a “Black-Clad Nightwalker Envoy”—the lowest rank in the Nightwalker Bureau, the imperial agency responsible for handling supernatural cases and imprisoning demons. A Black-Clad Envoy was so worthless that no one would even bother collecting his body if he died in some remote corner.
Had he transmigrated? Reborn in a corpse that was already on the verge of falling apart?
According to the original owner's final memories before he died, he had been patrolling Nine Currents Alley tonight when he was suddenly ambushed by a shadowy figure. The attacker had been unbelievably fast and vicious. With a single claw, it had pierced through his chest before throwing his corpse into the mass-burial ground at the Nameless Burial Grounds, more than ten miles outside the Imperial Capital.
This absolutely wasn't an accident or some stroke of bad luck that led him to encounter an evil spirit. This was murder! A fatal blow, ruthless methods, and an obvious motive: kill him to silence him.
But the original owner was only a lowly Black-Clad Envoy who lived from day to day in hiding and even had to drink on credit. Who could he possibly have offended?
Before his brain could piece together all the details, Qin Yan's eardrums suddenly caught a sound that made his scalp prickle.
Crack... crack... squelch...
It was the sound of cartilage being chewed, of dry chunks of flesh being ripped apart in the silent darkness. The noise came from a corpse-strewn mound less than fifteen yards away.
A freezing wind swept past, dispersing some of the hazy mist shrouding the graveyard. By the faint, wavering light of the ghost-fire phosphorescence, Qin Yan saw it.
It had a humanoid shape, but its limbs were unnaturally long and bent at grotesque angles. Its skin was a pallid blue-gray, stretched tightly over a thin skeleton. Its bald head was buried in the abdominal cavity of a recently deceased corpse, biting and tearing at it frenziedly. Its eye sockets bulged outward, blood-red.
It was a Corpse-Eating Demon (corpse eater)—a low-grade malignant spirit that frequently prowled graveyards, surviving by eating rotten flesh and swallowing yin energy.
Apparently sensing the smell of fresh blood and living vitality, so different from the rotting flesh around it, the Corpse-Eating Demon abruptly stopped chewing. Its neck twisted with a horrifying series of cracks before snapping around 180 degrees toward Qin Yan.
Its blood-red eyes locked onto him.
It knew he was still alive! Green drool streamed from the corners of its mouth, split all the way to its ears, mingling with the stench of blood. With a shrill hiss, the demon abandoned the cold corpse and crawled toward Qin Yan on all fours at terrifying speed.
Qin Yan clenched his teeth so hard that they drew blood. His body was unimaginably weak; he could barely lift a finger, let alone fight. Was he really going to die again right after being reborn—and die horribly beneath the filthy teeth of this beast?
Just as the darkness of despair closed around him, an emotionless, frigid yet imposing voice rang out deep within his soul.
[Beep! A compatible soul has been detected. The Yin-Yang Judge System is initiating fusion...] [Fusion successful. Host: Qin Yan.] [Identity: Trainee Judge.] [No crime in the mortal realm escapes judgment; the Netherworld Judge determines life and death! Welcome to the Yin-Yang Realm.]
The system! At last, the transmigrator's cheat had appeared. Qin Yan couldn't stop the excitement from flashing in his eyes.
[The host is in critical condition. Automatically issuing the Newcomer Gift!] [Received: Level 1 ocular art—Netherworld Eye.] [Received: soul-binding weapon—Soul-Severing Blade (Mortal Rank—Upgradeable).]
In the blink of an eye, Qin Yan's eye sockets suddenly flared hot, as though they had been held over a blazing fire. The pain passed quickly, replaced by a strange clarity. When he opened his eyes again, the world around him had changed completely.
The colors of the night sky, the grass and trees, and the corpses had vanished, leaving only black and white interwoven together. Across the entire graveyard, gray, frigid streams of energy billowed upward—that was yin energy.
And the Corpse-Eating Demon crawling toward him appeared within the Netherworld Eye's field of vision as a dense mass of black fog. However, right beneath its nape, at the third cervical vertebra, a dark-red point of light weakly pulsed.
That was its Yin Core—the fatal weakness at its vital point!
At the same time, an icy chill traveled through Qin Yan's right hand. A pitch-black saber suddenly appeared in his palm, its blade radiating a silent, sinister killing aura. The cold energy from the Soul-Severing Blade flowed into his body, temporarily suppressing the tearing pain in his chest and stimulating a brief burst of vitality in his muscles.
Only three feet remained between them.
The Corpse-Eating Demon roared and lunged straight for Qin Yan's throat. Its maw, packed with razor-sharp fangs, opened wide, and its foul stench rushed into his face.
This was the moment!
Qin Yan didn't retreat. He advanced instead. Relying on the temporary strength from the Soul-Severing Blade and the Netherworld Eye's absolute guidance, he summoned every bit of strength in his body and swung the blade upward.
“Thwack!”
The pitch-black blade met no resistance. It cleaved precisely through the demon's bark-hard skin, pierced the third cervical vertebra, and directly crushed the dark-red Yin Core!
“Keeeeee—!”
The Corpse-Eating Demon let out a miserable shriek that sounded like ten thousand souls being torn apart. Its body convulsed madly in midair before slamming into the ground. After thrashing a few times, it turned into a pool of foul-smelling pus and vanished into nothingness.
[Corpse-Eating Demon (Level 1) slain. Received: 10 Judge Points.]
The system notification rang out. Qin Yan exhaled a long breath, then collapsed limply onto the cold ground. The Soul-Severing Blade also transformed into a streak of black light and slipped into the space between his brows.
Ten Judge Points... He had no idea what they could be exchanged for, but at least he had survived the night.
After waiting for his breathing to steady, Qin Yan laboriously pushed himself upright and intended to inspect the pool of black pus left behind by the Corpse-Eating Demon to see whether it had dropped any items. However, his eyes inadvertently swept over the corpse the demon had been gnawing on earlier.
It was the half-rotted corpse of a man. The clothes on its body were in tatters, but the fabric was extremely familiar. A black robe with red trim, its chest embroidered with a python coiled around a broken sword.
The uniform of a Nightwalker Bureau Hundred-Household Commander!
Qin Yan froze. A Hundred-Household Commander was a sixth-rank official who commanded one hundred Nightwalker Envoys—a genuine powerhouse. Why had he died so horribly in this miserable graveyard?
Using the last of his strength, Qin Yan crawled closer to the corpse. He reached beneath the tattered clothes and pulled out a blood-soaked token made of white jade. Under the graveyard's dim, hazy light, the sharp engraving on its surface became clear:
“Nightwalker Bureau—Hundred-Household Commander—Zhao”
Commander Zhao? The original owner's direct superior! The man who always wore a fake smile and managed the East City branch office.
But if Commander Zhao had already rotted to death here several days ago... then what in the world was the thing that had assigned the original owner to patrol Nine Currents Alley this morning, indirectly sending him to his death...?
The night wind howled through the bare branches like the wailing of ghosts. Qin Yan tightened his grip on the blood-soaked jade token, the corner of his mouth curling into a bone-chilling smile.
“What a grand game you're playing... Commander Zhao. Too bad this Nightwalker Envoy Qin Yan has just returned from the dead, and I'm going to bring hell down on all of you.”