Unsheathed

In the Locust Flower Nation's Ritual Baton Prefecture...

There were many notices put up by the local government and wealthy clans near the city gates of the prefectural city, with all of them recruiting lofty beings to their residences to perform rituals. The bottom of these notices often promised extremely good compensation, but they all refrained from mentioning how many taels of silver this actually translated to.

Chen Ping'an stood in front of the wall and carefully read over the notices, and by the looks of it, things were quite chaotic both inside and outside the prefectural city.

After purchasing some dry rations and other goods in the prefectural city, Chen Ping'an found an inn to stay at for the night. When darkness set in, he sat on the roof ridge and quietly drank wine.

Sure enough, a snow-white figure flew around the city streets when it was late at night, with her expression twisted and her tongue sticking out. She hovered around with her feet above the ground, but her murderous aura was thin and she avoided the residences with door gods plastered on their front doors, regardless of whether these door gods still possessed spiritual energy or not.

The night watchmen in the prefectural city had been replaced by two bold young men with flourishing yang energy, and the local government especially rewarded them with extra compensation so that they could purchase two pots of wine every single day. The female ghost in white attempted to approach them several times, but she would immediately be pushed back by their formless yang energy once she ventured too close to them.

After failing several times, she could only huff in anger and travel elsewhere, making her way to the residences of the poorer families to drag her fingernails across their doors and courtyard walls. Some people were snoring loudly and fast asleep, so they were completely oblivious to the commotion caused by the female ghost. However, some people were easily woken, and they trembled in fear as they listened to the strange noises around their residence. This caused the female ghost to giggle in amusement, making the experience even more harrowing.

Seeing that the female ghost didn't actually enter the residents' rooms to harm anyone, Chen Ping'an pretended that he wasn't able to see anything.

He lay down on the roof ridge and crossed his legs, after which he retrieved his folding fan and lightly rocked it back and forth.

One of the most frightening things about a certain chain of events was having it extend and failing to see the start and the end of the chain clearly. This was especially the case if the start of the chain reached the heaven, the end of the chain reached the underworld, and if the chain pertained to past lives, future lives, and the fuzzy notions of status and order.

What was even more frightening than this was a complicated web of branch events extending from the main chain, leading to countless smaller chains and a blurry line between good and bad. Everything would become chaotic and interrelated.

And when a certain chain of events was extended, rendering it impossible to objectively focus on the facts, then it would become increasingly difficult to look into the future.