Chapter Fifty-Three: The Mist

In the ordinary small residential courtyard located in Ping'an Lane, east of Qingshan County City.

Though small, the courtyard was well-equipped with all essentials: a water well, a stove, a vegetable patch, and a pigsty.

Early in the morning, Old Man Liu lay back in his rocking chair, lazily staring up at the sun—shielded by a thick layer of fog—which resembled a fluorescent lightbulb.

"I am old, old after all. Yet just half a month of busyness felt as exhausting as losing my life. My energy is failing day by day," he muttered, unable to keep his eyes from squinting.

"Finally, I am settled."

"Once the fog clears, I'll go find Matchmaker Zhang."

The terrible, foggy weather still failed to dampen his fine mood.

"I'll take a concubine to warm the kang. That will be enough to satisfy this lifetime."

"I should also ask around to see which family has a child they can no longer afford to raise. The child shouldn't be too old, otherwise once raised, they still belong to someone else."

A yearning smile appeared on Old Man Liu's face.

"I'll go once the fog clears, I'll go once the fog disperses..."

He whispered to himself, carrying hope as he slowly drifted into a dream and gently passed away.

……

The inner courtyard of the Qingshan County Yamen.

Ever since the county magistrate went missing, County Assistant Li Qing had effectively taken control of Qingshan County.

He had brazenly moved into the official residence of the magistrate.

With the realm in chaos, no one cared about a tiny place like Qingshan County.

As daylight gradually broke, Li Qing slowly rose. He felt a throbbing headache, swollen eyes, and soreness in all his limbs, as if he hadn't slept a wink all night.

"Someone come," he called out weakly in a hoarse voice.

Yet after calling for a long while, no one came to help him out of bed.

Enduring his bodily discomfort and burning with anger, Li Qing struggled out of his bedroom.

"I need to find a physician." He could clearly sense something was wrong with his body.

He barged into the small side chamber next to his bedroom, which served as the temporary quarters for his personal maid.

The maid, who should have been up early, remained curled up on the bed.

A maid waking up later than her master?!

Dammit!

Furious, he rushed to the bedside, raising his hand to severely punish the maid.

Yet what met him was a face of absolute, ghastly pallor.

Had it not been for the faint rising and falling of her chest, he would have thought the maid was a corpse!

"Something is wrong!" Li Qing stumbled backward.

Could someone have poisoned him?

Panic-stricken, he bolted out the door.

He saw that the servants and guards stationed outside his room were sprawled out haphazardly, much like people who had drunk too much wine.

Their complexions were pale, and their vital energy and blood severely depleted!

"Something is wrong! Terribly wrong!"

"Someone come!"

"Someone, come quickly!"

……

The south official road of Qingshan County.

A long convoy of carriages suddenly halted, and a commotion arose from the front.

"Did something happen?" Chen Mu tried hard to peer ahead.

However, the thick fog blocked his view, making it impossible to see anything.

"Zhen Fan, go up front and take a look!" Zhang Ye stuck his head out of the window and shouted to the carriage behind him.

"You got it!"

A lean, wiry man leaped down from the rear carriage and quickly vanished into the fog.

Half a quarter of an hour later, the lean man returned.

"Boss, someone died up ahead."

"They say it's a concubine-born young master from the Zuo family."

"Quietly and suddenly dead."

"The young master's mother is kicking up a fuss right up front."

Chen Mu frowned slightly. Why would someone die so suddenly?

"Someone dying the moment we set off is not a good omen," Zhang Ye sighed, then complained, "And this young master picked the worst time to die—why right now? Isn't this going to delay things?!"

"Something feels a bit off." Chen Mu furrowed his brows tightly.

"Don't be afraid, brother. It's just someone dying. With your big brother here..." Zhang Ye patted Chen Mu's shoulder and laughed heartily.

Chen Mu cast a cold, indifferent glance at him.

Yet Zhang Ye felt a sudden wrench in his chest. A familiar sensation of weak limbs struck him, rendering him utterly unable to move. His mouth stayed open, but no words came out, making him look precisely like a duck whose neck had been squeezed.

Recovering his wits, he was immediately filled with shame and annoyance. He had actually been frightened by a pale-faced scholar!

Staring wide-eyed, he wanted to shoot a fierce look back, only to find that Chen Mu had already turned away and was ignoring him entirely.

"What is it?" Jie Jia turned his head to look at Chen Mu.

"It's too quiet."

He had lived in Little East Mountain for three months, where the sounds of insects and birds never ceased day or night.

He had felt something was amiss upon arriving here early this morning, and now he had finally realized what it was.

A cold flash crossed Jie Jia's eyes, and his figure suddenly vanished.

Three breaths later, he reappeared holding a thumb-sized gray spider.

The spider lay flat and motionless in his palm.

Jie Jia vanished once more and brought back three grasshoppers.

They were likewise limp and completely motionless.

Jie Jia's expression instantly turned unsightly.

"Let's go!" Chen Mu slapped the rump of the horse in front of him.

The carriage instantly lurrolled forward.

……

"Halt, what do you think you're doing!" A burly, bald man blocked the path on a black horse, shouting sternly, "Didn't I say to stand by in place and that no one is allowed to move around!"

"What should we call this big brother? We're awfully bored standing around, so we thought we'd walk ahead and scout the path for everyone in advance," Chen Mu said with a genial smile.

"Did you not understand my words? Stand by in place!" The bald man glanced coldly at Jie Jia.

"A small token of appreciation for big brother to buy some tea. We're just heading up front to get some fresh air." Chen Mu fished a piece of broken silver from his robes and tossed it to the bald man.

The man caught it with a snap, tucked it into his robes with a grin, and then his face abruptly turned icy again. "Get back!"

Chen Mu smiled cheerfully at Jie Jia. "This fellow takes money but doesn't do the job; his professional ethics are far worse than yours."

With that, he withdrew his smile, looked calmly at the burly man, and gently nudged the horse's flank with the tip of his boot.

The carriage lurched forward, driving straight at the man in black!

The bald man's expression shifted; a single horse of his could never out-collide a pair.

He immediately yanked the reins and dodged out of the carriage's path.

Standing by the roadside, seeing Jie Jia remain indifferent and silent, while Chen Mu completely ignored him, the burly man was almost laughing with fury.

A pale-faced punk actually dared to treat his words as wind past the ear?

He dismounted, wearing a ferocious grin, and reached out to grab Chen Mu by the neck.

With trouble in the convoy and morale unstable, he was precisely in need of someone to make an example of.

And here they were!

Swish!

A soft sound echoed.

The man felt a sudden chill on his fingers as a flash of silver crossed his eyes.

A razor-sharp sword tip passed between his index and middle fingers, appearing out of thin air right before his eyeballs.

At that moment, the tip of the sword was only a grain of rice away from his eyeball.

The bald man seemed to have been hit by a pause button, standing stock-still in the spot.

He didn't even dare to blink his eyelids for fear of being sliced by the blade.

With an expressionless face and a cold, clear voice, Chen Mu said, "Dare to block the carriage, and I'll kill you."

Swish!

Just as no one saw where the sword came from.

No one saw where the sword went back.

The sword tip vanished from before the bald man's eyes, and he felt utterly drained, his back drenched in cold sweat.

Just then, he had genuinely experienced the sensation of impending death.

"What is going on?!" a hoarse voice demanded coldly.

An elderly man in his fifties, with hair turning gray at the temples, walked over.

The bald man regained his composure, took two steps toward the old man, and cupped his fists respectfully.

"Master Zuo, I've caused you trouble," the bald man said with an apologetic expression. "Something happened to the convoy, so to investigate the root cause, I ordered everyone to stand by in place."

"One of the silver-booted guards refused the order. I have already driven them away," the bald man said respectfully.

Then, glaring coldly at Chen Mu and Jie Jia, he added, "Scuttle off. The Xue Family Freight Station has no use for unruly silver boots who drag their families along!"

Jie Jia rolled his eyes, cast a glance at Master Zuo, and gently flicked the reins in his hand. The carriage rumbled forward.

Chen Mu remained expressionless, not even deigning to look at the two men, leaning back against the carriage and losing himself in thought.

Ignored by both of them, the burly man flushed crimson with anger.

"Master Zuo, the disobedient fellows have already been chased off. You go and rest, we will handle this as quickly as possible..." However, before he could finish, he was interrupted by Master Zuo.

"Inform the team, we move out immediately!"

"Master Zuo, the young master has met with a disaster; we cannot act so hastily. We must rule out hidden dangers first..."

"I said, move out immediately!" Master Zuo fixed his gaze firmly on the bald man.

The look in his eyes was unmistakable: disobey, and I will replace you!

With a bellyful of swallowed words and a deeply aggrieved expression, the bald man gritted his teeth and replied, "Yes!"

Master Zuo glanced once more at the retreating black-lacquered carriage.

He glared coldly at the bald man. "Pick up the pace and keep up with them!"

……

Inside the black-lacquered carriage.

Cheng Ming held a Bigu pill in each hand, biting off the left side and chewing the right, enjoying himself immensely.

Du Huai, the chubby county magistrate's lieutenant, shrank obediently inside the carriage without uttering a single word, though his eyes darted around restlessly as if plotting something.

Zhang Ye leaned against the interior wall of the carriage. He could feel his back soaked through with sweat, feeling sticky and terribly uncomfortable, yet he dared not scratch.

Out of the corner of his eye, he kept glancing at Chen Mu, who was sitting outside the carriage.

Was this truly just a weak, sickly scholar?

Just now, he had kept his eyes fixed on Chen Mu, yet he hadn't even caught how the fellow had drawn and sheathed his sword?!

Out of martial habit, he subconsciously placed himself in the bald man's position.

He couldn't have defended against it! Absolutely unable to defend against it!

An expert!

An expert capable of taking his life!

Recalling how he had previously slapped the man casually on the shoulder and mocked him in his heart for fearing the dead, Zhang Ye felt a continuous, chilling sensation wash over his brow.

This scholar... surely he didn't hold grudges, right?

……

The carriage rolled along at a leisurely pace. Yet Chen Mu felt the hairs all over his body stand on end, sensing an escalating sense of foreboding.

Seizing the horse whip, he lashed the horses until the carriage flew forward.

Disregarding the complaints and bumping of the passengers inside, he drove over twenty miles in one breath, sprinting far beyond the range of the thick fog. Only then did he rein in the horses to let them rest.

He leaped down from the carriage and looked back along the path they had come.

The white fog resembled a giant mass of cotton wool, firmly enveloping a ten-mile radius around Qingshan County, impervious to the wind.

Viewed from the outside, there was nothing to be seen but a vast, blinding expanse of white.

Before long, a rumbling sound echoed from behind.

The Zuo family convoy also tumbled out of the dense fog in disarray.

Seeing Chen Mu and the others resting by the roadside, they slowed their pace. Once the entire convoy had completely broken free of the white fog, they halted and rested in place.

The frantic dash moments ago had thoroughly exhausted this massive convoy.

With personnel scattered in confusion, they needed to be mustered and reassigned; with goods jolted loose, they had to be re-tied.

Before long, the convoy erupted into another commotion.

"Boss, I heard four more people died. Old and young alike, all of them frail and sickly," Zhen Fan whispered, scurrying over to the black carriage to report.

The moment the Zuo family convoy stopped, he had sneaked off to gather intelligence.

"Damn it! This is cursed! It's a good thing we ran fast!" Zhang Ye's back was once again soaked through with cold sweat.

People dying for no rhyme or reason immediately brought malevolent spirits and supernatural disturbances to his mind.

Qingshan County had hardly been peaceful lately.

Those unclean things might very well be lurking inside that fog.

Zhang Ye looked at Chen Mu with newfound astonishment.

This Scholar Chen was formidable indeed! He had actually sensed something was wrong in advance.

Seeing Chen Mu staring expressionlessly at the white fog, Zhang Ye felt the fellow became all the more unfathomable.

……

"Is it evil spirits at work?" Chen Mu asked Jie Jia.

"No," Jie Jia replied, standing with his hands behind his back beside Chen Mu.

His eyes narrowed into slits, his bright yellowish pupils fixed intently on the fog in deep contemplation.

"There must be something wrong with that fog."

"Fog?" Chen Mu couldn't help recalling the Great Smog of London he had occasionally heard tales of in his past life.

In 1952, due to atmospheric conditions, industrial emissions and residential coal-heating smoke failed to disperse, shrouding London in thick smog for five days. During that time, the morbidity and mortality rates among citizens skyrocketed.

Later statistics showed that the death toll from this massive smog reached as high as 4,000 people.

Yet Qingshan County was merely an otherworldly, ancient city. Where could there be so many waste gases?

And yet, the vast city of Qingshan County was firmly enveloped by the white fog.

It was utterly silent, resembling a dead city, devoid of the slightest sound.

Gazing at it from afar, Chen Mu felt a creeping sense of dread in his heart.

"A place of peril..."