Early the next morning, Luo Chen donned his white fox fur coat from last year, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and set out to patrol his domain.
Winter had fully set in, and snowflakes drifted down endlessly, blanketing the entire Crescent Moon Valley in a pristine layer of white.
From a distance, Luo Chen spotted a small figure crouched at the valley’s entrance, busily stacking snow into a crude shape.
Curious, he walked over for a closer look, only to burst into laughter.
"So ugly!"
Qu Lingjun, the little culprit behind the misshapen snowman, froze for a second before tilting his head without a word and then suddenly dashed inside.
Luo Chen blinked in confusion. Wait... was that really necessary? I just gave you a pill yesterday, and now you’re acting like this?
But before he could process it further, the boy came running back out clutching a small flower pot.
"President! President! This is my birthday gift for you!"
Luo Chen looked at the pot, where a tiny sprout had just begun to unfurl its leaves.
He opened his mouth slightly. My birthday? Did I miss something?
Qu Lingjun puffed up with pride and declared, "This is a soul-nurturing tree! The seed was the one you casually gave me before. I used some beast blood that the uncles didn’t want and nurtured it for a while before it finally sprouted!
"What do you think? I’m amazing, right?"
Luo Chen pinched the chubby little face and chuckled. "So, you’re just returning my own gift to me?"
"Hehe!" Qu Lingjun grinned sheepishly before straightening his back. "Not just anyone can grow a soul-nurturing tree!"
Indeed, raising a soul-nurturing tree was notoriously difficult to cultivate. But not because it was fragile, rather, its growth cycle was the real challenge.
A single tree required at least a thousand years to mature to a usable stage.
This particular seed had actually been a birthday gift from Feng Xia last year. Luo Chen had tossed it into his storage pouch and forgotten about it.
Later, when he saw Qu Lingjun memorizing the Illustrated Compendium of Hundred Herbs, he had casually handed the seed over, thinking the boy could experiment with it.
He hadn’t expected the kid to actually succeed in growing it.
"Alright, I see that you've managed to grow it. No need to give it to me just keep taking care of it. When it’s bigger, you can hand it over then.
"Mm-hmm!" Qu Lingjun nodded enthusiastically and carefully carried the flower pot back inside.
Luo Chen watched him go, then crouched down, scooping up a large handful of snow to fix up the misshapen snowman the boy had left behind.
After a while, Qu Lingjun came back out and joined him.
"Who’s this snowman supposed to be? And why does it have a mustache?" Luo Chen asked.
"It’s my dad!" Qu Lingjun announced proudly. "His beard was really stiff and prickly, so I used pig bristles to stick on as his mustache."
"Doesn’t that basically mean you’re calling your dad a pig?" Luo Chen teased.
"He was really dumb! Not as smart as my mom... Wait, no, no, my dad wasn’t this handsome. I will take after my mom more!"
As they continued building, Qu Lingjun's nose turned red from the cold. He suddenly paused, looking up at Luo Chen with teary eyes, and sniffled.
"President, I miss my dad and mom."
Luo Chen pressed his lips together, then gently ruffled the boy’s hair.
In the falling snow, one tall and one small figure stood side by side, finishing their crooked little snowman.
***
"Ghost General?"
Inside Radiant Moon Hall, cultivators huddled around the furnace, warming themselves against the cold. Luo Chen listened intently, his expression filled with surprise as Zeng Wen relayed the latest information about the ghost city.
Zeng Wen clicked his tongue in amazement. "That's right! No one expected a Ghost General to appear inside the ghost city. The Nangong family, who charged in the deepest, suffered a devastating loss this time!"
The Yin Ghost lineage had many classifications.
Some ghosts were formed from condensed Yin energy, while others were cultivators who had perished and converted to the ghostly path. There were also vengeful spirits that arose from extremely Yin lands, and even zombies, the most well-known among them.
Their ranks were not measured by conventional stages like Qi-Refining or Foundation Establishment, but by a different system altogether:
Rather, they were ranked as Ghost Soldier, Ghost General, and Ghost King.
This classification existed because higher-ranked ghostly entities naturally suppressed low-ranked ones.
A Ghost King, for instance, was powerful enough to turn an entire region into a ghost abyss. Any ghostly cultivator within that domain would not only gain tremendous power boosts, but would also fall under the Ghost King’s absolute control.
During the battle in the inner city of Dahe Market, the outbreak had occurred at noon. The city was filled with cultivators, at least five thousand of them.
When the calamity struck, some perished instantly, while others were trapped inside by the formation activated by the Jade Cauldron Sword Pavilion.
Only a fortunate few managed to escape in the initial chaos.
By the time the battle ended, three Ghost Kings had been obliterated by the Golden Core sword cultivator, Pang Renxiong. However, the immense ghostly energy that had accumulated over centuries erupted at once, engulfing the inner city and permanently transforming it into a ghost abyss.
If that had been the end of it, the issue could have been resolved by waiting for a major sect to arrive and purge the lingering ghostly energy, restoring balance to the region.
But three months had passed, and there was still no sign of the Jade Cauldron Sword Sect.
Instead, news had spread that a Ghost General had now emerged inside the ghost city!
A Ghost General, while not as terrifying as a Ghost King, which could command an entire Ghost Abyss. However, it was still a major threat as it possessed some level of intelligence and retained vestiges of its former life’s behaviors.