Chapter 3: Please Descend

Si Qingxuan lived in a suburban villa district called “Songyan Residence”.

The surrounding area was somewhat desolate, but the environment was good, suitable for recuperation.

…After all, Si Qingxuan’s situation was special; he couldn’t stand the various noises of the city, and he was also afraid of running into an overly “lively” neighbor.

It had been raining continuously lately.

The swimming pool in the backyard, originally empty, had now collected half a pool of murky rainwater.

Debris of leaves and dirt settled at the bottom, looking at a glance like it could support fish.

Si Qingxuan paid it no mind.

He returned to his bedroom, turned off the lights, got into bed, and closed his eyes.

Time passed quietly, and the pitter-patter of rain gradually sounded from the window.

The villa’s balcony was open-style, making the dripping sound of the rain exceptionally clear, yet it seemed to come from a great distance, not enough to disturb anyone’s dreams.

Si Qingxuan wasn’t asleep; he had simply entered a state he was extremely familiar with: meditation.

In this state, his thoughts and five senses were exceptionally sharp.

Scrape, scrape.

Something was dragging itself slowly across the floor.

The intervals between the sounds were short, slight yet prolonged.

Scrape, scrape—

Si Qingxuan frowned, opened his eyes, and sat up.

The room was empty.

On the dim floor, there were only the swaying shadows of trees.

Si Qingxuan stared at the room for a long while, then threw back the covers and placed his bare feet on the floor.

However, his feet didn’t touch the cold wooden floor; instead, he felt a hairy texture.

Si Qingxuan peeked over the edge and saw a round back of a head crawl out from under his bed.

It seemed to be a woman’s head.

Her hair spread out evenly across the floor like a black mop.

Si Qingxuan’s face instantly darkened.

He was someone with an extremely strong sense of personal space; not even familiar friends could hope to cross the electronic iron gate at his villa’s entrance.

The gardener and housekeeper could only operate in the external areas; all the furnishings in every room were arranged and maintained by him personally.

Let alone a head of unknown origin like this, covered in who knows how much grease, dead skin, and bacteria, brazenly rubbing itself soundlessly against the wooden floor he had personally waxed—

A winding wet trail on the floor told him this head was even dripping wet, probably having soaked up enough rainwater outdoors before crawling all the way in.

Just then, the head moved, twisting one hundred and eighty degrees to reveal a face shrouded in hair.

It was the face of the woman in the black dress from earlier in the day.

Only it was even paler, her lips a cyanotic black.

At this moment, she was smiling.

The woman, gazing silently at Si Qingxuan: “…”

Si Qingxuan: “…”

“Heh.”

Si Qingxuan sneered and mercilessly kicked the head back under the bed.

Then, he leaped off the bed in a single stride, grabbed his phone from the nightstand, and bolted for the door.

As he reached the doorway, he glanced hurriedly back toward the bed and saw the woman, her long black hair trailing, crouched on the floor like a wild beast.

Her deathly pale limbs were twisted at an impossible angle, moving silently like an insect’s legs, and in the blink of an eye, she had scurried right in front of him.

With a loud bang, Si Qingxuan slammed the door shut and locked it.

“Ugh—ah—”

A moan, like that of an old crone, came from within the bedroom.

Afterward, the room began to tremble violently.

First, it was the wall clock and ornaments on the walls, then the furniture like tables, chairs, and the sofa—the entire room was plunged into a fierce tremor, and even the floor beneath his feet seemed on the verge of splintering.

But there were exceptions.

The portrait of Zhong Kui that Si Qingxuan had hung at the exit of the second floor, as well as the weapon case displayed on its own shelf, remained as steady as a mountain.

At this point, even if Si Qingxuan were any slower, he should have realized that he had likely been entangled by something unclean.

Si Qingxuan took down the Zhong Kui portrait and stuck it on the door like a talisman—the ghostly wails in the bedroom continued, but at least the surrounding furniture stopped trembling.

Amid his surprise, Si Qingxuan felt a bit of admiration: surprise that this kind of thing actually worked, and admiration for his own incredible luck, to have stumbled upon a solution like a blind cat finding a dead mouse.

Once the sounds in the bedroom weakened a little, Si Qingxuan glanced up at the silent weapon case.

The Zhong Kui portrait hadn’t moved because it could ward off evil; why hadn’t the weapon case moved?

Si Qingxuan hadn’t forgotten its origin: it was a gift from his grandfather.

And it had been delivered packed together with part of a dried corpse.

If that sword was truly a weapon with some “special function,” Si Qingxuan had no reason to doubt it was a “fake.”

The weapon case hadn’t moved at all during the commotion just now.

Either it had a suppressive effect on evil like the Zhong Kui portrait, or… it was even more malevolent than the thing in his bedroom.

“…”

Si Qingxuan glanced at the weapon case, deciding not to touch it for now.

After all, his grandfather hadn’t sent him an instruction manual.

Taking advantage of the ghost’s weakened power, Si Qingxuan wanted to leave this place quickly.

Just then, the sounds in the room abruptly vanished.

Si Qingxuan subconsciously tensed his nerves—not far from his side was the open-style balcony, and the soft, stuffy sounds of wind and rain seeped in along with the moisture through the cracks in the window.

A slender, four-limbed figure crawled out from the edge of the wall and slowly climbed onto the transparent glass window.

A flash of lightning lit up the world outside the window, but the figure remained pure black, like a humanoid shape coalesced from a mass of darkness.

If the woman in the black dress earlier had barely resembled a human, then this shadow couldn’t even be said to look human at all.

“…”

Through the transparent glass, the human figure opened its cavernous mouth at Si Qingxuan.

Seeing this, Si Qingxuan no longer hesitated, turning to walk toward the display cabinet and opening the weapon case.

Light flowed calmly along the blade’s edge, as cold as water.

‘…Whether it can suppress that evil thing or not, at least it looks like a good sword that can cut through iron like mud.

In other words, it’s a decent self-defense weapon,’ Si Qingxuan thought optimistically.

However, before he could even touch the hilt, he heard a tremendous boom in his ear—

The transparent glass window suddenly exploded like a cresting wave, and a sky full of sharp fragments rained down.

Si Qingxuan was sent flying by the shockwave.

The weapon case toppled over, and the longsword fell to the ground.

The black shadow from outside the window crawled in, its movements light and slow.

Si Qingxuan once again heard that familiar scraping sound, like fabric being dragged—he looked up from amidst the glass shards on the floor.

Everything before his eyes seemed to waver with overlapping images, but he finally saw the black shadow’s true form.

It was a shriveled monster, or rather, just a skin sack.

The only human-like feature on its entire body was a mouth, which looked as if it had been torn apart and stitched back together, stained with dripping black blood.

It slowly crawled toward Si Qingxuan.

Scrape, scrape.

Si Qingxuan gritted his teeth and fumbled through the glittering shards for the cold longsword—

Everything around him grew distant.

His head throbbed with excruciating pain, as if it were being forcibly split in two.

Another part of him was thrown into an infinite vortex, one moment plummeting into a deep well, the next soaring into the high sky.

He seemed to hear the voices of many people and see many images.

In the darkness, waves of human figures bowed their heads to him.

Some quietly repented, some wailed in grief.

Torches could not burn away the eternal night, and the tears they shed were like boiling blood.

Those voices were noisy, chaotic, and even had different syllables and tones, yet they converged like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, becoming a single sentence that exploded in his ear:

“—”

“…Please descend!!”

Si Qingxuan opened his eyes.

A transparent book materialized before him.

A mechanical voice also sounded in his ear.

[Beep! Phantom Library System has been activated.]

[Detecting S-rank Holy Relic ‘Sword of Caligula’… Although Caligula was a tyrant, ruling arbitrarily and levying exorbitant taxes his entire life, his absurdity, along with his merit in leading his subjects to resist the invasion of anomalies, has been recorded in the annals of mystery, forgotten by none.]

[The remnant imprint on the Holy Relic is ‘Talent: Judgment.’ Instructions for use are as follows: Exercise the authority of the emperor; within this domain, all is yours to command. Activation condition: Rage.]

[Does the host wish to collect the imprint?]

Si Qingxuan subconsciously chose “Yes.”

The transparent book began to flip its pages.

On a certain blank page, the image of a longsword slowly seeped out.

Collection complete.

At this point, the voice in his ear seemed to have become more emotional, sounding more like a person:

[Finally, after this long slumber, I can finally speak with you again—]

[Welcome to your awakening, High Priest!]

Si Qingxuan said, “…What High Priest? Doesn’t sound like anything good.”

[I will not allow you to speak of yourself that way!]

Si Qingxuan: “…”

‘Where did this system come from? It doesn’t seem very bright.’

“We can chat later.”

Si Qingxuan stood up from the glass shards, sword in hand, suddenly realizing he felt particularly familiar with this sword, as if it were an extension of his own arm, as if he had already used it to cut down countless enemies.

“Let’s deal with this thing in front of me first.

Do you have any good suggestions?”

[It’s just a Phase Ghoul. It excels at hunting for others’ skins and taking over their identities to live. It’s the lowest class of anomalous creature, not a familiar of any ancient god. Humans today call it a D-rank Anomaly… Originally, it probably wouldn’t even have qualified for D-rank, if not for its extreme skill in disguise.]

Si Qingxuan mentally put a question mark next to the words “extreme skill in disguise”.

[Don’t be fooled by its current appearance; it’s usually quite cunning. Judging by how starved it looks, it probably hasn’t found a skin it likes in a long time.]

[Anomalous creatures are like that. Desire is their driving instinct. So, even though it has already sensed how dangerous you are… it will still pounce.]

As soon as the system’s voice fell, the Phase Ghoul, which had been coiled on the balcony, suddenly let out a long shriek and lunged at Si Qingxuan.

Si Qingxuan dodged and swung his sword instinctively.

The exquisite and ancient sword technique was executed with ease in his hands.

The Phase Ghoul screamed as half its face was sliced off.

A brown slime flowed from the wound, and only then did Si Qingxuan confirm that it, too, was a physical entity with flesh and blood.

Si Qingxuan glanced down at the blade’s edge; it was still frost-white as snow, not stained with the slightest bit of filth.

“This sword is not bad,” he commented.

[Of course. When Caligula was alive, he was an awakened one of the highest order, standing at the very pinnacle of human evolutionary history. Not only was he a master swordsman, but the imprint left on his relic is also S-rank…]

[I suggest you use the talent from the imprint. A quick battle is best.]

‘What was the activation condition for the talent again?’

‘Oh, rage.’

The Phase Ghoul before him roared at Si Qingxuan in a bluff, and the wound on its face healed rapidly.

But where it stood, a pool of brown slime had dripped onto the floor, emitting waves of a foul, rotting stench.

Si Qingxuan, his floor dirtied once again: “…”

He was quite angry now.

A silent domain spread out with him at its center.

The scattered furniture, the drifting curtains, even the branches and raindrops outside the window—all were frozen in this silent moment.

Within this domain, he was the emperor, he was the master.

Si Qingxuan’s lips parted, and he uttered a low chant.

The Phase Ghoul, however, was no longer focused on Si Qingxuan’s beautiful skin.

As if se