Yun Jieshi only felt safe after he was past the first woodland – the one that surrounded the cabin. Before then, he had been expecting another Elite Jade Imp to rush him along with a platoon of Common ones. Well, to be fair, that wasn't an especially frightening thought. He dreaded the pheasants more than he dreaded the Elite Jade Imps.
At this point, he felt like only the Imp King was a genuine threat to the current him among the species. Unless, of course, there were other variants of the Elite Jade Imps that he didn't know about.
Gripping his daruan tight, the little monkey weathered through the blizzard. Since it was fairer during Wei Fang's reign, he wasn't particularly bothered by it. He had been slowly evolving over the last days, even while sheltered by Qui Tian. It also helped that his mind was clouded with many thoughts.
The distance towards where he and Qui Tian had found the other cabin was unkind. Luckily, since he was less burdened than the last time he made a journey through his land without an instruction protecting him from the weather, he could move quicker.
The little monkey thoroughly considered what he was going to say to the phantom when he saw it. He wasn't going to wing it this time.
Luckily for him, forming words wasn't the most trying task for his mind. It was even easier for him to create templates for what the ghost was likely to say and what would be the best way to respond. Thirty minutes into his journey, Yun Jieshi felt he had covered every possible base. He most definitely wouldn't slip up.
He had also spared a generous portion of his brain for making absolutely sure that he wouldn't run into the black-stalked flowers. His emotions were throbbing in eight different ways and without Qui Tian by his side, the little monkey knew for a certainty that those things would overpower him – however it was they would do it.
On his way, six silver foxes tailed him, their ever-curious faces meeting his when he turned to curse at them.
It irked him when they phased through mounds of snow cosplaying as hills and danced over the icy marshes as though they were hard, hot slices of desert.
It made him seethe when the foxes, unlike him, didn't have to hide from pheasants flying overhead. The little monkey didn't have the time nor energy to fight those creatures. He wanted to return home by Zi Kun's descent at the very latest.
'I hope I don't run into that black-feathered pheasant or whatever it could be,' the little monkey thought as he hid under the frozen canopy of one of the bowing trees he'd seen when he first crossed the Gap. The shadow of a Greater Pheasant was flying overhead, a green-feathered one.
Only after Yun Jieshi made doubly sure that it was gone, did he continue on his journey, his spectators in tow.
He tried shooing them away, but once again, they simply vanished into thin air and rematerialized when he turned his back.
Yun Jieshi might have sighed a thousand times.
Soon enough though, he had no choice but to forget that the foxes even existed.
He had arrived at his destination – a dilapidated cabin half buried in snow. The heaps that Qui Tian had removed days ago had already been replaced by thicker, harder mounds.
And of course, the weeping of the phantom was still fresh. The tempo hadn't shifted in the slightest. The suffering of a ghost was consistent, Yun Jieshi knew. Thankfully for them, it didn't seem as though they were aware of how long they spent wallowing in their despair. That was key in how the little monkey was going to have to handle this.
'Here we go,' Yun Jieshi told himself.
Unlike the hag, he didn't have the luxury of using the instruction for Southern Hand (even though he knew it) to open the door for him. He had to push through the snow and ice and wrench it open with his ruan.
The sound of the phantom's cry blared out as it was revealed.
The interior of the cabin was as wretched as Yun Jieshi remembered. Traces of clothes, majestic in their prime could be seen in the corner, along with piles of wood that he assumed had been used as furniture. There was cracked pottery too.
The phantom was sobbing while kneeling right in the middle of the cabin. The floor had caved in, parts of it charred as though a flame had run rampant within it some ages ago. From this perspective, it might have looked as though the phantom was weeping for his demolished house.
Yun Jieshi carefully walked in and closed the door behind him.
'I have to be quick. If everything happens just as it did with Feng Jie Hong, it will interact with me when I get close,' he thought.
Now that he imagined it, it felt a little like how players interacted with NPCs in video games.
And sure enough, when the little monkey was a meter away from the phantom, it quickly raised its head, shuddered and backed away, howling.
"Get away, monster! Get away!"
Yun Jieshi was not exactly surprised by the phantom's reaction. The transition from sorrow to fear seemed appropriate. What did baffle him, however, was how young this phantom looked. It was middle-aged at worst. The thick tufts of white hair it had on its head were misleading. Under them, there was a face that could have passed for a twenty-five-year-old… woman.
'What a beautiful… man,' Yun Jieshi thought, taken aback.
The man's face was perfectly round and clean shaven. He had the softest features Yun Jieshi had ever seen… for a man. His nose was slender and his cheekbones could inspire a supermodel.
The only thing that crippled the man's looks was his horrified expression. As he continued backing away while yelling for Yun Jieshi to get away, the little monkey hunched, reminded of his objective.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to… eat you," he said. That seemed to be what fiction pegged monsters to do when they met humans, as Yun Jieshi recalled.
The man stopped shuffling at once. He leaned forward, awestruck.
"You… You can talk?" he said, first with a smile. Then he turned hysterical. "Of course you can! Of course, you can! It's a trick!"
The man fell back into despair, this time far worse. Yun Jieshi might have become a fire-breathing dragon in his eyes.
The little monkey frowned. Remembering what happened to Feng Jie Hong, he didn't dare to let the phantom spiral into madness for too long.
He looked into the beautiful man's eyes and shouted, "Stop screaming! I can't harm you! You are already dead! Look at yourself!"
The phantom was jolted by Yun Jieshi's voice. He obeyed before he knew what he was doing. He looked at his hands, and upon spotting the oily trails rising from them, and how he could see the floor through them, his eyes widened.
"No. No. I'm… dead? I can't be…" the phantom said. The denial in his voice quickly dwindled. Even if he couldn't believe that he was dead, he couldn't deny that he wasn't human any longer. "No!"
Yun Jieshi rushed up the phantom before he could react and grabbed ahold of his wrists. The old sagely voice did not disappoint.
"Wu Chaoxiang, the Disharmonised ghost of a villager from the natural world."
Yun Jieshi immediately made fair use of this knowledge.
"Wu Chaoxiang! You are dead, but you are not lost! Listen to me!"
Again, the voice of the Discount Sage reached the ghost. Shaken, he looked right into the little monkey's vibrant electric blue eyes.
"W-what?"
"You are dead, but you are still moving. You can see. You can hear. That means you are not lost," said Yun Jieshi sternly. "You are only like this because you have unresolved matters. You have regrets. If you panic, I won't be able to save you."
Wu Chaoxiang gaped and slowly began to relax. His eyes darted here and there as he collected his sense. He must have figured that a talking monkey wasn't the most bizarre thing he'd seen in this world.
"I…I see. I am not… lost?"
"Yes," said Yun Jieshi and he settled in front of the ghost. "You have lingering regrets. That's why you are here. Tell me all about them and I can help. Tell me about your life. Where you come from. Why you are here."
Wu Chaoxiang spent a little more than ten seconds studying Yun Jieshi's face before blinking furiously. Even his eyelashes were immaculate.
"My life… Why I'm here? Ah. I remember," he said, taking deep ghostly breaths. "I came here with the Second Expedition some time ago… as a warrior."