My Little Ghost

Volume 1.1.0 — The Transgression

“As most of you have heard over the break and read through newsletters, our academy is joining this year’s Core Color Tournament. The cultivation masters and elders of the interschool participants will be visiting each participating school as we gather the players. Each school will prepare welcome festivities for the players and watch their parade before the tournament begins. With this being said, I would ask you to represent our school the best way you can and to show other schools what you are being taught in this school during the length of the tournament. We know we are the best academy there is when it comes to cultivating talents, but we can only prove this by showing them our best and not by displaying unethical behavior or by provoking a rival school outside the competition proper.

“Over the course of the break, Professor Chen has already gathered the profiles of the talented students in graduating classes who submitted their interests in participating. Only licensed cultivators are allowed to participate so anyone who submitted without a license would be automatically removed before the qualification round. We’ll be holding competitions for—in no particular order—elixir making, charm presentation, alchemy, and weaponry combat. The danger is inevitable, and by allowing only licensed cultivators to join these competitions, we eliminate the risk of younger and helpless cultivators getting bullied and having their cores stolen.

“If you have questions regarding the tournament or if you’re interested to join and haven’t submitted your profiles yet, you can look for your graduating class professor—Professor Bai, or the assigned faculty member who’s going to overlook the event—Professor Chen.

“Now, let’s listen to Professor Ping who’s going to talk about the schedule organization for each. . .”

While the voice of the headmaster is almost fading in Bai Bing Wen’s ears, he suddenly hears a light whistling sound that jolts him awake from his sleepy state. The few students who have noticed his reaction are now stifling their giggles while Bai Bing Wen only clears his throat.

“Xiao Bing, are you there?”

When he hears his father’s voice in his left ear, he almost exclaims in surprise before remembering the communication device he’s brought with him. “Dad?” he calls out in a hushed tone, covering his mouth.

“Can you hear me well?”

He looks around for a few seconds before answering his father in a lower voice, “Yes.”

“Son, I don’t want you to panic but listen to me, and listen well.”

Bai Bing Wen hates it when conversations start like this. Asking him not to panic as an introduction is tantamount to asking him not to get hurt before getting hit. But the way his father’s voice is sounding a bit shaky, he knows it’s not the time to talk to him about how conversations aren’t supposed to start like this.

“Your mother came home after visiting the association today and one of the immortal elders has been found with a stolen core. An immortal. He’s in critical condition and the culprit hasn’t been caught yet. They said a group of cultivators came last night in suspicious robes. Robes. Like the ancient kind. It happened while we were having a celebratory dinner with the whole clan at home, and put everyone around the room of this immortal to sleep. Your mother won’t stop crying... Wait, she’s calling for me.”

There’s a lingering silence on the other line as Bai Bing Wen feels the pounding of his heart almost reaching his throat. He’s never heard of a case in which an immortal’s core has been stolen in all the years of his life until now. And if people can steal a core from someone as powerful as an immortal, how easier it would have been to steal a core from a young cultivator like himself who’s not even reached the peak of his level yet? All because he has the potential to reach immortality.

“Xiao Bing? Are you still there?”

“Dad, I’m here. What’s—”

“Xiao Bing, are you listening? It’s me. How are you?”

At the sound of his mother’s shaky voice, Bai Bing Wen almost stands up to leave the hall before he realizes it would gain more attention. He does a simple hand seal under the table and whispers a few silencing enchantments to make sure nobody around the students’ tables can hear him. “Mom? What is going on?”

“My little son, listen to me. There was a... a banner. A-at the immortal elder’s residence. They used very different strokes when writing these words, they’re unfamiliar, but they’re the same. I don’t know. It’s like it was written with a level n-nine ink. It burnt my hand when I touched the letters. It said... It said...”

His mother’s voice keeps breaking, making it more difficult for him to understand what’s going on.

“I’ll read it,” his father’s voice says, finally taking over. “ “Bai Bing Wen. Ji Feng Huang. If we don’t have the magic cores of these two within a month, we’ll take each one of the immortals’ cores until we collect all ninety-nine of them. If anyone helps them, we’ll kill them, too, and burn their bodies with a purple flame, together with another immortal’s coreless corpse. Nobody has to do anything. Don’t hurt them, but don’t protect them, either. We’ll get them ourselves but don’t think about getting in our way.” ”

Bai Bing Wen feels his teeth grinding in anger. If not for Bai Li Jie gently touching his hand, he would have gotten up and out of the realm to face these idiots himself instead of putting everyone else in danger just for two magic cores. He doesn’t even have any idea whom the other one is, seeing how everyone gets news if another young cultivator sprouts out of nowhere and has the potential to gain immortality.

“Son... I know this is too much to take in, but we promised we’ll tell each other everything, right?” his father says in a firm tone, knowing exactly where his thoughts are heading.

When he doesn’t answer, he hears his mother’s sniffles and asks in between sobs, “Xiao Bing, are you with your brothers right now?”

While he listens, he sees his brother looking at him with a worried face. “I’m with Jie-gege,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Good,” his father remarks. “That’s good. After the orientation, quickly look for your Zhang-gege and tell him that you need to get back as soon as you can.”

“I’m looking at Zhang-gege right now and he’s looking right back at me. I think he senses my unstable aura. He’s a bit sensitive to that.”

“I’ll handle your great-grandfather and the rest. Just get out of the school the first chance you get and go home. Do you understand? Straight home, no detours.”

“Yes, father,” Bai Bing Wen answers, looking around him.

Not only has he been listening to this, making his skin crawl for a few minutes now, but as soon as he informed his father that he’s with one of his brothers, he’s been feeling this terrifying killing intent from someone in the vast hall, and no one else seems to have noticed it but him.

“Xiao Bing?” Bai Li Jie gently calls out.

Bai Bing Wen starts forming another hand seal to include his brother in his enchantment, but he feels the killing intent growing stronger and stronger. Instead of a silencing enchantment, he forms a different seal to protect himself and his brother. As soon as he finishes the hand seals, tens of small knives and pins fall all over them and everyone around starts either forming hand seals of their own or running away from the target spot.

Everything around them that the knives and pins have touched is now burning in black flames.

“Bai Bing Wen!” he hears the female voice of his older brother, Bai Zhang Wei, from somewhere in the hall. A few steps run towards them but more feet are running away.

Bai Bing Wen turns his sharp eyes around the hall and sees no one suspicious enough to catch. He then turns to look at his younger brother who’s buried his face in his chest with his eyes closed. “Jie-gege, are you all right?”

When Bai Li Jie nods his head, the eldest Bai brother has reached them and starts throwing glowing red talismans around them to fight off the harmful fumes of the black fire.

“These are level eight talismans, why aren’t they working?” Bai Zhang Wei exclaims in disbelief.

“Are you all right? What happened?!” the headmaster asks, flying towards them in a hurry after summoning his sword. He flips his wrist towards the flames and the fumes are sucked into oblivion. “These are made by a ninth level practitioner.”

“Great-grandpa, be careful!” Bai Li Jie yells out, tightening his embrace around his brother’s torso.

The headmaster takes a careful look at everyone around the hall and sees the same thing; students frantically trying to seal themselves for protection and professors quickly forming hand seals for the headmaster and the Bai brothers. Nothing out of place, except for the obvious.

“Is everyone all right?” the headmaster asks, glancing at one of the cultivation masters.

“I’ll check on them,” the master answers.

The headmaster stands in front of the brothers, his golden eyes glowing brightly as he whispers enchantments to activate the array within the hall. Blue neon lines appear in the air, in a beautiful pattern, after the headmaster’s spiritual energy has been infused, and they light up the entire hall with light blue and white sparkles. Everyone below the ninth level kneels in oppression as the headmaster releases his immortal aura, trying to detect foreign intents amongst the cultivators within the school’s realm. As soon as his face changes and he summons his sword to fly somewhere outside the hall, the oppression has focused somewhere else and everyone else finally gets to regain their attentive senses. A few cultivating masters and professors follow him out on their swords, while the rest watch over the students.

Bai Zhang Wei takes Bai Li Jie in his arms and takes a look at their youngest brother. “What the heck happened? Are you all right? Are you hurt somewhere?!”

Bai Bing Wen forms another layer of protection seal and summons his sword, Starflame, keeping his guards up. “We need to get back home. Right now,” he tells his brothers.

Nodding, Bai Zhang Wei supports Bai Li Jie while Bai Bing Wen prepares their emergency teleportation talisman. He holds the black jade in his hands, infused it with his spiritual energy, but nothing happens. Bai Bing Wen takes another jade, but the same thing happens until the third, fourth, and even the seventh jade teleportation talisman.

“What the heck is going on?” he mumbles to himself. He tries to make another hand seal to check his spiritual force and finds that it’s intact. “I can’t activate my emergency teleportation talisman.”

“What? Let me...” Bai Zhang Wei takes all the seven black jades in his hands and tries to infuse one of them with his spiritual energy, but the jade cracks into pieces, making it useless. “What?” he blurts out in disbelief.

“Mom? Dad? Can you hear me?” Bai Bing Wen almost exclaims, touching his earrings. When he doesn’t hear any response, he takes another look around. Just when his eyes are about to reach the exit where the headmaster has gone to, they hear a loud thud from behind the fourth window close to the podium.

“Bing’er!” a pained scream echoes around the hall, shocking the students and professors.

One cultivation master summons his sword to fly over, but the owner of the voice is already stumbling and struggling to run towards the Bai brothers.

“Ling Mao!” Bai Zhang Wei exclaims.

Ling Mao’s uniform is in a poor state of disarray and red lines are crawling from his neck to his face. His uniform coat is missing, his white dress shirt’s buttons are undone, and his blue tie has been burnt. He almost collapses halfway through and the lines start crawling on his arms, too. As his eyes close, the cultivation master catches him just in time and the red lines on Ling Mao’s skin have suddenly gone bright red.

But before Bai Zhang Wei can run to him, Bai Bing Wen stops him and gestures that they’re in a protection array that cannot be broken. Their family’s protection is more important than anything else at this moment since they are the targets. They cannot let their guards down; they can only let the other professors and cultivation masters handle the other students’ protection.

“Let’s walk together. Don’t lose the formation,” Bai Bing Wen quietly tells his brothers, holding them by the arms. They have gone through drills and practices to perfect their plans when emergencies like these happen, but nothing could have prepared them for Ling Mao’s words as soon as they reach him.

“Bing’er... Bing’er, be careful. They’re here. They locked you in. You can’t get out. Be... be careful... Red eyes... Red nails... Blond hair... T-they... Professor, h-help me...”

Placing his own coat around Ling Mao’s body, Bai Bing Wen whispers another set of protective enchantments around his friend, taking a careful look at the solid, red glowing lines on his skin.

Bai Zhang Wei presses on Ling Mao’s acupoints to protect his magic core from being infected by the toxins spreading on his body. “Shishu, he needs medical attention,” he tells the cultivation master who nods and takes the boy in his arms to send him to the infirmary.

A little shaken, Bai Zhang Wei tries to activate one of the teleportation talismans again, but instead of outside the school’s realm, he relocates themselves in the headmaster’s chamber where an immortal level of protection array is activated. Only a Bai clan family member bonded by blood can enter the headmaster’s room so they’re safe for now.

“Can you contact anyone outside?”

Bai Bing Wen shakes his head, letting go of his older brother who’s hugging him with trembling hands. “Jie-gege, are you all right?” he asks quietly.

Bai Li Jie shakes his head, breathing shakily. “I sensed it. It’s the same aura of that monster,” he starts mumbling.

Both Bai Bing Wen and Bai Zhang Wei stare at their brother with worried faces.

“Are you certain?” Bai Zhang Wei asks, summoning his sword from his space ring.

Bai Li Jie looks up at them with a pale face. “I am.”

Bai Bing Wen and Bai Zhang Wei look at each other, remembering a time in the past when their brother was almost kidnapped while teleporting to school through the portal. In the few seconds he was left alone in the darkness while waiting for the school’s realm to apparate in front of his eyes, he saw a different realm instead and was grabbed on by rough hands into a room that smelled like rancid meat. He was only ten years old then, but he would never forget how that monster smelled like. It was a good thing that their father always pinned safety talismans on them whenever they went away to make sure they’d teleport back to wherever they came from if they didn’t get to wherever they were supposed to go in five seconds. It was a level nine safety talisman made by their great-grandfather because they were always at risk of being kidnapped during teleportation.

Now that Bai Li Jie has confirmed sensing the same danger, they know for sure that the culprit responsible for that incident a few years ago that has left their Xiao Jie with a huge trauma is the same one responsible for whatever is happening now, or at least connected to it.