Courtyard House: Time Traveler Not Yet a Ghost

The night in the east courtyard was as deep as solidified ink, enveloping the entire courtyard in a thick silence. It was no ordinary night, but one with an almost tangible sense of oppression, as if it could penetrate to the bone and freeze one's thoughts, just like He Damin's heavy mood at this moment.

He Damin sat cross-legged on the cold earthen bed, the surface beneath him hard and rough. The chill seeped through the thin mattress, creating a strange resistance against the soul energy circulating within him. Outside the window, the last sounds of life in the courtyard had long since faded, like a candle flickering in the wind, utterly silent. Only the autumn wind remained, carrying the desolation and power unique to the north, howling and whistling through the iron eaves, like someone sobbing softly in the darkness. A few early-fallen sycamore leaves swirled in the wind, withered and pale, making a soft rustling sound in the flagstone courtyard before being blown away, disappearing without a trace.

The air was filled with the dry chill characteristic of late autumn in Beiping. The chill wasn't biting, but it carried a dryness that penetrated deep into the skin; inhaling it felt like a gentle scraping of the respiratory tract. In addition, there was the faint smell of cheap coal smoke drifting from the distant tenement courtyards, mixed with a subtle, almost imperceptible, sour odor of nighttime excrement, all contributing to the unique flavor of life at the bottom of Beiping at night.

His eyes were closed, his long eyelashes casting a small shadow under his eyelids, but the depths of his spiritual sea were not as calm as they appeared on the surface; instead, they were turbulent and towering.

The eerie smile on Yoshiko Kawashima's face as she escaped was like a poisoned dagger, sharp and chilling, each recollection sending a shiver down his spine; the blinding white light from the exploding jade pendant nearly blinded him, its lingering shadow haunting his consciousness; the ripples of space as it warped, like waves on water, and the venomous words, seemingly emanating from the depths of hell, "I will find you"... all of this flashed through his mind frame by frame, like a poorly made but inescapable silent film, each detail terrifyingly clear. Especially the distorted, hazy sensation when his fingertips touched that white light—that strange feeling, somewhere between reality and illusion, like touching a soap bubble that bursts instantly—still lingered faintly on his fingertips, carrying a slight numbing sensation.

"shame."

The word surfaced again like a cold, venomous snake, its forked tongue gnawing at his pride. Cold and precise, without the slightest ambiguity. In his past life, he was the fearsome "Thousand-Faced Yama," his cultivation reaching a pinnacle, forging an invincible golden body. But in this world, that golden body had been forcibly torn open. This wasn't due to insufficient strength or inferior skills, but rather a severe lack of intelligence, an underestimation of the opponent's profound foundation hidden beneath the mists of history. Behind Kawashima Yoshiko, there clearly stood a higher level, a more enigmatic power, no ordinary being, but a "cultivator" or "Japanese Onmyoji" beyond the conventional understanding of this era. The strangeness of their methods far exceeded his highest prediction based on "historical intelligence" and recent observations.

"Hide?" He Damin slowly opened his eyes. Those eyes, which had been dormant in the darkness, suddenly flashed with a terrifying light, like a cold star falling into an abyss, so sharp it seemed to pierce the thick night. "You can hide in spatial crevices, you can hide at the ends of the earth, disappearing without a trace. But your intelligence network built over many years, the Special Higher Police system you rely on for survival, like the fangs of a venomous snake, the military and political intelligence flow in North China that you've painstakingly tried to control… you can't move these away, you can't hide them!"

He stood up abruptly, his movements swift and decisive, carrying a suppressed burst of energy. He walked to the window; the paper windowpanes trembled slightly in the night breeze, making soft, rustling sounds. Outside, the oppressive, dark outline of the courtyard house's eaves loomed, their upturned corners resembling the silhouettes of silent, colossal beasts in the night. Further away, the city of Beiping slept in boundless darkness; its majestic walls, its numerous alleyways, and the scattered lights were all swallowed by the night, leaving only blurry, undulating shadows.

This ancient city, seemingly calm and undisturbed at this moment, resembles a weary, sleeping giant. However, He Damin could clearly sense the turbulent undercurrents and unpredictable events lurking beneath that tranquil surface. The Japanese military headquarters, intelligence agencies, puppet regime offices, banks, and trading companies—these institutions, scattered throughout every corner of the city, were like venomous spiders lurking in the shadows, silently weaving a vast and vicious web, greedily devouring the vitality and dignity of this land.

"Since you're hiding and afraid to show yourself, then I'll make you deaf and blind, completely stripping you of the ability to perceive the outside world!" He Damin's voice was extremely low, like the buzzing of a mosquito, almost lost in the wind, yet it carried an undeniable, iron-like decisiveness. "You want intelligence? I'll make all intelligence transparent to you one-way. What you see is only what I want you to see. You want to hide? I'll make sure that wherever you hide, in every direction, are my open eyes, leaving you nowhere to hide!"

With a single thought, like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, ripples spread outwards, and his consciousness instantly sank into that vast and boundless spiritual sea. His soul essence, after absorbing that pure soul power and undergoing quiet recuperation in the past few days, had fully recovered. In fact, due to the intense assassination battle and the profound reflection and refinement following the setback, the essence of his soul had become subtly purer and more resilient, like steel forged through countless hammer blows. The sense of limit—the ability to split into a hundred soul avatars—was like an invisible shackle, now clearly and distinctly present in his perception, cold and heavy.

"One hundred is far from enough." He calmly assessed the situation, his brain racing like a high-speed machine. "The North China Area Army Headquarters, the two major intelligence agencies in Beiping and Tianjin, the command posts of various divisions and regiments, the military police scattered throughout the country, the core departments of the puppet regime, key commercial companies and banks, busy transportation hubs, secret radio and communication stations... To achieve a comprehensive coverage of this vast system, to make any secret of the Japanese appear as if in broad daylight before me, with nowhere to hide, scattering these one hundred clones is like scattering a handful of sand on a vast lake. It's still too sparse, full of loopholes."

But a limit is a limit, like an insurmountable chasm. Forcibly splitting into more clones will inevitably result in each clone being too weak, like a candle flickering in the wind, easily detected by those with slightly higher cultivation levels. It might even damage the main soul's origin due to excessive burden, which would be a foolish act that would not be worth the loss.

"Then, we can only improve efficiency and make precise deployments, using the fewest pieces to occupy the most crucial positions." He Damin's thinking became clear like sunlight breaking through the fog. "There's no need to put a clone in every department; that would be too wasteful and too easy to expose. Key figures and key positions are the core nodes of the entire intelligence network. Controlling these nodes is like controlling the tap; intelligence, like water, will naturally flow through the pipes and converge here."

He sat down cross-legged again, his movements steady, his hands slowly forming a mudra, his fingertips turning slightly white from the force. In an instant, an invisible wave emanated from his body, and his soul, like a bird breaking free of its shackles, slowly floated out from his Baihui acupoint, hovering in mid-air. The soul emitted a faint golden halo, more condensed and pure than before. As the halo flowed, the faint phantom of a Tai Chi pattern slowly rotated around him, exuding a harmonious and profound aura, as if containing the ultimate principles of heaven and earth.

"point!"

A soft shout, like a thunderclap from a clear sky, though not loud, carried an irresistible force. His soul body trembled violently, as if about to explode from within! This separation process was far more difficult and painful than ever before. Each split felt like his soul being forcibly torn into hundreds of pieces. The excruciating pain originating from the depths of his soul was sharp and intense, several times stronger than when he split into fifty clones last time, as if it would completely rip his consciousness apart. But his eyes remained calm and still, his jaw clenched, using immense willpower to forcibly control the entire process, preventing his soul body from collapsing under the intense pain.