Chapter 123

After the start of autumn, the nights were a little chilly, and a place like a hospital often felt even colder than the actual temperature suggested.

It had been fine in the corridor earlier, where the wind could not reach them. But now that he was outside, the evening breeze hit him, and Li Zhuiyuan took the thin jacket from his backpack and put it on.

Everyone carried specific supplies and equipment in their bags. Back in the summer, even after wading across rivers, it had never felt especially cold, so this thin jacket had stayed buried at the bottom the whole time, never worn once.

When he tried to zip it up, he discovered the zipper was broken. No matter how hard he pulled, it would not close.

Back home, Taigong would have rubbed a candle over it.

The old man watched, helplessly, as the boy with his head lowered, fiddling with his zipper, walked toward him step by step.

Earlier, he had still been arrogant inside, his insolence wrapped in a kind of restraint. But now, he could feel his eyelids twitching uncontrollably.

This was his trade, after all. As someone who cast curses for a living, his instincts in this area were naturally sharper than most.

In fact, even setting that aside, in the current situation there were probably only two possibilities left:

Either the boy before him was insane, or what he himself had just done was the sort of thing only a madman would do.

The old man swallowed with difficulty and swung the wooden stick in his hand backward three times.

The girl who had just slipped into the hospital room stopped where she was, facing Tan Wenbin, who had already begun Walking the shade and was holding Yellow Talismans in both hands.

The old man tucked the stick into his waist, raised one hand in support, and lightly tapped forward with the thumb of his clenched right fist.

“Divining yin and yang, fortune and misfortune under the light,

Zhao of Stone Table from West Mountain, in Shunyao’s sight.

May I ask, young friend, which road of the jianghu you walk?”

Li Zhuiyuan gave up fighting with the zipper.

He raised his head, looked at the old man who was sizing him up through jianghu code talk, and replied, “Li the Corpse Retriever of Nantong Wharf on the Hao River.”

“Young friend, you should not joke about such things. I have heard quite a bit about the affairs of the jianghu, yet I have never once heard of any Li the Corpse Retriever of Nantong.”

“Yes, that is normal.”

“Could it be that your master’s line has been living in seclusion in Nantong?”

“Because I just made it up today.”

The old man’s gaze sharpened. Even a clay figure had some fire in it. He was an old man with years behind him, yet this boy had mocked him again and again, and the anger in his chest was becoming hard to suppress.

He pulled the wooden stick back out. He wanted to make a move, but he was deeply wary, because he knew that once this stick came down, there would be no room left to turn things around.

With both hands in his jacket pockets, Li Zhuiyuan looked at him calmly and said, “Stop dreaming. There is already no room left to turn this around.”

The old man’s chest rose and fell. If an adult had come tonight, or another old man, carrying a Yellow River Spade and a basket like his own, he believed he still could have done as he pleased.

But the boy’s appearance, his bearing, his presence, were enough to make cold sweat bead on his forehead.

“Young friend, since this is only a small misunderstanding among the younger generation, why not talk it out? Is there really any need to tear things apart completely? It is not worth it, is it?”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “In front of me, you do not have the face for that.”

The old man gritted his teeth and leaned forward. His withered frame suddenly burst with startling speed. In the blink of an eye he was only a meter away from Li Zhuiyuan, his stick raised sideways as he swung it toward the boy’s head.

A faint smile appeared at the corner of Li Zhuiyuan’s mouth.

The reason he had stood there provoking the old man into striking first was to make sure there was no room left for compromise.

Because what he wanted was not merely to kill the old man and deal with Zhao Mengyao, the one who had cast the curse.

He wanted to wipe out the entire Zhao family of Stone Table.

He did not know how many people there were in that family, whether it was just a small household or a large clan. So to be safe, he had to do enough groundwork first.

That way Heaven itself could see clearly: look, they were the ones who had attacked again and again. He was only going to exterminate the whole family because he had no other choice.

At worst it meant a little extra trouble. If destroying that family stained him with karmic entanglement and lowered his luck, that would be what truly was not worth it.

Bang!

A trident blocked the wooden stick.

Lin Shuyou, now with his face painted open, wore an exaggerated grin as he glanced at the old man.

“Officers of the Command Banner?”

The old man recognized them. This line had not existed for very long, but it was famous for its exceptionally fierce style.

Lin Shuyou lifted one arm, and the old man staggered backward several steps.

Then Lin Shuyou stood in front of Li Zhuiyuan, slightly turned his head, and looked at the boy behind him. “Heh. Were you not afraid I might be too late?”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “You have split personalities, not an intellectual disability.”

“You know, I really do not like that superior tone you use when you speak.”

“If you do not like it, hold it in.”

“Huff... huff...”

Two streams of white vapor spilled from Lin Shuyou’s nostrils.

When Lin Shuyou had not painted his face open, Li Zhuiyuan was willing to talk to him a little more and spare a little extra patience. But once the face was painted, he became as stubborn as a mule. The nicer you were to him, the more he tried to posture.

The old man hooked his stick toward the bamboo basket and flung it forward. A small pellet drum caught on the end of the stick, and as the tip of the stick shook, the drum gave off a crisp rattling sound.

A wisp of black smoke rose ahead, and a little girl in lotus-treasure robes, her whole body bluish-purple, crouched on the ground. She raised her head, smiling, revealing tiger teeth curved like hooks jutting outside her lips.

Lin Shuyou took a wide step sideways, raised the trident high in his right hand, and swept his left hand across the air before his face.

“To purge demons and defend the Way, only kill, never save!”

In an instant, Lin Shuyou’s entire presence changed.

White Crane Child descended.

The trident spun, its tip turning toward Li Zhuiyuan behind him.

White Crane Child tilted his head slightly, killing intent laid bare.

There was bad blood between Li Zhuiyuan and White Crane Child.

Last time, by the riverbank outside the school infirmary, White Crane Child had already shown killing intent toward him.

Because Li Zhuiyuan had been planning to draw up a new labor contract for him.

But in the final analysis, both of them nominally still ate from the same bowl with the words “orthodox path” printed on it.

So no matter how they fought among themselves, it was still an internal conflict within the orthodox path.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “They are a pair of sisters, living people refined into cursed objects.”

The trident spun again, its tip turning back toward the front.

Li Zhuiyuan was not nervous at all. In a situation like this, if White Crane Child attacked him before going after the old man, it would mean completely denying his own path and falling all the way back from a Yin god to a Ghost King.

He would not bear that loss.

White Crane Child strode forward. With Three-Step Praise, his figure flashed and shifted through the corridor under the night sky.

The old man thrust his stick forward. The purple little girl leapt up like an ape, grabbed the ceiling above, and climbed swiftly with alternating hands and feet. When she reached directly over White Crane Child, she came screaming down.

White Crane Child raised his head and opened his Vertical pupils. The girl’s body instantly slowed.

“Ahhh!”

The girl let out a shriek. It rattled White Crane Child’s Vertical pupils into momentary disorder. She landed on his shoulders, raised both hands, extended her claws, and stabbed toward his face.

Clang!

Her claws were blocked by the trident. White Crane Child’s other hand reached behind him and seized the girl, as though lifting up a mischievous monkey.

The Vertical pupils that had been wavering a moment earlier now became not only steady but tinged with a blood-red gleam.

Fear showed on the girl’s face. She could feel the immense gap in strength between them.

As a cursed wraith, she was not even comparable to the ordinary fierce ghosts wandering the countryside. How could she possibly be a match for the Officers of the Command Banner?

Put another way, if they could not even handle something like this, what right did they have to shout, “only kill, never save”?

With his left hand, White Crane Child held the girl up before him. In his right hand he gripped the trident and stabbed forward.

Thud!

“Ahhh!!!”

A scream rang out.

But this time it was genuine. And after the initial wail of agony, the viciousness on the girl’s face gradually faded, and what emerged in her eyes was relief.

Inside the hospital room came a series of muffled flashing sounds.

Li Zhuiyuan turned his head and glanced inside, then raised his left hand and snapped his fingers again.

Snap!

Under the hospital bed, the three inner flames that had gone out flared back to life in an instant.

Bang!

The girl’s body was hurled straight out of the room by a barrier and landed before White Crane Child.

The little girl in White Crane Child’s hand had already completely dissipated. He crouched smoothly, grabbed the other girl by the throat with his left hand, and stabbed down again with the trident in his right.

There was no needless showiness, no reversal, no surprise. Having once been a Ghost King and now a Yin god, the Officers of the Command Banner knew very well how to deal with this kind of soul-type evil.

The old man was so frightened that the wooden stick in his hand began to tremble. This time he was not summoning anything. It was fear from the bottom of his heart.

When he had introduced himself earlier, he had already said what line of work he inherited. The Zhao family of Stone Table specialized in placing curses from the shadows. They were not suited for direct confrontation to begin with.

Now that both of his cursed wraiths had been destroyed, he had lost all confidence in continuing the fight.

“Who exactly are you? Who exactly are you?”

Li the Corpse Retriever of Nantong was supposedly unknown, yet the Officers of the Command Banner were willing to serve as his hired muscle.

At first, when his cursed wraith had failed to enter the hospital room on its first try, he had already grown suspicious. Then, when he saw the boy snap his fingers again, he finally realized it.

There was actually an array set up in that hospital room in advance!

Damn it.

They had been fishing for him!

Someone who excelled at laying arrays, and who had a thug like this working for him, and you were telling him this was just an ordinary Corpse Retriever?

White Crane Child advanced on the old man step by step.

Back then, Li Zhuiyuan had only casually sealed up the female ghost in high heels that had been causing trouble and used her as a gatekeeper, and in the eyes of the Officers of the Command Banner that already counted as the sin of controlling ghosts.

This old man before him had not only refined living people into curses, he had also driven cursed wraiths to harm others. Was that not a crime deserving immediate execution?

“You, you, you... who exactly are you!”

The old man stood there, still pointing at Li Zhuiyuan as he demanded an answer.

Li Zhuiyuan ignored him. He turned sideways, leaned against the corridor railing, and looked down below, as if waiting for something to appear.

At the same time, he thought to himself: the old man had been releasing cursed wraiths one after another. That clearly did not fit common sense. No matter how skilled a curser was, he should not have been able to withstand using them like this.

And during the day he had also seen Zhao Mengyao. Her complexion had been normal, her blood and qi steady. There had been no sign at all of the backlash that should have come from curse casting.

Could it be that the Zhao family of Stone Table had mastered some secret method for offsetting the backlash of curses?

At the other side, White Crane Child reached the old man and thrust out the trident, piercing straight through his chest.

The old man’s face turned deathly pale at once.

In fact, the old man had really become a sheet of paper.

The trident had only pierced paper.

The old man standing there asking questions had been nothing more than a distraction. The moment he sensed things going badly, he had already slipped away.

“Heh...”

Li Zhuiyuan laughed. In his line of sight, he could see the old man rushing out from the stairwell and appearing in the flowerbeds in front of the hospital building.

White Crane Child began venting white vapor from his ears, nose, mouth, and even the corners of his eyes.

He had been played.

And the boy behind him had laughed at him.

The Child turned around and looked at Li Zhuiyuan.

Li Zhuiyuan pointed downward. “Why are you still standing there? Go after him.”

The Child leaped off the floor.

Each time he dropped past a level, he lightly touched the railing with one hand, skimming down floor by floor until he landed on the ground.

The fleeing old man looked back and found the Officers of the Command Banner already behind him. He was so frightened he nearly lost his soul and hurriedly ran even faster.

White Crane Child stepped with Three-Step Praise, rapidly closing the gap.

The old man looked back again, his eyes turning vicious. He pulled out a wooden plaque from his robe and clenched it between his teeth.

Black mist rose from the plaque. Blood immediately seeped from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, but his running speed increased, and his limbs became far more nimble.

One ahead, one behind, they began a drawn-out chase.

As he ran, the old man suddenly noticed that the Officers of the Command Banner behind him had stopped.

“Hah...”

A little calmer now, the old man was just about to take the wooden plaque from his mouth when he heard rushing wind behind him. He turned around and saw that the Officers of the Command Banner had put three incense sticks atop his head and were chasing again.

Now the old man not only dared not spit out the plaque, he bit down harder and cracked it open. Black liquid spilled out and ran down his throat.

Thick blood vessels spread downward from his neck, and his speed increased even more.

This kind of specialty trade did not depend much on regional advantages. The Sixth Hospital, famous for mental illness treatment, had originally been planned for the new district, so there was a wide expanse of open ground nearby. At this hour there were not many people on the road either, perfect for the two of them to run flat out.

The old man’s aura began to weaken. He knew his body had already been pushed past its limits. With his current methods, it would be hard to squeeze much more out of himself.

Behind him, the Officers of the Command Banner were drawing closer and closer. White Crane Child looked as if he were merely walking, yet every blink made it seem as though he had changed position, bringing with it an indescribable pressure.

The old man saw a river ahead. He reached into his bamboo basket, pulled out a silver toad, and cried out pleadingly, “Little one, save your grandpa this once. Afterward, grandpa will let you rest in peace!”

Then he set the silver toad atop his own head.

The toad, which had been a dead object, seemed to come alive and fixed itself there.

Pustules began erupting across the old man’s skin. Some had already burst, oozing pus.

They swelled and throbbed one after another, beating in the same rhythm as the toad on his head.

The old man was placing a curse on himself.

By doing this, he hoped to gain even greater frenzy.

No matter how high the price, he had to save his own life first.

“Ribbit! Ribbit!”

His throat swelled into a fleshy lump, making froglike cries, and then he jumped into the river ahead.

White Crane Child entered the river as well.

The old man swam underwater like a frog.

The Child walked underwater.

The three incense sticks on the Child’s crest did not go out in the river water, but being underwater caused them to burn faster.

Wave after wave spread apart before him, reducing the resistance of walking underwater, though it still took much more effort than using Three-Step Praise on land.

The old man felt he was nearing his limit. He looked back once more and saw the Child standing motionless on the riverbed.

Blub blub...

Seeing this, the old man excitedly blew bubbles.

He knew a little about the Officers of the Command Banner. He knew that each time a medium invited them down, at most they could extend the possession once more with guiding incense. Once the time ran out, the Officers of the Command Banner would leave, and the medium would fall into a weakened state.

He forcibly resisted the urge to turn back and kill while he had the chance. Grinding his teeth, he drove his body onward despite the agony caused by the curses laid on himself, swimming farther and farther until, beneath the pitch-black night, he could no longer see that figure at all.

Underwater, Lin Shuyou took out the Sealing Talisman Needles from his pocket.

He was going to inject himself.

Buzz!

The needle stabbed into his chest, and the Vertical pupils that had almost dispersed were stabilized.

Lin Shuyou opened his mouth and spoke indistinctly in the water while both hands began moving forward, backward, and across his own body in constant sweeping motions.

If someone could have come close and listened carefully, they would have vaguely heard what sounded like some kind of multiplication chant, each number paired with a corresponding direction.

It turned out that during that stretch of time lying in the hospital, Lin Shuyou really had studied seriously.

Recently, while suffering through the experience of borrowing Brother Binbin’s desk in Li Zhuiyuan’s dorm room, he had at least done some constructive thinking in his head.

He was a genius of the Officers of the Command Banner line, but he was not an all-around genius.

Even after working hard to make up for lost ground, he had only managed to catch up to where Tan Wenbin and Yin Meng had once been, knowing the how but not the why. But at least he could rely on formulas paired with mnemonic chants and follow a fixed procedure.

Of course, for a medium, that was actually enough.

At last, Lin Shuyou grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and pressed his right thumb against the center of his brows.

Yin Convergence!

The Yin aura around him began pouring into his body. The Vertical pupils recovered, once more shining with a sharp edge.

White Crane Child descended again.

The Child clenched both fists, opened his mouth, and let out a furious roar.

He was enraged.

He was panicked.

He was frenzied.

Because his medium had truly stepped onto this path.

“You... deserve to die!”

...

The old man lay on the riverbank, much of his body rotting and ulcerated. He was in terrible shape, but there was still a smile at the corner of his mouth.

He had escaped.

He had picked his life back up.

Then a trace of venomous resentment appeared in his eyes. Just what kind of existence had his precious granddaughter provoked this time?

Zhao Mengyao was his granddaughter. When she left home to go to college, she had secretly taken away the human-skin cursed object the family worshiped.

The family had actually noticed.

At the time, they had thought that since she was a girl living alone while attending college away from home, having a self-defense cursed object with her would at least ensure she would not be bullied.

But not long after school started, the family sensed that the human-skin cursed object had been used.

He immediately came to the school and found his granddaughter.

He had not come to scold her. He had been worried she would not know how to share the backlash after placing a curse, so he had brought along the support agreements from two solitary households in the village and had her put her mark on them.

After cleaning up the aftermath, he had also asked who her target was.

His granddaughter told him it was one of her roommates, a girl who had formed cliques in the dormitory, bullied classmates, stolen things, slept around, and even stolen the boyfriend she had fallen in love with at first sight.

The old man had eaten more salt than his granddaughter had eaten rice. Naturally he knew there was exaggeration and embellishment in her words.

School had only just started. No matter how bad that cursed girl’s nature really was, how could she possibly have had time to do so many evil things already?

But... what did that matter?

For families like theirs, if they did not like the look of someone, casting a curse was simply that person’s bad luck. They deserved it. Their fortune was poor, so they were bound to suffer such a calamity.

It was only because this was now an age of peace and because Heaven’s justice was manifest that families like theirs no longer dared to act too recklessly. In earlier times, let alone under an emperor, even in the warlord era they would have been honored guests of warlords without that being anything strange.

He had originally planned to leave tomorrow, but then his granddaughter sent another blood-written plea.

Li the Corpse Retriever of Nantong?

Some tadpole he had never heard of, sprung out from some unknown puddle, actually dared meddle in the affairs of the Zhao family of Stone Table.

Since the other side wanted an explanation, then he would give him one.

“Sigh...”

The old man tipped his head back and let out a long sigh.

He really did need to give the boy an explanation now. First, he would have his granddaughter apologize. Then he would punish her. If the other side was still not satisfied, then at worst the family would bleed a little and offer some tribute.

Although the boy had only snapped his fingers once tonight and never truly made a move himself, the old man knew very well that the identity behind him absolutely could not be underestimated.

That stupid girl. Of all people to curse, she had to choose someone with backing.

Splash!

The old man looked down in shock.

A figure burst from the water ahead, then landed in front of him.

He was about to flee, but a boot stomped down on his throat.

Why...

Why...

Why...

All three guiding incense sticks had already burned out, so how could he still have strength left?

The old man wanted to beg for mercy, but with his throat pinned, no sound could come out.

He waved both hands frantically, trying to show submission.

But unfortunately, not to mention that the Child was currently furious, even in normal times he had nothing whatsoever to say to people of this “evil path.”

Thud!

The trident pierced straight through the old man’s skull.

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