Chapter 27
Chapter 27
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 27
>Chapter Title: Eerie
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“Hee hee hee, tell me, do I look like a human or a god?”
The thing in the woods made the branches shake nonstop, its voice growing even shriller.
“You look human! You look human! Grandpa spirit, we’re all poor wretches just trying to scrape by!”
Terrified, Lv Zhuangyuan couldn’t think of anything else. He dropped straight to the ground and started kowtowing frantically toward the woods.
As he kowtowed, he suddenly froze. At the edge of the woods, he spotted a pair of feet in embroidered shoes standing there like two little awls.
A chill ran up his neck as he slowly lifted his head in shock. There stood a woman in a brand-new floral padded jacket, all alone.
Her broad face was deathly pale, her mouth tiny, her eyes like black beads embedded in her face, unblinking.
Her entire white face lurked in the shadows, like a little balloon floating in midair.
“Hee hee, do I look human to you?” The small-footed woman covered her mouth and giggled softly. With delicate steps, she began inching toward the campfire.
When Lv Zhuangyuan saw her body twist and writhe bonelessly as she walked, the last flicker of hope in his heart was utterly snuffed out. They’d run into the real thing!
“Little baby!! Little baby! Wake up! Quick, pee like a boy!!” Lv Zhuangyuan’s terrified, sobbing wail jolted the others awake.
A burning branch was tremblingly lifted by the panicked Lv Juren and hurled at her with all his might.
But the attack did nothing. The branch passed straight through her body.
Just as the small-footed woman neared the fire, her body suddenly jerked to a halt. Her big head snapped abruptly toward the eastern woods.
The branches rustled. Li Huowang and the others emerged, holding glowing fluorescent stones.
“Hm?” Bai Lingmiao, who had already removed her cloth strip, spotted something odd. “Senior Brother Li, look! This woman’s eerie! She has no back to her head—both sides are faces!”
With a sharp “clang!”, Li Huowang drew his sword, eyes locked warily on the bizarre small-footed woman in the distance. “What are you?”
“Hee hee, I’m human. Don’t I look it?” As the thin, reedy voice rang out, the small-footed woman twisted her slender body like a centipede and shifted toward her new target.
Li Huowang wasn’t about to sit there. He swiftly reached into his left side, pulling out a dented dao bell.
“Ding ding ding ding~” The piercing bell rang out. Everyone present—including Li Huowang himself—clutched their heads in agony.
Li Huowang kept shaking it hard. In his vision, everything twisted and swayed violently, including the small-footed woman.
As she writhed, cracks spiderwebbed across her new floral padded jacket, black vapor seeping out from within.
The copper bell worked on her!
With a sudden shriek, the small-footed woman’s crumbling body flailed wildly back into the woods. Moments later, she vanished from Li Huowang’s sight.
The bell’s toll faded. Li Huowang looked down at the dao bell in surprise. “Didn’t summon the Wandering Lord, but who’d have thought you had this kind of use.”
Whether because it had been smashed flat or for some other reason, though Li Huowang now had Danyangzi’s dao bell, shaking it no longer twisted the lines around him into the Wandering Lord like before—they just jittered chaotically.
The more he saw of this world, the more bewildered he grew. What on earth was all this madness?
“Master! True master! Thank you for saving us! I really didn’t recognize Mount Tai! Come, come, warm yourself by the fire!”
Tears of gratitude streaming down his face, Lv Zhuangyuan bowed deeply and eagerly pulled Li Huowang toward the campfire.
Compared to that thing from before, the monsters trailing this daoist were far friendlier-looking. With the daoist keeping them in check, they were scary at worst. That other thing? It straight-up killed.
“Hey! You damned beast! If it hadn’t gone mad and fled all of a sudden, how could an old man like me neglect a master like you?” Lv Zhuangyuan pulled out his pipe and pretended to knock it against the saddle.
After a few taps, he spun around and bellowed, “Hey, Jinhua! Quick, quick! Heat up some flatbread! Fetch water! The biggest white flour ones! And three—no, five—salted duck eggs!!”
Lv Zhuangyuan’s sudden warmth caught Li Huowang off guard. “Sir, no need to trouble yourself. Could I trouble you with a few questions?”
“Ask away! Anything! Little Daoist Master, you just saved my whole family’s lives! Hee hee, ask whatever you like!” Lv Zhuangyuan thumped his chest heartily.
Evidently feeling it wasn’t enthusiastic enough, he jammed the pipe stem under his armpit, puffed hard to relight it, and offered it to Li Huowang with both hands, fawning smile and all.
“Er… thank you, sir, but I don’t smoke. Do you know what that thing we just encountered was? Does it have a name?” Li Huowang gently pushed aside the well-worn pipe.
He knew next to nothing about this world. To survive safely, he needed to learn as much as possible.
Lv Zhuangyuan blinked in confusion. “Huh? How should I know? Daoist Master, didn’t you drive off that fiend? Don’t you know?”
Seeing the puzzlement in his eyes, Li Huowang realized he’d asked the wrong person. This old man might not know more than he did on this front.
“I heard you mention boy’s urine. Can boy’s urine hurt things like that?”
“Mmm, yes!! Absolutely! Those things fear filth! They say even smearing snot on them works, but the most effective is boy’s urine—purest yang energy and the filthiest kind.”
“Really? Have you tried it before, sir?”
Lv Zhuangyuan, who’d been so emphatic moments ago, chuckled awkwardly at the question, eyes darting away. “Might work, I suppose. That’s what the village elders say. If everyone agrees, it’s gotta be right.”
Li Huowang sighed helplessly. Another handed-down remedy. Was experience-sharing this backward here?
“Alright then, sir. Tell me—how often do you run into things like that?”
“Not often. You don’t bump into eerie stuff like that every day. If it happened every night, I’d have sold everything and dragged my boy back to till the fields long ago.” Lv Zhuangyuan stuck his pipe in his mouth and puffed away.
“Been on the road for years now, old man like me, and that’s just the fourth time.”
“I see.” Li Huowang gazed into the dark woods around them, gaining fresh insight into this world.
After so long by Danyangzi’s side, he’d thought the world crawled with Black Tai Sui everywhere. Clearly not.
Ordinary folk had heard tales of such things, but they stayed distant.
(End of chapter)