Chapter 400
Chapter 400
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 400
>Chapter Title: Reinforcements
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Outside the house, Zhao Tianhu heard Lv Xiucai's utterly miserable scream and immediately said dejectedly to Kui Sanjin, “Sigh, another one gone.”
Kui Sanjin hadn't spoken yet when a short, chubby black kid nearby piped up. “Boss Kui, I’ve got a buddy who’s connected to the Bureau of Astronomy. How about...”
“Smack!” Zhao Tianhu slapped the back of his head. “Don’t you know what business we’re in? We’re graverobbers! You wanna bring in the Bureau of Astronomy?! Get them on our tail and have them slaughter us all?”
The short, chubby black kid clutched his mouth and retreated aggrievedly into the crowd. “They’re not bailiffs anyway. They don’t have jurisdiction over us dirt-diggers...”
Zhao Tianhu narrowed his eyes slightly. “If it really comes to it, we’ll just abandon this funerary artifact. We’ve called in so many people already—that’s more than enough loyalty to Old Fourth.”
His words immediately caused an uproar among the others. “Boss Zhao, you can’t just ditch it! Whatever turned Old Fourth into that must be some cultivator’s top treasure!”
“Exactly! Even if we don’t dare use it ourselves, we could sell it to anyone and make a fortune!”
“Hey! Boss Zhao! I’ve heard those cultivators have immortality elixirs! Let’s trade this cursed skin for one!”
“Enough chatter! Shut it!” Zhao Tianhu barked, and the others instantly fell silent.
“If you’ve got the guts, go peel that creepy skin off Old Fourth! Whoever does it, it’s theirs! But do you dare?”
“You think I don’t know it’s a treasure? But these things we dig up can kill! Old Fourth and Old Sixth are both down—how many lives do you have to trade?”
“That’s it! Seal the door and windows tight. We leave at dawn so the bailiffs don’t catch us.”
No one dared argue further and began carrying out his orders.
“Aaahhh!!!” Lv Xiucai’s scream rang out from inside the house again.
“Oh?!” A hint of delight appeared on Zhao Tianhu’s face. “He’s still alive? Looks like this time it might work! Hold off, don’t rush it yet!”
“Aaahhh!!!” Clutching the copper coins, Lv Xiucai shouted hysterically while circling the bedroom. Behind him, a slender-necked head with disheveled hair writhed and pursued him like a serpent.
The twisted corpses nearby with their limbs knotted together spurred Lv Xiucai to flee for his life with every ounce of strength, terrified of ending up the same.
Cornered against the wall with no escape, Lv Xiucai gritted his teeth and thrust the copper coins high toward the head flying at him. It recoiled half a step.
“It’s fine, it’s fine! This thing fears copper coins!” Lv Xiucai gasped for breath while constantly reassuring himself.
Only now, drenched in sweat from running, did he have a chance to see what the thing really was.
It was a person—or at least, it had been. Its neck and limbs were all grotesquely elongated, twisting through the air like a snake.
On its chest clung a moldy skin, seemingly sewn from several faces and scalps. The neat rows of cicatrice scars proved these scalps had belonged to living monks.
The monks’ features were all sewn shut with thread, and their foreheads and cheeks were covered in crude approximations of Sanskrit script, making the already eerie skin even stranger.
With every movement of the figure, the monks’ features twisted as if being tugged.
“Is that human skin? Is that skin what makes its head stretch so long?” Lv Xiucai’s mind raced amid the crisis.
He didn’t care if it was true right now. The most important thing was escaping this hellhole—he truly couldn’t handle this.
Eyeing the serpentine heads and arms writhing before him, Lv Xiucai thought for a moment, then shoved his five copper coins forward.
Seeing them shrink back sharply, Lv Xiucai kept the coins held high and slowly shuffled toward the window. When he reached it, he began pounding the wooden frame with his elbows.
Just as he prepared to smash through and flee, the window suddenly pushed inward from outside, sending him tumbling head over heels.
As he scrambled up from the floor, his face ended up mere inches from the disheveled head.
Staring at the monster before him, Lv Xiucai’s breath nearly stopped.
As the head’s mouth gaped wide to bite him, a blinding light shot from his left shoulder, striking it dead-on.
Fur and flesh melted away in an instant, leaving only a ghastly white skull that rolled across the floor.
Headless, the skin-clad figure collapsed limply, thoroughly dead.
Sensing its host’s demise, the monk scalps abruptly peeled away from the corpse and lunged at Lv Xiucai like a ragged cloth.
In this moment of peril, “whoosh”—a wooden pole shot over, pinning the writhing human skin to the ground.
Dazed, Lv Xiucai followed the pole upward and saw a white banner hanging from it. Besides the yin-yang taiji diagram at the top, six characters were written below.
If Lv Xiucai could read, he’d know they meant: Palm-reading, character divination, fortune-telling.
“Hey now, this old blind Chen’s been down on his luck for days, but today I’ve finally stumbled on some good fortune.” Blind Chen, who had once dealt with Li Huowang, groped around before reaching for the white banner that served as his shingle.
He shuffled over, pinned the skin underfoot, then yanked out the banner.
Staring at the blind old man with the bamboo basket on his back, who bent down to fondle the writhing human skin lovingly, Lv Xiucai snapped out of his stupor and scrambled to his feet.
“Um... Immortal Master, thank you for saving me just now.”
Blind Chen ignored him, first wrapping the skin in a black cloth, then pulling out a mirror—the very bagua mirror Li Huowang had returned to him before.
Meanwhile, outside, Zhao Tianhu, Kui Sanjin, and the others crowded at the window, peering in with shock and curiosity.
They had witnessed the whole scene—what was this blind man’s background to be so formidable?
Clamping the bagua mirror under his arm, Blind Chen tapped the ground with his white banner as he approached the window. “What’re you all blocking the way for? Cramped in there, huh? Step back.”
Seeing the blind man apparently about to climb out the window, the others retreated a few steps but didn’t go far. They formed a semicircle around it—their skins were still in his basket.
“There we go.” Blind Chen, solemn-faced, assumed a horse stance. He held the bagua mirror flat in his left hand and traced incantation gestures on its surface with his right, murmuring a spell under his breath.
Lv Xiucai watched from the side with a flash of longing in his eyes. The blind man before him looked so ethereal and otherworldly. How great it would be if he could be like that someday.
And that bagua mirror in his hand—it was clearly a mighty artifact for subduing demons. Who knew how much it would cost to buy one.
As Lv Xiucai pondered this, Blind Chen’s incantation quickened.
The chant ended, and Blind Chen thrust the bagua mirror toward the crowd outside.
“Heaven and earth unbound, cosmic law of the realms!”
A piercing light erupted from the mirror, spearing through everyone like a lance.
Amid despairing screams, everyone outside was reduced by Blind Chen’s bagua mirror to puddles of red muck.
(End of chapter)