Stranger Danger

Chapter 111: Wall Painting

“Look at them! Look how happy they are!”

Ying Xiu waved a hand and conjured an image. It showed everything that was happening inside the surrounding pavilions. The men they were spending the night with earlier were currently having the time of their life. There were delicious food, sweet wine, melodious music, and warm, succulent bodies that promised never-ending pleasure.

“Stay with us!”

“Stay with us!”

The women beseeched once more with their sweet lips and bewitching eyes that could steal the soul itself.

“Heh. They got their wish after all,” Ye Qing commented mockingly. The women were hoping to seduce him with the lustful scenes, but he could see what was really happening in the pavilions. Unbeknownst to themselves, the delicious food they were eating were really their own flesh, the sweet wine they were drinking were really their own blood, and the holes they were plowing were really their own body!

The pain alone should’ve jolted awake a long time ago, and yet they could not seem to feel it one bit. Worst of all, they were all wearing bloody, skeletal smiles that were absolutely horrifying to look at!

Boom!

Xiao Yang stomped his foot against the ground and conjured what looked like a dragon of debris. It flew straight toward the women and shredded them to nothing yet again. This time, the women reappeared with hideous snarls and vicious expressions on their faces.

“You have wronged us for the last time, wretches! Taste our wrath!”

Ying Xiu abruptly raised her head and screamed. The rest of the girls did the same thing as well. The soundwaves spread out like ripples and crushed the bridges, the streams, the pavilions and everything else into dust. Not even the ghastly women and the skeletal men inside the buildings were safe from the attack.

“Hmph!” Both Ye Qing and Xiao Yang stifled a groan as blood spurted out of their orifices. Their head pounded like someone was hitting it with a hammer as well.

“Bitch!” Xiao Yang roared, so furious that golden flames were spilling out of his eyes. He clenched his right hand and gradually lifted it into the air, the golden flames surrounding his fist growing thicker with every inch it rose.

When his fist was held high above his head, a piercing light abruptly illuminated the entire residence like the sun. Space shook, and everyone and everything within the light disintegrated into nothing. Naturally, the deadly sound attack was cut off as well.

However, a bunch of clouds joined together and reformed Ying Xiu and the ghastly women once more. Worse, their auras felt just as powerful as before.

“Are they actually unkillable?! How the hell are we going to survive this?” Xiao Yang burst out in anger and disbelief. Although the women themselves were pretty fragile, they had proven themselves to be unkillable no matter what they tried. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before they ran out of strength and died.

“Haha! You cannot escape!” Ying Xiu giggled. This time, the sound spread to every corner of the residence and manipulated the clouds into crashing toward them like a tidal wave.

Boom!

Xiao Yang threw another punch and unleashed his astral qi. A sea of golden flames immediately filled the sky and scattered the clouds. However, the clash was so violent that he couldn’t help but spit out a mouthful of blood.

Looking as pale as a sheet, Xiao Yang looked at Ye Qing and asked, “What do we do?”

The young man had been leaving the battle to Xiao Yang and observing his surroundings the whole time. Squinting a little and rubbing his nose, he said suddenly, “Follow me!”

Xiao Yang’s eyes lit up. “Do you have a plan?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s better than nothing!”

He then charged straight toward the spirit screen [1] at the center of the residence.

The women suddenly turned furious when they noticed Ye Qing’s intentions. They all flew toward the duo at the same time.

I was right! Ye Qing thought in relief as he took out all their pursuers yet again using the Blood Shadows he had hidden in the sky. By the time Ying Xiu and her girls had reformed once more, it was already too late.

“No!” Ying Xiu screeched in anger.

“What do we do?” Xiao Yang asked.

“Don’t stop!” Ye Qing replied simply and charged even faster toward the spirit screen.

“What are you doing, brother? It’s still too early to commit suicide!” Xiao Yang exclaimed in shock. His first thought was that Ye Qing was planning to brain himself against the wall to preserve his honor or something. While the notion was absolutely ridiculous to him, there were some people out there who valued their honor over their life. Maybe Ye Qing was one of those people?

Ye Qing didn’t explode into a shower of blood and gore, however. He simply passed right through the shadow screen and disappeared.

“It’s the exit!?” Xiao Yang exclaimed in realization. He followed right behind Ye Qing and vanished into the wall as well. In the sky, Ying Xiu’s furious screech echoed like it would never end.

“The temple? We’re back!”

After Ye Qing and Xiao Yang had passed through the spirit screen, they discovered that they had reappeared in the rundown temple. Xiao Yang asked curiously, “How did you know that the spirit screen is the exit?”

Ye Qing explained, “While you were battling against the Strangers, I noticed that everything in the residence except the spirit screen was disintegrated by the shockwaves. That is why I figured that the spirit screen is the only real object in that world, and possibly the exit.”

“Of course, I didn’t actually know if it would work until I tried. Thankfully, I was right!”

“Thank goodness you’re here, brother, or I most likely would’ve died to those terrible women!” Xiao Yang said gratefully while giving Ye Qing a friendly clap on the shoulder, but in reality he was wary of the young man more than ever before. They had encountered two deadly dangers so far—the Anomaly on the bridge and now the ghastly women—and both times Ye Qing had displayed exceptional intelligence and collectedness. In fact, he had outdone him, a Patrolman of the Pacification Bureau. Of course, it was partly because he was hiding his strength, but there was no denying that Ye Qing was a formidable warrior.

And that was exactly why he could not allow him to live.

“What are you looking at, brother?” Xiao Yang asked when he noticed that Ye Qing wasn’t paying attention to him. Instead, he walked up to the wall painting with a deep frown on his face.

“Don’t you think it’s strange? We were resting in this temple and minding our own business when suddenly, we all woke up in that residence. Not only that, we reappeared in this temple right after we passed through the exit. Finally, don’t you think that this wall painting looks a little familiar? It looks pretty similar to the spirit screen we passed through earlier, don’t you think?”

“Are you saying that that strange residence is connected to this wall?” Xiao Yang frowned as well.

He wasn’t an idiot. He noticed that something was off with this abandoned temple from the start, and this wall was easily the most suspicious object of them all.

“That will be an understatement. I suspect that the world we were trapped in earlier is this painting,” Ye Qing guessed while rubbing his chin.

“I agree. What is your plan?”

“In the painting, the Strangers are the absolute rulers of the world, unkillable and immortal. We were much weaker than we should be as well!” Ye Qing’s eyes glimmered with intelligence. “But outside? Outside is a different story, won’t you agree?”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Xiao Yang’s eyes lit up.

“Exactly!” Ye Qing raised his hand and turned his wrist slightly. An unbelievable amount of force and lightning immediately sprung into existence.

“Boundless Lightning Palm”

The wall painting had one last surprise for them, however. Before Ye Qing could unleash his attack, the silhouettes on the wall suddenly morphed into warped, ghastly faces and howled soundlessly at the duo. They swelled outward as if they were trying to push out of the wall. Not only that, an evil, distorted energy washed over the temple and attempted to restrain Ye Qing, though it was a far cry from the power that they experienced inside the painting.

In response, Ye Qing let out an imperious hmph and channeled his true qi. When the force gathering around his palm had reached a critical point, he pressed it against the wall painting with surprising gentleness almost as if he was caressing a fragile object.

The wall painting immediately distorted as if it was being disrupted by some sort of invisible force. Then, the residence, the pretty women, the background and everything started disappearing inch by inch as if wiped by an invisible eraser. In the end, all that was left was a grayish black wall.

Cracks started spreading across the wall until the whole chunk resembled a spider’s web. A few breaths later, it abruptly crumbled into a pile of debris and dust. However, right as the wall fell apart, a brawny figure abruptly emerged into the open. It was none other than the leader of the bandit group. It would seem that the painting’s destruction also allowed him to break free from its influence and escape back into the real world.

“Thank you for saving my life!” The brawny man immediately thanked Ye Qing and Xiao Yang after escaping the painting. “I am Zhao, and I swear I will repay your kindness one day! Goodbye!”

The brawny man dashed toward the exit as soon as he finished. He seemed to be in a great hurry for some reason. He had just reached the center of the temple when Ye Qing said,

“I’ll give you a lift!”

“What?”

The brawny man did not understand what Ye Qing was saying and looked back instinctively. He immediately saw a flash of steel flying straight toward him.

“You—!”

His pupils contracted into pins as the premonition of death gripped his limbs. He immediately let out a growl, crouched down, and extended both hands toward the incoming attack. At the same time, thick, black hair started growing out of his arms and his face at an exponential rate. They glittered in the dark and looked just as tough as steel.

That wasn’t all. His bones abruptly grew larger and thicker, and his fingernails elongated until they resembled claws. His human arms had transformed into wolf arms, and his human hands had transformed into wolf claws in just the blink of an eye. A pair of canine teeth had also grown out of his mouth, giving him the appearance of a wolf.

“Awooooooo!”

The leader crushed the incoming attack with his bare hands before crouching on the ground and bending his back. Muscles tensing, he abruptly kicked off the floor and shot toward the exit like a loose arrow.

His speed was incredible, and for a second it looked like he might just make it out of the temple alive. Then, the leader abruptly turned limp as if he suddenly lost all strength in his body, and his head rolled right off his neck. It looked like a ripe apple from a distance.

“What a fast blade!” Xiao Yang praised even as his pupils contracted into pins. The leader thought he had stopped Ye Qing’s attack, but in reality it was just an afterimage. The real attack had sliced through his neck so fast that he never even realized he was dead until his body abruptly gave up on him.

“But why did you kill him, brother?” Xiao Yang asked in puzzlement.

Ye Qing replied indifferently, “He and his group are the Wolf Raiders.”

“The Wolf Raiders?” Xiao Yang walked up to the headless leader and kicked his body over. After a brief inspection, he nodded. “You’re right! In that case, well done!”

A Wolf Raider was almost the same as a Grave Raider except that a Grave Raider fed on corpses, while a Wolf Raider fed on human flesh. It should not need to be said which was the worse between the two. Moreover, a Wolf Raider was a former human who gave up on humanity to survive. It was one thing if they repented and returned to being human, but if they did not, then they would gradually transform into a half-Stranger and lose their humanity permanently. They fed on humans, lived in the wilderness, and kept company with Strangers. They were ruthless, inhuman bastards to put it mildly.

A Wolf Raider wasn’t fully human or Stranger. It was an amalgamation who possessed the worst qualities of both entities. It was decreed by Chu that all half-humans who harmed their fellow human beings were to be killed without mercy, so what Ye Qing did was an act of justice, not murder!

“Phew… the sun’s up, and the evils are all dead. Let’s resume our journey!” Ye Qing suggested while wiping the blood on his curved saber—he had gotten a new one after breaking his previous blade—and scanning the temple for loot. He was disappointed when he found nothing worthwhile, but the wall painting Stranger should give him some dragon-serpent runes, so it wasn’t a complete waste of effort. If he wasn’t mistaken, the wall painting Stranger was at least a Malice-class Stranger, so he should’ve gained a silver rune.

Xiao Yang looked at the faint light shining through the exit and nodded. “The rain’s let up as well, so why not? Assuming the sky stays clear, we should reach Jade Spring Village by noon!”

As if on cue, a ray of sunlight pierced through the dark clouds and filled the world with light.

1. A spirit screen, also called spirit wall or screen wall, (Chinese: 影壁; pinyin: Yǐngbì; lit. \'shadow wall\' or Chinese: 照壁; pinyin: Zhàobì) is used to shield an entrance gate in traditional Chinese architecture.