Stranger Danger

The general was just a manifestation of killing intent and so didn’t have a physical body. However, the four nails still managed to embed themselves into his limbs as if they possessed the ability to touch the intangible.

The second the nails sank into the general’s limb, he immediately froze as if someone had cast a spell on him. Ye Qing too felt a sudden stiffness overtaking him as the Bronze Tiger Head shook violently.

When the final nail entered the general’s forehead, he abruptly dissipated into nothing. At the same time, the Bronze Tiger Head started breaking all over like it was porcelain, and crimson blood seeped out of the cracks. Ye Qing also felt a surge of violent energy pouring uncontrollably into his body.

A rebound?

More specifically, the Bronze Tiger Head had gone out of control after its physical body was destroyed.

Ye Qing grabbed the mask and ripped it off his face, but the blood still clung to him like glue. It reminded him of The Mask, except that there was nothing friendly or sassy about his mask whatsoever. Not only that, angry, howling faces kept surfacing from the stretched blood and discharged even more killing intent.

“Hahaha! Karmic justice is upon you! Now die!” Bone Monk barked out a laugh and swung his saber at Ye Qing. However, a gloomy voice interrupted him before he could do so,

“That boy is mine, Bone Monk! You would be wise not to take my kill!”

Bone Monk stopped in his tracks and scoffed, “You think he’s yours just because you threw a handful of nails? How delusional! He’s not anyone’s kill until he’s dead!”

“Yeah! He’s not even dead yet, and already you’re calling dibs! Why don’t you say that the world is yours then? You’re just an opportunist who’s all bark and no bite!” Another jianghu warrior chimed in.

“It’s first come first serve only.”

“Get out of my way! I’ll kill anyone who dares to take my kill!”

Many more jianghu warriors started rushing toward Ye Qing, and everyone of them was as strong as Bone Monk and Old Man Hem. There was the Corpse Puppeteer Ying Xian, the Windfire Thunderbolt Lei Zhao, the Strange Sword Xiao Yue, the Demonic Cook Fei Yiguo, the Gut Cutter Shi Hanzhao and more.

……

Pang Kun was muttering the attackers’ names when suddenly, he saw something surprising. “Hmm? That’s Paper Celestial, Dog King, Husband and Wife! It looks like the Way of Taiping has decided to join in on the fun.”

“The Way of Taiping? Perfect. Once they took out Ye Qing, we’ll kill them and earn ourselves some credit.” Xue Shiwu licked his lips greedily.

“A wise decision, Little Commander. The Way of Taiping deserves to be exterminated anyway,” Pang Kun complimented.

Meanwhile, one of the jianghu warriors who had stepped out to confront Ye Qing at the beginning—a small man with a millstone-sized head—was scoffing at his fellow brethren, “Idiots. You can run as fast as you like, but you’ll never outrun my ghosts.”

He took a human heart that was covered in twisted, demonic patterns from his shirt. It was throbbing loudly as if it was alive. Then, he closed his eyes, danced a strange dance and muttered, “Tian ling ling, di ling ling. Ghost Gods of Fengdu, heed my call! I wish to summon a Ghost King whose magic applies to the nine heavens, whose maw could swallow the waters of the Yellow Spring, whose hands could block the sun and moon, whose feet step on a path of corpse and bones, and whose head carries a banner of ghosts and darkness! With this heart as the sacrifice, I humbly request a Ghost King to descend to this world! To this world!”

The thin man knelt three times and kowtowed nine times. Then, he crushed the heart in his hands.

Flesh and blood scattered everywhere, but they didn’t fall on the ground. Instead, they disappeared into thin air as if devoured by some sort of invisible power.

The next moment, a strong gust of yin wind converged in the sky. A massive hand then appeared out of nowhere and made a grab for Ye Qing.

“You think you can snatch my prize from right under my nose, Ghost Whisperer? Dream on!”

Ying Xian roared and spat out a mouthful of disgusting purge fluid. Everything that it touched—even the air itself—sizzled due to how corrosive it was.

Part of the purge fluid splashed a large chunk the ghastly arm and yin wind and corroded them in the blink of an eye. The other part had splashed on Ye Qing instead.

However, Bone Monk laughed tauntingly when he saw this. “The boy is tough enough to survive even the Blue Hui’s poison, and you think your purge fluid can kill him? Thank you for the donation!”

As soon as he finished, Bone Monk’s flesh and blood suddenly plopped on the ground and left him with only bones. When his bone saber burst into cold, white flames, and he swung the weapon down like a general giving a command, the bony Buddhas immediately charged toward Ye Qing while chanting evil sutras.

“And you’re dreaming a little too hard for a pile of bones! Go pick your bone elsewhere, Bone Monk!”

A short, fat man taunted before producing a black pot from his back and tossed it at Ye Qing. It was none other than the Demonic Cook, Fei Yiguo.

The black pot turned red hot after it left Demonic Cook’s hands. At the same time, it started bubbling with boiling hot oil.

The black pot took a detour and crushed the bony Buddhas rushing toward Ye Qing first. It pissed Bone Monk off so much that he couldn’t stop spouting a bunch of unmonk-like expletives for a time.

“Demonic Cook, you’re already filled to the brim with oil. You should learn restraint unless you want to kill yourself.”

Strange Sword Xiao Yue, Gut cutter Shi Hanzhao and everyone else showed off their ultimate techniques as well. It wasn’t just to kill Ye Qing, but also to stop the others from scoring the kill.

There was only one Ye Qing and one bounty after all. There literally wasn’t enough reward for all of them.

Everyone was a miser before the promise of great riches.

When the jianghu warriors were less than three meters away from Ye Qing, golden light suddenly burst out of his body. Lotuses started falling from the sky, and Buddhist chants filled everyone’s ears.

At the center of the golden light, a savage-looking Buddha let out a disturbing cackle and asked, “Keke. I have come. Are you all ready to die?”

The fiendish aura and killing intent pinning down Ye Qing immediately disappeared into thin air. As if on cue, the Bronze Tiger Head shattered into a million pieces.

Since Corpse Puppeteer Ying Xian and Bone Monk were at the forefront of the group, they were the first to suffer the Boundless Mara Buddha’s wrath. Both warriors screamed out in pain as their bodies started melting like candles.

The ghastly arm in the sky had become much more transparent because of the sudden burst of Buddha light as well. One could even hear a painful, angry roar coming from somewhere.

Ghost Whisperer’s fate was even worse. As the one who summoned the Ghost God into the world, he let out a muffled groan and bled from every orifice after the ghastly arm was damaged. Not only that, an invisible force suddenly ripped off his arm and bit down on it like it was a leg of lamb. His painful screams, the crunching noises, and the splatter of blood and gore painted a horrifying scene.

Dang! Dang! Dang!

Before anyone could react, a series of gong beats suddenly filled their ears. An invisible power rippled out and blurred everyone’s consciousness. It would continue for a while until all the forces in the air had dissipated into nothing, the natural qi in the air were flowing around haphazardly, and everyone was clutching their heads in pain and bleeding from every orifice.

When the gong sound finally came to a stop, Ye Qing summoned a crescent saber into his hand and swung it once. Demonic red lotuses immediately filled the sky and illuminated everyone’s sins.

“Hellfire Red Lotus Saber Art”

There wasn’t a single person in the area whose hands weren’t coated in blood, whose sins couldn’t fill an entire book, and whose karmic hindrance would forever prevent them from attaining enlightenment—at least in the Buddhist sense. It was why it only took an instant for demonic red flames to start shooting out of their pores, and the flames kept growing bigger over time.

The hellfire would never fade until their sins and karmic hindrance had been burned away completely. Everyone looked like human torches as they screamed, struggled, and begged for mercy. It was futile though. Death was their only release, and die they did.

“That’s… the Red Lotus Hellfire!” Pang Kun exclaimed in shock. He was at least fifty meters away from the scene, and he still felt his dark desires swelling uncontrollably, and tiny wisps of flames bursting into existence from them. It was potent to say the least.

“A Spirit Purification stage saber art!”

Greed flickered in Pang Kun’s eyes. Although he was a Spirit Purifier and a key personnel in the Black Feather Guards, he only had one Spirit Purification stage martial art. It was a generic one too and completely incomparable to the saber art Ye Qing was using to slay his enemies; a true peak Spirit Purification martial art.

Besides that, the two Strange Artifacts Ye Qing used earlier were extremely incredibly potent. The gong was a Strange Artifact that could affect the mind, a quality that was incredibly rare among Hatred-class Strange Artifacts. As for the Strange Artifact that filled the place with Buddhist light, it was obviously a Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, it was clearly sapient.

The boy has a sapient Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact?

Pang Kun almost lost control of his greed there and then. There were only a handful of those in the entire Luo Shui. If he could obtain it, he would become one of the strongest warriors of Luo Shui immediately.

So far, it looked like Ye Qing possessed a Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact, a Spirit Purification stage saber art, and all the loot he had acquired from his attackers. At this point, the boy was far more valuable than the reward the Way of Taiping offered. And if he could obtain them both, then all the better.

Xue Shiwu shared more or less the same thoughts as Pang Kun. While licking his lips, Xue Shiwu urged, “Pang Kun, Ye Qing is almost at his limit. We should go now.”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

The duo immediately rushed forward to engage the weakened, seemingly exhausted Ye Qing.

“Hahaha! I can’t believe it!”

“A Spirit Purification-stage saber art and a Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact? This is it!”

“I can hardly believe it. If I can get them all… hahaha! It’s mine! It’s all mine!”

In the shadows, countless powerful and greedy warriors finally couldn’t wait any longer and rushed toward Ye Qing as well.

……

“A Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact? A sapient Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact no less?”

Atop a small hill, Wang Luori’s eyes were turning bloodshot with greed and envy. Such was his shock that he didn’t even notice the ground beneath his feet crumbling a little from the pressure he was putting on it.

He never imagined that Ye Qing would have a sentient Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact. To say that this was a pleasant surprise would be a gross understatement. In the past, Sunset Hill’s greatest Strange Artifact was the Eastern Purple Cloud Stele, a non-sentient Soulstealer-class Strange Artifact. If he could obtain it and the “Emperor Fuxi Visualization Method”, then Sunset Hill would be stronger than it had ever been.

When the time came, he would be able to thrash White Horse Academy and that so-called Sage’s Notes like nothing.

Ye Qing’s Spirit Purification-stage martial art didn’t draw Wang Luori’s eyes. It was because Sunset Hill wasn’t lacking in top-tier Spirit Purification-stage martial arts.

Wang Luori was going to take action when Wen Zailai raised a hand to stop him. “Calm, father!”

The Hill Lord asked in a displeased tone, “Why are you stopping me?”

Wen Zailai explained, “It’s because something doesn’t feel right about this. We knew Ye Qing was leaving because we had a spy in the Pacification Bureau, but how did these jianghu warriors find out? I just can’t shake the feeling that someone’s hand is behind all this. Until we figure this out, I believe that it’s best if we act with caution.”

But Wang Luori disagreed. “If we can plant spies in the Pacification Bureau, then why not others?”

“Also, Ye Qing is an arrogant young man who stood out way too much for his own good. It’s entirely possible that someone in the Pacification Bureau holds a grudge against him and decides to leak the news.”

“You’re overthinking this, Zailai.”

“But—”

Wen Zailai still felt uneasy, but Wang Luori continued, “A warrior should plan like he’s walking on thin ice, but act like he has no tomorrow. It is good that you are cautious, but if you hesitate and second guess yourself when it is time to take action, then it is not caution, but cowardice.”

“Cowardice is completely detrimental to one’s advancement in the martial way, and this is doubly true for people like us. If you’re not going to fight to better yourself, then you might as well go home and be a farmer.”

Wen Zailai saluted him deeply. “Thank you for your guidance, father. I shall remember this.”

“But I still don’t think you need to go now, father. There are still many more Spirit Purification-stage warriors in hiding, and I have no doubt that they’ll attack Ye Qing to obtain the rewards. Why don’t you wait until both sides have sufficiently worn themselves down until you act? You’ll be able to get it all then.”

“Why be the snipe or the clam when you can be the fisherman?”

Wang Luori looked tempted, but in the end he still shook his head. It was because he wasn’t just aiming to obtain Ye Qing’s Strange Artifacts and the bounty, but also the “Emperor Fuxi Visualization Method”. If anything, the “Emperor Fuxi Visualization Method” was his primary objective; his key to entering the Spirit Master Realm. That was why Ye Qing couldn’t die yet, at least not until he surrendered his prize.

The reason he had taken action sooner was because he knew that the Astral Refiners wouldn’t be able to deal any real damage to Ye Qing. But now, Spirit Purifiers were joining in on the fight as well. He simply couldn’t risk those people killing Ye Qing by accident.

“It’s fine. Something unexpected might happen if we dilly-dally for too long. Stay here. I’ll come back in a moment.”

Wang Luori jumped down the hill and disappeared just like that.

Wen Zailai narrowed his eyes as he stared at the spot where Wang Luori was a moment ago. Why did he have this feeling that Wang Luori was hiding something from him?