Corpse Retriever

In the blood man’s eye sockets swirled a look of sorrow and rage. He opened his mouth and let out an unwilling howl.

He had struggled for so long. Earlier, he would rather have been killed than let this side of himself appear again. And now, everything was ruined.

Not only ruined, he had also been “ignited,” as though on the level of sorcery he was completely burning himself out.

But he had no control over himself now. The killing instinct inside him had been fully awakened. He had to kill.

He looked at Runsheng ahead of him. This man had been willing to believe him, willing to confirm whether he was actually saving people. He truly did not want to kill him.

But... sorry.

The blood man lunged at Runsheng again. Runsheng pressed his lips together. He did not know exactly what had happened, but from the blood man’s emotional change, he could tell that somewhere nearby, in some corner he could not see, another figure was hiding.

When there was more than one enemy, he could not open all his qi gates.

The blood man charged again. This time Runsheng stopped meeting him head-on and began to dodge.

Whether the other party meant to or not, now that he had confirmed the man’s aura was weakening and his state would not last, there was no need to rush into a direct fight.But the other man moved with the agility of an ape.

With such rapid shifts in position, Runsheng simply could not evade him.

Even when Runsheng flipped over and jumped down from the rooftop, the other man still followed without the slightest hesitation.

Runsheng grabbed the edge of the wall on the level below with one hand and was moving sideways when he saw the blood man drop straight down from above, wrap his arms around him, and drive both of them into a plunge.

Luckily, there were several terraces below this spot. They smashed onto one after a few floors, then rolled farther down. Without those terraces taking some of the force, if they had really fallen at full speed straight from the rooftop, the outcome would have been certain.

Bang!

In the end, the two of them crashed into the parking lot together, leaving behind a crater.

At that point, it was impossible to tell who was the blood man anymore, because both of them were drenched in blood.

And yet even in that state, the blood man still struggled to reach out and clamp a hand around Runsheng’s throat.

Runsheng could only grab his wrist and haul outward with all his strength.

The two remained locked like that for a while.

Fortunately, the blood on the blood man’s body was no longer so scorching hot. Otherwise, if Runsheng’s neck had melted through, his head would have rolled right off his body.

Like a candle that had finally burned down its very last drop of wax.

A voice came from the blood man’s throat. “S... sorry...”

The next moment, the iron chains on the blood man’s body snapped, and the chunks of flesh scattered apart with them.

A red halo floated free, drifted behind the pillar ahead, and vanished.

With the threat of death gone, Runsheng let both arms fall limp and lay on the ground, breathing out more than he breathed in.

From behind the pillar came a sound, as though something was about to come out from behind it and approach.

Runsheng lay there as if unconscious, but inside, he was quietly gathering qi.

His injuries were extremely serious now. Even during his special training, Uncle Qin had never wounded him this badly.

In this condition, if he fully opened all sixteen qi gates, he absolutely would not be able to withstand the backlash.

But he was willing to trade one life for one life, dragging that thing hiding in the shadows down with him.

That way, no matter what this wave truly looked like, at least he would have removed one dangerous enemy for Little Yuanhou.

Only, the preparatory movement for fully opening the qi gates still could not be done silently. His skin began to swell as though being inflated, and coils of air currents started circling around him.

That thing seemed to sense the terrible danger and stopped advancing.

Then its figure vanished from where it stood and it left at once.

“Cough... cough... cough...”

Runsheng coughed up blood. Eyes open, he glared bitterly at the pillar.

Damn it. It had seen through him.

Runsheng struggled to get up. His clothes had already been burned into strips, and a lot of his skin and flesh had stuck fast to the ground. When he rose, he had to tear them off along with it.

But without making a sound, Runsheng gritted his teeth, pushed himself back up, braced on the ground, and slowly rose to his feet.

Yet before he had taken more than a few steps, his body staggered and he dropped to his knees again. Fresh blood began spilling out from multiple wounds all over him.

He was in an extremely awkward situation now. He clearly still had fighting strength, but his injuries were too severe for him to move. If he forcibly opened all sixteen qi gates, then yes, he would gain the power to move quickly, but by the time he reached his destination, the duration of his full-open state would probably be over as well.

The feeling was like holding a bomb in your hands, but having nothing with which to launch it.

Runsheng angrily raised his fist and slammed it into the ground.

He lowered his head and looked toward his waist. There should have been a pager clipped there, and Yin Meng had picked out that pager pouch for him while they were out shopping.

Now forget the pager, even the pouch was nowhere to be found. Most likely it had melted, because the area at his waist was burned badly.

When someone is gravely wounded and has lost a great deal of blood, their mind easily grows hazy.

For example, right now, the Runsheng who had just been prepared to die together with his enemy was actually thinking:

“What a waste...”

...

There were not that many large shopping centers in the city these days, and because of that, each one became an absolute hub of foot traffic. From it as the center, crowds spread outward, and nearby there would be snack streets and large stores from other trades.

After Zheng Jiayi’s parents went through that serious illness last time, both of them had let go of a lot. Of course, Fatty Wu deserved part of the credit too, bustling around to take care of them and keep them company.

After all, hearts were made of flesh. The two elderly people no longer opposed their daughter’s marriage to Fatty Wu, and had even started urging it along themselves.

Fatty Wu truly had a talent for social maneuvering. The moment he filed his marriage report, a work-unit apartment was assigned to him almost immediately after.

The apartment was not large, just one bedroom and one living room, though the living room could be partitioned off into another room, making it barely usable as a two-bedroom.

Today, Zheng Jiayi had brought Yin Meng along to the furniture market to keep her company. She wanted to decorate and design her future love nest properly.

The whole way there, Zheng Jiayi hardly stopped talking. Sometimes Yin Meng could not help wondering how this girl managed to have so much to say.

Still, having a talkative friend around was not so bad. You only needed to respond with the occasional “mm,” “uh,” or “oh,” and there was never any danger of awkward silence.

Zheng Jiayi had once said that the reason Fatty Wu first worked up the courage to approach her was because at one group meal they had sat together and she had talked to him a lot.

Fatty Wu took that as a sign that she liked him. He figured that if she was not interested, what girl would be willing to chat with you so enthusiastically for so long?

It was only after the two of them actually got together, when Fatty Wu brought her back to his dorm, that he discovered she could stand at the stairwell entrance and chat with an old woman from upstairs for a full two hours.

Only then did Fatty Wu finally realize that he had misunderstood back then. She could talk to anyone.

Yin Meng rather envied her. She used to run a shop, and in the busiest part of the county town too. Logically speaking, the bosses in places like that were almost all masters of lively banter.

But she had run a coffin shop.

Most of the time, her shop had hardly any customers at all.

The furniture market had its own particular smell, and Yin Meng quite liked it.

In some shops, she liked the furniture and the boards even more, to the point that they gave her a tiny flutter of excitement.

But she knew very well what it was she actually liked, so whenever she came across a “shop she liked,” she immediately pulled Zheng Jiayi away.

Zheng Jiayi did not understand why, but she chose to trust the judgment of a “traditional Chinese doctor.”

Although after what happened in Min’an Town, she had privately started to wonder whether modern traditional Chinese medicine had really developed to this extent...

Still, since Mengmeng said she was a traditional Chinese doctor, then she believed her.

After all, Mengmeng had not only saved her parents, she had saved her too. If she did not trust her, who could she trust?

When they walked into one furniture store, there was not the slightest trace of any smell that Yin Meng liked.

It was so clean that it struck Yin Meng as strange, because she knew perfectly well that this sort of smell could never be removed completely.

The shop owner was a bald middle-aged man with a drinker’s nose. When the customers came in, he did not get up eagerly to greet them, but kept focused on fiddling with his incense.

Zheng Jiayi asked, “Boss, can this cabinet be any cheaper?”

The boss pulled out a tissue, blew his nose, and shook his head. “No. It’s already as cheap as it gets.”

“No way. I saw another shop earlier selling furniture in the exact same style, and it was cheaper than yours.”

“Miss, you get what you pay for. If mine costs a little more, naturally I have my reasons. If all you want is cheap, then go buy it from them.”

“Hey, boss, who does business like that?”

“All I can tell you is this: buy furniture from my shop and you’ll absolutely be getting a bargain. Mine is safe.”

“Whose isn’t safe?”

“That’s not necessarily so.”

Yin Meng reached out and touched the cabinet. Puzzled, she asked, “How did you make it this safe?”

“Because all the unsafe stuff, I sit right here and suck out through my nose.”

As he spoke, the bald boss rubbed his drinker’s nose.

Zheng Jiayi laughed, then turned to Yin Meng. “Mengmeng, should we check some other stores?”

“If the style suits you, I’d recommend buying your furniture here. It really isn’t expensive.”

“Huh? Oh, okay.” Zheng Jiayi nodded and began picking out furniture.

Using the excuse of browsing the furniture, Yin Meng deliberately moved closer and started examining the boss.

She suspected there might be karmic clues here.

Because she knew perfectly well that some things inside furniture could never be completely cleaned away. So how had this place managed it?

And besides, the styles here were not unique. Other shops had them too. Same materials, even goods from the same factory. So why was it that they were especially clean only after being displayed in his store?

Just then, workers from the furniture market brought in a dressing table. The boss pointed out a place for them to set it down, then sat in front of it and began looking into the mirror, examining his nose.

As he looked, he kept sniffing nonstop.

Yin Meng stood behind him and watched.

Gradually, she realized that he really was sucking something in!

Because the dressing table’s smell was rapidly fading.

The bald boss probably never imagined that someone could actually “sense” it, because that “smell” ought to have been odorless, impossible to detect.

That left Yin Meng in a difficult position. He was showing it off so openly. How was she supposed to carefully nurture the situation and draw out more clues?

Yin Meng first walked over to Zheng Jiayi and said, “Go to the sweet soup stand and buy me an iced sweet soup. Wait for my message. I’ll stay here and help you haggle.”

“Okay! Go, Mengmeng!”

It was a terribly clumsy excuse, but Zheng Jiayi believed her completely. She turned and left at once to buy the sweet soup. The shop was on the food street outside the furniture market, a fair distance away.

After sending Zheng Jiayi off, Yin Meng walked back to the boss.

At the moment, the boss was crouched under the dressing table, seemingly checking the workmanship details, but Yin Meng knew he was actually making it completely safe, not letting a single trace escape.

What exactly was this boss?

Yin Meng had already confirmed he was not human. What human could use their own bodily organs to do something like this?

But if he was not human, then what was he?

A malevolent spirit, a Dead Sinker, some demon thing, a resentful spirit?

No matter which sort of foul thing he was, if all he liked was sucking up this sort of stuff, then he could practically be called a beneficial insect.

Right now she and Runsheng lived in a basement. She did not dislike the place, because as corpse retrievers, neither she nor Runsheng cared much about damp yin-heavy conditions.

Little Yuanhou and Tan Wenbin lived in the dorms.

But in the future, all of them would surely buy homes of their own.

Watching this boss diligently sucking this and that away, she even found herself thinking that once she bought a house, she ought to lock him inside it for three days and three nights and let him suck to his heart’s content.

At that moment, the boss seemed to sense that something was a little off. He looked up at Yin Meng and asked,

“What’s wrong with you?”

Yin Meng hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Boss, what exactly are you?”

“How dare you call me—”

The boss’s eyes flew wide open. With his left hand, he grabbed the dressing table and pulled it between himself and Yin Meng.

“Who are you?” His voice began trembling, losing all the calm composure he had earlier.

“We don’t have to fight. You just need to answer my questions properly. Or better yet, come back with me.”

“Heh. You think I’m stupid? You hypocritical righteous-path scum!”

The bald boss exerted force with his arm and rammed the dressing table at Yin Meng.

Yin Meng sidestepped and vaulted over it.

The boss grabbed the edge of a cabinet beside him, his nose twitching, and somehow lifted the tall cabinet up and brought it crashing down toward Yin Meng.

Yin Meng kicked off the cabinet with one leg, borrowing the force as her body slid over the tiled floor, slipping clear of its range before it came down.

The boss turned, shoved open the back door, and prepared to flee.

Yin Meng drew out the Demon-Suppressing Whip from her waist and snapped it forward, winding it around his ankle.

The boss struggled to jerk his leg free, while Yin Meng used the pull to leap toward him. The two of them rushed through the back door and into the fire stairwell beyond.

Seeing that he could not shake off the woman behind him, the boss reached down, grabbed the whip around his foot, took a deep breath, and then violently spat a thread of flame from his nose. The flame ran along the Demon-Suppressing Whip.

Seeing this, Yin Meng had no choice but to release the whip and dart to one side.

The place where she had just been standing was already scorched black by the flames.

The boss inhaled deeply again, preparing to spit out another burst of fire.

But Yin Meng’s Demon-Suppressing Whip was laced with seven kinds of poison. When the whip had been scorched just now, a seven-colored toxic mist had risen from it.

When the boss inhaled again, all of that toxic mist went straight into his body.

“Uh... uh... uh...”

His body began trembling. Colored vapors started spraying from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

His nostrils rapidly expanded to a degree no human could possibly manage.

Then broken, sputtering flames started bursting from his nose, as if they were blocked, neither able to go in nor come out.

Strands of green liquid dripped from his nose, like blood, endlessly spilling and turning into radiance that scattered all around.

Yin Meng stood up. She had not expected a scene like this at all. He had actually inhaled all the poison himself, to the point that she did not even need to poison him personally.

The boss looked miserable and deeply aggrieved. He kept waving his hands around, as though protesting something.

That emotional outpouring really did not look fake.

Yin Meng said, “If you haven’t done anything that violates heaven’s laws or harms people, then come back with me. I can try to detoxify you.”

The reason she said try was because after those seven poisons had been mixed together, scorched, and inhaled, she did not really know how to cure it. But after going back, she could experiment slowly.

The boss looked at Yin Meng, as though he were finally reassessing what this woman was saying.

Just as Yin Meng had found this boss very strange earlier, the boss now found this woman very strange as well.

They stood on different sides, politically and in terms of identity, and each had slapped a label on the other beforehand. But after actual contact, both discovered the other deviated sharply from their fixed impressions.

At this point, he was already completely subdued. There was no need for this woman to keep up any fake, hypocritical act.

After a moment of thought, the boss nodded hard at Yin Meng.

Yin Meng said, “You should’ve agreed sooner. Did you really have to go smashing things first? Wait here. I’ll go catch a couple of toads and see if they can suck some of the poison out for you first, just to ease your pain a little.”

The boss nodded again.

This time, he became even more certain that this woman was different.

But just then, Yin Meng seemed to hear something, like someone speaking.

“What’s that sound?”

The boss was stunned too. Very quickly, panic and terror appeared in his eyes, and then he suddenly went berserk.

His face had already turned deep bluish green, and his stomach bulged high. He opened his mouth and inhaled violently.

The force of the suction was so strong that even Yin Meng, standing on the stairs above, had to grip the stair railing with both hands just to barely steady herself. The ornaments on her body, her trinkets, wallet, and even the pager hanging at her waist were all ripped away and slammed heavily at the boss’s feet.

The boss’s eyes were full of hatred and savagery. He raised both hands, twitched his nose, and blasted a tremendous burst of nasal breath toward Yin Meng’s position!

In an instant, scorching flames erupted from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. He himself became like a giant fireworks fountain, spinning as he spewed fire.

Because he had been poisoned earlier, his body was in disorder. His nasal breath was already difficult to expel. This time, after gathering too much force at once, the flames could not be projected outward properly, so they could only spill out from everywhere.

The fire swept both upward and downward. Yin Meng had no choice but to retreat out of the stairwell and shut the door.

The handle instantly grew scorching hot.

Fortunately, this was a fire stairwell that nobody used in daily life, so the indiscriminate spray of flame did not do much damage. If this had happened inside the furniture market, then a massive fire would have been unavoidable.

When Yin Meng opened the door again and went inside, she found the stairs above and below completely blackened with soot.

The boss’s body had turned into charred carbon. A black shadow stood before that human-shaped cinder and reached out to catch a streak of green light from the air.

“Who are you?”

The shadow seemed about to move toward Yin Meng and attack, but after one step it stopped, then let out a furious roar, as though something infuriating was happening elsewhere.

It quickly floated downward.

Yin Meng jumped down the stairs to pursue it, but every stairwell door on every floor had been opened, and the hallways were all charred black, so she quickly lost the target.

She tried to use her ears to locate it, but unfortunately, she did not have Little Yuanhou’s hearing.

As a member of the Yin Clan, she could not even walk the shade to investigate. In the end, she could only clench her fists and swing them in frustration to vent her anger.

...

“Why? Why? Why? Why? I was clearly living just fine, so why still won’t you leave me alone? Why!”

Fourth Uncle brandished two kitchen cleavers and continued his chase through the residential compound.

At first, Tan Wenbin was pulling Zhou Yunyun along as they ran. Zhou Yunyun had no idea why they were running, but she instinctively trusted him anyway.

But gradually, Tan Wenbin realized something was wrong. Just moments ago the weather had been perfectly fine and the sky was clear, so how had such heavy fog suddenly appeared in the compound?

This was not some simple visual trick. The coverage was far too wide. He immediately realized what it was.

Miasma.

He and Zhou Yunyun were gradually entering the miasma Fourth Uncle had laid out.

Unlike Brother Yuanhou, whose brain worked at high speed, Tan Wenbin had to first remember the name of the relevant book, then think of what was in it, then list out methods for breaking miasma, and after listing them, still had to consider what was practically workable.

Fortunately, while he was thinking this through, he first shoved Zhou Yunyun away and then ran off in another direction himself.

That Fourth Uncle’s target was obviously him.

Sure enough, once he started fleeing, Fourth Uncle chased only after him, while the white fog that gradually spread over the area merely followed him and no longer troubled Zhou Yunyun.

Break the miasma, break the miasma, break the miasma...

Tan Wenbin rapidly sorted through all kinds of methods for breaking miasma while running and widening the distance between himself and Fourth Uncle.

“Kids, help me hide. I need time!”

It seemed to work. Tan Wenbin started darting all over the compound, playing a game of hide-and-seek with Fourth Uncle.

He could not see anyone else in the entire compound.

Although every time he hid for a while, Fourth Uncle’s footsteps would appear again, he could always get an early warning, pick a new spot, and keep hiding.

Like that, after who knew how long, he found himself at a dead end in the compound. Other than going into that apartment building, every other route was blocked, and under the cover of the fog, none of them were even visible.

The miasma’s range was simply too large. There was barely any space left for him to keep hiding in.

Tan Wenbin gritted his teeth and rushed into the apartment building, then immediately began forming hand seals with both hands.

There was no way he would be carrying around a full set of formation flags just to go out for a meal. Those things were all heavy as hell. Even if he were going out for barbecue, he would still think the flagpoles were too heavy to use as skewers.

But relying on hand seals alone to form a formation barehanded was something even Little Yuanhou did not often do. For Tan Wenbin, it was an even greater challenge.

Still, whether he turned around to fight Fourth Uncle head-on or ran off to call for reinforcements, he first had to break the enemy’s home-field environment.

“Kids, hurry up and drill with me!”

Tan Wenbin climbed the stairs while forming seals. Below him, Fourth Uncle followed up the stairs with his kitchen cleavers.

A guy who could lay out miasma? Even if you beat Tan Wenbin to death, he would never believe the man’s only trick was chopping people with cleavers.

When he reached the fourth floor, Tan Wenbin suddenly noticed that the door to one apartment ahead was open. He thought he would slip in first, then jump out through a window, and keep circling around with Fourth Uncle.

But the plan was rich and reality was skinny.

The instant he stepped inside, he saw a large framed photo on the sofa. Inside it was Fourth Uncle cooking at the stove, with a reporter beside him holding a microphone and interviewing him.

Holy hell, he had run straight into the guy’s home!

Or maybe the darkness had guided and forced him into it.

A photo from an interview like that had not been hung in the shop, nor on the walls of the house.

Tan Wenbin looked toward the walls and discovered countless group photos of children, along with commendations for donations and aid to students, as well as newspaper clippings.

Those things covered practically every inch of wall space in the room.

Tan Wenbin immediately recalled what Luo Mingzhu had said earlier. She had said her Fourth Uncle could not stand her parents passing off inferior ingredients as quality goods, so in a fit of anger he had gone off to start out on his own.

Wait, you’re some evil thing, and here you are desperately accumulating virtue through good deeds?

So which one of us is the evil thing here, you or me?

Fourth Uncle, still holding the cleavers, appeared in the doorway. He walked in, used the edge of one cleaver to nudge the door shut behind him, and said,

“Why? I’ve already become like this, and you still won’t leave me alone. Why? What exactly do I have to do? What do I have to do! You forced me into this. You forced me!”

As Tan Wenbin glanced over, he caught not only gloom and rage in the man’s expression, but also a trace of grievance.

Everyone had their own specialty. For a very long time, Tan Wenbin had been the weakest in direct combat, so he could only develop in other directions.

As the Dragon King’s clan’s prow-caller, reading expressions, adapting to people, bluffing humans and bluffing ghosts, was his actual trade. That was the bowl of rice he ate from.

Tan Wenbin immediately raised both hands.

He was not surrendering. It was simply that this posture reduced hostility the most.

“Fourth Uncle, were all these students supported by you? You’re truly amazing. I need to learn from you.”

“This is all because you forced—”

The indignant words in Fourth Uncle’s mouth got cut off by the sudden turn in conversation.

Tan Wenbin sighed. “Honestly, it’s rather shameful. Although I’ve always regarded removing demons... protecting the common people as my mission, a lot of the time I’ve also been wasting my life.

“When I have free time, I really should take the initiative to do more good deeds, pursue material things a little less, and help people who truly need help.

“Thank you, Fourth Uncle. You’ve given me a vivid lesson.”

Fourth Uncle raised a cleaver. “What exactly... are you talking about?”

Tan Wenbin pointed around at the walls. “If all this was done by you, doesn’t it deserve praise and to be learned from?”

“You’re one of the righteous path!”

“The righteous way in our family is a little special. Are you talking about Wei Zhengdao or Li Zhengdao?”

“You...”

“Relax, relax. We won’t let a bad evil thing go, but we also won’t wrong a good one. I think we can have a proper talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“That meal you cooked for me just now. Were the ingredients fresh?”

“They were fit for living people to eat.”

“Whew... that’s good, that’s good. Really, uncle, your cooking is excellent. I liked it a lot. One day I’ll bring Li Zhengdao from our family over to support your business.

“Anyway, I’ll get straight to the point. Have you noticed anything strange lately? Like running into something odd, or maybe a relative or friend around you coming down with some bizarre illness?”

Fourth Uncle had already lowered the cleavers in his hands, though his body still radiated heavy caution.

“Have you? And if not, then do you happen to have some estranged lover, creditor, or enemy who recently sent word that they were coming to get back together with you, collect a debt, or seek revenge?”

“An enemy...”

Fourth Uncle suddenly seemed to realize something. He immediately looked up. The white fog that had been covering the entire compound vanished completely in that instant.

But tension had already appeared on his face, as though in his moment of negligence he had made a terrible mistake.

“It... it wouldn’t come, would it...? No... no...”

At that moment, Tan Wenbin heard the voice of a stranger speaking by his ear: “Who is it?”

Fourth Uncle lifted his head and said despairingly, “He found me anyway. He found me anyway...”

Then his expression twisted.

“No... don’t even think about it... don’t even think about it... don’t even think about trying to corrupt me!”

With a scream, Fourth Uncle raised the cleaver and plunged it directly into his own chest.

Blood splashed everywhere at once, staining the walls and the certificates hanging on them red.

Tan Wenbin’s eyes opened wide. He had no idea what exactly was happening, but the scene before him was undeniably horrifying.

This Fourth Uncle... was killing himself in the most brutal way imaginable?

Beep beep... beep beep... beep beep...

At that very moment, the pager at Tan Wenbin’s waist went off.

Tan Wenbin quickly looked down and pressed the pager. There were two text messages.

He must have been inside the miasma earlier, preventing the messages from getting through. Now that Fourth Uncle had withdrawn the miasma, the two messages, sent at different times, both came through.

The first: Return to school immediately.

The second: Zhengyang Street crossroads, Pingju Photo Studio, gather for a photo.

Gather for a photo?

Taking a photo at a time like this?

Tan Wenbin’s eyes narrowed in thought.

“Ahhhh!”

Fourth Uncle’s ears had sealed themselves completely shut, but even so, under the influence of that speaking voice, the expression on his face kept swinging between calm and madness.

“I would rather kill myself than give you the chance. Dream on!”

Right then, that faint muttering voice turned into a furious roar.

Tan Wenbin saw a black shadow enter from outside the door and stop in front of Fourth Uncle.

The shadow must have rushed here in haste. The earlier voice had probably been his as well, but at that time, his true body had not actually been nearby.

After all, a voice could carry very far.

Now, the black shadow’s hand pierced into Fourth Uncle’s abdomen. Fourth Uncle stopped convulsing and collapsed weakly to the floor.

White pus began to flow from those ears.

From inside Fourth Uncle’s body, the shadow pulled out a strand of white light.

Then the shadow turned and looked at Tan Wenbin.

The aura around him was very powerful. The blackness surrounding him was an extremely dense Yin aura, visible even without walking the shade.

Tan Wenbin knew at once that this was a terrifying being. And seeing the speed with which he had rushed in and drawn something out of Fourth Uncle’s body, Tan Wenbin was certain that in front of such a thing, he would have no chance to hide or escape.

He could only... face it head-on.

Tan Wenbin formed hand seals with both hands, preparing to burn away some of his lifespan and invite the kids to possess him.

He had learned the technique, but had never actually practiced it. After all, this was not the sort of thing you could casually test out just to see how well it worked. Try it a few times in rehearsal, and you might as well start planning your funeral.

The two resentful infants began trying to enter Tan Wenbin’s body. Before, he had only ever tried binding himself to the Ghost Husband from the Zeng family. This time it was two ghosts at once, and he could not quite keep control of it.

Before the possession was even fully completed, his body began to swell. The feeling of his flesh stretching tight was agonizing.

Wisps of ghostly qi swirled around him, puffing his clothes out even more.

Seeing this, the black shadow seemed to think of something.

At that moment, he actually showed wariness and did not come any closer.

Huh?

I haven’t even finished casting the Ghost-control technique yet, and you’re already scared?

Could it be that in my current state, I look so bad that even evil things are afraid?

The Ghost-control technique had been improvised by Little Yuanhou, and even Little Yuanhou himself had said that for now it still could not compare to the proper methods used by the Officers of the Command Banner.

Facing the powerful pressure radiating from the black shadow, Tan Wenbin felt that even if he pushed the Ghost-control technique to its limit, he still probably would not be his opponent.

Then a flash of inspiration struck him, and he immediately shouted, “Zhengyang Street crossroads, Pingju Photo Studio, gather for a photo!”

A deep gaze emerged from the heavy black shadow and fell on Tan Wenbin, as though weighing and judging him.

The next moment, the black shadow flew out through the doorway and left.

He had really gone.

Because Tan Wenbin could feel the mood of the two resentful infants inside him relax with a long sigh of relief. He trusted the kids’ judgment.

Tan Wenbin immediately shouted, “Kids, hurry and come out! Stop the spell! If we interrupt it now, I only pay half! Only half!”

Since there was no need to fight after all, he had to stop the spell immediately, so that the loss of lifespan would not become too outrageous. Lifespan was the sort of thing that had to be used sparingly.

The spell halted, and Tan Wenbin dropped to his knees on the floor with a thud, coughing up blood again and again.

The two resentful infants were just about to fall asleep.

“Don’t go to sleep yet, don’t go to sleep yet. We still have to go to the photo studio. We have to provide support!”

Tan Wenbin wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, climbed back up, and looked at the pager at his waist.

Earlier, he had deliberately told the other party the photo studio’s address.

Because he knew this was what Little Yuanhou wanted him to pass on.

...

Pingju Photo Studio, second floor.

Under the blue backdrop curtain, Deng Chen sat there with both himself and the chair completely wrapped in the Homecoming Net, which had been consecrated and stained with pure yang black dog’s blood.

Wrapped so tightly that only his face was exposed.

Li Zhuiyuan held a small knife in his hand and lightly waved it a few times in front of Deng Chen, as though making some sort of decision. In the end, though, he put the knife away and slipped it into his pocket.

“Just sit here. No matter what happens, don’t move around. I promise you, I’ll handle this.”

Deng Chen nodded to Li Zhuiyuan.

Li Zhuiyuan picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulders. It was very heavy, but he was strong enough to carry it.

He went down the narrow staircase and reached the first floor.

At that moment, he was the only person on the entire first floor.

Outside, white fog had already risen.

Not in the mountains, but on the plains. For fog like this to rise near dusk was rather rare.

Li Zhuiyuan walked to the counter, grabbed the candies from the sugar box, and began unwrapping them.

One, two, three, four, five...

As the fog outside thickened more and more, the pile of unwrapped candy in front of the boy grew larger and larger as well.

Finally, the fog stopped increasing, reaching some kind of limit.

Li Zhuiyuan also stopped unwrapping candy. He grabbed two handfuls and stuffed them into his pockets. The rest he tossed one by one into his mouth.

Crunch! Crunch!

As Li Zhuiyuan chewed the candy in his mouth, he walked to the doorway and opened the shop door. White fog immediately poured in from outside, like a stage flooded with too much dry ice.

Deep in the thick mist ahead, a black shadow appeared.

The shadow gradually drew closer, then stopped not far away once it had reached a suitable distance.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “What, you don’t want to meet me openly and honestly?”

The black shadow dispersed, revealing the figure inside: dressed in leather, wearing leather boots, gloved hands, and above the neck a motorcycle helmet.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “So you’re that ugly? Is that why you can’t show your face? What, do you look like a pig or something?”

A chilling, savage laugh came from inside the helmet.

The figure reached up and removed the helmet. Inside was indeed the head of a pig, grinning with its mouth stretched wide.

“Heh heh...”

Li Zhuiyuan laughed too.

Keeping that same distance between them, the two laughed for a long while.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Even though you’ve got a pig’s brain, I have to admit, you really are clever.”

The pig-headed creature seemed delighted by the praise and laughed even more happily.

“Black python for eyes, white centipede for ears, green ox for nose, red ape for tongue, yellow pig for mouth.

“Eyes, ears, mouth, nose, tongue. Black, white, yellow, green, red.

“The five of you were once a single whole.

“You wanted to fuse them back together, but they refused, right?

“And to avoid you, they even deliberately hid themselves away.

“So,

you brought them all out to the threshold one by one, using me, using my people, using the river water, to help you track them down.”

The other party stopped laughing and said,

“Who told them they wanted to accumulate virtue and do good, and become good people?”

He lifted his head, looked upward, and continued,

“Isn’t it laughable? Did they ever ask heaven whether they were fit to walk that path?”

“I don’t know whether they’re fit to walk that path.”

“See? Even you don’t know.”

“But I do know one thing.”

“What?”

The boy raised his left hand and waved it lightly to one side. At once, the thick fog between the two of them was swept away completely.

Then Li Zhuiyuan extended his right hand and pointed at him.

“Your road ends here.”