Corpse Retriever

And it was the worst kind of madness, the vicious kind that drove people to brutal self-mutilation. There was no need to deal with them. They would very quickly kill themselves.

Sure enough, when they got within a dozen meters of the car, they all collapsed to the ground. Even so, they kept mutilating themselves without pause.

Some clawed out their own eyes. Some tore open their stomachs. Some simply started eating themselves.

The methods varied, but every one of them was desperate to end their own life.

Some of the blood even splattered onto the windows, blocking part of the view.

Tan Wenbin tapped the wiper switch, smearing the blood across the windshield and turning the whole front window red so that nothing ahead could be seen anymore.

“Uh... I forgot to refill the windshield fluid.”

Li Zhuiyuan opened the car door and got out.

Tan Wenbin hurried after him. Seeing that the two of them had not gone far and were only standing in front of the car, Yin Meng stayed inside.

They had all seen plenty of dead people, but this kind of death was still horrifying and deeply unsettling.A normal person would have died long ago after mutilating themselves to this degree, yet these people were still going.

The violent stimulation of their consciousness and that terrifying perception of pain had turned them into something like snakes. Even after being skinned and gutted, they could still keep thrashing.

But Li Zhuiyuan’s attention was focused more on the robes they wore.

Every robe bore special patterns. They were probably formations inscribed into the cloth.

Li Zhuiyuan walked toward the nearest one. The man had already mutilated himself beyond recognition, yet he was still writhing.

The boy crouched down, lifted the bloody robe tangled with intestines, and examined the patternwork inside. It was a formation meant to conceal one’s aura.

Li Zhuiyuan stood up and shook the blood from his hand.

The robe was made of very fine material, and it was clearly old, likely an heirloom passed down through generations. Inside, the various aura-concealing formations—drawn, embroidered, and woven into the fabric—were intricate yet orderly, layered without conflicting with one another.

But now the host’s blood had contaminated it. This kind of thing feared blood-sha the most, so it was completely ruined.

If it had been well preserved, even a single robe like this would have counted as a family treasure. Even Li Zhuiyuan found it tempting.

To say nothing else, if you wore one while stealing, you could probably rob someone right in front of the owner’s face and the owner might just yawn and fail to notice a thing.

And for someone to possess more than ten such robes at once... that was real, unquestionable family wealth.

A group with that kind of heritage, and one that went to such lengths to avoid being detected through karmic traces—their identity was practically obvious.

And yet, seeing the people he had regarded as his most feared opponents all turned into this ghastly state felt intensely wrong.

Li Zhuiyuan knew perfectly well that he was absolutely one of the people involved.

And yet all he could see now was the result. He had no idea what had happened in the process.

Tan Wenbin gripped the Yellow River Spade and kept watch on the surroundings.

He found it strange too. It felt absurd. What kind of move was this from the enemy? Running up in front of them as a group to commit suicide—were they trying to scare them off?

Gradually, the people on the ground all died.

Even after death, their corpses still twitched from time to time. Their souls were still imprisoned inside their bodies, continuing to suffer.

And as the corpses decayed or were further damaged, that suffering would only continue to deepen.

Li Zhuiyuan certainly had no intention of meddling and relieving their pain. He wished these people no peace even in death, and even hoped the families behind them would suffer the same fate.

If this had been an open, aboveboard conflict, that would have been one thing. Schemes and tricks were one thing too.

Leaving everything else aside, plenty of River Walkers from the Qin Clan and Liu Clan over the generations had surely died at each other’s hands. Families of the Dragon King were basically hereditary enemies.

But an enemy was still an enemy. At the very least, everyone acknowledged when they had simply been outmatched. If they lost, the next generation could always send someone to recover face.

But this—deliberately using the strong to crush the young, ganging up on the younger generation of another family’s River Walkers, all for the purpose of severing that family’s lineage—this was what the jianghu called a blood feud.

There was no room at all for negotiation, compromise, or leaving some space once that kind of feud was formed. Once it began, it did not end until one side’s entire family line had been wiped from the household register.

If you were willing to do something that vicious and absolute, then you had no right to complain when the other side’s revenge came back even harsher.

Unfortunately, there were no identifying marks on the clothes, and their souls had been polluted beyond being captured and questioned. If only he could have extracted their exact identities.

Just then, a cry rang out.

The spirit-form of Boqi appeared ahead of them.

It kept shifting between bird and human form, but whether it became man or bird, half its body was charred black.

Its gaze flickered constantly—one moment savage delight, the next agony, then struggle, then terror.

Glug... glug... glug...

Its belly kept heaving.

There was lamplight inside it, and by that light a figure could be seen.

Li Zhuiyuan recognized it. It was the dream ghost.

But the dream ghost had already been swallowed by Boqi’s spirit-form. It was dead and in the process of being digested.

Boqi’s spirit-form should have grown much stronger after devouring the dream ghost, or at the very least recovered considerably. Yet like the people on the ground, it had suffered a devastating blow as well. Its aura was weak, and its thoughts were in complete chaos.

Seeing it, Li Zhuiyuan had the strange feeling that he had entered an amusement park just to pick up kills and clean the battlefield.

He had indeed brought in the river water on purpose, but even he had not expected the impact to be so absurdly effective.

If the price for a successful River Walk and cutting off the black hand behind it all was merely two of them being badly wounded and two of them exhausted, then this outcome was unbelievably worthwhile.

With a thump, Boqi’s spirit-form dropped to its knees before Li Zhuiyuan.

It began kowtowing and begging for mercy.

Li Zhuiyuan immediately said, “Tan Wenbin, Ghost-control technique!”

“Got it!”

The thing was clearly begging for mercy already, and with the situation so overwhelmingly in their favor, he was still being ordered to spend lifespan to use the Ghost-control technique.

Tan Wenbin did not hesitate in the slightest. He slapped both shoulders and began forming seals.

In the next moment, the aura of the two Resentful Infants surged explosively, instantly battering Tan Wenbin’s consciousness into disarray. Even his facial expression twisted.

There was no helping it. Tan Wenbin was still standing and still able to hold a shovel, but in truth he was already exhausted to the limit, while the two Resentful Infants had not been given any chance to move about in the dream.

With the balance shifting one way and the other, Tan Wenbin—who should have remained in control—lost command of his own body the moment the Ghost-control technique was activated.

It was not that the Resentful Infants were rebelling or turning on him. It was simply that the two little ones felt their godfather had gone weak, so naturally it was their turn to prop up the household and shoulder the burden for him.

But in essence, it really did have the effect of a ghost keeper being devoured by backlash.

Tan Wenbin’s two eyes shone with different lights of consciousness. He turned sideways with a feral grin, looked at Li Zhuiyuan, and let out a sinister laugh.

“Hee hee hee hee... hahahahaha...”

Li Zhuiyuan returned a calm gaze.

“Wuwuwuwu... wah wah wah wah...”

The two Resentful Infants, who had only just managed to stand on their own, were instantly frightened into tears!

Li Zhuiyuan’s current age technically still made him a child too, and children had a special sense for one another. They knew very clearly which child in the group was the one least safe to provoke.

The boy ignored the two infants’ reaction. He merely shifted his feet and moved behind Tan Wenbin.

In the next moment, Boqi’s spirit-form, which had been kneeling and begging for mercy, suddenly raised its head.

An invisible wave aimed at the mind and consciousness crashed down like a bird’s beak.

Its original target should have been the boy, but the boy had moved behind Tan Wenbin, so naturally Tan Wenbin had to bear it for him.

“Ahhh!!!”

Tan Wenbin let out a scream.

Boqi fed on dreams, so naturally its attacks pecked at spirit and soul. The two Resentful Infants were completely unprepared and took a serious hit.

But that, in turn, triggered the ferocity in them.

Shrieking, Tan Wenbin lunged out, hit the ground, then scrambled forward on all fours toward Boqi’s spirit-form.

Tan Wenbin’s own consciousness was no longer dominant, so many moves and spells could not be used. Left to their own devices, the two Resentful Infants naturally reverted to the way children fought.

Li Zhuiyuan stood where he was, hands behind his back, fingertips lightly tapping.

The moment Boqi’s spirit-form had started kowtowing and begging, the boy had already realized it was gathering strength for a sneak attack.

Because it knew how he had forcibly dragged it out of Ah Li’s dream, and it knew what he had done before in front of the girl. It naturally understood there was no chance of mercy.

But soon, Li Zhuiyuan suddenly frowned, puzzled.

Boqi’s spirit-form was heavily injured and mentally chaotic, and at this moment it was also being harried by “Tan Wenbin.” Logically, this should have been the perfect chance to use Wei Zhengdao’s Black Book to try controlling it.

And the facts did bear that out, but Li Zhuiyuan suddenly noticed that the entire process had become astonishingly fast.

In the past he would have needed at least five times more preparation time and would have had to let “Tan Wenbin” hold out a while longer. But now, it was somehow ready almost immediately.

In any case, Tan Wenbin was not losing ground. The two Resentful Infants were being pecked painfully, but they were still holding on.

So Li Zhuiyuan did not rush to activate control. Instead, he reexamined the technique itself. After that review, he even started over from the very beginning.

It was still fast. Still smooth. And he did not even need to descend into the depths of Boqi’s spirit-form’s consciousness to tamper with its memories. He could simply build a new thought-prison and try to drag it inside.

The essential result was the same. Both methods aimed to achieve control.

The difference was that before, he had been a thief sneaking into a house. Now he was a bandit openly hammering on the front door.

If he had not been able to clearly see that the dream ghost was still inside Boqi’s spirit-form’s stomach holding a lamp, Li Zhuiyuan would have suspected that he himself had swallowed the dream ghost instead.

There was something else that deeply puzzled him as well.

Boqi’s spirit and consciousness were in terrible condition. Logically, it should have behaved like those gray-robed people from before, hysterically beginning to mutilate itself. It should not still have possessed a complete self-awareness.

And yet now, it was still trying to survive. It could even launch a sneak attack?

It was like someone who should already have died long ago, but was somehow forcing himself to hang on to one last breath and act lively and energetic. At that point, you had to take a close look and see whether some ghost was standing behind him, one that had still not come to claim his life.

With all these bizarre factors layered together, Li Zhuiyuan truly could not make up his mind about controlling it, because controlling it meant linking his own consciousness to it.

If there was still something hidden on it, that thing would have a chance to climb along the connection toward him.

The clash between Tan Wenbin and Boqi’s spirit-form gradually shifted from stalemate into disadvantage.

If Tan Wenbin himself had been controlling things, it would not have gone like this. But the two Resentful Infants’ way of fighting was simply too primitive and direct.

“Ahhh!!!”

After another scream, Tan Wenbin began retreating rapidly, then cast a pleading look at Li Zhuiyuan, who was still standing there without moving.

Li Zhuiyuan gave no response.

It could be said that the boy had already aimed the gun barrel at Boqi’s spirit-form’s forehead, yet still refused to pull the trigger.

Seeing that Tan Wenbin was about to fail and that there was only Boqi’s spirit-form below, Yin Meng jumped out of the car with whip in hand.

“Brother Yuan?”

Li Zhuiyuan nodded, indicating that he agreed to let her join the fight.

Yin Meng swung her whip and joined in. Every lash raised clouds of multicolored poison mist, making the already injured Boqi’s spirit-form shriek in pain and dart about wildly.

Children really did have a gift for group fights. Seeing reinforcements join in, Tan Wenbin began circling Boqi’s spirit-form, looking for chances to sneak in hits from the side.

But Li Zhuiyuan could also tell that Boqi’s spirit-form was gathering power again, preparing another sneak attack.

If after the next sneak attack it still did not try to flee, and instead kept trying to attack him, then that would prove there was definitely something wrong with it.

Bzzz!

Bzzz!

Two invisible ripples spread out, like another bird’s beak stabbing down.

Tan Wenbin let out another miserable scream, clutched his head, and staggered back. In the end he dropped flat onto the ground and tears streamed from his eyes.

The two Resentful Infants hurt so badly they wanted to cry, but when “Tan Wenbin” secretly twisted his head to check and saw that Li Zhuiyuan still was not paying any attention to him at all, they stopped crying and got back up.

Yin Meng also grimaced in pain and stumbled backward repeatedly before finally dropping to one knee.

Having forced back both opponents with a sneak attack, Boqi’s spirit-form did not pounce toward Li Zhuiyuan. Instead, it turned, transformed into a bird, and tried to escape.

Li Zhuiyuan thought: It predicted that I would predict it. There is definitely something seriously wrong with it.

The boy restrained his impulse and still did not make a move.

At that moment, the kneeling Yin Meng, struck at the spiritual level, reacted under stress by entering Walking the shade.

She lifted her head blankly and saw, in the distance, a battered black coffin moving farther and farther away.

The coffin seemed to notice her gaze and actually flew toward her of its own accord.

From the perspective of reality, what happened was that the bird that had already flown some distance away was suddenly yanked backward by some outside force.

In the end, it crashed down right in front of Yin Meng.

Obscure, inscrutable runes flowed across the damaged black coffin, giving off an imposing aura.

Boqi’s spirit-form howled endlessly and struggled desperately to break free, but it was powerless.

Yin Meng immediately looped her whip around Boqi’s spirit-form, smacked the handle, and released every bit of poison mist stored within. It spread out in brilliant colors, and even Yin Meng herself had no idea what exactly the effect would be.

Seeing that the bird had been caught, Tan Wenbin let out a howl and started to rush over for revenge, but the moment he saw the huge cloud of poison mist, he stopped dead and refused to charge into it.

That alone showed that the two Resentful Infants really had grown attached to Tan Wenbin. They still knew to cherish their godfather’s body.

Yin Meng pulled out all kinds of jars and bottles from her bag. Too lazy even to read the labels, she did not bother uncapping them and just hurled them straight at Boqi’s spirit-form. When they shattered, liquids of every color splashed all over it, making it look as though a dye workshop had exploded on its body.

Li Zhuiyuan thought that if someone set up a big cauldron for Yin Meng right now, piled firewood underneath it, and boiled Boqi’s spirit-form in it, Yin Meng could probably produce an even better result.

Suppressed by that black coffin, Boqi’s spirit-form could not break free and could only submit as Yin Meng kept tempering it with poison.

It was a very despairing way to die—watching helplessly as that woman poured every strange thing she could dig out from her person all over you.

And you could even clearly see the absent-minded casualness on the woman’s face while she did it.

By this point, all kinds of unimaginable pain were crashing in. You no longer wanted to survive, nor to struggle. You only wanted this woman to hurry up and find some way to give you a clean death.

But that seemed to be rather difficult for the woman in front of it.

Finally, Yin Meng threw everything she could throw from her whip, her pockets, and her bag.

At the very end, with nothing else left to use and Boqi’s spirit-form still not dead, she could only slap a Dissolution of Evil talisman onto it as well.

Triggered by the evil aura on Boqi’s spirit-form, the Dissolution of Evil talisman immediately began to burn. At the same moment, Boqi’s spirit-form’s body started swelling larger and larger.

Having had a similar experience before, Yin Meng immediately shouted to Tan Wenbin, “Get back!”

Then she spun around and ran back to Li Zhuiyuan, placing herself in front of the boy.

Once Boqi’s spirit-form had expanded to a certain limit...

Boom!

It exploded.

A huge spray of red, green, black, and purple liquid splattered in every direction. A broad area around the blast center was corroded into a deep depression.

Even Li Zhuiyuan was startled by the sight. To think poison could be used to produce an effect like this.

If Yin Meng continued improving on the path of poison in the future, then whenever they had to deal with those hard-to-kill evil things, they would have one more method available. After all, relying on time alone to suppress and grind such things down was usually a helpless last resort.

Boqi’s spirit-form was dead.

Dead everywhere.

That black coffin, however, remained intact—though it looked even more battered than before, with many more pits and gouges on its surface.

“Brother Yuan, I just sensed that coffin. It feels like it resonates with me somehow.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “That coffin was left behind by your ancestor.”

The Great Emperor of Fengdu had once suppressed this Boqi spirit-form in his early years. Later, the Liu Clan Dragon King added another layer of suppression, and only then was the once-unbeatable creature completely beaten down, unable ever to rise again.

Yin Meng said, “I’m a little overwhelmed. It’s a very strange feeling.”

It felt like a child in the family who had never been favored, one everyone had treated like air, suddenly receiving a red envelope at New Year from the highest-ranking elder in the household.

Still, by ordinary logic, it was not strange for Yin Meng, as a descendant of the Yin Clan, to resonate with a sealing object left behind by the Great Emperor.

With the enemy dealt with and the Ghost-control technique’s duration not yet over, Tan Wenbin began hopping around and playing, even using his left and right hands to play rock-paper-scissors against each other.

After deciding a winner, he alternated between crying and laughing.

With those two little things staying inside him, the fact that Tan Wenbin could still sleep, study, and live normally really was no easy thing.

Crack...

A wisp of ghost fire rose from the black coffin, and a peculiar aura spread out.

Tan Wenbin was so frightened that he leaped high into the air. Before he even landed, the two Resentful Infants immediately broke free of the spell’s control and returned to his body.

Thump...

Tan Wenbin landed hard on his backside, then kept rubbing it. He had not really suffered any substantial injuries before, but now, at the very end, he had managed to pick up an on-the-job injury anyway—and in the humiliating location of his tailbone.

The black coffin melted away in the flames, and above it appeared four ancient, imposing characters:

Return home and worship your ancestors.

Then the coffin completely turned to ash, the flames dissipated, and the words remained suspended for a while before slowly fading away.

Yin Meng wet her lips, looked at Li Zhuiyuan, pointed at herself, and asked,

“Brother Yuan, does Ancestor mean for me to go home and pay respects?”

What she was thinking was that if her ancestor really had left behind some inheritance, then once she obtained it, she would be able to help Brother Yuan with his River Walk even better.

Taking ten thousand steps back, even if she could not learn that inheritance herself, she could always pass it on to Li Zhuiyuan. Brother Yuan would definitely be able to learn it at a glance anyway.

Besides, she knew Li Zhuiyuan had long been planning another trip to Fengdu. Did this not happen to line up perfectly?

Li Zhuiyuan looked at Yin Meng.

Yin Meng shrank her neck slightly. She could not quite understand the look in the boy’s eyes.

In truth, Li Zhuiyuan’s feelings were extremely complicated.

He suspected that the four words Return home and worship your ancestors were nominally meant for Yin Meng, the descendant of the Yin Clan, but in reality seemed deliberately intended for him to see.

But would someone of the Great Emperor’s stature really need to be so roundabout if he wanted to express something?

And when he connected that with the various strange behaviors Boqi’s spirit-form had displayed earlier, including the timing of when this black coffin had chosen to act—

A bold guess suddenly formed in Li Zhuiyuan’s mind, and he said:

“We can’t go to Fengdu. It’s too dangerous!”

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