Corpse Retriever

“Disgusting.”

The boy reached up and touched his own face, then asked with childish innocence,

“Big brother, are you disgusted by yourself?”

Li Zhuiyuan’s body trembled slightly.

The hatred in the depths of his heart was boiling wildly.

The boy spoke again. “Big brother, look, I already helped you kill her. I helped you, didn’t I?”

Li Zhuiyuan tried to shut out the boy’s voice, only to realize he couldn’t. The boy’s voice seemed able to go straight into his heart, feeding the dark, icy fire there.

“Big brother, take me with you. I’ll be very obedient. I’ll be your little follower, your shadow. When you’re tired and want to rest, I can even take your place for a while.”

At that moment, Li Zhuiyuan’s trembling body gradually calmed.

The coldness in his eyes slowly faded, replaced by a faint softness.

The relapse that should have happened was forced back down.Li Zhuiyuan turned his head slightly, looking at the boy on the altar, and a mocking curve appeared at the corner of his mouth.

The boy’s expression changed.

He could sense the shift in Li Zhuiyuan’s state of mind. He had thought he could destroy him. Just moments ago, he had already seen the dawn of success. But all of a sudden, everything went dark.

“Why?” the boy asked.

Li Zhuiyuan did not answer, and even the faint curve at his lips slowly disappeared.

That meant this boy had lost even the ability to stir his impulse to sneer.

A trace of anger appeared in the boy’s eyes. Clenching both fists, he shouted unwillingly,

“Why? We’re exactly the same, exactly the same!”

“Exactly the same?” Li Zhuiyuan said flatly.

“Aren’t we?”

“You’re just a failed product.”

Red welled up in the boy’s eyes, and he began to roar. “What gives you the right to call me a failed product? What gives you the right?”

“Because all you can make me feel is a momentary disgust.”

The boy could not understand.

“You don’t get it, do you? That’s normal.” Li Zhuiyuan raised a hand too and pinched his own face. “There isn’t even any human skin on your face to tear off.”

Imitating the young man’s动作, the boy pinched his own face again in confusion. He tore off that patch of human skin by force, held it before him, and examined it carefully.

“Li Lan would probably like you more. If I wrapped you up as a gift and gave you to her, she’d probably be pretty satisfied.”

“Li Lan?”

“Oh, I forgot to introduce her. She’s my mother.”

Mother and son were each other’s insurmountable barrier. The moment they met, they would uncontrollably start tearing at the human skin on each other’s bodies.

The most disgusting thing between them was that after crouching on the ground, they would desperately try to paste the torn skin back onto their own faces.

To everyone else, they both looked perfect.

Only when they looked at each other could they see the dense stitching covering one another’s faces.

But this boy, though he looked exactly like him, had never done that. When he performed, there had been no traces of patched human skin on his face at all.

He was acting in his true colors. He did not even need makeup.

Pure and clean, spotless and neat, yet because of that, he had lost the most important point of resonance.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “You are Old Hag Bian’s child. Under the Mother-and-child linked-heart curse, no matter how much they molded you to look like me, your essence could never change. In truth, you are just another continuation of Old Hag Bian’s life...

“You are Old Hag Bian.”

“No, no, I’m not! How could someone that stupid deserve to be my mother? She doesn’t deserve it!”

The boy became nearly hysterical on the altar, stomping his feet and flailing his arms.

Li Zhuiyuan said calmly,

“She isn’t your mother, because you don’t have one.”

The boy froze.

The next moment, he turned his head and looked toward the human head lying quietly in the distant corner.

Then he suddenly grabbed his own head and shook it frantically.

“No, I do, I do! I’m not Old Hag Bian, I’m you! I’m not a child without a mother. I have a mother. Your mother is my mother too. Li Lan, yes, Li Lan! Li Lan is my mother! Li Lan is my mom!”

Li Zhuiyuan let out a sigh and nodded. “If circumstances allowed, I really would love to pack you up and mail you to Li Lan as a Mother’s Day gift.”

A picture surfaced in the boy’s mind: Li Lan receiving the package, opening it, and finding this eight-year-old boy squatting inside, calling her “Mom.”

He didn’t know whether Li Lan would be pleasantly surprised, but he personally found the image quite worth looking forward to.

Unfortunately, something like this could not be taken out and mailed. In fact, he would not even allow the other party to leave this place.

The moment this thing was born, it had killed its own mother body.

And while speaking to him, it had already used mental manipulation. It had sharply detected, or rather sensed, his weakness and begun attacking him through it.

He was a more dangerous Old Hag Bian.

If he could not be dealt with here, if he were allowed to leave, he would inevitably unleash an even greater disaster.

“Li Lan, my mother, Li Lan, she is my mother. My mother is Li Lan!”

The boy muttered to himself, then suddenly paused. He copied the way Li Zhuiyuan had looked earlier, tilting his head slightly as a mocking smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“No. Li Lan is your mother. My mother will only be better than yours. I’ll find her. A mother worthy of me. I’ll crawl back into her belly and live there again. Hee-hee.”

This was no childish nonsense.

Because he truly had the ability to do it.

At that moment, the boy’s laughter and expression overlapped completely with Old Hag Bian’s from before.

At the bottom of the lake on the way in, those mountain-like piles of corpses had been mostly children.

That had been Old Hag Bian’s obsession. She had been searching for her most outstanding child.

For this boy, his obsession was to search for his most outstanding mother.

If he were set free, he would hunt down pregnant women, cut open their bellies, remove the babies inside, and take their place himself.

If one didn’t suit him, he would move on to the next.

He would search again and again, kill again and again, until he finally found a mother body that satisfied him. Then, just like Old Hag Bian had once done, he would hold a blood sacrifice for his new “mother.”

At this point, even Li Zhuiyuan had to admit that the boy did not merely look like him.

He had only just been born, yet he had already reverse-engineered the evil art of the Mother-and-child linked-heart curse.

To a certain extent, Old Hag Bian’s desire to give birth to an outstanding child had indeed become reality at this moment.

Though it was a reality far from what she had intended.

The smile on the boy’s face grew wider and wider. He pointed at Li Zhuiyuan and laughed:

“Hahahahahaha, I can tell. You’ve thought of it. You’ve thought of it, right? You’ve already thought of what I’m going to do next, haven’t you?

“That’s right. Exactly what you’re thinking. That’s what I’ll do.

“See?

“We really are alike. Up here...” The boy tapped his forehead. “...we’re both very smart.”

Li Zhuiyuan shook his head. “You’re not as smart as I am.”

“Oh... that’s not necessarily true, big brother.”

The boy flicked his fingertip.

A roar came from outside, followed immediately by two successive booms.

Snake Auntie didn’t even have a head, so where could a roar have come from?

That could only mean another creature had joined the battle. Runsheng was now fighting one against two.

The rumbling continued without pause. It sounded like the two ferocious beasts were both chasing after Runsheng and attacking.

When it had been one against one, Runsheng had still been able to trade blows with it. But against two, he could only evade and maneuver.

Even if he fully opened his Qi Gates now, the best outcome would be mutual destruction with both of them. Even if Runsheng did not die, the side effects of fully opening his Qi Gates would leave him paralyzed. He would have no way to come in here and help.

The boy said, “Big brother, look, you don’t have any helpers left to count on.”

Li Zhuiyuan replied, “I don’t need help to kill you.”

“Kill me?” The boy looked as though he had just heard something hilarious. “This is my birthing room. Tell me, who do you think has the power to kill whom here? Do you have the ability to kill me here, or do I have the ability to kill you here?”

“Want to try?”

“Come on, then.”

The moment he finished speaking, the boy sprang at Li Zhuiyuan.

He had absorbed the life force of his mother body and tempered his sinews and bones, so in terms of physical ability alone, he really was far stronger than Li Zhuiyuan.

At the very least, Li Zhuiyuan could not leap from a standstill and launch himself like a little cannonball.

But Li Zhuiyuan showed no panic. He drew out his copper coin sword with his left hand and held it horizontally in front of him, then lightly tapped the blade with his right.

The copper coin sword came apart, but instead of falling, it hovered before him, forming a barrier.

The boy’s head slammed directly into the coins.

In an instant, it was as though oil had been poured onto a raging fire. The boy let out a scream and staggered backward.

A layer of skin had been burned off his scalp, exposing a bloody mess beneath.

“Damn it!”

The boy shot forward again. But this time, he did not ram headfirst into him. Instead, he darted around rapidly, trying to find an opening in Li Zhuiyuan’s defense.

Li Zhuiyuan stood where he was without moving.

Because of his age, he could not cultivate martial arts. That was his weakness. But that did not mean just anyone could bully him through simple fists and kicks.

If he were up against someone with Runsheng’s kind of physical ability, someone who could crush techniques with brute force, then yes, there would be no helping it. But this boy was still far from that level.

Li Zhuiyuan deliberately showed an opening behind him.

The boy charged straight at it, grinning viciously. “You think I’d fall for that?”

But when he rushed behind Li Zhuiyuan and was just about to strike, a mass of Karmic fire suddenly rose up. The boy slammed straight into it.

“Ahhh!”

He screamed and staggered back again. This time, both his hands had been half-melted away, exposing white bone.

“Why? How is this possible?”

Li Zhuiyuan glanced at him and said, “As long as I’m standing still, I have no openings.”

The boy’s breathing turned ragged as he shouted, “That’s not fair! I was just born! You’ve had so much more time to learn all this. It’s not fair!”

Li Zhuiyuan flicked his left hand, and the copper coin sword reformed, its point aimed at the boy.

“When I was dragged into River walk, no one stopped to explain whether any of that was fair. Anyone who likes shouting about fairness proves he still hasn’t grown up.”

Then Li Zhuiyuan moved.

He did not dare delay any longer. He believed Old Hag Bian’s methods were definitely not limited to this. This child had just been born; there were still many techniques he had not yet grasped or learned.

Strike while he was young and take his life.

Against other evil things, this little bit of time would not have been enough for them to accomplish anything, much less learn. But this evil thing happened to look a great deal like himself.

When taking the offensive, more openings naturally appeared, because Li Zhuiyuan was not fast.

The boy sidestepped, trying to seize a more favorable position.

But Li Zhuiyuan clenched his right hand into a fist, and four black ghostly figures appeared beside the boy. All four crouched at once, and an invisible pressure descended, forcing the boy down into a crouch as well.

Li Zhuiyuan’s copper coin sword swept across.

The boy let out a furious roar, forcefully breaking free from the restraint of Four Ghosts Lift the Sedan and retreating backward.

But his neck had already been slashed open by the copper coin sword. The cut was deep, so deep that an ordinary person would certainly have died from it.

Yet the boy did not. He covered his neck with his left hand and rubbed it rapidly, actually making the wound stick back together again. Only the skin at his neck had become twisted and wrinkled.

Li Zhuiyuan inwardly thought it a pity. If only he had been a little faster, if only his strike had been a little fiercer, if he had sliced the boy’s head clean off, it would all have been over.

One strike failed, and Li Zhuiyuan closed in again.

Within this Zhao Jun Temple, the boy was being pressed so hard by Li Zhuiyuan that he could only scurry everywhere in panic. The wounds on his body grew more and more numerous.

The boy felt stifled, because every time he tried to counterattack, Li Zhuiyuan would use some uncanny technique to bind him in place, and every single one was different from the last. He could not guard against them.

In truth, Li Zhuiyuan also felt somewhat stifled. He clearly held every advantage, yet still could not finish things off.

Every time, he was just a little short. He could wound the boy, but not kill him. So during each attack, he could only take the opportunity to plant another array flag at his feet.

However, just as Li Zhuiyuan once again used a technique to restrain the boy and thrust out his sword—

Two crystals suddenly flew over and blocked the strike for the boy.

Li Zhuiyuan knew at once that the change had come.

The battered boy stood behind the crystals, an eerie smile on his face. “Big brother, I think I’ve learned some new things.”

Under the boy’s control, the inverted crystal cones above began flying nonstop toward Li Zhuiyuan.

Li Zhuiyuan let out a sigh, formed a hand seal with his right hand, and drove the copper coin sword into the ground before him with his left, using it as the array core.

The formation activated.

All the crystals stabbing toward him from every direction were blocked outside the formation.

This formation had originally been prepared specifically for the boy. Li Zhuiyuan had intended to use the force of the formation to completely pin him down, then finish him off.

But unfortunately, he had been one step too late.

“Big brother, just how much have you learned?”

The boy continued controlling the crystals to suppress Li Zhuiyuan without pause, while he himself walked onto the altar.

With a flick of his finger, the thickest crystal plunged down and stabbed into the center of the altar.

“Big brother, I can’t break your formation, but I told you, this is my home after all. Take a look at this move. It’s the technique that thing most unworthy of being my mother was best at.

“Mirrors don’t just reflect people. The things reflected in mirrors can kill too.”

The boy placed both hands against the crystal before him. Threads of blood flowed from his palms and merged into the crystal.

The originally clear, translucent crystal gradually turned blood-red. Then red light began to spread, not just here, but outward, covering more and more.

The blood light fell upon the empty coffins, upon the giant dead Gu insects in the insect pool, upon the damaged murals, and upon the two mutilated ferocious beasts fighting Runsheng.

The boy said, “Things that are broken in reality can briefly recover and become whole inside the mirror. Hee-hee.”

The blood was only the surface. What the boy was really pouring into the crystal was his own life force.

That life force had been forcibly absorbed from Old Hag Bian earlier. Now it was being fed into the crystal.

The things inside the mirror were false, but the life force was real. At this moment, some kind of strange transformation was taking place.

Meanwhile, the boy’s originally tender young body began to sag. His black hair started turning yellow and withered. His skin became wrinkled, and the vitality of his whole being kept dropping.

But he did not care. Once he left this place, he could make up for his losses while searching for “mother.”

Every baby inside a womb contained the purest, most abundant life force.

How wonderful. He could hardly wait.

At that moment, Li Zhuiyuan took the initiative to withdraw the formation and charged forward.

The crystals that had originally been blocked outside the formation all came crashing down behind him.

Once he had drawn closer to the altar, Li Zhuiyuan rolled up the sleeve on his right arm. A crossbow bolt strapped to his arm shot an arrow at the boy.

Bang!

Just as the bolt was about to hit the boy, a small crystal dropped down and knocked it away.

The boy turned his head, amusement all over his face. “Big brother, I still have strength left.”

Then the boy lifted his gaze upward and summoned even more crystals to fall.

His attack having failed, Li Zhuiyuan retreated quickly. While retreating, he used the copper coin sword to cut open the inside of his arm, and blood sprayed out.

He was running, trying to leave.

But when Li Zhuiyuan reached the two stone steles at the entrance to Zhao Jun Temple, the crystals came shrieking toward him. If he kept running, he would be skewered into a porcupine.

Li Zhuiyuan stopped, dropped to one knee, and slapped his bleeding right hand against the ground.

Blood rapidly flowed outward, drifting in all directions, and the same formation pattern as before emerged again.

Only this time, because he did not have time to set the array flags again, Li Zhuiyuan was using his own blood as the formation’s anchor points.

Each time a crystal slammed into the barrier and was blocked, a large surge of blood was violently drawn from the wound on Li Zhuiyuan’s right arm.

Very quickly, Li Zhuiyuan’s face turned pale from blood loss.

The crystal on the altar continued to radiate blood-red light. The boy let go, then walked down the steps one by one toward Li Zhuiyuan.

His fingers kept flicking forward. One crystal after another smashed toward Li Zhuiyuan, only to be deflected, then smashed again, then deflected again.

If Li Zhuiyuan had stayed inside the formation he had prepared earlier, the boy truly could have done nothing. But now Li Zhuiyuan had come out.

“Big brother, you really are smart. You saw immediately what I was going to do. But it’s too late now. You can’t stop me.

“And besides, my life force has already finished being offered up. Even though I feel weak now, how much longer can your blood keep your formation going?

“Big brother, your body is only a few years older than mine. You can’t have that much blood to burn through like this, can you?”

Li Zhuiyuan said nothing. He only continued maintaining the formation with his blood, blocking the crystal attacks.

“Big brother, are you worried about your subordinates? They’re only subordinates. If they die, you can just recruit more.

“Oh, wait, no. Big brother is probably worried that if his subordinates die, they won’t be able to stop the things outside. Once those things get in, you’ll be cornered too. That’s why you wanted to gamble everything on one desperate try just now, right?

“But too bad. You lost that gamble!”

The boy accelerated the motion of his arm. The crystals struck the formation faster and faster.

…

At the entrance, one Dead Sinker had already had its head cut off by White Crane Child’s trident. It lay on the ground, beginning to dissolve into pus.

The other Dead Sinker had also been pinned down beneath White Crane Child, who kept stabbing it with the trident. It would soon be finished off as well.

But White Crane Child had also suffered many wounds.

One against two. While intercepting them, the Child had also wanted to perform better—to kill them sooner and then rush inside to provide support.

He wanted to show his worth.

And with that goal, the price he paid was naturally greater.

Puchi!

At last, the Child killed the Dead Sinker beneath him too.

He stood up, his body swaying slightly. Then he suddenly saw that above the twelve previously empty coffins, twelve blood-red mirrors had appeared.

Blood qi spread out from the mirrors and was absorbed by the empty coffins.

Then twelve phantom forms of Dead Sinkers rose from inside the coffins.

Among them were the two Dead Sinkers he had just killed, as well as the one that had died at the construction site during the day.

They all let out roars and lunged at White Crane Child.

White Crane Child’s vertical pupils narrowed again as he charged at them.

They had no physical bodies, but under the injection of life force, they had entered a strange kind of state.

White Crane Child hacked through them again and again, shredding three of the phantoms, but the remaining nine kept charging at him.

Left with no choice, White Crane Child pulled out a Dissolution of Evil Talisman Needle and drove it into his own chest.

White Crane Child’s aura surged once more, explosive sounds coming from within his body, and his anger erupted:

“Even bodiless ghosts dare run wild before me!”