Chapter 35
Chapter 35
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” After being provoked by Xie Qingling over and over, the Painted-Skin Ghost longed to devour her alive.
It clenched its hands in fury. Its raw, bloody body suddenly shot into the air before diving swiftly toward Xie Qingling.
Xie Qingling retreated several steps in succession –
But to her surprise, the Painted-Skin Ghost had only feinted. It changed direction midway and rushed toward the roadside shop.
Xie Qingling drew Bloodsworn and chased after it.
Moments later, the Painted-Skin Ghost’s furious shrieks came from inside the shop, accompanied by the sounds of frantic smashing.
“Why?! Why?!” Disbelief covered the Painted-Skin Ghost’s raw, featureless face. It shouted furiously, “Why is he gone?”
Xie Qingling followed it inside. Seeing the empty shop and the counter the Painted-Skin Ghost had smashed to pieces, she asked, “Why what? What’s gone?”
“Were you… looking for a hostage?” Xie Qingling said. “Is that the only trick Painted-Skin Ghosts know? Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a hostage here.”
“When I bought the water, I had the owner escape ahead of time. Besides…” Hearing Dai Xingyu report through her earpiece that the area had been cleared, Xie Qingling smiled. “I’m not fighting alone.”
“You – I’ll kill you!” Painted-Skin Ghosts had always excelled at manipulating people’s hearts. This was the first time a human had toyed with one so thoroughly.
Its fury reached its peak. It decided that after killing Xie Qingling, it would peel off her skin and turn it into a lantern, condemning her to endure the scorching flames day after day even in death and denying her rebirth for all eternity. Only then could it vent the rage in its heart!
“Come on. I was hoping to kill you too.” Xie Qingling instantly released her Killing Field.
Gripping Bloodsworn, she used the counter as a springboard and leaped into the air, driving the blade in her hand straight toward its throat.
But her sense of distance was still wrong. Her blade did not strike its throat as she had intended, failing to rob the Painted-Skin Ghost of its voice. Its mind-bewitching shrieks continued to ring out.
Her feel for her strikes remained terribly distorted. The Painted-Skin Ghost’s mind-bewitching ability was active at every moment, constantly muddling human perception and reason.
The Painted-Skin Ghost laughed wildly. “Is that all you can do? I’m not as stupid as Mother. I won’t let you cut my throat!”
“I know,” Xie Qingling said. “That’s why my target was never your throat. It was your eye.”
The Painted-Skin Ghost’s strange cackling abruptly stopped the moment she finished speaking.
Pain stabbed through its eye, and its left side plunged into darkness.
Its eye had been slashed!
Having lost an eye, the Painted-Skin Ghost even began to stumble when it moved.
“You’re so desperate to protect the throat that lets you cast illusions that when my blade came at it, you were bound to defend with everything you had and neglect everything else. But your eyes are just as important.” Xie Qingling rotated Bloodsworn’s hilt in her hand and prepared to attack again.
This time, panic flashed through the Painted-Skin Ghost.
This woman was even more terrifying than it had imagined.
No matter what it did or what move it used, she seemed able to see through it!
The feeling of being outmaneuvered at every turn was utterly awful.
The Painted-Skin Ghost retreated two steps, intending to flee.
Far more intelligent than most ghosts, the Painted-Skin Ghost valued its life and understood that of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, fleeing was best.
But after only two steps, it abandoned the pointless attempt.
It knew that it was inside the Killing Field.
Within the Killing Field, either you died or I did.
It had nowhere to retreat.
From the moment they took this “shortcut,” that woman had already planned everything.
For the first time, the Painted-Skin Ghost understood what it meant to feel a chill sink into its very bones. Its entire body went cold.
No. It refused to be outmaneuvered like this.
It still had one final move. This move would surely turn defeat into victory and kill that hateful woman!
The Painted-Skin Ghost drew on every last ounce of strength and unleashed a piercing shriek from its throat.
It would trap Xie Qingling in an illusion, then kill her in one stroke when her mind was at its most vulnerable and her defenses had collapsed.
Did humans not possess morality?
Then she could have a taste of the illusion it had woven especially for her.
It wanted to see what Xie Qingling could possibly do.
Morality – that morality which bound humanity in layer upon layer of shackles – could bring nothing but disaster!
* * *
“Big Sister, Big Sister, come play with me.” Wearing her spotless white ballet dress, Yang Xianxian tugged on Xie Qingling’s hand and pleaded, “My mommy and daddy are dead. I’m so pitiful. There’s no one left to keep me company. Big Sister, come play with me.”
She wept so pitifully, her childish face pale and tender, her eyes brimming with tears.
She looked at Xie Qingling and opened her arms, pale and plump as tender lotus roots, as if yearning for the warmth of an adult’s embrace. “Big Sister, Big Sister, hold me. My mommy and daddy left me. No one will ever hold me again.”
Yu Wei crouched on the ground and tried to persuade Xie Qingling. “Qingling, put down the blade. Your blade is frightening. You’re scaring the child.”
“Xianxian is about the same age as my daughter. They’re still so young. They don’t understand anything. Put down Bloodsworn. Don’t be stubborn, and don’t frighten the child.”
Standing before Xie Qingling was Jiang Lulu, who had disappeared earlier.
Jiang Lulu’s face was deathly pale, and she looked as though she were about to die.
Suddenly, she collapsed to the ground, clutching her chest with one hand in unbearable agony.
She reached out toward Xie Qingling as her body convulsed uncontrollably. Her voice came out in a hoarse rasp. “Save me… Qingling, save me… Come here, Qingling… I’m right here. It hurts so much. Come save me…”
Xie Qingling’s gaze shifted. At last, she had found the Jiang Lulu she had been worrying about.
“Lulu, you’re all right. That’s wonderful,” Xie Qingling said, a faint smile appearing on her face.
All three of them smiled, looking exceptionally relieved.
* * *
Look. The illusion had already ensnared her.
Seeing Xie Qingling oblivious to her surroundings and completely immersed in her own world, the Painted-Skin Ghost revealed a strange smile.
Even so, it did not dare approach Xie Qingling too readily.
After suffering setback after setback at Xie Qingling’s hands, the Painted-Skin Ghost knew just how skilled this woman was at deception.
It waited quietly for a while, but Xie Qingling remained immersed in the illusion.
She truly had been ensnared.
The Painted-Skin Ghost crept toward her.
It had to seize her spine with one hand and dig out her brainstem with the other before she came back to her senses. Then it would peel away her skin.
That would make Xie Qingling thoroughly dead, without the slightest chance of survival.
It would definitely turn her skin into a lantern!
With that thought, the Painted-Skin Ghost finally crept up behind Xie Qingling.
Xie Qingling remained standing there in a daze, motionless, as though utterly unaware of the danger approaching from behind.
Good. Stay like that. Your death will be here soon!
The Painted-Skin Ghost’s eyes widened. One hand seized Xie Qingling’s neck, while the other had only just begun to move when the supposedly entranced Xie Qingling suddenly turned her blade and thrust its tip straight at the ghost’s throat.
It had been tricked!
The Painted-Skin Ghost abruptly realized it had fallen into Xie Qingling’s trap, but it was already too late.
At such close range, its body was nearly pressed against hers. There was no possibility of her blade going wide.
It had delivered itself right to her, allowing Xie Qingling to strike directly at its weakest point!
With a swish, the blade swept horizontally and opened a perfectly straight wound across the Painted-Skin Ghost’s throat.
“Hhk – ” That brief cry was the only sound it managed before its voice vanished entirely.
Clutching its gaping windpipe, it stumbled backward again and again, staring at Xie Qingling in terror as if asking: Weren’t you under my illusion’s control?
Xie Qingling turned around and looked at it. “Surprised?”
The Painted-Skin Ghost looked as though it had seen a ghost.
“Your illusion was too fake. It didn’t have the slightest shred of logic… Besides, you’re the only one here with me. No matter what elaborate fantasy you concoct, I won’t believe it.”
After a pause, Xie Qingling spoke as though struck by a sudden realization. “I see. You wanted to exploit my soft heart and distract me so you could launch a sneak attack.”
“But how did you know I would go soft? Why would I feel compassion for something that isn’t real?” Her voice turned cold. The moment she finished speaking, Xie Qingling abruptly lunged forward and appeared before the Painted-Skin Ghost in an instant.
If she feared being controlled by an illusion, then she would let reason govern her mind completely and feel nothing at all. Since she knew everything was false, all she had to do was cut it all down –
Xie Qingling raised Bloodsworn high. When it fell again, it took the Painted-Skin Ghost’s other eye.
A flash of bloody light passed. Then only eternal darkness remained in the Painted-Skin Ghost’s world.
The seal-script character zun that Ling Fang had carved into Bloodsworn drank blood as the blade descended. The slightly recessed symbol seemed to fill with red pigment, and a thin line of crimson spread through it.
It was only a tiny amount, with just the upper portion of the zun character stained red. But as time passed, this vessel would presumably store enough “blood energy” for her to release later.
“Hhk… hhk…” The Painted-Skin Ghost panicked completely. It could no longer summon the slightest thought of resistance.
It only wanted to flee, as far away as possible.
But without its eyes or throat, it was now nothing more than meat on a chopping block.
The Painted-Skin Ghost soon lost even the ability to run.
Xie Qingling had disabled both its legs.
At the ankles, both feet had been severed from the Painted-Skin Ghost’s legs.
It crashed heavily to the ground, its face landing in a muddy hollow. The sight was too horrific to behold.
No. No. It did not want to die.
The Painted-Skin Ghost tried to look tearful and pitiful. Imitating a human, it fell to its knees before Xie Qingling, kowtowed, and clasped its hands in supplication, unable to say what it wanted.
“Hhk… hhk… ah…” By now, the Painted-Skin Ghost could produce only a few pitiful syllables.
Xie Qingling watched it, her grip on her blade still tight.
After straining to make it out, Xie Qingling realized that the Painted-Skin Ghost’s lips were forming a name:
Lulu.
Jiang Lulu.
It was talking about Jiang Lulu.
Was it trying to trade Jiang Lulu’s whereabouts for its own survival?
Xie Qingling stopped and asked, “Are you trying to tell me where Lulu is?”
The Painted-Skin Ghost nodded frantically, as though it had glimpsed a chance to live.
“You hid her somewhere.”
The Painted-Skin Ghost continued nodding.
“You want to tell me that if I spare your life, my friend can live. Is that right?”
The Painted-Skin Ghost kept nodding frantically.
Xie Qingling said, “Then… why don’t you take a guess at why I’ve rambled on and said so much to you this entire time?”
The Painted-Skin Ghost clearly could not guess. Confusion appeared on its featureless face.
“Obviously, I was stalling for time, idiot!” Xie Qingling walked toward it one step at a time. “It seems you haven’t given any thought at all to what you’ve done.”
“The first time the Director sent us to the law firm, you anxiously tried to stop us. Although you ultimately pointed us toward the correct location, your behavior was still strange.”
“The second time, after we finally killed the Painted-Skin Ghosts in the underground parking garage, you insisted on returning to the law firm to retrieve something. After everything that had happened, you actually dared go back there instead of fleeing somewhere at once. Don’t you think your behavior revealed far too many flaws?”
“So let me guess. What was inside the law firm that you couldn’t let us see? You were in such a hurry to return – were you going back to silence someone?”
Ignoring the terror on the Painted-Skin Ghost’s face, Xie Qingling tapped her earpiece and asked, “Director, have you found Jiang Lulu?”
“We found her. She was unconscious in the law firm’s storage room. She’s being taken to the hospital for emergency treatment now.”
“Good.” Xie Qingling ended the call.
She said, “Then I can kill you without any worries.”