Chapter 168
Chapter 168
Wednesday, ten at night.
Li Miao and I were already lying in wait inside the small wooden cabin beside the stone bridge on River Street.
As for the five brawny young men Yao Tianlin had sent to help, I had stationed them in a nearby field of unharvested sorghum, armed with electric batons they had somehow managed to acquire.
They would serve as our reinforcements. Whether Li Miao and I failed to take down the rogue occultist or our target tried to flee, those five men would come in very handy…
Sorghum was mainly grown in northern China.
I hadn’t expected to find any in the fields along the river north of town. It made the perfect place to hide people!
Li Miao had originally suggested bringing Heizi along. A dog would make things easier.
But after thinking it over, I politely declined.
The black dogs that corpse retrievers raised from puppyhood might be formidable, but they were mainly used against evil things such as ghosts, corpse-fiends, and monsters.
They could also intimidate or attack ordinary villains and thugs.
But from everything we knew, the mysterious rogue occultist behind Zeng Qingfeng was a reckless and utterly cold-blooded criminal who feared nothing!
If Heizi came along and lunged in to bite him at close range, the man might very well kill it.
Li Miao and I would ambush him inside the cabin, while five seasoned fighters armed with weapons formed a perimeter outside. It was a nearly perfect plan!
The two of us hid in the cabin and waited in silence.
Time passed, second by second…
Suddenly!
With a soft creak, the door opened.
“He’s here!”
My entire body jolted, and I instantly became alert.
Holding my breath, I concentrated fully on the newcomer’s footsteps and used them to sense his movements and position.
Tap, tap, tap.
The footsteps stopped in the middle of the cabin.
After a few seconds of silence, a harsh, raspy voice rang out.
“Zeng Qingfeng? I’m here. Get your ass out here.”
Perfect!
The moment the rogue occultist spoke, I followed his voice and pinpointed his exact location.
“Attack now and catch him off guard!”
I exploded into motion and shot out from behind a stack of wooden crates.
At the same time, I launched attacks with both hands.
“Immobilization Talisman!”
“Long-Range Acupoint Strike!”
My right hand flung out a paper talisman, while my left hurled a specially prepared pebble.
Ever since Master had reminded me to train my martial arts properly, I had stepped up my practice in that area.
I had always considered acupoint-striking techniques quite useful!
I had once relied on the Flying Feather Acupoint Strike to win my sparring match with Old Cao–though, of course, it had only been a friendly contest, and he had gone easy on me.
That experience had inspired me to study acupoint striking even more deeply.
At its core, striking the correct acupoint paralyzed the corresponding muscles and nerves, leaving a person unable to move.
I had specially gathered some pebbles, ground them into round shapes, and kept them in my pocket for easy use.
All I had to do was throw one and hit a person’s acupoint.
Why not use marbles?
Those things were too smooth and slippery. They could easily slip from my fingers! How could they possibly match a pebble’s grip and accuracy?
As the talisman and pebble flew toward the blurry silhouette in the middle of the cabin, I heard something slicing through the air from behind me…
Needless to say, Li Miao was attacking from his hiding place in the other direction.
His black-dog-hair rope whipped out in a loop!
This was the tactic we had agreed on in advance.
A corpse retriever’s black-dog-hair rope was like a coffin bearer’s phoenix rope: a tool its owner always carried close at hand.
It absorbed its owner’s aura and was frequently used to bind corpses or coffins, gradually transforming into something akin to a ritual implement with considerable power.
Once it looped around someone, escaping it would be much harder than escaping an ordinary rope.
“We’re fresh and rested, and we’ve caught him by surprise. Can we finish him in a single exchange?”
I couldn’t help hoping so.
But sure enough, that rogue occultist was no pushover!
Pfft!
He actually spat something from his mouth.
A cold glint seemed to flash through the darkness.
Then came a hiss and a clang, and a small burst of sparks even flared in midair.
“A flying needle from his mouth!?”
I was instantly startled.
“Could this man… actually be the same rogue occultist who ambushed us near the Killer Demon Tree that night?”
If so, he truly would be difficult to deal with.
Then again, no matter how powerful this rogue occultist was, he remained an ordinary mortal of flesh and blood. He didn’t have three heads and six arms, nor could he see the future!
His reaction had been extraordinarily fast. Though he had spat out a flying needle and knocked down my Immobilization Talisman and acupoint-striking pebble, he couldn’t evade the black-dog-hair rope Li Miao cast from diagonally behind him!
Whoosh!
I heard the distinctive sound of the rope looping around its target.
Then came a click.
The light came on!
Li Miao had hidden near the cabin’s light switch. After casting the loop of black-dog-hair rope, he had switched on the light in passing.
The dim yellow glow of an incandescent bulb illuminated the cabin.
Li Miao and I finally saw what the rogue occultist looked like!
Uh…
Actually, we didn’t.
Just as Zeng Qingfeng had described, the man wore a linen Daoist robe and a garish, bizarre mask over his face.
It resembled one of the masks used in Sichuan Opera face-changing, but wasn’t quite the same.
Though Li Miao’s black-dog-hair rope now bound him, he showed no trace of panic. He merely asked in a cold, raspy voice,
“Who are you? Why were you hiding here to ambush me?”
I couldn’t be bothered to waste words on this rogue occultist now. I immediately pulled out another Immobilization Talisman, intending to slap a couple onto him first!
There would be plenty of time to talk after we had trussed him up like a roast pig.
Whatever you did, you should always seize the initiative whenever possible!
But just as I sent another Immobilization Talisman flying, the rogue occultist opened his mouth and breathed out a tongue of flame a foot or two long!
It burned my paper talisman straight to ash.
“Old-school conjuring? Fire-breathing? So he really is the bastard who ambushed us near the Killer Demon Tree!”
Understanding flashed through my mind.
It seemed that this man was the rogue occultist who had been lurking around Lianghe Town and stirring up trouble lately.
He might be formidable, but I was already far stronger than I had been a few months ago!
And while I sent out that second Immobilization Talisman, Li Miao didn’t stand idle just because his rope had caught the man on the first try. Holding a long bamboo pole, he thrust it fiercely toward the rogue occultist’s lower back.
The corpse retriever’s three-piece set: black-dog-hair rope, bamboo pole, and dagger!
Years of corpse retrieval on the Chuan River had made Li Miao extraordinarily deft with a bamboo pole. It was practically an extension of his arm. His forceful thrust produced a deep whoosh.
If it connected, the rogue occultist would collapse on the spot.
After all, the acupoint in the lower back was also called the “Ghost Eye.” It was one of the central acupoints connecting the upper and lower halves of the human body.
It lay in a depression in the flesh about three and a half inches to the side of the spine, level with the point beneath the fourth lumbar vertebra’s spinous process.
Even pressing it hard would make a person’s back ache and legs go weak, leaving them unable to move properly. A fierce jab from a solid bamboo pole would be far worse!
Clearly, Li Miao’s many years retrieving corpses had also given him a thorough understanding of human anatomy, acupoints, and meridians.
But at that critical instant!
A long arm suddenly reached straight out of the rogue occultist’s chest.
It seemed to be formed from gray mist, indistinct and trailing wisps of smoky matter. It reached backward, and its gray hand caught Li Miao’s incoming bamboo pole with perfect precision.
The hand held it rock-steady, preventing it from advancing another inch!
“That damned sinister ghost hand again!”
My heart jolted.
During the battle against the Killer Demon Tree a few months ago, this rogue occultist had used that strange “ghost hand” to block Uncle Yuan Fei’s Ghost-Beating Staff.
It was like having an extra, highly agile assistant!
And that wasn’t all. As the ghost hand of gray mist emerging from his chest blocked Li Miao’s bamboo pole, the rogue occultist himself seemed to take a deep breath.
His chest and waist visibly swelled by an entire size, then abruptly contracted to become smaller than before in less than a tenth of a second.
That lightning-fast expansion and contraction instantly created some slack in the loop of black-dog-hair rope around him.
Whoosh!
The rogue occultist dropped and compressed his body with incredible speed, slipping free of the rope.
He had regained his freedom.
“Oh no!”
I cursed inwardly.
This bastard truly was sinister. He had a goddamn endless supply of tricks!
Describing every move in our first exchange with the rogue occultist might take a long time in words, but in reality, the whole thing lasted only a few seconds.
At that moment, I had only just rushed to within three feet of him.
Shing!
I drew the dagger with my right hand and snapped my arm like a whip, slashing toward his throat.
But just like last time, the small black snake with fine scales emerged from the rogue occultist’s body and coiled around my dagger. Its muscles twisted. Crack! The blade snapped.
“It’s you! How did you grow so much stronger in only a few months?”
The rogue occultist’s slightly surprised yet cold, raspy voice came from behind the mask.
Clearly, he had recognized me too!
After all, the head-on exchange between us closely resembled the battle of magical arts we had fought in the darkness near the Killer Demon Tree. It was practically a reenactment.
We had even used almost exactly the same methods…
There was only one difference!
During the last battle near the Killer Demon Tree, Old Cao had confronted the rogue occultist head-on while Yuan Fei supported him. I had merely distracted the enemy and guarded their flanks.
But today, I was the one facing him head-on in a battle of magical arts!
Naturally, fighting him directly brought far greater pressure. Even with Li Miao attacking constantly from behind to keep the man distracted, the me from a few months ago could never have managed it.
“I’m even stronger than you think!”
In fact, while my right hand slashed the dagger toward his throat, my left had secretly drawn Master’s ritual blade from the custom sheath fitted against my waist.
By the time the black-scaled snake emerging from his body used its iron-hard coils to snap my dagger, the ritual blade in my left hand was already cleaving toward his chest!
A ritual blade was an unsharpened, blunt weapon, and it wasn’t especially heavy. It could hardly injure an ordinary living person at all.
So I was gambling on this sinister rogue occultist being no ordinary person!
A ghostly hand emerged from his body, and a bizarre black-scaled snake lurked inside him… He had probably used evil arts to alter his own body to some extent.
Compared with a living person, he might be closer to a corpse-fiend or monster!
If my guess was correct, then the ritual blade would definitely be effective against him.
“Damn you!”
The rogue occultist gave a cold snort, probably never expecting me to have another attack hidden in reserve.
His enormous gray mist hand yanked and shoved the bamboo pole with tremendous force. Caught off guard, Li Miao stumbled several steps backward, and the pole snapped with a crack.
This wasn’t the one he normally used for corpse retrieval, after all. It was newly acquired and naturally nowhere near as sturdy as his usual pole, which was practically a semi-ritual implement.
The ghost hand then swung back around to block the ritual blade cleaving toward the rogue occultist’s chest!
Judging from that move alone, Li Miao and I had finally gained the upper hand.
The ghost hand no longer had time to grab my wrist. It could only block the blade directly–a tactic that sacrificed part of itself in exchange for a chance to counterattack.
However…
“What a perfect opportunity!”
I was secretly overjoyed.
I was certain that although this ghost hand was strong enough to block Yuan Fei’s Ghost-Beating Staff and Li Miao’s thrusting bamboo pole, there was absolutely no way it could withstand a slash from my ritual blade!
Because this was Master’s ritual implement.
It was no ordinary object.
Back at the Xia Family Hamlet, this very ritual blade had allowed me to turn defeat into victory at the last moment. It was my greatest trump card, the final move I kept hidden at the bottom of the chest.
Sure enough, everything happened exactly as I had predicted!
The gray-mist “ghost hand” had barely risen and touched the ritual blade’s edge when the blade sliced straight through it. My swing hardly lost any force. It felt like cutting through tofu as the blade continued downward.
“How is that possible?!”
The rogue occultist finally lost his composure and cried out in shock.
He clearly couldn’t believe that the ritual blade in my hand had severed his gray-mist ghost hand so easily.
At such close range, there was no possible way for him to dodge!
Everything seemed to become a slow-motion shot from a movie…
The ritual blade in my hand descended slowly and struck solidly, cutting from his right shoulder toward his chest.
Squelch!
The blade felt as though it had cleaved through a thick layer of grease.
Then I saw a long gash appear in the rogue occultist’s linen Daoist robe, its edges charred black as if scorched by fire.
Dark red blood flowed from the tear in his robe.
My slash had truly wounded him!