Chapter 170
Chapter 170
When Li Miao snatched the dagger from me, I froze for an instant.
But I quickly understood.
I felt guilty, yet also deeply moved…
Everything happened in a flash!
An instant before Li Miao’s dagger pierced the rogue occultist’s heart, the light inside the cabin suddenly went out.
The room plunged into complete darkness.
“Oh no!”
My heart lurched. Something was about to go wrong.
But Li Miao was already driving the dagger toward the rogue occultist’s heart. At such close range, the thrust would take less than half a second. Surely nothing could change now, right?
Squelch!
The sound of a sharp weapon piercing something rang out.
But it clearly wasn’t the sound of flesh.
At the same time, we heard a rustling noise a short distance ahead. Then the cabin door burst open, allowing moonlight to spill inside.
A dark figure rolled and scrambled out, staggering miserably.
Heavy, pain-filled gasps escaped his mouth.
Using the moonlight streaming through the open door, Li Miao and I looked down.
A bizarre humanoid figure lay on the floor!
It appeared to be stuffed with straw and wood shavings and wore clothes made of rags, seemingly stitched together from many different burial garments.
A piece of cloth covered its round head, with human features painted on it in red cinnabar. The effect was profoundly strange.
Under the moonlight, it radiated an uncanny, sinister aura.
It had completely replaced the rogue occultist!
The black-dog-hair rope bound its waist, and the bamboo pole had pierced its thigh.
Li Miao’s sharp dagger was embedded in the straw-and-cloth figure’s chest.
The entire blade had sunk inside, leaving only the hilt exposed.
“Is this… the Puppet Substitution Art? This is an extraordinarily advanced magical art. It’s extremely difficult to perform and nearly lost. I never imagined the rogue occultist would know it too!”
I was astonished.
Li Miao probably didn’t even know about this bizarre secret art.
I only knew of it because Master had once mentioned it in passing during one of our conversations.
She had once encountered an enemy who knew this art and had needed considerable effort to kill him!
The puppet used for this substitution art was not only extremely complicated to make, but also required an extraordinary amount of time.
Supposedly, its main material had to be straw that had grown for five years without ever being harvested. It could only be dried in the glow of the setting sun during the final two-hour period before sunset each day.
The straw had to be dried under the evening sun for three cycles of seven days–a full twenty-one days. Every day had to remain clear. A single cloudy or rainy day interrupting the process would ruin all the previous work.
After that, the straw had to be completely spread out under the moonlight on the night of every lunar month’s fifteenth day, allowing it to absorb the moon’s essence. Only after twelve such full moons over an entire year would the primary material for the substitute puppet be complete.
Next, nine different kinds of trees that favored damp, cold places had to be found, cut into wood shavings, and stuffed inside the straw puppet.
Then burial garments once worn by many different corpses had to be gathered, cut apart, and stitched into clothes for the straw substitute puppet.
The puppet’s face had to be made from a blanket the practitioner frequently slept under, and its features painted in cinnabar mixed with blood from the practitioner’s fingertips and tongue.
Only after completing that bewilderingly intricate process could the straw substitute puppet itself be considered barely finished. It then required a long period of refinement with various secret arts…
Once that was done, the straw substitute puppet would slowly shrink until it was only the size of a palm, small enough to carry in a pocket or conceal against the body.
If anything went wrong during any step, all the time and effort invested before it would be completely wasted!
Its actual effect was to let the practitioner instantly transport himself to any point within a fifteen-foot radius.
The straw puppet carried on his person would remain behind as his substitute.
During the substitution, the attacker would notice nothing.
It was an extraordinarily mysterious and profound art!
That was why some people kept such substitute puppets as a final life-saving trump card, one of the ultimate methods hidden away for emergencies.
I had only heard Master mention it by chance and found it fascinating.
Never had I imagined that this rogue occultist had truly managed to create such a complicated substitute puppet. At the final moment, he successfully used it and escaped having a dagger driven through his heart…
Even so, the art had merely saved him for the moment and transported him to the cabin door, preventing us from killing him on the spot!
He was grievously wounded, and his thigh had been pierced through. He certainly couldn’t run very fast.
We still had a chance to catch him.
“After him!”
I shouted, and Li Miao and I leaped to our feet and sprinted after him.
As I ran, I blew a shrill, piercing whistle. This was the signal we had agreed upon with the five fighters hiding in the sorghum field.
The moment they heard my whistle, they were to rush out and help!
The riverside cabin was small to begin with, so Li Miao and I reached the door in only a few strides.
The moment we ran outside, the moonlight revealed a dark figure limping toward the sorghum field.
I immediately laughed.
“The heavens must want this rogue occultist dead! Of all the directions he could have run, he headed straight for the sorghum field. He’s walking right into our trap.”
Admittedly, with injuries that severe, he couldn’t have escaped no matter which direction he chose.
But having him run straight into the sorghum field still made things easier for us.
Sure enough!
Before the rogue occultist even reached the field, five burly fighters emerged from the sorghum carrying electric batons and moved to surround him.
Seeing the danger, he immediately tried to flee in another direction.
But it was already too late!
The leader of the group reacted incredibly fast. He scooped a rock off the ground and hurled it straight at the rogue occultist.
Whoosh… Thud!
His aim was remarkably good. The rock struck the wound in the man’s thigh where Li Miao had stabbed him.
The rogue occultist instantly let out a shrill scream of agony, collapsed to the ground, and could no longer get up.
No matter how powerful or bizarre he was, he still possessed an ordinary mortal body.
With injuries that severe, there was no way he could run quickly.
He had probably headed for the sorghum field because the stalks stood taller than a person. He hoped to hide among them and shake off Li Miao and me.
But the rogue occultist had no idea that I had prepared an ambush there long ago…
Li Miao and I were delighted to see him fall.
“Brothers, don’t hold back! Shock him as hard as you can with those electric batons! Turn them all the way up, and don’t be afraid.”
I shouted while running toward them.
I was afraid the five fighters might hesitate to strike hard enough and give the rogue occultist a chance to turn the situation around.
Hearing my order, they rushed forward and switched on their electric batons. All five brought their weapons down on the rogue occultist sprawled on the ground…
Bzzzt! Bzzzt!
I could hear the crackle of electricity and the rogue occultist’s renewed screams as the current tore through him.
It was rather gruesome.
But he was a thoroughly evil man who had committed every kind of atrocity. He didn’t deserve the slightest sympathy.
Li Miao and I ran over and finally relaxed when we saw the half-dead rogue occultist.
He was foaming at the mouth and twitching on the ground.
The young man leading the fighters looked at me.
“Young Mr. Wu, there’s no way he’s getting up again. Our electric batons have been modified, so they’re much more powerful than ordinary ones. They can even knock out a sheep. With all five on him at once, he’s finished.”
I smiled, nodded, and cupped my hands to them.
“All right. Thank you all for tonight. I’ll be sure to tell Boss Yao–”
Before I could finish, another unexpected development occurred!
A voice that made my heart shudder drifted out of the pitch-black sorghum field ahead.
It was a Buddhist invocation!
“Amitabha. Good indeed, good indeed. Amid all the karmic debts in this world, enmity should be resolved rather than deepened. Why must you benefactors exterminate him without mercy?”
As that strange Buddhist chant arose, my heart seemed to skip several beats. A faint numbness spread through my entire body, and my muscles inexplicably stiffened!
“I… can’t move?”
I was horrified.
Li Miao beside me was clearly in the same state.
As for the five young men holding electric batons, their bodies went limp and they collapsed on the spot. Their batons clattered all over the ground…
“What’s happening? What’s wrong with our bodies?”
“This is terrifying! What kind of sorcery is this?”
“Is this some evil magical art?”
“Holy shit, are we going to die here?”
They lay paralyzed on the ground, unable to move but still capable of speaking normally. Every one of them panicked.
Li Miao and I stared ahead.
Under the cold silver moonlight, a human figure slowly emerged from the sorghum field.
He moved one careful step at a time, walking very slowly.
He wasn’t deliberately putting on an impressive show. He probably couldn’t walk any faster!
I could sense that the qi radiating from him was extremely powerful, but it was also fluctuating violently and being consumed at a tremendous rate.
It was obvious!
An art this powerful–one that could immobilize us through sound from at least twenty or thirty feet away–had to consume an enormous amount of energy.
Just as Master had said, everything in the world obeyed the law of conservation. The more powerful a magical art was, the greater its cost had to be!
“Damn it! Why are we seeing so many bizarre magical arts tonight? First a substitute puppet, and now a Buddhist invocation has left us unable to move…”
Li Miao struggled violently, but his body could do no more than tremble faintly.
When the newcomer finally reached us, I could make out his features by the moonlight.
He was indeed a monk!
Naturally, he had no hair. His head was completely bald, and his earlobes were unusually large and long.
He wore a gray monk’s robe decorated with strange red cloud-like patterns.
A string of enormous prayer beads hung around his neck, while he held a smaller string in one hand. He regarded us with a beaming smile.
For some reason, the monk looked familiar, yet I couldn’t remember where I might have seen him… I was certain I didn’t know him!
Then why did he give me that strange feeling of being both a stranger and somehow familiar?
The monk lowered his gaze to the rogue occultist foaming at the mouth on the ground and shook his head.
“You see? I warned you to act more carefully. Fubei County conceals many hidden talents, including some formidable individuals. You refused to listen, and now you’ve truly ended up in this sorry state tonight, haven’t you?”
The rogue occultist recovered enough to let out a cold snort but did not answer.
At that moment, realization finally struck me!
I remembered!
I remembered why this monk felt so inexplicably familiar even though I neither knew him nor had ever seen him before…