Chapter 266

Chapter 266

Old Cao considered for a moment before saying,

“Then I, Xiao Wu, Roundy, and Brother Ni will enter and inspect the house. Everyone else will wait outside and remain alert. If anything flees the house, stop it. Brother Yuan Fei, keep a close watch.”

Yuan Fei patted his chest.

“Don’t worry, Brother Cao! I’ll guard the door so tightly that nothing gets through.”

Together with Old Cao, we stepped over the dilapidated house’s threshold and entered the shadowy central room.

The room was small, only about ten square meters.

Dust lay everywhere, while cobwebs covered the tables, chairs, and corners.

I took a few steps toward the wooden table.

“Bowls and chopsticks are still scattered across it, and the bowls contain some black, shriveled material. It looks like unfinished food. The villagers may have been eating dinner when Daling Village sank underground.”

As I spoke quietly, my mind conjured the panic and terror those ordinary villagers must have felt when danger struck.

Ni Yang pointed to the left and right.

“It’s a common village-house layout. The door on the left should lead to the kitchen and the rear yard where they kept poultry and livestock. The door on the right should lead to two or three bedrooms. Shall we inspect them one at a time together or split up?”

Old Cao probably thought the house was small enough that an extremely dangerous situation was unlikely, so he proposed splitting up to save time.

“Xiao Wu, you and Brother Ni check the bedrooms on the right. Roundy and I will inspect the kitchen, pigsty, and rear yard.”

“All right!”

I nodded. I understood his arrangement: Roundy and I could communicate through our mental connection. By separating us, the two groups could easily remain in constant contact.

“Everyone stay safe. Don’t let your guard down and suffer an unexpected defeat.”

Old Cao gave us another warning.

Roundy circled his head and squawked impatiently,

“We know, we know. Old Man Cao is such a nag. Come on, we can search this tiny wreck of a house in half a minute.”

With that, it flew into the kitchen first.

I shrugged helplessly, then turned right with Ni Yang and entered a bedroom.

By rural custom, the room closest to the central hall should be a secondary bedroom or guest room.

The cold, gloomy sensation was stronger here. I could see a wooden bed hung with white mosquito netting, a black-and-white television at the head of the bed, and an old-fashioned wooden wardrobe…

These furnishings closely resembled those in my own home and were common in southwestern villages of that era. They were usually familiar, ordinary sights, but seeing them in this eerie village deep underground felt strange.

“Young Mr. Wu, this room seems fine. Shall we keep going farther inside?”

“All right. I’ll follow your lead, Brother Ni.”

A small door stood in one corner of the bedroom. It presumably led to the other bedrooms. Privacy in the countryside naturally did not compare to privacy in town.

To enter another bedroom, one first had to pass through the room in front of it. Such were the peculiarities of village homes.

I reached out and pushed the door.

Creeeak…

A piercing, teeth-grating sound rang out.

The hinges had evidently rusted and decayed completely.

The instant the door opened, a black shadow rushed straight at me.

My reactions were swift. As I took a slight step backward, my other hand hurled out the talisman paper I had already prepared.

“Talisman fire!”

Boom.

The moment the talisman left my hand, qi ignited it. It became a dazzling ball of flame that shot forward.

Ni Yang leaped back beside me as two clouds of smoke emerged from his sleeves and wrapped around his hands. It appeared to be another form of old-school conjuring.

But once again, it was a false alarm…

The talisman fire struck the black shadow and produced only a few sparks, no different from an ordinary sheet of burning paper. That proved it was not a sinister evil entity. Otherwise, the reaction would have erupted like water poured into boiling oil!

“Uh, so it was just a bundle of dried mugwort hanging from the beam over the bedroom door. That gave me a fright.”

Ni Yang looked rather speechless.

People in the countryside often hung mugwort before their doors. Besides being a folk custom, it was said to repel insects and ward off demons and evil.

As cultivators, however, we knew that mugwort did possess some power to ward off evil, but at most it could frighten away the most ordinary wandering ghosts…

It was useless against any ghost even slightly more powerful.

“This cursed place keeps startling us over nothing.”

As I spoke, I brushed aside the dried mugwort over the door, crossed the threshold, and entered the room beyond.

The instant I stepped inside, I casually swept my powerful flashlight around the room. Its beam immediately illuminated a human figure on the bed in the corner!

Ni Yang and I instantly went on guard again and peered more closely.

There was no mistake!

A human figure was indeed sitting on the wooden bed. Dust-covered mosquito netting hung around all four sides, obscuring it from view.

Ni Yang and I exchanged a glance. We stopped talking, remained where we were, and even softened our breathing.

He made a gesture, apparently telling me to prepare for battle while he tested it first!

That was fine with me.

I was curious to see how an old-school conjurer truly fought demons, ghosts, and other evil entities. I wanted to witness his methods.

Ni Yang slowly raised both hands. Gray, cloudlike smoke immediately billowed from his wide sleeves and enveloped them.

Then he flung them forward!

Whoosh!

Two long ropes shot from his hands.

They flew toward the upper sides of the four-poster wooden bed and coiled around its posts. Then, as though alive, the ropes abruptly pulled outward in opposite directions.

Crack! Snap!

The wooden bedposts broke under the strain. The mosquito netting over the bed was torn down the middle, ripped into two halves, and flung to either side.

Only the bare bed boards remained. By the light of our flashlights, Ni Yang and I could finally see the “person” sitting on the bed with its back to us.

He, or rather, it, wore no clothing and had no hair anywhere on its smooth body. Its entire body was a strange, unnatural black.

Its skin was dry and shriveled, like a desiccated corpse that had been buried underground for years.

The shoulder blades protruded high from its back like bony tumors. Dense clusters of tiny holes pitted parts of its back, with things resembling mold or white fuzz growing around them.

The sight made my skin crawl and goose bumps rise across my body.

Even among corpse-fiends, this thing belonged to a particularly revolting and uncanny kind…

Ni Yang lowered his voice.

“This damned thing is seriously strange! I’ve caused such an enormous commotion, yet it’s still sitting motionless on the bed.”

He had assumed he was striking first by removing the objects obstructing our view: the bed frame, mosquito netting, and so on. That way, if the thing suddenly attacked, I could immediately counter and fight it.

Unexpectedly, the corpse-fiend remained motionless on the bed.

I found it strange as well.

At the same time, I used our mental connection to inform Roundy, who was in the kitchen on the other side of the house, about the situation.

Then I said quietly,

“Uncle Ni, we still need to be careful. Don’t let your guard down. This damned thing might also be waiting for the right moment and attack the instant we relax.”

“Don’t worry, Young Mr. Wu. I may not have faced as much danger or as many battles to the death as you, but I still possess basic experience.”

Ni Yang answered.

During dinner, we had talked about some of our past experiences. He had also found it incredible that someone so young had already survived so many dangerous and brutal battles…

Perhaps this was the “bad luck” inherent in my bazi and destiny?

Ni Yang and I moved to the left and right, preparing to circle around from behind and approach the corpse-fiend’s front from both sides.

Just then, Old Cao and Roundy arrived at the bedroom doorway. After signaling us with a glance, they blocked the exit to prevent the corpse-fiend from escaping later.

At last, Ni Yang and I slowly reached the front of the strange corpse-fiend.

We saw a bizarre, hideous face!

It was dry and decayed, with twisted features. A layer of short, black, fuzzlike matter covered its face, identical to what grew around the dense holes on its back. It resembled some kind of fungal mycelium…

It was still faintly possible to tell that this eerie corpse-fiend had probably been a middle-aged man in life.

“Old Cao, to be safe, I’ll bind it with several Corpse-Suppressing Talismans first. Then use your phoenix rope to tie it up and take it outside so we can carefully examine what happened. We need to learn why a villager turned into such a bizarre corpse-fiend.”

I offered my suggestion.

To uncover the truth behind Daling Village, we had to examine what these villagers had become after their corpses transformed…

Logically, if the Great Sea-to-Mulberry-Fields Feng Shui Formation had merely sunk all of Daling Village underground, then the villagers should have suffocated or starved to death. That should have been the end of it.

A feng shui formation itself would not make these unfortunate villagers’ corpses transform.

There had to be another cause, another conspiracy!

“All right, Xiao Wu. I’m ready. Go ahead.”

Standing in the doorway across from me, Old Cao patted the hemp rope at his waist.

I flipped both hands, and a Corpse-Suppressing Talisman appeared between the fingers of each. Then I launched them at the corpse-fiend on the bed…

But the instant the two talismans left my hands!

Something changed without warning!

With a boom, the earthen wall beside us shattered, and a ferocious corpse-fiend burst out from within.

It moved with astonishing speed, lunging straight at Ni Yang and me.

It was an ambush!

My heart jolted.

“Oh no! We assumed from the start that there was only one corpse-fiend. There were two hidden in this room!”