Chapter 267
Chapter 267
At that very moment, I had just launched two talismans. My hands were still extended, leaving me in the brief pause when old force had been spent and new force had yet to arise.
I never expected the corpse-fiend to seize that opening of less than half a second for an ambush!
Could they actually possess extremely high intelligence…?
Or was it some immensely powerful battle instinct?
“Watch out, Xiao Wu!”
“Watch out, Kid Wu!”
Old Cao and Roundy cried out at the same time. Neither could save me in time, and I could not react quickly enough myself.
Yet to my utter surprise, the corpse-fiend ultimately chose to pounce on Ni Yang beside me!
Had the thing sensed that he was somewhat weaker than I was?
It seemed it did not possess intelligence comparable to a human’s after all and relied mostly on battle instinct. That was why it had subconsciously chosen the weaker target.
Otherwise, ambushing me would have been the best choice at that moment!
Whoosh!
I heard wind rush behind me, followed by a series of crackling sounds as something shattered.
At almost the same instant, the two Corpse-Suppressing Talismans I had launched struck the corpse-fiend sitting on the bed. Its blood-red eyes snapped open, and it tried to move…
But a hemp rope slithered in from behind like a nimble python and bound it tightly. The rope seemed to burn its skin, sending up wisps of green smoke. The corpse-fiend immediately released a horrifying roar.
Old Cao had subdued it completely. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to see how Ni Yang was faring.
He was locked in a fierce battle with the other corpse-fiend. A large heap of shattered, rotting wood lay where he had been standing moments earlier.
I guessed that just as the corpse-fiend pounced, Ni Yang had used some magical method to instantly exchange positions with a short wooden cabinet nearby!
The corpse-fiend had therefore struck the cabinet instead.
Old-school conjuring might not excel at head-on combat, but it possessed many ingenious techniques.
When Ni Yang saw me regain my bearings, he hurriedly shouted,
“Help me, Young Mr. Wu! This damned thing is far stronger than an ordinary walking corpse. It’s powerful and fast. I can’t handle it alone.”
Under the corpse-fiend’s frenzied assault, Ni Yang could only defend and dodge in every direction. Several times, its sharp claws came within a hair of striking him!
I hurriedly intervened and launched another Corpse-Suppressing Talisman.
The corpse-fiend sensed the danger and tried to evade.
But it was fighting Ni Yang, and my sudden attack from behind was not so easy to dodge…
I was giving it a taste of its own medicine!
Smack!
The talisman flew onto the back of the corpse-fiend’s right shoulder blade, immediately slowing it considerably. Yet it did not truly stop.
Ni Yang had been right. This damned thing was far more formidable than an ordinary walking corpse!
With my current cultivation and strength, a single Corpse-Suppressing Talisman should easily immobilize even the most powerful corpse-fiend at the walking-corpse level.
But the thing before me had merely slowed. It instinctively turned and tried to slice the talisman from its shoulder blade with its sharp claws.
As it turned, I caught a rough glimpse of its appearance. It seemed to be an old woman. She might have been kindly in life, but now nothing remained except horror and sinister evil.
This finally gave Ni Yang, who had been forced into a corner, a chance to catch his breath…
He immediately fled in a wide arc around the corpse-fiend and reached Old Cao’s side.
I launched another Corpse-Suppressing Talisman and shouted,
“Fat bird! What are you standing around for? Fly over here and attack it. Didn’t you want a feast?”
I still had enough leisure to crack a joke.
“No, no! That thing looks far too disgusting. I can’t bring myself to eat it. We’ll see whether it has a corpse core later. If it does, I’ll dig that out and eat it.”
Roundy flapped its wings behind me, refusing to come forward.
It could also tell that while the damned thing was much stronger than an ordinary walking corpse, it remained far below the level of a vicious corpse. I would not have much difficulty handling it.
Helplessly watching as two Corpse-Suppressing Talismans still failed to suppress the corpse-fiend completely, I decided not to drag things out…
I clenched and gripped hard with all five toes, driving the muscles in my calves and thighs. My speed abruptly soared, and I charged toward the corpse-fiend with the light-footwork steps of internal martial arts.
As I brushed past it from the side, I swung the ritual blade already gripped in my hand and infused with qi.
Slash!
A hideous, rotting head left its neck and flew high into the air.
With one stroke, I beheaded the corpse-fiend!
The movement was swift, cool, and spectacular.
“It’s over…”
I thought to myself and was about to turn around to speak to Old Cao.
Unexpectedly, however, I heard movement behind me. A sinister wind seemed to brush toward the back of my neck.
“What’s going on?!”
My heart tightened. Instinctively, I bent at the waist and tucked in my body, instantly seeming to shrink several sizes as I used the Monkey Form movement technique from Xingyi Boxing.
It was called Monkey Crouches, one of the most effective internal-martial-arts techniques for evading a close-range attack!
Monkeys were clever and agile. Even while crouching, they could leap or attack in any direction at any time. Xingyi Boxing’s Monkey Crouches contained the same principles of defense and counterattack…
Once again, I marveled at how right Master was: cultivators of our lineage needed to train their bodies as well as developing their sense of qi and learning magical arts!
For a cultivator like Ni Yang, the mistake I had just made would have been fatal.
But I had no chance to counterattack, because as Monkey Crouches carried me beneath the attack from behind, my ears caught another sound…
Zing!
A metallic vibration and the whistle of sharp weapons slicing through the air rang out.
Several transparent blades of air swept in from behind.
Slash…
They seemed to sever something else.
I turned around.
The corpse-fiend lay on the ground, its head, arms, and legs all separated. Its torso was left bare and limbless, making for an extremely bizarre sight.
Fortunately, it was a desiccated corpse. Otherwise, the scene would have been far more visually shocking.
I knew Roundy must have beaten its wings violently in that instant and unleashed its signature demonic art: the wind blade! It had severed every one of the corpse-fiend’s limbs.
“Hahaha! Kid Wu, this magnificent bird has saved your life yet again. No need to thank me. Just call me Big Brother.”
That stupid bird Roundy crowed smugly as it flew in from the doorway and landed on my shoulder, looking thoroughly deserving of a beating.
I knew it had probably been startled just now, but its mouth remained as obnoxious as ever.
I was the same way.
Although I felt touched, I rolled my eyes at it and said with feigned disdain,
“Give me a break! What do you mean, again? Besides, I had already dodged that damned thing’s dying counterattack with Monkey Crouches. I could easily have countered and finished it myself.”
As I bantered with Roundy, I looked down at the corpse-fiend, now divided into several pieces across the floor.
I discovered something extremely strange about it!
It seemed different from every type of corpse-fiend I had encountered before…
As the name implied, a corpse-fiend was an evil entity formed when a human corpse underwent a transformation after death.
At its core, it was still a human corpse.
Of course, as corpse-fiends cultivated, their bodies increasingly diverged from what they had been as living people and developed many sinister characteristics.
But I had never seen anything like this.
The inside of the corpse was hollow!
Through the openings at the neck and severed limbs, I could see that the body cavity contained no organs whatsoever. The limbs were hollow too, entirely unlike ordinary corpse-fiends.
The empty cavities inside its body appeared to be stuffed with strange, fine filaments resembling fuzz or fungal threads.
Old Cao and Ni Yang walked over.
Frowning slightly, Old Cao patted my shoulder with a worried expression.
“Xiao Wu, you must never be so careless again. You gave me quite a fright just now.”
I scratched my head in embarrassment.
“Mm. I’ll definitely be more careful in the future. I really was careless just now. Mainly, I never imagined a corpse-fiend could still move and attack after its head had been severed by a ritual blade. It defies common sense.”
Normally, even vicious corpses, as well as most corpse fiends, would be destroyed once their heads were severed or their hearts pierced and mangled!
Only the most powerful corpse fiends, or ones that cultivated similar evil arts, could possibly continue moving…
Yet the corpse-fiend before us was clearly weaker than even the weakest vicious corpse. Why had it remained alive after I beheaded it with the ritual blade? How could it still attack me?
It made no sense at all!
Everything about it was deeply uncanny.