Chapter 66
Chapter 66
Old Cao thrust a hand into his pants pocket and pulled out two little birds cut from spirit money.
Muttering an incantation, he hurled them in that direction.
Whoosh!
The instant the paper birds left his hand, they accelerated. Their wings beat as though they were alive, carrying them through the darkness in a fierce attack.
I knew what Old Cao’s paper birds could do.
Flimsy though they looked, once infused with qi and empowered by magic, they flew with tremendous speed and force. They could punch through a thick wooden board or leave a bloody hole straight through a human body.
It was an exceptionally vicious method of attack.
The man standing at the crossroads seven or eight meters away was obviously no good. He had ambushed us without provocation, and his very first move had been to fling lethal steel needles.
Old Cao’s ruthless counterattack was perfectly justified.
My own heart burned with anger. I wondered whether I had some deadly move I could use on the bastard too–but regrettably, I did not seem to have one yet.
That did not mean I was an easy target.
I turned my palm, and the dagger hidden in my sleeve slid into my hand.
Pushing off hard, I circled in from the side, following the man’s aura.
This was one of the martial techniques within the eclectic arts that Master had taught me, a method of close-range assassination.
She said that although I had developed earlier than most boys my age, I was still an adolescent.
My bones had not fully formed, and neither my stamina nor my strength had reached its peak. Broad, forceful styles of unarmed combat did not suit me yet.
So she had first taught me this flexible, opportunistic style of knife fighting. I had never experienced a true fight to the death and lacked a little killing intent, but perhaps tonight would give me that opportunity.
At the same moment Old Cao attacked, Yuan Fei flanked the man from the other side.
All three of us struck together.
To our surprise, the man was genuinely formidable.
Another sharp whistle cut through the darkness. Immediately afterward, I sensed qi flowing ahead.
Boom!
Two fist-sized fireballs appeared in front of us. Burning fiercely, they flew straight into Old Cao’s paper birds. Both the flames and the birds disintegrated into ash and scattered on the night wind.
I was startled. He was incredible–he could actually use offensive talisman arts with that degree of precision.
Most esoteric practitioners used talisman arts primarily against sinister ghosts and other unclean beings. If they used them against a living person, they generally did so in secret.
Anyone capable of using talisman arts in a direct, fast-paced fight against living opponents already possessed impressive power.
At the very least, this man was no weaker than Old Cao.
But while he and Old Cao exchanged spells at a distance, Yuan Fei and I had already closed in.
“What kind of fiend are you? Taste your Grandpa Yuan’s staff!”
With a roar, Yuan Fei swung his Ghost-Beating Staff at the man’s head.
To our astonishment, a long arm suddenly reached straight out of the man’s chest.
The indistinct limb seemed condensed from gray mist and trailed wisps of smoke. Yet it seized Yuan Fei’s Ghost-Beating Staff in one hand and held it fast.
The staff hung suspended in midair. Yuan Fei could neither drive it forward nor pull it free.
“Damn it! What the hell is this thing? It isn’t afraid of my Ghost-Beating Staff–it grabbed the thing barehanded!”
Yuan Fei’s expression changed dramatically.
That arm was plainly some ghostly spirit in incorporeal form. By all reason, it should have feared his Ghost-Beating Staff.
Never had he expected it not only to show no fear, but to restrain him instead.
With Yuan Fei caught between advancing and retreating, the mysterious man gave a cold laugh and reached both hands toward his throat.
I gave him no such opportunity.
What manner of fiend are you to act so arrogantly? I thought as I drove my dagger at his back.
In such a desperate moment, there was no time to consider whether we should capture him alive. The only sensible choice was the most brutal way of fighting available.
Otherwise, we would be the ones to suffer.
My attack from behind helped Yuan Fei. The mysterious man no longer dared continue strangling him and spun around to intercept my blade.
There was a soft thump.
I felt something coil around the dagger.
No way. Did he catch a bare blade with his hands? Was he really that powerful?
I was stunned.
When Master taught me martial arts, she had explained that although people performed this feat constantly in movies and television shows, anyone capable of catching a blade barehanded in real life was a true master.
Such a person had cultivated the unarmed combat branch of the eclectic arts to an extremely high level and could easily fight ten men barehanded.
If that was what had happened, the man before me was terrifying. His sorcery was already formidable enough to contend with Old Cao from a distance.
An instant later, however, I realized the truth.
The thing blocking my dagger was not the mysterious man’s palm, but a slender black snake covered in fine scales.
It was only as thick as my thumb, but its black scales glimmered faintly and appeared extremely hard. Even a blade might not cut through them with ease.
Small though the snake was, it possessed enormous strength.
Its body wrapped around the blade so tightly that I could neither thrust the dagger forward nor pull it back.
But this was merely an ordinary dagger, nothing like Yuan Fei’s Ghost-Beating Staff, which was an important ritual implement. Abandoning it would cost me little.
The moment the strange black snake trapped the weapon, I decisively released the hilt and dove backward. While still in the air, I flung out a talisman.
It was a Headache Talisman. Anyone struck by it would immediately suffer unbearable pain, and their fighting ability would certainly decline.
At such close range, please let it hit him!
I prayed silently.