Chapter 67

Chapter 67

Sometimes, however, events simply refused to go as one wished.

Just as my Headache Talisman was about to strike, the man opened his mouth and spewed a great burst of fire.

Whoomph!

Orange flames surged more than a foot forward and burned my talisman to ash.

A talisman might contain the wondrous force called qi and be driven by the incantation drawn upon it, but fundamentally, it was still made of paper.

The Headache Talisman was also a very low-level talisman art.

Before it took effect on an enemy, it was no tougher than ordinary rice paper. Of course it vanished when touched by fire.

Good grief! This bastard really was powerful. Three against one, and we still had not taken him down.

I was shocked.

Old Cao was one of the most formidable coffin bearers not only in Lianghe Town, but across the neighboring towns and perhaps even the entire county.

Yuan Fei was slightly weaker than Old Cao, but he too had some reputation. He knew both feng shui and talisman arts, and no one could underestimate his ability.

As for me–well, I was not trying to boast. I might be only a middle-school student and have practiced the esoteric arts for less than three months, but I was no longer weak.

I had a mysterious yet unquestionably powerful master, and I worked extremely hard. Apart from attending school, I did not waste a moment that could be spent studying or training.

Following Old Cao, Big Bull, Yuan Fei, and the others, I had also experienced genuinely dangerous battles. I had even dealt with a minor spirit like the Dry Immortal by myself.

Old Cao had praised me as being stronger than many people who had studied for five or six years.

Yet even with the three of us fighting together, we had failed to inflict any real injury on this sinister man.

As the mysterious man spat fire and destroyed my talisman, he arched his back, blurred sideways like a ghost, and slipped out from between Yuan Fei and me.

At that moment, I smelled a powerful odor of alcohol in the air.

Yuan Fei shouted, “I thought you were some mighty rogue capable of spewing fire with a powerful spell. It turns out you’re only using an old-school conjuring trick–holding liquor in your mouth and spraying it through a flame! Old Cao, stop him! Get the bastard!”

So that was it.

Yuan Fei’s words made me understand as well.

Old-school conjuring was an ancient skill once practiced in the martial underworld. Put simply, it resembled modern acrobatics and stage magic, though it carried a much more mystical air.

Its practitioners sometimes possessed genuine magical skills, so old-school conjuring belonged to the esoteric world and was classified among the eclectic arts.

Most of its tricks, however, were glamour spells mixed with a few simple techniques. Even within the eclectic arts, it had little prestige.

That did not mean it could be underestimated.

The man before us had refined the trick of spraying liquor through flame so brilliantly that he had used it to destroy one of my talismans.

Whatever else could be said, our pincer attack had delayed him for a moment.

That gave Old Cao enough time to charge in.

He swung his old pipe and thrust its tip at the man’s kidney.

The strike was fast and vicious. Even a muscular brute like Big Bull would probably collapse on the spot if hit there.

But the next instant, I heard a wet, slippery thump. It did not sound like the metal tip of a pipe striking a human body.

That strange little black snake again!

Under the half-light of the streetlamp, I glimpsed the fine-scaled black snake, no thicker than a thumb, emerge from the mysterious man’s body and coil around Old Cao’s pipe exactly as it had trapped my dagger.

But the pipe was Old Cao’s treasure. Unlike my dagger, he could not simply abandon it.

“Hah!”

The mysterious man laughed coldly and opened his mouth.

This time, instead of flame, a stream of ghostly blue gas shot straight toward Old Cao’s face.

Any fool could tell it was poison.

The man truly was a sinister rogue occultist. Everything he did was perverse and unnatural–first he breathed fire, and now he spat poisonous gas.

“Old Cao, watch out!”

Yuan Fei and I cried out together, but we were still too far away to help.

Fortunately, Old Cao deserved to be someone even Master regarded favorably. Faced with poison rushing straight at him, he did not panic in the slightest.

I could not tell what technique he used. With a swish, a glittering piece of silver spirit paper flew from inside his collar.

It was the relatively rare kind known as silver spirit paper, normally burned as an offering to one’s ancestors.
When used to cast magic, silver spirit paper could carry more qi and produce far greater power than ordinary spirit money.

As soon as this piece appeared, it blocked all the poisonous gas rushing at Old Cao. It began spinning rapidly, whipping up a small whirlwind between Old Cao and the mysterious man and blowing the poison back toward its source.

Excellent!

It was a wonderfully ingenious move.

An ordinary rogue occultist would have suffered the consequences of his own attack.

But the mysterious man merely said in a hoarse, icy voice, “Hmph. Not bad.”

He opened his mouth and inhaled, sucking the entire cloud of blue poison back into his body and swallowing it. At the same time, he kicked Old Cao squarely in the abdomen.

The blow sent Old Cao staggering back several steps before he fell onto his rear.

Having completed its spell, the silver spirit paper broke apart and fell as glittering motes.

Old Cao shouted as he rose.

“He’s poor at close combat. His legs are unsteady, and his kicks have no strength. Either his body is extremely weak, or fighting all three of us has exhausted him badly. Catch him!”

He did not need to tell us. Yuan Fei and I were already charging furiously from behind.

Yuan Fei might not be in wonderful physical condition, and I might be only a middle-school student, but surely the two of us together could bring down this rogue occultist.

Yuan Fei’s staff was already descending toward the back of his skull.

“I refuse to believe it! That ghostly arm can emerge from your chest, but can it grow out of your head too?”

No sooner had he spoken than the gray arm formed from wisps of mist emerged from the back of the mysterious man’s skull and caught the Ghost-Beating Staff again.

Yuan Fei could neither complete his swing nor pull the weapon free. Once again, he was trapped between advancing and retreating.

Yuan Fei fell speechless.

Good grief!

The same move had caught him twice.

This time, however, the mysterious man had his back turned and was at a disadvantage. Yuan Fei had no reservations about raising a foot and kicking him in the back.

Thump!

The mysterious rogue occultist stumbled two steps forward and lost his balance.

Unfortunately, I had already abandoned my dagger. Otherwise, I could have cut the tendons behind both his ankles, which should have made him much easier to handle.

Half a brick happened to lie beside my foot. I snatched it up and smashed it toward his head.

The man tilted his head aside. The brick grazed his ear and struck his shoulder instead. He grunted, so it must still have hurt.

“All of you are dead!”

His voice had become sinister, violent, and savage.

After being pummeled by the three of us, the rogue occultist was obviously furious.

I hurried to Old Cao’s side and caught my breath, expecting another bitter fight.

Never had I imagined that after making such a vicious threat, the man would turn and run.

Whatever technique he used made him extraordinarily fast.

He fled like a galloping horse. In the blink of an eye, his back vanished completely into the night ahead.

Old Cao and I exchanged bewildered looks.

Had he really issued a threat and then run away?

Yuan Fei burst out laughing. “Good grief! The bastard put on such a grand show, but he didn’t dare keep fighting us. He even made a threat while fleeing? That’s an onion stuck up a pig’s snout–pretending to be an elephant!”

I laughed too.

Old Cao did not. He looked first at the three corpses still bound beneath the tree by his phoenix rope, then toward the darkness where the mysterious man had disappeared.

His expression and voice were grave. “Whatever else may be true, the three of us attacked him together. He was at a disadvantage, yet he still escaped with ease the instant he chose to leave. That proves how formidable he is. If any one of us encountered him alone, the odds would be very bad.”

Put that way, Yuan Fei and I had to agree.

For me in particular, facing him alone would probably mean dying after only a few moves.

Yuan Fei sighed. “Society is stable, the economy is booming, and people live and work in peace. How can such a powerful rogue occultist still exist? And no one has ever heard of anyone like him around Lianghe Town before.”

I understood what he meant. Master had also said that rogue occultists, wicked sorcerers, ghosts, and monsters generally ran rampant only during chaotic eras when ordinary people could barely survive.

Old Cao snorted. “Any large forest has every kind of bird. No matter the era, even in an age of prosperity, monsters still hide among us. They simply stay in the shadows and dare not act openly. Otherwise, the police would have arrested them long ago. Whatever happens, we need to be careful from now on.”

I nodded, then suddenly thought of something else.

“Old Cao, do you think the feng shui formation on that burial hill–the one altered specifically to cultivate the Golden-Thread Netherbloom–might have been this man’s work?”